Page 7 of Captive Mate
“Look, I cast this spell on you because I was afraid for my life,” I said, a little breathily and a little ruefully. The role of victim didn’t come naturally to me, but I could play one on TV. “I know I’ve done bad things. But — you know what Kimball was like. He threatened me. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” Matthew growled, gravelly and low. The wolf was pretty close to the surface, it sounded like. “You always — fuck. You did have a choice. You did.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me.
“Putting the spell on you didn’t hurt or kill you,” I said. “But if I hadn’t — do you have any idea what he was going to do to me?”
In an instant Matthew was right in my face, his hands planted on the wall on either side of me and his eyes glowing.
“Four of my pack died the other night, Jonah.Four. Because I was —” His jaw worked. “Because I was thinking about you instead of my family. Because I betrayed them to Kimball. Because I told the council, and all my betas, that Kimball wasn’t a threat and I was negotiating with him privately to form an alliance. No one was on their guard. No one was ready.”
I tried not to have a conscience; it was an inconvenient burden I couldn’t afford. But that shook me. I hadn’t known the death toll on either side; no one had bothered to tell me. I was sure the Kimballs must have lost a few more than that, but then, they were a bigger pack.
The thing was, it took a lot to kill werewolves. Fatalities were usually pretty low, even in a pack war. Wounded enemies would be left to live or die while the mobile combatants moved on to another fight, and they often lived. I’d been counting on that when I turned Kimball into a monster. He looked fucking horrifying, but that was more for shock and awe. And because I wanted to. I’d assumed most of his victims would live to tell the tale.
No wonder Ian wanted me dead. Those were his friends, people he’d known all his life. It was a weird thing for me, to try to put myself in the place of someone with real connections to other people. But for a moment, I almost saw it from the Armitages’ perspective.
Nope, twinging conscience or not, I couldn’t afford to worry about it.
“Kimball didn’t want me to put that particular spell on you, Matthew. He wanted me to tie you to him directly. If I had, you’d have been his puppet, and it would’ve worked out even worse for your pack in the —”
“You could’ve not done what that son of a bitch and his fucking psychopath of a warlock told you to at all!” Matthew roared. “You could’ve said no!”
“He would have killed me!”
“No, the fuck he would’ve. A shaman’s too valuable. Don’t give me that fucking bullshit, you —”
With a wordless snarl of rage, Matthew wrapped one of his huge hands around a fistful of my hair and smashed his mouth down over mine. He outweighed me by a lot, and his body pinned me to the wall...I could feel his erection digging into my stomach.
When I started to struggle, it wasn’t fake. His kiss was brutal, all teeth and force and anger, and I could’ve used it against him later and filed it away to get revenge for instead of fighting it, but it didn’t matter, it waswrong, and it hurt…
The next second he was halfway across the room again, panting for breath, his claws half extended. I leaned against the wall, my lips tender and bruised and the rest of me aching with some kind of pain I couldn’t define and didn’t understand. And at the same time, my whole body felt stronger, more alive — as if the spell was rewarding me for doing what it wanted.
“I’m not going to rape you,” he gasped. And again, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself. Which was the opposite of reassuring. “I’m not.” A little more confidence, that time. And then he added, “I’m sorry.”
That shocked me into speaking without thinking. “Why?”
He looked up and stared at me. “Why aren’t I going to rape you?”
Well, that too, but… “Why are you sorry?”
“Why am I…sorry.” His eyebrows drew together. “I came really close to — why am I sorry? Aren’t you supposed to apologize for something like that? What kind of fucking question is that?”
“Nothing’s stopping you.” And nothing was. I didn’t get it. Maybe he had too much self-respect to fuck someone like me, or too much human decency to get off on forcing me, but apologizing? For thirty seconds of taking advantage ofme? “I’m a prisoner. And you only kissed me.”
“I wouldn’t apologize for kissing you if youweren’ta prisoner. You have enough magic to fend me off. Usually,” he said, with a nod to my manacles.
“So take them off and kiss me again.” I extended my arms, cocking my hips provocatively. It was worth a shot.
Matthew shuddered, and his claws dug into his wrists as he clenched his fists. “You should lock yourself in the bathroom,” he said, slowly and evenly. “Right now.”
“A lock won’t stop you —”
“It’ll slow me down enough to get it together. Fucking now!” he growled, and his eyes were glowing again.
I dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door shut right as his body thudded against it hard enough to rattle the hardware and knock a few bits of chipped paint off the wall beside it. I pressed myself back against the opposite wall, breathing hard. Silence.
No, not quite silence. I could hear him breathing too, deep rasping pants that could’ve been used as a movie sound effect for the part where the ingénue was hiding in a closet with the serial killer heavy-breathing right outside.
Those scenes could go on for what felt like hours, with the tension ratcheting up until everyone, from the director on down to the moviegoer, wanted to scream.
