Page 45 of Frank's Felon
And he was sharing it with her?
Delilah raised herself on her toes and kissed him. She pulled his t-shirt up over his chest and he yanked it off the rest of the way. There was almost a feral look about him as he stepped into her, his eyes dragging over her body.
“Strip, Del. Now.”
Instead of listening to him, she let her hand glide down over him. His cock, already hard as steel, jumped at her touch. He stripped out of his boots and jeans, grabbed her hips, and pulled her against him.
“No,” Delilah said as she pressed her palms against his chest and shoved him back. She wasn’t sure why, except at that moment, seeing the distant, hungry look in Frank’s eyes, Delilah knew she wanted more from him.
Frank turned, looked at the ladder. “Then go.”
She shook her head, refusing to leave. Her wolf growled at her, cautioning her, but Delilah ignored her. Her wolf didn’t know Frank as she did. Everything she had seen and heard about him had told her what she needed to know. He’d never hurt her, no matter how hard she pushed him.
“You think this is a game?” he said, his face as hard as the stone walls around them.
“Tell me why you growled at Damien, Frank.”
“Leave, or I’ll strip you naked and claim you here. Hard. So hard you won’t be able to walk afterward. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she muttered, unable to lie. God help her, she did, but that wasn’t what she was trying to get from him, not yet.
In one large stride, Frank was on her, renting the shirt from her and pulling her bra over her head without even unhooking it. Then he shoved her to the ground and ripped her boots and jeans off her body. The panties he shredded as he forced her legs apart and caged her between arms of steel.
“You don’t get to touch me unless you tell me what’s going on inside your head,” she said, even as his heavy length dragged over her mound.
“You already gave me permission,” he growled.
“And now I’m taking it back. Unless you’d like to force me, take away my rights, my freedom.”
That’s when she saw the hard exterior falter, revealing the pain beneath. His hard swallow made her stomach twist for him, even as his shaking arms pulled away from her head. He sat back on his thighs, straddling her, without touching her. Then his eyes moved past her, as if she wasn’t there.
“You feel it too, don’t you, Frank? Out of control, lost, forgotten. I was only stuck on the inside for a year, but you were in there for five. I didn’t hold on to any false hope that someone from my pack would come for me, figure out how to get me out, or at least visit. I knew my pack was dead. But you. . . you had an entire pack, and no one came.”
“They couldn’t,” he said.
“They’d forgotten you.”
“Yes.”
“Left you in there, trapped and alone. Unable to shift except if and when you were lucky enough to get thrown into isolation where there were no cameras, no one to see your wolf.”
“One thousand, two hundred and twenty-seven days,” he said.
That was over three years of his five spent in isolation. She couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like. Every time she had picked a fight to end up in isolation, it had been a blessing when they’d locked her in there. She could finally free her wolf, but after three days in isolation, panic would set in. The loneliness, the worry that they’d never let her out had choked her. The longest they’d ever kept her in was twelve days—twelve fucking long days and nights without a sole to talk to, without the few books she had traded favors for, with nothing except the knowledge that this was the only life she'd know until the day she died. How the hell had Frank survived it?
“I’m sorry,” she said, as she finally let the tears escape.
Frank leaned forward and wiped her tears away. “I lost faith in them,” he said, his voice gravelly now, full of pain. “Even with Takara’s letters, I lost faith.”
Takara’s letters. She had written every week for five years. That box of his only held seven letters, and Delilah had seen the dates. There had been twenty-two months between two of those letters. No wonder he had felt utterly abandoned.
“You have every right to be angry, Frank, and I wish I knew how to help you. I don’t have any words of wisdom, but I know one thing. This pack loves you. I don’t know if they truly failed you or if they were as helpless as you, but they love you. Everyone here, from Tess and Frankie to your scout who looked torn up when you left Tess’s house, like someone had gutted him. I saw loss in his eyes, similar to your own.”
“Blade. He lost his pack a while back.”
“I don’t think that’s a shifter who would have given up on you. And for as different as Tess and I are, I don’t think she would have chosen a mate that wasn’t loyal to his pack.”
“Damien is a good alpha,” Frank said, as if forcing the words out.
