CHAPTER 31: LOST

Our bodies crashed together and we were both breathing hard as my lips pressed against his. His scent was so rich and intoxicating, like an addiction that left my eyes blurry with need, like he was the only thing keeping me alive.

I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe anymore. I kissed him like it was my first time, tasting every inch of his lips and mouth, and our tongues twisted together, and it still wasn’t enough. I pulled back to see stars in his hazel eyes. He looked so young now, not the Commander, not the Alpha, just mine.

My hands clawed at his shirt again trying and fumbling to get the buttons off until I just gave up and yanked it open, buttons flying everywhere.

"Maeve, I–"

I pressed my fingers against his soft lips.

"Say it again. Say my name again, Darek."

His eyes widened as his lips trembled beneath my finger.

"Maeve. Maeve. Maeve. Maeve. Maeve..."

He was whispering now, his voice straining and wrecked with struggle, his eyes pleading but I didn’t know with what.

I tilted my head and reached forward, my lips brushing against his jaw, tasting his sweet skin. He swore under his breath, his breathing more laboured, and his hand grabbed the back of my neck, forcing me to look up at his face again.

Then his mouth crushed mine again.

It wasn’t gentle by any means. It felt like war, as if we wanted to devour and destroy each other in the same breath. I let my nails rake across his shoulders and he groaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating against my lips.

I needed him more than I hated him. My body didn’t see the difference anymore.

My nightgown slipped down one shoulder, baring my heated skin and his palm roughly moved it down even further until it slipped completely down, exposing my chest. The bond inside me screamed and demanded even more, asking and begging for completion. I hooked my fingers against the belt hoops in his pants and pulled them down.

I used the ends of my feet to push it down even further until I felt the bare skin over mine. His thighs grated against the nerves between my legs and I probably should have screamed and shoved him away, anything but this.

But when he pressed me back onto the mattress, looking at me with eyes that mirrored the same need, his silver hair falling forward over his forehead, I arched into him like a woman starved. I was too far gone.

All I felt was his bare thighs rubbing against my centre and me grinding against the friction until all I could see was the stars.

His lips kissed me everywhere. It ran all over my face and neck, and descended down my throat until it reached the centre, and he sucked on the skin over my collarbone. A humiliating sound broke free from my parted lips.

The moment it slipped out, his whole body went rigid.

Time froze as something seemed to finally snap in him.

"Damn it," he growled suddenly, tearing himself away so violently and the sudden cold over my exposed skin felt like ice water was poured all over me. I gasped at the loss of skin and heat, clutching the sheets again to cover the trembling of my body and to shield it from embarrassment even though it did nothing to smother the fire still burning in all its rage inside of me.

He hoisted himself back up and stood at the edge of the bed, chest heaving and fists clenched so tightly that I could see the veins bulging over his forearms. His hair was wild and his lips were still red from the kiss that we shared just moments ago in a fit of blind need.

He looked feral and dangerous but just as ruined as I felt now. It all suddenly came back to me as my vision cleared and it felt like a fog was being lifted from my brain.

"What the hell?" I choked out as I pulled the sheets again in front of me like armour, trying to hide my red face and swollen lips as Darek looked at me like he was terrified. "What just happened, Darek?"

"This is the curse," he replied hoarsely as if he had to run his words through a barbed wire. He turned away as if he couldn’t even look at me anymore. He locked his gaze on his walls and licked his lips nervously, the same lips that were on mine, that had devoured me in seconds.

But now he looked like he would rather look anywhere else but at me in case he threw himself back at me again.

My heart thudded as it finally dawned on me. "The curse?"

He laughed bitterly. "The bond isn’t going to sit quietly and leave us alone like that, Maeve. It won’t stop pulling us together every single day until the night of the Green Moon now. And every time you resist or fight it, it’ll only get worse. Worse for the both of us."

For the both of us.

So he was struggling too because of this bond. The hunger inside him was not real just like for me and it was killing the both of us.

My throat tightened with worry, even more so since I knew the fire and heat were still searing through my nerves, still wanting me to do the things I didn’t want. My wolf was still begging to go back to Darek, betraying its master without any remorse. And apparently, this wasn’t even the peak of how worse it would get?

If this was just the beginning I didn’t know what would possibly happen if I waited any longer to reject him. This curse was going to drag me back into his arms again and again until there was nothing left for me to resist, and I lost all my self-control.

No, nothing in the world, no curse or twisted fate could bind me to someone I didn’t want. It all ends soon enough.

As I marched down the corridors of the White Hall the next day, in my Omega gear that I stole from one of the servants, with a red mark over my neck which Darek had imprinted on me the day before, the taste of him still lingered on my lips.