Chapter Two:

 ༺ ELARA ༻

It was only then that I realized what was happening to him.

He was in a rut.

My breath stuttered. 

But before I could even think, his mouth slammed onto mine. A breathless whimper tore from my throat, swallowed completely by his growl as his tongue slid past my lips and tangled with mine. 

A warm feeling pooled in my belly.

My hands instinctively flew up to tangle into his damp hair, holding him closer.

His hand dragged up my thigh, gathering the thick wool of my skirts and yanking them up to my waist.

The cold wind bit sharply at my bare skin, but the cold vanished the second his calloused palm slapped flat against my inner thigh, forcing my legs wide. In one move, he tore off my underwear.

I gasped as his fingers found the damp center of my heat.

“Gods, you’re fu.cking wet already,” Darren growled against my ear, his tone slightly surprised as his fingers stroked over me with a rough friction that made my knees buckle.

“Darren—” I whimpered, my hands scrambling up his broad chest to clutch his shoulders for leverage.

My brain was firing off warning flares, but my traitorous body was arching into his touch. I was melting under the possessive, intoxicating rhythm of his hands as he roughly yanked down the tops of my dress and captured my n.i.pple in his mouth.

I cried out, my head flying back in ecstasy. Strange sounds spilled from my throat—whimpers and moans—as he sucked deeply, his teeth grazing my n.i.pple.

He turned his attention to my other brea.st.

Same exquisite torture.

My body was on fire. Any final thread of good sense I had fled into the void. Darren grunted deep in his throat like he was the one being tortured by my reactions.

“Mine tonight,” he growled, releasing my n.i.pple with a wet pop. “You stepped into the dark, Elara. Now you take what comes with it.”

Gods help me, I wanted it.

I wanted all of it.

I had spent months imagining what it would feel like to have this man want me. I had imagined his attention, his touch, the things he might say if he ever looked at me the way I looked at him.

And now, this was happening.

He hauled me up by my hips, elevating me against the pillar. My legs instinctively wrapped around his waist. I barely had time to process the feeling of something hot and heavy pressing against me before, in one swift thrust, he buried himself to the hilt inside me.

I let out a breathless scream as pain flared through my core. It was like being ripped in half. My vision went white, tears springing to my eyes as my body recoiled, stretching impossibly wide around the length and thickness of him.

Darren kissed me, capturing my scream.

“Hush,” he gritted out through his teeth, his body locking up as he went rigid. His fingers dug into my waist to pin me still. A low, animalistic growl hummed deep in his chest, like he was fighting his wildest instincts to keep from tearing me apart. 

“Breathe, da.mn it. Don’t fight me, Birdie,” he ordered.

I swallowed hard, dragging cold air into my lungs.

Soon, the unbearable bite of pain slowly dissolved into heat. I dragged in another ragged breath, pressing my forehead against his neck.

“That’s it,” Darren growled, his voice dropping into a dark, possessive rumble against my ear. “Good girl.”

My body reacted instantly to his praise.

He pulled back and drove back in, hard and deep.

What followed was a blur of explicit, feral endurance. I learned that wolf’s rut didn’t end in minutes. For what felt like an hour, Darren owned every inch of my body. The beast in him seemed to take over completely.

He suspended me against the pillar with effortless strength, his hips thrusting between my thighs with a wet cadence that sounded obscenely loud in the deserted courtyard.

Every time I thought he was finished, his rut surged again, making him drive his length deep into my heat until I was sobbing breathlessly. I was babbling, making incoherent noises. Darren’s hand clamped over my mouth.

“Hush. You’re being too loud, Birdie,” he whispered, his own voice sounding strangled and hoarse.

Heat coiled so tightly in my belly that I thought I would shatter. I cried out in release over and over again until I lost count, my cries of pleasure muffled against his palm.

Just when I thought my knees would collapse and I would pass out, Darren groaned. His broad frame went taut, his muscles locking, before he thrust wildly into me a few final times, spilling his searing heat deep inside me with a deep growl.

My own final cli.max tore through me right behind his, shattering every nerve ending in my body.

All that had ended just minutes ago.

Now Darren pulled his coat tight around his broad shoulders. The glowing red in his eyes had receded.

“Fu.cking hell,” I heard him mutter under his breath.

I swallowed hard, my heart pounding with a foolish, desperate hope.

“So, erm… I was thinking, maybe we could… get tea together tomorrow? Or—”

“This was a temporary lapse, Lady Thompson,” he cut me off in a clipped tone. “There was nothing more to it. I was in a rut. You happened to come close despite my warning, and my wolf took advantage of your lack of sense. Do not mistake a beast’s rut for affection.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

The single syllable barely made it past my throat.

I nodded, glancing away as I desperately blinked back the tears burning behind my eyes.

“Of c-course, Beta Darren. I-I am not naive.”

It was a miracle I managed to get the words out through the tightness in my throat.

“Lady Thompson—”

“I’ll, uh, I’m fine, Beta Darren,” I cut in, not sure I could handle hearing another word in that dismissive tone. “I’ll go back inside in a bit. Just… I just need some fresh air, is all.”

Tears of humiliation burned hot in the back of my throat, but my stupid brain, desperate to claw back some shred of control, scrambled for a defense mechanism.

A tight, breathy laugh forced its way out of my chest.

It sounded hollow.

Pathetic.

“Besides… d-did you know?” I squeaked, my trembling hands blindly fumbling with the torn laces of my dress. “The grand scholars of the Western Citadel of Knowledge wrote that extreme bodily shock triggers a flood of… of natural pain-dulling vapors in the blood. So… scientifically speaking, I’m practically… I’m…”

My voice cracked.

The useless trivia died in my throat.

Oh gods.

I squeezed my eyes shut in double mortification, a fresh wave of humiliation crashing over me so hard my knees nearly buckled.

I was doing it again.

Rambling.

Pitching facts to a man who had just told me exactly what he thought of me.

Naive.

Available to soothe a rut.

I turned my back to him, hiding my burning face behind a curtain of disheveled hair, my wildly shaking fingers completely failing to mend my clothes.

“I’ll… I’ll fix my dress,” I whispered to the wall, unable to look at him for another second.

For one breathless beat, I felt his presence linger behind me.

My stupid heart lifted in naive hope that he might reach out. That he might wrap his arms around my shoulders and tell me he didn’t mean all those hurtful words he’d said to me.

Then came the sound of his heavy boots retreating.

And he was gone.

The silence in the courtyard was deafening, but beneath it, I could hear the sound of my own heart breaking.

I stood alone against the pillar, pulling off my glasses as hot tears gushed down my cheeks, burning against my freezing skin. I pressed a hand over my mouth to muffle the violent sobs racking my body.

How could I have been so stupid?