Page 62 of Seducing Selena

Derek stroked my hair again. “What do I want? All right. What I want is to finish the mission. We’re no more than a few days away now. After everything is finished here, what I really want is to take you out of this place. Find a house the four of us love, or build it, if that’s what we need. Or five, if Anna is able to stay with us. The rest of what I want is similar to what Seb described. I don’t know what we’ll do for ourselves, but I know I want you. I want our cuffs on you—real, permanent ones. I want you at my feet and on your knees because that’s where you want to be and that’s where you feel safest. I want to build a playroom that rivals this club so we can have our way with you in every way we’ve already taken you and more.

“I want to learn therealyou, and I want to show you who we are and not who we’re pretending to be. What I want, Selena, is to love you for the rest of my life. And spend all of it making sure you know how fuckingpreciousyou are. Most of all, that even though you’re on your knees, wearing our cuffs, we’re the ones owned by you.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. I slipped an arm around his waist and held him closer, letting the purr in his chest lull me down into sleep, where, for a little while, I could forget everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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SELENA

When I woke, I felt fuzzy. The amount of crying and revelations before I fell asleep took everything out of me. Absolutely fucking everything.

Derek wasn’t holding me now. Instead, I was curled into Nick’s chest. The spicy scent of his peppermint helped bring me fully to consciousness. Warm skin, and the soft, subtle sound of his purr beneath my ear. His tattoos stretched over his chest and shoulder. A giant tree, the trunk stretching down his ribs; the branches holding different symbols I hadn’t dared to ask him about.

I didn’t know if I would now.

Because I was still conflicted and confused.

Mostly because what they saidmade sense.

Every interaction they had with me, from the very first time Derek took me away from Delano, he’d protected me. Harshly, but it was still protection. Everything we’d done together, even the harshest things, they had been with me. In spite of their words making me an object, and their punishments, it neverfelt like the truth.

And the heat?

If they’d been like some of the monsters I’d encountered, they never would have done that. They would have tied me up in the club downstairs, gagged me, and declared me open for free use. That’s what the others would have done.

But these Alphas had abandoned everything they had to do, and now I knew, put their entire reason for being here at risk, in order to give me a good heat. Because they loved me.

I wished they’d been able to tell me the truth—I never would have given them away. If anything, I would have played along. But in the same way I couldn’t trust them because of how we met, they couldn’t trust me. I didn’t blame them for being suspicious. The Syndicate had made me suspicious, and there was no way around that.

Because of who we were and the way we’d been pushed together, there had been no way for us to trust each other. But in a strange sense, we’d found our way to each other anyway. Was it fucked up and totally not black and white? Yes.

Were the four of us going to have to make up a different story to tell people who we met? Absolutely. But…

I wanted them.

As soon as they told me the truth, everything clicked in my chest. Who I felt they were instead of who they claimed to be. Like all of us had been fighting our way to the truth through impossible circumstances.

Derek was right when he risked telling me that not everything was the way it seemed. And so was Nick, when he told me he needed me to fail their punishment. To keep their reputation with Delano.

It wouldn’t be easy, and there would be plenty of missteps. But I didn’t think I could walk away from them now. They were my Alphas. They knew how to make my body sing, and when I gave them what they asked for, the submission was beautiful. But I didn’t want to be a slave. Not like this.

“Your head seems like it’s going a million miles a minute, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t know you were awake,” I said.

His purr grew stronger. “I’ll be honest. I don’t think any of us slept very much.”

“Why not?”

“Guilt,” he said. “Trying to figure out how to do this with you, and undo the damage we’ve done. Just watching you sleep because you’re so fucking beautiful, and when you’re sleeping, you’re not in pain.”

I tucked my face into his chest.

His hand came up behind my head, holding me closer, and his voice was ragged. “I need to ask you, Selena. Is there any chance? Did we…” The pause was agony. “Did we ruin everything?”

A whine slipped out of me. “No. I won’t pretend that I don’t want you. I do. But it’s hard. You weren’t able to trust me, and I wasn’t able to trust you. Still, with all of that, last night excluded, I liked everything you did to me. I can lie and say I didn’t, but clearly a part of me needs this kind of submission. As much as you need the other side of it.”

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