Chapter 27
From the way he was staring at me, I was on the verge of bursting into tears. His stare was keen, probing, and burning. His touch overwhelmed me with the meaning of what we meant to one another. In more ways than one, I wanted him, but I'd never been able to take what I wanted, and I'd never desired anything to the extent that I wanted him.
It was an impossible, devastating fact that was constantly mocking and torturing me.
It would have been simpler to despise him and to have no feelings for him, but here I was giving in to the inevitable mate link.
It was dreadful to the very core to discover the truth, and it was neither fair nor proper.
Once more, his fingers lightly touched my cheeks, gently wiping away my tears. His body brushing against mine like the promise of all he could offer, his breath a warm breeze across my skin, his closeness engulfing me.
I closed my eyes for a little while and let the emotion seize me, allowing myself to fall in love with him.
"You're so beautiful." I opened my eyes to look at him again, his words gentle against the wreckage I felt inside of me, easing the ache of our situation.
Even though he was hardly touching me, I felt as though he was encroaching on every sensation. He pressed himself into me, my legs tightening their grip on his waist as I tried to redirect his need for me into something else. His eyes darkened as he drew nearer to me, and my hands slid to rest against his chest. I shivered at the sensation of his flesh against the palms of my hands, a desperate scream rising from the pit of my throat to something far more tangible—my own yearning for him.
At the sound of it, he let out a low growl, his eyes flickering with color as his beastly nature overcame his human nature. His heart was racing, his breathing was deeper, and his level of control was declining. With my fingertips fluttering across his collarbones and then the sides of his neck till I gripped the bottom of his jaw, I ran upwards, trying to stop the fury of his wolf, his chest heaving. His jaw clenched as he attempted to keep his wolfness away from me as he stared at me while his features changed in response to his control.
Despite his compliments regarding my appearance, he was the most beautiful creature I had ever beheld in this condition.
"Derrick, you still need to take care of my wounds." When I reminded him of what he'd done, his wolf withdrew in shame. He gazed at me, his iris glowing green.
With a shudder, he inhaled and gathered himself together once more, his hands drifting to the hold my legs had around his waist while his eyes returned to the harm he had caused.
The electric shocks of his touch went straight to the space between my thighs, and I nearly forgot how to breathe.
The heat, the dampness, and the shameless ideas are hitting me.
"Relax your legs for me." Instead, I squeezed them automatically, and he moaned at the abruptness of my violent touch. All I knew was that he was my mate, and he could heal it, but I had no idea how to deal with the sensation pressing against my core or with myself anymore.
If only I could muster the courage to ask him.
I watched as he knitted his brow, but I wasn't sure if he could smell my excitement. I couldn't seem to let go of him after only a moment of not wanting him close to me. I was far less adept at self-control than he was. All of my intense emotions and his generosity to them—knowing that I deserved none of it—seemed to intensify the heat pressing against my organs.
I felt so incredibly dependent on him because of the way he was treating me, the way he was looking at me, and the way he was touching me.
"Kylie, I can't take care of your wounds like this—you need to loosen your grip." He chastised me, and the shame of my attachment to him emerged fiercely against my cheeks.
I wanted him to care for me differently; I wanted his fingertips to caress the neediness that was beginning to bloom between my legs. I was a coward, yet my heart thudded as I saw him notice how crimson my cheeks were. I lowered my head and lowered my legs from his waist, trembling from his absence of warmth.
He untangled his body from mine, and we released our grip on one another, and I bit my tongue. I turned to stare at his hands while I tormented myself with their movement—his kind, considerate, and loving touch. I was curious about his potential partner's disposition if he was already this way. He had already shown me his hard side, but now he has also shown me his kind side. There would undoubtedly be a combination of the two.
At the moment, the mate link was performing phenomenal physical miracles on my body, and I had to resist every urge to give in.
"You seem disappointed." As I was looking down at him, he spoke in a low tone.
He avoided looking at me while he wrapped my cut with a gauze pad; perhaps I was a distraction to him just as much as he was to me because he hadn't commented on my delayed healing.
"An alpha never held themselves in transition for as long as you did, in my experience. Wolves in that state are known to become insane. I disregarded him and attempted to divert our conversation towards a different subject in an attempt to alleviate my unbearable horniness, but to no avail.
He took some time to process what I had said before turning to handle my other side.
"Kylie, I have a jealous wolf. You wanting to leave us did not sit well with him, and the only way I knew to keep him from pursuing you was to take away his ability to shift." At his raw revelation, my breath seized in my throat.
I had never believed that higher-ranking wolves had more intense mate bonds until recently. My fingers spread across the lines of his abs as my hand moved to his chest, and my focus returned to his body. Although Derrick was descended from royalty, his appearance demonstrated that his strength was not solely derived from his rank.
He hadn't even completely changed, but his half-transformed wolf had been enormous, towering over all of his troops. Not only was his fully changed wolf considerably larger, but it was also far faster and far more deadly. In both cases, my body had been crushed up against his, and I knew that his strength wasn't the only thing that impressed me.
"Is your wolf still mad at me?" I hesitated, running my fingers over the grooves in his muscles, longing to experience the sensation of pressing against him once more. "Are you still mad at me?" I spoke something hesitantly, waiting for him to answer, but he remained silent until he had completed his tending.
As soon as he had completed tending to my injuries, his intense stare lit up my face.