Page 25 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
Suddenly, he froze. I realized I’d been holding my breath, waiting to see what he did.
Aidan was up and off me in a second, curling in on himself in a half-sitting crouch, concealing his arousal. I drew my legs together, frustrated at the wetness there, the ache within me, at coming so close to having him.
His eyes burned when they fell on me. Across the small space, he glared at me. Alongside that, anger was something I recognized about what he’d almost done: fear. He sat back on hishaunches. His shoulders were tight, as if he had to hold himself back. At his sides, his hands clenched into fists.
“Aidan,” I said gently.
“Don’t talk,” he said, but not angrily or a command. It was more restrained, as if I would break that control he was wrapping around himself. “Please.”
It was the first time I’d heard him sound like that, and while the angry, intense Aidan did something to me, this version of him did, too. I wanted to go to him, crawl through the dirt, leaves, and into his lap. My body was ignited with kissing him, and I hadn’t wanted him to stop. Why had he? What had happened to make him go stiff against me and retreat so much?
Arousal still coursed through me as I slowly pulled myself up to sit and wrapped my arms around my knees, which I tucked to my chest. Being a shifter meant that we all had to get comfortable being caught undressed at times, depending on if a shift was triggered unexpectedly—which could be by another pack, a mate, or danger. We didn’t always have time to undress and stash clothes, but thankfully, this time, we had.
But the thought of this weird distance now between us, as we walked back to our clothes, was excruciating. I tried to clear my head of the haze Aidan had created.
“What now?” I asked quietly. He’d told me not to talk, but that far-off look in his eyes was disappearing, so I chanced it.
He took a moment. “Now we go back.”
“Back?”
“To the car,” he said. “To Oak Hill.”
That closed-off version of him was coming back, and I found myself wanting just one more minute with the man who had kissed me and looked at me with lust instead of hatred, likeI was only the key to his big revenge plan against Fenrys. He could barely even look at me now, making me want to cover up my body, but I forced myself to have confidence in myself. I was Dakota Shields. I wasn’t meek or a coward. I could be bold. I had almost won the Mating Games. That counted for a lot more than anyone had given me credit for in Fenrys’s pack, and I refused to have the same here, with Aidan and his own pack.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I went to walk back with my head held high, but Aidan quickly caught up, gritting his teeth as he wrapped his fingers around my upper arm. His grip wasn’t hard enough to bruise, but I relished at the contact anyway. How torn I was between wanting him to press me against the nearest tree the way he had that day when we’d fought, and wanting him as far away from me as possible.
“When we get to the house, you can clean up,” he said when he saw me cringing at the grime, caking me like a second layer of skin. “I will not have you watched in there, but I will have my pack guarding every door and window that you could escape from.”
I nodded.
“And tonight, you’ll eat with us.”
“What?” I asked, surprised. I stumbled at that. “You’re finally giving me basic rights to eat?”
“Take it quietly and gratefully or leave it, Dakota. I’ve got a nice empty basement in the Oak Hill house you can stay in if you’d prefer.”
I shut my mouth, letting my thoughts build up quietly. I couldn’t let him see that he got to me. I just remained quiet until we picked our way to where we’d thrown our clothesbefore. In silence, we dressed, and we were done, Aidan tugged out a length of rope from the back pocket of his jeans. My jaw dropped.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously,” he answered. “I’m not taking more risks from now till we reach the house.” He pulled the rope tight, looping it through his own hands as if I was on a leash. I despised it, yet I followed him out of the woods.
Emerging this time felt different, like something had shifted, and people would know. Like his pack would be able to know the change, even if we didn’t quite know it yet. But somethinghadchanged, hadn’t it? He’d viewed me differently since kissing me. I just couldn’t figure out why.
He’d abandoned his car on the side of the road. The other driver, as had the rest of his pack, had driven off. I assumed they’d gone ahead. Aidan glared at beeping cars as they went around me. As he got back in the car, he hustled me into the passenger side.
Then we left Silverlake Valley behind, en route to Oak Hill. All the while I could feel his gaze slide to me out of the corner of his eye.
Chapter 15 - Aidan
As I peeled off the highway towards Oak Hill, my knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Coming back here—to what was, essentially, my home—felt strange, especially with Dakota in the car with me. Acaptive. That’s what she was. Not a lover, not the schoolboy crush I’d had years ago. No, she was my captive, and I would do well to remember that.
And yet…
In the woods, pinning her to the floor, I’d been overwhelmed by the headiness of our intimacy. There had been a roaring in my head as I’d kissed her, devoured her as if she was prey. I’d felt ravenous for her, a carnal need that had driven me towards her. And she’d wanted me too—I’d felt her hips rolling into me, her hand that had reached for my length. Her legs, parting. I’d found my way to her scent gland, her mating mark, and had almost not stopped myself.
