Page 26 of Lost and Bound
Two years didn’t seem like such a long time, until they were.
I found Calder in the kitchen as I’d expected, setting two bowls of soup on the table. He’d located the canned goods, apparently, and steam rose from generous servings of something that looked like chicken and barley.
I couldn’t believe the question hadn’t occurred to me yet. “Will this—normal food, is it enough for you?” I tried to make it sound casual, but the answer had anything but casual meaning to me.
“If the blood has the right type of magic in it…it’s not the blood itself that sustains me. Not like a vampire. It’s the magic in it that can feed me when I need extra strength, or when there’s no real food available.” He sat down in front of his bowl. “I won’t need more. Not under normal circumstances.” He glanced up at me. “I listened, while they did what they did to me. And that’s how it feels, too. I’m not craving it.”
He sounded confident about that, and…yep, that was enough for me.
I had food in front of me. And I wasn’t going to get drained again. Good enough.
I dropped into my chair and fell on the soup without a word, and I wouldn’t have bothered with a spoon if Calder hadn’t already put one by my bowl.
His disappeared even more quickly, and when I looked up from my empty bowl, he was already leaning back in his chair and watching me. Those eyes caught and held me, just the way they had when the guards shoved me into his cell, and the way they kept doing every time I let myself meet his gaze for too long.
The mate bond thrummed between us, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. It’d settled down a bit now, though, no longer frantically working to keep me alive.
And that…I didn’t know more about shifter mating magic than the average werewolf, but I hadn’t thought bonds would do that. Act independently, making their own judgments on how to balance magic and life itself between two mates. The bond had given Calder the strength to break free of the chains and magic that bound him, sucking my inherent werewolf magic out of me and pouring it into him, along with the strength he drew from consuming my blood. But then it had apparently, what, pulled some of that strength back? After he’d broken free, and he didn’t need every drop of that power anymore. Kept me alive, drawing from him. It hadn’t sounded like he’d done that himself.
But what if he had? What if he’d brought me back, sending his own strength and magic back to me through the bond? Saved me at the last moment, for no other reason than…what? Mercy? Compassion? Kindness?
If so, why hadn’t he admitted it?
And looking into those hard, cold eyes, it didn’t seem likely.
But I couldn’t tear my gaze away. My heart beat faster, and my limbs went weak, nerveless. Passive.
“You need to go back to bed.”
The words fell heavily into the silent kitchen, silent except for the ticking of the clock, which made the quiet all the more noticeable.
“I’m not sleepy.” I had to force the words out.
His eyes didn’t waver. I couldn’t see anything else.
Calder hadn’t been suggesting I go to sleep, I realized.
He hadn’t been making a suggestion at all. He’d been telling me what he expected from me.
No, dammit, no, I didn’t fucking play that way. I’d never wanted a dominant mate, probably not even a male mate, and I wouldn’t have chosen this fucked-up bastard even if I had. I’d tell him where to jump off.
Any second now, I’d tell him. That I might have ended up mated to him, and he might have put his bite on my neck, but that hadn’t made me his property, his thing to use whenever he had an erection or simply got bored.
My cock twitched in the stupid borrowed sweatpants, and my ass…those muscles tightened too, like they were anticipating being loosened up by his cock.
Instead of telling him he could go fuck himself, but definitely not me, I found myself standing up, leaving the kitchen, walking to the bedroom on wobbly legs. He followed me, a looming presence at my back. The bite mark on my neck tingled and throbbed. The scent of him enveloped me, thick in the air, dark and searing and cold, so cold.
I turned as I reached the bed and found him standing just inside the doorway. Silver-mirrored eyes. My fingers still felt too thick and heavy, but I pulled the shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor. Untied the string of the sweatpants, fingertips fumbling, and dropped those too, stepping out of them and lying back on the bed.
Calder walked away, into the bathroom. I stared at the ceiling as I listened to drawers opening and closing, and then he was back, setting something on the nightstand. I knew what it was without looking. Lube, or lotion. Something he meant to use to take me again.
It felt inevitable, and I still couldn’t open my goddamn mouth. The mate bond had to be doing this to me, but I didn’t know how or why…it had to be the mate bond, because this wasn’t me.
And it sure as fuck wasn’thim. One time getting fucked, with his lips so hot on my skin, his body around me, making me feel like something he treasured as he split me open…
My cock hadn’t hardened all the way, but I could feel that hot, weighty anticipation building in the pit of my stomach. The need to open my legs for him became nearly irresistible, a twitch in my thighs, but I didn’t move. Taking action apparently wasn’t a part of whatever this was, not for me—or at least not when he hadn’t told me what to do.
He wouldn’t kill me this time. Would he? Not after saving me the first time. Not after carrying me out of hell, destroying everything in his path, ripping them to shreds and still managing to get me out at the same time. He’d opened the other cells. Dealt with our fellow prisoners. He’d said I’d have died if he got too far from me. Had he held me close the whole time? Cradling me in those massive arms while they broke out, stole cars, probably set the place on fire, if they’d had half the rage in them as they escaped that I would have, if I’d been conscious and able to wreak my vengeance?
