Chapter 4: Public Display of Ownership
The dawn air was a knife against my bare skin, the cobblestones icy under my feet. I stood in the center of the courtyard, the weight of dozens of eyes crawling over the bruises Luca had painted on my hips, the bite mark purpling on my shoulder. He circled me slowly, the soft tap of his boots the only sound in the frozen quiet. The riding crop in his hand was polished leather, dark as his eyes.
He stopped before me, the crop’s tip lifting my chin. “Open,” he commanded, his voice carrying over the pack. I parted my lips, my breath fogging in the cold, and he slid the leather between my teeth. The taste was bitter, equine and masculine. He withdrew it, trailing the tip down my throat, over the frantic pulse there, then lower. It traced the curve of my breast, circling a nipple until it tightened painfully. A low murmur rippled through the watching wolves.
He continued the slow, torturous descent over the plane of my stomach, the sensitive dip of my navel. I trembled, not from cold, but from the violation of this public cataloging. The crop paused at the junction of my thighs. “Spread your legs,” he said, a flat, casual order. I did, the movement exposing the swollen, used flesh between my legs to the morning air and the pack’s gaze.
The cold leather pressed against my inner thigh, then tapped lightly, insolently, against my damp folds. A shocked gasp escaped someone in the crowd. Luca’s grey eyes held mine, devoid of tenderness, blazing with pure possession. “This cunt,” he announced, his voice a clarion call in the silence, “is drenched with my seed. It aches from being stretched around my cock.” He pressed the crop harder, a blunt, claiming pressure. “The scent of my come is deep inside her. Let that scent be a warning.”
He finally withdrew the crop, running it back up the inside of my thigh, leaving a faint, cool stripe. He turned to face his pack, his shoulder blocking me from view for a moment. “Every inch,” he growled, “belongs to me.” The declaration hung in the air, a verdict and a chain. My skin burned where the leather had touched, a shameful counterpoint to the icy courtyard. Inside, the bond, that newly forged cable, throbbed with a dark, synchronous heat.