Chapter 49 – NIKOLAI #2
He laughs, the sound half-manic. "Last night. Why do you think I missed the fucking shipment?"
Guilt twists in my chest. While I was busy being pissed, he was here, alone, riding out another one of these episodes. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"What would you have done?" he asks, eyes flashing. "Hold my hand? Pat my head? Tell me to take a cold shower?"
"Well… have you?—"
"Yes, I've taken a cold shower!" he snaps, wincing suddenly as he holds his side like it hurts.
Fuck .
"I could have—" What? What could I have done? There's nothing medical for this. His body is reacting to trauma, to the years of conditioning that brothel forced on him. They turned him into this, and I don't know how to fix it. "I don't know. Something."
Raven's eyes narrow, suddenly sharp despite the fever glazing them. "There is something you could do. You could fuck me."
My heart hammers against my ribs. For a moment, I'm tempted— so fucking tempted—to take what he's offering.
Then I remember finding him that night, kneeling half-naked and collared at the feet of that alpha. Remember the vacant look in his eyes, the way he responded mechanically to commands. How he looked at me when he came to my room that night, ready for me to use him the way everyone else always had.
I can't.
"That's not going to happen," I say, voice rough as gravel.
The pain of rejection flashes across his face before he masks it with a sneer. "That's what I thought. So get out and let me suffer in peace."
He's right. Every second I stay makes this worse for both of us. But I can't make myself walk away from him when he's like this. "There's got to be someone else. Someone safe."
"Like who?" he spits. "One of your goons? The ones who look at me like I'm a piece of meat or a ticking time bomb? The ones who only tolerate me because they're afraid of what you'll do to them if they don't?"
Each word is like a bucket of ice dumped on me. Is that how he sees his place here? As tolerated? As nothing more than an extension of me?
"That's not?—"
"It is," he cuts me off. "You think I don't hear the shit they say when you're not around? The things they call me?"
Rage flashes through me, hot and fierce. It's a welcome departure from all the other emotions I have no fucking clue how to deal with. "Who?" I demand, my voice guttural. "I'll?—"
"You'll what?" he interjects bitterly. "You'll cut his tongue out and pin it to the wall to make an example out of him? So they can hate me and still think those things?"
I start to argue, but that was probably going to be my chosen mode of punishment. He knows me. Better than anyone.
Better than I'd like.
"I don't give a shit what those animals think," he mutters, looking away. "That's not the point. But you… You've made sure I'm completely dependent on you. And then you act surprised when I want you."
I flinch. "It's not like that."
"No?" His laugh is bitter. "Then what's it like?
Everything I have, I have because of you, Nikolai.
You're my entire fucking world, and I'm just a sliver of yours.
I'm not even your sidekick, I'm just a toy you can pick up and put back on a shelf whenever you feel like it.
You think that doesn't fuck with my head? "
The accusation leaves me cold. "I was trying to protect you."
"From what? Sex? I've had plenty. Choice? That might be nice for a change."
"You know damn well that's not what I meant," I growl, anger finally cutting through the guilt.
"You think I don't see how you freeze when another alpha gives a command?
How you'll do anything, risk anything, the moment someone raises their voice in that tone?
You think I don't know what that means?"
His face goes blank in that way that tells me I've hit too close to home. "Fuck you."
"No, Raven. I'm serious. You're not in control when you're like this. You're not capable of?—"
"Of what? Consent?" He laughs harshly. "Look at me, Nikolai. Look at what I am. Look at what they made me. When are you going to accept that I'm never going to be normal? That you couldn't fix me?"
"I'm not trying to fix you," I snap, the words tearing from my throat like barbed wire.
Raven launches himself off the bed with a sudden burst of energy I didn't think he had left. His face contorts with something that looks dangerously close to hatred.
"Yes, you are!" he shouts, the sound bouncing off the metal walls of his quarters.
"You think the same shit the rest of them do.
The same shit everyone has always thought my entire life.
" His voice cracks, and I see the first tears start to trickle down his flushed cheeks.
"That I'm just a broken alpha. A failure. A freak ."
The last word hangs between us, dripping with all the venom and self-loathing he's been carrying around like a second skin. Those tears… fuck, I can't handle his tears. Not when they're my fault.
I'm on my feet before I realize what I'm doing, grabbing his arms to hold him steady. To hold him close. To keep him from falling apart.
"That's not true," I growl, giving him a slight shake. "That's not what I think. Not what I've ever thought."
He reacts in an instant, like a cornered animal, and shoves me. Hard. Hard enough that I actually stumble back a step, which catches us both off guard. His face instantly transforms from rage to horror.
"I'm sor?—"
I don't let him finish that apology. I can't. Something inside me—something I've been fighting for years—finally snaps. I surge forward, one hand tangling in that golden hair, the other gripping his hip, and I crush my mouth against his.
Raven goes completely rigid in my arms. For one heart-stopping moment, I think I've read everything wrong. That I was right all the years I've spent convincing myself if I ever let my guard down around him, if I ever let my control falter, even an inch, I'd be the thing that finally breaks him.
Then, instead, he melts .
His body softens against mine, his lips parting on a broken sound that's half sob, half moan. His arms snake around my neck, pulling me closer, deeper. The kiss turns desperate, hungry, years of restraint burning away like paper in a wildfire.
I back him against the wall, pinning him there with my body, cursing myself even as I press closer, even as I drink in the taste of him.
"I never—" I break the kiss just long enough to grit these words against his lips. "I never saw you as any of those things. Never ."
Raven's eyes are fever-bright as they search my face. His lips are already swollen from my kiss, his chest heaving as he stares up at me.
"Then what?" he asks, his voice small, vulnerable in a way Raven never allows himself to be. "What am I to you?"
I search his face, all that golden beauty I've been denying myself since the day I pulled him out of that hellhole. My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches as I finally admit the truth.
"A temptation."
Something flashes in his eyes—shock, hope, hunger—and then he's kissing me again, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to bruise. Any last semblance of control I had shatters. My hands are everywhere, tearing at his clothes, his at mine, desperate to feel skin against skin.
We stumble back toward the bed, a tangle of half-shed clothing and frantic touches. I push him down onto the mattress, following him down, settling between his spread thighs like I've dreamed about a thousand times but never allowed myself to want in the waking world.
Raven arches against me, his nails raking down my back through my shirt, more aggressive than I'd ever expected. More demanding. This isn't the vacant-eyed doll I feared he’d be. This is pure Raven. Willful, fierce, and utterly desperate for me.
I drag his remaining clothes off, my own following in quick succession.
His body is a revelation beneath mine, lean muscle and golden skin.
I've seen him undressed before—it's impossible not to when you live in each other's pockets in a war zone—but never like this.
Never splayed out beneath me, flushed with want, cock hard and leaking against his toned stomach.
My hand wraps around him, thumb sliding through the generous slick pooling at the tip, and he makes a sound that nearly undoes me on the spot. His hips buck up into my grip, seeking more friction, more pressure, more everything .
"Please," he gasps, the word punching through me. "Nikolai, please, I need?—"
I capture his mouth again, swallowing his pleas as I work him with steady, firm strokes.
He's leaking more than any alpha I've ever seen, almost like an omega in heat, or at least the male version, and I realize this is part of what they did to him.
Part of how they broke him. But it's useful now, letting me slick my fingers before reaching between his legs.
The first press of my finger inside him makes him jerk, a broken cry escaping his lips. I freeze, afraid I've hurt him, but he grabs my wrist, pressing my hand closer.
"Don't stop," he begs, eyes wild. "Don't you fucking dare stop now."
So I don't. I work him open carefully, one finger becoming two, watching his face for any sign of discomfort. But there's only pleasure there, his head thrown back, lips parted, a continuous stream of soft sounds escaping him with each thrust of my fingers.
I curl them, searching, and when I find what I'm looking for, his entire body goes taut as a wire.
A strangled cry tears from his throat, his cock pulsing in my grip as I milk him through his release, fucking him with my fingers until he's trembling, oversensitive, yet still somehow begging for more.
"Niko, please," he whimpers, using a nickname I haven't heard from him in months, come to think of it. "Need you. Inside. Please ."
Those words cut through the haze of lust enough for me to remember. He's not an omega. He can't take a knot. I'm not even sure if he can take my cock, not without proper preparation. Not without?—