by Everly Frost
Pulling a blanket from the bed in the third room—a bed I’ve never slept in and doesn’t feel like mine—I make a place for myself on the floor beside Iyana’s bed. I’m still wearing my damaged clothing and it’s not made for sleeping in, but now that I’m back, I don’t feel like I can leave Iyana alone.
I failed one woman tonight. I won’t fail another.
I toss and turn for the next half an hour, struggling to work through everything that happened in the night. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the crackle of the warlock’s shotgun, see again the flash as the chamber lit up, sense the magic hitting me and streaming off me onto the ground. I hear, over and over, the white wolf telling me I’m just like my mother. Feel his magic pull closer and closer around my chest until I’m gasping for breath—
“Tessa.” Iyana groans, making me shoot upright.
“What is it?” I ask, urgently leaning across her. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay.” She moans, throwing her hand over her eyes. “You’re keeping me awake.”
“You’re hurt,” I say. “I won’t leave you alone.”
“I’m a vampire, sweetie,” she says, snorting a little. “I’ve sucked down a dose of mercury. This bruise is nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I’ll be right as night after a solid sleep.” She removes her hand from her eyes and gives me a pointed stare. “Assuming I can get to sleep.”
All of the tension drains out of me.
She’s definitely okay. I lean across and give her a hug.
She smiles against my cheek. “Love you, Tessa. Now go get some sleep.”
“Love you, too.” I scramble up and drag the blanket with me, but I stop when I reach my bedroom door.
The tightness in my chest remains. I thought it was the memory of the white wolf’s power, but now I’m not so sure.
Closing my eyes as I grip the doorframe, I try to take a deep breath and can’t. My chest squeezes. My inhale catches.
I try again.
Fail again.
My breaths come faster and now I’m on the verge of panic.
I can’t breathe and I don’t understand what’s wrong. I’m about to call out to Iyana for help when I sense my wolf’s power inside me. I’m shocked to find her quietly writhing in pain. It’s the same clawing pain I felt moments before Tristan and I melded…
I gasp. “Tristan.”
I spin on my heel and hurry from the apartment, latching the door behind me as quietly as I can, even though my hands are shaking. Jemimah isn’t sitting in the entrance room anymore and the elevator arrives nearly immediately.
I swipe my security card across the scanner and bump the button for the twelfth floor before I slide down the wall of the elevator, attempting to keep myself upright by hanging on to the handrail at the side.
The doors blur as they open and I crawl through the gap, wheezing and gasping for breath, the world spinning as I try to get enough oxygen.
In the distance, Tristan grips the edge of the kitchen table, leaning back from it, a roar growing in his throat. He thumps the surface with his fist, cracking it. His muscles bunch seconds before he upturns the table, flipping it halfway across the room. It slides to a stop, dangerously close to the windows.
I freeze where I grip the elevator’s doorframe.
Tristan’s rage washes over me, a thousand times more intense than the anger I sensed pouring off him when he saw Bridget. It’s his pure rage without walls or boundaries that’s squeezing my chest now.
He jolts upright as he becomes aware of my presence.
Remaining where he is, his voice is a menacing growl. “Get out of here, Tessa. You can’t be around me right now.”
His warning contains raw truth.
I have two choices. I can crawl back into the elevator and try to gasp enough oxygen to breathe until he calms down—at which time I hope I’ll be okay.
Or I can follow my instincts.
I launch myself to my feet, race toward him, and throw myself across the distance, wrapping my arms and legs around him as I knock into him.
He braces as we connect, his arms flying around me, scooping me up so we don’t fall and tumble across the kitchen tiles.
My chest presses to his. My legs wrap around his waist. I arch against him to make sure our chests connect as much as physically possible as we come to a complete stop.
Oh, sweet oxygen.
I inhale my first full breath of air since I returned to the tower. My chest expands and my head clears. But now I’m breathing in Tristan’s rage and all its sharp edges, and it hurts.
His arms clamp around me, his shoulders tense. One hand grips the back of my head like a vise, preventing me from looking up at him. “You can’t be here right now, Tessa. I’ll destroy you.”
I push against his hand, my wolf’s energy giving me the strength to raise my head and meet the darkness in his eyes. I lace my hands behind his naked back, flexing my palms against his muscles, and lock my ankles around his waist.
“I’m strong enough,” I murmur, edging forward to press my lips to his, inhaling the same back-arching power I felt when we first met.
Our mouths have barely touched when he pulls me away from him, quick, aggressive, holding my head an inch from his. He lashes out with a snarl. “You’re too vulnerable. Too fragile.”
Two months ago, I would have retaliated against his assessment of my strength. I would have tried to prove to him just how fragile I am not.
Tonight, I have greater perspective. The kind of rage he’s experiencing is sourced from pain. The deepest pain. It has to be more than Bridget’s injury. And it’s making him lash out with an intensity that he already regrets.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
“The past happened,” he says through gritted teeth. “A past and a future I can’t escape.”
“Your father,” I whisper.
His grip becomes excruciatingly tight on my scalp, but he leans forward, closing the gap nearly completely between us. “Deceiver. Coward. Killer. That was my father.”
I press myself as close to Tristan as I can, my muscles straining with the effort, but I refuse to let go. “You aren’t him.”
He growls, low and soft. “He destroyed everyone who cared about him.”
Tristan’s anger washes across me in waves that push and pull at me. I’m buffeted in the storm of his rage, but I refuse to let go.
“How can the child of a monster not become a monster?” he asks.
I level my gaze with his. “You aren’t him.”
Tristan’s green eyes are half-animal, darkly rimmed. Strands of his raven black hair fall across his eyes. The first rays of sunlight break across the horizon and shine through the windows, highlighting the curve of his lips.
I brace, using the strength in my thighs to remain where I am as I remove one of my hands from his back and reach up behind his hand—the one pressed to the back of my head that is keeping me at a distance.
Slowly and carefully, I slide my fingers over the back of his, taking control of his hand so I can lean forward again.
My lips press to his fully for the first time, fitting to the curve of his mouth. He inhales sharply as I explore the shape of his lips, traveling the upper and lower curves.
The taste of his mouth is intoxicating. I moan against his lips, nudging at them, wanting to feel more.
The muscles in his arms flex across my back, the hand with which he holds my head gripping me painfully.
“Tessa,” he says. “Leave while you still can.”
He’s giving me another choice.
For a long time, I didn’t think I had any choices with Tristan, but he has always given me options. Live or die. Fight him or fuck him. Leave or stay.
“I’m staying.”
His forehead creases, his eyes narrow, a moment of distrust. His grip on my head changes, pulling me closer, pausing while his gaze scorches mine.
My heartbeat is rapid inside my chest, my wolf’s energy r
ising to the surface, but I focus on maintaining my calm, determined not to taint this moment by losing control of my power.
His lips nudge mine, a testing pressure, before he pulls back to assess my reaction. The brief contact is tantalizing, the insistent question in his eyes unrelenting. I sway toward him as close as I can without kissing him, waiting for him to make his own decision.
With a throaty snarl, he swoops toward me and demands full access to my mouth. His lips push mine apart, his tongue grazing across my tongue. Scorching need bursts through me, both mine and the need he has kept under control since… Damn… His emotions tell me that he’s kept his need for me under control since the night he first laid eyes on me.
I respond by releasing his hand and running mine up his back into his hair, holding him as firmly as he’s holding me.
He breaks the contact as suddenly as he started it, casting a withering glance at the flipped table, which is of no use to us, before he strides with me to his bedroom.
His scent envelops me as soon as we enter, a relentless mix of fury and desire as he carries me to the bed.
“I want you naked,” he says, his lips meeting mine in a blistering kiss that ignites the ache in my center.
Every move he makes is intense as he presses me back onto the bed, my hips raised above its edge while my legs remain curved around his hips where he stands at the bed’s edge.
He unzips my skirt with fierce efficiency before unfurling my legs from around his waist, pulling my skirt off, and pitching it off to the side. Flipping me onto my stomach, he unzips the back of my bodice all the way down so that it falls away from me. With another quick movement, he unclasps my bra, leaving me only in my underpants.
His palms graze my stomach as he bends over me, his chest pressed against my back as he slides his hands beneath my ribs. Pulling me back into a standing position, his hands slide up my stomach and ribs to cup my breasts. At the same time, his mouth nudges the side of my neck, tasting the skin at the curve between my shoulder and neck and working his way up to my ear, tugging my sensitive earlobe between his lips.
Moans leave my mouth and I brace against the edge of the bed as his hands explore my breasts, hips, and the curve of my pelvis. He turns me in his arms to face him, trailing kisses down my neck, across my collarbone, nudging my breasts on his way to my underpants before he pulls them off and down to my ankles.
His hands are firm around my hips as he guides me to sit on the edge of the bed before drawing my legs apart and tasting the skin across my inner thigh, one side and then the other, before his warm mouth closes over my center.
I moan, gripping his shoulders as intense pleasure rides me. It’s a mix of release and growing need as his tongue curves and licks across my most sensitive folds.
The pleasure builds so fast that I cry out in protest when he stops right when I’m on the brink of climaxing. I dig my fingernails into his shoulders, growling my unhappiness deep in my throat.
He wears a self-satisfied smile as he rises to his feet between my legs, ridding himself of his jeans before he pushes me back onto the bed. It’s the same smile he gave me when I woke up at Hidden House after he commanded it. But this time, his smile carries an edge of anger that hasn’t diminished despite the attention he’s giving my body.
He warned me that he would destroy me, but destruction works both ways. I have the power to destroy him too.
Standing over me, he takes in my entire form from my red hair spread across his bed, the stray, crimson strands resting across my breasts, to my waist and thighs. It’s a lingering appraisal before the animal returns to his eyes. Taking both of my hips in his hands and positioning himself, he pulls me closer to the edge of the bed.
“You are fucking beautiful,” he says, thrusting inside me.
My body is completely ready—he made sure of it. I arch up off the bed, crying out as intense pleasure rocks me. He withdraws slowly, testing my responses before thrusting again, an act that feels like being claimed, a deep marking.
My own darkness and recklessness rise to the surface as he rides me. I match him, meeting every thrust, fisting the sheets and using them to brace, demanding more from him. Arching and lifting my hips off the bed, I push myself against him, taking control of our movements, curving my own hips up even further, drawing him deeper inside me.
With a groan, he leans down close, planting both hands on either side of my head, his mouth demanding access to my lips again, the taste on his tongue a heady mix of his scent and mine.
He grips my torso, sliding his arms beneath me and wrenching me upward, his movements wild as I meet every thrust with my own relentless need. If I could tell him what I wanted, I would, but all of my focus is set on taking his anger and turning it into the flames that will feed my own desire, in matching his darkness with my own.
“Fuck, Tessa!” He grips my backside as I use every muscle in my body to push against him, needing release, wanting to take it all from him.
He drops me back onto the bed, crashing deep inside me at the same time.
I scream as I orgasm, powerful heat rushing through me, tearing me apart wave after wave. My whole world rips and it feels like my foundations shift. It’s more than pleasure. It’s darkness and need, hope and violence. As I match the fury in Tristan’s final thrusts before he crashes with me, my wolf’s energy rises to the surface, seeking, trying to reach beyond me.
I’m searching for the true mate bond I can’t attain. Will never attain.
With furious determination, I push the threatening heartache from my mind, refusing to allow it to define this moment. I have to accept who I am, that I can share my body and heart with Tristan, even if there will never be a soul connection between us.
Tristan remains poised above me, his fists on either side of my head, his chest rising and falling, rapid breaths that match how fast I’m breathing. He searches my eyes, demanding but not furious anymore, before he dips his head to nudge my lips with his, another brief testing pressure.
I arch to follow his lips, demanding that he kiss me fully, enjoying the taste of his mouth before I drop my head back onto the bed and wait for him to respond.
He makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat, his lips relaxed, a satisfied smile growing on his lips again.
The bedsheets are strewn around us. I’m still gripping a section of them in my fist and I slowly release it, sighing with remnant pleasure as he withdraws his body from mine.
I’m prepared for him to leave the bed, but he stays where he is, dipping his head to my thighs and nudging them, one after the other, with his lips, stroking kisses up to my lower stomach.
His tongue swirls across my skin, along my ribcage, across my breasts, pausing at the bruise I sustained tonight. The cut has closed already, but the wound will take another day to disappear. He whispers kisses around its edges before he continues over to my shoulder, down my right arm, all the way to my fingers, where he turns my palm over and sucks on the inside of my forefinger. I gasp and shiver as he works his way back up my arm and across my collarbone to my other shoulder.
It’s a careful, methodical process that makes my wolf’s energy purr, contentment lulling me into submission as I accept his attention.
His lips ease across my neck, his hands brushing across my body. I don’t think anything of it when he folds one hand around my left shoulder and presses the palm of his other hand against my jaw on the same side.
I watch him lazily as his incisors descend and he lowers his mouth to my shoulder, preparing to nip.
My eyes fly wide. “No!”
His only reaction to my sudden tension is to pause and level his gaze with mine. “My instincts tell me this is right, Tessa.”
My breathing is suddenly out of my control, but it’s because of misery not panic. He’s forcing me to face the fact that I’m losing something I never had.
“You said that the woman you mark will be yours forever,” I say. “How can I be yours forever when I won’
t live longer than another year?”
He doesn’t deny my question, but his response is equally unequivocal. “My forever only lasts as long as I’m alive. My forever will be shorter than yours. But for the time I have left, I want you by my side.”
He’s telling me he doesn’t expect to live beyond the next few months. I’ve never wanted to say yes more badly in my life. My lips part, my body more alive even than when my wolf runs free.
Tristan’s thumb strokes my shoulder, his other hand soft and compelling against my jaw. “You withstood my worst, Tessa. Hell, you invited it.” His voice is thick, his calm receding, a new anger growing in his shifting eyes, becoming more animal as he speaks.
“There’s no such thing as normal bonding for creatures like you and me because our true nature is to rip apart anything that binds us,” he says. “We refuse to be caged. You have fought me every step of the way. You would rather tear yourself apart than give in to the idea that I have any control over you.”
His grip tightens on my shoulder, demanding that I agree. “I will never find an equal like you. You’re the one I want.”
I guard my thoughts, making sure he doesn’t have a window into my inner turmoil. My response could break us. I will never agree to be marked, but I don’t want my refusal to be interpreted as rejection.
I breathe carefully in the silence between us as he waits patiently for my answer. His body still rests between my legs. Slowly, I bring my knees up beside his hips and curl my legs around his backside. Equally slowly, cautiously, I brace my left palm against the side of his chest and my right hand against his left shoulder.
He tips his head, wary of my intentions just as my muscles flex and I use my strength to roll us over in a quick maneuver, reversing our position so that he’s beneath me.
With rapid movements, I grab his jaw and his shoulder like he was gripping mine and lower my mouth, as if I’m going to mark him instead.
Tristan jolts, his eyes flying wide. His hands whip around my wrists, stopping me, a growl in his throat warning me not to proceed.
