Page 16 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
Chapter 9 - Aidan
Walking away from Dakota was surprisingly easy, even if all I wanted to do was interrogate her more. Why was she so insistent to keep Fenrys’s trust? What had he ever done for her? Given her a pack, sure. But she would have naturally been in her family’s pack in Oak Hill.
Unless…
There had to be something else. Something keeping her there—or something in her past that Fenrys’s pack gave her security from. Why was his pack her home but not her own? I paused in the doorway of my bedroom and glanced back at her. She met my gaze with a steel one of her own. Betrayal lay in her eyes, and I ached for it. Delighted in it. Knowing I had some sort of power over her even after all these years was passion in my blood.
What are you running from, little wolf?
And yet I knew my reluctance to leave her wasn’t only because of that. My blood and body had practically sang for the challenge she’d presented me with in the forest. The grappling, the bruises she’d now littered over my skin from her punches that had been surprisingly hard, had me riled up, both excitement and fury combining in a confusion cocktail. I felt drunk on it and wanted to taste it again.
I half wanted her to try to escape again just to have a reason to fight with her like that. I wanted her to give her worst. The spit-flying, screaming sort of fight. I wanted her to break—to tell me what Fenrys had over her, or what she saw in his pack that kept her away from her home. I couldn’t deny that her looks had merely grown with her, and she was still the attractive girlshe’d been when we were younger, but now she was a woman. A woman with a good girl attitude but fire beneath her skin.
That was what got me.
And I despised it.
Despised her.
Wanted her.
Hated her.
I hated her for that fight I knew wouldn’t be dimmed easily.
I hated how she switched so easily from soft pleas to spitting anger. Ilovedit. I craved it, resented it, a war inside my head of wanting Dakota. By the time I stripped in the bathroom upstairs and ran the shower, letting the steam fill the room before I stepped into the glass cubicle, I was hard.
“I hate you,” I muttered—to myself, to Dakota. And yet the sight of her among my pack when I’d returned her earlier had distracted me. She had landed a hard punch to my face, sensing my distraction. But the sight remained: how she’d looked among them, and it had ignited something disgustingly territorial in me. Something that wanted, like an empty appetite that I didn’t know how to feed. Orwouldn’tfeed. I couldn’t do it. I had wanted Dakota once, and she hadn’t wanted me. I refused to go through that again.
And yet, my arousal wouldn’t go away. I was half tempted to turn the shower colder to get rid of it, but my hand reached for my own dick before I could make myself turn the temperature dial to cold. I hissed out a breath, wrapping my fingers around myself with a reluctant tug, thinking about Dakota’s thighs either side of my waist when she’d straddled me in the forest. Had we liked each other, it would have been so easy to take her.
But the thought of her made me recoil.
At least that’s what I told myself, even as I stroked myself to full hardness, gritting my teeth. I should go out, find someone else to do this for me. Someone to bury myself in for an hour and then come back with a clearer head.
But Dakota’s face remained in my head, the grunts of effort she’d made as we’d fought, the venom she’d spat at me. It all turned me on, and I knew my thoughts wouldn’t be quelled so easily.
I inhaled sharply and thumbed over the head of my dick. If I closed my eyes, I might picture her there, on her knees, her pretty lips parting for me. Finding out if that venom might only be silenced this way. I stroked fast and hard, wanting it over as soon as I could. My breaths short and hard, I bit back the urge to groan her name. I leaned against the glass wall, my forearm braced on the cubicle, my forehead resting on my arm. A groan slipped my lips as the water pounded down my back, hitting my sensitive skin, easing the tension Dakota naturally instilled in me.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” I muttered, my stomach tightening as I neared my climax. Part of me wanted to go out there and tell her what she did to me. Make her squirm, see if she would take the invitation. The other part of me recoiled.
She was my enemy. My captive. My old high school crush. My tormented target.
And that only made it all the better. I laughed to myself, a dark sound that I muffled quickly before anyone would hear me. Usually I did this in my room, but by the time my orgasm crashed over me, sudden and quick, I shot onto the shower floor, watching as the evidence of my Dakota-fuelled orgasm got washed down the drain. Good. No evidence to give me away.
Shuddering as I washed the rest of my body and hair from that day at work, I eventually toweled off and went downstairs. I knew she saw me go to my downstairs bedroom, covered only by the towel tucked around my hips. I heard the sharp intake of breath and smirked to myself.
I hoped she was as uncomfortable as I had been.
Knowing that if I caused even a sliver of the same reaction in her then she would have to remain uncomfortable all night with only her own thoughts to keep her company and no touching to sate her.
But I’d gotten off to the thought of her. Now, I would be clear-headed. I would get her sounds and body out of my system. I told myself I didn’t need to touch her to do that. But Icouldfind another woman’s bed to warm that night. After all, it had been a while since I had haunted the streets of Erenvsille. Dressing, I left the house through my bedroom window, not even half an hour later.
***
God, I hated this town. I had missed it a disgusting amount, but my hatred came from seeing the Randons’ influence splashed on every possible inch of the place. Small towns were something I loved, that sense of security of knowing your neighbors would have your back, but there was something so exposing about them sometimes. Everyone found out a person’s business, everybody judged, and because the town was so cliquey, everyone sided with the majority. People spoke as a town or not at all, I found. It was why nobody had spoken up for me when my father had been banished, ordered to take us all with him, rejected from the pack he’d been loyal to all his life.
Now my father was older, back in Oak Hill, a wise man who had never had the chance to be the alpha he could have been if it wasn’t for Fenrys’s father. He could have done something real good with this town. While he had formed a new pack in Oak Hill, those rumors and accusations had haunted him, wearing him down, until I had naturally taken his place, building my new pack for a new generation.
