Something was happening, changing inside me. Every firm, hard thing I’d ever carried with me was dissolving. Ideas, feelings, thoughts, barriers, boundaries. They all fell away in this moment, entirely dominated by the fire raging in my body. I was need, pure and simple, and my body was rearranging itself to aid that. My tendons were lax, my thighs able to widen further than they ever had, and Caleb grabbed my knees and pulled them up against my chest, Jai’s fingers pushing deeper and deeper.
But not deep enough. I was aching, right up inside me, in a place his fingers couldn’t touch. The rough thrust of them helped and made it worse, his knuckles smacking against my bare flesh until they too began to sink further in.
“I’m gonna make you come, baby. Get you all soft and sweet and ready for me.” Jai’s voice was warm, loving, but not for long. “She’s chosen me. You need to go. We’ll talk later, but this—”
I frowned, cried out, thrashed on the bed when that heavy weight on my stomach was removed.
“No!” I shouted, flailing blindly trying to restore it. “It hurts! It hurts!”
“Not for long, love. Almost there.”
I felt a pop as Jai wedged something deeper inside me, but despite getting the penetration I craved, this wasn’t right. My eyes flicked open, and I stared into Jai’s silver ones, my own not feeling right.
“I need more, Jai.”
“And I’m gonna give it to you, baby.” He was trying for reassuring, but I could hear the fear, the anger in his voice.
“No, Jai, more.”
I looked over to my right where a distraught Caleb lay, the two of them so close, their animals in their eyes. They edged in at my look, invited closer by my plea, and that felt right. Jai yanked my attention back to him when he pulled his fingers free and hunched over me, replacing them quickly with his cock.
Oh yeah…
Maybe I had a life, a purpose, a name before this, but it didn’t matter for shit right now, only this.
“More,” I nodded.
There was no working him in this time, my slick, my body accepting him like he was home, like he was always supposed to be there. And that’s what rushed up, pricking at my eyes, burning in my chest. Jai, Jai, Jai. He was my heartbeat, my compass, my true north. My body craved him like a drug, swallowing up every inch until we reached that bloody knot. His eyes jerked up, focussed entirely on me as he pushed.
When I look back now, this didn’t go the way I’d hoped. Right then, there were no thoughts, no plans, just instinct. Jai had made changes in my body, but it had its own ideas, as did my power.
It surged inside me as Jai pushed in. Working with an animal felt like sinking into a cloud of them, dealing with what was there, sorting things out. For the first time, this was about me.
Hollingsworth thought he could drive me out of my mind with his tricks. He was only partly right. By pushing my heat into overdrive, he’d pushed everything else to its limits as well.
That same ability to reach out to other minds was there, but in a completely different form. More, more, more. He’d lit a fire inside me with my heat, one that destroyed my mind and made me nothing but instinct, and my power provided the fuel for it to turn into a burning conflagration. The sound of the shifters’ groans was music to my ears as they were hit with me.
Each and every one of them—Kazimir, Zane, Nero, Caleb, and even Gaden—could feel the ache inside me, waiting to be filled. Clothes were shredded, and feet moved quickly as they stalked over to the cage, ringing the bed. Jai snarled his anger at their interference, but that soon fell away as I bucked my hips forward.
“More, Jai…” I said gently, what was left of my conscious mind trying to soften the blow. He wanted to be enough, but deep down, I knew he wouldn’t. This must be why Nan always warned me away from the shifters, I thought dimly, tears streaming from my eyes as I heard Jai’s ragged groan. I felt the pinch, then the burn as his knot forced me open, while strange fingers snaked their way down to stroke my clit, my hair, my face. Fingers that plucked at my nipples, pulled my thighs wider.