Declan’s knot hadn’t gone down at all by the time I blinked my eyes open and slowly came back to reality, lying on my side with Declan wrapped around me from behind. The bite he’d left on my neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I could feel his, too, syncing with mine and vibrating through my back.
And I felt safe again, which made me want to throw up and then run away screaming.
Well, he’d already made me scream. Running away was out. And it’d suck to throw up all over the bed and be stuck here.
Unfortunately, that left me with nothing to do but lie there enclosed in his arms listening to his steady breaths in my ear, savoring the heat of his body and the softness of the bed.
Ugh.Savoring. I really was, and it made me swallow hard against a wave of real nausea.
But it suddenly occurred to me that maybe Declan felt something similar. Pheromones. Hormones. Borderline mating-magic. I couldn’t be the only one completely at their mercy, could I? He might not feel them as strongly. That didn’t mean he wasn’t mellower than usual—although he hadn’t always been so mellow immediately after sex.
Still.
This might be my only opportunity to talk to him without getting my head bitten off, either literally or figuratively.
I cleared my throat and stirred a bit, and Declan’s arm tightened around my waist. “So did you look at the security cameras earlier?” I asked, going for casual, even though my interest was anything but. “Someone seriously was following me in the casino.”
“I looked,” he said after a moment. “I saw a guy checking you out. Lucky for both of you that you weren’t interested, or there might’ve been trouble.”
Checking me out? He so hadn’t been! That had been…well, I guess it could’ve been stalking of the sexual-interest variety, not the dangerous variety. Could it have? Declan had me doubting myself, and I fucking hated it. I knew that guy had been following me. And he hadn’t seemed like someone wanting to fuck.
Wait a second, though. Trouble? My heartbeat stuttered, and I really hoped Declan either didn’t notice or put it down to irritation at his dismissive attitude.
The devil on my shoulder prompted me irresistibly. “You never said anything about being exclusive. Maybe I should’ve taken him up on—Declan, ow, the fuck!”
His fangs sinking into the still-raw not-a-mating-bite on my neck hurt likehell, it turned out.
“That hurts like hell! And where do you get off—”
A hard thrust, shoving his knot even deeper into my overstretched body, had me breaking off in a ragged cry.
“This is where I get off,” he growled in my ear. “Inside you. And no one else does that, ever.” A pause, and I felt his heart give a quick one-two stumble this time. “Until I get tired of you and throw you out on your ass, and then it’s fair game. But you’re mine until I say otherwise.”
Don’t say it, don’t say it…my mouth had other ideas. “So no one else gets to fuck me, but maybe he wanted me to fuck him. I’m an alpha, that’s usually what people want from me. Is that on the table?”
He’d gone so rigid behind me that he could’ve been carved out of rock. Well, so much for talking to him while he was all fucked-out and mellow.
“What do you think is going to happen here, Blake? Best-case scenario. If you push me.”
That was a damn good question, actually. I blinked at the wall across from me. It stayed stubbornly white, no answers magically appearing there. His arm around my waist could’ve crushed me, and it almost felt like it was about to. His fangs hadn’t gone anywhere. My throat might heal quickly, but maybe not quickly enough if he tore it out completely.
The real answer, the one I didn’t need any oracular walls to tell me, hovered tauntingly in the back of my mind. My eyes stung.
I want you to…
No, I couldn’t even think it. I couldn’t let myself. No one in the world gave a fuck about me, and Declan would be the last person I could think of who’d step up to start. He didn’t care if I fucked someone else. He didn’t care aboutme. He only wanted to control me. An alpha bent on revenge wouldn’t have it any other way. Total dominance, until he’d crushed me down so small I couldn’t fight back any more.
“Well?” Declan prompted, tone tinged with impatience. “The fuck do you think is going to happen if you piss me off?”
“I don’t know,” I said through numb lips. “Nothing. Forget it. I’ll follow your rules.”
The silence following that lame bit of bullshit had a baffled quality that almost made me smile. At least I could confuse him. That was something, right? Something adjacent to interest in what I had to say? I squeezed my eyes shut, hating myself with more intensity than usual.
“Yeah, you will.” He cleared his throat. “You weren’t interested in that asshole anyway, though. He’s not your type.”
Irritation twinged through me. Declan thought he knew what my type was? Fucking arrogant bastard! I bit my lip to try to keep in a snarl of annoyance, but it slipped through my teeth. “Not like it’s up to you to tell me what my type is, but someone who wears pleated khakis wouldn’t be anyone’s type, or shouldn’t be,” I growled. “And blackmailing, neck-biting assholes like you aren’t my type either!”
I tried to jerk away from him, at least from the waist up, to get a little distance before I fuckingexplodedand did something suicidal like reach back and whack him upside the head—and he moved his arm up around my chest, clamping me to him so firmly it knocked the wind out of me. His mouth closed around the muscle stretching from my neck to my shoulder.
