I didn't know how I was going to survive it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LEO
She was beautiful when she was desperate.
I'd always known that about her, even when she was a fierce little girl with skinned knees and a temper that rivaled my own. I'd watched her grow up in that house, watched her transform from a wild child into a guarded teenager, watched her present at fifteen and witnessed the exact moment she realized what it meant. What we would become to her.
Then she'd run. And for three years, I'd watched her through cameras, memorized new expressions, new gestures, new tells that revealed who she'd become in the time away from us. She'd changed out there. Hardened. Built walls around herself that the girl I'd known never had.
Nothing—nothing—compared to seeing her like this. Flushed and trembling, her green eyes glazed with need, her lips parted around sounds she couldn't control. This was Ava…the Ava who was now a grown woman and not a teenager, all wrapped into one devastating package.
My turn to teach her. I intended to make it memorable.
"Leo," Ava gasped, her fingers clutching the sheets beneath her, her back arching off Mason's bed. "Please."
"Please what?" I asked, trailing my fingers up her inner thigh, stopping just short of where she needed me. Her skin was fever-hot, slick with sweat, and she smelled incredible, ripe and sweet and desperate. Every Alpha instinct I had was screaming at me to take, claim, satisfy. I ignored them. I was nothing if not patient when it came to her.
"Please stop," Ava whimpered, even as her hips lifted toward my hand, seeking the contact I was denying her.
"Liar," I murmured, leaning down to press a kiss to her hip bone, feeling her shudder beneath my lips. "You don't want me to stop. You want me to keep going. You want me to make you feel so good you forget your own name."
A keen escaped her throat, low and wanting, the kind of sound that made my blood run hot. I'd been edging her for two hours now, bringing her to the brink again and again, never letting her fall. The others had given me this time with her, trusting me to do what needed to be done.
They didn't know that I intended to do so much more than break her. I intended to find the girl I'd known beneath the walls she'd built. And maybe show her who I really was in return.
"Tell me something," I said, my hand moving in lazy circles on her thigh, keeping her on edge without pushing her over. "Something true. Something you never told me back then."
Ava's eyes flew open, confusion cutting through the haze of need. "What?"
"You heard me." I shifted, moving up to lie beside her, propping myself on one elbow so I could watch her face. My other hand continued its maddening pattern on her skin. "Tell me a secret, Red. Something real. Something you kept hidden even when we were living under the same roof."
"Why?" Ava asked, her voice cracking, her body still trembling with unfulfilled desire.
"Because I thought I knew you," I said, and I was surprised to find that I meant it. "I watched you grow up. I knew your favorite foods, your favorite hiding spots, and the way you'd bite your lip when you were trying not to cry. Then you ran, and you became someone different. Someone harder. And I want to know her too."
She stared at me, something shifting in her green eyes. Suspicion warred with vulnerability, defiance with exhaustion.
"You knew me as a child," Ava said bitterly. "You don't know who I became."
"No," I agreed, my thumb tracing idle patterns above her heart. "I watched you through cameras for three years, but watching isn't knowing. I saw your habits change. Saw you build walls. Saw you become someone who trusted no one, needed no one. But I don't know why. I don't know what you were thinking, feeling. I don't know the woman you became out there."
Silence stretched between us, broken only by her ragged breathing and the soft sound of my hand on her skin. I waited. I was good at waiting, when it mattered.
"I was lonely," Ava finally whispered, her voice so quiet I had to lean closer to hear. "The whole time. I pretended I wasn't, pretended I liked being alone, but... I was so lonely I thought I'd die of it. And the worst part?" She laughed, the sound sharp and broken. "I missed you. All of you. Even knowing what you were, what you'd do if you found me. I still missed you."
Something cracked in my chest. I'd known she was isolated, we'd orchestrated it, removing anyone who got too close, ensuring she had no one to turn to when we finally came for her. But hearing her say it, hearing the raw pain in her voice, hearing that she'd missed us even while running...
"I'm sorry," I said, and the words surprised me almost as much as they surprised her.
"You're sorry?" Ava laughed again. "You helped make me that way. You made sure I had no one."
"I know." I pressed a kiss to her shoulder, soft and apologetic, nothing like the teasing torment of before. "I'm still sorry. I'm sorry you were lonely. I'm sorry we made it worse. I'm sorry we couldn't figure out a better way."
"A better way to hunt me down?" Ava asked, but some of the venom had drained from her voice.
"A better way to bring you home," I corrected gently. "You were always going to end up here, Ava. With us. That was inevitable from the moment you presented. The loneliness, the fear, the three years of running... that I regret. I wish you'd never had to be afraid. I wish you'd trusted us enough to stay."
