Page 18 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

“Some of us more than others,” she says, pouting.

I do not bring up the fact that the damn vampire brutalized me out of my mind, that we have all suffered, that we are suffering because of her behavior, and not ours.

It would be easy to blame her, but blame has no place between mates.

Whatever she did before we met was her business, but has become ours.

“Poor little thing. Don’t tell me you’re so soft a little spanking makes you suffer?”

“I’m not soft,” she says, her temper flaring. She’s turned her ire to me now.

“I know,” I say, sitting on the bed, “I can see how strong you are. And I can see how much you like Conroy.”

“Is that your idea of a joke? I hate that man.”

“You don’t hate him.”

“It’s close. He’s done nothing but hit me and fuck me since I met him, and he won’t stay away from the fucking truck. He’s going to get hurt if he’s not careful.”

“You could tell us what’s in the truck and then we’d understand and we could help you. What is it? Drugs? You stole something you shouldn’t? I don’t see why you’re being so shy about this. There can’t be anything we haven’t dealt with before.”

“You’ve never had anything like that through your port before,” she says, smirking through the pain.

I know she’s sore to the point of tears, but whatever’s in the truck makes her instantly smug.

That makes me think it definitely belongs to someone else.

She’s only happy when she’s fucking with someone.

I stand up and look down at her. I need to assert myself. I need her to understand that Conroy might be one kind of rough, but I am another kind of dominant, and we both have to have attention paid to us.

“What is it?” I slide my hands to her hips, lift her up against the wall, pin her in place with my hips, and put my hand under her chin, controlling her face.

She flushes pink immediately, so very pleased with herself, and enjoying the sensation of being handled.

“Tell me, you little brat. I know you want to. I can see how proud you are of it. What is it? What clever, difficult thing did you steal?”

Her eyes flash. I can see the desire to talk rising in her. This is how it is done. I don’t force her. I invite her. I seduce her.

I turn my head to the side and let my teeth nibble along the side of her neck, tasting her and teasing her.

I feel tremors of excitement rushing through her body as she responds to me with need.

We are still very much in the first flush of mateship.

My need for her is being tempered, but it is intense.

“Tell me,” I rumble. “Tell me what a terribly clever, devastatingly dangerous mate I have.”

She whispers something. A little too quiet for me to hear. I lean in, my ear closer to her lips.

“What was that?”

The second time I hear it, though, it doesn’t make that much sense.

“I’ve got Alexander’s heart.”

“You mean he’s in love with you. That’s why he’s chasing you around, hunting you down? He’s obsessing after you?”

“No,” she says, lifting her voice. “I mean I literally took his maker’s heart. It’s this relic he kept in his castle. It’s what remains of the thing that made him, and it matters to him, and it has powers, probably. I don’t really know.”

“I see,” I say, trying to avoid sounding so horrified she stops talking.

“Don’t worry. I took proper precautions. It’s encased in a concrete block that has been laced with all sorts of compounds. I put a thousand crucifixes in it, for starters. And some other things. It’s not safe to be handled. Wildly explosive.”

“Wildly explosive?”

“Even more explosive than that,” she beams very proudly.

The bedroom door slams open, kicked off its hinges by an angry alpha. Conroy comes storming in, his hair practically on fire from fury.

“So you are fucking with a vampire. For the fun of it. And that’s why we were tortured,” he cuts in. She is lucky I am holding her against the wall. It stops him from grabbing her and whipping her ass for this most recent revelation.

She looks over my shoulder as she replies. “You were tortured because while everyone else worked out they needed to get the hell out of there, you didn’t. You don’t have any survival skills because you think you’re the one people have to worry about.”

Damon grabs Conroy, pulling him back from me and from her.

“You little shit,” he growls.

“Stop it,” I snap back. “You’re acting as badly as she is, and she’s a good decade younger than you. You didn’t even ask her why she did this. And don’t forget, we were all strangers when she planned this. It’s not about you, or us.”

“We’d already mated. She knew me well enough. She should have loved us.”

Conroy’s exclamation makes me feel terribly sorry for him. He sounds hurt. Badly hurt.

“She didn’t know us.”

“She knew me. She knew what it felt like to have me inside her.”

“It felt like being fucked… it felt like being obliterated as a person. It felt like I wasn’t going to be anybody by the end of it. It felt like I was a thing for you to use, a stranger you were rutting because you decided I belonged to you. So no, I didn’t owe you.”

“She didn’t owe us anything,” I say. “We’re just getting started. Every romance starts with a drama of some kind.”

I am feeling quite good, having my mate pinned here, safe in my arms and squirming against my leg. I think she quite likes being here too. I can smell her pheromones, which are increasing with each and every breath she takes. She likes fighting.

“Alright. Fine. This is what love is. Fucking someone and then having them leave you to be mercilessly tortured is just part of the courtship,” Conroy says, running his hand through his hair.

“I’m not fighting about this anymore. We’re going to deal with this.

We’re leaving the vampire heart here. That’s what he’s tracking. Isn’t it. Not you. His body part.”

“It’s not his heart. It’s his maker’s heart. I guess it has sentimental value, or whatever. Trust me, he deserved me stealing it. He’s a terrible person. Or vampire.”

“He’s an ancient evil who has stalked the world since time began,” I say.

“Well, he doesn’t have to be a dick about it.”

I press my thigh between her legs more firmly and flex it lightly, getting her attention. She likes being held like this. Likes the firmness of it. Likes the way she’s contained for a bit. I don’t think Kita wants a life of recklessness and danger. I don’t think she’s been given many other options.

“We’re leaving. Tonight,” Conroy says. “We’re leaving that fucking time bomb behind and we are going to hope that once the vampire gets what he wants, he decides to bother someone else.”

“No!” That sets her off again. She struggles against me, only succeeding in grinding her pussy against my thigh.

“Do you know what I had to do to get that heart! I had to get inside his most ancient stronghold. I had to put up with the horrible advances of his guards. I almost had to sleep with them. I could have lost my virginity to them, or even been imprisoned in his dungeon forever. Or I might have been killed. Or worse.”

“Why would you have done any of that?” I ask the question more gently. “What prompted you to go through all of that? Why did you risk your life?”

“For revenge.”

“Revenge for what?”

Her eyes darken. She looks as though she is about to cry again. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself together with some obvious effort, looking adorably stoic as she does.

“That story I told when we came into the city?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t make it up. Alexander really killed my parents.

I thought that was a bit much. So I stole something dear to him.

I would have killed his parents, if I could have, but they died thousands of years ago.

” She bites her lower lip and draws in a deep breath.

“I’m not giving up the heart. You three go. Save yourselves.”

“That’s not happening,” Conroy says. “We don’t leave our mate to die, even if that’s something you would do.”

“Fuck you,” she says.

“I did fuck you. Didn’t make a difference.”

“My loyalty isn’t located in my vagina,” she snaps back, grinding that same body part against me.

“You two have to stop arguing,” I say, flexing my leg forward so she cannot move. She is pinned in place, unable to take physical pleasure from her rebellion. “How can you have his maker’s heart? I thought vampires crumbled to dust when they were killed.”

“Well, if that’s true, then I guess his maker isn’t dead. Technically.”

Conroy’s eyes darken. “What you have in that truck is incredibly dangerous.”

She grins ferociously. “I know. That’s the point.”

They’re back to their immovable object, irresistible force thing again. The most adept diplomat would have great difficulty trying to get these two to come to an agreement.

“Conroy, please. Stop talking.”

I can feel Conroy’s annoyance at me, but we need to talk, and all he knows how to do is bark orders.

“So you have a very personal relic belonging to Alexander,” I say. “And your plan was…”

“To sell it,” she says. “It’s worth more money than you could possibly imagine. It’s a relic of untold power and truly ancient provenance.”

“Right. You’ve performed a heist and now you are trying to sell the goods. Okay. Excellent. That’s a paradigm we are familiar with.”

“A good idea, right?”

“Well, I might not go that far,” I say. “You see, the vampire you stole it from seems to be very much aware of the heist and also the little wolf responsible, and seems to be insistent on destroying everything between him and the heart.”

“Yes, but I knew he’d do that. That’s why I planned to come here. I’m not an idiot.”

“I think you had an incredible idea, and you’ve executed most of your plan very well, but you’ve met us now. So that changes things.”

“It doesn’t need to.” She looks at me with real rebellion. “I was doing something. I am still doing something.”