Chapter 77

Chapter 77
I think I was on fire now, and his breath on my neck made me even hotter. I held him tighter, gripping his shirt and curling into him.

“Have you been reading my thoughts all this while?” I pressed, needing to know, my voice croaking. It would be embarrassing if he had been, yet deep down maybe I wouldn’t mind. Maybe I wanted him to know me well, just as he said—to know my body, my needs, without needing me to say it. It sounded good.

“I haven’t,” he assured me, leaving a feverish kiss all over my neck that made my eyes roll to the back of my head, heat spreading between my thighs. His arm went around my waist, and he pulled me even closer till we were almost one body.

I could hear his pulse as my nose was on his Adam’s apple, so close I could smell his skin, the rawness of it.

“Can you hear what I’m thinking now?” I croaked. “I wish I could read your mind too,” I teased, feeling a blush creep up my neck.

His lips traveled, kissing my chin and then my lips—just a kiss, soft—and then he grabbed my hair, pulling back. It hurt, and between that pain, his tongue slipped into my mouth.

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he replied, his words dripping with a raw intensity that sent a shiver down my spine, till I felt like I would explode from sensation. “Your body calls to me all the time. Your mind. Your smell,” he said into my mouth.

Then he left my hair, and I was breathing hard. I looked at him now, panting. His eyes were gold now, just like the first time I had seen him. I knew I had seen the glow.

“Your eyes… like the first time I met you…”

He closed them, reopened them, and they were back to blue. “Sorry if I scared you. It was because my wolf was excited then, and it is excited now. Even more than it was then,” Lucien explained.

It felt validating to know I wasn’t insane from the first time we met.

“You make me feel lightheaded, Lucien. God!” I said, grabbing his shirt again. “I’m so in need of you.” I added, “I want you to make love to me.”

He smiled, caressing my cheek. “We matched at the right time. It was a week before I was meant to mate with her,” he added.

“With who?” I asked, dread pooling in the pit of my stomach.

“Nala. She’s Javon’s sister and the princess of the Westbrook Pack.”

“Did you mate her?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

“I couldn’t,” Lucien admitted. “I thought I could never love anyone. So I wanted to give my pack a Queen, not a mate for me, but a Queen for them. I didn’t know that it lies within humans—the one I would love.”

“Will I be your mate?” The words tumbled out before I could catch them. “Forget I asked,” I added at once, shyness creeping in as I almost moved back.

“How can I ever forget you asked to be my mate, knowing how dangerous it is?” Lucien replied, his words searing themselves into my mind.

“Can you, um… can you mate a human?”

“I already knew that’s what you were going to ask next,” Lucien replied, a knowing smile in his words.

“That’s because you are so full of yourself,” I retorted.

“I’m not,” he countered.

“Yes, you are. And you are arrogant too,” I shot back.

“You couldn’t keep it in even if you tried,” Lucien teased.

“I hate that you know me so well,” I admitted, feeling the vulnerability settle over me like a heavy blanket.

“You don’t have to answer me now,” I added.

“You are so thoughtful,” Lucien said, his tone softening.

“So, Nala. She’s the one. She’s the wolf after me. The wolf.”

“Yes, and I cannot fully control her because she’s not in my pack. Her father is the Alpha of Westbrook Pack. Her brother, Javon, introduced her to me. He’s an acquaintance and sort of friend. He learned of the trouble I was having in finding a Queen…”

“Javon, your driver?” I interrupted, confusion swirling in my mind.

“He isn’t my driver,” he said, his tone hinting at something more. “He’s a prince and the next Alpha of Westbrook Pack.”

I stared. “I’m so confused,” I admitted, feeling overwhelmed.

“I know you are. All this can be confusing for someone who isn’t in our world.”

“So why was he driving you?” I asked, needing to understand the full picture.

Lucien’s expression darkened. “Javon is powerful,” he said, his voice holding a note of finality. “But I will tame them all.”

My anxiety flared again as I recalled the wolfsbane incident. “But I can’t do anything with wolfsbane conveniently lying around,” Lucien continued. “Baby, you have to tell me where you found the wolfsbane.”

I hesitated, feeling the weight of the moment. “It’s that important for you to know, right?” I asked, trying to gauge the gravity of the situation.

“You know it is.”

Desperation edged into my voice. “Just promise me you won’t burn down the house.”

“I can’t make a promise I’m not sure I can fulfill,” he finally said. “If there’s another way, I would not do it.”

I took a deep breath, my hands shaking slightly on his shirt. “It’s in the building across the house,” I confessed. “We looked everywhere but didn’t find it. I only did when I…”

“What happened to you?” he pressed.

“You really don’t know?”

“No. It was my wolf.” His words were both reassuring and unnerving. “It found its way to you.”

“If you can’t mate with me, why would your wolf lead you to me? Why would it want to protect me?”

He let go of me and moved back as if I had burned him. “I have to go.”

“Lucien—” I reached out, but he was out of the door before I could even get to him. The door closed behind him. I rushed forward and opened it almost immediately, but he was already gone.

The hallway empty, just silence.

I stood there for a moment, my hand still on the doorknob, staring into it. “What did I say wrong?”