Page 104 of Sweetheart: Part One

I couldn’t give him that.

I clung to Drake’s vulnerability, the way he was so gentle and sweet. So nervous to get close, so beautiful when he’d opened up.

What happened between us meant something to him.

It meant something to me.

“I willnottell you about him,” I managed to say through the agony.

A thousand orders, he could give me, and I didn’t have the strength to fight them all. But this one, I would fight.

He chuckled, something cruel in the sound. I could barely focus, a rolling wave of white hot pain smothering the world. “You know how tempting you’ve become, Vex?” he asked. “A filthy little gold pack siren. I should have seen it coming.”

Then the pain vanished as he relinquished his need to make me answer the questions.

I gasped, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. For him to swim into my vision.

It was all I could do to shake my head again. I didn’t know what he wanted anymore, the threat of agony just too much.

His breath was hot on my neck as his touch found the bite he’d left. It was in my biology to sink against him, trembling fingers clutching him desperately. I hated that response, as if that bite meant anything real at all.

Drake had nothing like that, and cared for me more.

“I didn’t expect how difficult it would be, claiming an omega and watching her with other alphas.”

Still pressed against him, my body began to shiver, terror leaching into my veins as I remained too afraid to move. I could feel his want for me—something that, before now, I’d denied existed.

I was Drake’s.

I’d decided that today with every ounce of me left that still had a choice.

He held me against him, threat like a blanket in the air around us.

Then he tugged his phone from his pocket and lifted it to my face, the light flashing for just a moment. I shut my eyes, feeling sick.

He was filming me.

“Don’t push me Vex. It can always get worse,” he murmured. “For example, I think the others would love to see this.”

I tried to duck away but his grip was impossible to fight.

“Look at me.” I grit my teeth, opening my eyes, knowing this wasn’t the order to fight. “What doyouthink I should do about how much you made me want you?” he asked cruelly. His fingers wove through my hair, dragging my neck into an arch so I was looking right up at him. “You could give me something to work with, and you can return to them untouched. Or you could fight me, and leave me to claim what I want another way.”

The threat hung between us, clear as day. The phone recorded my fear.

My heart pounded in my chest as every instinct screamed at me to give him exactly what he was asking for.

Tell him what he wants to know, and you’ll be back with Drake.

But Drake had given me his trust.

I couldn’t give that up.

But he wasn’t done. “Tell. Me.” Alastor’s command seized me again, a million threats of pain hiding behind those words.

Tears streamed down my face as I made my choice.

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