Page 96 of Alien God

“You don’t hate me?’ she asked, so astonished that she stopped crying for a moment. “Well, I hate you.”

“Clearly,” I said sardonically. “That’s obviously why you’re clinging to me so.”

She sucked in a wet-sounding breath and scrambled out of my lap. Some stupid instinct I could not quash made me regret my words, made me regret that she was no longer in my arms. Even my cock was being stupid at the moment, straining for her through my trousers, as if the curve of her hip still pressed there, even though she’d gone.

“You should have told me.” Her words were an accusation from across the bed as she sat up against the headboard. Though I could have grabbed her with very little effort, it felt as if she was in another world entirely, across a great expanse of fur wider than any universe.

“Told you what? That you could not take a lover, have children?” My own disillusionment was rising now. “It is the same for me. I can never find my true bride, my fated mate. Never. I’ll never have a son, as I always dreamed I would.”

“Oh, please!” Torrance cried, her eyes flashing in the low firestone light. “Aiko told me. She told me that you become a mortal when you claim your true mate. You’re just afraid of dying, that’s why you need me instead of your real bride. Don’t make it sound like we’re the same. You’re choosing your future. Mine was taken from me.”

“That’s what you think?” I asked, keeping very still, freezing everything down when what I wanted to do was explode. “You think I’m avoiding my fated mate and trapping you in this bargain because I’m afraid of dying?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Torrance didn’t look pleased with my answer. Her eyes were hard gold points with black in the middle.

“That’s because you’re immortal. How can you be afraid of something you have no concept of? People like me,” – she smacked her hand to her chest, making the silk of her robe rustle and expose more skin – “we have to fight every day to survive. It could all end in an instant.” Her voice cracked, then got quiet. “I was dying when you found me.”

“But you didn’t die,” I reminded her, more forcefully than perhaps was necessary, “precisely because I found you.”

“Well, maybe you should have left me there!” she cried. “It isn’t like you’ve saved me.”

My insides went dark and off-kilter. Like everything was sliding to one side, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my balance. In an instant, I was above her, on my knees, my hands planted on the headboard on either side of her.

“Do you wish that you were dead instead of with me?”

She did not answer, only stared up at me, all hurting honeyed fire.

“Answer me, Torrance!” My voice grated. I sounded desperate, delirious. I sounded mad – I heard myself, and I knew I did – but I kept on going. “Answer me, now! Would you rather be dead than with me?”

Something in her expression cracked. I thought that she might weep again, but with remarkable steadiness, she just said, “No.”

Relief spun dizzily inside me. Until she added, “Tell me the real reason you won’t find your mate.”

And when she dies it will be by her husband’s hand and blade.

I couldn’t tell her.

I couldn’t even say the words. So, I settled on something that was true even if it was not the main reason.

“It would take too long,” I said. “I don’t know where she is, who she is. She might not even be born yet!”

I was not sure that Torrance looked convinced, her eyes scanning me, her mouth tight. Her long hair was in a wild disarray about her shoulders, her cheeks showing tracks from her tears. Some of those tracks went right down her neck, leading my gaze to her delicate collarbone, down further to where the red silk of her robe parted, showing the space between the luscious curves of her breasts. Heat flooded me, and I gripped the headboard, denying my body its sudden need to lower, to bury my face in that opening. Her scent was stronger than it had ever been, winding through my limbs, warming my spine until my tail twitched and my wings snapped. Her legs were bent and spread, creamy white lines with their apex obscured by the silk.

This time, I could not stop myself. My body moved as if governed by another master, one whose name was not Wylfrael, one who had no discipline, no power, no control. One of my hands drifted downward to her bare knee, my thumb skimming inward, up her smooth thigh.

Her breath caught. “What are you doing?”

“Tell me to stop, and I will stop,” I said hoarsely.

I hated that even my voice was affected by her. My breath coming ragged and harsh just from touching her knee. I wanted to blame her for it, to make it all her fault, but I knew that I could not. Something in me had weakened, had worsened. I saw her hopes and desires for the future and wanted to strike them down. To kill them. Until there was only me, standing among the ruins of her life.

But perhaps I was not the only one. Because she did not tell me to stop. Even as my hand moved upward, my thumb nudging at the silken place where her thigh met her groin, she did not say the word. My entire body was taut. I gripped the headboard so tightly I feared it may crack, merely so that I didn’t unleash my crushing desire upon her small body.

I lifted my hand from her skin and flung apart the robe.

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