“You do not dictate to me,” he snarled, his lilting Irish brogue thicker than she’d ever heard it before. “Not now, not tomorrow and not the day after that. You will never control this. You understand me, lass?”
“I’m not interested in controlling you,” she shot back, fisting her hands even tighter, while deep within she felt the fiery heat of her power swirling with energy, desperate to break free. A rising power that she only managed to hang on to by a thread. “I’m simply making my position clear. You’re the one who’s been acting like a jealous ass. Not me!”
“I’m protecting you!” he roared in a voice that held dark, dangerous things that were so much more than human. As a male who was half werewolf, he was as deadly as he was beautiful. But she knew he would never cause her physical harm, even when he was glaring at her with such raw, seething fury.
The safety of her heart, however, was a different matter.
“I don’t need your protection. I never have.” Words rushed up into her mouth that were revealing and intimate—words she knew would make her vulnerable the moment they were spoken—and yet, she couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t hold them back. “I...I just need you,” she whispered, loving the way the muscles in his strong, corded throat moved beneath his skin as he gave a hard swallow, his blistering gaze fixed on her tongue as she nervously wet her lips. He watched her mouth with the hungry avidity of a predator who wanted to play and claim and mate, his body expanding with need, his rigid biceps straining the sleeves of his T-shirt. But the human half of him was too stubborn to give in.
“No,” he bit out, the denial emerging like a bitter piece of gravel stuck in his throat as he shook his head. And then again. “No.”
“Finally take what’s yours, or I’m finished,” she warned him, tired of the maddening double standard that existed between them. Of the way he could sleep with endless numbers of women, and yet, she wasn’t allowed to have a simple conversation with another male without him interfering. “I have friends,” she snapped. “Good ones. Male ones. Lycans who won’t reject me. Who won’t be so opposed to the idea of enjoying my body if I offer it to them.”
His head jerked back as if she’d suddenly struck him with her fist. Then his gaze sharpened and a muscle began to pulse rhythmically in the hard line of his jaw, while his breaths became rougher, eerily stark in the heavy stillness of the forest. The woods were unusually quiet, as if every living creature were tuned in to their argument, waiting with bated breath to see how it would end. This was a storm that had been brewing between them for months, its fury finally unleashed in a torrent of anger and hurt and maddening frustration.
“Are you seriously threatening to take a lover, Sayre?” he demanded, his deep voice causing chills to race across the surface of her skin. “To let another man touch you?”
Lifting her chin, she kept her own narrowed gaze locked in tight on his burning one. “I’m not threatening. I’m stating a fact. You either stop this archaic bullshit you’ve been pulling for months now, protecting my virginity like it’s something you expect me to keep for freaking ever, or I’ll end it for you.”
He drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, his shoulders seeming even broader as he came another step closer, his nearness causing her own breath to quicken. “You really think I’ll allow that to happen?” he rasped in a low, almost silent slide of words.
Sadness stabbed her right through the chest as she stared up at him, seeing his resolve in that piercing metallic gray, the phrase He’ll never want you...need you...accept you looping over and over within the darkness of her mind. She had asked him to meet her tonight so that she could make a final bid for her sanity. Had offered him her body, with no strings attached, desperate for a measure of relief from the incessant hunger rushing through her veins, her need for him growing stronger each day, until she was ill with it. But he’d turned her down, refusing to give her what he so casually gave to so many others, and all because fate had decided to screw with them for a laugh. The connection between them was nothing more than a sick, costly joke, and she and the Irishman were the ones who would pay.
But she was the one paying the most. Because while he eased his hunger with countless others, he refused to allow her to do the same. And though she didn’t want another male—how could she when she so desperately wanted him?—she was tired of playing the pathetic pawn in his twisted game. Tired of being alone. Of sleeping in an empty bed when his was always full.
“Just try to stop me,” she finally whispered, unable to shout when everything inside her was aching and raw. Incapable of enduring another moment in his presence, she turned and walked away from him. Though she was dying a little more with each step that she took, she kept her chin high, refusing to look back, even when he growled her name with that rough, delicious accent. She could feel the burning, savage intensity of his stare pressing against her skin until she was finally shielded from his view by the lush flora of the forest, the leaves and branches feeling as if they were reaching out to embrace her. She normally took comfort in the verdant plant life, loving the way its rich scent filled her head and soothed her nerves. But tonight she was too cold. Too shattered.
She would give him the rest of the night to brood and rage...and hopefully think over what she’d said. But that was all.
Pressing a trembling hand to her stomach, her next breath stuttered out on a broken sob, and yet, she refused to give in. She’d already cried enough over the stubborn male. All she could do now was pray that he would make the right choice and alter his path, embracing what they had, even if it were just for one night, instead of doing everything in his power to spurn it. But she was terrified that this was it. That it was over. Whatever it was.
Oh, God. Had she honestly thought that she could hold the tears inside? The hot, salty wetness on her cheeks was proof that she’d been wrong. But as awful, empty and alone as Sayre felt at that moment, it was nothing compared to what was coming. To the pain that waited for her, lurking like a killer in the darkness, ready to cut and rend...and completely destroy her.
Because when the sun rose over Maryland the following morning, the Irishman was already gone.
Five years later
Morning sunlight glinted through the treetops as Cian Hennessey pulled onto the paved mountain road that led into Bloodrunner Alley. He tried to stay focused on what he was about to face, but his last night in the picturesque glade he’d called home for so many years kept playing through his mind. After his disastrous meeting with Sayre in the woods, he’d known he was done there—that he couldn’t stay. He’d waited until everyone had gone to bed, and then he’d packed his Land Rover with as many of his belongings as he could. His plan had been to take off before anyone noticed, but Eli Drake, a badass Lycan mercenary who had recently returned to the Silvercrest werewolf pack after years of banishment, had found him before he could get away.
“You can’t run from fate, man,” Eli had lectured him. “Take that from someone who knows. Even when you try to convince yourself that leaving is the right thing to do, it’s nothing but a goddamn lie. And it all comes back to bite you hard in the ass when it finally catches up to you.”
That had been five years ago. If he’d known just how true Eli’s words would prove to be, he might have paid more attention to them. But he’d been so sure he knew what needed to be done. That the path he’d been set on taking was not only the right choice, but also his only choice.
In the end, Cian had finally realized that he hadn’t known a damn thing. All he’d managed to do was postpone the inevitable. But he’d been around long enough to understand that there wasn’t any point in wishing for a do-over. What was done was done, and nothing he could do would ever change that. He just had to chalk it up as another entry on the long list of regrets that he lived with, and focus on how to make the best of the situation at present.
So here he was, returning