Page 11 of Brutal Alpha

“Shit,” she murmured. “I drooled on you.”

Blinking up at me, sleepy and fucked out, she smiled. I had to leave. Rolling her off me as gently as I could manage, I got to my feet, scanning the grass around us for our clothes.

“Get dressed.” I scooped her dress up from the ground where I’d discarded it, throwing it in her direction. If I looked at her sitting naked in the moonlight, her pale skin glowing and her hair already mussed from where I’d buried my hands in it and tugged, I was going to make another bad decision.

“So we’re not going to talk about this?” Her voice was small and oddly vulnerable, and I sighed. All the girls I’d ever been with had asked that, but I honestly hadn’t expected the same from Julia. I had assumed she would recognize this for the mistake it was and be keen to move on. Clearly, I had overestimated her.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. It was the same thing I’d said to every other girl, and it felt wrong even as I said it. Julia wasn’t every other girl: she was my best friend’s little sister and a pain in my ass.

“Nothing to talk about?” she echoed, and I moved on to the next stage of the hook-up aftermath response: changing the subject.

“I mean—your magic. Obviously. That’s great.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Julia said. I should have known that wasn’t going to work on her. Every other woman I’d been with knew when she’d been dismissed, and she wasn’t going to question the Alpha. Julia had never respected my rank, and there was plenty of fight in her.

“Look, this isn’t exactly my ideal scenario either,” she continued as I pulled my pants back on. “Contrary to what I’m sure you think, I haven’t been wandering around these past few years thinking, ‘gee, I wish Ethan was my mate.’ But you are, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because the truth is inconvenient.”

I froze. Her mate? Surely she didn’t really think that. It made no sense.

“I’m not your mate, Julia,” I said because there was nothing else to say.

“Then what the fuck just happened?” she replied. “Because that sure as shit felt like a newly-formed bond to me.”

Had things been different, I might have agreed with her. The sudden onset of desire, the need I had felt for her, like water in the desert, might easily have been mistaken for the tug of a newly formed bond. I’d certainly never felt that way about any of the women I’d been with before, but I’d never felt as much for those women as I had for Julia. I hadn’t felt protective of them the way I always had her, even if that feeling was buried beneath several layers of frustration.

“You don’t know how a newly formed bond feels,” I pointed out.

“Neither do you!” Julia retorted. It hadn’t taken long for her attitude to make a return, and there was a terrible part of me—a part getting louder by the minute—suggesting that I simply hadn’t fucked her well enough, that maybe I should try again.

“Maybe not, but I know how sex can make people feel,” I said, shoving my shirt back on and trying desperately to smother that awful, hungry voice. “Females, especially if they’re… not as experienced, tend to mistake simple attraction for something more. You get attached.”

For a moment, Julia said nothing, only fixed me with a long, flat look.

“You’re right,” she said, for the first time. Then, “I’m pretty attached to the idea of kicking you in the balls right now.”

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. I should have known better than to get myself into this position in the first place.

“Please don’t be difficult,” I started, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were wrong. Julia’s eyes narrowed, and her voice was sharp and furious as she hissed.

“Difficult?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, taking a deep, calming breath.

“We can talk about this in the morning, Julia,” I said. We were clearly both too emotional to get anywhere tonight. I could only hope that a night of sleep might give us enough distance to be rational.

Julia, of course, had no interest in being rational.

“We’re talking about it right now, asshole,” she insisted. “You knotted me. Do you do that with every quick fuck or am I just special?”

There was nothing I could say in my defense. It was a lapse in control that I was far too experienced to have made.

“I got carried away,” I admitted, and Julia gasped, clutching her heart in mock delight.

“Wow, so I am just special,” she exclaimed, breathy and fake. “Or—”

“We’re not mates, Julia,” I snapped. “We can’t be. It’s been years since you first shifted, we would have known before now. It’s impossible.”

“More or less impossible than me seeing out of my blind eye?” she shot back. It was a stupid argument: those two things weren’t connected. Magic had always been unpredictable and wild, but shifter biology was as predictable as the sunrise. No matter how strong the urge had been between us, no matter how insane I’d felt when she touched me, it simply could not be the bond. It was high emotions and hormones. That was all there was to it.

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