by JJ King
I squeezed his hand, terrified to let go in case he turned away from me. I could feel the heartbreak through our bond, and it swamped me. After the crash, I’d told him the truth of my past with Connor but then he’d been pulled away by his family and I’d taken the time to visit with mine. The thought that he’d been suffering with this heartbreak all this time while I’d been actively ignoring it filled me with guilt.
It hadn’t worked, of course. Even trying to pretend things would be alright when I got back, I’d twisted and turned most nights, feeling the weight of Bash’s absence hanging over me. I’d focused all my energy into rebuilding my relationships and training, pushing down the fear and doubt that kept rising up at every turn. I’d assumed Bash would do the same until we could talk, but I saw now that it had been eating away at him the entire time. My heart seized painfully.
I took a deep breath to steady myself and whispered the words I’d refused to say since the moment Connor had shown up at Alpha Wolf Academy, “He makes me feel safe.”
Bash made a sound like a wounded animal and tried to pull his hand from mine but I held on and kept talking in the hope I could make him understand the painful tug of emotions inside me.
“I love you so much,” I rushed the words, needing him to hear me and believe. “Old Ones, Bash, you’re my soul, you’re my mate. I love you.” I put down the coffee and reached to stroke his cheek. “I will always love you. That will never change.”
“You loved him.” It was a statement, not a question.
I nodded. “Yes.”
Bash frowned and lifted his head to look at me. “How does he make you feel safe when he left you, Elena? I can’t wrap my head around it. He broke your heart. You said it yourself. He destroyed you. So, how can you stand to have him near? How does he make you feel safer than I do?”
I lowered my gaze, too ashamed to look into his eyes. There was so much hurt and confusion in them, it tore at me. But Bash deserved the truth or, at least, the truth as I understood it, as I’d worked it out. I looked into his eyes. “It’s because he left me that I trust him with my life.”
Bash’s lips twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”
I said, turning more so that I was directly facing him. “It’s taken me a bit of time to come to this, but I think I understand now. The Sisterhood sent him to guard me, to make sure I was safe. He wasn’t supposed to become my friend,” I inhaled and continued, “or more. He could have lost his job for it, but it happened anyway.”
“You think he loved you enough to break the rules and then enough to walk away, is that it?” Bash asked quietly.
Hearing my thoughts aloud from him made them sound twisted and impossible. I chewed on my lip, worrying it over. Was I completely wrong? Was it possible Connor had been playing me from the first moment, from our first kiss? It just didn’t make sense for someone like him to jeopardize his entire career on a romance when he could have just as easily stayed away and kept watch.
“Yes,” I said, mustering the courage to admit it. “I think he fell in love and made some bad decisions, then walked away because it was the only way he could stay to keep me safe.” I closed my eyes and prayed this didn’t make things worse between me and Bash.
He was quiet for a long time, so long my skin began to tingle with anxiety. I forced myself to swallow the need to beg him to talk, to tell me what he was feeling. He had the right to time and patience, to think this over before speaking to me about it. I gave him all that but refused to let go of his hand.
“Do you still love him?”
Everything inside me tightened at the rawness of his voice. His fear and confusion were like blades slicing my skin through the bond that connected us. I ignored the tears that streamed from my eyes and focused solely on that bond, on projecting my love, the enormity of it, to him so he could understand just how much he meant to me.
The only man I love is you.
Bash’s head snapped up and his eyes, so broken a moment before, widened in shock. I stared back, startled at his reaction to the words I’d yet to say, then gasped as his voice whispered in my mind.
Can you hear my thoughts?
A laugh bubbled out of me, echoing through the silence around us. I slapped a hand to my mouth and just stared at him as my thoughts whirled wildly.
Slow down, I heard Bash’s voice say with amusement in my mind. His eyes filled with tears barely held back as he looked into my eyes. I can hear you. He raised a hand to my chest and rested it above my heart. I can feel you. It’s alright. I understand now.
A sob broke from my throat as a tidal wave of relief and love sucked me under. I threw myself into his arms and just held on, unable to do much more than just gasp for breath in his arms. His embrace enveloped me, gathering me so close it felt as if we were one.
I pressed my lips to his neck and reveled in the taste of his skin and my own tears. They were tears of happiness now, so different than the grief that had spilled from me just moments ago. My lips skimmed his jaw, fluttering over the stubble I loved so much to find his mouth.
His fingers delved into my hair and pulled me closer as his mouth devoured my lips. I gasped into him, giving his tongue entrance as words of love and devotion poured from his mind into mine. It was so intimate, hearing him, feeling him, and tasting him all at the same time. It was as if we existed in a private world of our own, a beautiful world where danger and fear no longer existed.
I pulled back an inch so my lips hovered above his and whispered, “Why Mr. Reeves, are you coming onto me?”
His lips turned up easily and his eyes flashed with aroused amusement. “I believe I am, Ms. Jensen. Do you have a problem with that?”
I pursed my lips as if I were considering, then shook my head. “None at all.” I linked my arms around his neck and sighed. “I know it’s verboten,” I said, dipping into my Buffy vocabulary. “But, would you consider skipping class with me to participate in some extracurricular activities?” I leaned into his ear and whispered, “To be clear, I mean sex.” I gasped at my naughty suggestion in mock concern.
His eyes went from emerald to near black in an instant, then he was pulling me up and dragging me back, behind the bushes, into the shadows. My back hit the brick just as his teeth closed over my bottom lip.
I gasped, for real this time, as the nip mixed pain with pleasure. His teeth moved on, to my jaw, my neck, my shoulder, taking small bites along the way, marking me as his hands ran over my body, lighting my nerves on fire.
I closed my eyes and raked my nails through his hair, over his neck, grasping at him in wild abandon, needing everything he was giving and more. When he dropped to his knees in the dirt at my feet and reached beneath my skirt to pull down my lace panties, I forgot how to breathe.
His clever fingers helped me step out of them before he stuffed them into his pocket and hooked one of my legs over his shoulder.
My eyes rolled back so hard at the first touch of his tongue that I thought for sure I must be blind now. I’d take it, I thought, just to be in this moment. My hands slapped against the rough bricks and I searched for something, anything, to hold onto, to keep me from melting to the ground. My remaining leg buckled for an instant, then Bash’s hands were at my hip, pinning me to the building as his mouth did unspeakable things.
It was like being burned alive while riding a wave of pure pleasure. I tore a hand from the building wall and plastered it over my mouth in a futile attempt to stifle the screams that wanted to rip out of me. When he added his fingers, sliding them into me as I poised at the edge of release, I came with a breathless gasp and tears that tracked down my cheeks and onto his head.
Bash rose to his feet, pressing the length of his body against me on the way up and fitted his mouth to mine. The taste of my pleasure on his lips almost undid me again. I wanted more, I needed all of him. I reached for his pants buckle.
“Not here,” his whisper was rough and smelled of sex. He captured my mouth again and plundered it, licking a
nd biting at my swollen lips as his hands smoothed down my skirt. When he pulled away, his lips were lifted in a wicked grin and echoed in his endlessly emerald eyes. His hands slipped into mine and then we were off, running like wild children towards his room since it was nearest.
My heart pounded in my chest, spurred on by the sense of Bash’s voice and emotions in my soul. I concentrated all my thoughts and feelings on him and whispered suggestions, each one dirtier than the last, until a fine sheen of sweat broke out on his face and his eyes went black with desire.
I was giggling over my evil antics when we ran straight into Xavier.
I smacked into Bash’s back and nearly cursed before seeing my professor and mentor. An amused look crossed his face as he looked from Bash to me, then he held up a manila envelope and arched an eyebrow.
“I was just looking for you. I’ve got fifteen minutes to spare. Meet me in my office in two minutes.” He walked off without another word leaving me and my hormonally hopped up soul mate standing just fifty feet from Bash’s room with no way to relieve the tension swimming in both our veins.
Fuck, I thought as hard as I could then gave Bash a kiss that made my own head spin. As I stalked off, regretting the run-in with Xavier, I heard Bash’s detailed description of what he’d do to me later in my head and pressed my legs together in anticipation.
Chapter 3
“What the hell is this?” Xavier asked, slapping a pile of paper down on his desk with a disgusted sigh.
I blinked in confusion at the pages. I’d been so caught up in wondering if I still smelled like the sex, I’d gotten so close to having that I hadn’t been paying attention to Xavier. I realized in an instant of absolute horror that he was talking about my manuscript and fought back the sudden urge to vomit right then and there. Tears sprang to my eyes and were about to fall when I saw the flash of amusement around his lips and made a strangled sound of disbelief. “Are you making fun of me?” I demanded, glaring at him with the mock outrage that had replaced the previous misery I’d felt. I grabbed the manuscript from his desk and blinked back tears. “You almost made me cry and I’m not a crier.”
Xavier laughed. “Sorry, blame schadenfreude. I might get a perverse pleasure in seeing that moment of absolute panic in a student’s eyes when I tell them their work is crap when it’s actually really freaking good. That,” he pointed at the first fifteen thousand words of my dystopian novel, “is really freaking good.”
“Yeah?” I chewed on my bottom lip and considered my split desire to both graciously accept his praise of my writing and to run out of his office, manuscript in hand, and hide it away from the world so no one else could ever see it again.
My writing had always been so intensely private, except for schoolwork, that showing it to anyone, especially my super critical, super talented professor, was a fresh kind of torment. At the same time, if I was going to write, really write, I wanted to get better. It might hurt like hell but hearing the brutal truth from Xavier’s lips would make me a stronger writer.
“Yeah, and if you’re going to do this, you have to develop a much thicker skin, Elena. For Old One’s sake, you dug a bullet out of me and fought your way across campus not six months ago. Buck up,” he said with a twisted smile.
I nodded. “Okay, ‘Buck up.’ I’ll put it on my to-do list.” I picked up my phone and pretended to jot it down in my notes.
“Smart ass,” Xavier muttered with a grin.
“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Hit me with your feedback and don’t hold back. I’m bucking up as of right now.” I flipped the cover page and winced at the array of red ink notes.
“Well,” he began, taking a sip from his coffee mug. “For starters, I think you need to switch from third person to first. I love your depth of description, but the story would be more immediate and accessible if you wrote it in first.”
I chewed my lip as I scanned the page, rereading my own words. “I can try it,” I said, musing over his suggestion. I thought of the shelf of books in my room and tried to remember which authors wrote in which style. It would be interesting to see what my favorite authors did.
He broke down his comments, explaining his thoughts with a patience I hadn’t thought possible after my first few classes with him. He’d been a major part of me getting into AWA, or so I’d thought when I was under the assumption I was here because of a scholarship and not actually because I was the heir to the Russian Alphaship.
I’d expected his class to be the one place I’d feel welcome, which was why it had hit so hard that he’d immediately torn into every single piece I’d passed in. I’d been alone, completely out of place in a world I didn’t understand or even like, and the man I’d hoped would be my mentor had been a huge dick.
We’d made peace after I’d saved his life and he’d explained that his pissy attitude was based primarily on his being in the midst of a brutal divorce and custody battle with his ex over their daughter.
He’d approached me about working on a novel right after the plane crash. I’d known it was an attempt to pry my focus away from yet another tragedy, but I’d taken it anyway. Writing was a way to escape, a way to create a world I’d rather live in than the one dogging my every step.
I blinked when I heard my name repeated with a question after it.
“Elena?” Xavier arched an eyebrow and shook his head. “I think maybe we’ll leave off here. Give the first person a chance and we’ll meet back next week. Okay?”
I nodded slowly, feeling as if I’d just been dragged out of a fugue state. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I drifted off. Early training session.”
Xavier leveled his gaze on me and quirked a knowing smile. “Go, or you’ll be late for class.”
I picked up the manuscript and rolled it as I stood, fidgeting nervously as I searched for the balls to ask the one question that had been playing on my mind these last few months.
“Just spit it out, Elena,” Xavier said with an edge of impatience that made me swallow my fear and blurt.
“It’s not derivative, is it?” I shifted, tightening my grip on the paper. “I know dystopian exploded in young adult back when Collins released, but it’s been around forever. Atwood, Orwell, Burgess, I mean they all created their own version of a world in ruin.” I chewed my lip and blew out a deep breath. “Am I regurgitating or creating?”
Xavier’s dark eyes narrowed as he watched me suffer in the silence that fell after my question. His inhalation sounded like the roar of the Atlantic waves I’d grown up with, it was half deafening and too loaded with importance for a simple breath.
“Do you need me to validate you?” He kept his voice low, almost a murmur that I’d have had to struggle to hear if I hadn’t been a wolf.
I thought about it for a second then nodded sharply. “Yes. Fuck yes.” A blush flared to life, heating my cheeks. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize and don’t question your right to create something similar or completely different than what's already created.” He pushed to his feet and leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk. “This is your first book. Just get it out.”
I nodded but inside my chest was tight with nerves and doubt. I hoped that just meant I was a real author, since it was my understanding all creative types were self-deprecating anxiety ridden children at heart. “Thanks,” I mumbled, turning for the door.
“Elena,” Xavier interrupted my deep-seated angst as I stepped through his doorway. “Do you trust me?”
I answered automatically. “Yes.”
“Then trust me on this. One day, your name will be synonymous with Atwood, Orwell, Burgess, and more. You’ve got a remarkable way with words, kid.” He sank back into his seat and turned his attention to a stack of papers, finished with his validation of me.
My lips lifted in a smile that reached my soul and filled me with a feeling of lightness. I floated down the hallway with my manuscript pressed to my chest, not caring that I looked like an utter fool.
♀♀�
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“It’s too hot for pants,” Rory complained, throwing the pair of jeans she’d just tried on and taken off onto the growing pile of rejects.
“It’s hot now, but it’ll be cooler tonight. Wear the blue pants,” I murmured, turning the page of the novel I’d grabbed from her shelf, which was almost as impressive as my own. “With the white shirt and gold earrings.”
Rory mumbled something under her breath and disappeared into the bathroom with a huff. I lifted my head out of the book and raised my eyebrows. I’d known her for almost a full school year now and I’d yet to see her stomp around like a petulant child. Something was wrong.
“Hey,” I said, putting the book down and sliding off her bed. I moved to the door of the bathroom and watched as she fussed with her hair even though it looked perfect. “What’s up with you? You’re all…” I waved a hand in front of me and searched for the right word. I settled on, “weird.”
Rory glared at me in the mirror. “I can’t be weird every once in a while?” Her tone was clipped, which was more surprising than the bad mood. I pushed down the hurt of being snapped at and laid a hand on her arm.
“What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
Her gaze dropped and her jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought she was going to throw me off and finish her snit in private, but then she lifted eyes filled with misery and sagged.
“It’s all falling apart,” her voice broke with emotion that struck me by surprise. I’d seen my friend pissed off plenty of times, but never near tears. I pulled her into my arms for a hug and held on even tighter when she started to cry.
I found her robe on the back of the bathroom door and waited while she pulled it on and belted it in a knot. “Come on,” I touched her gently, steering her towards the oversized lounge chair set into the corner by her bookshelf. When she sank into the deep cushions, looking for the world like a porcelain doll about to break. My stomach churned as I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for her to speak.