Chapter 28 #2
“I like watching you sleep.”
“That’s creepy.”
“I’m a wolf. Being creepy is part of the job description.”
She laughed, the sound vibrating against my chest, and I felt myself smile. This was what I had almost lost. This easy intimacy. This woman who could make me laugh even when the weight of the world pressed down on my shoulders.
I was never losing this again.
The morning passed slowly. Alice arrived with breakfast, fussing over us the way she always did, filling the kitchen with the smell of bacon and fresh bread.
Lena sat at the counter in one of my shirts, her hair still tangled from sleep, her feet bare against the tile floor. She was beautiful. She was mine.
My body stirred at the sight of her. The first time it had truly responded since before the shooting.
Weeks of recovery, of weakness, of being too damaged to want anything except survive and mend.
But now the wolf was healed. And my mate was sitting in my kitchen wearing nothing but my shirt, and every instinct I possessed was screaming at me to take her back to bed and remind her exactly who she belonged to.
Not yet. The conversation had to come first.
But my body was not interested in conversations.
My body was interested in the curve of her thigh where my shirt rode up.
The glimpse of her collar at her throat.
The way her scent wrapped around me, and something that spoke of want and need and the beginning of arousal that she could not hide from my wolf’s senses.
She caught me watching her across the breakfast table, her eyes dark with awareness. She knew. The bond carried my desire to her, and her answering heat flooded back through the connection. We had gone weeks without this. Weeks of almost dying.
Alice left in the late afternoon. “I will see you tomorrow, children,” she said, her eyes soft with understanding. She knew what day it was and what it meant.
The door closed behind her, and the silence of the manor wrapped around us. Evening light slanted through the windows. Snow continued to fall. The world outside was quiet, still recovering from the holidays.
And a contract was about to expire.
Lena found me in the study, standing by the window, watching the snow. I had been standing there for an hour, maybe longer, turning over the words I needed to say. The wolf paced restlessly beneath my skin, impatient with all this human ceremony when the truth was so much simpler.
She was ours. End of discussion.
She crossed to me without speaking, sliding her arms around my waist the way she had done a hundred times before.
I pulled her against me, her back to my chest, her scent surrounding me.
For a long moment, I simply held her, breathing her in, letting the bond hum between us with warmth and contentment.
“The contract expires at midnight,” I said.
She did not tense. Did not pull away. Her calm reached me through our connection, along with her certainty. “I know.”
I turned her to face me, needing to see her eyes when I said what came next. “You understand what that means.”
“It means I fulfilled my end of the bargain.” Her voice was steady. “One year as your wife. The hotel is mine free and clear. The debt is paid.”
“Yes.”
“And now I could theoretically walk away.” The corner of her mouth curved. “If I wanted to.”
Her amusement rippled between us. She knew. She had always known.
“You could try,” I said, my voice dropping to something dark and possessive.
“You could walk out that door. Get in the car. Drive to the airport. Fly to the other side of the world.” I pulled her closer, one hand fisting in her hair, tilting her head back to bare her throat.
“And I would find you. I would hunt you across every continent, through every city, into every hiding place you thought you had. And when I caught you, I would drag you back here and remind you why you should never have run.”
She inhaled sharply. Not fear but arousal flooded our connection, dark and heated, pooling low in her belly.
“You think I am a good man,” I continued, my lips brushing the claiming bite on her throat. “You think that because I love you, I would let you go if that was what you wanted. But I am not a good man, Lena. I am a monster who would rather watch the world burn than live in it without you.”
“I know.” Her voice was breathless but steady.
“If you left me, I would destroy everything in my path until I found you again. And if I could not find you, if you somehow vanished completely, I would follow you into death itself.” I met her eyes, letting her see the truth of it.
The absolute certainty that there was no version of my existence that did not include her.
“There is no escape from me. There never was. The contract was a courtesy. A piece of paper to make the humans comfortable. But you were mine the moment I first scented you, and you will be mine until the stars burn out.”
She should have been horrified. Any sane woman would have been terrified by the obsession burning in my eyes, the possessiveness that went far beyond love into something darker and more consuming.
But Lena had never been any sane woman.
“Good,” she said.
The word nearly buckled me.
“I do not want a man who would let me go.” She reached up and grabbed my face, pulling me down to her.
“I do not want nobility or choices or the freedom to walk away. I want the monster who would tear the world apart before he lost me. I want the wolf who would hunt me to the ends of the earth. I want you, Raphael. Every dark, obsessive, terrifying part of you.”
Her eyes blazed with a ferocity that matched my own.
“You think I stayed because of the contract? Because of the bond? Because I had no choice?” She laughed, and there was nothing soft about it.
“I stayed because when you look at me like you would kill anyone who touched me, I do not feel trapped. I feel wanted. I feel claimed. I feel like I finally belong somewhere.”
“Lena.” Her name was a growl, torn from somewhere primal.
“I am not going anywhere.” She rose on her toes, bringing her face close to mine. “And neither are you. We are monsters together now. And I would rather burn with you than be safe with anyone else.”
My wolf howled with triumph. This woman. This fierce, dark, perfect creature who loved the monster instead of fearing it.
I caught her face in my hands. The wound that had defined my entire life cracked open, and instead of bleeding out, it healed. Not by softening me. Not by making me less of a monster. But by showing me that the monster could protect instead of destroy. That love did not have to mean death.
“Loving you saved me.” The words came out raw and true. “Your love reached through death itself and dragged me back. And I am still the monster, Lena. That has not changed. I will still kill anyone who threatens you. I will still burn down anyone who touches what is mine.”
“I know.” Her smile was sharp and fierce, a match for the darkness in me.
“I love you.” The words were not soft. They were not gentle.
They were a claiming, same as the bite mark on her throat.
Same as the collar around her neck. Same as every possessive thought I had ever had about this woman.
“And I will destroy anyone who tries to take you from me. That has not changed. That will never change.”
“Good.” She rose on her toes and kissed me, and there was nothing soft about it. Her teeth caught my bottom lip. Her fingers tangled in my hair. Her body pressed against mine with weeks of need behind it.
But when her hands slid down my chest, they hesitated over the scar. Her fear surged through our connection, along with her worry. She was still treating me like something fragile. Something that might break if she pushed too hard.
I caught her wrists.
“Stop,” I said.
She froze, her eyes widening. “I don’t want to hurt you. You almost died, Raphael. I watched your heart stop. I held you while you bled out on the floor of that cabin. I can’t just…”
“I did not survive death to be treated like I might break.” I released her wrists and pulled my shirt over my head, baring the scar to her gaze.
Pink and healed, the evidence of wolf metabolism working its impossible magic.
“Look at me, Lena. I am healed. I am whole. The wolf has done his work. And I have spent weeks watching you move through this house, smelling your need, feeling your desire through the bond, and not being able to do a single thing about it.”
Her lips parted, pupils dilating. Her arousal flared at my words, at the authority in my voice.
“I am done being careful.” I backed her toward my desk, and she went willingly, her eyes locked on mine. “I am done being treated like something fragile. And I am going to remind you exactly who you belong to.”
Her back hit the edge of the desk, and I lifted her onto it, scattering papers and sending a pen holder crashing to the floor. She gasped as the cold wood met her bare thighs beneath my shirt.
“Spread your legs.”
My voice came out as pure alpha command, and her body obeyed before her mind caught up.
She parted her thighs for me, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her scent flooding the study with the musk of her arousal.
Her dew was already gathering between her thighs.
I could smell it. I could practically taste it on my tongue.
“Look at me.”
She did. The bond carried my command into her bones, and she could not have looked away if she tried. I watched her throat work as she swallowed, watched her nipples tighten beneath the thin fabric of my shirt, watched her thighs quiver in a futile attempt to ease the ache I was building in her.
“Your body knows who it belongs to.” I hooked my fingers under her collar, using the silver chain to pull her toward me. She came willingly, her breath quickening. “Even now. Even after everything. Your body is already wet for me.”