Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
THISTLE
After the bestest most funnest evening of my entire life, Rogue took us back to a hotel.
For a moment, as I stepped into the lavish room with a huge bed and TV, I was worried. I’d become super attached to the mansion, but as long as Rogue didn’t leave, I didn’t think I would notice too much.
Still, when we entered the hotel room, I ordered him to scent mark the whole place, so it didn’t smell unfamiliar.
He obliged, and I giggled as he even picked up the remote and ran his chin over it. The room was like a honied bourbon bath bomb.
A Rogue sauna .
I plucked the Monopoly money and photo-booth-pictures from my bra and tucked them away in the top drawer of the bedside table for safekeeping.
I fumbled around, tucking the blankets around me a dozen different ways while Rogue jumped in the shower. I didn’t wanna, since all the awesome fair smells were still lingering, and they made me feel giddy every time I caught them.
A real-life date.
At a fair.
Just for me…
I squealed, kicking a dozen cushions about the room from beneath the blankets I was burrowed in. The hotel was Omega friendly, so there were mountains of bedding to dive into.
This place would definitely do for the night.
Though I’d prefer if all my Alphas were here…
Still.
Things were… different now, especially with Rogue.
I brushed the mark he’d left on my neck, which was still closing up. It was a good sore when I poked it.
My bond.
I was truly getting my bearings after coming out of heat, and it was the strangest experience.
Heat hadn’t even been anything I liked before.
With Dan’s pack, I had no control. It was best if I remembered the least possible, but what I did remember was always a frightening mess of trying to keep his horrible pack happy.
They got angry so easily, rutting way more often than normal and in heat with me, that could be dangerous.
With Ace, it was calmer. I’d never felt unsafe, but I’d never felt like enough either.
Heats were always a disaster of foggy memories that kept coming back to haunt me, asking why I didn’t do more of one thing or another. Yet, when the next came around, nothing would change.
I never had control.
And finally, this heat had hit, and when I’d been dragged down into it, I was in more danger, with more to lose than any other heat I’d ever suffered.
Instead of the world ending, something impossible had happened.
Rogue had made sure I was taken care of.
He’d carried me to safety and dragged Ace down to the basement, too.
He’d fought Bella’s Alphas to get Knox back.
And when I woke, for the first time, I hadn’t lost more than I’d begun with. Despite the darkness and fear, I’d ended up safer than I’d ever felt in my life.
Most odd of all, he hadn’t even touched me. I was still piecing together the fragments of our conversation. He’d known how vulnerable I was, and he’d let me choose. I remembered a cycle of pain after that, but it wasn’t pain I was angry at.
It was pain I’d chosen.
And he’d let me.
For the first time in my life, I hadn’t felt completely powerless. This was the first heat that had felt like it was mine.
A plume of steam followed Rogue from the bathroom as he walked out. Tragically, he was wearing his sweats and a bathrobe that he was tying at the waist.
“I want you to take all your stuff off.”
“All my stuff, huh?” Rogue asked, peering down at what he was wearing.
“Yup. We still never had sex.”
He tilted his head, a crease in his brow as he considered me.
I pouted. “You took me on the number one date of my whole life.”
“It was the only date of your entire life.”
“That’s what I said.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it with a snort. “I don’t want you feeling like you have to fuck me because I took you out.”
An angry little growl rose in my chest before I could stop it, and his eyebrows shot up. “Do you not wanna have sex with me?” I demanded.
Wait.
Oh my god, Bunny. Is that why he rejected us in heat?
And before, when I’d snuck to his room the night he’d lost it and bitten me. He’d refused sex then too…
Oh no.
Oh no. We misread it all.
The pillows and blankets were swallowing us whole. I’d never come out. He doesn’t—the thought cut off as he dragged me out.
And Bunny’s not here, idiot.
Oh god. I was alone.
I blinked away tears, trying to get him into view again.
He was so pretty. Too pretty.
Knew there was too much right with him.
“Kitten!”
But I’d thought…
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid ? —
The thought cut off as Rogue began tugging his bathrobe off.
Oh.
“Clothes off,” he growled at me.
I didn’t really hear him.
He was just so fucking big. Huge, rippling muscles disrupted by all those scars, some of them still red and angry from where I’d carved them out just a few days ago.
“Kitten, if you aren’t in nothing but lace by the time I’m ready for you, Knox’s punishments will look like child’s play.”
My lips popped open in shock at those words, a feral part of me wondering what grumpy Rogue would be like… but I wasn’t betting on no hedges tonight, or on any bushes for that matter—not when I had a beast to conquer.