“Sandwiches,” I said as firmly as I could, shaking my head to try to get the picture of Matthew eating me out to go away. “One second.”
After a beat, Matthew released me, and I scrambled off the bed.
It took a little maneuvering to get settled on the bed again with me, Matthew, and the tray, but finally I was able to dig in. I didn’t care about the way his side was pressed against mine, or the fact that our hands kept brushing when we reached for the food.
And even though I was normally incredibly fastidious, I didn’t even care about the crumbs going everywhere on my shirt and the bed, or the gulping noises I was making as I stuffed sandwich after sandwich in my mouth. Every bite was paradise. I guzzled two bottles of water and ate until every scrap was gone.
I flopped back against the pillows, breathing like I’d run a marathon. My shoulder bumped into Matthew’s; I realized he’d stopped a while ago, and was already reclining next to me.
I turned my head. He was staring at me, with something between bemusement and — something else I couldn’t read. It was intense, whatever it was, and I was caught, unable to look away.
“Feeling better?”
“Did you not believe I was hungry or something? I was on bread and water in the basement.”
Matthew shrugged, a hard move to pull off while lounging on a bed, but somehow he made it look good. “Not believing you is a good default position.” Before I could muster a reply to that, he added, “But now that we’ve dealt with your immediate needs, you have some questions to answer. Starting with where Hawthorne was for the last two years, how he ended up with the Kimballs, and how you ended up with the Kimballs. And who you really are.”
I blinked at him. “‘Starting with’? That’s a long list.” I licked my lips absently, and Matthew’s eyes flicked down to my mouth. His pupils expanded and his breathing sped up a little. “I’m not answering those,” I said quickly.
Fuck. Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, because the last thing I wanted was him getting all bitey again — except that was tied for last with how little I wanted to answer any one of his questions.
“Yeah, you are,” he said grimly, looking at my eyes again, at least. “You realize you’re never getting free until you do, right? The Kimballs are still a threat. Hawthorne’s dead, but who knows what he was up to while he was off the grid. He could still be a threat from beyond the grave — for the second fucking time. And until I have some reason to think you’re not a threat, you’re staying neutralized. I of all people know what you can do.”
My heart pounded away and my fists clenched. “Then you’ll be under my spell forever,” I snarled. “Because I can’t remove it with these fucking things on my wrists.”
Matthew shook his head and laughed a little. It didn’t reach his eyes, which were as dark and cold as the depths of the sea. “You won’t remove it anyway, right? Not when you’re convinced you’re a dead man as soon as you do. Ian told me about your little heart-to-heart.”
A few hours before, he would’ve been a hundred percent right. Nearly ending up knotted, bitten, and permanently mated had changed my perspective a bit.
And the danger wasn’t over, either. I’d have to be stuck to Matthew’s side, and on my guard, twenty-four hours a day until the spell was off.
Yeah, safe to say I was starting to come around on the spell-removal issue.
“Not necessarily,” I admitted grudgingly. His expression didn’t soften. Gods, he was so much better at this than Ian and Nate. They didn’t have any patience. Shouting and insults rolled right off my back, but if Matthew kept staring at me like that I’d start to squirm. “I’m not enjoying this situation we’re in either.”
“Then answer my questions. Because worst-case scenario, if we keep on like this? I mate you against your will. And I guarantee that’s going to be a lot worse for you than it will for me.” He shrugged again. “I’m in love with you, thanks to your magic. I’d be delighted to be your mate. Using your magic. Using your body.” Matthew’s voice had dropped to a low register that thrummed through me, sending shivers down every limb. “You’d belong to me, Arik. Mine.”
“Bullshit,” I whispered. “You hate me as much as you love me.”
“Makes it more fun,” he growled, and bared his teeth at me.
No. No, I didn’t believe it. Not a chance. Matthew’s passionate defense of me and my right to have a choice in who mated me, when he hadn’t even known I’d been listening to him arguing with Sam Kimball, was engraved on my brain. And his arguments had all been based in logic, too, not even dependent on his ‘love’ for me. Matthew had been sincere.
“You’re too nice for that,” I protested. “That’s not you. The way you tried to get me free when you came down into the basement the other day? You were worried about me. You’re a…responsible pack leader. You don’t believe in forced matings, either. That isn’t you.”
Matthew sat up slowly, propping himself on one elbow and looming over me, his face only inches from mine. “You know fuck-all about me,” he said quietly. “Yeah. I was worried about you, because we’d been separated and I was going crazy. And yeah, I don’t like torturing prisoners, and forced matings are fucked-up — in principle. But Ian and Nate told me a few things about what you did during the fight, and whatever sympathy I had for you is pretty much gone. Not to mention being near you for a few hours and getting that spell off my back a little has gotten my head on straight. I am a responsible pack leader. And using you would be the best thing for my pack.” His expression hardened, and his voice dropped even more, until he was almost whispering. “And I’m not proud of it, but if you think a big part of me wouldn’t enjoy it, then you really don’t know me at all.”
If you think a big part of me wouldn’t enjoy it, then you really don’t know me at all. The words echoed and repeated in my head.
That was my last hope, really. That Matthew would be too decent to take advantage of the situation. He hadn’t wanted to rape me — and he still didn’t, obviously, or he would be right now. But apparently he wasn’t completely a white knight, either, when he wasn’t overwhelmed by magic gone wrong.
Mating me and having a shaman under his control would be good for his pack — at least on paper. And underneath the fake love, he had a lot of reasons to hate me, so it wasn’t like rationally he’d need to feel too bad about forcing me into it.
If you think a big part of me wouldn’t enjoy it…
I shivered and edged away from him. Why was I reacting like this? He was just like any other alpha, to be avoided, manipulated, or killed if necessary before I ran like hell from his pack.
But the other alphas who’d tried this kind of shit with me weren’t good men. Not even close. And Matthew…I’d been so sure that he was. And maybe he still was, mostly. But not good enough to stop at…whatever it was he was going to do. Or not good enough to overcome whatever tangled mess my spell had made out of his brain. Trying to focus on it was making my brain into a tangled mess, whirling and confused.
“You really don’t want to be mated to me.” As an opening, that was all right, but then — I didn’t have a follow-up. I fell silent, biting my lip.
“What, because you don’t cook?” he sneered, throwing my earlier words back at me. “Like I give a fuck. I don’t cook either, why should you? Or is it because you don’t submit?”
“Alphas always want submission. So would you. And I don’t do that. I’d fight you every step of the way, even with the mating bond.”
Matthew’s eyes darkened, and he leaned even closer, until our lips were nearly touching. “That’s supposed to turn me off? Like I said, you don’t know me very well.”
“You’re not going to have me,” I gritted out. “Not now. Not ever. You can rape me, and you can bite me, but you’re not getting what you think you want.”
“Maybe I don’t want what you think I want.” He closed the final bit of distance between us and ran his lips over the line of my jaw. His hot breath fa
nned my neck. “If you don’t want to find out, start talking.” His mouth found the curve of my throat and closed over my flesh, lightly, just enough to make me jump. “Or maybe I’ll start biting.”
My head swam. I was going to claw my way out of my own skin, implode, anything to get away from the heat and pressure of his body over mine and the terror and confusion and…I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think.
“What do you want, then?” I gasped. “What do you actually want, since I’ve gotten it all wrong?”
He lifted his head and smiled down at me, and it wasn’t a nice smile at all. “Glad you asked. I want my pack whole, unthreatened, and alive. If I can’t get that any other way, I’ll mate you and use you as much as I can. So. Start talking, Arik. Last chance.”
“Wait!” I tried to wriggle out from under him, but he tilted over, pinning me under him, and his hand clamped around my wrist. “Wait, ‘last chance’? This is a negotiation! You ask your questions, I dance around them, and the threats come later! It’s been five fucking minutes!”
“That’s because it’s not a negotiation.”
I stared up at him, afraid to struggle in case it set him off. His eyes were getting a little wild again, like having me trapped under him was bringing out the worst of his instincts.
“I don’t know very much,” I hedged.
“We’re skipping the part where you dance around the questions, remember?” he snarled. “Now fucking talk.”
Talk. Something I avoided at all costs, most of the time. Talking only got me in trouble. I lied, and I prevaricated, and I seduced, but actual talking? Honest answers? Ugh. Anything I said, he’d use against me. And the parts I could actually spin to make me look good? I wasn’t sure I could force the words out of my mouth, relive all of it in the telling.
“I don’t know where Hawthorne was while he was supposed to be dead,” I said, because that at least was both true and not all that important to me. The asshole had faked his own death two years before, disappeared, and only returned shortly before I came on the scene. And I hadn’t known him before then. “He mentioned Seattle. I think he was in Washington part of the time. But that’s all I know.”
“Not all that helpful,” Matthew said. “And also not the most pressing issue. How did you end up working for Kimball?”
“Working with Kimball,” I corrected him, piqued at the implication that I was some kind of pawn, and then realized my mistake when he frowned down at me. He still hadn’t let go of my wrist, and his fingers tightened.
“So he wasn’t coercing you after all.” Matthew wasn’t even angry. He simply sounded…resigned. Disappointed, but unsurprised. Like he’d known all along that I was a piece of shit and I’d just confirmed it for him.
Fuck, fuck, shit. “It was the best option I had at the time,” I said, my throat tight. “It wouldn’t have worked out well for me if I’d tried to walk away.”
Not that I had tried to walk away. What the fuck did I care about the Armitage pack, or the Kimball pack, or any pack? Werewolf politics were nothing but a means to an end for me, and the end was survival and coming out on top of whatever war was brewing. The werewolves themselves were nothing to me. I didn’t do loyalties.
“Yeah, because power-hungry murderous assholes don’t like being stabbed in the back by other power-hungry murderous assholes. Big fucking surprise.”
“I’m not power-hungry.” And I wasn’t, unless you counted my own magic — I was always looking for ways to make that more potent. But that was a matter of pride and principle, not a means to getting more control over other people, or money, or whatever. My power was mine. It was the only thing no one could take from me. Even the manacles only suppressed it and prevented me from using it. It was a part of me, and would be as long as I lived. “I didn’t care what their goals were. It didn’t matter. I needed somewhere to go. The Kimball pack was — somewhere.”
That was sort of true. An alpha pack leader from eastern Nevada had gotten it in his head that I belonged to him, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He’d knotted me and bitten me, with an allied pack’s shaman keeping watch and keeping me under control. The mating hadn’t taken, but I’d pretended it had long enough to get the fuck out and make a run for it.
I’d been lying low in southern Oregon when the Kimball shaman had come up to me in the shadows outside the back door of a biker bar where I’d been trolling for a place to sleep for the night and made me an offer. I’d seen a couple of guys who smelled like werewolves and looked a little familiar staring at me from across the street earlier in the day, and I was getting a bad feeling about sticking around. So I’d headed south across the California border with Adam, getting to the Kimball pack lands early the next morning.
Matthew’s jaw had clenched so hard I could hear the faintest grinding coming from his teeth. “Somewhere to go from where?” he gritted out. “You know what I need. Information about what you were doing. What they were doing. How’d you hook up with their shaman? Who else was involved? Who’s going to be the biggest threat in the Kimball pack? There had to be a plan beyond that travesty of a battle the other night, because that wasn’t planned at all! It’s fucking tempting just to bite you and make you talk once we’re mated and you can’t hold out anymore.”
He leaned down again, and all at once, sheer terror took over. He was going to do it. The only semi-decent alpha I’d met in years was really going to mate me against my will, bend me to his, take me and keep me and never let me go.
I fought like the wildcat I was, clawing and tearing and thrashing all my limbs, screaming something incoherent even to me. I went for his eyes, and he cursed, dodging just in time to save his sight and wrestling me down to the bed.
It was the worst thing I could have done, but I couldn’t help it. I’d hit my breaking point with being backed into a corner, and I just — couldn’t. It didn’t do any good, of course. He had me pinned within a few seconds, my arms over my head with one of his hands holding them down and his body flat on top of me.
I bucked, trying to head-butt him, and his other hand landed on my throat.
We stared at each other, our chests rising and falling too fast against each other. He was hard, his cock jabbing between my legs like it was straining to get inside me through all our layers of clothing.
The door opened, and Ian burst in.
“We have a prob— the fuck, Matt?”
I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, and Matthew didn’t bother.
“Get out,” Matthew said thickly. “Get the fuck out, Ian.”
“Nothing I’d like better,” Ian said, sounding horrified. “But you need to get off of him and snap out of it. Just got a call from some alpha from Nevada. He claims he’s this bastard’s mate, and he’ll be here in an hour.”
Matthew’s eyes widened and his hand twitched around my throat. And just like that, my chance to be honest on my own terms was gone. It shocked me how much I regretted it.
Chapter 6
Two Mates too Many
Being in the same room with Matthew, Ian, Nate, and two members of the pack council wasn’t my idea of a good time. The fact that I was sitting on Matthew’s lap made it so much worse.
My hands were clammy, and I had a twitch in the muscle next to my nose. Matthew was warm and solid. I wanted to hate it.
None of that compared to knowing that Parker had found me, was coming for me, and would be here to take me within the next fifty minutes or so. If I had my manacles off, I’d kill him.
As it was, I had to depend on the Armitage pack to protect me, and that was a losing proposition in more ways than I could count.
We were arranged around the pack house’s large battered dining-room table, in mismatched chairs that looked like thrift store rejects. Matthew’s chair, at the head of the table, was the largest — which meant it only creaked a little under our combined weight. Ian sat at our right, with Nate beside him, and the two members of the council took the other side. They were bo
th older, and if one hadn’t been female and the other male, they could’ve passed for identical twins, what with their matching short salt-and-pepper hair, heavily muscled bodies, and uncompromising scowls. I had no idea what their names were, because no one had bothered to introduce me.
“What did he say, exactly?” Matthew demanded.
He sounded completely in control, which surprised me more than a little. I’d expected a meltdown when Ian delivered his news, but Matthew had paused, closed his eyes for a moment, and then climbed off me and started rapping out orders: to send six of the pack’s best fighters to the territory border near the road, to alert the council, and to have Nate ready to provide magical support. Ian didn’t argue, which surprised me even more; he’d been so adamant about Matthew being out of the driver’s seat.
That left me to awkwardly crawl off the bed after him, until Matthew grabbed me by the arm and hauled me downstairs, clamping an arm around my waist and yanking me onto his lap as I tried to sit next to him at the table.
Ian frowned and ran his hands through his hair. “He said he’s the shaman’s mate. That he’d run away, and he wanted him back, and he was coming to get him. And then he hung up on me.”
“I have a name,” I put in.
“No one gives a shit,” Ian snapped back.
“Yeah, and it’s probably fake anyway.” That was Nate, who didn’t even bother looking up from his phone to speak. He was tapping away at something that I hoped to hell was a plan to turn Parker into a frog, a pillar of salt, or possibly a giant shrieking-in-agony ball of flame.
Parker hadn’t been gentle when he mated me. His borrowed shaman was too powerful for me to fight, and sticking around to try to kill them both before I got away was too risky. If Nate wanted to incinerate him, I was more than game, even if I didn’t get to do it myself.
“Actually, we’ve already done the fake name. He’s Arik.” I risked a glance at Matthew’s face. It was set in hard, emotionless lines and didn’t tell me a fucking thing.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 5