Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (30 page)

His warm, smooth breath mingled with my erratic gasps as his fingers encircled the column of my throat and began massaging the vertebrae along the back of my neck at the top of my spine.

“I was seized by a sense of panic that I might not be able to go on living if I didn’t discover each and every tiny thought and desire that resided inside of your mind and heart that instant. After a lifetime of studiously avoiding the emotional projections and needs of others, I was suddenly quite sure I’d die if I didn’t gain unrestricted access to all of yours.”

His touch was reverent. Tender. It was in stark contrast to the embittered rumble of laughter that bubbled up from his chest next as he murmured, “Then I realized I already could.” He shook his head. “And they were so loud, your emotions. So full of hate and disgust.
For me.
”

It took effort to swallow. I felt compelled to say something reassuring, but words refused to form on my tongue.

“And your
fear
 
…
” he continued seamlessly, “as it permeated my senses, yours was a terror so palpable as to be sickening. For several moments the thrum of your poor, panicked heart racing was the only sound I heard in the foyer. I was deathly afraid it would give out before I’d even learned your name or heard the sound of your voice.”

That same heart raced once more as graceful fingers slid from around my neck, down the vee front of my sundress, to trace the curve of my left breast. His dark eyes followed the path of his fingers, and I felt my skin prickle with heat.

“Stupidly, I presumed the cause of your distress to be that you’d just witnessed me callously take a man’s life in front of you, and the stench of your acute horror at my actions nearly brought me to my knees in a fit of self-loathing. But”—he chuckled dryly, his eyes still fixed upon my breast—“I reassured myself I could correct your horrendous first impression, taking foolish hope that I would be able to explain to you what Felix had done to betray me and endanger my pack, and that you would then see that I wasn’t the bad guy you’d taken me for.”

He paused, biting his lip thoughtfully as his eyes lifted to my face. “But as I took a closer look at you and scented beyond the initial mating attraction, suddenly it all clicked. Belatedly, it dawned on me that you were human.

“For the first time, I noticed your resemblance to Raul, and I realized you had to be the sister Felix had brought as a trade for Celio. And then I knew … you didn’t simply fear and hate me for killing a man in front of you. No, you identified me as your brother’s killer—and you saw me as the most vile, contemptible creature imaginable.

“I was a demon … the Grim Reaper … the most gruesome of all villains that had ever plagued your scariest of nightmares,” he intoned with such desolate bitterness my ravaged heart ached. “Yours was a loathing so profound you wished me nothing but the worst sort of suffering. And death.”

His lips curved into a smile that held no warmth. “Most certainly death. And in that moment of realization, all I wanted was to despise you back and believe the whole thing a terrible mistake.”

His smile faded. “I knew you could never love me. In the first place, you were human,” he snorted with disdain, abandoning my breast and backing away from me. Goosebumps blanketed my skin, eclipsing the warmth his hand and nearness had lent.

“You were barely more than a child. And you had absolutely no comprehension of what had even happened between us!” He shook his head. “Despite my soul-shattering attraction to you, I had to presume the very worst of your character.”

I felt myself flushing in offense at his damning appraisal. “Just because I was human?”

“Because you were Raul’s sister,” he hissed. “The family of a man I’d never fully trusted, much less respected. A man who’d conned and betrayed my sister as well as my pack. A man I wanted to brutally punish for his crimes. A traitor I’d only delayed executing in order to extract an admission of his crimes for Lessa’s benefit first.”

He wasn’t holding back any of his feelings where Raul was concerned for the sake of my own anymore. And the true depth of his hatred for my brother was both frightening and infuriating. But I forced my own indignation into check as much as possible. Because Alessandra had warned me.
And because I didn’t want him to stop sharing.

“Alex, you don’t know that he’s guilty,” I stubbornly, albeit quietly, reminded.

“And you,”—his brow rose and he shook my own mom’s pointer finger at me—“don’t know that he’s not.”

“Yes,” I insisted, my breath coming in little pants, “I do.”

“Do you?” he challenged, suddenly crowding me into the wall again with one swift movement. I nodded. His brow creased as he tsked, “So young … so fucking trusting for no good reason.” There was a distant look in his eyes as he murmured, “I can’t remember there ever being a time when I was so thoughtlessly trusting of anyone.”

I couldn’t tell if it was envy or pity I saw in his expression. I went with envy. “I’m sorry … that your childhood was … the way it was. Really. I am.”

His frown deepened. “I know you are. Because you can’t help yourself, can you?” He smiled sadly. “I do wish it were because you actually cared for me,” he lamented. “But I’m afraid you’re simply a confoundedly empathetic creature capable of far too much compassion and forgiveness for your own good.”

He turned away from me and crossed the cellar to retrieve his wine glass. Upon downing the remains of the glass, he asked the ceiling, “Where was I?”

My she-wolf gnashed at me to tell him that I did care for him. But I knew I couldn’t lie about something like that.

Would it be lying?

“I think it was about that same time that I smelled my brothers on you.
All over you,
” he stressed, spinning on his heel to face me. His nostrils flared as he eyed me up and down. “Knowing my brothers, I could easily imagine the liberties they’d taken. I knew they’d had their greedy hands and mouths on you long before Alcaeus boasted about it. But when I realized they’d also stolen inside your mind, yet failed to heal your most critical injury, I was so livid I could’ve killed them both for that failure alone.

“Then, to add insult to injury”—a look of disgust tainted his features—“even though they’d failed to heal you, they’d somehow wormed their way inside your good graces and forged a fragile trust. Because you looked to them with such tremulous hope in your eyes that they might save you. From me—
the evil monster incarnate.
I watched in revulsion as your eyes repeatedly sought out Remy across the room, as if he was the hero you wanted—the person in the hall you trusted most with your life and safety.”

“I’m sorry.” It was barely a whisper, but it was all I could manage with the way his anguished eyes pierced me. Either he hadn’t heard me, or he simply chose to ignore my apology.

“Let’s see,” he reminisced with a sigh of feigned indifference before turning from me again to pour himself another glass of wine, “it only got worse from there, as I recall. Because after recognizing you as Raul’s sister and sensing your still unhealed internal injuries at Felix’s hands, I could barely contain my fury at having granted him such a benign end.”

He sauntered in my direction, leisurely swirling the fresh wine in his glass, as if our present discourse wasn’t upsetting to him in the least. He consumed half the glass before lowering it and addressing me again.

“But while I cursed all that was holy for not having a spell at my command that could bring Felix back to life so that I might torture and execute him more appropriately, I noted with horror how your innocent blue eyes paused upon his lifeless form with such pity.” His bark of laughter was maniacal then, shattering the mien of indifference he’d heretofore attempted to uphold.

“
Even Felix you preferred to me!
” he boomed, the angry, incredulous sound ricocheting off the cellar walls just as his wine glass exploded. My stomach leapt as shards of the stem, along with the remaining liquid, went flying, and the glass itself was crushed to mere dust particles within Alex’s fist. “A man who had kidnapped you, assaulted you, and offered your very life to me in a fucking trade!”

I nearly choked trying to breathe normally. “I … I’m sorry …” I tried again to interject. But once more, he didn’t seem to hear me. He seemed too engrossed in his own disturbing memories.

“And I lost it,” he confessed, his jaw tightening and his whole body trembling as if his very muscles remembered and were reliving the fury of that moment in the foyer that I recalled only too vividly myself. “I didn’t care what my heart or my wolf wanted with you. I wanted none of you.” His chest moved smoothly up and down as he left those hateful words suspended in the stifling airspace between us.

“And
yet
 … I still had to have …
something
from you,” he admitted in a voice so low and dangerous it immediately made me miss his shouting. “Something more than your fear and overwhelming aversion to me. I wanted—
needed
—to discover and carve out a piece of you no one else had unearthed, invade a sequestered part of your soul my brothers hadn’t accessed.” He flicked his wrist and the mess of glass and wine vanished from his palm.

“I wanted to uncover your darkest blind spot, your most shameful secrets, if for no other reason than to disabuse myself, and my siblings, of your feigned innocence and expose you for the same sort of fraud your brother is.” His spiteful words burned like acid in the pit of my gut.

“Only once inside of your mind, it didn’t take long to discover that you were nothing like Raul. You were simply …
simple
. Your mind was shockingly uncomplicated, in fact. And you … you were merely …
sweet
. Kind. Good. Fair. Nice.”

I might’ve focused on being more offended if he hadn’t looked so increasingly tormented as he tossed out those horridly banal adjectives to describe me.

“There was nothing.” He tossed his head from side to side in bewilderment. “You hadn’t a fucking scheming, manipulative bone in all of your beautiful body. Of course”—his lips quirked in a poor imitation of a smile—“you hated me, and with a passion that was rather impressive. So there was that. But you had reason. Which left me with nothing! Nothing I could rationally continue to fault or despise you for.”

A low growl tore from his throat and he took a cautious step back from me, as if he was afraid to get too close. “Do you have any idea how infuriating it was? Trying so desperately to hold onto my hatred for some slip of a human girl who was just this … beautiful … delicate …”—his hands clenched and unclenched into fists at his sides—“bundle of sweetness, innocence, and self-righteous, tearful fury in my arms?”

I had no answer. He didn’t expect one.

“You,” he indicted, raising his voice once more, “are fucking impossible to hate! Impossible.”

I bit my lip to stifle the nonsensical apology poised on the tip of my tongue.

“You are the embodiment of everything I should never have been gifted with, Milena,” he charged, gradually slinking closer to where I remained glued to the stone wall, as still as a trembling statue could be.

“You’re right that you don’t belong with someone like me,” he conceded. “I’ve done nothing remotely good enough in my long lifetime to deserve you as a mate.” His words became a plaintive whisper as he approached. “And yet there you were, a perfect angel before me, delivered right to my doorstep in the cruelest of fashions. And you despised me. At first sight. With every fiber of your being.”

Butterflies assailed my belly as his fingertips made contact with my hair, stroking tentatively, as if testing their ability to be gentle, before securing a riotous lock behind my ear. He was close now.
So close.
Caging me in against the wall.

His form blocked most of the light, and yet not enough to obscure the unguarded, ineffable suffering I saw in his eyes. I should’ve looked away. I didn’t.

“You identified me as a monster. You feared I would rape you, as you lay wounded on my basement floor. You were so sure I intended to kill you—even after I’d healed you! And I had only myself to blame. Because I continued to be so cruel, so horribly vicious to you—even while you sobbed and begged me to stop.”

I needed to end this. The sharing. The self-loathing. His pain. My pain. It was fast becoming one and the same. And it was torture.

“But I couldn’t. Fuck, I just couldn’t stop!” he professed. “In part because I was so starved, so desperate to absorb every measly shred of insight I possibly could from your mind. But also because the better part of me wanted for you to hate me every bit as much as I hated myself in that moment.

“Alcaeus was right. It was my poetic justice to be forever beholden to a mate who could never love me. But it was also your only hope of salvation.” His throaty laugh was weak, and so bitter. “Because, believe me, ultimately nothing good ever befalls anyone who truly loves me. For your own sake, the more goodness and purity I found within you, the more I prayed you’d forever despise me.”

With every word he spoke, I felt my flimsy resolve disintegrating, withering to nothing. I couldn’t do this. Had to stop. I needed to look away from those imploring black eyes. He was the worst sort of kindling. He would burn and consume me. There’d be nothing left of me when he was done.

His fingers found their way to my face, slanting and holding it captive, as if he’d read the direction of my thoughts and intended to seal off any fragile chance I had of escape.

“Unfortunately for you, I am not very religious. And I never actually prayed very long or hard for you to despise me.
If at all,
” he mumbled under his breath. “Because, as you know, I’m also terribly spoiled, and unerringly selfish. Regardless of whether or not I deserve you, Milena, I want you. I need you. And I intend to have you. Always.”

Cue heart failure.

“I thought I could stop this for your sake. But I can’t.” His fingertips traced my cheek. “I thought maybe I could get you out of my system. But I won’t. It wasn’t your blood inheritance that made me want you for my mate. But it was that inheritance that gave me hope that you might actually survive being mine. That you could love me back and not be forever cursed or mortally harmed for it. Right or wrong, the fates delivered you to me, Milena. And I am far from noble or honorable enough a man to simply let you go.”