Page 42 of The Alpha's Warlock
And that was not happening. He waswarm. I wassleepy. No way. I rolled over, doing my best impression of a needy, grabby octopus. Would it be easier to keep him in bed if I had eight limbs and those cool little suction things? Probably, but I managed anyway, wrapping my hands around one big bicep and flinging a leg over his.
Ian stilled, halfway out of the bed and halfway underneath me.
“I have to go deal with Matt,” he said, voice strained. “C’mon, Nate, let me up. I’ll make coffee.”
“Warm,” I mumbled, and tugged on his arm. He wasn’t going anywhere. The gap he’d made in my cocoon of blankets was letting in freezing-cold air, and it needed to be fixed, stat. Everywhere my skin touched his, comfort and heat and coziness seeped into me. “Coffee later. Come back.”
I pressed my face into the side of his chest with a happymmmm— and Ian wrenched his arm out of my hands, jerked out from under me, and tumbled out of bed, staggering a few steps away.
“What are you — what the hell?” I gaped up at him, all my sleepiness fled in a burst of adrenaline. Ian looked crazed, his face red and his chest heaving, his cock half-hard, and his fists clenched by his sides. No claws, at least, but I still sat up and drew the blankets around my chest, as if that would help if he wolfed out on me.
“Are you trying to fucking kill me?” Ian shouted, his eyes blazing. “Do you hate me that much, seriously? I don’t — I don’tgetit, Nate, why the fuck are you doing this to me?”
I clutched the blankets tighter, wondering if my hair was blowing back from the force of his anger. What was he talking about — hate him? “I don’t hate you! You hate me! And what am I doing that’s so bad? I mean, you’d have to really, really hate me if you don’t even want me touching you, but —”
“Of course I want you touching me,” he ground out, his teeth hardly a millimeter apart. “That’s the fucking problem. And you fucking know it. But you don’t want it. You let me be with you last night because you were too fucking tired not to need me, but you want to break the bond. And now you’ve gotten some rest. So again. What. The fuck. Are you doing?”
“Ian. You’re freaking me out a little.” My voice shook, because hell, he was freaking me out alot. I’d started to shiver, and it wasn’t because the shack was like an icebox in the morning and the sun had barely come up. “I don’t understand — you hated it that Jared was with me. You didn’t want to bond with me. And now you don’t even want to be anywhere near me? So telling me you don’t hate me is stupid —” Oh, crap, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that anymore, but the word was already out there. I swallowed and forged on. “Because I already know you do. It’s obvious. It was always obvious.”
Ian stared at me, his anger visibly draining away, his fists and jaw unclenching. Something else replaced that rage, something that lit his eyes with an emotion I’d never seen in him. “When you told Hawthorne I hated you,” he said at last, his voice unsteady, “I thought you were lying your ass off to get him to agree to do what you said.”
“Why bother to lie when the truth worked just fine?” Bitterness wasn’t all that attractive, but I couldn’t help myself. “You hated me, so you wouldn’t care what happened to me once the bond magic wore off.”
“Nate.” He said my name like a sigh, like a prayer, like it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. I gripped my blankets like a lifeline, my knuckles going numb, afraid to move or speak or do anything to break whatever spell he’d cast with that one word. Ian stepped forward, carefully, slowly, taking pains not to startle me, and then crouched down by the side of the bed so that we were eye to eye. He looked at me steadily, more serious than I’d ever seen him, but his hands were trembling where they rested on the edge of the bed. “Nate. I never hated that Jared was with you. I hated thatyouwere withhim. I hated him. I hated myself for hating him. I hated everyone in the fucking worldexceptfor you.”
Ian had spoken words, actual words in English, but they didn’t compute, like my brain had shut off all of its language functions and decided to interpret everything as meaningless sound.
I stared into space, not seeing Ian, not seeing the four walls around me, totally lost. Ian hated Jared. Not me, Jared. For being with me? But not because I was a warlock, not because I wasn’t good enough for an Armitage?
I tuned back in, only to catch the tail end of someone mumbling, and Ian’s shocked face. Fuck. I’d said something out loud. Rewinding in my head I realized — oh, gods, I’d said all of it out loud.
“You thought…oh, fuck, baby, you thoughtyouweren’t good enough?” Ian’s voice cracked on the last word, and the next thing I knew he was on the bed and wrapped around me, his arms like a vise holding me against his broad chest. “Never. Never. Jesus fucking Christ, you’re the best thing in the world. You’re everything. I always thought so, from day fucking one. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you.”
Every word was like an antidote dripped into a poisoned wound, balm for years of misery and loneliness. Ian felt that way about me? Ian had felt that way about me foryears? Everything I thought I knew about him was nothing but chaos now, a muddle of assumptions and misunderstandings and missed opportunities. It would take me time, more time than I had right then, to sort through it all and try to figure out how to relate to him, now that he’d detonated every one of my misconceptions.
And — well, that explained the creepy staring. I started to laugh, muffled against the planes of his chest.
Ian stiffened. He thought I was laughing at him. Oh, fuck, hethought I was laughing at him. The breath stopped in my lungs. Making a confession like that, and then being mocked for it — that would be the worst, and of course the way I’d always treated him would make it seem like a pretty likely scenario.
For once, words had deserted me completely. Nothing I could say seemed good enough.
I pulled back, reached up and caught his face in my hands, and hauled him down until I could mold my mouth to his.
I kissed him with everything I had, every drop of regret and hope and joy and disbelief, nibbling at his lower lip and stroking his tongue with mine, and drinking him in as I poured out my own feelings into him.
Ian didn’t move, frozen like a statue. And then, between one moment and the next, he lost it, pushing me down onto the bed with a low growl and devouring me, kissing me back like I’d never even dared to imagine being kissed. I struggled to get my legs out from under him and the blankets, wrapping them around his waist once they were free. My arms went around his shoulders. Our cocks rubbed together, hot electric friction that had me arching up, tearing myself out of the kiss to moan, loud and shameless.
Ian moved down to my throat, my collarbones, my chest, nipping and sucking and licking like a madman, like he had to taste every bit of me that second. I writhed under him, completely lost.
“Nate,” he said, lifting his head. His eyes glowed golden-blue, the color of a sunset reflecting from the sea. “You want this. Tell me you want this. If you don’t — I can’t — I can’t do this again with you not wanting me.”
“I wanted you,” I said a little desperately. Honesty clogged my throat, making it so hard to get the words out. His unhappiness and confusion surged through the mate bond, and I knew I had to get this right. “I did want you. I do.”
He bent back down, sucking a bruising kiss just above my navel, and I buried my hands in his thick hair. I knew it wasn’t enough, that he wanted more, but I didn’t have a road map for this. I’d never had a lover I trusted.
Apparently it was enough for now, because he went back to work with single-minded intensity, leaving words aside in favor of showing me. I wanted to reciprocate, but every time I tried to sit up, or to turn over, he pushed me back, gently but inexorably. By the time he worked his way down between my thighs, I was already panting, cock curving back toward my stomach and pleading for attention.
He bypassed it completely. “Ian! Ian, please, come on, please just touch —” I let out a yelp of shock followed by a groan of something more than pleasure as he dipped below my balls and flicked his tongue over my hole. I flailed, but he held me down, his arm immovable across my abdomen, and thrust his tongue inside me.
