Escaping Death

Chapter 30

Ace

"I hate that I can't keep you," I confess. I hold her against me, my length still inside her warmth, attempting to burn this feeling into my memory. I haven't allowed her, or myself for that matter, to admit just how perfectly matched we are. The sparks skittering across every inch of my skin are only physical manifestations of how my wolf yearns for her, how strong the pull of our bond is.

I recognize that giving in like this will make it only ten times harder to send her back to the Grove, but nothing else has changed. Whether either of them admit it or not, it is painfully obvious she and Hunter are still in love with one another and still hurting.

If she stays I'll either end up hurting Hunter and Eli, or if she and Hunter finally make up she may end up choosing him and then how could I stand to look at either of them anymore?

I've said this from the moment I met her...she'll be the death of Death if she stays.

"Maybe I don't want to be kept," she whispers into the sliver of space between our lips. Her words lack the conviction they usually carry.

"Then we agree?" I nip at her bottom lip, unable to resist the way it taunts me. "Once your bounty is lifted you'll be free to go." Our mouths seal together in a tender kiss. My tongue sweeps across her mouth seeking to imprint her taste onto it like a tattoo.

Fuck. This is going to be impossible.

Slowly, I slide out of her warmth. My cock jerks back to life ready for round two as my cum starts to leak out of her perfect pussy. The urge to clean her up with my tongue is painful to fight, but I use the towel she was wearing to gently wipe her clean before my wolf can act on that impulse. Cleaning her becomes more intimate than I intended. I sweep her folds, gathering my spilling cum onto the towel.

And that's when my stupidity hits me.

My head jerks up, eyes snapping to hers in horror and panic. Fuck. I didn't wear a condom, I didn't even think to ask her if she was on birth control, I just rutted into her bareback like a hormonal fucking fledgling.

She tugs at the other end of the towel, bringing it up to cover her body from me. "Stop panicking. You really think I'd let you knock me up?" She says, reading my face like an open book.

What I want to say is that I'd never abandon her to raise a child on her own and that I don't want her to feel trapped here with me if that were the case. But I also know the last time she was 'knocked up,' as she puts it, was by a man she loved and then both of those things were ripped away from her. I'm not the evil monster she thinks I am, I don't want to hurt her. But in this situation I can't comfort her without bringing up a painful part of her past. So which is the lesser of the two evils? Saying nothing, or risking hurting her?

I mull over my options as I sift through a few boxes in the back of my office, rummaging around for clothes that she can wear home. We've had so many girls coming through lately I've had to store some items in my office in the event of an emergency extraction.

"Here," I offer her a pair of new leggings and my shirt. "In case you wanted something more comfortable to wear."

Her lip curls up in disgust and she leans away from me like I'm handing her something radioactive. "I don't want the clothes your whores leave behind," she says before muttering under her breath, "it's bad enough that I have to smell them on you."

"Those whores are women we rescue from breeder circles and traffickers," I state simply. "Like the three from the yacht job."

"The ones Reef was looking for," she says absentmindedly before accepting the clothes I'm still holding out to her. "He knows you took them."