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"Jake —"
"It's almost day," he said.
Zorah feared she'd slipped into a dream turned nightmare and would wake in an instant, confused and disoriented. Only no dream she'd ever dreamt approached the heart-rendering sear of the impassioned kiss he pressed against her unmoving lips.
His hands fell away from her face to grip her shoulders, and, with a gentle shove, he pointed her in the direction of the village. "You have to go."
The shock of defeat held her immobile, her mouth hanging open like a landed fish, her thoughts nothing more than scattered fragments of inchoate protest.
With one lingering, indecipherable look, Jake turned on his heel and strode away. Angry, stinging tears burned Zorah's eyes, unexpected and unwelcome, commemorating the end of something never began. Fantasies she hadn't allowed herself to even entertain hemorrhaged out in a spurting mess. Everything hurt, everything ached, everything inside her scratched raw and peeled back and skinned.
Zorah wiped her eyes with violent swipes and paced toward her tent with stomping feet. Why was she crying? She didn't want him. Shedidn't. He was an outcast, a loner, a damaged Alpha shunned and bullied and barely a member of this Pack. He was about as far from a Prince Charming as she could imagine. He had nothing: no position, no home, no trade or future. He had nothing to entice her family, nothing at all that would satisfy them even in the slightest.
Then again, Zorah didn't care about any of that.
Position and status were her mother's preoccupation. Her father's. Zorah never cared. Why did every decision require strategy and political maneuvering? Why couldn't she simply have something because she wanted it?
Did she evenwantJake as her mate? She didn't have an answer to that question, but she did want to kiss him again, feel his hands on her naked body, enjoy his weight anchoring hers to the earth. Was that too much to ask? To have one satisfying fling before being mated to someone her family found suitable?
It didn't seem like an unreasonable demand.
Lips quivering, she threw back the flaps on her empty tent and crawled onto bedding lacking all traces of human warmth. Zorah tore at the forgotten flannel and yanked it off her body. She wished she'd balled it up and hurled it at his head. Or shoved it at him with a suggestion to stick it up his ass. Instead, she crammed it under a jumbled pile of blankets to get it out of her sight. Then she turned her back on the whole mess and buried her head in a pillow, breathing into the suffocating cotton, waiting for her stupid tears to run dry.
CHAPTER 19
Jake
The touch sketched a meandering path over his brow, down his cheekbone, and along the curve of his upper lip. It seduced him out of sleep with a gentle tug of invitation so unlike his usual terrorized lurch into wakefulness. Jake glided into consciousness, embraced by the accepting amber eyes, ready to meet his own with open arms.
"Zor —"
A firm, slim fingertip shushed his lips from uttering the second syllable, and before he could react, she replaced it with the tentative touch of her lips. Smooth, delicate, and inquisitive, the kiss rocketed into him like a heat-guided missile. She was here.Zorahwas here, and he didn't know why, but he also didn't much care about the reason.
Jake, wasting no time, cupped her cheeks and redoubled his efforts. Her citrusy taste flooded his mouth and propelled him to seek more and more andmore. Levering up, he flipped her on her back and kissed her again with his whole body, closing his eyes and narrowing everything down to that singular touch. He flicked his tongue over the curl of her lower lip, the one that gave her the natural pout that drove him wild. Squirming with pleasure, Zorah's hands clutched at his shoulders and raked through his hair, making him crazy with each demanding touch. She wanted more of him, and he needed more of her. They could go slow the second time. She was here giving herself to him, and this time, he wouldn't discard her holiest of offerings.
"Jake." She gasped and pulled his hair and moaned his name, and Jake thought he might explode right there in his jeans.
He mouthed over her jaw, down her throat, and lapped at the trilling flutter of her pulse.
"Jake," she repeated, her hands stilling in his hair and a different tone contaminating his name, one absent any of the pleasure-drunk agony. "Jake!"
He startled up onto his hands and locked his focus on Ava's deep brown, terrified eyes. Her mouth gaped, fear writ large on her face as she stared over his shoulder. They were here, they were back, to take her again, and he'd never see her again.
"Jake!"
He jolted upright, fists cocked and teeth bared, into blinding sunlight. His chest worked like a bellows, pumping air into his resistant, wheezing lungs to prime him for the fight he'd surely awakened to. His cock throbbed in his pants, angry and unsatisfied, unhelpful for the impending battle. Where was she? Where was Ava? Where was Zorah? ZorahandAva? Why was Ava here in his cabin? Nothing made sense except the panic pounding through every single cell in his body.
"Yo, Jake!" A loud voice penetrated his confusion. "You in there?"
His groggy mind snapped to order, several things registering at once. He knew that voice. Colt.Coltwas here. Zorah wasn't. Ava was still lost. No longer asleep and dreaming, he flashed back to the stolen moments in the lake, the consummate high and abject low of the entire night rolling out before him like a filthy red carpet. The reality rent him in two. He could almost sense the hot blood gushing from his chest.
"Yeah, hang on," he called out, the words scratching his parched throat.
Scrubbing a palm over his face, he stood and tangled his face in the last batch of Zorah's drying clothes, still perfumed with her scent as they slapped at his cheeks. Much like she'd wanted to slap him herself, no doubt, after that final send-off.
She should've. He'd deserved it. But even if she had, he wouldn't feel any better.
Cursing under his breath, he whipped the clothes off the haphazardly strung clothesline, compressing them into a messy ball that he hid under his bedclothes. The last thing he needed today was to explain the incriminating presence of Zorah's clothes in his cabin. After he dealt with whatever Colt wanted, he'd think of a way to get them back to her. Or not. Maybe he'd burn them and be done with it. They were done, after all. Done with the lessons, done with the sneaking, just... done.
