Page 4 of Beast’s Temptation

"I am telling you the truth." Vethros rose as well, though his movements were slower, heavier with age. "The law is clear. Any Priest who breaks his vows is cast out. Stripped of his markings. Exiled from the temple forever."

"I know the law." Sorek's voice cracked on the words. "I have recited it ten thousand times. I have believed in it with every fiber of my being."

"And now?"

And now he couldn't stop thinking about her hair brushing against his skin. About the vulnerable truth in her voice when she'd admitted she didn't fit with her own people. About the way she'd looked at him like he was worth understanding, worth knowing, worth more than his robes and his vows and his endless, empty serenity.

"Perhaps," Vethros said slowly, watching his face with ancient knowing eyes, "the human could be removed. Sent away before the drive becomes unmanageable. If she leaves, the symptoms may ease over time⁠—"

"No." The word erupted from Sorek's throat with a violence that shocked them both. He felt his claws extend fully, felt his markings flush with sudden heat, felt the growl building in his chest like thunder before a storm. "No one sends her away. No one touches her. She stays."

Vethros looked at him for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was unbearably gentle.

"Then you already know what you will choose."

Sorek stood in the center of the Elder's chamber, breathing hard, his body thrumming with possessive fury and desperate want and the first stirrings of grief for everything he was about to lose. He thought of the temple that had been his home for three decades. The vows that had given his life meaning. The serene certainty that he had sacrificed nothing, because he had never wanted anything.

He wanted now. He wanted with a ferocity that terrified him, and he couldn't make it stop.

The bells chimed for the midday meditation, and Sorek left the Elder's quarters without another word. He told himself he was going to his chamber, to attempt some form of centering practice, to find a way through this impossible situation that didn't end in exile and ruin.

Instead, he found himself in the corridor outside the guest quarters, pressed into an alcove where the shadows were deep enough to hide him, watching her.

She had been given a small room near the outer wall, modest but comfortable, with a view of the lesser courtyard. The door was open to catch the breeze, and he could see her sitting at the small desk, hunched over her tablet, her hair falling around her face as she typed. She was still wearing the same clothes from the morning, practical and travel-worn, and there was a smear of ink on her left hand that she didn't seem to notice.

She looked frustrated. Distracted. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and every few moments she would pause to rub her temples or push her hair back from her face. He wondered what she was working on. He wondered if she was thinking about him, about the way he'd fled from her in the Hall of Prophecies without explanation.

He should leave. He should go back to his chamber and meditate until the dawn prayers, and then he should request reassignment, have another Priest take over as her guide, put as much distance between them as the temple walls would allow.

But he couldn't make himself move. He stood in the shadows and watched her work, cataloging every detail with the same intensity he'd once brought to memorizing scripture. The way she bit her lower lip when she was thinking hard. The way her fingers flew across the tablet with practiced efficiency. The way she sighed and stretched her neck, exposing the pale column of her throat in a way that made his cock throb against his robes.

She laughed at something on the screen, a small surprised sound, and the echoes of it hit Sorek like a blade between the ribs.

Mine, something primal growled inside him. She should only laugh for me.

He pressed his hand over his heart as if he could physically hold the possessiveness inside, and the motion made his robe shift, and the sound of fabric against fabric was apparently enough to catch her attention because she looked up suddenly, straight at the alcove where he was hiding.

He held his breath. The shadows were deep, but Khorani eyes glowed in darkness, and if she looked hard enough she might see the amber gleam of his gaze fixed on her with an intensity that bordered on worship.

She stared at the shadows for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she shook her head slightly, as if dismissing a fancy, and returned to her work.

Sorek waited until she was fully absorbed again before he slipped away, silent as the temple's ancient ghosts.

That night, alone in his chamber, he did something he hadn't done in decades. He removed his robes. He lay back on his sleeping pallet, where he'd spent thirty years in solitary rest. And he wrapped his hand around his aching cock.

The sensation was overwhelming. His body had been dormant for so long, so completely ignored and suppressed, that even the simple pressure of his own grip sent shockwaves of pleasure radiating outward. He stroked himself slowly at first, then faster as the need built, and he couldn't stop the images that flooded his mind.

Her face. Her scent. The strand of hair that had touched his skin.

He imagined more. Her hands on his chest, exploring the markings that covered his body. Her mouth against his throat, learning the texture of his fur. Her voice saying his name, not in greeting or academic interest but in pleasure, in need, in surrender.

He imagined covering her body with his own, pressing her into his sleeping pallet, fitting himself between her thighs. He imagined the sounds she would make as he pushed inside her, the way her hands would grip his shoulders, the way she would look up at him with those cool inhuman eyes and see not a Priest or a guide but simply him.

The climax hit him like a sandstorm, sudden and devastating and impossible to withstand. He came with a broken moan, spilling over his shaking fist in pulses that seemed to go on forever, his vision whiting out at the edges as thirty years of suppression released in a single overwhelming wave.

Afterward, he lay on his pallet and stared at the ceiling, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hand still loosely wrapped around his softening cock. His seed was luminescent, glowing faintly gold in the darkness of his chamber, and there was so much of it. More than he remembered from those early years before he'd learned control. His body had clearly been waiting for this, storing up need and desire and desperate longing, and now that the dam had broken, he didn't know if he could ever rebuild it.

He looked at his trembling hand. At the evidence of his weakness gleaming on his skin.