YOLO, Bitches!
Icouldn’t fight it anymore. The heat and pain were too strong, the urges too suffocating. It really felt like if I didn’t touch him, I’d die.
It was a bit surreal to regret something in real time and still do it anyway. Guess that was sort of my life up to this point—a series of mistakes all made in rapid succession and me there hoping they somehow worked out.
I could almost hear Kate’s voice in my head screaming “YOLO, bitches!” Except, she was in the other room sleeping like a rock, and I was here already regretting it.
Everything about this thing between Aram and I was completely wrong, so why did it feel so right when he finally kissed me? Why did his mouth on mine feel so damn euphoric I couldn’t do anything but moan? Guilt would’ve crippled me if I hadn’t been so damn relieved to cool the burn and dull the lust just enough to focus.
The beast of a man would’ve crushed me if not for my powerful genetics. He was nearly twice my size and three times my weight. Nothing but muscle and power, but that didn’t stop my legsfrom wrapping around his taut waist and my arms from slipping around his massive torso to drag him closer. I barely registered that his wings were gone.
His tongue swept my mouth, flicking and twisting around mine like he couldn’t get enough. He teased every sensitive place inside as if he’d been given the map to it. Powerful hands dragged down my front and sensation exploded everywhere they touched. It wasn’t long before I was arching into him, begging with little moans for more.
“Little mate,” he breathed in a break between kisses.
I swallowed and groaned, hips moving without permission. The ache was distracting. Only friction seemed to satiate it. So, I didn’t stop. I rocked back and forth and clung to my enemy, betraying everything I’d promised myself after making the contract with him.
“This is so fucked up…” I rasped.
His gentle hand caught me off guard as he cupped my face and stared down at me. “I’ll only satisfy the urges the way you ask, V. Nothing more and nothing less.”
Which was a bit difficult to believe when the dude was this damn hard, but as promised, he didn’t do more than kiss me. The muscles in his torso were strained, struggling for reasons unknown.
Our connection broke through the haze of the Season. I sensed Aram’s quiet determination again, his restraint, his unmovable position on what he was willing to do. He was…holding back? He didn’t want me to regret anything. He wanted me to come to him because I wanted him, not because I was in pain and desperate to satisfy the Season.
It was weird to be so certain of someone else’s thoughts and emotions when I was so rarely that confident in my own. Even now, I barely understood how I felt about him and everything that was happening between us.
How did that make any sense? Why would I be so sure he’d do whatever it took to prove himself worthy? That he’d never hurt me? That he wasn’t going to take what I didn’t already want to give? It was almost as if I knew Aram better than I knew myself.
Each new emotion and thought I pulled from our connection only made me more confused. Even Cash hadn’t held back like this. Like me, he’d used it as an excuse. Or maybe as validation. It’d put Cash at ease knowing we were meant to be together, but Aram was different. He wouldn’t accept anything less than my absolute, uncoerced affection.
His white hair curtained both our left and right, making it seem like we were in our own little world. It was just him and I.
Biting my lip to keep from gasping as another terrible wave of heat hit, I reached up to touch his face. His frightening red eyes closed, his expression relaxing as my fingers brushed his cheekbone. “You really don’t want to do anything that would hurt me, whether it’s emotional or physical, huh?” I whispered, and his eyes shot back open, pupils the size of pinpoints. “You’re afraid of me regretting this and losing the chance to convince me to stay.”
His lips thinned before his eyes darted to my mouth. “Yes.”
“So if I told you to stop…”
“I would,” he breathed, his eyes flitting from my lips to my eyes. “I’m not a monster despite what they might say, and not even the Season can make me become one.”
I fought the urge to say I was apparently collecting monsters if he asked Big. And sadly, it was getting harder to rebuke him on that particular topic. Cash and Jo were more of a villain than he’d been since we met. More than his thoughts and memories suggested. What if they got it wrong? What if it was some millennia-long misunderstanding?
It couldn’t be coercion. Something in my gut told me I’d know if he used it on me. I’d sensed it the minute he used it on Phillipand Rayis, and I hadn’t felt it since. But I was convinced that even if he wanted to use it on me—which he didn’t—he couldn’t.
The pain of the Season was creeping back in, but I did everything I could to ignore it. “And if I told you I never wanted you to touch me again…?”
His clawed thumb brushed across my lower lip. “Is that what you really want, V? You have all the power here. I can’t read your mind like you can read mine, so you’ll have to tell me. Do you want me to stop touching you?”
“No.”
The word took us both by surprise because I hadn’t planned to answer that way at all. I’d planned to tell him to stop. I’d fully intended to put an end to this and suffer the next however long it took to end the torture, if only to prove I could. But why did it feel like I’d lose more that way? Why did it feel like I’d be betraying myself if I didn’t give in?
Aram’s lips twitched up. “No?”
Now it was my turn to stare at his mouth, the lustful fog making it difficult to form coherent sentences. “No…I don’t think that’s what I want.”
“You don’t think?” He chuckled, his rich baritone guttural and doing terrible things to me, and then he leaned in close. “That won’t do, little mate. You need to be certain. Demand what you deserve, what you want, and let no one and nothing stand in your way. If you learn one thing from our time together, let it be that.”
