Page 10 of Purchased

This man is a cathedral of confusion. I do not know how to interpret him. He wants me to trust him, but that’s impossible. It would require me to stop thinking entirely.

Aside from my youth, I can’t see any reason for him to be interested in me—and everybody on sale at the orphanage was young. He could have picked one of the nicer, prettier girls. The ones who had done their hair and whose makeup wasn’t hastily inflicted upon them.

I know I don’t look my best, and I know my best is not the best. So why me? Why am I here in this car with this man whose scent alone makes me want to do things I’ve never wanted to do before? Every breath I take is filled with him. He is taking up the entire field of my vision. I am absolutely fixated on him.

I tell myself I am just getting to know my newest enemy, but the truth is I am struggling to avoid falling into whatever trap is obviously being set here. I can feel wetness between my legs. An arousal that I don’t want to be feeling, but can’t seem to help.

When he smiles, I feel myself melt.

I am being hijacked by my libido. Hormones doing hormone things with no understanding of how much danger I am in. There is no good reason for good men to show up to an orphanage to buy girls who have just aged out of the system. Whoever this man is, however attractive I might imagine him to be, he is a predator.

“Don’t you mean sigma? Isn’t that the new term for douchebags with too much money? Don’t tell me, you’re the best at video games in the world, too.”

“I don’t play games,” he says, his lips quirking at me with a little amusement. “And I don’t mind attitude either, but you might want to keep a few things to yourself, because there’s more going on than you understand.”

“Right, you showed up to a barely legal teen auction because you’re a good guy alpha dog.”

I think about throwing myself out of the car. It would probably hurt, but it would get me out of the danger I can feel I am in. There is an intensity about this man that makes my stomach do flips.

“I came because I was searching for something. And I found it.”

“You were looking for the craziest girl in the orphanage?”

He tilts his head slightly. “What makes you say you’re crazy?”

“Everybody has told me I am crazy since I was taken there when I was seven. I insisted on telling them that I was a wolf. They laughed at me at first, then they punished me for saying it. Then, when I got older, and still wouldn’t let go of the delusion, they gave me pills that stopped me from saying or thinking anything.”

I see his fingers flex, then curl into a fist. He covers it with his other hand, tries to force the tension out of his jaw. He forces a smile that is more like a snarl. He seems genuinely angry about what he is hearing and he is trying to hide it.

Strange.

“Are you still on the medication?”

“No. I refused to take it anymore, once I got big enough to make it hard for them. They tried to make me for a while, hid it in my food, tried to deny me food at all unless I took it, but it was too much work. I don’t make it easy. Besides, after a while, I knew what I was.”

There’s warning for him in that sentence. He won’t find me an easy captive. I don’t care if I want him. I don’t care if I need him. I won’t ever give myself to him. I have been starved of everything that matters. He cannot take anything from me that someone else has not already tried to take—and failed.

“I would like you to try to remember events and the people who were involved,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because I’d like to know.”

He smiles again. He’s very bad at smiling genuinely when he wants to kill someone. His silver eyes flash with anger that I can feel because it touches something inside me. It finds the rage that has been propelling me all these years and somehow soothes it just by existing.

* * *

Armand

The expression on the director’s face flashes in my mind. The satisfaction. The smugness. The sense that he was so right and she was so wrong.

Patience, I remind myself.

There is a temptation to turn back to the orphanage and kill everybody who had anything to do with this state she is in, but that is not compatible with a sensible decision. So much about being a wolf is resisting those animal impulses when they come in human form. I like to think I am very controlled. It is important for me and my entire pack that I am.

I turn my attention back to my mate. From now on, she is the only thing that matters. I try to ground myself, notice physicalities because they are infinitely distracting.

I am a very tall man, six foot four. A lot of women are significantly shorter than me. My little mate is quite tall for a woman, five foot nine at least, maybe five ten if she is not stooping or crouching. I see not only youthful beauty, but elegant potential. She has a presence, too, even in this state. I can imagine how she will be years from now, when she and I are celebrating the anniversary of this night. I imagine her happy. I imagine her relaxed. I imagine her surrounded by love and family that right now she does not understand are even an option. I will show her all these things.

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