Page 26 of Purchased

I quickly learned not to talk all about it. When I did, people mocked me or sometimes punished me. This man is trying to get me to talk, but I don’t know him nearly well enough to trust him with the details of my life, in so far as I remember them.

I don’t think he really cares about the answers anyway. I think he’s full of desire for me. I think he wants to fuck me. The girls at the orphanage knew all about that, anticipated sex with great glee. We told each other stories about what we thought it was like. None of us ever had it, of course. We were locked away from boys, not allowed out at all unsupervised.

Of course, I had a reputation for sneaking out and about. There were questions about what I did, and rumors, too. My attempts at escape were scandalous for many reasons, but mostly because I was impossible to control.

“You’re a wolf,” I say. “Like me.”

“Yes,” he smiles. “We’re all like you.”

This man is handsome, charming, and obviously rich and powerful. When he looks at me with those silver-gray eyes, when he gives me all his attention and all his desire, I feel myself melt between my thighs. But it’s the memory of last night that really turns me on.

Last night was the first time I caught the scent of my kind on the wind.

I took my wolf form last night because that’s the easiest way to run, and most of the time nobody suspects the animal running at a distance is the girl they’re looking for—but he knew it instantly.

He came after me, a full-blooded animal hunting me with inexorable intensity. I was never going to escape, no matter how far I fled. I felt that in the wind.

I never knew how much I wanted to be chased down by a male and pounced upon. I never understood how much I needed to be shown thoroughly what an alpha can do. Lying in the mud last night with him atop me, naked and furious and so afraid for some reason, as if he thought he’d already lost me—that was the most intimate moment of my life, and it is that moment that makes me want him now.

“I wish I didn’t have to be a person at all. I wish I could stay in my wolf form. It’s simpler there.”

“It is,” he agrees. “So much simpler. There is no shame. There is no conditioning. There is only the matter of what you want. What do you want now, Beatrix?”

I look into his silvered eyes, so much lighter than anybody’s eyes I’ve ever seen before, and for a moment, I get a mental image of him as his wolf self, powerful, steady, offering me the protection of his ferocity.

I melt.

“I think I want you,” I say, nervous. Words are the worst. Having to hear them is bad enough, but having to say them is a terrible ordeal.

Fortunately he does not make me keep talking. When I tell him I want him, his fingers drop from my neck to my breast. He reaches out with his other arm and kisses me deeply, drawing me closer to him with the fingers of his other hand in my hair. It is a tender, passionate embrace, but when he tightens his grip I think about how roughly he pinned me last night, and that is what makes me soak myself with desire.

Suddenly, I am so fucking horny I can hardly handle myself.

Taking my wolf form always invigorates me. It makes me feel as though I could rule the world. It reminds me that places like the orphanage are little prisons for people who consent to be imprisoned in exchange for the illusion of safety.

I told the girls the truth, but they didn’t want to believe me. I wonder if they believe me now, or if they are getting comfortable in their new prisons. The thought takes me out of the moment, makes me wonder if I, too, am just getting comfortable in a new prison.

“You are a tense little thing,” Armand purrs, looking down at me with those piercing eyes. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

I snort. I wouldn’t tell him what I was thinking if I only had two brain cells remaining.

His eyes narrow as he understands the quality and meaning of my mirth.

“I see. Won’t tell me about your past, won’t tell me about your present, won’t tell me anything of any use whatsoever.”

The air is still thick with arousal, but that doesn’t stop me from arguing. If anything, all this passion, all this primal energy makes me want to fight more.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I tell him. “I don’t care how much you spent on me. You can buy a lot of things with ten million dollars, and you should have bought them, because you can’t buy me.”

I steel myself for what I know is coming. He’s going to snap on me. He’s going to give into anger, yell at me, curse at me, possibly beat me. He might kill me.

He takes a deep breath.

“I can be patient,” he says. “You want to be difficult, that’s fine. We are new to one another, and I know you have had a hard life. In time you will see that I can be trusted.”

“I don’t want to trust you. I want you to let me go.”

It is a ridiculous thing to say. I don’t want him to let me go. I want him to hold me down and fuck me. I want him to surge inside me, the cock I saw in the bath last night thick and hard and claiming me in ways I have never been claimed before. But it’s easier to tell him to fuck off than it is to ask him to fuck me.

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