Page 28 of Betrayed Auctioned Mate

I cut him off, my voice more forceful than I want it to sound. “You didn’t try hard enough, Ado. You left me to rot inthat place. For weeks. You never came back. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

“I didn’t have a choice!” he snaps, his frustration spilling over. “I was out of my mind with that head injury, barely able to think straight, let alone find you. I would’ve come back for you if I could, but nobody knew where you were, or if you’d even survived—”

His words hit me like a sucker punch to the jaw, but I’m so angry, too hurt to let them sink in.

“You could’ve found a way,” I say bitterly. “You could’ve tried harder. But you didn’t. And I was the one who paid for it.”

In Ado’s eyes, I see the truth. I know he isn’t lying to me at that moment. Implicitly, I know that he couldn’t if he tried. But it’s not enough. It’s too late.

“Keira, please,” he whispers, stepping closer. “You have to believe me. I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped wanting to—”

But the words die in his throat, and I can see the frustration in his eyes. He’s trying so hard to explain, but it’s not enough. It can’t be.

“I can’t do this, Ado,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t go back to that place. Not with you.”

I turn away, ready to close the door on him, on everything, but he grabs my arm. His touch is electric. It almost sends me out of my body.

I look up at him. He stares into my eyes andintome, and he sees me somehow as something nobody has seen me as for a very, very long time. It skewers through me, the truth of how he knows me, how badly he wants me. He’d kill to have me. I see it all.

Before I can stop myself, I step toward him, closing the distance between us. His breath hitches, and as if frozen, we just stand there, staring at each other, the air between us unbearably tight.

He grabs my face in his hands and kisses me.

I close my eyes and sink like a stone in a river. It’s desperate, raw—a fraying knot of need and frustration comes apart in our hands, enmeshing and then releasing everything we haven’t said and everything we’ve been holding back all this time. In the heat of his lips, the taste of his musk, I remember a thousand things I had forgotten. The warmth of his hand on my leg in the barracks. The fear in his eyes in the dark as he fought to protect me before I was taken. The flare of his nostrils at some joke I told what feels like a million years ago now, lifetimes away from us, but somehow, it never left.

I grasp Ado’s neck, threading my fingers up through the back of his hair. His fingers come around my waist, tugging the small of my back, pulling me closer, and I let myself get lost in it, in the heat of him, in the way his lips move against mine like he’s trying to make up for every second we lost.

We stagger backward into my room. I kick the door closed behind us with one foot as Ado snags an arm tighter around my back and pulls my body against his, my hips flush against the side of his leg. I feel his hardness against me.

He kisses down the side of my mouth to my throat. I hear myself gasp his name but don’t remember consciously deciding to.

“Oh God,” I hear myself moaning. “Oh, God.”

Ado sweeps me off my feet—literally. He staggers to the bed, and we land, his body on top of mine, on the rumpled covers.

“You’re certain?” he asks. And I know Ado well enough to know that even though I can stop at any time—that with a single word, I can end this—he will only ask me this one time.

I nod. I kiss him hard. He bites my lip, and I feel his tongue flush against my teeth while his other hand wrestles with my button-down shirt, until he gives up, pulling away and tearing it open.

In my right mind, I might have told him off for that. But I don’t. I’m so wet. I’ve never been this aroused in my life; I’m sure of it.

Ado’s large, warm hand skitters down my front. He looks up at me one last time. His eyes are so dark with arousal that he’s halfway to wolf, transforming without transforming. He’s pure instinct, a live wire. He’d devour me if he could.

I reach behind to unclip my bra. Straddling me, Ado whips off his t-shirt in one smooth motion. His torso shines with perspiration in the faint golden light of the bedside lamp on its lowest setting. As he pants, I see the warm glow ripple over the tight muscles of his stomach, corded like rope, running hot with anticipation.

“Ado,” I groan. “Ado,please…”

I arch up off the bed as he touches my chest with one hand. With the other, Ado throws his shirt aside. When did he take his pants off? My head is hazy with lust. I fumble with the front of his boxers, feeling his excitement pressing against the black fabric.

He squeezes my breast hard, and I keen. The danger in his eyes makes me feel more wanted than I can ever remember feeling.

“You’re still mine?” he asks me.

I nod desperately. “Yours.” I don’t know if it’s even true. I just say it because I need him and think I’d say anything he wanted me to.

Ado rolls my nipple between his finger and thumb viciously. Then he releases me and reaches down toward my hips, pulling me further down on the mattress, almost manhandling me. Positioning me.

He fumbles with the drawstring of my pajama pants, and I reach down to help him, our shaking hands tangling above my heat. He pulls down my pants, then my underwear.

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