10 Kit #2
“You speak highly of someone you helped break,” I seethed, vengeful like the women in the river. With disgust, I let my eyes drag down his body as though it was the vilest thing I had ever seen. “At least I know none of you ever loved me if you were that capable of leaving me to those monsters.”
That’s what did it.
Ryatt snapped.
His restraint went out the window.
I’d been unprepared this time.
The quickness of his shifting personality found me with his hand clamping my slender neck, pinning my back against the wall next to the window.
My surprise was apparent and unmasked when caged in by him.
His wicked leer loomed over me, hovering his dominance to trap me under his Alpha countenance.
Barely able to breathe, he cut off the flow just enough to remind me he was in control, and I felt forced to drop my gaze.
“Let go,” I shushed in a low, menacing growl, trying to shake myself free.
His strong body just moved in closer to press against me.
Ryatt wasn’t doing it to arouse me, but that began to build the more my body dragged against his hardness.
All the boys had grown since I last saw them, but it only made me miss their youthful souls that were vacant in their new forms of power.
Without being choked, I could feel his power as an Alpha, and it suffocated me to feel the rage of it.
I kept battling against him to get out from under his command, but he didn’t budge an inch.
The air was toxic between us, an unnerving tension too thick to clear.
Our eyes locked, stuck in whatever sickening trance caught us now that we were so close.
My fur coat was open for my silk nightie to be revealed.
The tips of my nipples were pebbling already, and he saw it the second he glanced down.
Ryatt studied my body, remembering what it looked like underneath the layers…
underneath him. Keeping my throat pinned, his other hand wandered from whatever memory was blocking his consciousness.
There was no hiding my desires or the slight arch in my back that happened when his freehand skimmed down my side.
Even after all this time, my body begged to belong to him.
Heady, there was a shift in this play. The familiarity of our past crept into our present.
Closing my eyes, I couldn’t deny how badly I wanted this.
Ryatt’s hands to be on me again, stroking me the way I dreamed about in his absence.
The smell of his peppery spice enchanted and tingled in my nostrils from being so close to it again.
A slight sniff of sage always lingered, leaving me desperate for more to make it stay permanently.
Shifting his legs to stand between mine, he made me feel it wasn’t just me responding to what we both once knew.
Hooking my thigh, he lifted it to wrap around his back.
His hard length pressed against my core, making me whimper as my brows pinched.
His dominance never eased, drowning me in his aura.
Trying to breathe, I couldn’t inhale completely, vexed by this damnation.
Gently, his face lowered to mine, placing his perfect lips a breath away.
I could feel the warmth of his exhales, inhaling it like it could revive my cold heart.
Speaking of my beating organ, she sped up to show him through the thrumming of my pulse under his thumb that I felt it within.
That thumb began to stroke over the one spot only he and the others in his pack knew about.
The one spot I never let a lover touch now because it made me purr.
Lulling my head to the side, I closed my eyes as the sound formed from within my throat, matching his guttural rumble he began when mine did.
His other hand kept drifting over the exposed flesh of my hip and thigh.
The tenderness he touched me with promised a lurking level of feelings, and me letting him only confessed the same depth.
No words needed to be said as he began rocking gently against me.
I moved with him, desiring the friction he created.
“Kitty,” he said my nickname as though he had every right. That one word shook me to my core, remembering why this couldn’t happen.
My purr stopped, humiliated I let him hear it.
Seven years went by, never letting someone have that, and he robbed me of it because I still loved him too easily.
Turning my head to the side, he felt the shift in my flexible state because I went rigid.
A tear escaped my eye on the cheek he could see.
“You need to go. I belong to someone else.”
“You were supposed to belong to me,” his voice was strained, tightening his thumb over the raised bumps on my neck.
Looking back at him, I let him see me in ruins. The very state that helped me build this empire. “You abandoned me.”
When I said it with such conviction in my broken whisper, he finally saw how hurt I was because he saw I still loved him. This moment proved we both harbored feelings, but our lives took different paths, and mine couldn’t handle another heartbreak from this man.
“No, I came back for you, Kitty. I came back the moment I’d been told you went missing.
” He pressed his forehead against mine, trying to keep us in this moment.
“Do you know how much it hurt when my men weren’t enough to protect you?
That those I trusted most couldn’t keep you safe while I’d been gone? ”
He still didn’t know. His words held a place of respect for who he left me with.
Logically, I knew the pack left someone behind in charge of my safety because they did care, but like with anyone’s Omega, they never let them out of their sight.
“Why did you not claim me? If I’d been claimed, I could’ve gone with you. ”
“Kit, we were barely out of high school. We didn’t know if you’d be okay with the things we had to do.” He tucked some hair behind my ear.
“I grew up in the trailer park, Ryatt. I saw unsanctioned crimes my whole life!”
“But at my hands?” His eyes intensified with what he struggled with back then. Something he never voiced before. He didn’t tell me that was his hang up until now.
“With it not being your hand, I learned my place in this world by someone else.” I made him look me in the eye as I said it.
His emotions toiled to the surface, resting plainly for me to see. His voice so quiet, the moving river trickled in my ears louder. “And after? After you escaped? How come you didn’t come back to me?”
My hand clamped over his, pressing my forehead harder against his like I could allow this simple slip back into what used to be familiar. But I had an Alpha to be.
“I did,” I admitted. “You were the first place I ran to.”
“W-what?” my admission surprised him like I knew it would.
A single tear slipped from my cheek as I looked him in the eye to confess. “You moved on. I saw through the window, you with your new Omega. Smiles and laughter met my suffered ears, and it made me realize I couldn’t rob you of that.”
“Kitty,” he tried to soothe but also couldn’t grasp.
“You were happy, Ry, but I didn’t know how to be happy anymore.” I pinched my eyes shut as more tears found me.
“No.” He shook his head to deny it, urging me to let him in now. The intensity of our love burned brighter than a thousand suns, but our love came with a cost, and I paid the heavy toll.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, sniffling my leaked emotions back in. “If I had come in that day, if I took what I selfishly wanted, it would’ve hurt you all over again. I walked away from your window, but I left the rest of my heart there. I couldn’t love you in order to become this.”
I kissed his cheek, stepping away with the release of my own hold, losing his warmth.
He let go of me, so I excused myself from the boathouse with rushed steps.
Sucking in a hard breath under the clear sky, it wasn’t enough to alleviate the tightness that gripped it now.
I knew Raphael saw my current state when I blew by him, but he knew better than to chase me.
He and his sister were the only ones here who knew my truths.
Just like he knew who came out of the compound after me.
Ryatt wouldn’t know that I gave his pack more freedoms in my home compared to the other packs.
Finding my room, I slammed my door shut and hyperventilated.
Staggering to my bed, I crawled into my empty nest and curled into a ball.
My hand grabbed the only thing I ever added outside my blankets, a simple flannel shirt that belonged to someone I loved but couldn't have.
It no longer smelled of the boy who helped save me, but my mind remembered.
In the fetal position, I wept. I cried because I knew there was no happy ending for me.