The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(24)

It's magic.

I melt into the mattress, grinning like an idiot at a fluffy pillow in a moose-and-pine-tree pillowcase. Darragh snaps his hips against my ass again, once, twice, a third time, and then he snarls and abruptly pulls out. There’s a sharp pinch as his swelling cock tears through my tender entrance. My muscles immediately seize up. My wolf alerts. Something isn’t right.

I struggle to raise my head, twisting to face him, blinking to clear the fuzziness from my brain.

He’s upright on his knees, his face contorted in pain, his hand clamped around the knot engorging the base of his red dick, shiny with my juices.

He didn’t knot me?

He has to. Males can’t stop themselves. It’s shifter biology.

His face is drawn in harsh lines. He’s clearly in pain, but he tightens his punishing grip, squeezing until his knuckles blanch white. Despite his stranglehold, milky stuff spurts from its bulging mushroom head, splattering warm and sticky on my butt cheek and pooling in the small of my back.

His seed is hot, and there’s so much of it. It feels wrong on my cooling skin. My wolf doesn’t like it either. She whines. I’ve been oblivious to her, but as my heartbeat and breathing slows, pieces of reality filter back, and she’s there, on her feet, frozen in shock, horrified.

The last drop of cum splats on my back. For a moment, there is a crushing silence.

Darragh’s right hand drops from his still swollen, half-erect cock, and for a second, his dull brown eyes look—tired. Lost. He frowns, and as if he can’t help himself, he reaches out with a trembling hand and smooths my hair. With exquisite care, he winds one of my curls around his finger. His touch tugs ever so slightly at my scalp, so I turn my head to ease the pressure, and the move bares my neck.

Instantly, his face shutters. He snatches his hand away, and his gaze darts around the room, anywhere but in my direction. Without looking at me, he grabs a sheet, messing up my nest, and wipes my back, but he picks a polyester blend, and the fabric kind of smears the cum around instead of absorbing any.

As soon as he makes two hasty passes with the sheet, he drops it on me, hops out of the nest, and grabs his pants. Quick as a wink, he’s buttoning his jeans, thrusting his arms into his flannel. He still won’t look at me.

Cold air hits my flushed pink body, and I shiver. It’s as if he stole all the heat in the room. I force my drained limbs to move, to maneuver myself upright, to haul blankets over my shaking body to hide my nakedness. A minute ago, it had felt so natural and perfect, and now it feels like I’ve done something bad.

Have I?

Did I not do it right?

“Did I screw it up?” I ask because I don’t have pride right now. I’m small and left behind and scared.

He doesn’t answer right away. He’s tying his boots.

When he finally stands, he says, “Of course not.”

His voice is distant and gruff, and he addresses the floor, not me. He backs up to the door, to the exact spot where he was standing while I built my nest, and for a second, I think he’s just going to leave, but he doesn’t. He looks at me, arms rigid at his side, jaw clenched so tight that the cords in his neck pop.

Maybe he’s worried that he screwed it up. He seemed really concerned about hurting me.

“It was, um, good,” I say.

I’m too embarrassed to meet his eye, but there’s a faint warmth in the bond. Maybe he needs reassurance like I do. Maybe this is all as strange to him as it is to me. A gush of compassion floods my tender heart.

“It’s all really nice. The nest. The cabin. I’m so excited about the washer and dryer.” I blink up at him and offer him a tremulous smile.

His brow knits. “What do you mean?”

“I never dreamed that I’d live in a cabin with my own laundry room. Well, laundry cubby, but still. It’s awesome.”

Something happens to his face. He seems to register something, and his cheeks darken under his bristly beard. His eyes harden. His spine goes ramrod straight. “You’ve misunderstood,” he says. “This is a guest cabin.”

My stomach sinks. “We’re going to live at your place?”

It doesn’t seem physically possible, but he stiffens even more and backs up another step until he’s almost out of the bedroom and into the hall. A heavy blanket of dread descends over me.

My shoulders slump and curl forward, as if I can protect myself from what’s to come, but I’ve never been able to keep myself safe. I’ve never been strong enough to stop awful things from happening, to make anyone stay.

This isn’t going to be okay. It isn’t going to work itself out.

“No. This—” He gestures between himself, with one foot out the door, and me, huddled in a ball on the bed. “This isn’t happening. It can’t— It isn’t—” He hacks a cough, shaking his head back and forth like he’s denying some terrible accusation. A life sentence. “I’m not doing this.” He blows out a heavy breath. “We’re not doing this.”

But we just did, didn’t we?

What makes you mates? Penetration? The knot? The claiming bite? They don’t tell us anything.

He didn’t knot me. He pulled out. I honestly didn’t know males could do that with a female in heat, but what do I know? Everything I know about sex I learned from eavesdropping.