Chapter 15: I’m Losing Control

Chapter 15

I’m Losing Control

Being home free, just like that, seemed way too easy.

And I went with it, because for fuck’s sake—didn’t we deserve a little bit of easy? Hadn’t we earned it?

Apparently we hadn’t, although I didn’t realize it right away.

After the dinner party, we stayed inside the house for the next two days.

And Drew basically stayed inside me.

It was amazing at first.

My fancy new tux ended up scattered all over the living room and up the stairs, and my bow tie didn’t even make it out of the garage. He tackled me to the bed, devouring my mouth, seemingly unable to stop kissing me even long enough to get my pants off now that kissing was allowed.

Not that it hadn’t been allowed before, although it broke my heart a little to be kissed like that, with that amazing mouth, and not be able to enjoy it.

The forty-eight hours plus that followed were a blur of Drew’s hands on my skin, his hot mouth, his cock buried in me, his knot filling me to bursting. Sometimes we managed to shower and eat.

But day and night didn’t seem to make any difference, and every time I’d gotten clean and fed again, Drew would stalk me, eyes glowing, cock rampantly hard, and carry me away to bed.

Sometime in the very early morning of the third day, I was almost certain—by then time had ceased to have any real meaning, divided only into “knotted” and “not knotted”—Drew finally went still, wrapped around me from behind. He still had his knot in me, because of course he did, but he’d stopped thrusting.

For now, anyway.

Which meant I needed to take advantage of this brief moment of opportunity to ask him about what I’d had on my mind, in those flashes of not-time (not-knot-time?) when my mind could function.

“Did you really mean it? That we were home free?” We had our hands clasped together, his pressing mine against my chest, and I gave him a squeeze to emphasize that I expected a response. Drew hadn’t talked much. He’d growled quite a bit, though. “Will your uncle really back off if Victoria convinces her parents to let the mating thing go?”

Drew let out a grumpy kind of huff.

Because of the question? Or because he didn’t want to get distracted from what he had going on below the belt? Not that either of us had worn a belt, or any other clothing, for that matter, since the tuxes had gone flying.

“Focus, Drew,” I said, a little of my irritation leaking into my voice.

And my growing worry, too. The first day of frantic nothing-but-sex had given me such a high from the strength of Drew’s desire that no negative thoughts could penetrate the haze. Besides, it made sense that Drew’s instincts were driving him to stake his claim after being challenged by so many alphas. I’d done enough reading online to understand that much.

But two days and three nights straight? That seemed a bit extreme.

“I’m focusing,” he said after a long moment where I thought he might start fucking me again instead of talking.

“Well?”

Drew sighed. “We have better things to think about.” His hips started to move again. Only a little, but it pushed me over the edge from irritated and mildly worried to seriously annoyed and anxious.

“I mean it!” I tried to hold still, to prevent him from starting the process all over again, but I couldn’t move: his knot, and his powerful arms, held me completely immobile.

And for the first time, the constraint of it frightened me instead of reassuring me.

“Drew, please, I need you to stop!” My voice went high and shaky, and I yanked at his arm, trying to get it off me, get him off me…for a second I thought he’d ignore me, and he really would tie me to his bed and make me his sex slave, and oh, God, what if he’d lost his mind, my heartbeat ratcheted up to a frantic tripping tempo, I gasped for breath…

And Drew stopped, going completely still, panting in my ear, his heart hammering against my back.

“Fuck,” he said, very low. “Ash. You were—were you trying to fight me off?”

His genuine confusion terrified me more than aggression would have.

“Sort of,” I hedged, because if his mental state had deteriorated that much, if he’d become that unstable, I didn’t want to push him over the edge either with guilt or with resistance he might take as a challenge. “It’s okay. But I need you to listen to me.”

He pulled in a deep, ragged breath. “I’m listening. I’m sorry. I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

“Your uncle,” I repeated, deciding to leave the question of Drew’s issues for next. “Is he really going to leave us alone?”

“Depends on your definition,” Drew muttered into my hair.

Oh, shit. “Drew.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to you. If Victoria and her family recognize you as my mate—and I think she really likes you.” He shifted down, kissing my neck in a way that I absolutely could not allow to distract me.

“I like her too. If they recognize me…?”

“If anything happened to you, Victoria wouldn’t want to mate with me anyway, so he doesn’t have any reason to hurt you, whether we’re mated or not. Okay? Good enough?”

“No! Because you still haven’t answered my—God, stop that, you’re making it impossible to—”

“That’s kind of the idea,” Drew whispered into my ear, punctuating the words with a flick of his tongue.

“Drew!”

“Gods, you taste so fucking good—”

“Drew!” That came out a shout.

He stopped, but he didn’t move back. “He might tell all my clients to drop me, but I don’t care,” Drew said after a moment, with almost palpable effort. My anxiety cranked up another unbearable notch. He’d already told me that trade-off would be worth it to him, but this total lack of concern? Shouldn’t he be at least slightly upset about it? “And he might make my dad’s life hell. Frankly, I don’t care about that anymore either. It’s worth it not to have his bullshit hanging over my head anymore. But you’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”

That wasn’t all that mattered, and Drew really shouldn’t be that nonchalant. I tried to protest, but he rolled me over onto my front, smothering any arguments I wanted to make, and thrust down, hard, growling against my neck, his knot forcing me open all over again.

He hadn’t even gone soft this time.

I gave in to it, because what choice did I have? And I loved it, that pressure inside me, his weight on me, knowing how much he wanted and needed to take what my body could give him.

But the worry didn’t go away, even when I succumbed to two and a half days of his constant attention and passed out halfway through. My last thought was: This isn’t working anymore. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that simple.

***

I woke without Drew wrapped around me, in me, or even next to me. It felt cold and lonely, and I popped up on my elbows, wide awake and terrified.

“I’m here,” Drew said.

My head whipped around. He sat by the bed in the chair he’d used to keep watch over me after our escape, the one usually covered in a pile of half-clean laundry these days. He’d gotten dressed, too—in some of the clothes that’d been heaped on the chair, by the wrinkles.

And he looked like hell otherwise, too: dark, grayish circles under his bloodshot eyes, pale cheeks, several days’ worth of beard growth, and lips pressed into a flat, grim line.

A heavy coil of tension balled in my belly.

“Drew? What’s wrong?” Other than the obvious, of course.

He slumped forward, elbows on his knees, scrubbing his hands over his face. When he removed them and met my eyes, the bleak, lost expression in his made me quail.

“You were bleeding,” he said heavily. “When I pulled out of you finally. Not a lot,” he added quickly, not actually making me feel that much better. “Not internally. If there’d been blood like that the doctor would already be here. But you were bleeding, Ash.” He swallowed hard. “I made you bleed.”

I clenched the cheeks of my ass together, knowing I wouldn’t feel a damn thing but reflexively trying anyway. That’d hurt, wouldn’t it? Maybe even hurt a lot.

Knowing that I had an injury but being unable to detect it with my own body’s natural processes freaked me out to a degree that Drew’s confession, his guilt and shame and fear for me, hadn’t achieved.

My head dropped down into the pillow, and I shuddered, trying to get it together.

“It’s getting worse, Ash. Not better. Right now, I know you’re hurt, but it’s still taking a lot of effort not to get right back on top of you. And worse.”

Worse? I bit my lip to hold in the moan that wanted to come out. Worse. Exactly what we fucking needed.

“Yeah?” I asked. “What’s worse?”

“It’s getting harder and harder for me not to bite you for real.”

That made me lift my head. His eyes glowed full amber-gold, obliterating the dark brown beneath, and he flexed his hands, finally balling them into fists on his knees.

Trying to keep his shift in check. I knew that sign well enough by now.

“Mate me, you mean?”

“Yeah.” His chest rose and fell too fast. I wondered if he knew he was leaning forward, his body and his instincts and whatever predatory, parasitic magic the warlocks had embedded in him driving him to get closer to me, to take what he wanted. “Claim you. Mate you. And I don’t fucking know what would happen after that. I’m losing control. You’re not safe with me anymore. If you ever were,” he added bitterly.

I couldn’t move, mired in fright and misery and in the rigidity of muscles that’d been so hard-used they’d gone stiff, even if the pain didn’t penetrate.

Safety. That’d been my first, my most critical impression of Drew. That with him, I’d be safe. But maybe I truly never had been. Even as he’d carried me out of our prison, he’d also carried that insidious, wicked magic brewing within, waiting to tear him apart—and me with him.

He almost certainly wanted me to run. To leave him, go back to California armed with what I knew now about my past, with a place to start in unraveling the mystery of what had happened to me. Maybe I could call Alyssa or Victoria. They might even help me.

If I stayed, I’d be trapped: desperately servicing Drew’s instincts, offering up my body as a sacrifice until he couldn’t stop himself from mating me…or destroying me.

It made me sick with horror, but it also didn’t matter.

I wouldn’t be leaving him.

“There’s nothing you can say that’ll make me go,” I said hoarsely. “Nothing in the world. We agreed we’d fix this together, that we were always on the same side. That hasn’t changed.”

Drew’s eyes flashed. “That changed the second I was a danger to you instead of protecting you,” he snarled.

A flash of anger seared through me. “No, fuck that,” I said, doing a decent snarl myself for someone who didn’t have werewolfery to give me an assist. “No. We both went through hell. You didn’t abandon me, and I’m not abandoning you! And no, shut the hell up, that’s final, Drew. Obviously we need to do something else. Go and find a shaman who can help, or even a warlock, someone. We’ll leave today, okay? But I’m not. Leaving. You!”

Drew’s expression softened, and his hand twitched like he’d almost reached out to me.

“My worst nightmare is hurting you,” he said. “Literally. I wake up sweating some nights. Seeing your blood—I’d rather slit my own throat.”

I pushed myself up and turned, sitting on the edge of the bed—remembering at the last second to pull the blankets over my lap. Drew’s eyes still flickered down, avidly scanning my bare skin, and a red flush spread over his cheekbones.

God. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“You should go downstairs and get anything done you need to before we leave,” I said, keeping my voice even and soothing and as not-challenging and not-sexy as possible. “Call your second in command at your company.”

“I went back on leave. That’s not a problem.”

“Then—go do something, okay? Something that’s not here.”

“Yeah.” Drew looked me up and down again. He shook his head and pushed to his feet, jaw set. “Yeah.”

And then he booked it out of the room, shutting the door behind him a little too hard.

As soon as I couldn’t hear his footsteps on the stairs anymore, I darted to the door, locked it—for all the good that’d do if he tried to break it down, but at least it might stop him long enough to make him think—and then shut myself into the bathroom, locking that door too.

I needed a shower. I needed to get myself together. If I could find a hand mirror, I kind of needed to take a look at my ass…although no, strike that, because I might have a panic attack if I could see what he’d done to me without being able to feel it. Knowing about it made me shaky and lightheaded enough.

And then I’d have to pack up what few belongings I had, the clothes and toiletries Drew had bought me, and manage to get him packed and in the car without getting fucked again on our way out the door.

Of course, I had no idea where we were going, beyond the vague idea that we might head for Southern California eventually. But my past had to be put on the back burner until we’d found a solution for Drew. And I’d have to use his phone’s data to search for a shaman while we drove, and here was hoping that shamans had websites, because we simply couldn’t delay any longer. Drew wouldn’t be able to keep his hands, and other parts, off of me for that long.

While he drove a car, he couldn’t knot me.

At least, I sure as fuck hoped so. That had to be illegal in all fifty states.

Anyway. It might distract him enough to keep him from losing it completely.

Shower first. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror over the sink, either, figuring that in this case ignorance would be bliss. I didn’t need to see my ass or my face. Both were probably totally wrecked.

And then I’d hustle Drew into the car—the SUV this time, because we needed to take some luggage and because I didn’t trust Drew’s driving in that death-trap of a sports car even if he wasn’t trying to knot me on the road—and get him to a shaman.

Everything would be okay once we found one.

I had to believe that.