Page 10 of Captive Mate
I went limp, my eyelashes fluttering and a small moan escaping my lips. Hitting the floor was going to hurt, but not as much as how badly he’d need to rip up my neck to get his bite to take.
His arms shot out and clutched me against his chest. My adrenaline spiked even higher. He might not believe I was fainting. Not with how my heart was racing. He scooped me up and carried me out of the bathroom, burying his face in my hair and shuddering. I stayed pliant, dangling in his arms like a rag doll. Predators liked to chase their prey. That was my experience, anyway — if a rabbit played dead, I’d poke at it, but I might not be as inclined to eat it.
Matthew carried me through to the bed and laid me down, wrapping himself around me and nuzzling my neck. Each one of his exhales heated my skin and paradoxically made me shiver. His cock jabbed into my side. It felt huge.
Gods, he was heavy. And hot. I was nearly suffocating, with my face pressed into his shoulder. He smelled like a forest in the summer, humid and rich. A strange sensation crept along every one of my nerves, a prickling, sparking awareness. Was this how magic felt to people who didn’t use it? Who couldn’t control it? I hated it, but I also couldn’t quite resist it. It made me want to tip my head and expose my neck even more, offer myself up like a not-so-virgin sacrifice.
Give in.
That snapped me out of my fugue. Giving in wasn’t an option. If Matthew mated me, I’d be as good as his slave. He’d force me to remove the spell, and then I’d have a mate who hated me, and I’d be the Armitages’ tool. Matthew wouldn’t be stupid enough to give me access to my magic until he was sure I was under his control.
I stirred a little, as if I was coming around. Matthew’s arms tightened. Slowly, trying to keep him calm and soothe his instincts, I slid my arms up and wrapped the one that wasn’t trapped under him around his ribs. I clutched a handful of his shirt with the other, and I rubbed my face against his shoulder.
Like a mate. Like a lover. Like someone who wasn’t a threat and was already Matthew’s.
“Arik?” he whispered, and brushed his lips over the skin just below my ear. “Arik, I know you’re awake.”
Apparently we were still going with the serial-killer horror-movie vibe, then.
“Hold me,” I whispered back, praying I wasn’t fucking this up. So far so good — no new holes in my skin. But that switch could flip again at any second. “Keep me safe?”
Matthew’s arms tightened around me. “You’re safe. No one’s going to touch you. I’ll rip their throats out if they try. You’remine.”
His teeth grazed my jugular. I forced myself not to stiffen in his hold.
No, nothing to get worked up about here. Just lying in my bespelled captor’s arms, completely relaxed — because why wouldn’t I be, right? — with his massive erection prodding me and his teeth a millimeter from rippingmythroat out, manacled to keep my magic inert and locked in with no hope of escape.
And the worst part was, I wished I could let go enough to pretend it was real for myself, and not just for him.You’re safe. No one’s going to touch you. That was a fantasy I couldn’t afford. A protector like Matthew, strong and decent and devoted…no. Not happening in reality, and not in my imagination, either, if I knew what was good for me.
“Thank you,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. He vibrated against me, and I grimaced. No kissing, then. I needed him chilled out, not fired up and ready to fuck. “I know you won’t let anything happen to me. You’d never hurt me. You’d never let anyone else hurt me.”
Every word burned my tongue like acid. Maybe this was the real torture: being forced to voice my own deeply-hidden longings as a lie.
But it worked. Slowly, slowly, he started to relax — although his erection didn’t go anywhere. Maybe that was going to be permanent for a while. I grimaced again, this time in sympathy. Or maybe even empathy, because I’d been half-hard pretty much since I came into Matthew’s bedroom, and that hadn’t shown signs of softening, either.
Fuck this spell. If it’d been cast by someone else, he’d be so dead once I got my hands on him.
At long last, a while after the light through the windows had shifted to show it was afternoon, Matthew raised his head. He’d spent the time in between just breathing me in, his arms still locked around me and his body half-sprawled over mine. I’d been trying to zone out, to reach some kind of state of Zen, but my aching stomach was too much to ignore. So I lay there, miserable, trying both not to tense up too much and not to relax into his hold like the sweet, helpless little mate I’d been posing as.
His intense dark blue eyes fixed on mine, hard and cold as lapis lazuli. They looked a lot less insane; when he’d burst into the bathroom, he’d been like one of those cartoon characters with the swirly spirals going opposite directions in each eye.
But he looked far from happy, with a deep furrow between his thick straight brows and the corners of his lips tipped down.
“I think I’m in my right mind.” He said it like it came as a bit of a surprise to him. “I can think clearly.”
I swallowed hard. On the one hand, great — no biting. On the other hand — well, if he was thinking clearly, that meant he hated me again. That shouldn’t have bothered me.
But I needed him on my side, right? Of-fucking-course it bothered me. At least he hadn’t let go of me yet. One big hand was splayed across my lower back, and the other between my shoulder blades. Maybe that meant I still had some leverage.
“I’m afraid to move,” he said a second later, bursting my bubble. “I think you were right, much as it pains me to say it. We needed to be…closer.” The last word dripped with distaste, and his lip curled.
An unfamiliar sharp pain lanced through my chest. What the hellwasthat? Was the spell acting up again?
“I guess we do,” I said, my voice gone hoarse. I couldn’t even clear my throat, it was so dry. “Can we get something to eat though? Seriously. I think I might faint for real.”
His lips twisted in something smile-adjacent. “I knew you were faking.”
At least one of us did.
