Page 23 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Right after I told him I thought we might be fated.
“Aurela,” he starts again, turning to me suddenly, his eyes so intense that I have to look away, my omega starting to tremble at the touch of his fingers around my wrist. “I—I need you to know something. About what happened back then.”
“Soren, it’s okay—”
“Your parents forced me to break it off with you.”
I stumble back like something has physically shoved me. His hand falls away from my wrist, and when I look up at him, I expect him to be laughing. Telling me a joke. A cruel one, but a nontruth.
But his face is serious.
Of course, he wouldn’t joke about something like that.
“You…” I clear my throat, feeling completely out of control with my body, myself. “What are you saying?”
“Your mother found me a few weeks before prom,” he says, looking down. “After the first time you and I kissed. She told me that I wasn’t good enough for you, that an affiliation with me would ruin your reputation. That if I kept pursuing you…”
He trails off, and I can barely hear him over the frantic, insistent beating of my heart. Over the blood rushing through my ears.
“What?”
“They said they would send you away. To a boarding school or something. Take you away from your friends, from your home, and you’d graduate somewhere across the world. I think your mom said something about Switzerland? I don’t even know if that would have been possible just two months from prom, but she sounded very serious about it. She said you wouldn’t get to see Lach, that you would be given no contact. That they would do whatever it took to protect your reputation.”
“What?” The word bursts out of me a little too loudly, and the walls of the cabin around us shake a bit. I try to rein in my magic, knowing I’m getting too worked up, but finding it hard tocontrol it with the millions of thoughts flying through my head. “But…but…it’s not like you’re a Winward. You were friends with Xeran—”
“I wasn’t good enough.”
Soren says this with such conviction that I pivot away from my own hurt and focus on his instead. What it must have felt like for my parents—whom I know he sought approval from—to come to him and not only make it clear that they didn’t approve of him, but that they were going to punish me if he didn’t stay away from me.
“Youaregood enough,” I seethe, stepping closer to him, raising my hand and cupping the side of his face like I wanted to since the first time I saw him again. “You’re the only man I’veeverwanted.”
And just like that, I’m pressed against the wall, Soren dipping his head down to take me in the most passionate, mind-numbing kiss of my entire life.
His hands are frantic, moving first to my hips, to squeeze them and pull them against his, then up to my shoulders, then behind my ears, his hand gently tipping me back so he can kiss me deeper.
His tongue is hot and seeking, his breathing erratic, something about himfinallyseeming to come undone.
When we kissed in high school, it was nothing like this. It was careful, controlled, Soren doing everything he could to maintain himself.
But now, it’s nothing like that.
I loop my arms around his neck and haul myself up closer to him, my magic glowing in little pink dots on my closed eyelids, the taste and scent and feel of him intoxicating.
My breasts press against his chest, and he growls from somewhere low in his throat. When his hands dip back to my hips, his pinky fingers sliding under the waistband of my pants, I think I might just get my wish.
That Soren might take me here, in this cabin, right here and now.
And no matter what happens after that, I would always have had him. If I could just carry that with me for the rest of my life, I might be okay. Happy.
But he doesn’t tug me over to the bed and lay me down on it.
Instead, he pulls back, the cool air rushing into the spot he just occupied, the stark contrast of it making a sob rise to my throat.
“Soren—”
“I want you, Aurela,” he rasps, and when I open my eyes, he looks more tortured than I’ve ever seen him. My core throbs for him, and I feel the edge of my heat, threatening to come over me right now. “I want to make that completely clear. I always have, and I always will. But it’s wrong to do this while you’re engaged.”
That sends a bucket of water right over my head. I’m engaged. To Caspian.
