fussing with his iPhone, “sure didn’t.” He didn’t look up or comment further, but his lips twitched and curled at the corners.
Alcaeus roared with laughter and bum-rushed me a split second later, tickling me into the leather chair until I begged for mercy. Then he snatched me up by the waist and flung me none-so-gently over his broad shoulder.
“Aw, Milena, Milena,” he sang, “I’d adore you even if you weren’t the hottest vessel in half a millennia and holding the key to our entire future existence.” He swung me around a few times before marching back toward the center of the room with me still dangling upside down over his shoulder and protesting that fact with my fists.
“In the first place, Remy,” Alcaeus argued, “Milena is no longer a fragile human female. And in the second, check this cool trick out …”
Before I could blink he’d pulled me back over his shoulder and down the front of his hard body, drawing my thighs open around his waist and imprisoning me securely up against him with a hand splayed intimately beneath my backside. Whoa! I was about to let squeal my disapproval of his most unexpected manhandling when he forced my head to the side with his other hand, sweeping my disheveled hair out of his way and lowering his mouth to my neck.
“Ooh, ah, oh!” I emitted rather lamely in my startled bewilderment as his hot tongue swirled over my skin. “ Al-cae-usss!”
I squirmed against him as a cacophony of protests, curse words, and loud, vicious growls erupted throughout the room from all sides. I shrieked in objection, even as my eyes crossed and glazed over, when Alcaeus drew a sizable expanse of my tender flesh into his warm mouth and began sucking erotically. Sweet Jesus!
“Ooh … ahh … Aaahlcaeus … Ssstopit!”
The sounds of furniture breaking and bodies barreling and smashing about the room around us assailed my ears. And yet I moaned in bliss, my eyes rolling back and fluttering shut as a freakishly delightful pulling sensation bloomed in the pit of my belly. Glorious tingles spread throughout my body. I was still struggling—albeit weakly—as a peculiar sense of apathy and lethargy pervaded my system.
It occurred to me I probably should have cared more as I heard an enraged Alex screaming gruesome death and torture threats at Alcaeus, and an equally infuriated Remy promising full-on defection should Alcaeus dare mark me against my will. But it just seemed easier to blow off their over-the-top, predictably possessive reactions right now in favor of enjoying Alcaeus’ bafflingly inappropriate and ill-timed public mauling session.
What the hey, right? YOLO and all that jazz …
“ Mark her and die! Mark her and die! ” Alex was bellowing again and again, like a deranged man.
Mark me? What? Well … duh! Yeah, this little prank of his was definitely going to leave quite the trashy-looking hickey on my neck, that was certain.
I felt the vibration of Alcaeus’ profound amusement rumbling deep within his chest as he hummed pleasantly against my neck. But when I heard handclapping and the unfamiliar cackle of a female occupant in the room, I finally forced my eyelids open and blew my hair out of my face just enough to see what sort of insanity was transpiring around me from my cockeyed view over Alcaeus’ shoulder.
Alcaeus turned us slowly in place, affording my dazed eyes a glimpse of the room and what proved to be quite the riotously chaotic scene. Alex was magically suspended high up against the wall, his face beet red, his eyes bright yellow, his mouth practically foaming in fury as he raged down at Alcaeus—every muscle in his body bursting with tension, veins protruding throughout as he wrestled in vain against imaginary restraints. I noted it was both distressing as well as a turn-on for my wolf to see him so. Hmm …
Remy was caught in a similar predicament on the adjacent wall, but he’d somehow lost all of his clothing and was completely