He curses and a nerve jumps in his neck. “I can feel your struggle with your beast. You can’t give in to her, kitten. You can’t slip down that slope. You won’t come back. Do you understand?”
I blink through my tears but only manage to shake my head. I hear the words he’s saying. I know he’s right. But I don’t care. I want to slip into oblivion, and if that means I lose my humanity along with this pain, so be it.
I pull at my shirt, tugging it over my head in jagged movements.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to shift. I—”
He snarls and presses his face against mine, our foreheads nearly touching. “No,” he snarls, his eyes glowing with the force of his wolf, and I can hear the command in his voice. It’s an Alpha’s command, and a small piece of me demands I submit to that command. That I obey him. But I’m so lost to my grief that it can’t take hold and I quickly brush it aside.
I move to tug down my skirt but he grabs my jaw, forcing me to still. “You can’t shift. Not when you’re like this. You’ll lose yourself—”
“I don’t care!” I snarl in his face and pound my fists against his chest. “I don’t—” a shuddering breath, “—want to feel like this. I can’t, Des. Please.”
“Fuck.Meiying, you have to work with me here. If you go rogue, I’ll be forced to put you down. Don’t put me in that position. You can’t do that to me. Do you hear me?”
I shake my head. No. “Please.”
He moves his hands to either side of my face, leaning in until we’re only an inch apart and his warm breath caressing my skin.
“You can’t go down that path. We’ll find another way. Come up with something to help—”
“Like what? What could possibly help me? What will fix my mom being dead? Huh?” I wail.
He offers no answers.
Tears spill from my eyes and hopelessness slams into me. “I hate you,” I tell him. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
“I hate you, too,” he tells me, but the way he says it doesn’t sound like he’s telling me he hates me at all. It sounds like he’s saying something else entirely.
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” I don’t want to feel at all.
“I know, kitten. I know. If I could make the pain go away, I would. Fuck, I’d do anything to make it go away right now. But I won’t allow you to lose yourself to your beast. Anything but that, kitten.”
There’s that endearment again. I know it means nothing. He’s just being nice to me. Using comforting words, but what if it's more than that? Or what if it can be more than that? At least for a little while.
I reach for him, shifting in his lap. “Help me?” I ask.
He holds me tight against his chest. “Anything, Meiying. Just tell me what to do. What will make it bearable right now? This very moment? What else can I do? I can’t see you like this and not do something. I have to do something.”
I don’t let myself think about it. I lean back in his embrace and when he tilts his chin down to look at me, his eyes full of concern, I kiss him.
He responds immediately, his hold shifting until he’s grasping the side of my neck and angling me for a deeper kiss. Hot. Desperate. I pour everything I’m feeling into that kiss. My hurt. The pain. The anger over it all.
Our teeth clash. Our tongues duel. He slides his fingers into my hair and devours my mouth. There is no other way to describe it, and the longer he kisses me, the further the pain fades into the background. It’s still there, lurking in the shadows of my mind. I’m not naive enough to think kissing Desmond will make it go away forever, but it helps. It gives me something else to think about. Something else to feel.
But I need more.
I shift until I’m straddling his lap and rock myself against him.
He growls, a sound full of need before breaking the kiss. “Meiying...”
I see my own desire reflected back in his eyes. He wants this just as much as I do. We may not get along. Hell, we might even hate each other, but this, this he can do. This will help.
“Are you sure?”
My eyes narrow and I shift on his lap, grinding against the hard-on he’s sporting beneath me. That should be his answer.
