Chapter 16 Lucien
SIXTEEN
Lucien
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Olivia. Look at me. Just look at me!”
Later, I would be ashamed for alpha barking at my female. I knew it, but it didn’t stop me from doing it.
“Can you honestly say you want to be mated to a monster who looks like this? I’m hideous. Lying isn’t going to make it go away. If you can’t handle it, you should run now, before it’s too late and my wolf won’t let you go.”
Her fear was palpable, horror and terror in equal measure twisting her pretty little lips and turning her sweet, peachy scent sour. I hated myself for being an ass, even as I felt it was completely necessary. She needed to know who I was.
If she ran screaming now, my wolf would already be fucking miserable.
But if she kept dragging this out for months?
Fuck me.
No. I couldn’t let that happen. If she was going to leave, she needed to just do it. It was a poor excuse for scaring my mate, but I ignored my wolf’s howling and bared my teeth at her, letting the savagery that always boiled below the surface peek out for once.
But after a moment, something shifted in the air between us. The fear left her, even as I stayed frozen, snarling in her face like an uncouth beast. I was prepared for her to run, to slap me, call me a dick. I was prepared for a lot of things.
But not for her to reach up, capture my jaw between her hands, and press a kiss to my cheek.
No, not my cheek.
My scar.
The moment was strange on one level, but so achingly tender. It was as if she’d somehow seen through all my bluster, all the hot anger, and found the core of me underneath.
Fear. Pain. Ugliness. Revenge.
And just… accepted it.
I could feel myself flush, the bone-deep impact of such a simple touch rocking me to my soul.
“Olivia,” I started, then immediately stopped. She hadn’t let me go, hadn’t done anything but rest her forehead against my temple, holding me. But at the same time, she’d given me everything. “I—”
Her fingertip rested on my lips, silencing me with no effort at all.
“I don’t want your wolf to let me go. I don’t think you’re a monster or hideous. I’m incredibly sad that you feel that way, but trauma is a bitch.”
The curse word sounded wrong somehow coming from the sweet little healer’s lips. But she wasn’t finished.
“We’re fated. My wolf has claimed yours as much as your wolf has claimed mine.
So if you want me to leave”—her voice shook, and I hated being the cause of it on a visceral level—“then I’m going to need you to come right out and tell me that.
Not try to scare me off or be an asshole to drive me away.
If you don’t want to pursue our bond, say so.
But if you tell me to leave, mean it. Because I’m not coming back. I deserve better than that.”
Her hands trembled on my face, and I knew it cost her everything to pour it all out like that. To challenge an alpha male, and a pissed-off one at that.
In the end, the decision was achingly simple.
Did I want her, even if I was no longer a fit partner? Did I trust her to accept all of me, including my flaws?
Or did I send her away and end this forever?
There was only one answer.
I threaded my fingers into her red-gold locks, the soft silk of them decadent beneath my calloused hands, and brought my lips to hers in a claiming kiss. She tasted like honey and peaches, fruity and sweet and perfect, and I knew then that I’d only ever been kidding myself about letting her go.
Olivia was my little hellcat, and I was never going to be separated from her again.
She was stiff with surprise for only a second, and then she melted into me like the finest chocolate, dissolving on your tongue into pure bliss.
Her hands wandered away from my jaw, looping around my neck as she leaned in, pressing our chests together as she took everything I offered and gave it back in equal measure.
I wasn’t thinking as I led her away from the kitchen, guiding her toward the bed with our lips still fused together as if we never wanted to separate.
It wasn’t until her thighs hit the mattress and she tensed under my hands that I realized I might have pushed things too far, too fast.
We broke the kiss, and I stroked her cheek with my thumb as I studied her expression. Soft, reddened lips, flushed cheeks, pupils blown wide. She was into it, but there was a little crease between her eyebrows that I knew meant she was thinking something that had her hesitating.
“What is it?” I murmured, pressing a kiss to that line between her eyebrows.
“I— I—” she faltered, chest and cheeks flushing brighter red. “I don’t want to take things too fast. Physically.” She blurted the last word as if it tasted bad.
“That’s okay. We don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want.
Just because we’ve both agreed we want to pursue the bond doesn’t mean we have to jump into bed.
” I smiled, doing my best to keep things light and casual, even though my dick was pulsing to be set free just from that one taste of her.
Her lips were addictive, and I knew that once I tasted the rest of her, I’d be hooked for life.
“No, I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. I want to kiss you. It’s just…” She bit her bottom lip roughly, and I could smell her sudden distress in her scent.
“Hey, now. Whatever it is, you can tell me. After the stunt I just pulled, and you forgave me, I won’t judge. Ever. That’s a promise.”
It felt right too. Perhaps the very first thing I’d gotten right since finding out she wore my marks.
Mate marks, which I desperately wanted to see now that we’d taken the plunge.
But that was definitely a step too far if just kissing had made her nervous.
I could wait. It would just make it all the sweeter when she was ready.
“I’m a virgin.”
I blinked at her, the words sinking in slowly through my formerly ordered thoughts. “You’re a virgin.”
“Yes.” She nodded, gnawing that lip as if I was about to freak out again. Which, to be fair, she had every right to be nervous about.
I needed to get my shit together so that my sweet little hellcat didn’t have to look like she was tiptoeing through a minefield whenever she had to tell me something. That started now, no matter how fucking shocked I was at the news.
“Okay. Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re… Welcome?” I could hear the question in the words, and I cast around quickly for something else appropriate to say. But for all my usual political polish, I was completely unprepared for this bomb.
It was no wonder she radiated innocence at every turn. She was innocent. Part of me, the caveman part, was really fucking thrilled that nobody before me had ever touched her. The other part—perhaps the saner part—was appalled.
Not because there was anything wrong with being a virgin, but because it brought all those feelings of being too dirty for her back to the surface. I’d been with so many women, I literally couldn’t count. And here she was, untouched at twenty-four.
It made me regret the faceless blur of women I’d previously slept with. Though surely she didn’t expect me to be a monk at my age. But this wasn’t about me right now. It was about Olivia. The thought grounded me, bringing me back to what she needed. My regrets could wait.
“So, we’ll take things slow. At your pace.” I cupped her cheek, noting that some of the tension left her at my words. Emboldened that I was on the right track, I continued. “Anything you want to try, anything you want to know, you can just ask.”
She nodded, eyes wide at the possibilities.
“But what if you don’t enjoy it because I don’t know what I’m doing?
” Her expression seemed to crumple, tears building along her lower lids.
My wolf did not fucking like it. “I’ve had boyfriends in the past, but nothing serious, and I don’t…
I know you’ve been with more experienced women.
I don’t want you to be disappointed that your mate is so—” She gestured down at herself, as if there was any damn thing wrong with her beautiful body, right as the tears began to fall.
“Whoa, now. Hold on.” I hugged her tight, then sat on the bed so I could hold her in my lap and stroke her back. “First of all, inexperience isn’t a deficit. It’s just a starting point. We can learn what you like together.”
I paused until she nodded.
“Second of all, I could never be disappointed in you, hellcat. You’re so much more than I deserve. You’re fucking gorgeous and so kind. Even to me when I’m being an asshole and don’t deserve a bombshell like you.”
She chuckled, and the sound lit me up from the inside out as she finally got brave enough to meet my gaze again. “You’re a really handsome asshole.”
I snorted at her unexpected honesty. “Why, thank you. You’re a perfect, kind, gorgeous woman who I can’t wait to explore.
From the tip of your head,” I placed a kiss on her silky-soft hair, taking a deep drag of her alluring scent as I did so.
“All the way to your toes.” I kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her cheeks, before lifting her hand and kissing the back of her knuckles.
She caught her breath, staring at me as if I’d just rocked her world with the most innocent of touches.
“Does that sound good?”
“It sounds incredible. If you’re sure you’re not disappointed. That I’m not better. Older, more experienced?”
I shook my head, making eye contact so she’d hear me. “You can’t be better than perfect. There’s not a single thing I would change about you. If I could change anything, I would rewind the years I wasted without you, so I could have known you when I was younger.”
She blushed, and I was starting to figure out that a beautiful bonus about my mate being a redhead would be reading every single emotion right on her skin. There was a deep flush working up her neck from the conversation, and I liked it a little too much. Reading her was becoming an obsession.
“Do you think we could just snuggle and talk for a while?”
“Absolutely. We’ve got all night.”