by Faye Avalon
Her eyes were huge, and if it were possible her face turned even paler. “If you were bitten by a beast capable of killing people, does … does that mean that you have the same instinct?”
“No.” He hadn’t meant his denial to come out so brutally fast, but he wanted to drive that image right from her head pronto. “I was spared such a savage fate. The only explanation I have is that my grandfather saved me before the full transformation could take place.”
Briefly, her eyes fluttered closed, and she shuddered in a long breath. “Thank God he got to you in time.”
For years, Tor had wished the opposite. That he might have been killed by the beast along with his parents. As a teenager he had tried to drive the beast from his blood by cutting himself, but he had managed only to end up being hospitalized for several weeks and having his mental state assessed by unsuspecting nursing staff. As he grew older, he had found a way to incorporate his wolf into his life, had been able to manage it, largely control it.
He had learned to celebrate the parts of himself that went beyond the scope of his human side. His heightened senses had proved beneficial in both business and in his personal life. His abilities often allowed him to sniff out deception, to sense a good deal over a bad one. To determine who was friend and who was foe. He never truly knew how it worked but had learned early on to trust his instincts.
He wished to hell that he had trusted them that night in the New Forest when he had given in to the primal energy storming through him that made him want to make Connie his mate. To take her, to tell her the truth of who he was and make her his. For good.
He had allowed that energy to consume him. Until he had no option but to shift, to run it off. But then she had seen him…
And now they were here, and he was doing his utmost to convince her that he was not to be feared. That she could trust him. That beneath the man lay a wolf, but beneath the wolf remained the same man she knew, the man she had trusted, had wanted.
“Does anyone else know about you?”
Suspicion was ripe in her tone, in the way her eyes narrowed. He thought she might use the same tone when asking a murderer if anyone else knew of his crime.
“Grigor,” he said stiffly. “He knows what I am but not the circumstances. He and I have been friends since childhood, so no explanations were necessary. He saw the marks on me and just accepted the reality of what I had become. It may seem strange to you, but in parts of the world stories such as mine are not as difficult to believe and accept as they are to the average westerner.”
“Meaning me.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I know. I’m sorry. And you’re right. It is difficult for me to accept and believe. If I hadn’t seen you change with my own eyes…”
“I’d planned to tell you. I just wasn’t sure how to approach it. How to break it to you gently so that you wouldn’t—”
“Freak out? I have to be honest, Tor, I don’t think there was any way you could break it to me that wouldn’t have made me lose it.”
“Da. But then it’s not every day the man you’ve been sleeping with admits to being a shapeshifter.”
She looked at him, held his gaze with those steady blue eyes, and then she smiled. It wasn’t a full out smile, more of a flicker across her lips, but something warm and primitive moved in his chest.
“Why did you choose London?” she asked, surprising him. “Wouldn’t you be better living in the country where there’s more space to run when you turn into … when you shift?”
Despite his having shared his story with her, it seemed she still couldn’t manage to speak the words that defined him. But he had to remember she was hearing all this for the first time. He’d had decades to get used to the reality of his situation.
“I like the buzz of the city, and it’s easier for business purposes. There are places even in London that I can head to if the need arises. In truth, I prefer the temperate British climate to the extremes of the Siberian forest. Plus, I am able to retreat here whenever I desire. The Alps offer the best of all worlds. Cold, but a few miles south the heat of Italy awaits.”
He glanced down at her glass, noticing that she had finished her drink. “Let me get you a refill.”
She handed him her glass and didn’t flinch when he deliberately let his fingers brush hers. Progress, he thought. And about bloody time.
****
Connie couldn’t imagine what Tor had been through. It seemed an impossible story, and if she hadn’t seen him in wolf form with her own eyes she could never have believed it.
She watched him as he went to the drinks cabinet and refilled their glasses. He was one of the most devastatingly handsome men she had ever known, and she’d been attracted to him immediately. But he was so much more. He had a magnetism that had drawn her from the first moment she’d met him, a hypnotic quality in his eyes that held her captive. Plus, he had a mysterious aura about him.
Well, now, she sort of knew why.
He was supremely confident, self-assured, and hugely intelligent. He seemed to know something about almost every subject they conversed about, and was exceptionally well-informed, both about business and the world at large.
And he was an incredible lover, passionate, intensely dominant, wildly zealous in his efforts to give them both pleasure. He was also generous, attentive, and considerate.
How much of those traits were his as a human? How much were they due to his animal nature? And what of the new side of him that had been revealed? That unscrupulous side? The part that had driven him to find her, threaten her, trap her? Was that part of his primal nature, too?
Connie closed her eyes. Would she ever be able to make sense of everything he’d told her? Would she ever be able to compartmentalize the two sides of him? To focus on the man she had known. The man who had once swept her off her feet and treated her with thoughtfulness and consideration.
Aware he stood in front of her, she opened her eyes but refused to meet his as she took the glass he offered.
When he was seated again, she looked across at him. “Why do you want me? Is it just because I left? Because I ran from you?”
His eyes narrowed, and Connie shook her head. “I’m sorry, but these are the questions I need answered. What happened to you was absolutely awful, and I can’t imagine how you dealt with it, came to terms with it. But I don’t know how to do that. I can’t decide what parts of your nature are due to your human side, and what parts are more primal. God. Does that even make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“There’s this mishmash of questions that keep swirling around in my head, and I need to ask you as I think of them.”
“I understand. It took me a long time to accept what I’d become, and I know this is hard for you to deal with.”
“Are you afraid I’ll tell someone? Is that why we’re here, miles from anywhere? Because you think I’ll give away your secret?”
“No.” He said it with such conviction Connie found herself believing him. “We’re here because you need time to make sense of everything. I wanted you to have the space to figure out what questions you need answered, and for me to have the opportunity to answer them.”
It warmed her for some reason, the fact he didn’t believe she would reveal what she knew to anyone else. Not that she had any intention of doing so. Apart from the fact she would never betray him, who would believe her? She was having a hard enough time believing it herself, despite the fact she had firsthand knowledge of what he was.
Tor leaned forward. “I want you, Connie. You. Not because you ran from me, and not because I think you might tell someone about me. I want you. You belong to me. You belong back in my bed.”
The warm, fuzzy feeling that had been slowly building as he told her he wanted her, disappeared beneath the cold chill that shivered down her spine. He wanted her back in his bed. For sex. Was that all she really meant to him? He had pursued her because he could, because he didn’t want to los
e what he considered his.
She looked away from those compelling eyes, refusing to acknowledge the hurt his words caused her. “I don’t belong to anyone. Least of all you.”
“I’m still the same man.”
“That’s the whole point. You’re not. Haven’t you been listening to me?”
He reached across and caught her hands in his before she could move away. “I’d never hurt you.”
“I know that.” For some obscure reason, she did. She was scared at a deep level, but only of the concept of who he was, not of him. He would never hurt her, she knew that as sure as she knew anything.
The realization hit her center of the chest, and she gazed at their joined hands. “I … I don’t know how I feel right now. It’s all so mixed up.”
Her insides spun and crashed around in a maelstrom of confusion. Everything she thought was real, was skewed. Off-center. “I know you’d never hurt me, but it doesn’t stop me being afraid.”
He squeezed her fingers and gently drew her up to stand. “I want you to know you can ask me anything. Anything. I won’t lie to you.”
His thumbs brushed lightly over her hands, sending little shivers and chills along her nerve endings. “And if I don’t like the answers? Will you let me go?”
Fractionally, his fingers tightened around hers, but his expression didn’t change. “No.”
She tried unsuccessfully to pull away from him. “You’d still hold me against my will?”
The intensity of his gaze sent shockwaves down her spine, and she jumped as his hands bracketed her face. “I’ll do everything in my power to make this easier for you. To make you remember how good we were together, and how good we can be again.”
Determined not to back down, not to look away, Connie glared at him. “You didn’t answer my question.” Although his silence provided answer enough. She grasped his wrists, anger battling with confusion. “Forcing me to stay with you won’t change my mind about any of this. Don’t you get that?”
His eyebrows came together in a deep scowl, and for an instant Connie had the impression that he was as confused as she was. But then he took a breath in and his nostrils flared. “I’m allowing you time to come to terms with the situation.”
“And if I don’t?”
He’d leaned down, pressing his hands against her face to keep her head still, his mouth just a smidgen from hers and his eyes gray fire.
Again, she saw that flash of confusion, as if he didn’t know what the hell was really happening any more than she did. Then his mouth crushed down on hers, cutting off her thought process as she sank beneath a torrent of sensation. Oh God, no man alive could kiss like Tor could. No man could turn her into a pool of desperate need so easily, so quickly.
The kiss didn’t stop, and Connie felt her head spin. In desperation she tried to hold on to a semblance of sanity, but she was lost against this brutal kiss of ownership, of possession.
Because that was all he wanted. To own her, possess her, control her.
When he pulled back he showed his teeth. “Know this, milaya. I will not stop until you accept me, until you submit to me. You made a choice to be mine again. You will honor that. In return I’ll give you anything you want, everything you need.”
Another kiss, just as brutal, just as possessive.
Connie couldn’t quite feel her legs, and everything inside her pulsed and spun. How could she feel this way? How could she react to Tor like this, knowing how ruthless a man he was?
“You arrogant prick.” She pushed at his chest. “Can you hear yourself? I’ll accept you? I’ll submit to you? You have absolutely no conception that what you just said will do nothing to make me do either. All it will do is make me hate you. Make me hate everything you say to me. Everything you do.”
She couldn’t have said anything more potent, couldn’t have issued any more of a challenge. Ignoring the way she pushed at his chest, he kept her tight up against him, his big hands now bracing her hips so she couldn’t move.
“You’ll hate everything? Will you hate it when I touch you like this?”
He moved his hands down to cover her backside and yanked her up close to his erection.
“Perhaps you will hate it when I run my tongue over every inch of your delectable body, like this.”
He touched the tip of his tongue to the spot below her ear where she loved to be licked, then slid it lightly down the side of her neck.
“And I’m sure you will hate it when I kiss you. When my mouth covers your mouth, when it covers your breasts, when it tastes that spot between your legs that sends you wild with desire.”
Oh, please. Please. Every memory of every time Tor had done exactly those things came flooding back with a sensual vengeance. Her head spun, her blood heating. A flash of pure need ricocheted between her breasts and her core.
“I could take you now,” he said. “I could lay you down on the floor, rip your panties away and just shove my cock inside you. You’d be wet for me, wouldn’t you, my sweet? Wet and so willing. Oh, you might give a token protest,” he said when she wriggled hard to get free, “but you’d love every damned minute of it.”
Unceremoniously, he let her go, and she stumbled back on shaky legs. “You’re despicable,” she spat. “Justifying your deplorable actions by some sick reminder of how things were. And you dare to ask me to accept you, to come to terms with what you are? Tell me that you’d never hurt me? Really? If you don’t think forcing a woman to have sex isn’t hurting her, then you really are a beast.”
He showed his teeth in a kind of snarl as he moved toward her again. Connie moved back and shoved her arms out in front with her palms up. It stopped Tor in his tracks. They stared at each other for long moments, chests rising with erratic breaths, eyes gleaming.
Connie tried to slow down her heartbeat, but she was just so damned mad. With Tor, and with herself. How could she be remotely aroused by what he’d just done? How could she even think about him doing those things to her that he’d just stated so graphically?
He looked down to where her chest rose and fell in a desperate attempt to draw oxygen into her overheated system, then met her eyes. “It’s been a long day,” he said and moved to the door. “Let Grigor know if you need anything.”
That was it? He’d just kissed her senseless, brought her to the shattering edge of need, blithely reminded her that he intended keeping her at his mercy until she accepted him, and he was just going to walk out? The man was insufferable.
Connie looked around, searching for something to hurl at him. But he was already gone.
She made a conscious attempt to tamp down her anger, and to slow her breathing. Her heart still beat far too rapidly for her liking, making her feel heady and disorientated.
Despite her outburst at Tor’s reprehensible behavior, she couldn’t shake the knowledge that he had been right about one thing. She had made a choice. Back at the bar, she had agreed to his terms. Which meant if she didn’t want to spend her life on the run, picking up odd jobs for cash wherever she could, she had to indeed honor that choice. She wasn’t so naïve as to think that Tor wouldn’t find her wherever she went. Already she had experienced his tenacity, his sheer bloody doggedness, no doubt aided by his special skills and abilities. If she ran again, she had no doubt he would keep looking for her.
So yes, she had made a choice. There was nowhere to run.
She just had to find a way to live with it.
Chapter Four
Despite her residual anger with Tor, Connie had mixed feelings about spending another night alone in her bed. Which was ridiculous. Oh, she was thankful for one more night’s reprieve, but he’d stirred her up, made her remember how it had been between them. Now she was feeling restless and edgy.
He might be a beast of a man, but that definition went far beyond the fact he could turn into a wolf at the drop of a hat. In fact, now that she knew the kind of man he really was, his ability to shapeshift hardly factored in to the equation.
> Now that she knew his story, her attitude had softened. The realization of that had pulled her up short and made her question her own prejudices. She had judged Tor, found him guilty of something that hadn’t been, and never could have been, his fault. Whether he was born with his ability, or had been changed during his childhood, it had not been his choice.
Unlike her own jaundiced views, her own intolerance and bias. For she had chosen to judge him, to blame him, to make him accountable for aspects of his nature he had no control over. And she had done this without once considering his feelings.
While she might condemn him for the imperfections of his personality—and God knew he had them—she had no right to punish him for his essential nature, any more than he could hold her accountable for the city of her birth or the color of her eyes.
Unlike Tor, she had never had to come to terms with the unimaginable horror of what had been done to him, while at the same time dealing with the loss of his parents in such a cruel and tragic manner.
Connie couldn’t imagine the pain he had suffered. And she’d wanted to reach out to him, to comfort, to tell him that she understood. But she didn’t. How could she? As Tor had said, he’d had decades to come to terms with what he was. She’d had only a few short weeks.
All that aside, how could she want a man who was prepared to hold her against her will? Who seemed incapable of understanding how wrong that was.
But it seemed she did.
Try as she might, it was impossible to stop the need, the desire, and the sheer compulsion to be with him.
In many ways he was still the same man he always was. Dynamic, driven, passionate, fiercely intelligent, and so damned attractive. But now she also knew how deep his ruthless streak went. Could she ever find a way to accept that part of him?
She was no closer to figuring it all out when, hours later, she lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Not yet having undressed, she rolled off the bed and glanced at the clock. Just short of two in the morning and she was still wide awake. Worse, she was hyped, edgy, and full of uncertainty. If she could just switch off her mind for a while, she could sleep. But it wasn’t only her mind that needing switching off, it was her body. Blood pounded through her veins, her heart thumped erratically in her chest. Even her fingers and toes seemed fired with tense and jittery energy.