215- Sweet Heat and Dangerous Proximity
POV Elowen Grimwald:
I did not want to see him, nor to feel affected by his energy, even though I needed that to kill him.
I reflected quickly and decided not to push his warm finger away from my lips, which were already tingling. The plan was simple: if Aldren was drunk, it would be good for me to understand the way he behaved—it could be very useful to my plan.
“What are you doing, bitch?” he hissed, lowering his index finger only to brace himself against the countertop, trapping me between his arms.
Damn him.
We were so close that a single hiccup would have been enough for our noses to touch.
“It’s… a dessert…”
Why the hell did he make me lose my words?
“Hm…” he murmured, so fixated on me that he didn’t even blink.
“I think it might be good to raise my glucose levels after so much whiskey.”
“Of course.” I tried to swallow the lump choking my throat and turned toward the stove, only to find complete disaster. The spoon wouldn’t even move; it had hardened along with what was supposed to be a syrup, but had turned into a stone. “Damn it…”
Aldren didn’t move, but he laughed low and loud near my ear, clearly noticing how fucked up that mess was.
“Do you think you can turn this rock into something edible, mutt?”
The nicknames were escalating from terrible to equally terrible—but now provocative.
I sighed in frustration and pressed the button I’d used to turn on that cursed stove. The blame could only be his.
“I… I’ll clean up the mess.”
I tried to move away, but Aldren thought it was a good idea to rest his nose against the taut skin of my neck and inhale. I shuddered down to my last strand of hair and had to hold back a daring moan in my throat.
Son of a—
“The whiskey put me in a good mood. Now you stay quiet and learn.”
His large hands gripped my shoulders and he pushed me away from the stove, shoving me aside.
In disbelief, I watched him take the ruined pan to the sink and grab another one.
He wasn’t going to… Oh, yes, he was.
He pushed the long sleeves of his half-open tunic up, exposing arms sculpted with veins and light-brown hair. My God. He washed his hands and dragged the pan to the induction stove, but didn’t turn it on yet.
“You know how to cook…?” I asked, uncertain, despite the order to stay silent.
He turned his face to me quickly to answer.
“I’m three hundred and fifty years old. I know things you can’t even imagine.” There was a ton of presumption in his tone, which made me restrain the urge to roll my eyes.
All right, I didn’t expect a powerful alpha like him to be young, but all that age caught me off guard.
Three hundred and fifty? Heavens.
“Wow…” It slipped out before I could stop myself.
“Touched? Well, if I had to guess, you’re twenty and close to transformation,” he said, pulling a knife that hung on the wall.
“Oh!” My body jolted at his movement, and he smiled out of the corner of his mouth, twirling the blade between his fingers, apparently quite sharp.
“Don’t worry. I intend to cut only the fruit—for now.”
Was I supposed to feel relieved?
“Thank you…” Faking it was my only choice.
Aldren took the frozen fruit, splitting it skillfully straight into the pan, then crushed it with the handle of the knife. Brutal.
He added sugar and went to the fridge, bringing back a lemon, which he also split in half. He squeezed it with his large hand and turned on the heat.
“Low heat.” He seemed to be giving me a lesson, moving the wooden spoon in the pan with the ease of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
“I understand. I’ll follow your recipe next time.”
“You’d better. I’ll leave and let you burn in the house if you set my kitchen on fire.” He shot me a threatening look and placed the spoon in my hand. “Now you stir, until I tell you to stop.”
Petulant.
Bold, but not that bold, I took the large spoon and took his place, trying to follow the same motion.
“Slowly, bitch. Not everything needs force and haste. Sometimes, a smooth and steady motion can be all a woman needs.”
For some reason, his sentence—spoken with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what he was talking about—sent a chill down my spine. I swallowed the saliva pooling in my mouth and cleared my throat.
“That’s true, Aldren. Sometimes brute force only serves to hurt…” He would understand what I meant.
He understood it so well that he chose silence long enough for the syrup to boil.
“Eight more minutes and you’ll have a syrup instead of a stone.”
I nodded without making eye contact, tense with him so close. “Did you receive the clothes I ordered them to buy for you?”
I blinked several times, a bit lost.
“If it’s the two pajamas, yes, I received them.” He growled, displeased.
“No. I ordered them to buy you decent clothes.”
I sighed and forced myself to look at him without stopping stirring the pan. I found a blaze of anger in his irises.
“I only received Nerin’s pajamas…”
His hand went to the side of my face, his thumb tracing the entire contour of my lips. I froze completely.
“I don’t want you walking around my house in those pajamas.” His eyes traveled over my body, undressing me without removing a single piece of silk. “Nerin must have already told you, but it doesn’t hurt to reinforce it: you are forbidden to interact with my guards.”
“Why…?” My voice came out low. Aldren furrowed his brows.
“They can be foolish, like Kehin, and I don’t intend to kill anyone else because of you.”
The fault of being born a hybrid and having heat was mine. The foolishness of his men—mine too. I seemed destined to bear all the blame for the misfortunes in that male’s life.
Aldren pulled his hands away from my face to take control of the pan again. I watched him reach the perfect syrup point and bring the spoon to his mouth.
The bastard exposed his large, pink tongue and licked it, never taking his eyes off mine.
It was boiling hot, but instead of a burned expression, a lupine smile appeared on his face. Not even that cursed tongue burned, unfortunately.
“So this is when you send me back to the cage and let me sleep wanting?” I enunciated, as someone fully aware of her fate.
I drew a short laugh from him.
“I can’t blame you for thinking so little of me,” he said, running his index finger along the spoon, coating it with the flaming reddish syrup, blowing on it before bringing it to my mouth. No. “Taste it,” he ordered.
My lips parted as if they had a life of their own, driven by the frantic beating of my heart. The alpha forced the entrance between them, and my only choice was to slide my lips forward, then suck.
Magnificent.
A perfect balance between sweetness and acidity. I slipped my lips off his finger after tasting it, provoking a sharp pop that set his eyes on fire.
His Adam’s apple cut down his throat and his pheromones hit me, making me realize just how much I had affected him.