Page 23 of Magic Hunted
“I have no family. Definitely no friends. There’s no one who can be used against me. Don’t you see, Savvas? If he knows about you. About us. He’ll use you all against me. I can’t have that. I won’t!” I said.
“I’ll make him pay for what he’s done to you,” he rasped.
I blinked back unshed tears, wishing the pressure behind my eyes would fade. Where was his anger? Why did he sound so understanding?Where was the hate?
“I deserve to go to the bottom of the seven hells, Savvas. The things I’ve done…the people I’ve wronged. Not just panthers, but wolves and dragons.” My voice was hoarse but I forced the words out. I had to make him understand.
“You were forced by the worst kind of predator. He singled you out. Preyed on you and used you to his advantage,” Savvas said.
I didn’t want his understanding. I wanted his fury. His loathing. “Why don’t you hate me for this? Because that’s what I’d feel if my mate was Titan’s spy. I’d detest them. I’d be disgusted. Filled with revulsion. I’d hate that fate had tried to bond me with someone like me.”
He didn’t say a word. Just peered down at me with a storm in his eyes. I pushed away from him and his arm dropped from my waist. My chest heaved, glad he’d let me go and hating that he had. It was all kinds of messed up, but that was me. Messed up and hopeless and rotten to the core.
“Did you want to do any of those things?” Savvas said.
“What?” I gasped.
“When Titan asked you to spy on people and…and worse, did you want to do any of it?” he said.
Helpless rage filled me. I wanted him to hate me because that would be less painful than the agony swallowing me whole. I fisted my hands and slammed them on his chest. “It doesn’t matter if I had a choice or not. I still did what he wanted me to do. I did it all!”
Tears ran unbidden down my cheeks and all he did was curl his fingers around my wrists to stop me from hitting him, overpowering me so easily.
“Haera, stop and listen to me!” The alpha command in his voice made me stop. I blinked up at him, panting and breathless.
“Hate me!” I yelled.
“I’ll never hate you. Not even anything close. I won’t hate anyone who had to make impossible choices,” Savvas said.
“I could have refused him. I could have chosen death, but I didn’t. I chose to put my life above others.” Surely he could see that? I made the same choice over and over.
Savvas pressed his lips together before he spoke. “Did you tell him everything you saw? Did you do everything he tasked you with?”
I never told Titan the full truth. Only what he asked for. If he found out, he would have tortured me for days but it was my only way to reclaim some control, however little it may have been. I lifted my chin, ignoring my limbs that wouldn’t stop shaking. “It still doesn’t make up for what I’ve done, Savvas. Nothing will.”
Savvas pinned me with the storm in his eyes. “This is on him, my heart. He made you responsible for his actions. He manipulated your actions and he’s manipulating your mind. You’re exactly where he wants you to be. A perfect willing sacrifice who believes she’s responsible. He let you think you had a choice when there was never one to begin with.”
My chest heaved as I sorted through his words. “I don’t want your understanding or your pity.”
His nostrils flared and his caramel eyes glowed. Fur skated along his arms before it disappeared into smooth, tanned skin. “I don’t pity you. Far from it.”
“Then what in the hells do you feel?” If that look on his face wasn’t pity, then I had no clue what it was.
“If my words aren’t clear enough, then this will be.” He tugged me to his chest. My breasts slammed into a wall of hard muscle and his lips crashed against mine. This was not a soft kiss. Or a kiss that teased and tempted for more. This was a kiss that showed me exactly what he felt. Gone were the gentle touches of before. They were nearly brutal, yet my nipples crystalized into hard nubs, shooting a blazing path of desire straight to my core.
He tilted his head, swiping his tongue along the seam of my lips, demanding me to let him inside. My lips had other ideas to my brain, but that’s all he needed. His tongue swept into my mouth when I parted my lips, claiming, owning, commanding. Our teeth clashed and he crushed me hard enough to bruise my lips. His soul-light stroked mine, no longer asking but demanding to be heard.
“It’s not your fault, Haera,” he growled.
He was wrong. Titan may have commanded me, but I’d carried out his tasks better than anyone else. His lips landed on my mouth before I could argue. His tongue clashed with mine. His fingers plowed through my damp hair, locking my nape in the cradle of his palm.
“Tell me it’s not your fault.” His lips glistened, and his chest heaved. His soul-light stroked mine, as insistent as his kiss.
A kiss could not scrub away years of guilt. I couldn’t give into the temptation. Didn’t deserve the type of forgiveness he’d shower me with.
His arms were a cage I couldn’t get out of. He swallowed my noise of impatience with another kiss, stroking my desire into something too hard to resist.
I had to resist, but his whiskey and cinnamon taste flooded my mouth, and the pureness of his soul-light seeped past my best defenses. My pussy throbbed, wet heat gathered in my core and I felt myself loosening against him, falling against the hardness of his body and responding in full to his kiss. I slicked my tongue against his, groaning at the wet slide, and my defenses crumbled as though they’d never existed.
