Chapter 22: I’m Not Any Better

Chapter 22

I’m Not Any Better

I’d only managed a couple of sips of the foul hotel coffee—my sense of taste: definitely overrated—when the door clicked and Drew stepped in.

“I brought you some better coffee and a muffin,” he said before I could even open my mouth. The cup and paper bag landed on the desk in front of me, and Drew dropped onto the foot of his bed. “And the background checks I ran and then forgot about while I was going nuts came back. I have information for you. Some of it’s good news, I think.”

Good news. My head and belly churned in opposite directions.

“Good news,” I repeated, my voice a scratchy whisper.

Drew smiled, his eyes soft. “Yeah. Ash, I think I found your parents.”

My parents.

“My parents?” Shit, I couldn’t stop repeating everything he said, the words tumbling around and around my head without attaching to anything. Parents. Wouldn’t they have tried to find me? Help me? Did they believe the accusations against me?

“Their names are Judith and Paul Stern, and they live in an even smaller town just outside the one where you definitely went to college. Actually, you graduated with a degree in—”

“Stop!” I jumped up from the chair, clutching my temples, which felt like they might explode. I staggered a few steps and half fell down onto my bed, rubbing at the throbbing in my skull. Judith and Paul, and those names meant nothing to me. Did she go by Judy? Did one of them have curly blond hair? “It’s too much, all at once, I can’t—”

“Fuck, okay, I’m so sorry.” Drew’s hands landed on my shoulders, holding me up. Holding me together. “Ash, I wasn’t thinking. I was so fucking happy to have something concrete to give you. It can wait. It can all wait.”

“It can’t, though,” I choked out, leaning down to put my head between my knees. If I threw up all over the hotel room floor, Drew would have a hell of a cleaning fee to pay. “We’re going there. Today. And it’s already waited way too long.”

Drew rubbed a small, soothing circle on my back, still holding me up with the other hand on my shoulder. “We can stay here today. Relax and take it easy, take a walk on the beach. One more day doesn’t matter, baby. Not if you need some time.”

Another deep, ragged breath, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t vomit up bile.

God, Drew. That right there—the easy kindness, the constant willingness to accommodate me. He didn’t complain, didn’t even seem to think about doing anything but going with my flow anytime I needed him to. That was why I wanted to be his mate, not the incredible cock and talented mouth.

Not that those put me off the idea, or anything.

But who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of his life with someone who always put his mate first? He’d complimented me for always rolling with the punches, but that was only because they knocked me down every time and I sort of went with the momentum. Drew dodged, weaved, shrugged, and carried on. He had equilibrium, and he managed to cling to that with the tips of his fingers even when he could barely stay sane. Drew balanced me out, and he made me feel like I could keep my balance even when I was figuratively walking a tightrope in a high wind. Like he’d catch me if I did happen to fall, and kiss me better after.

Maybe he only wanted to mate with me because that would be the easiest, quickest solution to our warlock-induced problems. But I could make him happy too, couldn’t I? Anything he needed, I’d give him. I could learn to tie a bow tie and make small talk so I’d be acceptable arm candy when he had to appear with the Castellis. Learn to cook, and maybe find some way to earn a living of my own. Submit to him whenever he wanted me, and love every second of it.

Love him, every second.

I had to admit it in my own head, even if I couldn’t say it out loud. The warmth blooming in my chest and the longing in all the cells in my body couldn’t possibly be anything else.

He probably didn’t feel the same way. But I had to know.

“Drew?”

“Yeah?” The hand on my shoulder tightened. Not painfully, but as if he wanted to keep a grip on me in case I tried to slip away.

“Why did you ask me to let you bite me? Mate me?”

I stared down at the floor, counting the bits of lint on the carpet, too terrified of what I might see to turn and look at his face.

“Because that’d be the best thing for both of us,” he said after a lengthy pause. His tone didn’t give anything away. “It sounded like a real mate bond would make the improvements in both of us permanent.”

That hit like a punch to the gut, although…what the hell else had I been expecting? I swallowed hard, trying to push my irrational disappointment down.

“I talked to Jared and Arik this morning. I called Jared’s number from the hotel phone.”

“And?” Had his body gone even more tense?

“Arik says mating would fix us both. You’re right. It would. But he also said that’s a shitty reason to do it, and I agree with him.”

“I’m not surprised you agree with him, since you already turned me down.”

I had to look at him then, because hurt had bled through into his voice, and I couldn’t stand it. His hand fell away from my shoulder, but he left the other on my back, grounding me. His eyes filled my vision, dark and deep.

“I didn’t want to turn you down. I wanted you. I always want you. But I don’t want to be something you regret. What if you meet someone you really like? What if I can’t—I’m not a werewolf, I’m not anything special. Except for the magic, and that’s not much anyway, and you don’t like it to start with. I mean, I can do my best to be what you want, but—”

“You don’t get it! Ash, I like the magic if it’s a part of you. I like everything about you. Just you, not what you can do for me or be for me. But I’m glad you turned me down.”

I gaped at him, mouth and eyes wide open—surely not an attractive look. But I couldn’t help it. “You’re glad?”

My shock and hurt echoed in those two words, and Drew winced.

But he also let go of me, stood up, and stepped away. Distancing himself from me. Those couple of feet felt like a deep, rocky crevasse yawning in front of me: too far to cross, and deadly if I tried. And it hurt as much as if I’d already fallen in.

“Yeah,” he said roughly, running his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I am. Because we have no idea what you left behind when you were kidnapped. You could be totally straight—”

“Oh, come on!” I cried. “Seriously? We saw a photo of me with someone who was probably my boyfriend, and even if I was straight before, who cares? I’m obviously not now!”

“Okay, but what if you had a boyfriend?” Drew sounded harassed now, as if he needed to convince us both. “Someone you loved? Who loved you? You have parents, Ash! You haven’t even come to grips with that yet, let alone reconnected with them. It’s too fucking much to put this on you when you don’t have any idea what it’d mean in the context of the rest of your life. So I’m glad you said no. You were right. I was being selfish. And now we need to drop this, because I can’t fucking talk about it anymore without being selfish all over again.”

“You can be selfish if you want!” I argued desperately. “I want you to be selfish. That was the problem, I thought you weren’t asking because it was what you really wanted. But if you want me, really want me? Then take me. I’m all yours, you know you can do anything—”

The world flipped around me, and I found myself flat on my back, Drew on top of me, eyes glowing brilliant gold. He had his hands locked around my wrists, pressing them to either side of my head, and his weight pinned me down completely, cock stabbing me between the legs.

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” he rasped. “No idea. I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those fucking asshole alphas who took whatever they wanted, and I thought I was so much better, I was so fucking self-righteous about it.” He bent down, nuzzling into my throat, and my head tipped back all on its own. Baring myself to him, to his fangs, that scraped my skin and set my whole body on fire with the need for them to stab into my flesh. To claim me. “I’m not any better. I’m the same. The ways I want to hold you down and own you, take you apart and put you back together again—Ash,” he breathed. “You have no. Fucking. Idea.”

“It’s the magic—”

His fangs pricked me, and I cut off in a high-pitched keen, terror and desire, all my neurons firing and once and running in different directions.

“No, it’s you.” His voice had hit that low, alpha register that reduced me to helpless, frozen prey. “It’s always been you. From the second I saw you in your cell. Scented you. Tasted your skin and your blood when I gave you that fake bite. Their magic, Arik’s spell, it didn’t matter. It was you.”

His heat and strength surrounded me, blotting out the rest of the world, and everything—melted, including me, going boneless and pliant. There was nothing he could do to me that I wouldn’t want.

He didn’t need to love me the way I loved him. As long as he chose me, for whatever reasons of his own. I’d do the rest. I’d love him enough for both of us.

“Show me, then,” I slurred, even my voice melting as I gave in and allowed myself to stop fighting. “I want you to own me.”

Drew lifted his head and our eyes met and held. His had gone wild, more like the eyes of the wolf he transformed into than his human ones.

“You asked for it,” he snarled, voice as inhuman as his eyes.

Claws flashed, and my T-shirt went flying in thready pieces, floating around us as he moved down and ripped my jeans off the same way. I could only gaze up at him, heart pounding, cock as hard as it could get. His claws didn’t frighten me, even when they grazed my balls as he tore off my boxer briefs. Drew wouldn’t hurt me. And I trusted him with everything.

He never stopped looking at me, eating me alive with his eyes as he dropped the last few bits of my clothing and started on his own.

He could’ve just taken our clothes off…and then it occurred to me that he couldn’t, that he’d lost control of his shift. Those claws weren’t going anywhere, and it wasn’t like he could get us undressed any other way.

That shook me a tiny bit. This glowing-eyed, lethal predator meant to claim my body and soul, sink his fangs into my flesh and bond me to him, and then have his way with me for the rest of my life.

I tilted my head back on purpose this time and shivered at his growl.

I almost hoped he hurt me. That way I’d know I was giving him as much as he gave me.

Naked at last, Drew—backed away from me? I sat up, surprised and betrayed, and watched him lie on his own bed, leaning against the headboard with his cock standing straight up.

“Come here,” he said, and my betrayal evaporated. The surprise remained. He didn’t want to take me where I lay on the bed waiting for him? Drew wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked it slowly, quite a feat with his claws still out. “You’re going to fuck yourself on my cock the way I tell you to, Ash. Because you’re mine.”

Well, when he put it that way.

The bottle of lube he must’ve used to fuck me the night before sat on his nightstand, and I stood up, took it, and climbed onto the bed with him, straddling his legs. His skin nearly burned me, he ran so hot. That flushed, massive cock stood up in front of me, nearly brushing my stomach. It’d be in me in a couple of minutes. Filling me, making me his. It looked bigger from this vantage point.

“Like this?” I asked. “Facing you?”

Drew’s eyes rolled back in his head for a second, and his hand tightened on the base of his cock. “Fuck. Yeah, facing me in a minute. But turn around first. You’re going to get yourself all slick, and I’m going to watch.”

That moment of weakness on Drew’s part made my breath come faster. He was going to be mine, too, very soon.

Maybe he already was. The thought that he might be as overwhelmed thinking about it as I was gave me more courage than I’d imagined I could have as I turned around awkwardly, straddling his knees with my back to him, and stuck my ass out, reaching around behind with lubed fingers to touch myself.

“One finger,” Drew said. “Just one. In and out.”

I obeyed him, sliding my index finger in, such an odd sensation: first the tight ring of muscle, and then the softness of the inside of my body. In and out, like a metronome, arching my back and opening myself up for my finger and for his pleasure.

“Now two.” Drew sounded breathless, wrecked, exactly the way I felt. “Slowly,” he added, as I started to shove a second finger in beside the first. His hand landed on my hip, touch gentle but claws pricking lightly at my abdomen. “Spread them a little. Let me see what’s going to belong to me.”

Drew’s low, hoarse voice telling me precisely what to do made it so fucking easy to put on a show, to be wanton and unselfconscious. It set me free, hanging my head down and pushing my ass up in the air, writhing on his lap like a slut. He kept instructing me on how to use my fingers, when to add a third, how much lube to add to my already sloppy hole.

It’d be so much looser, so much wetter, once he knotted me and filled me with his come.

His other hand landed on my other hip. “Enough.”

I slipped my fingers out and let him pull me back until the head of his cock rubbed against my hole. I rode it a little, rubbing my ass on his cock, getting the tip wet and slippery. It breached me, and I held myself still, panting, quivering with the desire to push myself onto it.

“Jesus Christ, the way you look. I wish you could see yourself, baby.” He tugged me down an inch, and his cock popped inside.

Goosebumps rose all over my skin. I let the hand I’d had behind me drop down to the bed and braced myself on both arms, since the first had started to shake with the strain. I’d barely even noticed. It didn’t matter; only doing what Drew told me to do mattered anymore.

“Turn around,” he said, an undeniable command.

It took me a second to get up again, to move one knee and then the other, holding onto his calves and repositioning myself.

Drew lay back against the headboard and the pillows like a king or a sheik on the cover of a cheesy novel, the kind I thought I’d probably used to read as a teenager. His half-lidded eyes gleamed and glowed, and my mouth went dry. The tousled hair, and the broad shoulders, and the powerful chest, and the lean hips, and that cock…

I couldn’t help myself. Even though he hadn’t told me to do it, I bent down and pressed my mouth to the base of it, kissing up his shaft, inhaling the hot scent of him and savoring the flavor of his skin.

Drew moaned, his hips rising to meet me, one of his hands—now clawless, thank God—wrapping and tangling in my curls.

“Not now, or I’ll come all over your face, fuck,” he groaned.

And then I moaned too, sucking on the side of his shaft, imagining Drew coming just like that, all over me, holding me in place while he marked me up.

Time and space blurred together after that: Drew cursing and dragging me up and onto his lap, his slick cock between my cheeks, my fingers curling into his chest like claws and my forehead on his shoulder, damp with sweat.

I shoved my hips down hard, taking him in one long slide, mouth open in a silent scream as he impaled me. God, nothing should feel this good, nothing should hurt so perfectly. He’d told me I’d be fucking myself on him, but I couldn’t take any control of it: he caught me by the hips and slammed me down, over and over, so deep it rattled my teeth and punched the air out of my lungs.

Drew bent and sucked one of my nipples into his mouth, fangs scraping, mouth pulsing on my swollen flesh, and my scream ripped out of me at last.

I came in long, agonizing waves, everything below the waist clenching tight, and collapsed, limp and wrung out.

His knot swelled in me, irresistible, taking over my body and making me his possession. I couldn’t feel anything else. I didn’t need to. I floated there, suspended between Drew inside me and his arms around me.

He let my nipple out of his mouth, the cool air on my hot skin making me shiver.

And then I felt his lips on my throat, a swipe of his tongue, the sharpness of his teeth. He drew a deep breath, kissed me, and bit.

I’d expected pain, and blood, and to be horrified by the sensation of fangs piercing me.

It did hurt. But when his teeth penetrated me, it felt like being fucked, like having Drew inside me, only doubled: his cock and knot filling me to bursting and his bite completing the circuit, sending shocks of bright heat from my neck down, zinging through where we were joined below, and then up again, until I thought I might be glowing through my skin.

The bond flowed out of the heat and the light, wrapping around and through me, enclosing Drew and me in its silky tendrils.

I could feel him: his joy and his triumph in claiming me, possessiveness and relief and renewed desire, even though he couldn’t possibly have fucked me more thoroughly already. And beneath that, thrumming through both of us, the power of the bond itself, shades of amber and gold and bronze, gleaming and twisting and embedding itself into both of us.

Could I have seen it, experienced it that way without magic? God, that made the magic worth it, because I’d never felt anything so breathtaking.

When he withdrew his fangs, it wasn’t a loss. I could still sense him in me in a way that wasn’t physical at all. He nuzzled and licked the wound he’d made, caring for his mate.

His mate.

Me.

I let my head fall onto his shoulder and smiled into his sweaty skin.

Drew’s mate. His arms around me, his knot inside me, his soft kisses on the throbbing, lovely ache of his bite.

“I bit you in the same place,” he whispered against my neck. “So you’ll only have one scar.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

Drew shuddered, his lips latching onto the bite mark again. “It’s beautiful.” He kissed me again. “You’re beautiful. And you’re mine. Gods, you’re mine.” He sounded awestruck, as if he couldn’t believe his own luck.

That made two of us.

“And you’re mine?”

His arms tightened around me, cradling me close. “So very fucking yours.”

Mine. That sounded amazing.

I closed my eyes and snuggled deeper into him, his warmth and strength and comfort.

I didn’t need anything else in the world.