Chapter 12: No Turning Back
The moment Isla whispered Alpha, something ancient stirred. It wasn’t calculated. It wasn’t even conscious. The word ripped from her like breath, like instinct or destiny. It didn’t feel like something she said. It felt like something within her did.
Damian stilled.
For a heartbeat, everything went silent.
Then came the sound, a low, vicious growl from deep within his chest. Not human, civilized and certainly not safe. It vibrated through her ribs, her stomach and her thighs. It shook the air. He moved dangerously fast.
Isla barely had time to gasp before her back was firmly gripped and she was in the air, legs wrapped tight around his waist, once again. His grip was brutal on her thighs, one hand slipping lower to palm her ass, the other fisting the fabric of her shirt, yanking her closer. Her breath punched out of her lungs at the impact, but the pleasure that followed stole everything else.
He was hard, painfully hard and she was soaked, aching, empty and wild with need.
The heat of him pressed against the pulsing apex of her, separated by too much fabric and not enough mercy was unbearable. He ground against her, slow, rough and torturous. Isla cried out. Her head fell back, but he wasn’t letting her escape, not even for a second.
His mouth was on her neck, kissing and biting and tasting her like he was starving. His teeth scraped her pulse point, a silent threat, a promise.
“Say it again,” he growled against her throat. His voice wasn’t human anymore. It was thick with something deeper, possession, command and hunger laced with reverence.
Her fingers sank into the back of his shirt, clawing at his shoulder blades. “Alpha,” she whispered, barely audible.
The sound he made was filthy and feral. As if the word had reached a place no one else had ever touched. He kissed her then. No, he devoured her. There was nothing soft about it. It was raw and punishing, tongues tangling, teeth grazing and breath stolen. Isla moaned into his mouth, her entire body arching into him, trying to fuse to his skin, to his heat, to the darkness he carried like a cloak.
He broke the kiss only to bite down the column of her neck again, licking over the bruise he’d just left.
“Mine,” he snarled, voice like gravel. “Say it again.”
“Alpha,” she gasped.
It was a prayer, a plea and ultimately a surrender.
His hand slid down between them, yanking her panties aside with one sharp tug that made her gasp. Then, skin… his fingers found her slick and desperate heat. The moment he touched her, really touched her, everything else disappeared.
Her back bowed, a strangled cry escaping her lips.
“Oh god, you’re soaked for me.” His voice was thick with male pride, with dark satisfaction.
His thumb circled her clit in slow, deliberate strokes, while two fingers slid inside her, deep and precise. Isla shattered, not fully and not yet, but the edges of her control frayed, ripping strand by strand as he worked her expertly, like he knew every inch of her already. Like her pleasure belonged to him.
His mouth found her again, this time lower, brushing the edge of her collarbone, her chest, teasing until he had her shirt shoved up and her bra pushed aside. He sucked her nipple into his mouth, biting gently, then soothing the ache with his tongue. Her fingers tangled in his hair, yanking and begging for more.
“You’re going to come for me,” he murmured against her breast. “You’re going to scream my name.”
“Damian…” she choked out, trembling.
“No,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers. They were silver fire and glowing with something inhuman. “Say it right.”
She couldn’t think and most of all, couldn’t breathe. The only thing that existed was the way he was wrecking her with his fingers, his mouth and his power.
“Alpha,” she whimpered, broken.
He kissed her then, not like before. This was slower, deeper and binding. It was a promise in blood and bone. A tether being forged.
His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “You have no idea what that word means to me. What it does.”
But then, he stopped. Ripped his fingers from her. Pulled back like she burned him. She cried out at the loss, body shaking, needy and aching and furious.
“What! why…!?”
His face was tortured. His chest heaved, his pupils blown wide. His hand was shaking as he reached up to touch her cheek.
“I can’t,” he rasped. “Not like this. Not when you don’t know what you’re giving me.”
“But I…” She tried to speak, to reason, to beg, but he was already stepping back.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he said quietly and reverently. “You said Alpha.”
“So?” she whispered, blinking.
He smiled, a broken and haunted thing. “You called me Alpha like a mate calls her bond. Just like instinct and once we finish this… there’s no turning back and going back to your old life.”
She stared at him, heart pounding and body still pulsing with need. “I don’t understand…”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I stopped.”
Just like that, the air shifted again and the storm calmed, but the damage had been done. She had said Alpha and the beast inside him would never stop hearing it.