Page 12 of Sigma
I watch, blinking and trying to process what just happened. What I saw. All the things I felt. What I’m feeling now.
The sounds around me are no longer muted. Wind, animals, and the world continue doing their thing as if everything wasn’t frozen, holding breath while all that happened.
The sun is rising.
First, I thought I was about to die. Then, I thought I was getting some primal sex with a stranger, and I did not understand why I didn’t want to fight him off. But when that knot emerged, I realized it was more than some good, rough dick. I was being taken by my fated mate, a big alpha male with a scary as fuck wolf and no scent to him. And now? Now?
Wind kicks up and whips my hair around as I continue to watch, feeling cold to my bones with confusion and rising anger, but being unable to do anything but wait for him to get to the other side of the river. He rises on the rocky riverbank and turns to face me.
He stands tall, every inch of his body carved to perfection as if from marble. He’s staring at me with a ravaged expression on his face. And I blink in astonishment at all I’m feeling. I’m overcome with the urge to go to him, to find a way to soothe the pain that pulses from him and in me.
He’s a perfect male specimen with a steel-cut jaw, chin cleft, with a perfect mouth, corded arms, and the sculpted, muscled frame of an alpha. His hazel eyes alternate between anger and pain as he stares at me, his erect cock reminding me of what he just did to me. Not that I could ever forget. My legs are still shaking. And my neck… it’s tingling.
I stand on shaky legs while we hold eye contact. I don’t just read pain from him, I feel it with a clarity that’s new and unusual, and also more than a little angering. Because raw agony ripples from his very being to the degree it swamps me. And I’m sure he can both read and feel my confusion. I’m betting he can sense that it’s turning to anger. Because why is he standing there staring at me like this on the other side of the river he’s put between us?
The way it felt with his weight pinning me, his hands on my hips and my breasts, his mouth on my throat, tasting me, his thighs bracketing mine as his strong body pinned me. The feeling of being knotted, having my world tilt and right itself when his hot fluid filled me. I want more of it. I want to touch him, kiss him, bite him back. But things went cold. In me and around me, and now I’m left with the sting of him being across that river, the crushing weight of the emotion coming from him, it’s all in the way.
I step toward him and his hand flies up in an urgenthaltmotion, as if I’m too close already, despite the river.
Is he really standing there wordlessly halting me from coming closer while his essence drips down my thighs, while the wound of the mate mark is still fresh on my throat?
My voice comes out strong and infuriated. “Either I come there or you come here. Choose!”
Agony slashes across his face and he looks away. And facts fly through my brain, conclusions that make me even angrier.
“I’m Cicely Oakes,” I tell him. “But you already knew this, didn’t you?”
More pain.
“And Linc is your friend so you’re the reason he suddenly keeps his distance and barely looks at me. Because you know. Because he knows. Right?”
His mouth tightens. So do the tendons in his neck. He doesn’t answer. He clenches his fists at his side.
“Are you gonna look at me? Are you gonna answer me? Introduce yourself?”
He swallows.
I wait.
Finally, he says, “Jared. Stone.”
And I recognize his deep voice. Not because I’ve heard it before. Because I recognize it at a cellular level as the voice of the male who just claimed me. He doesn’t feel like a stranger. But he is. He’s a stranger who looks, right now, like mating with me was the biggest mistake of his life.
“Are you coming here or am I swimming to you?” I ask and I don’t do it nicely.
“Go home, Cicely. Forget this happened.”
My body jolts.
“Get your ass over here, Jared Stone. Right fucking now!”
He shakes his head and lets out a bitter laugh while rubbing his forehead with his fingers.
I’m livid.
“You just… you…” I shake my head. “Did you actually just mate with me…for life… and now you’re rejecting me?”
His expression hardens. “A fucking miracle.”
