I allow it because I’m too faint to do it myself.
“Can I bring you some soup?” he offers quietly.
“No talking,” I say, tight-lipped as my eyes flutter closed. “Please, don’t disturb my peace any more than you already have.”
Branson pads silently to the kitchen, and the brand on my chest throbs a little more with each step he takes. I throw my arm over my face to hide my eyes, and to try to nip the infuriating compulsion to look at him in the bud. I know where he is. He’s in the kitchen, clanking crockery and cutlery like a bull in a china shop. I can hear him plain as day. I don’t need to look at him.
I don’t.
I’m not that pathetic.
I open my fingers a crack and peer through them to see a sliver of Branson stooped over the stove. His chest is caved and he has a hand on his heart. His face is lined with discomfort. He looks in my direction every few seconds, and when he does, the hand on his heart clenches hard.
18
Lucien
Afternoonmeltsintoevening,and Branson keeps bringing me small portions of food that are, annoyingly, exactly what I feel like. Hungry doesn’t begin to describe my current state, so I wolf down everything he gives me, though my rage remains firmly intact.
Now and again, curiosity gets the better of me, and I take a brief hiatus from my silence.
“How long was I out for?” I whisper.
The day has been strange. It’s been very short. I think it was past noon when I woke up, but I’m not sure. I have no idea what time it was when I passed out, or even what day it was, so I’m struggling to piece things together.
“Um, ’bout seventeen or eighteen hours, I think,” replies Branson. “I was a little out of it, so I’m not sure exactly, but I woke up seven hours before you did, and I usually sleep for at least twelve hours after…you know.”
As he speaks, I’m sucked back in time with a dizzyingwhoosh. I’m lying on the sofa in the past, like I am now. The big difference is that in the vision, I’m naked, and I have the weight of a jacked alpha on top of me. I’m on my back, with my legs wound around Branson, and the base of his dick is swelling inside me. I’m begging for his knot. Pleading for it as it thickens. So desperate that I keep asking for it even though he’s giving it to me.
I hear echoes of my voice, desperate and strident. “Please, alpha, please, alpha, please knot me.”
What he did to me felt unbelievable. Indescribable. His knot was so big. So thick that even now, during what I know full-well is a flashback, not the real thing, I can’t move a muscle as the memory of it consumes me.
The way my body stretched to accommodate him was beyond reason. Beyond words. There was pressure everywhere. Pleasure everywhere. More than pleasure. Whatever comes after pleasure, after euphoria, after nirvana—that’s what it was.
As my memory flits to the surface, I remember screaming when I came. In my mind’s eye, I see it happening all over again. I see the way my cock choked and spurted between us, and I see the way Branson looked down at me as he moved inside me. He barely blinked. He panted andstruggled through, his biceps and abs straining as he held back his own peak.
His groans were anguished, but his words, oh fuck, his words were so soft and sweet.
“Come for me, Lucy,” he said.
“Come for me, Lucy.”
“Come for me, Lucy.”
He said it over and over, and each time he said it, I did it. I came screaming. Shattering. Splintering into a million pieces as his knot fucked me open.
Afterward, when we were both spent, he sat up, taking me with him. He had to, I suppose, as we were knotted together. He sat on the sofa, with me straddling his lap. His fingertips danced up my thighs and around my waist. Every time he kissed me, his smile was a little more unguarded.
“I think I’m going to lose my voice,” I told him huskily.
Back in the present, Branson brings me a smoothie and a sandwich and sits on the floor with his back against the sofa. He is so close to me that I could stroke his hair if I wanted to.
“Is it okay for me to sit here?” His hand digs into the muscle on his chest, massaging deeply. “I kind of… I think I need to be close to you.”
“Is it thebond?” I rasp.
It might be my imagination, but I think he tenses at the sound of my voice. His shoulders raise slightly and a deep quiver shakes him from side to side.
