Page 11

WINTER

This is all his fault.

This would have never happened if he let me walk out of here when everyone did.

He kept me here.

He made some shocking accusations that riled me up and caused me to react when I said I wouldn’t bat an eyelid to anything he did today.

And now, we are trapped in an elevator with both our phones having no signal service to call for help.

A streak of white-hot fear blazes across my face as I try to make out everything in front of me, only to fail disastrously at it. I can’t see a thing. Pitch darkness surrounds us and eats us up without mercy, and I can’t move because I’m afraid if I do so, the elevator might give in to my and Deacon’s weight and drop us.

I can’t die like this. I can’t die trapped within four solid walls of steel with him, no less. I can’t leave Asher and Adrian without telling them how much I love them. I'm not yet ready to leave them in the first place!

Deacon’s hand cups my cheek in the darkness, and I grab the lapel of his jacket as if I need a tether to prevent me from plunging to death. Whether I like it or not, his scent and the feel of his touch on my skin is the only thing that makes sense right now, and without it, I don’t think I’m going to survive being locked in an elevator that’s probably dangling above thirty floors from the ground.

“Breathe, baby. I need you to take a breath for me. In. Out.”

I hate this.

I hate him.

And I pay heed to his words like I’m his dainty loyal omega and he’s my Alpha, almost like Deja vu.

One gulp of fresh air through my nostrils and all the way to my lungs feels like I’m inhaling liquid fire. It burns, and it fails to take the uneasiness away.

“Turn,” my voice cracks, and I swallow past the feel of nausea, dizziness, and crippling fear before I correct myself. ” Turn the lights…on. Please.”

His hand slides down from my cheek to the column of my neck, and I would be lying if I said the feel of his thumb applying pressure to my throbbing pulse isn’t doing a thing in calming my frayed nerves.

Like a damsel in distress who needs saving, I lean into his palm all the more, needing him more than I can admit.

“Wish I could do just that, Winter, but the lights will be back anytime now. Give it a few seconds.”

I can’t survive a few seconds in here.

My wolf is panicking so much that I can feel her rioting inside my head. We’ve never been able to handle enclosed spaces for too long.

Did I use this same elevator to come and leave the office for all the years I've worked here? Yes, but that was different from this.

Being trapped here inside this elevator without it moving reminds me of how my family died. I’m trapped the same way my parents and Jake were caged in our burning house with no way of saving themselves, and the reminder of how they died makes my body leap into panic.

“Winter, hey? Stay with me, baby,” Deacon begs.

I bite my bottom lip in my mouth, venting out my fear and anger at him. ” Don’t call me baby. Not right now, Deacon Cross.”

His other hand moves to my right arm, and he caresses me, never leaving me to die in the darkness alone.

“You hate me calling you baby when we are mates?”

My heart pulses in my mouth. This is how I die, isn’t it?

“This is all your fault. You… did this!”

You self-entitled prick of an Alpha.

“I did.” Deacon takes the blame more easily than I’d expect him to, and that only fuels my wrath—wrath that’s coated with nothing more than terror.

“You should have let me leave. I wouldn’t be in this…this darkness if it wasn’t for you.”

I wouldn’t be too far away from my babies if he didn’t make me work overtime. And all for what? Some fucking reports that didn’t even make sense?

“Keep talking, Winter. Focus on me, you got that? I want your thoughts on me and not on the darkness, baby.”

Reaching out for his chest and grazing the rippling muscles underneath his shirt, my body moves on its own accord to Deacon, and soon enough, I’m hugging him.

“I hate you.”

Patting my head and acting like I said nothing, Deacon’s hand comes falling on the back of my head. He hugs me so tight, like he knows I’ll break if he doesn’t catch me.

“Hate me as much as you will, Winter, because I’ll love you enough for both of us,” he says that in a voice like nightshade, one that’s cloaked with determination and certainty. How wrong he is if he thinks me hugging him in a moment of weakness means I’m accepting him and his so-called love.

The Goddess, who’s been watching me on the precipice of a breakdown, somehow remembers us when a beeping sound bounces off the walls, and light fills the space we are in, blinding us temporarily. I lift my cheek from Deacon’s chest as if mere contact with him will burn my skin off.

Lifting my head to look up at the numbers on the elevator nearly paralyzes me. The numbers are not moving. The elevator is not moving.

“Winter.”

My lungs clench, and Deacon’s concerned eyes do nothing to assure me things are going to be okay.

“The lights are back, meaning things are okay, but why isn’t the elevator moving?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Deacon tries to explain.

“I can’t breathe, Deacon. I can’t stay here one more minute, or else I’ll die before anyone notices we are trapped in here. We’ll die here. We’ll run out of air, or the elevator could snap, and we would fall to our deaths. I would never get to see…” I restrain my words with a harsh bite.

Rubbing my chest only makes breathing more difficult, and I can almost feel my panic attack winning.

“Fuck, Winter. I’m right here. No one’s dying because I’m here with you. Look at me,” Deacon’s voice hogs my ears, and it almost sounds like a saving grace.

I look at him. I look at those dark onyx eyes that are all concerned about me, all lasered on me, and my wolf chooses to seek solace in him rather than face this nightmare.

Unlike the naive girl who kissed him like she believed the world was theirs and they were but star-crossed lovers blessed by the Goddess, the woman who kisses him now does so because she’s scared, and he’s the only thing that feels safe.

One kiss on Deacon’s lips turns out to be both a nightmare and a curse.

Electricity coils in every cell of my body, and I’m transported back to his office when he kissed me and I pulled away. I’m transported to that night in the woods when our mate bond first burned between us, and it doesn’t compare to the way it lits up aflame when Deacon snags my waist with one hand pulling me to his body while the other hand fists my hair deepening the kiss.

His lips pry mine open, and in no time, our teeth clash, and our tongues fight like tortured lovers learning their way back to each other. I tell myself I should stop this, but stopping this means facing my nightmare and means pretending that I don’t feel the shock and warmth that pools between my legs, threatening to throw me off the edge of a cliff from a single touch.

The sound of our lips clashing almost rivals my moans as I scratch Deacon’s chest with my nails, praying to the Goddess that I leave marks beneath that shirt he’s wearing. I might like this, but I might just hurt him to show him this is nothing but a spur-of-the-moment type of thing.

The boy who made love to me a few years ago is nothing like the man who fists my hair and nips the skin at my neck, going all the way down to my blouse and ripping the buttons away with his teeth. The buttons clatter against the ground, my blouse rips open at the front, and the sight of my pink bra reflects in Deacon’s eyes like two shiny beacons.

Deacon doesn’t speak when he buries his face between my breasts. I don’t expect him to speak because I know if he does, the spell between us will be broken, and the lust brought by the bond between us will shatter and remind me I’m weak for letting him in.

He takes off my coat and blouse, and I let him.

His teeth tug at my already swollen nipples, the pain and the pleasure of it all sending my hands to rest against one of the steel walls, and I let him.

His tongue sucks the throbbing in my nipples, and all I can anticipate is the feel of his mouth on my pulsing clit.

This is what happens when you remain untouched for years. The pleasure takes hold of you, and once you are all in, there’s no escape.

There’s no escape for me as Deacon kneels on the floor of the elevator, hiking my skirt up till it bunches around my waist and kissing my pussy through my already-drenched panties.

There’s no escape for me as his fingers deftly pull my lacy pair of undies down my legs. A second later, with my hands against the wall and my feet off the ground, my thighs are on Deacon’s shoulders with his face buried between my inner thighs.

“This greedy, whiny cunt still smells like mine, Winter. Mine to taste, fuck, and fill with my come, yes?”

Goddess. No. No, he’s not right. I’m not his. I’ll never be his again.

His tongue dives inside me, and my toes curl. Deacon’s name flies out of my lips with a pant before I add, “Yes.”

The first orgasm hits me like a freight train. Stars narrow my vision, and Deacon eats me out while I ride an orgasm that feels like I’m chasing a high.

Not allowing me a moment to overthink or figure out where we are still locked at my second orgasm comes in the form of me riding Deacon’s fingers as he embeds himself in me, rubbing that sweet spot inside me that no one has touched for years.

I cum with a cry. I ride his fingers, and his mouth like a stripper who’s found her favorite pole, and the most shameless thing is, I can see my face in the reflection of the polished steel wall. Perverted. Lustful. Too hung up on desire to think straight.

Sucking my clit once, twice as the second orgasm wears off, Deacon slowly stands up with me in his arms. Our eyes clash once more, and I wrap my hands around his neck and my legs around his torso, careful not to fall.

His eyes mirror adoration. My eyes convey hate.

The pull of his body against mine feels like love. I know it’s not love. This is sizzling lust. This is the kind of hate fucking ex-couples do, and it literally means nothing to either of them.

This is me letting off steam.

With no words exchanged, our lips find each other again, and the taste of both of us on his lips is enough to send me into a spiral, especially when I feel his hard cock poking my entrance. Especially when I feel this is happening, and I don’t have the strength to stop it, nor do I desire to.

“Sit on my cock, Winter. Let me have your cunt again, baby.”

In his arms, his huge hand on my back, my thighs tangled around his torso, I do as Deacon commands. I sit.

I guide him inside me, feeling the familiar and yet surprising way his cock stretches me, taking all the breath from my lungs and rearranging my insides.

Hanging onto his shoulders for dear life, I pace my breathing as Deacon moves inside me with one hard thrust. The thrust itself feels like a sharp slice of a knife. My lungs squeeze the oxygen inside them. Deacon’s groans mix with my moans, and our sounds rain down on me like needles pricking my skin in a good, tantalizing way.

The discomfort of having him inside me subsides with the long, luxurious kisses that Deacon rains on my mouth, cheeks, neck, and breasts. He stops every now and again, not wanting to come, to suck one of my nipples into his mouth and lick around it. He caresses my face and swipes stray locks of hair from my forehead. He is moving inside me as though he’s done it a thousand times before, but he is also careful and gentle.

Each thrust is a testament to how perfectly we fit together.

“You feel how your cunt swallows my cock, baby? Like she was made for me?”

“Mmm.”

Coherent words fail to escape me as Deacon increases his pace.

Gone are the gentle strokes he started with, and in their stead are rough thrusts that have my nails digging into the back of his shoulders and my walls clenching around his cock desperately.

His cock rubs that sweet spot inside me, and together, I meet his thrusts, I meet his lips, and I kiss him. I meet those eyes that force me to be locked on nothing else but him.

My orgasm comes, wrecking my body in a reckless moan as Deacon’s name repeats on my lips like a broken record.