Chapter 12 Intimacy in its fragile form
Celine's POV
“The door.” I gasped.
The knock grew louder, but Tristan was still above me, his face still close to mine as though he didn't hear the sound from the door. He kissed me, just once and shallowly.
“Someone’s at the door,” I said.
“You wouldn't hear it again.”
“How? Except you respond to it?”
The knocking stopped, returning the room to quietness.
“I already did.” He winked.
“But you… you didn't get to the door.”
He chuckled right on top of me, our jaws brushing against each other's. Well, I was a meaningful question as any other person in my shoes would do.
“What about that?” I probed.
“I mindlinked.”
“Mindlinked… what's that?”
The word sounded familiar, but strange. I must have heard someone say it, but couldn't remember any instance of it.
His eyebrows raised. “Thought you would know. I mean you dated a werewolf before me.”
Before me.
He was already assuming a relationship I was yet to accept. Our lying together on this bed? A sudden lust made me do it, nothing else.
His fingers resumed work on my nipples as the oil he poured on me wasn't dry after all. “Mindlink is about sending information through the mind. Only an Alpha like me can do it.”
My mind was starting to go blank again, and I could barely focus on what he’d said. The pleasure picking up pace to go around my body caused it, and soon I forgot about the door. It became just about us on the bed.
“Yes… Yes.”
His fingers were like magic.
They trailed down from my boobs, passed my belly button, and landed on my clit. He was never in a rush. With two fingers, he touched my clit from different directions. He would start slow at first, increase his pace, and slow down the next moment.
“It's good, isn't it?” He smiled.
“Yes… Go on… Go on.”
And then, he took things further.
He rubbed his hardened rid at the entrance of my pussy lips, teasing me before going deep. And then he stroked a different rhythm. He started slow, then fast, slow again, slower, fast again, mixing up the rhythm.
I must have become unconscious at the peak moment when my body gave way to orgasm, and his fluid shooting into me.
We laid on our backs gasping for breath.
“We consummated,” he said.
A minute passed.
The pleasure and the moment we had started to fade. When our eyes met again, he was lying on his left side, looking at my body.
I suddenly felt too exposed and bare to him. This moment… The moment, the pleasure. It no longer felt right. His scent of rust had become so low, and that chaos I felt around him seemed to return.
“Tristan.” My lips moved, I didn't realize I was going to call out his name.
His eyes were empty. No tenderness in them. No brutality, just empty and complicated. I would have preferred if I could read through them rather than just being uncertain about what he had in mind.
“Celine,” he called in response.
Then he sat up to face the other side of the bed, paying so much focus on the wall.
I blinked.
For a second, I saw blood all around me. I saw my parents’ dead bodies placed on the bed. When I blinked again, the room returned to its normal state.
“What's all these about?” My fingers were starting to quiver, my voice becoming shaky.
Tristan looked at me, but he didn't utter a word. And I thought he planned everything, that he led me to his bed. Was that so?
“I have to leave,” I said, picking up my dress from the floor.
He just nodded.
“This shouldn't have happened.”
He still wouldn't speak. His action of staying silent was creeping on my nerves that I feared I was going to lose control to go all out with him, to tell him he used me for his own pleasure, to speak rudely without a care that he was the Alpha of this pack, and that I was in his camp.
At this point, that didn't matter to me anymore.
“You should at least say something!” I shouted, my breath taking a race.
It became hard for me to breathe, and this wasn't the same as other times—his touch had caused those, and maybe the burn of his presence, but this was different.
It was like I became trash, and this pissed me up.
His fingers moved, like the effect of the curse was coming back up against him?
That wasn't so. The fur was not growing out of his skin, his face wasn't pale. If that was the case, he would have been struggling to breathe freely by now, but none of that was on the list, except he was just sitting, doing nothing.
“Fine.” I wiped my palms against my eyes to confirm they weren't wet.
I wouldn't let another tear escape my eyes.
But why was his speaking to me seem so important anyway?
It wasn't!
I shouldn't believe it was.
I got to the door, but it was hard to hold the doorknob. I should get him to say something to me, perhaps that would clear the bad feeling that was beginning to flood my mind. It was a good time we had, wasn't it?
Then why did I feel like trash?
He didn't call me trash, but I didn't call myself that.
My instinct told me. The scene of my parents’ death haunting me just after our blissful moment called me trash.
I turned the doorknob, but wouldn't pull the door open. Maybe I needed a coat to cover myself so no one could see me. Or I should pretend I didn't feel this way and walk out with shoulders high?
Even if I tried to do that, the look on my face, the way I would walk, and the way I would speak would give me all out.
I pulled the door open, and I confirmed myself to be some sort of trash as I stared at the woman my eyes met.
“Lila…” I managed to speak. “You… You have been here all this time?”