Page 63 of Love Bites Hard

He surfaced, and when he disappeared from the water, I focused on the top long enough to realize he’d gotten in the boat I’d seen tied to the dock so many times.

It either belonged to him, or he’d commandeered it. Both seemed equally possible.

“Do you realize the situation we’re in?”he growled into my mind.“We can spend the entire day here while I try to fish you out and haul you back to our room. Or you can just come up here and talk to me.”

“When has that ever worked for me with you? Every time we talk, you end up basically telling me that what I feel and want doesn’t matter compared to what you feel and want. Why should I give in to you yet again, and give you even more power over me?”

“I have no fucking power over you,”he snarled back.“When have you ever done what I wanted?”

“You’re holding me captive in your pack. Forcing me to sleep in your room, despite my lack of comfort here and my repeated requests for you to share it. Only feeding me when you want to. You bound my mind to yours and your pack without asking me or warning me.”I paused for a moment, my body trembling slightly with my anger, before I went on.

“You’ve left me to deal with the pack’s link—hearing half of them despise me and half obsess over me, daily—on my own. I’ve tried to be patient and understanding, but the only thing you’ve ever done for me is ask my sisters to come for the day. You don’t even call me by the name I choose to go by. Everything is always about you. So don’t fucking try to tell me that you don’t have power over me. I agreed to be your mate, but I’ve been dragged into the rest of this shit unaware and without any semblance of a say in it.”

He snarled into my mind.

When I focused on him through the link, I could feel his chest heaving as he sat on the floor of the boat, his massive legs sprawled out in front of him. Even more than that, I could feel his intense shock at my words.

He genuinely hadn’t realized, or didn’t believe, what I’d said.

I added,“My power over whether or not we have sex is the only control I have in this situation, and you took that away from me yesterday when you left me on our bed. So no, I’m not going to get out of the water and talk to you. I’m going to stay here as long as I want. Maybe I’ll even get myself off, because at least down here, you can’t try to take charge of my body. You started this war, but you won’t win it.”

My eyes were stinging when I stopped talking, but I ignored the feeling. I couldn’t cry underwater. Iwouldn’tcry underwater.

Porter didn’t reply, not that I expected him to. What was he going to do, declare me his yet again and try to force me to the surface of the water?

It wouldn’t work.

A few minutes passed, and he didn’t get back in the water.

Instead, I felt the boat start to move.

It crossed the lake and stopped at the dock.

I wasn’t sure whether to cry or thank him when he didn’t get back in the water or demand anything else from me. So, I didn’t do either.

And when I tapped into his mind closely enough to see him sit down next to my bikini, beneath a tree, I finally let out a long breath.

He hadn’t won again.

I wasn’t going to let him win again.

After the sunset and the moon rose, I finally admitted to myself that I was starving, food-wise. And that I needed to feed emotion-wise too.

The second part was a predicament, because I was not going to drink from Porter until I had no other choice. I was used to keeping my magic under wraps when I was hungry, but the kind of hunger that accompanied spending a day and a half pushing my magic into the water around me was a different kind of beast.

My power was going to radiate, pulling everyone nearby toward me no matter how hard I tried to control it. There was no way around it. And Porter would probably think it was another battle in our war.

Maybe it was.

I didn’t know.

I was just exhausted, and I didn’t want to be the one to accept defeat by doing a walk of shame out of the water.

His mind brushed against mine so gently, I wondered if I’d imagined it for a moment.

“Izzy?”he finally asked. It was the first time he’d ever used my nickname. Maybe I should’ve found it big or important, but it just felt hollow.

“What?”

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