Page 55 of You're Not My King!

I sniffed, nuzzling farther into his pillowy muscle. “You’re going away, and I have to stay here. On my own. And for some reason, it’s bugging me.”

A small noise of understanding rumbled against my ear as clawed fingers cupped my chin, raising my gaze. “For a short time, c’karuucha. I shall return.”

Against my will, my bottom lip wobbled, and I sucked it between my teeth. The way he looked at me, all fond and patient, made me feel so vulnerable. I hated it, but at the same time… kinda didn’t? Vo’ak was letting me feel and hurt without judgment, and I couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that for me.

A tear ran down my cheek, emotions bubbling to the surface that I’d thought were locked away. “I… I don’t like feeling abandoned.”

“Oh, little thing,” Vo’ak cooed, swiping his thumb under my eye. “I am here. Always.”

My family had said the same thing. My ex. Everyone I’d ever loved. It was hard to believe the words anymore, hard to trust anyone. I had myself to blame for that—I’d driven people away, I’d been a disappointment, and shit or not, I had to live with the consequences. Up until very recently, I’d been mostly successful, but for whatever reason, the thought of Vo’ak leaving me was something I couldn’t imagine recovering from.

I had no right to feel that way. I was the one who planned on leaving. I was the only hypocrite here, but I was also fucked up.

Contradictions were to be expected.

In the beginning, I hadn’t anticipated meeting and getting to know someone like Vo’ak, developing a fondness for him. I had thought I could guard my heart better than that. The reason I wanted to leave this place was because of my fixation with the past, with erasing the parts of my life that I hated, but this idiot had burst in and added another player to the field.

I was sorta used to being alone, had worked so hard over the last year to ignore it because, in my head, I was doing everything I could to worm my way back into my old life. That was my end goal, and I had focused so hard on getting there that I hadn’t anticipated being stopped at this crossroads again. Stuck between following a familiar path and chasing down something new and possibly temporary. The last time I’d made that choice, every single person I knew ended up abandoning me one way or another. What if Vo’ak did the same?

What if I let myself love him, and it all went to the dogs, too?

Zack had fucked me up. He’d taken me from my family, then left me on my own. To me, going back to how things had been meant I could heal from everything he’d done. I could erase the feelings of abandonment and regret, because, surrounded by the people who, up until recently, had given me the only good memories I had, I could pretend none of it ever happened.

It was the only strategy I had—the one I’d clung to for so long that I didn’t know how to let it go. Vo’ak invoking those feelings in me now was only complicating things. My reaction meant I cared more than I wanted to, and right now, all I could see was everything crashing and burning.

I didn’t know what to do.

Silence settled around us like a heavy cloak, nothing but our soft breathing and the thump of Vo’ak’s heartbeat against my ear. Inquisitive fingers trailed over every inch of my exposed skin, snaking under my clothes, claws raking anywhere that made me shiver. It wasn’t sexual, it was just… nice, a constant buzz of grounding touch. I didn’t even stiffen when those hands explored the raised welts on my back, tracing and mapping out each crossed pattern like he was committing them to memory.

“Who?” he ground out eventually, making me blink.

“Hm?”

“Who hurt you?” he clarified, his voice pitched low, and my gaze dropped to my lap.

“Oh, um… How long ya got?” I laughed humorlessly, and Vo’ak just tilted his head.

Fuck, I was weak for that head tilt.

“I… Well…” I sighed, frustrated with my inability to make a full sentence. I was flustered, scrambling for an answer. Would there be any harm in telling him the truth? It wasn’t as if I’d be here for much longer, and he couldn’t exactly hunt down the culprit, but it meant showing my hand, and I’d just gone on a whole rant about not doing that shit.

Vo’ak watched me, expectant but not rushing me, and my tongue seemed to loosen before I could even decide.

Was it obvious yet how I always ended up in trouble?

“It was my ex-boyfriend.”

“Eh-xs bouy-frendah?” Vo’ak parroted, clearly having no clue what it meant, and I couldn’t help my soft snort at his garbled attempt.

“Past lover,” I tried again, and that apparently resonated as he tensed beneath me, fangs bared in a slight snarl. “Easy, tiger. He’s dead.”

“Good.”

With my belly fluttering, I curled myself into a ball in his lap, needing every inch of me touching a part of him. “He wasn’t a nice guy,” I continued, voice barely above a rasp. “He was, at first—kind, funny, confident—but as soon as he got me hooked on the hard stuff, that all changed.”

I couldn’t even remember how or when it’d started exactly—Zack morphing from the perfect man to the perfect fucking nightmare. By that point, I was so head-over-heels that I’d brushed it aside, shrugged and blamed everyone else except him. Looking back, it probably wasn’t love that I’d felt. Obsession, maybe? Or just a sense of blind idolization. He’d been my sole supplier, kept me doped up whenever I desperately needed the hit, but he’d also been all I had. That had been the plan; to control me, to be the only person I relied on. And whenever I made a fuss, he’d call me ungrateful, throw me out on the street until I came crawling back, begging, because he’d threatened anyone who dared to help me, and then he would…

I swallowed the lump in my throat, the marks on my back throbbing with phantom sensation, the chicken scratch below the flower on my ass burning with the memory of him pinning me to the floor and carving his name into my skin. It was my reason for being so adamant about free will. I mean, no shit. No one wanted to be robbed of the right to choose, but this was bone deep. I enjoyed being Vo’ak’s possession for the evening, even day to day, because that type of ownership made me feel wanted, but the one-sidedness of it was the worrying part.

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