Chapter 7 The Alpha’s Fever
EXPLICIT CONTENT: RATED 18+
Chapter Seven
The Alpha’s Fever
XAVIER'S POV
"Not yet. I'm sorry."
The words felt like they were being ripped out of my throat, jagged and raw, as I forced myself to turn my head away from her. Avrielle was slumped against my shoulder, her small, shivering frame feeling like a brand against my chest. My heart was racing at a speed that felt lethal, a frantic thrumming that echoed the chaos in my mind. My wolf, Thorne, was screaming, pacing behind my ribs with a predatory hunger I could barely contain. He didn't want comfort. He didn't want a warm shower. He wanted to bend her over, to claim her until she forgot every other man’s name, to fuck the hell out of her until the scent of my mark was the only thing she knew.
I let out a low, shaky sigh, trying to hide the tremor in my breath. She was shivering so violently that I instinctively pulled her closer, my arms wrapping around her in a soft, protective cuddle. It was supposed to be an act of mercy, but it only made the torture worse. I didn’t know the mate bond could be this visceral, this maddening. Perhaps it was because I had spent five years starving for her, or perhaps it was the proximity of her damp skin against mine.
I reached out with a trembling hand and turned on the water heater, then the shower, desperately hoping the sound of the spraying water would drown out the voice in my head telling me to take her right there against the tiles.
She had just been through a divorce—a divorce I had orchestrated with surgical precision. I had seen the light die in her eyes when Adrian signed those papers, and the way her hand shook when she added her own signature had nearly torn me apart. I was ecstatic that she was finally free, that the legal tether to my pathetic nephew was severed, but seeing her soul crushed in the process felt like a blade to my own heart. I had given her the cold shoulder at the house because if I had stayed a second longer, I would have killed Adrian for what he did to her.
Suddenly, I felt her gaze. I looked down, and our eyes locked. The world outside the steam-filled glass vanished. Control—the one thing I prided myself on, the thing that made me the Alpha—snapped like a dry twig. My gaze dropped to her lips, and a dark, obsessive heat flooded my veins. I wanted to screw her until the sun came up. I wanted to kiss those lips until they were swollen and bruised from my hunger. I wanted to drive into her so deep and so hard that she wouldn't be able to walk the next day.
Take her, Thorne whispered, his voice a seductive, gravelly growl. She is ours. Mark her. Claim her.
The intensity of the urge was so frightening that I snapped. I had to get out. If I didn’t move now, I would ruin any chance of her ever looking at me with anything other than disgust. I wouldn't let her first memory of our bond be one of forced desperation.
"I’ll have a maid come in to help you finish your bath," I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger. I ignored the mental battering from my wolf, who was howling at me to stay, and I walked out of the room without looking back.
The moment I stepped into my own master suite, I ripped my soaked shirt off and tossed it across the room. I shoved my hands through my hair, letting out a hot, stuffy sigh that felt like steam escaping a pressure cooker. I was on fire. My skin felt too tight for my muscles, my blood humming with a frequency that made my vision blur.
I kicked off my trousers, standing in the center of the room as my hands raged over my own body, trying to dissipate the static electricity. I grabbed a bottle of water from the nightstand, drinking it like a madman, but the cool liquid did nothing to quench the furnace in my gut. My wolf was going wild, clawing at the walls of my consciousness.
"Damn it," I hissed, grabbing another bottle and pouring the contents over my face and chest.
It didn't help. It felt like I was going into heat, a physical necessity so strong it was paralyzing. But it wasn't the full moon, and even if it were, a matured Alpha shouldn't be reduced to this state. It was her. It was the bond finally realizing she was within my reach.
I stumbled toward my own bathroom, my hand gripping the bed railing so hard the wood groaned under the pressure. I needed to drown the fire before it burned me alive.
I stumbled into the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind me as I kicked my boxers away, the fabric sticking to my damp skin. I wrenched the shower handle to the coldest setting, desperate for the icy blast to shock my system, but as the water hit my chest, it felt like nothing more than a mist against a wildfire. The fever wasn't on my skin; it was in my marrow, a pulsing, rhythmic demand that had been building for five years and had finally reached its breaking point.
I leaned my forehead against the cool, white tile, my breath coming in jagged, desperate hitches that sounded more like a wounded animal than a man. My hands moved over my body of their own accord, trying to soothe the ache, but the moment my fingers brushed my own skin, my mind fractured.
The steam from the water became a veil, and through it, I saw her. I saw Avrielle standing in that shower just down the hall, her eyes wide and searching, her soft, curves molding against me with a trust she didn't even know she had. Unconsciously, my hand wrapped around my length, my grip tight and punishing. The image of her cuddling into my chest, her small frame shivering as she sought my warmth, blurred my vision until I was blind to the room around me.
The fantasy took hold, dark and relentless, fueled by the primal hunger of a wolf who had finally tasted his mate. I visualized myself pinning her against the shower wall, my mouth crashing onto hers with all the suppressed violence of my desire. In my mind, I was ransacking her, my hands tearing at the soaked silk of her dress until it gave way, pulling it up as I found her lace panties and ripped them aside with a predator’s ruthless intent.
I could almost smell her—that intoxicating, sweet scent of honey and rain—as I imagined my mouth catching her moans, my teeth grazing the sensitive skin of her neck while I drove myself into her.
I began to stroke my dick, my movements starting slow and heavy, then turning fast, then frantic.
The visualization intensified, a fever dream of us in the dark. I saw myself fucking her with a rhythmic, bruising pace that shook her very soul, her legs wrapped tightly around my waist, her heels digging into my back as she clung to me. She was begging for more, her voice breaking as she shattered beneath me, her fingers clawing at my shoulders as she screamed my name—not with fear, but with a need that matched my own.
"Avrielle... Fuck, Avrielle," I groaned, the sound low, rugged, and pained, echoing off the marble tiles like a confession.
My hand moved in a blur, the friction and the sheer, forbidden weight of the fantasy pushing me toward a jagged edge. I stroked faster, my muscles coiling like a spring, my heart thundering against my ribs until I felt the sudden, violent surge of my release. I squeezed my eyes shut, a guttural growl ripping from my throat as I ejaculated, the heat of it coating my hand for a fleeting second before the relentless spray of the shower washed it away.
Slowly, the roaring in my ears died down to a dull hum. The adrenaline ebbed, leaving me hollow and cold as my body temperature finally began to plummet. The freezing water continued to pelt my skin, rinsing the evidence of my weakness down the drain. I felt the strength drain from my knees, and I crumbled to the floor, sitting in the rising puddle of water with my back against the wall and my head in my hands.
I stared blankly at the drain, my chest heaving as the crushing weight of reality settled back in.
I was the Alpha. I was the Devil of the North, the man who held the fate of thousands in his hands. And I had just been reduced to a trembling mess, masturbating on a bathroom floor to the thought of my nephew's ex-wife—a woman I had essentially forced into a divorce hours ago.
I had lost every ounce of my legendary composure to a ghost of a memory. How was I supposed to look at her tomorrow? How was I supposed to keep my hands off her when the mere thought of her name was enough to set my world on fire?