He gulps before he speaks again. “I’m saying that this is the reason you are my fated mate, Annika. You allow me to regain my strength, but you have healed me because you are a witch.”
I’m knocked over onto my rear as the single word erupts like fire in my eardrums, my vision blurring, heart hammering with a range of incomprehensible emotions I can’t make sense of.
“No…no…that’s impossible…why are you saying this now…?” I shake my head with desperate denial, but all he does is stare at me with a serious expression, not indicating that he’s lying.
“Because it’s true, Annika. The ritual we performed to find my fated mate… it wasn’t just a fated mate I was looking for, but the second witch who will help us defeat the demons for good. You are a descendant of the wolf pack that was wiped—”
The heat burning my insides suddenly has me looking up at him with a ferocious glare, seeing red, feeling red all over, andI rise onto my feet, a bout of furious rage taking over my body and filling me with undefined strength, my hands shaking with ripples and surges of the sensation.
“I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. It,” I grate through gritted teeth, blowing fuses from every inch of my being, nostrils flaring as if I’m about to explode with the deep-seated anger that suddenly surfaces.
Heinrich suddenly gets to his feet, too, staring warily at my face. “Annika, you need to calm down…”
“I am calm,” I retort with a grunt, but then I feel it in my palms, and look down, turning my hands over as I notice my veins simmering with crimson color. “Oh, no…what’s happening to me?”
“You need to calm down, Anni. I’m serious,” Heinrich says as he places both hands on my shoulders. His touch is frightfully calming, shocking me, and I gasp as I slowly turn my face toward my right shoulder.
I’m already calmer somehow, my racing heart slowing down steadily enough to return my vision, and I blink, lifting my eyes back to his.
“I know this is a lot to take in, but you really need…”
The rest of what Heinrich is saying seemingly drowns out in my eardrums, becoming an echo in my head that I can barely hear. I blink at him as I frown, trying to make sense of what he’s saying, but finding nothing. I feel strange, like something is happening to me that I don’t understand, something completely out of my control. My eyes flit to his lips as they move, but I’m no lip-reader. However, I become heavily focused on his mouth, the plump buds seemingly tantalizing in a way that washes a new sense of heat over my body.
It’s a wave of awareness that has me doing the unthinkable in a moment of heightened emotion, and I lift my hands to his face, cup his cheeks, and pull his face toward mine. I reach on my tiptoes to meet his lips, crushing him in a brutal kiss that doesn’t ask for any permission.
I don’t know what has taken over me, but my lips move against his of their own accord, drinking in the sound of his guttural groan as he plants his hands on my waist and draws me in dangerously close to the hardness of his muscled body. Mine, softer and pliable, melds to his frame as if I was made perfectly to fit him, and while my heart swoons, I realize how much calmer I feel, the heat rushing from my nerve endings and concentrating at the apex of my thighs.
Breaking the kiss only to catch my breath, I lug in a deep breath and feel way steadier than I was a few seconds ago. Our eyes meet, and a wave of calm passes through my bones.
Heinrich gulps, lips swollen and moist from the passionate kiss, eyes searching my face for something I can’t quite comprehend.
“You’re calmer,” he observes, voice soft and silky as if he’s caressing my insides.
My heart skips a beat, and I’m left staring into his eyes with a sense of recognition, and maybe it’s because being in his arms and kissing him did actually make me feel calmer, and perhaps that’s what I’m clinging to so that I don’t dwell on what he said about me being a—
“Kiss me again,” I breathe, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing I want, because it just feels right.
Heinrich hesitates, eyes flitting to my lips and back up. The tension between us is palpable, almost like stardust betweenthe mist of our breaths, and he returns his eyes to mine, searching again.
“Anni…I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
Perhaps it’s the softness of his tone, or the sweetness of his words of conviction, that really undoes me in a way that allows me to see that Heinrich isn’t the brute I thought he was all these years. Something shifts inside me, and where there was deep resentment before, there’s only a space left for him to fill.
“You wouldn’t be taking advantage of me,” I admit in a whisper, feeling that uncontrollable fire buried deep inside me stirring, threatening to bring chaos to my emotions again, and I can’t lose myself the way I just did. “Please,” I whisper. “Just k-kiss me again.”
It must be the crack in my voice that does it, because this time, Heinrich doesn’t hesitate, and he kisses me fiercely, fire on his tongue as he dips it into the cavity of my mouth and explores like a caveman, grabbing me closer and lifting me off my feet. We’re moving, until he perches me on the bathroom counter, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist. His lips leave mine for me to catch my breath while he peppers my neck with open-mouthed kisses, traveling to my collarbones while he hooks a hand under the strap of my nightgown.
He pauses, looking up at me seductively through dark brown lashes, eyes dark and heady with hunger and desire.
“Tell me to stop…” he murmurs, tugging on the strap to indicate what he means, but I shake my head slowly.
“Don’t stop,” I return, and that’s when his eyes flit to my shoulder as he watches the way he pulls the strap down my arm. My breast becomes exposed, nipple begging for attention with how plump and erect it is.
Heinrich listens to its silent plea, dipping his head and latching his lips on the perky mound, the sensation of his tongue flicking at the nipple with precision prompting me to throw my head back and moan, hand carding through his curls.
“Oh, God…” I mewl, legs spreading further like a desperate plea for him to touch me. I don’t have to say another word before his hand slithers up my inner thigh, fingertips brushing lightly against my clothed core.
I gasp from the way an electric spark of awareness rushes through me from the slightest touch, and my eyes meet his as he lifts his head.
