Pumping his cock hard, he let go of control. He always lost it with Chloe. A smile curved his lips, pleasure streaking through him, so hot and sweet it almost dropped him. He rotated his grip, ran his fingers along the underside of his dick, and imagined the wet warmth was her mouth moving on him, sucking him deep.
“Gods,” he groaned.
The dream dragged him under, and he felt the hot spil of his come over his fingers. The orgasm just kept going as he pictured her lips and tongue on his cock, her eyes gleaming with wicked glee because she knew at that moment she owned him, could make him beg, and she liked the power. Final spurts made his cock jerk, and he shuddered, wanting to hold on to the ecstasy as long as possible.
“Merek.” Her voice was so real, so precious, that he had to close his eyes. She wasn’t there when he opened them. He knew she wouldn’t be, but for a moment he’d wished with every scrap of his battered soul that she would be.
He choked, sagging against the wet tiles. How was he going to survive without her? It was acid corroding his veins knowing she’d never be his again. The people he wanted with him the most would never be with him again. Hel , even the damn cat would never pester him again. He’d never been so alone. Until he met them, it had never mattered to him.
So, he forced himself to remember soaring through the night air with Luca, circling to land on the top of a building where both Alex and Chloe were ripped to pieces by werewolf teeth and claws. He made himself recal the raw sound of Luca’s sobs as he realized the woman he loved was lost to him forever. Merek knew that pain. With Laura, his parents, his childhood friend. Even then, it didn’t stop him from wanting to drive straight to Seattle and get his people.
One thought came through crystal clear: he couldn’t do it. Not to them, not to himself.
How many times did he have to fail them to learn that lesson? Over and over again, he’d failed them, failed himself, failed his own expectations. Some tiny part of him had begun to believe it could be different this time, to need that close human contact again. Some idiotic portion of his soul had reawakened at having people he couldn’t read. People who mattered. Not because of work, or any other proximity he had no say in, but just because. Because he wanted them, because he craved the contact, because he needed them.
And they’d damn near died because of it. Again.
If Chloe had been with another Magickal, someone who could read her future enough to know when danger was coming for her, al of this might have been prevented. He couldn’t quite smother the knife of jealousy, of possessiveness, that sliced through his gut. They were his. No one else would protect them as vigilantly as he did. He checked the thought. He hadn’t done a very good job of protecting them, had he?
Which was how he’d ended up in his current position.
Regret and pain and a longing so deep it made his hands tremble twisted inside him. He missed Chloe.
He missed Alex. He missed being around them, talking to them, laughing with them. Everything felt empty, hol owed out with hurt.
He’d thought he’d feel less like a complete failure after they were safely away from Smith, after Smith was dead and could never harm them or anyone else again, but nothing had changed. It wasn’t about Smith, was it? It wasn’t even about this situation. It was about Merek, about how he couldn’t handle the fact that his clairvoyance shut down with the people he loved. And he loved them. Gods, how he loved them. And they loved him back. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the morning. Chloe had even said it.
The warmth that flooded his chest at the thought was so good it was almost painful. He could have them, if only he had the courage to reach out and take what they offered him. Love. A family. People to come home to, and not just an empty existence that consisted of his job and his bitterness.
The choice was his to make. Claiming them meant dealing with the fact that he could never see their future, and had to live day to day knowing that to lose them would rip the heart beating from his chest. But, hel , he already hurt so badly he could barely breathe, and he hadn’t even lost them yet.
No, he planned to throw them away. He winced, but made himself face that reality. For a man who didn’t lie to himself, he’d sold himself a lot of half-truths lately. The meager contact he would have offered Alex would have been an insult to a boy who’d become a son.
And Chloe deserved far better than he’d given her the past week. She’d kick his ass for not cal ing her, for avoiding her. For avoiding himself. For failing to be honest with her about loving her so much it was like a hammer blow to the heart. He knew she wouldn’t blame him for al the other failures he’d seen in himself lately, and while he might never agree with her on that score, he knew she’d be hurt by this failure.
But going to her now to make things right, being honest, giving her everything, was a risk. Because he knew exactly how it would feel if he risked it al and lost again.
He’d been right—he couldn’t do it. Not to them, not to himself. He couldn’t walk away. To do so would be the biggest lie of al . The whole truth was he couldn’t live without them, no matter how bad it scared him, no matter how much it could cost him in the end. Having them now was worth it.
Loving them was worth it.
17
Whatever had remained of boyhood was gone from Alex’s eyes. A threshold had been crossed, and it couldn’t be uncrossed. Far too early, the boy had become a man, the last of his childhood stripped away.
Chloe ached to see that knowledge in his gaze, but the pain was tempered by the understanding that events could have turned out so much worse than they had. She had survived and so had Alex. Even Tess, for al the pain she had to deal with, was alive and would recover someday. She had a life ahead of her, even if it wasn’t the life she’d expected.
As Chloe and Mil ie stepped further into the wolf’s hospital room, Chloe watched him hang up the phone, and pointedly didn’t let herself think of the stil absent Merek and Luca. Every day that passed with no word made her heart hurt.
Mil ie caught her hand, somehow sensing she needed the supportive gesture. It had been an eventful week since Chloe had been discharged. Ophelia and she were staying at her aunt’s mansion in Upper Queen Anne for the time being, and Mil ie’s bodyguard / chauffeur Philip insisted on driving Chloe anywhere she needed to go. Al of it was more for her aunt’s peace of mind than anything else. If this nightmare had proved anything to Chloe, it was that she was resilient enough to cope with whatever life threw at her.
“Excuse me.” A nurse pushed past them both to check Alex’s charts and draw a vial of his blood.
He gave the woman a tolerant stare while she stuck him. He’d had to deal with more needles in the last week than anyone should have to in a lifetime, but since he was the one person who had ever received Chloe’s treatment for ful moon madness, he’d become an instant science project. Desmodus Industries had offered Chloe her old position back, at twice the salary and research funds, so she was careful y monitoring everything the hospital was doing to Alex, but enough was enough. She was taking him home in the morning.
Ushering Mil ie into a chair beside the wolf’s bed, she waited for Nurse Needle to take herself off. Alex brushed at his arm, the smal puncture already fading to nothing. “From Desmodus intern to Desmodus lab rat.”