Page 15

Chapter Fifteen

L ILA WINTER

Light creeps up to my face, dragging me out of sleep against my will. My lashes flutter open, but the world is still too fuzzy around the edges.

The room I'm in is dim and quiet, and yet my head pounds like someone’s trying to split it open and take a peek inside my skull.

I sit up with a soft groan, the sheets slipping down my bare chest, but I don’t stop to think about that even for a minute. My limbs feel heavy as I try to move, and my brain remains foggy. It takes me a lot of effort just to swing my legs off the side of the bed.

Where am I?

The room’s unfamiliar. It’s not mine, I realize. Because this one is too expensive-looking. The air smells like cedar and dark musk and definitely not my cheap jasmine diffuser or Lina’s strawberry shampoo.

If that wasn’t enough, my mouth tastes like I slept by the beer keg all night.

I blink a few times, trying to shake this weird haze off. I need water. And a mirror. Something, anything to ground me in reality.

And as if the universe is more than happy to show me reality, I cock my head to the side, only for my voice to stay in my throat and my shocked gasp to almost choke me.

I see Alaric is in the same bed I am in, and I don’t waste a second in dragging my feet across the floor as quickly as I can, finding my dress, bra, and panties that are scattered on the floor and picking them up in silence as I pad toward the bathroom.

Once I’m there, I flick on the light, and the glow of said light immediately stings my eyes without mercy.

I drop my dress on the marble counter and rinse my face with cold water, my hands trembling slightly as I scrub the remnants of whatever might have happened from my skin.

It doesn’t work, though.

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 arranged to 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.

Alaric picks that moment as the opportune time to stretch his hand to the space I was lying on a few minutes back. Like he misses me. Like he’s surprised I’d be gone after we shared a night of intense passion.

I recoil at the thought of it, my back meeting the window frame as I try to hold in my tears.

He opens his eyes slightly, his gaze honed in on me. I’m not going to lie and say he doesn’t look handsome right now.

But handsome or not, he’s engaged.

Handsome or not, he still called me a gold digger. He still didn’t believe me six years ago.

And I haven’t forgotten that. I haven’t forgiven him for that. My walls might be faltering, but they’re still up.

“Lila,” his voice is rough and still thick with sleep, but here’s something careful threaded through it. “You don’t have to stand all the way over there. Come back to bed…if you want.”

It’s not a command. It’s a request.

Uttered so gently and softly like he knows one wrong move will send me running again.

And Goddess help me, it almost works.

“I shouldn’t have let last night happen,” I say, my voice even, all professional like I’m discussing office files, not the fact that he ruined me with his mouth and cock last night. “It was a lapse in judgment, Mr. Hells. It won’t happen again.”

Calling him “Mr. Hells” is like hitting him over the head, because his eyes narrow, a flicker of frustration crossing his features, but before I can brace myself for his retort, he starts moving toward me.

The sheets slide off him in a smooth caress, and in an instant, he’s standing up, naked, his body unapologetically revealed to my eyes.

My breath catches in my throat without even meaning to. The sight of him, tall and muscular, grabs my attention with a force I can’t fight, even as I try to tear my gaze away.

I blink rapidly, my chest tightening as the heat between my thighs stirs again.

How is it that I’m still so drawn to him?

My thoughts jumble and twist, but my eyes are locked on his body because I’m unable to look away at him, at…all of him.

Goddess, the way he had touched me like he was starved, like my body was the only thing that could quench him. Every kiss had been a wildfire. Every thrust a sin. He’d pinned my wrists over my head, looked me in the eye, and made me beg for more.

And I had.

I’d begged him.

Because I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe without him on me, in me.

He’d worshipped me like I was sacred, then ruined me in the next breath, whispering filthy things in my ear while his mouth did unspeakable things to my skin. I could still feel his tongue between my thighs, his growl when I came undone on his mouth.

And the way he filled me after, stretching me so wide I thought I’d break. How his hand held the back of my neck as he moved deeper, slower, like he wanted to memorize how I shattered for him. Over and over.

The memory alone nearly unravels me, but his next words bring me back to earth.

“You were drugged. That wasn’t supposed to happen. What Julian did—”

“This isn’t about Julian.” My voice comes out harsh, maybe because he completely ignored my second statement, and he’s choosing to act stupid.

“You know this isn’t about Julian. What we did—”

“What we did?” There's a chuckle in his voice, but there’s no humor in it. There’s no sleep in his eyes either because it’s been replaced with subtle anger. “We made love, Lila. Call it what it is.”

I stop him before he can give me that nonsense.

“Love? There was no making love because I wasn’t in my right senses.”

“Is that what you are going with? That every time you moaned my name, you were out of your senses? That every time you fucking begged me to kiss you, you were out of your senses? That when you opened your legs, urging me inside—”

“Stop!”

“That you didn’t feel a thing every time we kissed? Every time you—”

“Stop it!”

“I’ll stop if you fucking stop denying what’s going on between us, Lila. I want to haul you over to me and kiss you, wild one, but don’t mistake my affection for tolerance. You wanted me as much as I wanted you, Lila.”

I scoff at the absurdity of his words.

“Do you fuck and want all women who aren’t your Luna, Alaric?”

“No, you are the exception.” He smiles.

He fucking smiles at me like that’s supposed to make me feel better.

“We are done here, Alaric. This…this will never—”

“Me finding the woman who was supposed to be my Luna? It was an arrangement, Lila. One made before I even met you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No, baby, but it’s what I should have told you last night when I followed you.”

“Don’t baby me.”

And he didn’t follow me immediately if Julian had the time to spike my champagne. But even my vain self has to admit it wasn’t Alaric’s fault that I got drugged.

He smiles. “You don’t like it. Do you prefer ‘wild one’, then?”

“You should have told me. Before we kissed, before I came here, before I got humiliated in front of your entire pack!”

“I didn’t know how to. And would you have given me a chance to tell you that you are the only woman who has ever mattered to me?

That I'm sorry for how I left things six years ago? Lila Winter, you’ve been in my mind for every fucking second since I laid eyes on you.

There’s no other woman because you are it for me. ”

He steps out of bed, walking toward me like he doesn’t care that he’s naked and ridiculous.

“Stop,” I whisper. “Don’t say things you can’t take back.”

“I’m not taking them back,” he says, stepping closer. “I love you, Lila.”