Page 75 of The Alpha's Fake Mate
Chapter Seventeen
Holland
I lay with my head resting on Orion’s chest, listening to the life-force of his body thrum. The room, edged in amber light as the afternoon waned, made me feel safe and guarded well, bathed in a golden security I had won when I let myself feel again.
My stomach growled but I didn’t want food. I just wanted more Orion.
Orion had a way of making me think differently about myself. Back on the farm, Sen would have probably said he was the best medicine I could have ever received. Everything I thought I was after the attack—tough, hard, hateful, nonchalant, stubborn, cold—melted away in the onslaught of Orion’s love.
I still remembered the attack in great detail—how that mad Alpha’s hands hurt, how he held me down so hard I couldn’t breathe, how he pummeled and tossed me around until I was dazed, until I was too passed out to be not compliant—but thankfully the immediacy of that memory, and the pain and fear associated with it were beginning to fade.
It was hard to describe how the memory still made me feel. Sometimes my heart was a hollow cave. Before coming to Orion’s gigantic home, I had always felt as if I were one step away from cardiac arrest. Like I was balanced on a tightrope across an ancient and vast abyss, and I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back.
But now I saw my way forward better and better with each day.
We hadn’t formed a mate-bond to supersede Bosk’s yet, but I truly began to believe it could be done. I hadn’t told Orion yet, but I felt that we were right for each other. Perfect together. We’d find a way.
So far, I hadn’t felt anything from the supposed weak bond, no unusual force or tingle, nothing from that monstrous source. I hoped it would remain that way until Orion’s next Burn. But that wasn’t for another month.
I worried about that, but told myself over and over again it would turn out fine. It was Orion, after all. He might be only twenty-three, but he behaved far more mature and aware of himself than his age, and his concern for my well-being so far trumped his own.
I had no worries about his Burn and forming a mate-bond with him.
He slept at my side, one arm flung over my naked waist, his beautiful face relaxed and content.
But of course the idyllic silence couldn’t last.
A buzzing sounded from the room’s floor. I leaned over the side of the bed. The noise was coming from Orion’s pants.
He lifted his head, one arm propping him, and said, “What?”
“Your phone.” I gestured toward the floor. “That’s awful. You don’t have a pretty song programmed on there like everyone else?”
“I don’t know. No one ever calls me. And you… you only message me. Or email.”
“Old habits,” I said.
He slid partway off the bed, exposing his beautiful ass as he fumbled to pick up the phone.
He brought it back up into the bed and my lovely view was destroyed as he pulled the cover to his waist and sat up against the headboard, staring down at the screen.
“Anything important?” I asked.
“It’s my lawyer.”
“Saben?”
He nodded, poking at the screen.
“You’re ignoring me. What’s he say?”
“He left a message.”
After accessing it, Orion set the phone on his lap and hit speaker.
The old man’s voice rang out in the quiet room of our so recent lovemaking.
Orion, this is Saben. You need to call me. Right away. The deal with your claim may be going sour as we speak. This can’t wait. I hope you get this immediately, but in case you don’t, I’m calling Alston as well.
