Oscar was right. I shouldn’t have come—
But as I move to stand, his hand wraps around my wrist, squeezing. “Sit. Down.”
It’s not a bark. He can’t bark at me, not when there’s no mating bond in place between us. I don’t wear his bite in my skin, and he doesn’t wear mine.
Stiffening, I look him in the eyes. “I don’t want to bond with you.”
His jaw tightens. And he yanks, pulling me down. I lose my balance, and he follows me. “Stop – Jesus, Kennedy, stop moving—,”
My arms fly out. My fist catches him directly between the eyes. “Get. The hell. Off me.”
I’ll walk back. I’m not getting in a car with him.
But he’s not moving. He grows heavier, instead, his hands finding my wrists, pinning them as I twist. But he doesn’t move. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m giving you everything, Kennedy. You should be fucking grateful. Take the damn bond.”
I spit in his face. “Fuck you.”
And I watch, as his face…changes. His eyes grow darker, a red tint spreading across them as I freeze beneath him. His front teeth, his canines… they sharpen, before my eyes.
I don’t know if I say it or breathe it.
Feral.
The noises in my throat turn from anger to fear. They grow higher, and pleading. The sound of my shirt tearing barely registers, until the sharp agony laces through my neck.
He pulls away as my scream echoes, his mouth red with blood. My blood.
“Bite me.” It’s a snarl, his hand tangling painfully in my hair as he drags my head up to his own neck. “Now.”
A bond. With him. Forever linked.
My heartbeat thunders in my ears as I take a breath. Shake my head.
More tearing. Ripping, my skin giving away. My agonized cry rises up into the air, there for nobody to hear. “Bite me.”
The keening sound in my throat stutters. “No.”
I won’t.
I won’t.
Even as he bites, and tears, and rips at my skin. As his sounds fill the meadow, my own cries fading into silence.
Hours pass. His hands work over my skin. Pushing, tearing at my clothes. Moving lower. And it hurts.
He takes everything. Every single first.
And I count, every single time that he tears into me. Every time he asks me to bite him. And every time that I say no.
Three.
Five.
Nine.
Twelve.
Fifteen.
