“That first time I truly met you—on the beach the summer after Vale and Jason contracted—I felt something for you, but I denied it.”
Xan pushed windblown hair out his eyes and drew closer, trying to make sense of Urho’s anger and cold rage. “I felt something for you too,” he admitted.
“Fuck. It’s true. It’s my fault you were ever hurt.” Urho’s shoulders slumped and he squeezed his eyes closed. “You could have been safe with me this whole time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Xan sputtered. “You barely knew me then.”
“But I grew to know you. As much as I allowed myself to. I held you at a distance because something about you always got under my skin.” He laughed bitterly. “You made me want things an alpha should never want.”
Xan blinked at him, trying to make out his face in silver light of the moon. The club on the cliff above glowed. It hurt to see somehow. It was a reminder that up there people were happy, laughing, gambling, and fighting—anything but having a conversation that cleaved open wounds with every word spoken.
“I let you down before we even began.”
“Well, that’s a fucking handy excuse!” Xan exclaimed, standing up to kick sand at Urho’s feet. “Let me guess! You’re going to end this now? Spare me any more suffering? What shit from wolf-god’s own ass!”
Urho grabbed his hand and pulled him down to the sand, dragging Xan into his arms. “No. I’m never leaving you to the likes of that monster again,” he bit out. “And I will see himburiedbefore he ever lays a finger on you.”
“Urho,” Xan soothed, “he doesn’t want me like that. If I don’t go to him—and I won’t—he’ll never touch me.”
“He’ll still pay for what he did.”
“Leave the past in the past.” Xan’s heart thumped. The surf pounded at his back, racing up and wetting him all over. His favorite suit was now a wreck. “Anything you do to him will raise questions, and those questions will come back to us. Just let it go. I’m safe here with you now.”
Urho gathered him closer, removed his tie, and scented along Xan’s neck and collarbones. Opening Xan’s shirt, Urho kissed his chest and sucked his nipples before coming up to claim his mouth.
Xan was shaking with cold and fear, so lust was a welcome hot distraction and comfort. The waves roared around them, crashing over their legs and wetting them, but Urho didn’t let go, pushing Xan down, and shoving him into the sand. He kissed and rubbed against him until the sandy, gritty torture became too painful.
They pulled apart to walk, panting and shivering, hand-in-hand back to the car.
“Ren’s going to be annoyed with me about this,” Xan said, taking the driver’s side this time and nodding as ocean water and sand muddied the interior of the car. “He’ll flash me his angry eyes while outwardly smiling, and I’ll have to wonder if my tea is poisoned for the rest of the week. I’ll give him a bonus in his salary next pay period.” His normal words sounded strange to his own ears after what had happened.
Urho remained quieter than usual, but the drive back to Lofton had lost the tension of the race to the sea after leaving the club. As Xan drove, Urho stared out the window at the ocean until they came around the curve that blocked it from view. Then he studied the town’s houses and fields until they reached home.
“You can’t blame yourself for my choices,” Xan finally said, briefly reaching out for Urho’s hand between changing gears.
“How did it start between you? The first time?” Urho asked.
Xan nearly swallowed his tongue. He couldn’t bring himself to confess the reality of what had happened that first time with Monhundy. In part because the truth contradicted his statements that Monhundy only fucked him because Xan begged him to, and because it would show beyond a shadow of a doubt just how fucked up Xan was inside. How disturbed.
“I want the truth,” Urho said, as though reading Xan’s mind.
He chewed his lip and stared ahead, navigating the car through the gate leading up to the Lofton Estate. He was glad they were almost home. Maybe he could still get out of this.
“Was it alpha expression the first time? Did he rape you?”
Xan slowed the car to a halt and put on the brake halfway up the drive. He sat silently for a long moment until he thought he could speak without crying or hyperventilating. “I taunted him in a bar we were both visiting. He came at me, but his friends held him back. Said I was an unmanned shrimp and didn’t deserve the trouble he’d get for starting something with me in a beta establishment.”
Urho nodded.
“He waited outside the bar, though. It wasn’t the first time we’d gotten into it. He’d bullied me at Mont Nessadare and we’d come to blows more than once. He always won.” Xan gave a bitter smile. “It’s true that I’m an unmanned shrimp.”
Urho said nothing, but his fists clenched.
“You have to understand, what happened next… I didn’t want it to go down the way it did. But when it was over, it was my choice to go back for more. To make him do it to me again, and again, and again.”
“Stop now.”
“He didn’t rape me,” Xan said softly, lancing the festering boil. “I wanted him to fuck me. No matter what form that came in—I wanted him however he’d give it to me. Brutal, cruel—it didn’t matter. It was no worse than what I thought I deserved.”
