Page 10 of Collared Mate

“Easy,” he says. “Settle down, brat.”

“I’m not a brat!” I blush as he calls me that. God. He’s making me feel small and embarrassed and no fucking way have I really just slept with him.

My memory of him is of a tall, broad guy with thick dark hair that was never cut very well but always looked cool anyway, and brown eyes that had a reddish hue when they caught the sun. He had dimples and an easy smile and once he grew a mustache, then Rick grew a mustache, and then my mother made Rick shave his off because we were throwing a soiree and she said it made him look like a dock worker.

“Good girl,” he praises me for stopping fighting. It was probably only going to make things worse anyway, wriggling on his cock while trying to get off it. I’ve heard that some males can get hard again right away and fuck you and breed you while they still have some knot.

I don’t want to look him in the eye, but I do want to see him. I’m torn between the two impulses. I haven’t had sex in a very, very long time, much less been deliberately bred.

He shouldn’t have done that. That was reckless.

I shouldn’t have let him do it.

Would I have been able to stop him?

A few torturously long minutes go by, and finally I feel him slide out of me. He sits up on the seat next to me, while I am still bent over and bound. I feel his hand in my hair, pulling that tie away and lifting my head so I have to look at him while I’m still kneeling and dripping his seed.

This fucker knows how to dominate a woman.

I bring my eyes to his and there he is. Almost exactly as I remembered him. I think it’s been maybe five years since I saw him, so he looks more mature. But he still has those deep, captivating eyes, that roguish hair, and those rakish good looks. He smiles at me and I feel my stomach do a little flip.

“Hello,” he says gently.

“Hi,” I squeak.

It’s hard to believe that thirty minutes ago I was ripping some other guy to pieces for the twin sins of being male and rude. Right now I am soft and I am as close to submissive as I will ever be. Now that I can see him, I can’t tear my eyes away from him. He’s so handsome. And so… I don’t know. Just perfect. He’s everything a female wolf could want in a mate.

There’s something happening inside my body that I don’t entirely understand. A sense of completion flowing through my veins. Since my husband died, I’ve been feeling lost and alone in the world. I’ve had no place to be. I haven’t belonged anywhere or to anyone. And now, suddenly, here I am, completely at peace and somehow entirely at home in the back of a sketchy van.

I don’t understand why he’s come for me. He knows I was married to Christian. He knows I’ve already been used. Is he wasting his time with me? That would be so cruel. There’s no cruelty in his eyes, though. Maybe I am imagining his gaze, but it seems to me to be something closer to devotion.

I always thought Henry was going to be a beta, because he started out without a bloodline. I knew he’d be a strong one, but a follower. He’s not. He’s more of an alpha than Christian was. He might be more of an alpha than Rick. Which makes this even more confusing.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“Why me?” I screw up my face in confusion. “You could have anyone.”

His voice softens a fraction as he answers in a way that makes him sound completely sincere. “There’s nobody else, sweetheart. There could never be anyone else. Now. Are you going to come along peacefully from here on out, or am I going to have to spend my time carrying you about like a spoiled pup being made to leave a carnival early?”

“That’s a really hefty simile,” I mutter. “And I think you know what’s going to happen next.”

“Oh? What’s that? Are you going to come down from this carnal high and decide that you don’t want to have been mated, and you don’t want me and you don’t need any man, and we should all probably be dead, just to be on the safe side?”

He grins at me, and I see that flash of silver in his eyes. He’s going to enjoy this struggle of wills with me.

I’m already enjoying it.

There’s so much pain in me. So much grief. I’ve been looking for places to put it, killing men that needed killing, hunting those that deserved to be hunted, fucking up the occasional inanimate object in the hope that would make me feel better. None of it worked. But maybe going up against him will be different.

Maybe he can take it.

“What happened to you? I didn’t see you around the house at all for the couple years before I got married. You guys went to college and then, it was just…”

“It’s complicated,” he says. “And right now it doesn’t matter. You matter.”

I feel a flash of warmth and excitement as he says those words, but I can’t let myself show it. I can’t stay here with him, and he knows it.