Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1)

by Hettie Ivers

  My breath hitched. I’d not seen his eyes look like that since my first night in Brazil.

  “Come here,” he beckoned with a tilt of his head.

  Without so much as a second thought, I arose from my seat and bridged the small distance between us as his hands reached for me. I found myself sideways in his lap, somewhat baffled as to what on earth had possessed me to instantly do as he bade.

  But as his hands ran up my back and his cheek nuzzled mine, I chose to let go of little concerns like sanity and pride. Because a deep, subtly audible purring had begun reverberating through his chest, and the sound and vibration of it was so inherently inviting I was loath to remove myself from his lap regardless of what better judgment might dictate. I nestled closer instead, drawing my legs up as my body curled into his.

  This was the solace I’d turned my back on in the little hallway off the kitchen and had felt desperate for since. In the back of my mind I rationalized it was because I’d had too much wine, and because Alex had scared me earlier with his warnings of the repercussions that could come from pissing off his Cujo side. But in truth, he simply smelled too good to not get closer.

  And he felt too good to not touch back. Remembering I had his explicit permission, my fingers uncurled to tentatively press against his warm, bare chest. I both heard and felt his lulling vibration strengthen against my palm. It increased as I slid my other palm up to his shoulder.

  He growled into the crook of my neck as his arms tightened around me, squeezing my body into his and forcing the air from my lungs in a half-sigh, half-squeak. His hold relaxed in response, affording me the space to expand my ribs and breathe again. But my body had already stiffened, and my hands remained frozen in place against him as I evaluated whether touching him was such a wise choice after all.

  “Don’t stop,” he growled, capturing my earlobe between his teeth. “Safe.”

  Why on earth that one-word edict, delivered in a voice that sounded more animal than human, should reassure me, was beyond rational comprehension. Yet it did, as I realized I did feel safe—moronic as it may have been. And soon my trembling hands were roving his chest and torso, canvassing his impossibly chiseled eight-pack stomach and traveling over his muscled shoulders.

  I was oddly captivated by how his muscles twitched and flexed, dancing to life beneath the feather-light touch of my fingers. I was even more fascinated with the sounds he emitted in response to my touch. Every little purr, each guttural groan and grunt spurred me on, feeding some deep-seated, primal need within me that I’d never known before.

  With growing astonishment I realized it was more than my own mounting carnal desire, more than an innate, if twisted yearning to return the inexplicable comfort and pleasure his nearness and his touch provided me. It was power.

  Something I’d never recognized as wanting or needing before. But I knew it was a desire at least in part driving my actions now. For while his responses made me feel important and desired, they also made me feel powerful. And I was discovering how much I liked that feeling. Especially after so much time in a situation where I held so little power, I realized I liked it a lot.

  Ironically, the louder his inner animal rumbled and grunted in reaction to my exploratory touch, the more formidable I felt. Even as I knew in the back of my mind that I was playing with fire interacting with and tempting his beast side like this, it somehow provided me a glorious, if however incongruous feeling of control to know I could elicit such responses.

  And despite Alex’s earlier assertions about needing to protect me from his wolf, who presumably wouldn’t have adequate concern for my feelings or human frailty, I couldn’t shake the intuition that he was wrong somehow, that he had it backward and that his wolf was actually the safer, less predatory of his two natures.

  The wolf was instinctual, yes, but that alone didn’t make him dangerous. The wolf was simply more direct, his thought process clear and straightforward compared to the man’s, whose judgment was clouded by ego and human subterfuge. The wolf knew what he wanted; the man was still figuring it out. His wolf nature felt honest to me—pure in his intentions.

  Unlike Alex’s human nature, the wolf didn’t seem bent on intimidating me through manipulative mind games or sexual prowess. And as intense and savage his feral energy felt beneath my wandering fingertips, I noted it had been markedly easier than ever before to believe him when he’d growled out that I was safe.

  I could hear and feel his heartbeat pounding more forcefully amidst his growing excitement, and I realized he was exerting substantial effort in order to hold himself in check. I could tell by the way his hands would grip and release me as they cautiously roved my frame. It was exhilarating. Arousing.

  Then without warning, he licked up the side of my neck. That was a little bizarre. It was like a friendly lick a dog might give his owner. It was wet, and it tickled. I giggled. He did it again.

  But right when I was adjusting my expectation to what I thought was now going to be playful interaction, he latched onto the side of my neck that he’d licked and began sucking in earnest. And my whole body burst into flames.

  Suddenly I was the one moaning and making whimpering noises, my fingers yanking at the roots of his short hair, clutching his head to me in a mad, frenzied need to keep his mouth affixed to my neck for as long as I could possibly stand the unbearable pleasure of it.

  As I felt his teeth scrape my sensitive skin, his lips and tongue devouring everything in their wake, I couldn’t quite gauge what the hell he was even doing to me; all I knew was I never wanted him to stop.

  And when he began to get a little rougher, latching on and sucking my skin harder, his teeth sinking ever deeper into flesh, I heard the crazy sound of my own voice pleading “yes” over and over, like a woman possessed.

  That was the moment I knew, I was suffering something far worse than Stockholm syndrome. I definitely wasn’t myself. And yet I felt more alive, more authentic and present than I ever had before.

  Then he abruptly, unexpectedly paused. And he growled so furiously against my neck that for a terrible second I feared I was about to become the dead idiot girlfriend from the bad horror flick rather than the gangster film.

  Somehow, I held perfectly still and calm with my throat between his trembling jaws as he commenced groaning in agony against my jugular.

  Lord only knows what possessed me to do it, but I let my hand slip from his hair, allowed my fingers to slowly caress the side of his face and neck all the way down to his chest, where I pressed my palm over his heart. And I whispered, “Safe.”

  My throat was abandoned. Alex was breathing heavily as his head lowered to fall against my chest. I ran my fingertips gently through his hair, hoping to soothe him, but his head snapped up and he pulled my wrists away.

  His eyes were once again black, and his face was a mask of emotions I didn’t recognize. He was definitely upset—angry with me for some reason. When I tried to ask about it, he insisted everything was fine.

  “You should go back to your seat now,” he said. “Your tea’s getting cold.”

  Huh? I glanced over my shoulder and noted someone had apparently poured a cup of tea for me while I’d been preoccupied getting the hickey of a lifetime.

  “Go on,” he nudged.

  Wow! He’d gone from mauling me as if his life depended on it to kicking me out of his lap in the blink of an eye. Well, he wouldn’t have to ask me twice!

  I practically ran back to my own chair. It took a minute, however, for my trembling hands to calm sufficiently before I attempted to pick up my steaming cup of tea. As it turned out, my stupid fancy-pants tea proved to be delicious. I drank it in bitter silence while Alex sulked and pretended he wasn’t sulking.

  After a while, he seemed to mellow and we made awkward, idle conversation. He asked me what I wanted to do for the day, and once again I requested to see Alcaeus, Remy, and Alessandra, mentioning specifically that if I couldn’t see Remy today, I at least wanted to send a message to
him thanking him for my luggage.

  At that comment, Alex casually nodded, then picked up the teapot from the table and forcefully pitched it clear across the terrace, smashing it to smithereens.

  Fucking psycho!

  “Hey! Know what?” he said with forced cheerfulness. “I think I hear Remy playing a game with some of his friends out in the garden right now. What do you say we go find him and say hello?”

  I was still working to scrape my jaw off the terrace, trying to recover from his bewildering teapot violence, but I nodded cautiously nonetheless at his suggestion, thinking anything was better than staying here on the patio with him. And hoping beyond hope he wasn’t lying about Remy being in the gardens.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We strode through a maze of hedges, many of which opened up into private and semi-private gardens with pretty fountains, sculptures, lounge seating, and quaint dining areas. The ones I was able to view as we passed were breathtakingly lovely.

  Alex was leading me along quickly, though, seemingly eager to deliver me to Remy and his friends. As we ventured deeper into the garden, and my heightened sense of hearing picked up what I thought might be Remy’s voice, I was elated that Alex hadn’t misled me and I was going to see Remy after all.

  In my excitement, I told Alex that I could hear Remy, and he seemed surprised as well as impressed by my enhanced auditory function. He encouraged me to run on ahead of him and test out my newfound skills.

  I followed the sound of Remy’s baritone and was able to make out his voice along with several female ones as I came closer to them. Possibly that third glass of wine spritzer was distorting my perception, but my first thought was that it sounded as if Remy and his friends might be playing a game of Charades or Twister, or practicing a coordinated dance move … perhaps something acrobatic? Whatever it was, it sounded like they were working hard at it, and that Remy was trying to keep them all focused and … synchronized it seemed?

  But never in my life could I have guessed what I was to actually come upon as I rounded the final hedge. It was most certainly not Charades or Twister.

  A well-built, attractive naked man was rocking in and out of a woman on all fours from behind. The woman being pleasured from behind had her face planted between the spread limbs of another woman lying on her back. And a third woman was straddling the reclined woman’s face. It was a ménage a quatre!

  And it was well beyond anything I possessed the ability to rationally process. So I did the only thing I could do. I gasped. Loudly. Loud enough to completely disrupt the outdoor ménage activity of four unsuspecting naked persons singularly focused on a synchronized orgasm.

  The gasp had a prim old-lady sound to it, too, that I’d never before imagined might come out of me. In fact, it’d sounded frightfully reminiscent of just the sort of shocked gasp of distress my late Great-Aunt Felicia might’ve emitted upon perusing the Sunday circular and noting the rising price of canned peaches—or some such similarly egregious, perceived crime against her.

  “Milena!” Remy’s plaintive cry assailed my ears as he turned to me, eliminating any possible remaining doubt as to the male participant in this triple X-rated garden orgy. He halted mid-thrust and withdrew from the girl on her hands and knees, causing her to jerk and whine in muffled protest into the twat in which her face was buried.

  Issuing instruction to the girls to finish each other off without him, Remy bounded over to me—his wet, fully erect, condom-encased prick leading the way.

  Unwittingly, I channeled my Great-Aunt Felicia a second time. The price of canned peaches was skyrocketing fast!

  Receiving no clear directive from my hapless brain, my eyes hadn’t a clue where to look. Too embarrassed to look him in the face, my eyes naturally gravitated to the nearest, largest moving object that was coming toward me and refused to look away.

  “Milena, honey, how are you? Are you okay? We’ve all been so worried!”

  Before I could find the wherewithal to tear my eyes from his huge penis that was headed like a battering ram straight at me, much less muster the ability to form syllables, a symphony of euphoric shrieks and moans of orgasm broke out from the trio of girls writhing in the grass.

  “Omigod! Omigod!” I erupted, spinning around and colliding with Alex’s broad chest as he caught me in a protective embrace.

  “What’s this?” Alex exclaimed with what was obviously mock surprise. “Remy, is this what you do in my gardens?” he demanded—while struggling to contain his mirth.

  “Asshole!” Remy swore at his younger brother. “The fuck? What are you, twelve? Milena, I’m so sorry.”

  Remy’s apology sounded sincere. But I’d scrunched my eyes tightly shut behind my hands as I stood stiff as a board, pressed up against Alex within the confines of his arms, and I was too focused on trying to breathe while blocking out the sounds and scents of the girls’ tapering climaxes to be able to respond.

  “Serious dick move, Alex!” Remy reproved.

  “She wanted to thank her personal hero, Remy, for his thoughtfulness with her luggage,” Alex justified, his tone glib. “So I brought her by to thank you when I heard you here with your friends. Rather magnanimous of me, I think.”

  “How could you do this to her?”

  Alex snorted. “You mean how could I do this to you?”

  “No, I mean Milena! You’ve just freaked the hell out of the poor girl for no reason other than to satisfy your own petty jealousy. Is your ego that fragile, Alpha?”

  “Go jerk yourself off,” Alex dismissed. “You’re the one who traumatized her, charging at her with your wet boner.”

  I heard Remy curse under his breath at Alex’s revelation, as if he hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d in fact done just that. “Thy, my angel,” he called out, “bring me my shorts, please?”

  I heard movement in the short grass behind me, followed by a rustling of fabric, and then the overwhelming scent of feminine arousal was swiftly coming closer. I moved my hands from my eyes to cover my nose and mouth. The girls smelled human, I noted. The fact I could so readily make distinctions like that now amid all the other chaos did little to calm my anxiety.

  “Thank you, Thy.”

  “Is she going to stay and play with us?” a female voice inquired. She spoke perfect English, but her voice was accented.

  “No, sweetie,” Remy replied, “Milena’s not quite comfortable with our manner of play.” I heard more rustling of fabric and the sound of a zipper before he added, “And our Alpha doesn’t share very well.”

  “But he shared Amy,” Thy pointed out, “just today … or yesterday, was it?”

  I felt Alex stiffen against me. I stopped breathing. I fully opened my eyes for the first time and stared blankly at his nipple.

  “When was it, Amy?” Thy questioned. Presumably, to one of the other two girls from the ménage.

  I needed to breathe. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to smell her. I had a sneaky suspicion I’d recognize the scent of parfum trash.

  Alex and Remy exchanged rapid, irate words in Portuguese. Always a sure sign a cover-up was in the works.

  I told myself it didn’t matter. That I couldn’t care less whom Alex had fucked in the last twenty-four hours. Yet, I still had to see her.

  I knew without a doubt I needed to commit her visage to memory so that I could access it the next time Alex wore a silly hat and juggled kitchen utensils; the next time he made doleful, wounded eyes at me and attempted to pull on my idiot heartstrings. I wanted to remember her face whenever he tried to manipulate me into thinking he actually cared one iota about anyone but himself.

  I was so damn gullible I’d allowed him to let me feel guilty for making him worry when I was in a coma. I’d even apologized! And apparently whilst I’d been straddling the line between life and afterlife he’d been so worried he’d busied his cock in a girl named Amy.

  But what really galled me was the knowledge I had no rational reason whatsoever to be surprised by
this turn of events given the facts of the situation. He was a bad guy. Bad guys did this sort of thing. This was par for the bad guy course. I had only myself to blame for being stupid enough to anticipate anything different.

  I spun around as fast as I could in Alex’s arms. But he was still faster, spinning with me and blocking my view of the girls with his massive frame.

  “C’mon, baby, we’re done here,” he asserted with authority, backing me up and then turning me away from the garden scene with an insistent hand between my shoulder blades.

  I wanted so badly to break my fist against his jaw then, to harangue the life out of him for daring to call me baby. But I chose another tactic. I let him guide me forward a few more paces, then I abruptly dropped to my knees and half crawled, half squat-ran as fast as I possibly could back in the direction of the girls.

  I barely caught a glimpse of a shirtless Remy and three naked, dark-haired beauties before Alex had hooked his arm about my waist and plucked me up off the ground as easily as a child, swinging me around and marching away from the crime scene with me tucked under his arm, kicking and screaming my head off.

  “Let me go! I wanna meet Remy’s friends!”

  He ignored my cries of protest and kept walking, increasing the length of his strides while shouting an order back at Remy that he was not to follow us.

  “I wanna meet Amy!” I bellowed in indignation like some deranged lunatic, thrashing and flailing about. “Let me see her! I know you fucked her, so you can just stop treating me like I’m an idiot.”

  He swung me upright and deposited me onto my feet. Before I’d fully reclaimed my equilibrium, my back was up against a wrought iron fence in another little garden area and Alex’s heated body was towering over me, his hands gripping the fence on either side, caging me in.

  As I smoothed my disheveled hair from my eyes and glowered up into his dark orbs, I found his expression difficult to decipher, prompting a moment of slight panic as a shiver of apprehension danced up my spine. I tried to imagine it was merely a reaction to the cold iron fence digging into my back through my thin henley.