Page 16 of Protector (Alpha Ties)

SIXTEEN

AX2

He’s through the door in a fraction of a second, eyes scanning every detail of the room while he moves across the floor to the bed. To her.

Nothing is amiss, yet the wild thrashing of their bond tells him that something is horribly wrong, as clearly as his mate’s gasping breath and tear-streaked face.

“Help me!” she cries again, hands fisting in her duvet. “Please, please, help me!”

“I’m here,” he says as he kneels on the mattress, surveying her. Her eyes are large and unfocused, but she leans toward him like a flower to the sun. There is no outward sign of injury. “Where does it hurt?”

She lets out a soft gasp and paws at her ribs, where she shredded her own flesh before he could save her, and he understands.

Grimly, he catches her wrist before she tries to hurt herself again. She doesn’t pull against his hold, and he releases her hand to reach for the hem of her nightgown.

“Nononono!” It comes out as a garbled shriek, and she flails to grasp at his arm, nails digging in.

“I’m just checking your wound. I won’t hurt you,” he says, his voice softening at the look of terror in her still-unfocused eyes.

She stares up at him, lower lip quivering, but when he pushes the garment up, she doesn’t fight him.

There are angry, pink scars on the pale skin under her left breast, fresh and shiny, but with no hint of seepage. The pain still throbbing through his own chest isn’t from any physical injuries.

“All right.” He huffs out a breath and lets her nightgown fall before he wraps his arms around her trembling body and pulls her close. “You’re okay. It’s gonna pass in a minute. Just breathe.”

He expects her to be stiff in his grasp—to resist the forced proximity. Instead she lets out a choking sob and loops her arms around the back of his neck, flattening herself against him in her efforts to get closer still. When she nuzzles at his neck and her breath ghosts over his skin in a deep inhale, his cock jumps.

Shit. He tries to shift his hips without breaking his hold on her, but all he achieves is to rub his swelling cock against her hamstring. Electricity zings through his system at the added stimulation, and there’s nothing he can do to prevent a full erection.

But rather than retreating in horror, she digs her fingers deeper into his back muscles and sobs.

“Shh,” he whispers, the ache from their bond mixing with pain that’s wholly his own. “I’m never gonna hurt you like that. Just breathe, girl. Breathe.”

It takes a long while, but slowly her sobs quiet to shaky breaths. A few moments more, and she calms enough to sniff at his neck again, instincts she’ll never acknowledge in the light of day urging her to soothe herself with her mate’s scent.

AX2 sits entirely still, jaw clenched against the desire to rub his nose along her jugular and scent her in response. Their bond is quieting, the throbbing of it turning duller, and he expects the return of the cold monster he knows so well. But when she finally lifts her head to look at him, it is not with her usual hardness.

Her unfocused gray eyes search his, and the uncertainty in them makes his gut clench.

“Why can I still feel him?” she whispers, her voice so quiet it almost doesn’t sound like her. “He’s gone. You took his place. Why is he still there?”

“Because you sent me away,” he says, his words devoid of the anger he felt before. “I can’t protect you if I’m not by your side.”

She swallows, her throat bobbing with the motion as a fresh bout of tears clouds her eyes.

“Shh,” he hums, shifting her weight more fully onto his lap to ensure the closeness she needs. Only in doing so, his cock rubs along her hamstring and nestles against the apex of her thighs. Even through his fatigues, her heat is overwhelming, and he swallows a groan.

She goes rigid in his arms.

“Shit,” he mutters, twisting his hips to the side to break the direct contact with her soft pussy. It makes his now throbbing dick grind maddeningly back down along her leg, and he can’t contain his moan this time. When he looks back at the woman in his arms, she’s shaking like a leaf.

“I couldn’t force you, even if I wanted to,” he grits, too frustrated with the ache for pleasure and his inability to calm his mate to keep his voice soft. “You will always be able to command me to stop. Always. You’re safe. No one’s gonna hurt you like that again. I would break them apart before they could.”

She stares silently at him, but her body stills in his grasp and the fear in her eyes fades as she takes in his gritted jaw and the seriousness of his expression. She knows he’s right—he sees the moment she finally fully accepts that he speaks the truth. Her shoulders slump, her fingers softening against his back.

“I can command you,” she whispers, more to herself than him.

“You can,” he agrees anyway. “You have. I mated you on your orders. It was your choice.” Even if the only alternative was a miserable death. He doesn’t say that part out loud.

She blinks up at him, and for a moment, he sees her return. Not in a hardening of her gaze, but a resolve. When she presses her cheek against his collarbone, her eyelashes feather along his skin, drawing a thrill up his spine and deep into his groin.

“Hold me closer,” she murmurs.

It’s an order, but the softness of her voice keeps his chip from activating. He still pulls her tighter to his body.

“Closer,” she demands, constricting her own arms tighter around the back of his neck. “Until it hurts.”

He gets it then—what she needs. Grunting, he pulls her up higher against his torso by her ass, ignoring her squeak of surprise and her flailing hands, and puts her on her back on the bed. Before she can voice a protest, he presses down on top of her, pinning her with his weight.

She lets out a shuddering breath, eyelids fluttering closed. When he bites her neck, the side that isn’t bandaged, her muscles slowly soften under his.

He keeps his teeth in her flesh until he feels her heartbeat slow to a near-normal rhythm, then releases her neck to look down at her.

She stares back up at him, lips parted around short breaths. He’s restricting her breathing, but before he can move to ease the pressure on her chest, she grips him by the shoulders with surprising strength.

“No. Don’t.” Her eyes flick from his to his mouth, then off to the side. “I need… more.”

Shame flutters through their connection. Shame and confusion.

It’s amusing, on some faraway plane. Haughty doctor Adelaide Thompson, the woman who’s made herself the vengeful god of his existence, doesn’t understand why she needs him to scare away the terrors in her blackened soul. And she’s too ashamed to admit it. Won’t tell him she needs him to guide her.

But like it or not, he’s her alpha. She doesn’t need to ask.

“It’s okay,” he rumbles, bending to brush his lips against the shell of her ear. “I’m here.”

She shivers underneath him, eyes clenching shut as she clings to his neck.

“I’ll make it stop.” He buries his nose in her hair and inhales, groaning softly as her scent fills his nostrils. There’s no floral touch to it, only the harsh remainder of the hospital provided soap, but it doesn’t matter. It’s rich with her pheromones, rich with her.

When he brushes a hand down the outside of her arm, she shudders in response, head twisting to stare at him. Her eyes are wide, uncertainty flashing in them again.

“I can’t hurt you. I won’t.”

She doesn’t respond, and he trails his hand from her wrist to her hip, then down her thigh until he reaches the hem of her nightgown. Only when he grabs the back of her knee and pushes her leg up does she release his neck to grab onto his forearm.

“No.” It’s a broken little mewl that makes his cock jump, but the anguish in her eyes keeps him firmly in control. She needs it, and fuck, he does too—but the thought of her sobbing with terror while he sates his maddening desire for her is less than appealing.

“I won’t.” He rubs his thumb against her hamstring, biting back a groan when her eyelids flutter and her grip softens on his arm. He doesn’t give her time to reconsider her hesitant submission. Leaning low on one elbow to keep as much of his body tight with hers as possible, he shifts her thigh to the side, opening her.

She sucks in a sharp breath, but before she can voice another protest, he rolls his hips and presses down firmly between her thighs, sealing his pelvis to hers.

“Just breathe,” he murmurs, stroking up under her nightgown along her trembling thigh until her muscles reluctantly relax once more. “That’s it. I’ve got you.” He runs his hand down her leg to her ankle before he hikes her knee over his hip, allowing her time to adjust before he shifts his weight to his right elbow.

She doesn’t resist when he repeats the process with her other leg—only stares up at him as he lets his weight settle in the cradle of her pelvis.

“Fuck.”

The heat of her is nearly enough to break through his repulsion at forcing her—even through his fatigues and her cotton underwear, she feels like the fucking sun against his straining cock. Memories of her pussy clutching on him, of the tight, slick slide into her innermost, burns in his mind, and he groans and rolls his hips on instinct alone.

Pleasure zings through his nerve endings, throbs through his pelvis, and burrows deep into his muscles. Stars above, he’ll never get enough of her. Even this—it’s more sensation than he can contain.

Moaning, he rubs his cock against her again, and again, and again, electricity buzzing through him with every gasped “oh!” she releases into his ear as he grinds on her clit. When her legs tighten on his waist and she wraps herself around him, arms constricting around the back of his neck in her efforts to get closer still, he loses himself fully to the instincts.

“That’s it. That’s it.” He moans the words in her ear, rubbing his nose against the side of her neck and burrows into her hair, inhaling her in greedy lungfuls. His mate. His anchor. The center of all he’ll ever be. There is only bliss in her embrace.

Her mewls turn syrupy, pleasure thick in her cries, and he knows she’s almost there. Can feel it in the tidal wave mounting in their bond and in the way she rocks her pelvis back against his, all her fear and trauma momentarily lost to primal urgency.

“Good girl. That’s it. Good girl,” he gasps into the shared air between them, as eager for her release as he is his own. Ecstasy burns up his hamstrings and throbs through his cock every time he rolls his hips, and he’s close—so fucking close!

She takes hers, first. Her hands fists in his shirt, her thighs clamp around his hips, and then she arches up against him—and breaks.

“Oh, fuck, Jacob!”

Even if he hadn’t been hanging on by a thread, the fine tremor playing across her features as she comes for him would have gotten him there.

He lets out a roar pulled from the depths of his being, and slams his pelvis to hers hard once, twice, three times.

The release is fire so intense it’s nearly painful, but all he can sense is mind-numbing relief. His cock throbs with each surge, and there’s an ache at the base where his knot threatens to swell despite the lack of penetration. She is fucking everything.

He is only halfway aware of pressing his mouth to her jawline, her ear, her forehead while he rocks slowly against her, trembling with the aftershocks and high on the pleasure of this one, perfect moment.

She still has her arms around him, but her grip on his shoulders and hips softens until she’s simply holding him. As if they’re nothing more than sated lovers.

She buries her nose in his neck and breathes in his scent before looking up at him with pleasure-dazed grogginess. A single tear trails down her temple, but there’s no anguish in their bond. Only relief.

When she falls asleep underneath him a few minutes later, he simply stares at her in wonder. For those brief moments before sleep takes him too, for the first time in his cursed existence, AX2 can’t bring himself to hate her.

It feels so good that the question of who the fuck Jacob is floats to the back of his mind and flickers into foggy bliss.