AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He closes his eyes and breathes in unevenly. “It’s painful to talk about, and I don’t really do well with talking about … painful things.”
I interlace my fingers with his, a move that’s becoming strangely and increasingly natural. “But you told me once before.”
“I know.”
“Can you trust me enough to tell me again?” I replay my words. “Well, I guess trust probably isn’t the right word since we barely know each other.”
“But we do know each other.” His eyelids open, his eyes glowing brighter than before. “And I do trust you.”
I don’t know if his words carry any truth, but I latch on to the opportunity to discover why he feels the need to self-inflict pain. “Then tell me.”
His gaze lowers to our interlocked fingers. “I think you’ve probably already caught on that my father isn’t very kind. And he’s not. Not to my mother. To my sister. To his pack … To me.” His throat muscles bob as he swallows. “He’s always been a little worse with me, though, He likes to put me through vigorous hours of training to the point where I nearly bled to death a couple of times. And he was always the one I was fighting against during those training sessions.” His hand twitches. “And if I cried, the sessions would always end with more pain. Pain and pain and pain. Physical pain, that’s what I grew up knowing. It’s how I learned to handle things.”
He rotates my hand over, brings my palm to his nose, and breathes in my scent with eyes shut. “When I was seven, he gave me the silver rings and told me to wear them all the time. To use them to block out my emotional pain because, according to him, emotions make werewolves weak.” He moves my hand to mold around his cheek and lays his hand on top of mine. “At first, I didn’t believe him, so the first time you threw the rings into the trees, I let you. Then you disappeared, and I …” He pauses, gathering a breath. “I didn’t want to deal with the pain of losing you, so I put the rings back on. It seemed easier at the time to deal with things.” He tilts his head, nuzzling into my hand. “Maybe it was, too. But now …”
My broken heart breaks a little more. Not for myself, but for him.
“And now what?”
His eyelids lift open, his shimmering eyes basking me in violet light. “And now I think I’ll let the rings stay in the trees.”
“Good. I’m glad. No one should intentionally hurt themselves.” I chew on my bottom lip as his eyes alter between violet and blue. “Jules, I want to know—need to know—why your eyes keep glowing violet? Is it a werewolf thing?”
He hesitates. “Sort of.”
“Will you explain it to me?” I ask as he positions my knuckles in front of his lips.
“I’m not sure you’re ready to hear that story just yet.” His lip rings graze my skin as he kisses along my knuckles.
The softness of his lips is extremely distracting and conflicting. On one hand, the sensation of his lips caressing my skin sends wonderful tingles across my skin. However, below the scars, in the pit of my stomach, nausea burns.
He’s a werewolf.
A wolf.
Just like those werewolves who hurt you.
“Jules, I think maybe we should …” A soft whimper fumbles from my lips as his mouth trails up my forearm, kissing, touching, branding my skin.
“You smell just like you used to. Do you know that?” he whispers as his lips reach the curve of my shoulder. “And you threw the rings into the trees, just like you did when we were younger.”
I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at, nor do I care at the moment. All I care about—can comprehend—is the way his lips trace over my shoulder, across my neck, along my jawline. When he reaches my lips, he pauses, his breath dusting across my mouth.
“Lake.” He struggles to breathe steadily. “I want to … I think …” His eyelids lower as his lips inch toward mine.
Maybe I should run. Perhaps if I were smarter, I would have. Instead, I remain frozen where I stand, half-panicking, half-wanting.
Desire.
Desire simmers through my veins in a way I can’t even grasp. A foreign feeling, I realize then. I’ve never felt anything like this before. The heat so intense. Or so I thought. Then his lips connect with mine in a featherlight kiss and my body erupts in flames.
I groan as Jules parts my lips, tangling his tongue with mine, digging his fingers into my waist. When he pulls back an inch, I gasp.
“Good fucking wolves, this is better than I ever imagined,” he whispers shakily, then moves in for another kiss, this time with far less control.
Our teeth clank together as his lips crash into mine, and he entangles his fingers through my hair as he draws me closer. My chest presses into his as he bites my lip, the metal of his lip rings cutting my skin in the most wonderfully confusing way ever.
A pathetically needy whimper flees my lips as he bites at my lip again, rougher this time, a shudder rippling through his body. Then he kisses me deeper, fiercer, while backing me into a tree.
