“If that’s true, then prove it.”
His head jerked back as if he’d been clipped on the chin. “What?”
“You heard me,” Olivia whispered, taking a step toward him. “Prove it.”
“It’s not that simple, damn it.” He started pacing from one side of the room to the other, feeling like an agitated animal prowling its cage. “You make me lose control. More than…anyone else. And that’s dangerous,” he muttered, scrubbing his hands down his face, then ripping them back through his hair. “When I was younger, I gave more of myself up to the animal than most shifters do at that age. I had to, if I wanted to stay alive.”
He came to a stop in the middle of the room and just stood there, with his head angled forward, his hands braced on his lean hips. A husky rumble of laughter fell from his lips, sounding hollow and tired. “Hell, if it weren’t for the animal,” he rasped, “I wouldn’t be here today. But there’s a price to pay for it. I’m more aggressive than most. More feral.”
“If you’re trying to scare me off, it isn’t working.”
He let out a sharp, explosive sigh and turned his head, the thick waves of his hair falling against the side of his face. The corners of his eyes creased as he stared her down, the seconds stretching out like a body being tortured on a rack, until his mouth began to twitch with a boyish, lopsided smile. “I’m starting to think that nothing scares you, Liv. Not really. You’ll fight till the bitter end, won’t you?”
“If it’s something worth fighting for,” she whispered.
He looked down, staring at the dark blue carpet, while those soft words played havoc with his sanity. A full minute passed before he cleared his throat, his voice a rough rasp of sound as he said, “Yeah, well, that’s the problem, Liv. That’s what I’m trying to get through to you. I saw you and I wanted you, and was selfish enough to go after you. But the truth is that I’m not even fit to touch you.”
“Is that what you think?”
His chest shook with bitter, breathless laughter. “It’s what I know.”
“That’s such bullshit, Aiden.”
“You think, Liv?” Frustration surged through him, seething and sharp, pouring out in a rough, visceral growl. “Let me tell you about the guy you let cover you last night. About the animal you let inside you. You wanna know why I feel the way I do about humans? Because my mother was one. And you wanna know where I got these?” he snarled, holding out his scarred wrists as he stalked toward her. “When I was seven, my mother—my human mother—sold me to a man named Mueller.”
Her mouth trembled and she shook her head. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Well, you’re going to,” he grunted, dropping his arms to his sides, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his faded jeans. The muscles across his shoulders were coiled with tension, his biceps rigid as he fought to keep himself under control. “You need to have it all spelled out for you, Liv, so that you’ve got a clear picture of the situation. See, Mueller made tons of money from running what he liked to call his little fun house. A place where loaded, sick-as-shit humans could come and get their kicks, working over kids in any way they chose. As long as you paid your money, you could have whatever you wanted.”
“Oh, God.” She pressed her fingertips to her trembling mouth, a violent shiver moving through her entire body. Her face was so white she looked like a sheet. Bleached and drained of color.
Aiden jerked his chin toward her, his expression twisted with a cocky smirk that he knew didn’t hide the pain hidden beneath his surface. “Yeah, you’re starting to get the picture now, aren’t you? And Mueller’s genius was in using kids who could take a licking and keep on ticking. With our ability to heal, shifters were like manna from heaven to a guy like him. The favorites in his little collection, he liked to say.”
He went on, mercilessly telling her about the things they’d done to him. Confessing all the vile, twisted things they’d made him do. The drugs they’d given him to make his body hard. The way he’d given up more and more of himself to his beast as he’d grown older, just so he could retain some shred of his sanity.
Though he was shaking and covered in sweat, his insides twisting with shame, he forced himself to reveal just how thoroughly he’d been used, and in some perverse way Aiden knew it was because he expected her to turn away from him. One of them needed to end this thing before he screwed up both their lives by biting her…marking her—and he didn’t trust himself to be the one to do it. So he’d force the issue into her hands.
“What about your father?” she whispered when he finally paused. Her voice was thick…broken, a wash of glistening tears overflowing those beautiful eyes. “Did he know where you were? Didn’t he ever come looking for you?”
“Naw,” he muttered, pulling his hand down his damp face. “I doubt he ever even knew he had a kid. He was just some guy my mom had a fling with while touring Europe. By the end of her trip she’d hooked up with another man. Turned out she’d moved on from a shape-shifter to a heroin dealer, and the rest was history. Once she finally clued in to the fact that I wasn’t human, I became just a means to an end. A commodity that could be traded in to fund her habit.”
Her voice quivered as she said, “Do you know what happened to her?”
He shook his head, another gritty laugh spilling from his lips. “She probably overdosed in some dark alley, stoned out of her skull, so far gone she couldn’t even remember her own name. To be honest, I don’t really give a damn what happened to her.”
“I don’t blame you,” she whispered. “I’d feel the same way.”
Rolling his shoulder, Aiden popped his jaw and got on with it. “Anyway, when I was fourteen, I hit my growth spurt. It should have been too soon for me to make a full change, but I did. At first I just wanted to get the other kids out of there…and I tried. But I was a young, stupid jackass who didn’t know what he was doing. Not to mention scared out of my wits. Mueller’s house was an hour outside Reno, buried in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There were too many of us to move quickly, and it didn’t take long for his men to catch us. I’d managed to steal some weapons, and I told the others to fight back. It turned into a slaughter and they died. Every single one of them. The youngest was only five.”
She covered her wet eyes, whispering something broken and hoarse under her breath, though he couldn’t tell what it was. He coughed, forcing the last bit out, needing to get it over and done with before the knot in his throat choked him off completely. “I should have bled out, but somehow I managed to drag myself away. At least what was left of me. I spent three days hiding out in the woods before I recovered from my wounds. And while I was out there, freezing my ass off, I realized that I’d gone about it all wrong. If I left Mueller and his men alive, they were just going to keep on doing what they’d done to us to a whole new group of kids. So I went back and let the predator that lives inside me take its revenge. I hunted them down, one by one, and ripped them to pieces. But I saved Mueller for last.”
For a long time the only sound in the room was that of their soft, ragged breathing, and then she finally said, “I hope you made it count when you killed him.”
With a jerky nod, Aiden locked his jaw, trying to brace himself for the blow. The brush-off. He knew it had to be coming, any moment now. She was probably too polite to tell him what she thought to his face. But she’d bow out with some murmured excuse. Then find a way to keep a careful distance between them from that point on. Eventually act as if he didn’t even exist.
He waited…and waited, his body sweat-slick and hot beneath his clothes, as if he were burning with fever. But she didn’t turn away. Didn’t leave.
Instead, she came toward him, her energy hitting him like a blast of electricity, tingling and warm. He stiffened, his muscles coiled for flight. And yet his feet stayed rooted to the ground, even as she came closer…and closer. He shook. Trembled. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t run.
“I don’t know how you could think you’re n
ot fit to touch me,” she said in a soft, tender spill of words. Heat crawled up his spine, curling around his shoulders…the backs of his ears, chasing away the painful chills. “You’re the one who’s strong. Who fought to survive something that would have crushed most people. You’re the one with something to be proud of, Aiden. If anything, I’m the one who’s not fit to touch you.”
He felt himself swaying toward her, his brain fuzzy…thick. “Huh,” he breathed out, shaking his head.
She stared deep into his eyes with that wild, hypnotic power that made him feel as if she was seeing right inside him. “What?” she whispered.
“It’s just that…you never react the way that I think you will. The way you should. It’s like you’re…I dunno.” He shook his head again, not knowing what to make of her. He’d been so sure of how she’d react…and now she’d gone and knocked him on his ass again. “I don’t get it, Liv. It’s not right.”
She took a step closer, so beautiful and sweet it hurt just to look at her. “Am I supposed to blame you for being strong and surviving, Aiden?”
He took a deep, shuddering breath, his face prickling with the blood rush that came just before you passed out. He didn’t know what to make of the chaos swarming through his system—but there was something so much more powerful than lust fueling these strange new emotions awakening inside him. Something more potent…and infinitely more dangerous.
“You should be disgusted by my weakness. By my mistakes. Those kids died because of me.” There was no heat in the words. It was just a quiet, desolate statement of fact.
“God, Aiden, that’s not true! You were a child yourself. The only disgust I feel is for those monsters who hurt you. I feel nothing but absolute pride in you for being so strong. For growing up into the kind of man who could survive something like that without letting it blacken his soul.”
One second she was wrapping her slender arms around his trembling body, and in the next, Aiden was attacking her. There really wasn’t any other word to describe the fierce intensity of his actions. His hands were all over her, his mouth claiming hers in a wild, explicit kiss that was hot and wet and savagely hungry. The only thing that made it okay was the fact that she was kissing him back.
With his long fingers curled around her biceps, he turned, shoving her against the nearest wall. “Damn it,” he gasped, nipping at her bottom lip, the salty taste of her tears only fueling his desperation. He grabbed her ass and lifted her off the ground, forcing her thighs to part as he lodged himself against her, grinding his denim-covered cock against her soft, tender core. “I’m being too rough again.”
“Don’t stop,” she panted, wrapping her legs around his hips. “I love you like this.”
His heart stuttered on the L word, even though he knew she meant it in a sexual sense. But the damage had been done. All that devastating angst that had been twisting him up inside turned into a raw, explosive sexual aggression that nearly floored him, ripping through him like a tidal wave. She knew his darkest, most shameful secret, and yet she still wanted him. He couldn’t get his head around it. Couldn’t get it to compute.
And the way she looked at him when he stopped kissing her long enough to check her expression, keeping his face close to hers, simply blew his mind. It was almost as if she…cared. Even after everything that he’d told her. She was so open, her emotions just blazing there on her beautiful face like a neon sign. All that heat and shimmering warmth just spilling out, melting him down.
In a distant part of his brain Aiden could hear someone shouting for him to wake up and take a reality check, but he was too far gone to care. Too desperate to heed its warnings.
Burrowing his face in the crook of her shoulder, he pressed his open mouth against the side of her throat, flicking his tongue against the warm, salty sweetness of her flesh. He loved how she smelled. How she tasted. Loved how different her body was from his own. Soft where he was hard. Tender and pale where he was rugged and dark.
His heartbeat roared in his ears as he kissed his way back up to her mouth, and with his lips against hers, he said, “Get rid of your sweater.”
She complied instantly, breathing in a sharp, excited rush as she reached for the hem of her sweater, yanking it over her head. He moved back a little so that she could have room to reach behind her back and unhook her bra, the satiny scrap of satin falling to the floor.
Lifting her higher, Aiden nuzzled his mouth against the inner curve of one soft, heavy breast, while staring up at her flushed face. The dark, crimson silk of her hair fell forward in wild curls as she gazed down at him, her lush, kiss-swollen lips parted for those gasping breaths. Aiden held her gaze as he opened his mouth over one thick, delicious, candy-pink nipple, trapping the tender bud against the roof of his mouth, rubbing it with his tongue. She cried out, trembling in his arms, her delicate hands clenched against his shoulders.
“I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to these yesterday,” he groaned, moving his eager mouth to the other breast. He swirled a slow, hungry lick around the puffy nipple, loving the way she squirmed in his arms. “They deserve hours of attention, Liv. Days. Months. Years. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
Her chest shook with a breathless flutter of laughter, her tender mouth curling in a shy, dazzling smile. “You’re crazy.”
“I mean it. That’s not a line. You take my breath away,” he panted. “Blow my mind.”
Tears still glistened in her eyes as she leaned down and kissed him, holding his face in her trembling hands. With his head spinning, Aiden tightened his grip on her ass, holding her against him as he turned and quickly carried her to the closest bed. He laid her down, ripping off the rest of her clothes, then his own, and was beyond thankful that he’d put a condom in his back pocket so that he didn’t have to go searching for one.
Racked with a violent, visceral need, he fumbled with the rubber like a green-eared virgin, nearly roaring with relief when he finally got the thing on. Then he crawled over her naked body, his muscles shaking so hard his damn teeth were chattering. “I need to fuck you,” he somehow managed to scrape out.
“Then what are you waiting for?” Sweet, husky words that made him shake even harder as she ran her soft palms down the bunched muscles in his back.
Cursing a breathless stream of raw, erotic phrases under his breath, Aiden shoved her thighs wide and nudged himself against her opening, the slick, moist heat of her making him see red. With his muscles coiled hard and tight, he shoved deep, pulling a hoarse, shocked cry from her chest as he gave her every brutal, demanding inch…and began stirring the liquid depths of her body. He couldn’t look away from her eyes, lost in the deep, smoky pools of violet, every intimate pulse of pleasure that thrummed through her body shining right there for him to see, so beautiful and sweet and bright.
Some kind of dark, primitive sound tore from his throat, and he heard himself saying, “Every time I get inside you, it just feels better. Like being caught in the middle of a hurricane, and everything’s thrashing around me, while I’m snugged up tight in paradise, going out of my mind. It doesn’t make any sense. I should be getting tired of you by now, and instead I just want you more. It’s like you’ve put some kind of spell on me.”
Her mouth curled with a slow, womanly smile, her eyes heavy lidded and dark as she ran her hands over the corded muscles in his arms, across his shoulders, fluttering them up the strained tendons in his throat. He rode her hard and roughly, caging her beneath his body as he thrust in deep, penetrating lunges that drove their sex-slick bodies across the bed. When she closed her eyes, he twisted his fingers in the thick hair at the back of her head, tilting her face up to his as he said, “Look at me, Liv. I need you to look at me.”
Her lashes fluttered open, and his breath caught at the glittering sparks of emotion burning in their luminous depths. He refused to let her hide, demanding she give him everything he wanted. He sucked on her breasts as if they belonged to him. Drove himself into her as if his life depende
d on it. And when she came, Aiden could have sworn her wild, sobbing burst of pleasure surged right into him, like some kind of crazy, breathtaking feedback loop.
She was liquid and soft and deliciously warm, hugging the thick, granite-hard length of his cock as if she wanted to keep him inside her forever. She stretched beneath him like a sated, well-fed cat and purred, “I thought things like that only happened in books.”
“You like it?” he asked, riding her through the orgasm with slow, heavy thrusts, while she pulsed and throbbed around him. A stupid question to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself.
She lifted her hand, stroking the tip of one finger across the slash of his brows, then along the hard edge of his jaw before sweeping it across his bottom lip. “Let’s just say that I’m finding it hard to remember why I ever thought sex was overrated,” she whispered, following the movement of her finger with her eyes as she traced the shape of his upper lip, a rush of shivering pleasure left in the wake of her touch. “I guess…I guess it’s easy to understand why you’ve had so many lovers. Women probably follow you around, just throwing themselves at your feet, begging you to take them to bed.”
Aiden frowned, suddenly feeling a little sick inside at the idea of Liv comparing what was happening between them to the sex he’d indulged in before meeting her. He wanted to explain the difference to her, but didn’t know how. How could he make her understand that this heart-pounding, throw the world off its axis thing that they had eclipsed every moment of pleasure he’d ever felt in another woman’s arms? God, it was like comparing water to the finest, rarest scotch whiskey.
Not knowing what to say, he let his body communicate for him. He tried to keep it slow, at first just rubbing against the damp, moist cushion of her sex, teasing her…loving the way she writhed and arched against him. But he could hold back for only so long before his hunger got the better of him, and the next thing he knew, he was riding her harder…deeper, increasing his rhythm until he was slamming his hips against hers, the slick, exquisite friction driving him out of his mind. As he lowered his head, pressing his open mouth to the fragile column of her throat, tasting the salty heat of her blush, he started to wonder if this blissful sense of perfection was what had the Buchanans so lit up, their normally rugged expressions always lovesick and sappy when their women were near. Was this what he’d been missing out on? This strange, mind-blowing connection that made him feel as if he’d finally, for the first time in his life, actually gotten something right?
Touch of Seduction Page 25