How to Worship a Goddess (22 page)

That animal he sensed inside himself reared up and took over then. His hips began to pump, working his cock in and out in a piston-fast motion that cranked his blood pressure and sent his libido into overdrive.

His mouth latched onto hers, stealing her breath and sucking it into his lungs. When he began to see stars in front of his eyes, he broke apart to suck in air, his hips continuing to pound against hers. He stared into her face, watching her expression slacken even further into ecstasy.

He stroked harder, faster, felt his body tense as she tried to move with him. The bare skin of her neck called to him and he put his mouth over the tight tendon and bit. Hard. He couldn't help himself.

Christ, he wanted to taste blood and that was just fucked up. Still, he couldn't stop. He barely managed to stop his teeth from breaking the skin.

Tearing his mouth away, he let his head fall back even as he pushed his body harder against hers.

His cock felt swollen and ten times more sensitive than it'd ever felt before. Each time he retreated, he growled and shoved back in that much faster.

Her hands, which had been clenching tight to his shoulders, began to flex, as if she were fighting him. It made his beast rear back on its hind legs and roar.

And made him go at her that much harder.

Total domination. She had to give in. He had to have her complete submission or he'd fuck her until she gave it to him.

But he felt her pressing back against him. She wouldn't give him what he wanted. She twisted, as if trying to get away. Her head shook back and forth. She wanted to deny him his prize. Her orgasm.

He pulled out, fighting her hands as she tried to keep him against her. But she couldn't match his strength.

Setting her on her feet, he turned her to face the wall, lifting her arms and pinning her wrists above her head with one hand. She moaned, and wriggled her ass against his groin, drawing a harsh growl from him.

“Fuck me, damn you.” Her voice sounded hoarse and rough with need. “You know you want to. Just do it.”

It was exactly what he wanted but he refused to let her control any of this. So instead, he fit his cock into the seam of her ass and pressed hard, making sure she understood exactly what he was promising. She shuddered and moaned then went pliant beneath him, one cheek pressed to the wall.

“I'll do it when I'm Goddamn good and ready. I'm going to fuck you until you can't stand.”

Leaning in, he pressed his nose behind her ear to breathe her in, then licked a path from just below her ear to the tip of her jaw. Then he nipped her jaw and strung a series of kisses down her throat as he ground against her.

Her eyes fluttered shut as she drew in a huge breath, her lips parting to release it.

“Then do it already.”

Goddamn her, she was taunting him, pushing him. She pushed back against him, her hips rotating, rubbing his cock with those smooth ass cheeks.

One hand on her wrists, his other reached around the front of her to slip between her legs.

Her sweet, slick essence coated his fingers and he speared them into her pussy without warning, just to feel her writhe. She clamped down on him with a moan, making her sheath that much tighter. He had to use more force to penetrate her now.

His cock throbbed and he realized he'd been rubbing himself against her, almost to the point of getting off.

Pre-cum seeped from the tip, just as her essence flowed down her legs. Pulling his hand away required concentration but he did it, grabbing his cock and angling it down.

He had to bend his knees to get at the right angle but he got distracted by the feel of her wet lips sliding against his heated cock. Christ, he could get off just like this.

His hips naturally took over the rhythm, rubbing against her heated skin, feeling her body quake with each pass.

“Brandon. Blessed Goddess, fuck me.”

“When I'm damn good and ready.”

“I know you're ready now. I can feel it—”

With just a flex of his knees, he pierced her and sank as deep as he could go in this position.

Lucy released her breath in a harsh exhalation that sounded almost pained to him. Still, he couldn't stop.

He moved closer, knocked her feet with his own so her legs spread even more. It gave him a few more inches of depth. And made her moan out his name.

With one arm around her waist and the other still holding her wrists pinned above her head, he let his hips pound against her ass.

The position made her so fucking tight, he could barely stand it.

Somehow he managed to hold off his orgasm, to push into her and push into her until she hung limp in his hand. Her body merely a receptacle for his, she finally gave him what he needed and let him have her.

When she came, she didn't tense at all. Instead her body went liquid around him, fiery hot and clenching. Grasping his cock and squeezing until he couldn't hold back.

With a low growl, he pushed as deep as he could go and held tight. He exploded, his seed pumping deep.

The orgasm went on for minutes until he honestly thought something was wrong. But Christ, he didn't want to pull out. And he swore he was still hard.

The hand at her waist slid across her stomach and arrowed straight down to her clit. He flicked the little nub and felt her twitch around him.

He'd just come but he was still hard and getting harder. He could go again. Right now. So he did.

Chapter 9

When he woke, it had gone dark again.

So dark, he couldn't at first tell whether he was blindfolded or it was just that pitch black.

He reached for his eyes… No blindfold.

“Shh, Brandon, just lie still a while longer.”

Ah, he knew that voice. He loved that voice. That voice made him hard and ready. Even now, when his blood felt like frozen slush in his veins, he felt his cock begin to fill.

“Lucy.”

“Yes. Everything's fine, sweetheart. Just lie still.”

Sure, he could do that. Frankly, he didn't know if he could do much of anything else.

Jesus, everything fucking hurt. What the hell had happened? The last thing he remembered was falling asleep after nailing Lucy up against the wall like a madman. And that sure as hell hadn't hurt.

“Are you okay?” Damn, his voice sounded scratchy, raw. Deeper somehow.

“I'm fine, Brandon. You need to lie still.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

Finally, his eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, enough for him to see shapes.

“Nothing happened. You… just need to rest some more.”

He turned his head toward her voice and saw her sitting next to him on the bed. He couldn't see her expression but he knew by the tone of her voice that something was up.

Her hand settled on his chest, a comforting weight that sank heat into him. He felt that warmth trying to seep through his body, trying to dispel the cold.

Her head lowered and she began to chant. Though he couldn't understand a word she said, he knew it was the same language she'd been singing in the other night.

He wanted to reach for her, tried to lift his arms but they were too damn heavy. He opened his mouth to speak but he couldn't get his vocal cords to work.

Now what the hell was wrong with his voice? Panic wanted to eat away at him but Lucy's voice soothed him. He wanted to close his eyes again.

But he had questions about… Hell, what questions did he have?

Something to do with what had happened earlier today. Something about a knife.

The little goat man, Sal, had stuck a knife through his chest. He glanced down at his chest.

Huh. No knife hilt sticking out. And since his heart was beating, he figured the fact that the knife was gone was a good thing. He glanced around. No Sal. No Cat either. The teen girl with the beautiful hair had helped Sal stick a knife in his chest.

Okay, maybe his brain needed a few more hours of sleep to be able to function properly because right now, he definitely felt fucked in the head.

He closed his eyes, concentrating on calming that strange, almost detached panic. And banishing the cold. Why had Sal stuck a knife in his chest?

Berserkir
.

Okay, that he remembered. They'd been trying to find out if he had
berserkir
blood.

“Lucy.” He swallowed a few times, trying to moisten his mouth. “Did it work?”

Lucy lifted the hand she'd been resting on his shoulder to his mouth and continued to chant.

Okay, he could take a hint. Besides, he didn't really feeling up to moving.

And he loved listening to her voice. She sang like an angel… Wait, was that mixing metaphors, considering she was an Etruscan goddess?

Okay, that sounded a little more like him, even if it was only in his head.

After a few minutes, he actually started to feel more like himself.

His blood unfroze, his brain began to put things back into the right order. His memories of earlier today lined up and he knew it was only a matter of time before he had the answer to his last question.

He relaxed, letting her voice wash over him until finally she went silent and drew her hands away.

“Brandon, open your eyes now. How do you feel?”

She sounded tentative, worried. He opened his eyes to see her expression reflect the same feeling. Shit, maybe he didn't want to know what'd happened.

So instead of thinking about that, he concentrated on her question. He hauled his upper body off the bed then swung his legs off the side of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. He sat there, waiting to feel light-headed or nauseous.

Nothing. He felt fine.

Well, actually… He felt better than fine. He felt energized.

And strong as hell.

Like he'd pumped a few hundred pounds and popped some steroids to go with it.

“I feel okay. Actually, I feel pretty strong. It worked, didn't it? Whatever you and Sal did, it worked.”

He couldn't hide his grin but she bit at her bottom lip, worrying the soft flesh as she nodded. “Yes, but there were… complications.”

Okay, that didn't sound good. He looked down at himself, trying to figure out if he was missing any body parts or—claws. He remembered claws.

Holy
shit.

“Can you turn on a light?”

He needed to be able to see more clearly. He had to—

A lamp on the bedside table clicked, and light flooded the room. Blinking a few times to get his eyes used to the light, he lifted his hands to check out his fingers. Then breathed a sigh of relief.

No sharp white claws where his nails should be.

“No, you didn't imagine them,” Lucy said. “You'll get accustomed to how they work in a few days.”

His gaze flashed back to hers. “So I really am a…
berserkir
.”

“Yes. I'm sorry, Brandon.”

“Sorry? Shit, why are you sorry?”

He was a frickin' bear without the heavy fur coat. He was strong enough to protect her now—

“Because we broke the spell. If I'd known… If we'd realized sooner what was going on, maybe we could have prevented the spell from breaking, maybe—”

“Wait. What spell?”

Lucy grimaced, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Well, we're not one hundred percent sure but we believe your parents had a spell cast that bound your
berserkir
powers. They probably had it done when you were a child. I assume they wanted you to lead a human life and never know you were different.”

Shit, that meant his parents… “So my parents are
berserkir
.”

She nodded. “At least one, but I'm guessing both because the binding spell was so strong.”

His parents were
berserkir
. Memories from his childhood started to play through his mind. The scratches on his parents' headboard shot to the forefront. What kid wanted to think about his parents having sex, much less rough sex? Yeah, he'd seen the scratches but he'd pretty much forced them out of his mind.

What the hell else had he overlooked as a kid?

“Holy shit,” he breathed, “the entire town I grew up in. They're all in on it.”

His town wasn't big but it was isolated as all hell. No hotels, no bed and breakfasts. If you had family coming to visit, they stayed with you in your home or they didn't stay overnight. But that happened rarely.

No one ever sold their house if they moved away. They either kept it or sold it to one of the other families.

Hell, the town was so isolated, he and all the other kids had been bussed almost forty minutes both ways to attend the district's high school. The younger kids were taught in a four-room building until they hit seventh grade.

Almost every single child who'd grown up there had left for bigger cities and never looked back. It was practically ingrained into them from birth that they would leave, get jobs “away.” Meaning anywhere except where they'd grown up.

“Probably.” Lucy's voice drew him back to the present. “I've seen it happen before. Your parents wanted a different life for you than they had. Don't all parents want better for their children?”

“Yeah, but to hide what I am? What if I have kids? Fuck, what about my sisters' kids?”

“The binding is a blood ritual. Your sisters' children probably had the spell passed to them through the blood. And your sisters probably mated men who are not
versipelli
. Their children would have only a fifty percent chance of being able to shift anyway. That spell was so strong, you nearly died when Sal accidently broke the binding.”

Brandon just sat there, shaking his head. The lengths to which his parents had gone to allow him to live the life he had now, it amazed him.

He remembered being a teenager and practically crawling the walls to be able to get away from his no-stoplight town. Hockey had been his savior. For others, it'd been college.

“Guess their plan worked. Shit, I couldn't wait to leave.”

He was still shaking his head when he realized what Lucy had said. He turned to look at her and she met his gaze straight on.

“Wait, what do you mean, broke the binding?”

“Exactly what I said. When Sal… pierced you with the blade, he disrupted the spell. You can now access your
berserkir
powers. Since I don't know much about
berserkir
, I think you might want to call or go visit your parents.”

“I've got games.”

She dropped her gaze for several seconds before taking a deep breath and lifting her head, as if it was so hard to do.

“I don't think you're going to be able to play, Brandon. At least not for a few weeks. You're going to need time to adjust—”

He blinked at her, stunned. “Weeks? I can't be out weeks.”

Jesus, just the thought of missing Thursday's game gave him a case of the shakes.

Lucy's expression had turned stony. “You'll have to tell your coach you've had a family emergency—”

“No, no way—”

“—and you had to leave immediately. Tell them your father's had a heart attack, tell them your mother's come down with a deadly disease. You can't get on the ice until you know how this is going to affect you.”

“What do you mean, affect me?”

But he already knew. He could feel the change deep inside. Almost like a coal smoldering in his gut. Earlier, when he'd fucked her against the wall…

“You'll need to test yourself, see what your limits are,” Lucy said. “How hard you can throw a punch. You already had a killer slap shot. Now, you might literally be able to take someone's head off with it. If you get into a fight with someone, you won't be able to control your claws. Not yet. It's going to take time for you to master everything that being a
berserkir
means.”

He froze as another thought occurred to him. “Am I going to change into a bear? A real fucking bear with fur and fangs and…”

Holy
fucking
shit
. His brain had gotten stuck on that image and now it wouldn't release him. Could he handle that? Or would he freak out and have to be put in a cell for freaked-out werebears?

He felt a laugh bubble in his chest, but in his head he knew it sounded kind of scary so he tried to suppress it.

“No, you won't.” She reached for him then, put her hand on his arm, and suddenly he could think clearly again. He put his hand over hers so she couldn't get away and take his sanity with him. “Do you remember what Sal said earlier? About how the
berserkir
had evolved? You won't become a bear but you will take on some of their traits. The claws, the fangs, the strength. You will learn to control them, but until then you'll need to lie low. Sal's promised to help. And I'll do whatever you need me to do.”

Was that guilt he heard in her voice? “Lucy, why do I get the feeling you're not too thrilled about this? I did this for you—”

“But I gave you no choice!”

He frowned. “What? What the hell are you talking about? I told Sal—”

“I should have known something would go wrong.” Releasing him, she got up to pace. The second her hand left his, he felt that spark, that flare of heat and… aggression. Yeah, that was the word he was looking for. Aggression.

He gripped the side of the mattress, forcing himself to stay on the bed, not to run her to the ground or grab her arm and throw her down on the bed every time she passed by him.

“Sal
broke
the binding. We can't replace it, can't fix it. We can't put you back to the way you were.” She stopped to take a deep breath. “Your life will never be the same, and this is all my fault.”

He shook his head, trying to see it from her angle, but there was a little part of his brain that kept telling him she was right. This was her fault. He'd never play hockey again. He'd be a freak and an outcast.

All
her
fault.

With a growl, he grabbed her arms, yanking her to him then flipping her onto the mattress beneath him and covering her with his body.

And she let him. She didn't fight him, didn't yell at him or tell him to get off. Which meant he was in way more trouble than he'd thought.

He opened his mouth to tell her, again, that this wasn't her fault… and decided to show her instead.

Bending down to her, he kissed her. He let himself revel in the heat and the taste of her. Her scent tangled around his fast-growing lust and he pried open her unresponsive lips and plundered her mouth.

She let him kiss her, let him take what he wanted. And it pissed him off even more.

He didn't want her docile. Fucking her into submission was different than having her just give in.

Swinging his leg over her, he planted his knees on either side of her hips and held himself above her, trapping her beneath him.

He almost thought she wouldn't meet his gaze, but she did, and now he really could see the guilt in those stormy gray eyes.

Stealing another kiss, he drew back so he could see her entire face.

“You still don't get it, do you?” he said. “You still don't understand that this is what I wanted. I
want
to be strong. I
want
to be what you need.”

She shook her head. “But I never wanted to have the choice taken away from you. I—We almost lost you during the ritual. You almost died when the spell broke. You didn't…”