Page 27 of Sold Bullied Mate

He steps back. Away from me. Cutting off the touch.

My brain hadn’t processed it as an option. Our connection, to me, felt like electricity through a live wire, connecting us, latching on and not letting us go once we started to touch.

But he heaves in a deep, shuddering breath and stands a few feet from me, his body shaking, like he’s desperately trying to regain control of himself.

My chest is heaving, skin tingling from his absence.

Then, the shame sets in, hot and sticky, climbing through my stomach and sticking to the bottom of my throat.

I threw myself at him, kissed him, and it’s clearly not what he wants. I know the biology of how things work—he’s an alpha. And my mate, no less. Which means it’s going to be a lot harder for him to stay away from me.

Even if he knows, in his logical brain, that it’s not what he wants.

I’m so humiliated I could burst into tears at this reality—that the kiss I’ve been waiting for, dreaming about, was a moment of weakness for him. An unwanted moment.

“Kira,” he finally manages to say, his hand to his mouth. When he drags his gaze up to mine, it’s tortured. “I’m sorry, I—”

“No,” I choke. “You don’t have to apologize, Dorian.”

I open my mouth to say more, to say my own apology for throwing myself at him like that, but nothing comes out. Dorian looks at me, and I look at the ground.

We stand like that quietly for ten long minutes, until finally, he sucks in a breath and opens his mouth to say something. I’m expecting him to say it’s time for me to go, that he’ll have to figure out somewhere else for me to stay, but instead, he says something I never would have guessed.

“Your brother asked about you.”

I blink stupidly. “Emin?”

What a thing to say—I obviously only have one brother. But the sudden change of topic, and the fact that Emin would ask about me, feels so sudden and strange that I’m not sure what to say.

“Yes, Emin,” Dorian laughs, thrusting a hand into his hair and meeting my eyes. “He stopped me after the meeting today and asked me about how you’re doing.”

“I … can’t believe it.”

“We’ve both grown up quite a bit, Kira.”

I blink at him again, just barely managing to stop myself from saying something likeI can see that.

“He’d like to see you,” Dorian continues. “And I’m willing to let him come over, if that’s what you want.”

When I try to swallow, I feel like I might choke. My brother, Emin, wants to see me. And Dorian is using this as a way to steer us away from the reality that we just kissed, and he wishes we hadn’t.

“Okay,” I hear myself say, though I haven’t really thought it through. The entire situation feels weird, but there’s something deep in my gut—a whole, constant missing of my family—that pulls me in the direction of saying yes to seeing Emin.

Dorian looks stiff, uncomfortable, and for some reason, I find myself thinking Emin might be a good buffer between us. So I shift my weight from one foot to the other, clear my throat, and ask, “Can we do it tonight?”

Chapter 17 - Dorian

I’m lucky my grandfather built this home with good, reliable hardwood flooring. If this was cheap laminate, I surely would have worn a groove in the wood from all the pacing.

My bedroom is washed in the deep purple of twilight, and Kira is downstairs in the kitchen, cooking something that smells amazing—sweet and zingy, savory and mouth-watering—but I’m holed up in here.

I’ll wait until Emin arrives to go downstairs, because I’m not sure I can trust myself around her until we have him between us.

As I pace, I think about the look on her face when I pulled back, how she’d stared after me with those huge pupils, her fingers stretching and curling at her sides. It took every ounce of my strength to keep from stepping back into her.

But I know, from the fact that her scent is swirling through this house, pooling thick and heady, that she’s going into her heat soon. And her behavior—kissing me, pressing her body to mine—is likely just the result of that.

After everything I’ve done to Kira Argent, I will not take advantage of her. Not when I’ve brought her into my home, and not when I haven’t done enough to apologize. To atone. For the bullying, for the night I rejected her.

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