Page 45 of Lost and Bound
“I guess I didn’t prove a goddamn thing,” I muttered.
I expected him to laugh at me again, or gloat about it. He’d seemed to find my attempts to get my way kind of amusing so far.
But he only gave my hand a squeeze and sighed, his breath ruffling my hair.
“I’m glad you didn’t.” He paused, and his chest rose as he drew in a deep breath, like he was bracing himself. “I would’ve kept up my end of the deal. Fucked you without holding back. I didn’t want to.”
Because he didn’t think I could take it? Did he see me as that weak—as pathetic as I really was?
“You were willing to kill me. You didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died.” His fingers felt good between mine, thick and strong, like his cock inside my body. I hated that I couldn’t make myself let go. “And now you’re obsessed with this idea that I’m your—responsibility.” I spat the word, because it tasted awful. “A pack of two. Because you’re in a better position dealing with other packs, with other shifters, if you’re not a lone alpha—”
“I didn’t give a fuck if anyone lived or died, least of all me,” he retorted, cutting me off just as I started to build up a good rant. “I hadn’t seen another living thing in six years that I didn’t want dead. Do you fucking understand?No one. And I was never exactly the kindest person to begin with. Then they threw you in my cell. You smelled like prey. You were probably there to spy on me, or…some new way to fuck with my head. If I’d protected you, gotten attached, they’d have tortured you to death in front of me.”
My head spun, everything I’d thought and felt about the way he’d treated me when I first landed in his cell reorienting dizzily.
It made sense, it made such horrible sense. They would have, I could imagine it vividly. And his total unconcern over whether I was dead or alive, lying next to him on that filthy pallet…as long as he treated me like an insignificant plaything, like something to use and abuse, the guards wouldn’t give a fuck. Theyhadn’tgiven a fuck. Their lack of concern had ultimately allowed us to escape.
And then he’d killed them all, without mercy, while he carried me out of that place, keeping me safe from any further harm. Probably risking his own life to do it, because it would’ve been a fuck of a lot easier and safer for him to take on several guards and at least one fairly powerful warlock without having to protect my deadweight at the same time.
And he’d rescued the other prisoners. Three other beings were safe and alive and able to go home because of him.
It was my turn to squeeze his hand back, because I didn’t think I could’ve forced words out through my tight, scratchy throat if my life depended on it.
Six years. He’d been there three times as long as I had.
Six fucking years, oh my fucking gods. And he’d still had the presence of mind and the strength of body and of will to save me. That place had drained all the life out of me, all the fortitude. And he’d come out the other side even stronger than before.
“I know you think I think you’re too weak to take me,” he went on at last, again with that uncanny ability to read me.
I couldn’t be transmitting that much through the bond, could I? Emotions could bleed through when bonds were strong, and there were legends of shifters hearing their mates’ actual thoughts, sometimes, in moments of high stress. But I couldn’t feel him like that, and bonds were almost always even in terms of the mates’ senses. They allowed you to glimpse your mate’s mind, or they didn’t, and that cut both ways.
“I don’t think you’re weak,” he said. “You survived there. You still wanted to live. You wanted to escape. You’re so fucking brave—Jared. I didn’t want to kill you. You almost died, and I was holding you in my arms when I ripped that collar off, feeling your life slip away.” He stopped abruptly, his arm tightening around me. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met,” he added quietly, and for once that deep, menacing rasp sounded nothing so much as comforting.
“I could take you.” I swallowed hard.
Fuck. That wasn’t what I’d meant to say. Not at all. I could’ve thanked him for the compliment, or denied that I’d been thinking that at all, or any one of a number of things.I could take you. Christ. Like I was begging for his cock and his knot after all—begging for real, this time.
Finally a little tremor of amusement went through him, the ghost of a laugh. He took some of the sting out of it by ducking his head to kiss my shoulder. Gods, that felt good. How could a mouth that terrifying feel so incredible, caressing my skin?
“You’re weirdly insistent on that for someone who’d never gotten fucked before I put my cock in you.” That amusement carried through into his voice, and my eyes burned. All that bullshit about how brave I was, and how I wasn’t weak, and he was laughing at me for being a needy little bitch.
Well, fuck him.
“It’s the mate bond,” I said, desperately spinning my wheels, looking for an out. And it had to be the mate bond, right? That, and… “And I’m feeling…off-balance, okay? My family thought I was dead. Theystillthink I’m dead, even though I’m right fucking here, except maybe Ian, and I’m wondering if he’s so desperate to get his cousin back that he’d sort of try to overlook it if I’m some kind of creepy magical construct. I never wanted this before. I won’t want it after we break the bond, either.”
A heavy silence fell. “Arik’s a shaman now,” Calder said at last, sounding neutral again, without a trace of the emotions he’d been letting show so freely—freely for him, anyway. “He could probably break the bond. The other, Nate. He smells like magic too. Between the two of them I doubt it would be an issue.”
I swallowed hard. Breaking the bond…I’d suggested it. It was logical.
“Nate’s a warlock. He’s fairly powerful, I think, even though he didn’t have much training, because his—” I cut myself off, realizing it hadn’t been spelled out explicitly in our conversation back at the house where they’d found us. No one had bothered to explain, because all of us were all too aware, and we’d forgotten Calder didn’t have the same background. And I couldn’t hide it, even though I wished I could. “Jonathan Hawthorne was his father.”
The silence after that went from heavy to crushing.
When Calder broke it, his voice could’ve cut through steel.
“Nate said you were his ex.” I stayed silent, and I could almost hear him thinking, putting the pieces together. Some of his emotions were seeping through the mate bond after all, now that I was focusing on it, and they weren’t pretty. I shied away from looking at them too closely. Shame and guilt coursed through me as I thought about what I’d done. And Calder was going to despise me as much as I despised myself, once he thought it through. “You were working with Hawthorne against his own son? Your lover?”
“Yeah.” Further explanation wasn’t possible. I didn’t have a good excuse.
