Chapter 17 - Veronica

I watch Percy's face transform as he realizes what I'm upset about. His eyes go wide, and he lets out a shuddering breath, taking a step toward me.

"No," I say, shaking my head, "do not come near me."

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice low. "I just—can we go inside? To talk?"

My traitorous body wants nothing more than to go inside with him, but it doesn't want to talk. It wants him to bend me over the side of the kitchen table and fuck me until I can't think straight—but my brain is having none of that.

He lied to me.

"Fine," I manage to get out, turning and struggling with the lock for so long that Percy steps forward, his fingers brushing mine as he takes the key, slipping it in and unlocking it easily. Normally, in this situation, one of us would joke about finally getting it in, but it would be half-hearted at best and horribly wrong at worst.

I follow him up the stairs and watch as he crosses the living room, bypassing the couch altogether and sitting on the floor, his back against the wall under the window.

"I should have told you," he says, after I stand there, staring at him, with my arms crossed, for a long, painful moment. I'm looking at this man and not wanting to see a liar, not wanting to see someone who doesn't tell me the truth. My heart is still so bursting full of love for him.

"I could die?" I ask, my voice cracking. "If you die?"

"Yeah," he says, and when he looks at me, his expression is so full of pain that I know it's true.

"What the fuck , Percy?" I ask, full-on crying now. I turn away from him, unable to stand how sad he looks, and how badly I want to go to him, comfort him. I'm the one who needs comforting now.

"I—I was trying to resist it, Veronica, if you remember, I was saying no. I was prepared to die to keep that from happening."

"But why didn't you say something to Maisie?" I half-say, half-scream, turning around and throwing my hands in the air. A sob rips through me. "If you'd told her, maybe she wouldn't have done this to me ."

I wave my hand in the air, but when I turn to look at it, I realize the angry red line that had been there just yesterday is gone, and in a sobering moment, I lower it, running a hand over my palm, my heavy breaths moving my body.

"Because," Percy says, his voice low. "If I told Maisie that my mate was a human, it would be confirmation that I'm a fucking monster."

" What ?" I say, tearing my gaze away from my palm and really focusing on him for the first time. He looks miserable, his entire posture slumped, and my heart squeezes, a flood of guilt and grief moving in, shame close on its heels.

"A monster ," Percy says, letting out a sarcastic laugh and tipping his head up, looking at the ceiling. "That's what I am. When you do the things I've done, you're despicable. I just wish that I'd managed to kill myself that day in the woods."

"Hey," I say, the word coming out as a breath, I fall to my knees in front of him. He shakes his head as I try to take his hands.

"No, Veronica—don't do this! Be mad at me, be fucking pissed at me, hate me, please . I don't deserve your care, this empathy or attention, your—" he cuts himself off, and for a terrifying moment, I think he's about to say love .

"You are not a monster," I say, shaking my head, tears coming to my eyes.

"In the most literal sense, I am," he laughs, "the big bad wolf. But even to other wolves, I'm bad."

"You are not; they love you."

"They are tolerating me, because they feel bad for me."

"Linnea loves you."

"Linnea loves everybody ."

I let out a frustrated growl, scooting closer to him gathering his hands to my chest.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I rasp.

"When should I have told you?" he asks, bringing his eyes to mine, and they look so tired, so completely worn out that I just want to cradle him in my arms. The rage from earlier is gone, leaving something empty and soft in its wake. "That day, in the hospital, when I realized?"

"In New York?" I ask, eyes widening. "You knew that soon?"

"Yeah, Veronica," he laughs again, relaxing his hands. "I knew the first time I looked at you, but if I told you, you wouldn't have believed me, and probably would have had me locked up in the psych ward."

"Okay," I say, nodding, thinking of the person I was then and how I still don't quite believe all of this now, "that's fair."

"Then, I was…gone," he says, "and the next time I saw, you, I was becoming aware of the fact that you were one of the people I kidnapped and locked in a basement. I was pretty sure you didn't want to hear that from me. And still, I didn't think you would believe me. And then, everything happened so quickly with the vamp bites, and I felt like there was nothing I could do. I didn't want to tell Maisie," he says, a tear sliding down his cheek as he looks away from me, "but I should have. It would have been better than condemning you to this."

"Percy," I say, and this time, when I scoot forward, I'm practically in his lap. I reach out, running my hand through his curls, laughing, when I realize he still has his fake side burns on for his werewolf costume. I peel them off slowly, and he grimaces at the ground.

We stay like that for a moment as I set them off to the side.

"Aris and Linnea are blood-bonded," I murmur, "right?"

"Yeah," he says roughly.

"And they're making it work. So—what? It can't be that big of a deal, right?"

"It feels like a big deal," he says, his throat working, his eyes dragging up to me. "Does it feel like a big deal to you?"

"I think about you all the time," I admit, closing my eyes. "I can't stop thinking about you. I don't know why or how any of this is happening, but the one constant thought has always been you."

Percy exhales, hard.

"Veronica," he laughs, "I haven't stopped thinking about you since the day I saw you in the hospital."

"Then why did you leave?"

He closes his eyes, taking a long, slow breath.

"You heard the way Maisie talked about it—a human with a shifter. It's unheard of, and that's for a reason. It just doesn't work. Human bodies are too weak to survive…intimacy with a shifter. It could cause major damage, or even kill them."

"I don't feel weak," I say, realizing, that as I saw it, it's true. I feel stronger than I have in a long, long time. "I feel strong. And it didn't hurt me last time. What hurts is the way this feels."

"Yeah," he agrees, "it does."

"So, let's do something about it," I say, breathing hard, my core already warming at the thought of what might be coming. "I won't be here forever, and when I leave, I'm assuming some of those feelings will go away. But while I'm here, as long as you need the blood transfusions, I don't see any reason why we can't scratch that itch."

"Scratch that itch," Percy says, his voice rough.

"Yeah," I say, moving so I'm straddling him. He sucks in a sharp breath when I reach around to my back, pulling on the single, velvety cord that's keeping my dress laced up. When it starts to unravel, the dress loosens in the front, falling forward, and I feel Percy go hard underneath me.

My pussy throbs with need, already aching for him.

" Fuck ," he gasps, then, as though he can't stop himself, he leans forward, pressing his forehead to the middle of my chest. I cry out when he takes one of my nipples in his mouth, biting around the edge the way he knows I like.

Because he knows what I like. Because we've done this before.

I rock against him, a slow movement of my hips that sends fireworks coursing through my body, up to my neck, exploding behind my eyes. He groans, low and slow, and if it's possible, I feel him getting even harder under me, his cock pressing, tight against the straining fabric of his pants.

He moves to my other breast, his hand coming up to cup the one he just abandoned, and I let my head fall back, my hair skating over my bare back. The dress is now pooled around my hips, nothing but a puddle of black and red, my entire torso exposed. He pulls his mouth away from my chest and skates it up my collarbone and neck, the stubble on his jaw tickling the sensitive skin there. His hands slide around to my back, opening, splaying his fingers, and he holds me like that, working over my neck with his mouth, before finally cresting my jaw and capturing my lips with his.

The kiss is hungry, desperate, and full of everything we've collectively wanted for the last few days. I grind and grind my hips against him, but it isn't enough. Distantly, I think about getting up, going to the bed, doing this somewhere that isn't the living room floor, but my hands are already fumbling with his belt, trying to undo the clasp and get to what I really want.

" Oh ," he breathes, when I get my hand around it, squeezing and stroking, and as though in response, his fingers slide under my dress, pushing my panties to the side. He slides a finger into me so quickly that I fall forward, gasping against his shoulder, my grip on his cock temporarily going lax.

"You like that?" he whispers, and I can feel his smile pressed into my cheek. I manage a noise in response and get my hand moving again, taking all the snarky words out of his mouth. We stay like that for a moment, him pumping his fingers inside me, me stroking him, feeling him grow and grow under my palm, until apparently, he can't take it anymore.

Pulling his fingers out of me, but keeping his hand there to move my underwear to the side, he puts his other hand on mine, withdrawing it from his dick. Then, his free hand moves to my hip, guiding me down and onto him.

He sinks into me, deep, but I'm able to control the pace. I take him slowly, watch his face as it etches with impatience, and when I'm fully seated, he growls softly, his hands coming to my hips. I can see his face, flushed in the moonlight, his eyes closed, his lips parted.

He is so, so beautiful, I think, and as I start to move my hips against him, the ecstasy of the moment coming close to what I felt during the blood-bond, I feel something I've never felt before, a sort of possessiveness I thought was meant for other couples, but not for me.

He's so beautiful. And he's mine.