Page 31 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

He felt Milo’s head give a curt nod, his tiny shoulders trembling.

“I’ll be quick.”

And before he let his mate suffer the anticipation of it, Grievance bared his fangs and sank them into flesh.

His teeth sank deep into the skin, blood filling his mouth and coating his tongue. His sharp canines sank further, embedding themselves in muscle. And as he’d instructed, Milo screamed. He screamed loud and long, his shaking hands gripping the carpet fibers so hard he yanked them free.

Grievance’s mouth was filled with the taste of iron. He couldn’t help but lap at the dripping red ambrosia, swallowing it, savoring it, relishing the way he felt a piece of Milo fill his belly. Teeth still sunken in his mate, with blood dripping in steady drops, staining the cream rug, Grievance felt the rise within himself.

The rise of joining. Of permanence.

My mate. Now, we are forever bonded.

He couldn’t stop what was about to happen. He was too far gone. Grievance pulled his teeth free from his mate and felt the blood dripping from his lips and down his chin. He reached around Milo’s hips, gripping his length and stimulating it back to life as he continued to fuck. To breed his eternal mate.

Milo was half-collapsed on the carpet, his upper body sagging. But he still managed to keep his hips raised and his legs spread.

“Such a good mate. So perfect.” Grievance growled, fucking into his mate’s womb as he jerked his cock. “I’m going to fill you with pups. I’m going to make you swell with my seed.”

All Milo could do was groan as Grievance stroked him to climax. And the second he felt his mate’s release coat his hand, it was his turn.

Grievance shoved inside that pink hole one final time and came on a roar. He gripped his mate’s hip, claws digging into skin as he held Milo against him, forcing him to take his seed right into his womb. Right where Grievance’s pups would begin to grow. Then with a flash of heat, the bulge at the base of his cock expanded.

Milo gasped and groaned, his cock still pulsing from release as Grievance knotted inside of him.

“You have it,” Grievance gasped, Kava fangs bared. “I have filled you with my seed, and you’ve taken my knot.”

Grievance went still then, unable to move without seriously harming his mate. He gasped, sweat and blood dripping from his face and sliding onto his mate’s back.

Without his permission, tears welled in Grievance’s eyes and joined the sweat and blood that coated Milo’s perfect, slender back.

The emotions, the intensity of it all—the brutality—fell heavily on his shoulders in a single breath.

He’d gone too far.

“Grievance…” Milo said weakly without turning his head. Perhaps he felt the shudders building in Grievance’s chest, spilling down his arms and legs until there wasn’t a part of the Chimera that wasn’t trembling. “Are you okay?”

And he asks if I am okay. After enduring my brutal mating. He worries for me.

Carefully, oh so carefully, Grievance lifted Milo onto his lap, so that his knot remained inside and didn’t pull at his tortured hole. Milo winced, but eventually found a more comfortable position on his lap.

“Grievance?” Milo asked, eyes barely staying open, like he was on the verge of passing out.

Grievance didn’t respond. Couldn’t. It was like his tongue had forgotten how language worked. His mind had forgotten words. All he knew was instinct. Touch. The tender connection between him and this incredible creature, currently filled with his seed.

Grievance sniffed at Milo’s neck. His mate was spent. Perhaps pushed too far.

His mate spoke—but Grievance could no longer understand his tongue. Only the worrying timbre of his tone.

Grievance let out a long whine, like a wounded wolf. He smelled again, his nose filling with the tang of iron. Of pain. He looked at the wound on his mate’s shoulder, at his own teeth marks still dripping with blood. He leaned down and began licking the wound. Milo hissed, flinching, but a moment later relaxed into his ministrations.

He said a few more things, and his voice sounded pleased, so Grievance continued. He licked and held his mate. Doing everything in his power to ease his discomfort as his knot held them in place.

Instinct told him to do this.

Instinct told him that this was the carrier of his cubs.

And as their mating sealed with the scent of blood and semen, instinct told him that this was the most precious creature in all the world. That he would die to protect him. That he would live and breathe only to be with him.