Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1)

by Hettie Ivers

  Though his features were composed, his chest heaved up and down. He didn’t exactly appear angry, more excited. He continued to stare me down as his tongue licked casually across his bottom lip, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. He looked … hungry.

  Crap.

  “Of course I fucked her,” he admitted, his features as emotionless as his tone. “I fucked that girl six ways to Sunday and back again. Took her in every orifice she offered.” I felt my stomach turn over in disgust at his vulgar explication. “Compelled her only once at her own request when she was having trouble swallowing me past her gag reflex and asked if I could coax her through it the way Remy had before.”

  He arched a challenging brow. “Feel better now?”

  I nodded absently, though I felt positively awful. Nauseous. Confused. Horrified.

  Fear became infused with my cocktail of emotions when a moment later Alex growled and hoisted me up by the backs of my thighs, moving his hips squarely between my spread limbs and pressing into me against the unforgiving fence.

  The shocking scent of my own arousal assaulted my sensitive olfactory. It was beyond my comprehension how lust had ever managed to enter the melee. Yet it had. Further evidencing just how sick in the head I was becoming.

  “I warned you not to lie to me,” he grated in my ear. “I asked if you felt better?”

  When I didn’t respond, too dumbstruck to form syllables, he shifted me and rolled his groin into my center. And I felt him—through the seam of my jeans—large, long, and hard, mashing against the throbbing heartbeat at my cleft. Faintly, I heard myself panting out the Lord’s name over and over above the pounding in my ears.

  “Answer me,” he commanded, his strong fingers sliding up the backs of my thighs to squeeze the flesh of my ass as he ground himself into me once more. “Does it make you feel better knowing I fucked Remy’s little friend senseless?”

  “No,” I groaned, torn between so many warring emotions and sensations. “Ah … God, no …”

  “Didn’t think so. Know why? Because you’re jealous,” he assessed, not waiting for me to answer. “You’re behaving like a jealous girlfriend who thinks she has an exclusive claim on me.”

  I shook my head out. Jealous?

  Me?

  “You are,” he said with a mordant chuckle, pulling back to kiss my frowning forehead. “And you’ve no need to be jealous,” he said, desirous eyes gobbling me whole. “All you have to do is ask, and I will gladly look after you. Much, much more thoroughly than I did her.”

  His eyes roved my features with the greedy intensity of a starving man grappling with his self-restraint. “Or any other female ever before for that matter.”

  I wasn’t sure how I managed to speak. “I will never,” I croaked, “ask you for any such thing.”

  He chortled again, the sound replete with bitterness and tension. “Oh, but you will, princess,” he rasped, leaning in to nuzzle my ear. “I know it. And you know it.” He paused, letting the truth of his words settle within me as his hot breath warmed my neck. “Deep in your bones you know you’re scarcely a breath away from begging me for that release your body is craving so desperately right now.”

  When I shook my head in denial, he growled. His hips rolled into me again, slower—harder, at the same time squeezing my backside in his grasp as he rocked me up and down his hard length. I panted for air as my body responded brilliantly to his assault, my insides fluttering to life, my whole being vibrating with need and anticipation.

  The scent of my arousal was overpowering. My underwear was saturated with the evidence of my desire as the torturous build-up of pressure within me escalated rapidly in its ascension toward release.

  “Fuck. Tell me to stop this. Please?” he begged, even as he nibbled my earlobe and continued to grind into me. “Please ask me to stop you, baby?” he beseeched in a voice that sounded frightfully helpless … wounded even. “Because I can’t—I can’t stop …”

  I felt dangerously close to coming apart in screaming orgasm against him as the energy of his own arousal overwhelmed me.

  I whimpered and moaned in the back of my throat, unable or unwilling to muster the wherewithal to tell him to stop. But then he growled in anger and lifted his mouth from my ear, breaking the spell when he barked out an annoyed, “What?”

  I was confused, as well as painfully frustrated, until I heard an unseen male clearing his throat on the other side of Alex’s shoulders. My head rolled back to fall heavily against the fence, relief and despair flooding me. My lips parted as I tried in vain to rein in my erratic breathing.

  “I apologize for the interruption, my Alpha.” The male voice sounded American. “But we have a situation in Salvador, sir.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Talk to Kai,” Alex snapped, his black eyes refusing to break focus from my flushed face.

  “Yes, well … I did try to, my Alpha,” the man replied cautiously, “but he’s in the research lab and refuses to be disturbed. Said he had an emergency situation of his own.”

  “Then go to Alcaeus,” Alex directed in irritation. “I’m busy, Kaleb.”

  “Yes, my Alpha.”

  I heard the man’s retreating footsteps, and I knew somehow a guardian angel somewhere had offered me a Hail Mary pass with this timely interruption—a moment’s respite to gather my wits before I did something regrettable. I’d be a fool not to take it.

  “Stop,” I told Alex when his captivated dark irises floated closer to mine. “I want you to stop. I don’t want this. And I won’t … and you can’t … you can’t force me. You said you’d never hurt me like that.”

  “Forcing?” His eyes blazed with affront. “Those are your thigh muscles rhythmically gripping me. And you have full control over your ankles locked around my waist,” he charged to my mounting embarrassment.

  “I may have started it, but those are your heels digging into my backside in an attempt to draw me closer,” he appraised. His lips dipped to my ear. “Shall I be a gentleman and not point out the fact you’ve been arching your pelvis into me and not so covertly grinding against my erection for the last minute and a half?”

  Dear God, he was right! I took a moment to take stock of myself and realized everything he’d said was true. What’s more, I’d been clinging to him, my nails digging ruthlessly into his shoulders. In my haze of lust it hadn’t registered before that he’d begged me to ask him to stop me. Me!

  “I’m not myself,” I insisted breathlessly. “Despite what my body might display, I don’t want this, I don’t want … you.”

  “Sure ’bout that?” he murmured, the tip of his nose grazing mine. “Because I want you, Milena. So fucking much.” His lips brushed my own, reigniting my barely suppressed flames of desire. “I want you so badly I think I’ll go out of my damn mind if I don’t feel you from the inside soon.”

  I closed my eyes, hoping to block out his words. To forget the pleading look on his handsome, beguiling face—erase the entrancing sound of his voice … the undeniable deliciousness of his scent … the memory of how his wolf essence had made me feel so alive inside. Because no matter how twisted up my head was at present, I didn’t belong with a bad guy. My mom had raised me to be so much smarter than that.

  “No,” I denied. “You don’t want me. Not really. This is all a game to you. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t mean anything. And I’ll never … never belong with someone like you.”

  Silence stretched between us. I didn’t open my eyes. Not when I heard his heartbeat speed up, or even when I felt his warm breath fan my face in irregular pants. But then I smelled the absolute impossible. Fear.

  Alex’s fear!

  My eyes flew open to find the face of the lost little boy in the mall reflected back at me. Hurt. Scared. Yet still hopeful of salvation.

  “Maybe you’re afraid to find out what you might mean to me,” he said, the words delivered with the innocence of a choirboy, spoken as if he was processing them for the first time himself.
“Maybe it terrifies you to know that you’ve always belonged with someone like me.”

  Or maybe it terrified him. Either way, it was the sincerity in his eyes that stumped me. I had no defense, no good comeback for that. He must have sensed my wavering reticence, my tremulous resolve, because his next play went straight for the kill.

  Those hypnotic eyes never left mine as his hands skimmed around my hips and up my sides, traveling gently over my quivering stomach up to my heaving chest. His touch was tender, but oh, so very proprietary! His fingertips traced my collarbone at the leisurely pace of one who has infinite time, dipping between the valley of my breasts and then circling around my slight, fleshy mounds with the confidence of one who holds exclusive privilege.

  And as adept hands proceeded to more intimately discover me through the thin barrier of my henley and bra, it served to illustrate two very important, disconcerting facts: My legs really were locked around his waist in a wanton death grip; and I was in way over my head.

  “I know it’s all happening fast, and you’re scared, but I’ll be so gentle … so careful,” he pledged. “I won’t hurt you.” His thumb rolled casually over my nipple where it lay crested beneath a layer of cotton. My eyelids grew heavy; my vision blurred as I arched into his hand.

  A hint of a smile warmed his eyes. “I promise, my sweet girl.” His lips ghosted mine, searching for a boundary—tempting me to let it down. “No matter how much I want you, I won’t take anything from you you’re not ready to give.”

  His lips tentatively touched and retreated, teeth gently captured and released, sucked and nibbled, then abandoned, again and again, until my fingers had crept around his neck and I was straining forward in my attempt to follow his retreating, teasing mouth each time he pulled away from me.

  “That’s it,” he said, nipping my lower lip, “show me what you want. I promise you can have it.” My lips moved hesitantly over his, kissing him back. “So safe … so slow … ”

  He was palming both of my breasts in his capable hands, stimulating my nipples in a way that had me aching and seeping desire between my thighs.

  “Just want to explore,” he professed ingenuously, before too briefly slipping his tongue in and out of my willing mouth in an inciting kiss, “… play a little.” I moaned and lightly bit his full bottom lip as he’d done mine, silently demanding his tongue again. “Help you find out what you like … show you how good you can feel …”

  With another whimper he at last gave me his tongue back. And then some! Thrusting deeply, invading fully, he had me all too quickly teetering on a surprisingly delicate precipice between pleasure and pain—one that went so much further than physical awareness alone.

  His tongue overwhelmed mine, staking irrefutable claim to the inner sanctum of my mouth with a quiet dominance that both enslaved and freed me, awakening my senses to a whole new world and a part of myself I wasn’t sure I was prepared to know.

  He groaned into my mouth as his tongue stroked my depths in a manner that felt thoroughly indecent—so shockingly naughty, considering it was only a kiss.

  Except it wasn’t “only” anything. It was everything. It spoke volumes to how he felt about me. How much he did want me—even if it was a game. And I knew without a doubt that he’d keep hammering away at my meager defenses until that hard girth of his that I was once again shamelessly grinding myself upon was thrusting intensely inside of me, owning my body the way his tongue was presently possessing my mouth.

  What alarmed me most of all, though, was how much I wanted it, too. How well I relished the idea of him shredding my jeans from my limbs and pushing everything he had fully inside of me, consuming my most sacred space with all that pent-up, demanding hunger—all that inexorable, infinite need that radiated from him, threatening to devour me.

  Each time our lips briefly parted to allow oxygen, he’d croon words of encouragement, enticing me to tell him what I wanted, saying I could take whatever I needed, do whatever felt good, as his hips gently spurred me to continue my erotic grinding. He whispered tender sentiments about only wanting to fulfill my needs, to nurture my every desire.

  But amid the allure of his words and his touch, somehow the greater facts of the situation became even more flagrantly indisputable, and something deep within my psyche shifted perceptibly as my own truth clicked into place.

  Alex was a man used to getting what he wanted. He wasn’t gentle, or careful. Lord knew he wasn’t safe!

  He’d shown me how perfectly horrible he could make me feel within minutes of meeting him as he’d callously taken my whole world away from me. And he’d done it all by force—none of it I’d been willing to relinquish. Now he was after the only things I had left. My virtue. My tenuously held sanity. My very heart.

  Despite what he claimed, this wasn’t about helping me explore and gain what I wanted. It was still all about him! What he wanted.

  He’d said that he wanted me willing. Happy. And here I was on the verge of giving it to him—happily willing to let him fuck me against a fence in the very same garden where he’d fucked another girl less than twenty-four hours ago.

  If I didn’t owe it to myself, I knew I at least owed it to Raul and to my mother’s memory to stop and backpedal from this vortex of insanity! I yanked at his hands on my breasts, screaming into his mouth when I couldn’t instantly break the suction of his lip-lock to free myself.

  “Stop!” I gasped. “Stop! Please, stop!”

  His black eyes were half-lidded and dazed as he pulled back to search my features. “Too fast?” he murmured thickly through sensuously swollen lips. “I’ll go slower,” he appeased.

  “No,” I panted. “Not slow, stop! I need you to stop.”

  His brows merged. He looked baffled. “It doesn’t feel good, baby?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It feels outstanding! I just … don’t want it. I don’t want you. I want you to stop touching me and put me down.”

  His frown relaxed and he nodded amiably, his hands reluctantly leaving my breasts in favor of cupping my face. “It’s okay … you’re safe. I got a little carried away, but I’ll slow down. We should take this inside anyway.”

  “You’re not listening to me! It’s not too fast; it’s simply too wrong. I said I don’t want you. I said stop!”

  Pure disbelief transformed his arrogant features as he studied me with rapt fascination—as if I were some alien creature he’d never encountered before. I could almost see the wheels spinning wildly in his brain, calculating the impossibility of any woman not wanting him, prompting me to burst into a fit of shrill, maniacal laughter. His look of abject befuddlement intensified.

  “Look, you’re partly right,” I admitted, still giggling, “I have always been afraid I was destined to end up with someone like you. Feared it was part of my fucked-up genetics to only attract self-centered assholes, you know?” I proceeded excitedly, seized by a renewed sense of self-awareness and confidence that I’d not felt since encountering Alex.

  “I mean … I was the daughter of the single mom who’d gotten herself mixed up with not just one, but two absentee baby daddy bad guys. And my mom was so smart! ’Course”—I shook my head—“now I know she was actually paying for the mistake her twin sister made with just one giant disaster of a baby daddy bad guy. But regardless, I never wanted that to be me. And she definitely never wanted that for me.”

  He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing in increasing incomprehension and irritation while I blabbed on as if chatting with a girlfriend over lattes, rather than with a hot, Alpha werelock with a pulsating erection pressed into the cradle of my thighs. I was probably on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.

  “So I steered clear of all the high school players and moody bad boys who pursued me. Because just like with you, I knew that whatever it was they saw in me, it was invariably all about them. About what purpose I served for their needs—how I could fit into their world and their image. It was never about me, or what I wanted.”

  “
Milena,” he seethed, his jaw clenching, “I am no human high school boy.”

  He looked so thoroughly insulted, so appalled by the comparison that it set me snickering again. I was definitely coming undone.

  “No,” I agreed, a rush of adrenaline causing my head to spin dizzily for a moment, “no, you’re so much worse. None of those boys were evil!” I attacked. “None of them ever killed anyone and then executed their innocent immediate family members. And even the worst of them was capable of a halfway decent apology!”

  “Jesus Christ, where the hell is this all coming from?” he fumed. “What does any of it have to do with what’s happening between us right here and now?”

  “First of all, there is no us!” I screeched. “I’m just trying to explain me! How I feel and why I don’t want you. How can you spew all that bullshit about wanting to discover and give me whatever I want when you don’t even listen to me when I tell you directly what I want? Do you even realize you’re not remotely interested in understanding anything about me even when I’m willing to share?”

  “Ha! That is so not true,” he refuted. “I am fucking out of my mind desperate to understand you, Milena!”

  “Only if there’s an angle in it for you or if you need information you can use to manipulate me,” I accused. “You have no concept of what a tyrant you are because everyone around you acts like your behavior is normal … like it’s okay that you mistreat people the way you do—even your own family!”

  His escalating rage was palpable. I should have been scared, but it was almost as if that emotion had been temporarily disabled within me—eclipsed by my own mounting self-righteous fury, recklessly cast aside along with the eroding remnants of my sense of sanity and self-preservation. I was simply not cut out for a hostage situation.

  “You’re crossing a line,” he warned in a forbidding whisper.

  Oh, that was it! “You expect me to respect your boundaries when you don’t acknowledge any of mine? I asked you to put me the fuck down!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. And I hoped anyone and everyone having sex throughout the gardens had heard me, too.