Page 35 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

She waits until he disappears, a feat that takes all of a second. He doesn’t burst into bats. He’s just… gone. I am sure he could come back just as quickly.

Kita looks at me, throws her arms around me, and bursts into tears.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry. Again. I’m sorry again. I’ll spend my whole life being sorry about the things I do to you. And I just keep making it worse.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, holding her close. “It’s going to be okay. We are going to make it okay.”

“We’re trapped here, and he’s not going to let us out until he gets what he wants, and I can’t give him what he wants.”

“Slow down. I need you to explain what the hell is going on. I thought the vampire hated you, but he clearly doesn’t want you dead. Tell me everything.”

We sit down on the bed, which is a stretcher with a mattress and a thin pillow and no blanket on it. It’s not stained, but it gives the vibe of being stained.

She starts babbling. “He’s like my dad. Sort of.

Stepdad. Dad I want to kill. Dad who killed my dad.

If that’s what a dad is. I feel like it’s not really.

My dad used to mow the lawn, and I’ve never seen Alexander mow anything.

He kidnapped me after he ate my parents when I was about seven. And he took me here, and he…”

“Raised you as his own?”

She snorts. “He’s not really the raising anyone as his own sort of vampire. He’s busy. Travels a lot. Kills a lot of people. Terrorizes villages. Dominates other vampires mercilessly.”

“What did he do with you all the years he had you here?”

“Well, he forgot about me for most of them, I think. I lived in the castle. He had a cook and cleaners and I could go out during the day. I ran away a few times, but there wasn’t really any point.

There wasn’t anywhere to go. I’d been taken a long way from home, and I didn’t know how to get back, and there was a bed for me at his place, and I got fed, and I could go to school if I wanted to. ”

“He didn’t hurt you?”

“He hurt me by ripping my family away from me and then carrying me off like a hamster he forgot. He hurt me by making me understand how to live only by stealing and running, and being an asshole, because there was nothing to do other than learn how to be a criminal. If my family had raised me, I’d probably be an accountant.

But no, he didn’t kill me. He didn’t beat me.

He didn’t remember me most of the time.”

I think about that for a moment. “Is that why you did that? With the heart? Were you trying to get his attention?”

“No! Of course not!”

She blushes a little and I think I have gotten close. She may want revenge, but she also wants to be acknowledged.

This very personal psychodrama now involves a whole fucking war with humans. I assume the Rock City siege is still continuing. It’s not that uncommon, I suppose, for wars to be based on personal spats. Most of them might be, actually.

Tailor died because our mate started a fight with her surrogate daddy.

“You’re angry at me,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

We keep telling her these things aren’t her fault, but I am starting to consider that it’s very possible that quite a few things have been significantly impacted by her decisions. Like the one to run away while Damon was bleeding out.

“I am not pleased with you,” I say. “You shouldn’t have left us at the doctor’s. It resulted in Tailor’s capture.”

“And yours.”

“Yes, and mine.”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t want you to come after me. I wanted you to just let me go. I figured, if I did enough terrible things, you’d realize I wasn’t worth it and then you’d lose interest and then you could go back to your lives and not worry about me…”

I grab her by the arms and give her a not so gentle shake. “You are our mate, Kita!” I snap. “We cannot abandon you. We will die for you. You need to understand that. This is non-optional for any of us. We are dedicated to you. The choices you make can get us killed.”

Her eyes widen and fill with tears, but I am not going to give her any respite.

She should feel guilty. Tailor is dead, and though I am not going to make that announcement this minute, the truth is she and I could easily be the last ones standing at this point if the doctor was wrong and Damon did not survive his injuries.

“You should have let me go.”

“There’s no letting you go. We cannot get out of this. We are in it. You are in it. So fucking stop acting like a spoiled little girl and get your head in this game.”

I expect her to growl or pout or perhaps cry. But that’s not what happens. She turns pink. A very particular shade of pink.

She’s flushed.

“You’re kidding me,” I growl. “That turned you on?”

“No,” she lies.

“Yes. It did.” I clutch her jaw in my hand. “Is this all about getting some attention?”

“No,” she lies again. “It’s about saving you from me. It’s about keeping you from…”

Kita

I trail off, because the expression on Conroy’s face is making talking absolutely impossible. He’s glowering so fiercely it feels as though my words are stuck in my throat, unable to emerge.

“You…” he draws in a breath and growls at me. “Are lying.”

“I would never.”

There is a darkness, a sorrow, and an intensity behind his eyes that I haven’t seen before.

“You are. You wanted to run, maybe, but you wanted to be caught and kept, too. Consider yourself caught. Consider yourself kept.”

His hands slide down to my hips and he pins me against the wall. His thumbs hook in my pants and draw them down. He’s getting me naked in the vampire’s dungeon; he’s playing right into Alexander’s plan. Our instincts are going to take over and there’s nothing I’m going to do to stop it.

“This was un-fucking-necessary,” he growls.

“Running? Getting caught? Getting…” He pauses and doesn’t finish the sentence.

Instead he kisses me furiously and spreads my legs by kicking them open.

Before I know what is happening, he’s hoisting me up and thrusting inside me, claiming my tight pussy in one long, passionate stroke.

“Eyes on me,” he murmurs, clasping my face in one hand. “I want you to keep looking at me while I punish this pussy. This hole that I own. This breed-able little fucking cunt that should never have gone anywhere, and will never go anywhere again.”

He is mad. He is mad and he is right to be.

I fucked up. I ran and I got him caught.

And now he’s fucking me and that’s because I deserve to be fucked. I deserve to be punished. I deserve to be hurt. I probably deserve to die, but that’s not going to happen. He’s going to protect me. Even though I don’t deserve it.

His cock is so deep inside me, stretching me wider and wider, the knot at the base making my inner walls submit to him in that primal way only a wolf can make them submit.

He is my alpha, and I am his mate, and when his cock is buried inside me that’s all I can think about.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “And I’m going to make you a good little pup. I’m going to make you belong to me, and I’m going to give you everything you never had. You’re going to be safe. And you’re going to have rules. You’re not going to be left out of my sight.”

He does not rut me long, but he does fuck me hard. It is a quick, rough, and punishing interlude that has an urgency to it. We are both seeking refuge in physical connection, clinging to each other with animal desperation, mating in the face of almost certain death.

Afterward, when I am soaked in his seed, I fall asleep in his arms, in the cell, in the heart of the lair of the vampire who wishes only evil for all of us. Being left alive by Alexander is not a mercy. It is a prelude to pain.