Obsession: A Rejected Mate Shifter Romance (The Mate Games #1)(25)

“You make me feel . . . delicate.”

“You are.”

I shook my head, loving the scent of him even as I knew this could all be fever delirium talking. He settled me on the hard leather couch near the fireplace and carefully lifted the shirt Caleb had given me. The worry lines etched across his forehead had my heart racing. So it was as bad as I thought. I wasn’t hallucinating.

“The blade was laced with wolfsbane. I analyzed it after you took her.” Alek spoke to Caleb but stared hard at me while doing so.

“Wolfsbane?” I whispered.

I’d seen a wolf die from a wound like this. Hunters were ruthless, out to end all of us, but wolfsbane was hard to come by, and even harder to make into a potent, concentrated form. They’d really wanted me dead.

“I have a cure. If you’ll allow it.”

“Yes,” Caleb said before I could speak.

“I’m not asking you, Father Gallagher.” Alek turned a tight gaze to me.

“I trust you.”

He nodded, jaw clenched, before he gripped the T-shirt at the hem and tore it completely in two, baring my body to him and Caleb both. I’d never been more thankful that I’d chosen to wear panties. But that dress I’d worn to the club? That was a no-bra situation, so now, my tits were right there, literally in his face.

He swallowed hard but didn’t stare down at my breasts. “I have to touch you.”

“Okay.”

His warm palm pressed gently to my belly, just below my sternum, before he slid it up to my chest, right between my breasts. The other hovered directly over the wound on my side.

“Your heart is hammering like a frightened bird’s.”

“Well, I have been poisoned.”

A slight smirk turned up his lips. “We’ll see to that. Close your eyes.”

I did as he asked and instantly felt him inside me. His essence flowed from his palm and outward, racing through every cell and nerve ending. The pain in my body built and reached an unbearable peak, the overwhelming sensation making me whimper, but he whispered soft, comforting words in a language I couldn’t understand.

“What are you doing to her?” Caleb asked. His voice was rough and breathless, and when I risked a glance at him, there was a feral hunger in his eyes.

“Healing her.”

The pain crested again, a burning heat centering in my wound, causing tears to leak from my eyes before turning to warmth, then pleasure. Pleasure I shouldn’t have been feeling but definitely was. I moaned, my nipples tightening to desperate peaks, begging for attention.

“Alek, oh, my God. What are you doing to me?”

My eyes fluttered open again and locked with his. The same pleasure radiated from him, uncertainty flickering in the depths of his ice-blue irises.

“I don’t know. Fuck, Sunday.”

My whole body was alight with euphoria, desire, and rampant need for him to claim me and make me his. It was primal and undeniable. Reaching up, I gripped him by the nape of his neck and used a strength I didn’t know I possessed to pull his big frame down until our lips met and that burning need was given fuel.

Power and strength flowed from him to me, and as my mouth opened to accept his deepening of our kiss, I threaded my fingers in his hair. Alek was giving me more than his healing abilities. He was feeding me his Novasgardian strength—and it felt incredible. Primal, ancient, wild. I’d never experienced anything like it.

Even though we hadn’t moved, except to press closer to each other, my nose filled with the scent of snowy pine and my mouth the somewhat incongruous taste of the sea. Images of snow-capped mountains and crystal blue glaciers raced through my mind—which made no sense given how I’d never seen either in person. But laced through all of it was the absolutely delicious feel of him. Alek. His essence rolled through me, filling me, merging with mine, and it felt so utterly right.

For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to feel powerful. Unstoppable.

And I wanted more.

A crack sounded in the room, breaking us apart and drawing my attention from the Viking currently ravishing me on the couch to the vampire priest standing at the small table fifteen feet away. The remnants of the small table, anyway. Caleb’s eyes were wild, fangs extended and fists clenched by his sides near the rubble that once was his table. His gaze wasn’t on Alek; it was completely focused on me.

“Your wound is healed,” he bit out. “You need to leave here.”

“Caleb—”

“I think it best if you call me Father Gallagher from now on, Miss Fallon.”

I sat up, the tattered remains of Caleb’s T-shirt falling off me. But Alek was there, pulling his black tee off his back and helping me slip it over my head without me saying a word. It smelled like him, which sent arousal careening through me once more.

“Come on, Sunny. I’ll walk you back to your dorm. Moira will be glad to see you’re safe.”

I stood and took his offered hand, turning my head to thank Caleb for his help, but the priest was gone, the door to the room next to his bedroom clicking shut before I could get a word out.





Chapter

Fourteen





SUNDAY





Apparently, being stabbed and almost poisoned to death wasn’t enough to get me out of another day of class. Caleb—correction, Father Gallagher—knew me well enough to anticipate I might try to use that as an excuse because he’d emailed me and copied all my professors, letting all of us know I would be back in class beginning that afternoon. And that if I missed one for any reason short of literal death, I would be spending the next two weeks paying for my insolence.