Chapter 9 Raphael #3
“You’re not.” I pressed the bread against her mouth. “You’re mine. And tonight I choose to feed you. Open.”
She stared at me with something that might have been hatred. Then, slowly, her lips parted.
I placed the bread on her tongue. Watched her chew. Swallow.
Provide, the wolf murmured. Care for her. Feed our mate. Ours.
I fed her in silence. Small bites of bread, then vegetables roasted with herbs from the garden, then tender slices of beef that melted on the tongue. She resisted at first, her jaw tight with humiliation, but gradually she relaxed. Accepted each morsel from my fingers without protest.
The intimacy of it surprised me. I hadn’t expected to enjoy this so much, the simple act of putting food in her mouth, watching her lips close around my fingertips. The brush of her tongue against my skin when she took a bite. The soft sounds she made when something pleased her.
Halfway through the meal, I poured her a glass of whisky.
“Try this.”
She took a sip and coughed, her eyes watering. “That’s strong.”
“Islay single malt. Aged twenty-five years. It’s an acquired taste.” I pressed the glass back to her lips. “Again.”
She drank. Coughed less this time. By the third sip, she was nodding.
“It’s… smoky. Like a campfire. I think I like it.”
I should have stopped her after one glass. She was small, clearly not a drinker, and whisky on a nervous stomach was a recipe for disaster. A good captor would have cut her off, kept her clearheaded, maintained the power dynamic I’d worked so hard to establish.
I didn’t stop her. I poured more. Watched her drink. Watched her cheeks flush pink and her shoulders loosen and the tension slowly drain from her body like water from a cracked vessel.
Something in me wanted to see her relaxed. Wanted to see her without the fear and the guard and the desperate bravery. The wolf wanted to see what she was like underneath all of that, and for once I didn’t argue with him.
By the second glass, she was laughing at something I’d said. I don’t even remember what. Something meaningless about the wine cellar or the garden. But the sound of her laugh, bright and genuine, did something strange to my chest. Made something unwind in there that had been tight for years.
By the third glass, she was on my lap.
I don’t remember how it happened. One moment she was in her chair, leaning toward me as she spoke, gesturing with hands gone loose and graceful from the alcohol.
The next she’d lost her balance reaching for her glass and grabbed my arm to steady herself, and somehow that had turned into her sliding onto my thigh, and somehow I’d let her stay there.
Her head rested against my shoulder like it belonged there.
Her guard was completely down, every wall demolished by single malt and exhaustion.
She was warm and soft and she smelled so good it was making me dizzy.
Apples and cream and whisky, and underneath that, the warm musk of a woman who was aroused whether she knew it or not.
“Here.” I held a piece of dark chocolate to her lips. “Last bite.”
She took it from my fingers. Then, instead of pulling back, she caught my thumb in her mouth and sucked the chocolate off.
I stopped breathing.
Her tongue traced along my finger, collecting the last traces of sweetness. She did the same to my index finger, her eyes half-closed, completely unselfconscious. Then she took my middle finger into her mouth and sucked gently, her cheeks hollowing around it.
The wolf was going insane, howling and clawing and demanding.
Take her. Now. Claim her. She wants it. She’s offering herself. Take what’s ours.
I clenched my free hand into a fist, fighting for control. My cock was iron-hard against her hip, and she had to feel it, had to know what she was doing to me.
She pulled back, licking her lips. Her eyes were hazy with whisky but there was something else there too. Curiosity. Desire.
“Are you going to fuck me tonight?”
The words hung in the air between us. Obscene. Direct. Not something I’d expected from her innocent mouth.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?” She shifted on my lap, her hip pressing against my erection. “I can feel how much you want to.”
“You’re not ready.”
“I feel ready.” She wriggled again, on purpose this time. “You feel ready.”
I grabbed her hip, stilling her movement. If she kept that up, I was going to lose what little control I had left.
“By the time I take you,” I said, my voice rough, “you’ll be begging for it. You’ll be wet and desperate and you’ll think you’ll die if I don’t give you my cock. That’s when I’ll fuck you. Not before.”
She considered this with the earnest concentration of the thoroughly drunk. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied with this answer, and rested her head against my shoulder.
“Okay.”
We sat like that for a while. I didn’t move. I barely breathed. The weight of her on my lap, the warmth of her body against mine, the soft sound of her breathing… I felt something shift in me. Something I didn’t want to examine too closely.
The wolf was quiet now. Content in a way I’d never felt before. Mate, he murmured. Safe. Ours.
I told him to shut up.
Time blurred after that. We sat in the candlelight, her weight warm against me, her breathing slow and deep. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the hour. I didn’t move. Didn’t want to disturb whatever fragile peace had settled over us.
Eventually, her breathing changed. Deepened.
She fell asleep against me.
One moment she was warm and pliant, making soft sounds of contentment, and the next she was unconscious, her head lolling against my shoulder, her breathing deep and even.
I should have woken her. Sent her to her room. Made her walk there on her own two feet.
Instead, I gathered her into my arms and carried her.
She weighed nothing. Her arms wound around my neck without conscious thought, and she pressed her face into my throat, breathing me in. Nuzzling into my scent like she belonged there.
The gesture of trust from someone who had every reason to fear me did something I didn’t want to acknowledge. Woke an ache I thought I’d killed years ago.
Her room was at the end of the hall. Alice had prepared it, soft linens and fresh flowers on the dresser, a lamp left burning low. Not my room. I still had some lines I wouldn’t cross.
I laid her on the bed. She murmured something, reaching for me when I tried to pull away.
I should have left.
Instead, I knelt beside the bed and removed her shoes, setting them neatly on the floor. Pulled the blanket over her body. Brushed the hair back from her face with fingers that were too gentle, too careful.
I leaned close, my lips nearly brushing her ear.
“You’ll dream about me tonight,” I murmured. “And when you wake up, you’ll be wet. You’ll wonder if it was the whisky or if you actually want this. Want me.” I pulled back just enough to watch her face, slack with sleep and whisky. “The answer is yes. Your body already knows it.”
She made a soft sound, shifting toward my voice even in sleep.
Stay, the wolf urged. Guard. She’s vulnerable. Someone hurt her today. Stay and protect her.
I stayed. Watching her sleep. The way her lashes fanned against her cheeks like dark crescents. The soft parting of her lips. The steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket.
What was I doing?
This was a pawn. A tool for revenge. Nothing more.
“You’re not as scary as you want to be.”
Her voice was a mumble, barely audible. Her eyes were still closed. She was talking in her sleep, already drifting back under.
I froze.
“You pretend to be a monster,” she continued, the words slurring together, “but I think… I think you’re just lonely…”
Then she was asleep again, truly asleep, and she wouldn’t remember saying any of it in the morning.
I stood there too long. Watching her breathe. Fighting the urge to crawl into the bed beside her, to wrap myself around her, to keep her safe from whatever had sent that dead animal to her door. Fighting the wolf’s insistence that she belonged in my bed, in my arms, in my life.
Mate, the wolf whispered. She belongs with us.
No. She was a pawn. Revenge. Nothing more.
I left the room. Closed the door quietly behind me.
In the hallway, I let the mask fall back into place. Tomorrow, the training would continue. Tomorrow, I would be the predator she feared. Tomorrow, I would be the monster she expected.
But the dynamic between us had shifted. The ground beneath my control had cracked, and I refused to examine the damage.
I walked back to my own room alone, her scent still clinging to my clothes, her words echoing in my head.
You’re just lonely.
She was wrong. She had to be wrong.
I stripped off my shirt and caught myself pressing it to my face, breathing her in. Apples and cream. Innocence. Trust she had no business giving me.
I threw the shirt in the corner and lay down on sheets that smelled only of myself.
She was a pawn. A means to an end. Her father had helped destroy my family, and she would help me destroy his legacy in return. That was all she was. All she could ever be.
The wolf whimpered in disagreement, but I silenced him.
I didn’t sleep for a long time.