Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (29 page)

“No.”

“Is it a secret?” I was being awful, but I felt powerless to stop my string of heartless word vomit where Maribel was concerned.

“Milena …” His tone held a clear warning for me to drop the topic.

“Is it an unresolved incident? Or … or is it just that you … don’t like to talk about it?”
Because you’re still in love with her?

“She died defending her Alpha.”

Oh.
And there it was. I was a terrible person.

“When you say
Alpha,
do you mean—?”

He nodded. Just once.

I was officially a bitch. And not merely because I’d been envying and thinking ill of a dead woman, but because now that she’d been proven a veritable saint, I liked her memory even less.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling like a jackass. Again, he simply nodded.

We sipped our wine in silence for a spell after that, and I grew increasingly uncomfortable as I pretended to analyze what I could see of the dirt floor in Alex’s dark, dank, underground wine tomb. Apparently, discomfort plus undiluted, really old wine made me ballsy as hell.

“Do you wish you’d never laid eyes on me?”

When he scowled in reaction, I nearly recoiled physically from the harshness of it. “Why would you ask that?”

“Well, umm … because you look pretty miserable right now. And I don’t … don’t think my presence here has been all that good for you. And let’s face it, you weren’t exactly thrilled the first time you saw me,” I pointed out with no small measure of sarcasm.
Or resentment.

“Not true, Milena. It’s complicated. And my feelings at the time were … complicated.”

Complicated.
Right.
“You were disappointed, weren’t you?”

He ran agitated fingers through his short hair.

“That’s a yes!” I charged, leveling my wine glass and pointer finger at him in accusation.

“Fuck, Milena—”

“You were! Because I was nothing spectacular, nothing exceptional—”

“You don’t understand—”

“Because you were always hoping your mate would be someone extraordinary, weren’t you? Someone
perfect
like Maribel—”

“
Fuck!
You were nothing like
anything
I was expecting you to be, okay?” I was sure the earth had shaken beneath my wine barrel seat at his thinly suppressed rage.

But I was angry, too. Hurt
.
Most of all I was afraid that I was about to lose something I’d never wanted in the first place. So somehow I decided it was as good a time as any to insert my foot in my mouth all the way by asking my most difficult burning question yet. “And
were
you expecting me that night?”

His eyes narrowed. “
What?”

“Did you send Felix and his men to get me?”

His nostrils flared. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

Shit. It hurt having him look at me like that.
I focused on breathing—in and out.
In and out.
There was no stopping or retracting it now.

“Was Felix operating under your orders to kidnap me?” I didn’t pause or mince words, just expelled them all in a rush of fading oxygen and swiftly failing nerve. But then I followed it up with a markedly more timid and apologetic, “I just … I really need to know the truth, Alex.”

The silence that followed was deafening as I watched so many layers of anger and hurt roiling in his eyes. I wanted to look away. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to turn back time and never have asked it. Because the answer was clear. The truth was there in his eyes. He didn’t need to say a thing. But he did.

“Go. Get out.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

His words were soft, delivered with a distinct breadth of calm that was beyond petrifying. I found that I couldn’t move.

“Now,” he added, his tone still eerily placid.

I didn’t move.

“Please don’t make me remove you, Milena.”

Finally, I found the wherewithal to slide from the barrel onto my trembling legs. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to my bare feet rooted to the cold, damp earth. “I didn’t … really think you had … I just … I had to ask it. To be certain. Can you please try and understand that? I’m sorry.”

“I understand. Please understand that I need to be alone right now.”

I nodded, but didn’t move; didn’t look up from my feet. I didn’t want to go—even though I was scared of what might happen if I stayed.

“Tell me, how long have you been wondering that? About Felix?”

His question caught me off guard, and in my excitement at the prospect that he might actually be willing to engage with me again, rather than simply demand I leave, I answered quickly and truthfully, “Since two days ago.”

“Ah,” he exhaled. “How interesting. Well, then, the next time your brother gets past Al’s useless shield and manages to rattle and upset you to the point of inconsolable bawling with his web of deceit and relentless emotional manipulation, perhaps you should seek comfort from someone who you are absolutely certain never sent ruthless criminals to kidnap you.”

My eyes went wide as I raised them to Alex’s.

“Really?” His brow arched at my shocked countenance. “I realize you don’t think much of me, but surely you knew I was capable of adding two plus two and drawing obvious conclusions when you came running to me in the middle of the night, professing to have had a nightmare and sobbing your heart out over how you couldn’t give up on your brother, regardless of how much he’d changed?”

“I … it was …” I winced. My heart felt like it had been wounded. And the worst part was I couldn’t tell anymore if the injury originated from my pain or Alex’s. “I’m so sorry—”

“I believe we’ve both apologized enough for one night.” He forced a strained smile that almost managed to look amiable. “Please, just go upstairs? I’ll send Lessa to take you back to Al’s house.”

“But I just—”

“Milena, we can hash this out another time, all right?”

I managed ten sluggish steps in the direction of the staircase before I realized I was still holding my wine glass. I stopped and turned. Alex’s back was to me, and he appeared to be engrossed in the task of searching through the labels on the many densely stacked, tall shelves of racked wine bottles.

“Yes?” he finally grated in annoyance, not bothering to turn around.

“Um … I still have my wine glass.” I held the nearly empty stemware up as evidence, even though he persisted in giving me his back. “Should … should I leave it down here? Or take it upstairs to the—”

The glass vanished from my grip before I’d finished my question.
Just.
Vanished.
Alex never turned around or addressed me. He kept exploring the shelves—disregarding my presence.

I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
To hell with caution.

“What?” he finally erupted again when another whole minute had gone by and I still hadn’t moved a muscle. “What is it now? Why are you still here?”

I took a deep breath. My stomach was in knots. My heart felt like it was being shredded.

“I’ve been thinking … if you’re my prisoner, then why should I have to leave?”

He laughed; a deep, mordant rumble of malevolent amusement that would’ve sent a saner woman fleeing for the staircase in self-preservation. But not me. I’d already checked my sanity back in the kitchen when I’d taken a cheap swing at Alessandra’s face.

He stole a glance over his shoulder at me. “You are playing with fire, princess.” It was more than a warning. It was a promise.

I stood my ground. “I know.”

“Why?” he eventually asked, still largely ignoring me.

“Because I need to know things.”

“Milena, I’ve talked as much as I care to for one night.”

“But you’ve barely told me anything!”

“I’ve said plenty,” he maintained, withdrawing a bottle from one of the shelves that finally seemed to meet with his approval.

“No,” I argued, willing my wobbly limbs to amble away from the staircase and back toward Alex, “you haven’t.”

When standing in place observing his back within closer proximity only proved to accentuate just how much my knees had started shaking—whether from apprehension or the cold of the cellar—I opted for pacing to distract myself. I was going to say my piece, and I refused to look intimidated while doing it.

“You tell me I don’t understand, and you say that it’s complicated. You describe your feelings on the night we met as ‘extremely complicated.’ But those aren’t answers, Alex. That’s the same as saying a big fat nothing, because I still have no clue what any of it means or where I actually stand with you.” I paused in my speech to gauge his reaction, but the back of Alex’s head gave nothing away.

“You speak in riddles and innuendo and act like somehow that should count for communication. You claim that everything you do and every decision you make revolves around me now. But I am not stupid! And I haven’t forgotten for one second how horrified and furious you were over my mere existence just a week ago, or the fact that you never wanted me as your mate until you found out that I had this”—I flapped my hands as I searched for the right words to describe my curse—“potentially cool … blood inheritance …
thing
happening.”

“That’s not true.” His thoroughly impassive, utterly uninformative retort only incensed me further.

“So tell me something that is!” I stamped my foot down onto the hard, compacted earth. “Explain to me what was so fucking complicated about your feelings that first night that you treated me the way you did. Because I’m just … I’m so lost here, Alex.”

Breathe. Walk. Don’t trip and fall.
“And I’m trying so desperately to comprehend how we got to where we are now … with you buying up my whole neighborhood.”

“It’s scarcely a block. We’ve been over this.”

“But none of this”—I gestured between the two of us—“is sane, Alex! It’s not logical. Or right. I can’t …
be
with someone like you. We don’t belong. You have to know that, right?” I beseeched the back of his head. “Please, just admit it? You have to know that ultimately this won’t work and that we can’t possibly be predestined mates?”

“You need to go now, Milena.” His flat, monotone reply made me want to throw a full bottle of wine at his head.

“No! I can’t do that either!” I ceased pacing and folded my arms over the festering wound pulsing within my chest. “Because it hurts, Alex.
So
much. And I don’t understand why. Because I shouldn’t need—
want
you like this, when there are so many wrong, not to mention missing, pieces to you and to this entire situation.

“I’m in the dark about so much of what makes you who you are, and what it is that you honestly want with me, because you haven’t shared those things. And I just want to understand”—
deep breath, sound confident, stand your ground
—“how you feel about … stuff.”

Okay, not exactly the strong finish I was going for. “I mean, honestly, what is it that you—and your wolf—see in me?”

Annnd …
nothing
.

I told myself it didn’t matter whether he responded aloud to me or not, as long as my words prompted him to think, and to realize that the very idea of us as mates was ludicrous. But my heart wasn’t buying it. Neither was my wolf. I did want to know how he felt. And maybe I wanted him to convince me that it wasn’t entirely ludicrous. I was an idiot.

I pondered the cellar beams above. “Look, I’m never going to be brilliant or special in the way someone like Maribel was. No matter how much amazing magic is in my blood, I’m always just going to be …
me.

“And while I may not need or want fancy things the way that you do, I think I’m entitled to know what’s been going on inside your head if you’re planning on appropriating my neighborhood. And I really don’t think I’ll be able to leave you alone in peace in this cellar tonight until you lay it all on me.”

I’d known all too well he was far from being in a communicative mood in his present state, but my heart still sank when it seemed I’d grossly miscalculated my ability to force the issue, as he proceeded in his perusal of the wine shelves, casually selecting a second bottle—as if I’d never spoken at all, much less begged him to share his heart with me.

When what seemed like an eternity of disappointing silence had lapsed and I was at the point of fighting back tears, Alex finally paused and turned to me, casually inclining his head in a sign of nonverbal conciliation.

“When I first saw you, I just … wanted you.” A flicker of unease flashed in his eyes, and for a second I feared that was all he intended to say on the matter. Then I saw a glimmer of hope. And determination.

“But it was more than a carnal desire to own you at the most primal, instinctive level,” he expounded in an even tone that seemed incongruously nonchalant, given his choice of words and the manner in which he was regarding me.

“More than an instantaneous, sanity-eroding drive to fuck you with the very last breath of my being,” he proceeded to calmly relay as he abandoned the bottles of wine he’d selected atop a nearby shelf and fluidly stalked closer. “To make you revel in it and crave me in turn with every secreted sexual urge you never realized you possessed, regardless of how dark, or dirty … or obscene.”

Sweet Jesus, he was good at sharing!
It was a small miracle that for once my jaw hadn’t dropped to the cellar floor at his words as his impressive frame and heavenly aroma came to dominate the space in front of me, blocking out what little light and oxygen there was available. I probably had some shock-induced, temporary facial muscle rigor mortis condition to thank for it.

I hadn’t noticed I’d been shuffling backward until I felt a cold, stone wall at my back and wondered where the heck a wall had suddenly cropped up from. Alex’s left arm extended, his hand coming to rest against the wall beside my head. He looked every bit the dangerous predator he was as he leaned in to scent me. The knuckles of his right hand lovingly traced my jawline, tilting my face up.

“I wanted to worship you; to intimately explore every millimeter of you. Inside. And out. Devour you. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. I felt as if I might actually go mad from some demented, insatiable obsession if I didn’t manage to absorb every single morsel and thread of your very being within those first few moments.”