Chapter 15

The fragile impasse of detente Karl and I had silently established could never realistically endure for long given the feral, primal forces constantly vying for dominance in both our natures. My deluded fantasies of somehow circumventing the inevitable collision course our clashing wills and insatiable hungers had set on a headlong crash trajectory were abruptly shattered one stifling summer evening.

I had ventured to the darkened training arena seeking solitary refuge from the oppressive atmosphere pervading the inner den areas - as well as a much-needed outlet to vent the simmering storm of conflicted impulses perpetually snarling beneath the surface of my restraint. With the cavernous space deserted and swathed in velvety shadows cast by the low emergency lights, I felt secure in allowing myself to burst into an uninhibited flurry of vicious kata strikes and defensive grappling forms.

Every ounce of the turmoil churning within - the hatred and shame, the ruinous self-disgust over my body's vile betrayal, the howling anguish of denying my wolf's compulsions - I channeled into a dervish of merciless blows. Each punishing combination of linear attacks and grappling techniques drawing ragged exhalations and faint whimpers from my exerted form as I strove for that elusive calm at the eye of my inner cyclone.

So thoroughly did I lose myself in the primal cadence of those well-worn drills, that I actually failed to register the sudden heaviness of aroused male musk permeating the air around me. Thick, bestial tendrils of undisguised intent infiltrating my senses with all the insidiousness of a slow-acting neurotoxin...steadily hijacking higher neural function until my body began slowing in unconscious invitation.

It wasn't until the sound of mocking applause shattered my solitary rhythm that reality came crashing back in merciless clarity.

"My, my...what an arousing little exhibition, my feisty little wolf."

The rich, velvet tones of Karl's resonant baritone seemed to coalesce out of the smothering blackness itself, immediately spiking my heartrate into overdrive. Every hypersensitized nerve-ending detonated with heightened awareness as his stoic, imposing figure emerged from one of the shadowy entryways into the dim glow cast on the center mat space.

Closer inspection revealed he was stripped to the waist, every cut, corded muscle of his combat-hewn physique delineated in exquisite musculature seems to glisten in the low light. With every measured, predatory stalk closer to my paralyzed position, the aura of pure virile masculinity cloaking him penetrated deeper...threatening to drown out all remaining facets of lucidity still clinging desperately to the surface of my fracturing self-possession.

"It's been far too long since I've had the pleasure of appreciating your...assets on full display, precious omega," Karl practically purred in dark, sinful invitation. The wicked cant of that chiseled mouth and heated intent blazing in those diamond-gaze promised something deliciously deviant lurked just on the cusp of manifesting. "Enough futile denial and cloaking those delectable curves from the hungry eyes of your rightful alpha."

A shudder of mingled trepidation and liquid heat saturated my lower abdomen as he casually divested himself of his loose training pants and strode purposefully the remaining distance separating us. Every stride seemed to broadcast subliminal volumes about the apex predator prowess and rarefied breed of carnal magnetism simmering in his prowling, rippling form.

I wanted to flee, to escape the intoxicating spell this depraved male seemed bent on ensnaring me within once more...and yet by body remained rooted and trembling with wanton desperation for the very ravaging he was implying. A strangled whimper hitched past my parted lips as Karl closed the remaining distance until the scorching furnace of his musculature nearly scalded my sensitized skin.

"Precious Lexi," he chastised with mock sympathy positively dripping from that smoky rasp, calloused knuckles grazing the wobbling plane of my abdomen. "Did you honestly believe you could outrun the inevitability of your submission to me forever? That your deliciously depraved little core wouldn't betray those pitiful walls you've erected sooner or later and crave this?"

Every syllable of brazen seduction punctuated by that questing hand inching higher, cupping the underside of my breast through the sodden fabric of my training top. My treacherous nipple predictably pebbled into an engorged point at the barest contact, eliciting a dark rumble of satisfaction from his heaving chest.

"That's it, revel in those honeyed flickers of lust sparking back to glorious life," he crooned like velvet sin. "Let it morph back into the raging bonfire I know your wolf yearns for above all else - the searing ecstasy of my thick, punishing conquest claiming every decadent inch of your traitorous flesh for my personal indulgence."

Despite my labored pants of skirmishing resistance, I found no recourse but to submit as Karl relieved me of the tattered remnants of my top. The ruined scrap fell away, leaving my torso utterly exposed and ripe for his scorching visual consumption. The heat of his molten stare raking my naked flesh made every cell in my body combust with awareness, fueling an insidious feedback loop of wanton receptivity.

In that moment, it was all I could do not to openly keen for mercy beneath that ravenous scrutiny, to part my thighs in offering of the slick delta nestled between. My mind screamed in enraged denial even as my carnal core quaked with delirious rapture at having every molecule set ablaze by this alpha's sheer displays of mastery.

Then his smoldering attentions finally refocused on my flushed and shaken countenance, the naked searing possession glinting in those pale depths nearly robbing me of the ability to form coherent thought altogether.

"You were a fool to try and wrestle against our fated union for so long," he snarled around a pleased smirk, punctuating each biting syllable with a twist and pinch of my numb captive. "Every fiber of your being was always destined to writhe in paroxysms of ecstasy under my rough mastery, little omega. And now you'll experience none of my feral appetites muzzled or restrained any longer."

A rough pivot of our entangled bodies slammed my arched spine against the nearest wall, stealing my breath in a rush. Any fleeting notions of further protest withered to ash on my tongue as Karl unleashed his full weight upon me in one shattering grind that spread me splayed and supine beneath his hovering, scorching dominion.

Chest heaving and fevered skin sheening, I could do nothing but watch in delirious rapture as he divested himself of the final scrap of concealing fabric. I tracked the thick, pulsing length of his arousal springing unrestrained from the dark thatch of curls like a serpent unfurling...my mouth suddenly dry with needing to sample its veined, blunt entirety lavished against my licentious taste buds.

When next our ravenous gazes collided, a sick thrill ripped through me at the uncharted depths of wanton violence and possessive devouring blazing through his. In that suspended breath before he claimed his feral rights to every exquisite depravity from my offering form, I suddenly understood why even the most secretly lurid hallucinations could never do justice to the total ruination about to be visited upon me.

For when Karl unleashed the full, unbridled tempest of his sadistic lusts upon his hapless prey...even the most warped and degenerate of prepared psyches risked being forever laid to waste in the cataclysmic wake of his searing rampage. This wasn't just a reckless male intent on gratifying his basest desires until sated.

No...on a level deeper than even the most sinister cosmic forces could begin to comprehend, Karl Corbyn was the manifestation of pure, unrestrained violence made flesh. A scouring purge of chaotic Armageddon unleashed upon any foolish enough to dare invite his dark attentions intimately.

One glimpse into the yawning, primitive maw of primal masculine fury he embodied and any lingering sanity risked being forever obliterated. Which was perhaps precisely why no coherent facet of my identity seemed to linger after that fateful plunge into the abyssal fathoms of his unfurling savagery.

I remember only the sensation of being utterly unraveled and subsumed under the seismic force of Karl's merciless ravaging after that soul-shattering revelation. My last tattered remnants of self were scourged away, replaced by untold ecstasies and agonies wrought by his rutting frenzy only the truly damned could fathom.

And in those abyssal depths where no light reached...something equally ravenous and feral began gestating in the shadows. A snarling, unshackled madness hungering to finally birth itself into rapturous rebirth...or utter damnation?