Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (26 page)

“I’m not myself,” I insisted breathlessly. “Despite what my body might display, I don’t want this, I don’t want … you.”

“Sure ’bout that?” he murmured, the tip of his nose grazing mine. “Because I want
you,
Milena. So fucking much.” His lips brushed my own, reigniting my barely suppressed flames of desire. “I want you so badly I think I’ll go out of my damn mind if I don’t feel you from the inside soon.”

I closed my eyes, hoping to block out his words. To forget the pleading look on his handsome, beguiling face—erase the entrancing sound of his voice … the undeniable deliciousness of his scent … the memory of how his wolf essence had made me feel so alive inside. Because no matter how twisted up my head was at present, I didn’t belong with a bad guy. My mom had raised me to be so much smarter than that.

“No,” I denied. “You don’t want me. Not really. This is all a game to you. It doesn’t mean anything.
I
don’t mean anything. And I’ll never … never belong with someone like you.”

Silence stretched between us. I didn’t open my eyes. Not when I heard his heartbeat speed up, or even when I felt his warm breath fan my face in irregular pants. But then I smelled the absolute impossible.
Fear
.

Alex’s fear!

My eyes flew open to find the face of the lost little boy in the mall reflected back at me. Hurt. Scared. Yet still hopeful of salvation.

“Maybe you’re afraid to find out what you might mean to me,” he said, the words delivered with the innocence of a choirboy, spoken as if he was processing them for the first time himself. “Maybe it terrifies you to know that you’ve
always
belonged with someone like me.”

Or maybe it terrified him
. Either way, it was the sincerity in his eyes that stumped me. I had no defense, no good comeback for that. He must have sensed my wavering reticence, my tremulous resolve, because his next play went straight for the kill.

Those hypnotic eyes never left mine as his hands skimmed around my hips and up my sides, traveling gently over my quivering stomach up to my heaving chest. His touch was tender, but oh, so very proprietary! His fingertips traced my collarbone at the leisurely pace of one who has infinite time, dipping between the valley of my breasts and then circling around my slight, fleshy mounds with the confidence of one who holds exclusive privilege.

And as adept hands proceeded to more intimately discover me through the thin barrier of my henley and bra, it served to illustrate two very important, disconcerting facts: My legs really were locked around his waist in a wanton death grip;
and I was in way over my head.

“I know it’s all happening fast, and you’re scared, but I’ll be so gentle … so careful,” he pledged. “I won’t hurt you.” His thumb rolled casually over my nipple where it lay crested beneath a layer of cotton. My eyelids grew heavy; my vision blurred as I arched into his hand.

A hint of a smile warmed his eyes. “I promise, my sweet girl.” His lips ghosted mine, searching for a boundary—tempting me to let it down. “No matter how much I want you, I won’t take anything from you you’re not ready to give.”

His lips tentatively touched and retreated, teeth gently captured and released, sucked and nibbled, then abandoned, again and again, until my fingers had crept around his neck and I was straining forward in my attempt to follow his retreating, teasing mouth each time he pulled away from me.

“That’s it,” he said, nipping my lower lip, “show me what you want. I promise you can have it.” My lips moved hesitantly over his, kissing him back. “So safe … so slow … ”

He was palming both of my breasts in his capable hands, stimulating my nipples in a way that had me aching and seeping desire between my thighs.

“Just want to explore,” he professed ingenuously, before too briefly slipping his tongue in and out of my willing mouth in an inciting kiss, “… play a little.” I moaned and lightly bit his full bottom lip as he’d done mine, silently demanding his tongue again. “Help you find out what you like … show you how good you can feel …”

With another whimper he at last gave me his tongue back.
And then some!
Thrusting deeply, invading fully, he had me all too quickly teetering on a surprisingly delicate precipice between pleasure and pain—one that went so much further than physical awareness alone.

His tongue overwhelmed mine, staking irrefutable claim to the inner sanctum of my mouth with a quiet dominance that both enslaved and freed me, awakening my senses to a whole new world and a part of myself I wasn’t sure I was prepared to know.

He groaned into my mouth as his tongue stroked my depths in a manner that felt thoroughly indecent—so shockingly
naughty,
considering it was only a kiss.

Except it wasn’t “only” anything. It was everything. It spoke volumes to how he felt about me. How much he did want me—
even if it was a game
. And I knew without a doubt that he’d keep hammering away at my meager defenses until that hard girth of his that I was once again shamelessly grinding myself upon was thrusting intensely inside of me, owning my body the way his tongue was presently possessing my mouth.

What alarmed me most of all, though, was how much I wanted it, too. How well I relished the idea of him shredding my jeans from my limbs and pushing everything he had fully inside of me, consuming my most sacred space with all that pent-up, demanding hunger—all that inexorable, infinite need that radiated from him, threatening to devour me.

Each time our lips briefly parted to allow oxygen, he’d croon words of encouragement, enticing me to tell him what I wanted, saying I could take whatever I needed, do whatever felt good, as his hips gently spurred me to continue my erotic grinding. He whispered tender sentiments about only wanting to fulfill my needs, to nurture my every desire.

But amid the allure of his words and his touch, somehow the greater facts of the situation became even more flagrantly indisputable, and something deep within my psyche shifted perceptibly as my own truth clicked into place
.

Alex was a man used to getting what
he
wanted. He wasn’t gentle, or careful. Lord knew he wasn’t safe!

He’d shown me how perfectly horrible he could make me feel within minutes of meeting him as he’d callously taken my whole world away from me. And he’d done it all by force—none of it I’d been willing to relinquish. Now he was after the only things I had left. My virtue. My tenuously held sanity.
My very heart
.

Despite what he claimed, this wasn’t about helping me explore and gain what I wanted. It was still all about him! What he wanted.

He’d said that he wanted me willing. Happy. And here I was on the verge of giving it to him—
happily willing to let him fuck me against a fence in the very same garden where he’d fucked another girl less than twenty-four hours ago
.

If I didn’t owe it to myself, I knew I at least owed it to Raul and to my mother’s memory to stop and backpedal from this vortex of insanity! I yanked at his hands on my breasts, screaming into his mouth when I couldn’t instantly break the suction of his lip-lock to free myself.

“Stop!” I gasped. “Stop!
Please, stop!”

His black eyes were half-lidded and dazed as he pulled back to search my features. “Too fast?” he murmured thickly through sensuously swollen lips. “I’ll go slower,” he appeased.

“No,” I panted. “Not slow, stop! I need you to stop.”

His brows merged. He looked baffled. “It doesn’t feel good, baby?”

I rolled my eyes. “It feels outstanding! I just … don’t want it. I don’t want
you
. I want you to stop touching me and put me down.”

His frown relaxed and he nodded amiably, his hands reluctantly leaving my breasts in favor of cupping my face. “It’s okay … you’re safe. I got a little carried away, but I’ll slow down. We should take this inside anyway.”

“You’re not listening to me! It’s not too fast; it’s simply too
wrong.
I said I don’t want you. I said stop!”

Pure disbelief transformed his arrogant features as he studied me with rapt fascination—as if I were some alien creature he’d never encountered before. I could almost see the wheels spinning wildly in his brain, calculating the impossibility of any woman
not
wanting him, prompting me to burst into a fit of shrill, maniacal laughter. His look of abject befuddlement intensified.

“Look, you’re partly right,” I admitted, still giggling, “I have always been afraid I was destined to end up with someone like you. Feared it was part of my fucked-up genetics to only attract self-centered assholes, you know?” I proceeded excitedly, seized by a renewed sense of self-awareness and confidence that I’d not felt since encountering Alex.

“I mean … I was the daughter of the single mom who’d gotten herself mixed up with not just one, but
two
absentee baby daddy bad guys. And my mom was so smart! ’
Course”
—I shook my head—“now I know she was actually paying for the mistake her twin sister made with just one giant disaster of a baby daddy bad guy. But regardless, I never wanted that to be me. And she definitely never wanted that for me.”

He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing in increasing incomprehension and irritation while I blabbed on as if chatting with a girlfriend over lattes, rather than with a hot, Alpha werelock with a pulsating erection pressed into the cradle of my thighs.
I was probably on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.

“So I steered clear of all the high school players and moody bad boys who pursued me. Because just like with you, I knew that whatever it was they saw in me, it was invariably all about them. About what purpose I served for
their
needs—how I could fit into their world and their image. It was never about me, or what I wanted.”

“Milena,” he seethed, his jaw clenching, “I am no human high school boy.”

He looked so thoroughly insulted, so appalled by the comparison that it set me snickering again.
I was definitely coming undone
.

“No,” I agreed, a rush of adrenaline causing my head to spin dizzily for a moment, “no, you’re so much worse. None of those boys were
evil
!” I attacked. “None of them ever killed anyone and then executed their innocent immediate family members. And even the worst of them was capable of a halfway decent apology!”

“Jesus Christ, where the hell is this all coming from?” he fumed. “What does any of it have to do with what’s happening between us right here and now?”

“First of all, there is no
us!”
I screeched. “I’m just trying to explain
me
! How I feel and why I don’t want you. How can you spew all that bullshit about wanting to discover and give me whatever I want when you don’t even listen to me when I tell you directly what I want? Do you even realize you’re not remotely interested in understanding anything about me even when I’m willing to share?”

“Ha! That is so not true,” he refuted. “I am fucking out of my mind desperate to understand you, Milena!”

“Only if there’s an angle in it for you or if you need information you can use to manipulate me,” I accused. “You have no concept of what a tyrant you are because everyone around you acts like your behavior is normal … like it’s okay that you mistreat people the way you do—even your own family!”

His escalating rage was palpable. I should have been scared, but it was almost as if that emotion had been temporarily disabled within me—eclipsed by my own mounting self-righteous fury, recklessly cast aside along with the eroding remnants of my sense of sanity and self-preservation. I was simply not cut out for a hostage situation.

“You’re crossing a line,” he warned in a forbidding whisper.

Oh, that was it!
“You expect me to respect your boundaries when you don’t acknowledge any of mine?
I asked you to put me the fuck down!
” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
And I hoped anyone and everyone having sex throughout the gardens had heard me, too.

He put me down. Nearly dropping me on my ass and stepping back from me. And I was pretty sure he would’ve preferred to have thrown me if he’d thought I could survive the fall.

I righted myself against the fence, then folded my arms across my chest as he stared me down—looking positively homicidal.

“You may be able to hold me hostage here, torment me with your sexual bullying, and hold my brother’s life over my head to get what you want out of me,” I lectured, “but it’ll never be what you say you really want. Because it will never be willingly! And it most certainly won’t be happily.”

His lip curled and he sneered contemptuously, “Well, I’m not so sure I give a fuck about your happiness right about now.” He backed me up into the fence again. “So keep misbehaving and forcing my hand, princess, because the use of compulsion is looking more appealing and justifiable by the second.”

I suppressed a rising sliver of fear before it could take hold. “You wouldn’t …”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“N-no,” I asserted unsteadily. “We both know that’s not what your … erhm …
wolf
wants from me.” It felt super weird referring to his wolf aloud to him like that, as if they were separate entities.

He harrumphed. “Really?” he challenged, leaning a hand above my head against the fencing. “You think you know what
my
wolf wants from you?”

“Yes!
Maybe
…” I wavered, my eyes darting to the side away from the harshness of his denigrating stare.

“Well?”

“I think he wants me to feel …
safe,”
I concluded, eyeing him warily. “I think he might even want me to feel”—I swallowed—
“confident.
Like maybe … he wants me to feel like his equal?”

I watched as Alex’s expression morphed from arrogant disdain to disbelief.

“Why?”
he mouthed, the sound almost inaudible as it escaped his lips.

I shifted awkwardly, not sure I wanted to tell him why I thought that, and equally uncertain if that’s what he’d meant by his half-question in the first place.