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I still feel…flushed. I still feel his hands all over me.

I glance up at the mirror, and that’s when I see it. My neck’s blotched with pink love bites. My lips are swollen. My hair definitely screams I just got fucked and there’s a mark on my collarbone from…Alaric’s mouth. His teeth.

The ache between my thighs pulses like it’s reliving the memory from last night.

My heart stutters.

No.

No, no, no.

I try to breathe, but everything that happened last night starts rushing back like pictures in a slideshow. The party. The spiked champagne. Julian. His taunting voice. Then the dizziness and finally…Alaric.

His arms. His voice growling, “I’ve got you, wild one.”

His mouth on mine.

His mouth everywhere.

Oh, Goddess.

I flinch.

Before I know it, I’m already toweling off, slipping into my underwear, putting on my crumpled and wrinkled dress next, and stepping back into the bedroom.

I wasn’t imagining seeing him in the bed when I ran into the bathroom. My eyes fall once again on the Adonis-like man.

Alaric is sprawled on the bed, half on his stomach, the sheets tangled around his waist and the curve of his spine exposed to the soft glow of moonlight sneaking through the blinds.

His tattoo coils along his arm like a beacon written in dark, bold ink. His lashes rest against his cheeks, his lips slightly parted. If this were a normal situation, I would probably fawn over how he looks like Lina when he’s asleep, however, this is anything but.

Suddenly, the ache between my legs starts to make sense.

The bruises on my hips?

The burning need still humming low in my belly like an unquenchable thirst?

They are all starting to make a lot of sense right about now.

I can’t even breathe properly.

I just stare, frozen, as reality all but slams into me like a freight train with my heart thundering and my chest twisting with something dangerously close to regret.

Not because of the way he touched me. Not because of the way my body responded to his like we were made for each other, and I was his, just like he had declared a few hours ago.

But because I don’t know how to come back from this.

Mate bond or not, I made a mistake. I handed him another piece of me, knowing he was going to bleed me dry.

How could I have stooped so low? Whether it was the drug or this pull between us, that doesn’t hide the fact that he’s arrangedto be married! That he slept with me knowing he was engaged to someone else.

That he’s been giving me crumbs back in the office, hinting that he regrets what he did six years ago and wants me, but all along he’s been playing me.

I feel used.

I feel cheap.

And even though I'm not nor will I ever be the other woman for anyone, shame hugs my shoulders like a bitter mistress.