Page 52 of Prey for Me

“You,” I repeat, looking her dead in her eyes. And for the first time in a week, I see a fire of life flickering in them, no longer dead and glassy and despondent.

But then, she closes them, clutching her forearms as if she’s protecting herself from my desire. And it makes me sick because it’s all my fault that Grace can’t believe me, won’t believe me, and feels as though she has to shield herself from a lie. She lifts her hand to her forehead and rubs it in slow, concentric circles as I’m forced to wait.

Without opening her eyes, still massaging whatever migraine I induced, she asks me, “What do you really want in exchange? Money? I can get access to it. Supplies, well, I–”

I answer, “No, I wantyou,Grace, and only you,” before she can catch her breath.

My confession is instant, and I don’t bother to deny it. Her breath hitches, and her eyes spring open. We stare at each other, alone in the hot springs, only the sounds of our panting breaths, and I’m sure the thudding of my heart is audible in the air. It’s as if the island and all its residents have disappeared, and we’re in a world where there’s only me and my omega.

“Me?” she asks as if she didn’t hear me for the fourth time.

“Yes, you. Take me to your nest, and I’ll convince them to walk on water, if you want. But first, I want you. Alone,” I elaborate the best I can without giving everything away.

She looks off in the distance for a long time, sporting Nakoa’s mating mark and now Leo’s on the right side of her neck exposed to me—something ugly and wretched claws at my heart, and my bond to my brothers breaks just a bit. I know I’m being cruel. After everything her father’s taken from me, I thought I’d feel something even if Mother Nature took my revenge on my behalf. But I can’t even feel shame anymore, just a cold emptiness that fans out from my soul at the thought of Faith truly being dead.

I don’t know her, but if she’s better than her sister, like Grace claims… I thought I was sentenced to hell, but maybe evil has always been inside me. To think I ever wanted Grace to crumble like this makes me physicallysick.

Grace takes far too long to answer, and I shield my eyes with my hand. Didn’t Nakoa say I’d eat my words one day? By being so absolute that I would never mate a Wilder? Well, I hope he’s laughing right now while he forages with Leo, because I’m choking on a banquet of regret, a five-course meal with dessert at that.

“Fine,” she whispers so softly that I mistake it for a whisper of air at first. “Fine, you can have me all to yourself tonight, yeah? But don’t bite.”

It’s the best offer I get, and I take it without looking back. Grace allows me to hold her hand as she leads me back to camp.At the entrance, she forces me to wait. So I do, wet, craving another more sickly sweet dampness on my skin. When she comes back, her face is flush despite her tan, and she peers up at me through her long eyelashes.

“Don’t laugh, bastard. This is what you asked for, and I don’t have much to work with right now.”

I don’t know what she means until she leads me all the way to the back, near the dying fire. I freeze as she falls to her knees in a sea of white, naked, wet, and looks up at me over her shoulder with expectations etched all over her heart-shaped face.

“This,” I whisper, pain constricting my scarred chest, “is your nest?”

She nods softly, gathering a quilt and more pillows into a bed of sorts around her.

They’re not fit for her, the barely clean fabrics, nor the dim cave we call home as we trek across our sector. My bond brothers and I have been tainted by this place. We belong to its filth. But our omega shines so brightly, it’s blinding, as she continues to gaze up at me through her thick, black eyelashes that flutter ever so softly.

“Do you like it?” she whispers, and it’s like a caress.

I clench my jaw and then my fists, desire flooding my veins, and my burn scars ache. I should hate her nest. I should hate her. After all the unforgivable shit her father has done means she can’t be mine. To worship? To protect? To father a family with?

Nonsense!

It’s simply too cruel a fate to fall for the daughter of my worst enemy.

But, as light streams through the cave mouth, she looks divine under the glow. Like the traces of starlight I used to cling to in my prison cell at night, imagining a better world. The beauty silenced my nightmares and kept me sane when I escaped onto the island proper with Nakoa and Leo. And for once, I don’t seemy little white rabbit as prey. I don’t see her father in those soulful brown eyes, like smoky quartz.

No, all I see is her, my precious omega.

Mine!

“I love it,” I say, marching over to her, crossing the threshold of our nest, as I lower my body overtop her warm, soft, golden-brown tanned skin.

I can give her only this, my body, in exchange for quelling the rebellion brewing inside me. I’ll give her the world if she lets me inside of her one more time.

Never my heart. Never my love. Despite the words ‘I love you,’ clawing at my throat, desperate to come out.

All my devotion threatens to come flooding out as I claim my omega with the force of the raging storm that just passed us by.

Even if she hates me, I need her to, “Look at me.”

There’s something so intoxicating about her scent. So much so that it drives me to the brink of going feral. A tremor of lust coils in my gut before it strikes my cock like a bolt of lightning as my omega rolls her hips to meet me, my hands digging into her thin hips. Too thin. I’ll feed her well after I fuck her senseless tonight. I’m thankful now that I followed Nakoa and Leo’s advice to tote the pillows over the mountaintop so Grace has a bit of comfort while we’re forced to make camp at this base or that. It’s a gift to be offered anything by her, especially an invitation to her nest.

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