Page 72 of Lost Touch

Drew blurred a little, and I blinked the moisture away. He didn’t react. Every other time I’d so much as shed a tear in front of him, he’d gone into full-on alpha protector mode.

Not that I needed him to, but…it wasn’t helping me calm down at all that he didn’t seem to give a shit.

But we did need to settle it, even if I couldn’t seem to act my age.

“We should stay a little longer.” I tried to clear my throat. It didn’t work. “Arik said this isn’t a good solution. It’ll only be worse the longer we let it go.”

“Only be worse?” Drew demanded sharply. “Is this so fucking terrible?”

“It won’t work,” I said, doggedly determined to argue him out of what I wanted more than anything in the world, even though a hard, throbbing ache had lodged itself under my ribs. “Fake mates was never a permanent fix for anything, even though it worked for a while. Twice, even. But it won’t keep working forever.”

Drew didn’t reply. He rubbed his hand over the back of his head, making his hair stick up like hedgehog spikes, and I had to clench my own hands into fists to keep from reaching out and smoothing it down—or maybe fluffing it up even more—and touching him, kissing him, forgetting everything but how it felt when that irresistible heat sparked between us and the whole world outside of it melted away.

The garden rustled around us, louder than it ought to have been given the mild breeze. Maybe it had magic, too? And we’d gotten it all worked up arguing in its peaceful confines?

“It doesn’t have to be fake,” Drew said abruptly. “The mating. We could mate for real. That’d solve all of this.”

Mate for real.

My abdomen clenched with arousal and nausea and longing, so much that I almost doubled over.

I could just…let him bite me. Belong to him forever, and he’d never know he hadn’t made the decision rationally. That our mating might be real, but the feelings driving him to want it were still, and always would be, conjured out of magic and trickery.

“No,” I gasped, digging up a strength of will I’d never known I could have. “Hell no. That’s not happening.”

The expression on Drew’s face could’ve turned Medusa to stone.

And then it sharpened, turning predatory and intent. Cruel, even, his eyes glowing faintly and glittering beneath that with something so far from the kind, affectionate Drew I knew that it made me stumble back a step.

He followed me, prowling, hands flexing the way they did when the claws started to come out.

“You’d want it,” he said, so softly it almost got lost in the susurrus of the leaves. “You’d lie there with your eyes closed. Not moving. Waiting for me to do anything I wanted to you.”

I backed up until I crashed into some kind of tall plant with spiky branches, one of them poking me in the neck, and stopped, panting, pinned like prey.

Drew closed the gap, looming over me so that I had to tip my head back into the leaves. He slid one hand behind me, down my back and brushing softly over the swell of my ass, cupping me, rubbing in little circles.

That gentle, coaxing pressure had me fighting not to arch into him, plaster myself to his bigger body and offer myself up. Everything below my waist went all hot and tight, cock aching and a slow, steady throb of awareness pulsing between my legs.

Another circle, fingers tracing the crease of my ass.

He didn’t touch me anywhere else.

He didn’t need to.

Drew leaned down, lips almost brushing my ear. His heat and scent surrounded me, and my head went light and floaty.

“All you need to do is say yes. You know I’ll do everything else. Strip you. Spread you. Mount you. Bite you once you’re moaning and writhing on my knot. Claim you, Ash. One fucking word, and all you have to do is give yourself up to me.”

All I had to do was give in, give him everything—everything he already had, because I was helpless against him and didn’t want it any other way. Yield. Stop fighting, the sweetest surrender I could imagine.

Even if I spent the rest of my life being the most loving, submissive mate an alpha could possibly ask for, I’d still know I’d taken advantage of him. That he hadn’t chosen me for real.

“No,” I whispered.

Drew’s hand stilled. His rough breaths tickled my ear and made me shiver, even though my body felt like I had a hundred degree fever.

“All right, your call,” he murmured.

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