This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,105
the darkness in his eyes. I lace my hands behind his naked back, flexing my palms against his muscles, and lock my ankles around his waist.
“I’m strong enough,” I murmur, edging forward to press my lips to his, inhaling the same back-arching power I felt when we first met.
Our mouths have barely touched when he pulls me away from him, quick, aggressive, holding my head an inch from his. He lashes out with a snarl. “You’re too vulnerable. Too fragile.”
Two months ago, I would have retaliated against his assessment of my strength. I would have tried to prove to him just how fragile I am not.
Tonight, I have greater perspective. The kind of rage he’s experiencing is sourced from pain. The deepest pain. It has to be more than Bridget’s injury. And it’s making him lash out with an intensity that he already regrets.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
“The past happened,” he says through gritted teeth. “A past and a future I can’t escape.”
“Your father,” I whisper.
His grip becomes excruciatingly tight on my scalp, but he leans forward, closing the gap nearly completely between us. “Deceiver. Coward. Killer. That was my father.”
I press myself as close to Tristan as I can, my muscles straining with the effort, but I refuse to let go. “You aren’t him.”
He growls, low and soft. “He destroyed everyone who cared about him.”
Tristan’s anger washes across me in waves that push and pull at me. I’m buffeted in the storm of his rage, but I refuse to let go.
“How can the child of a monster not become a monster?” he asks.
I level my gaze with his. “You aren’t him.”
Tristan’s green eyes are half-animal, darkly rimmed. Strands of his raven black hair fall across his eyes. The first rays of sunlight break across the horizon and shine through the windows, highlighting the curve of his lips.
I brace, using the strength in my thighs to remain where I am as I remove one of my hands from his back and reach up behind his hand—the one pressed to the back of my head that is keeping me at a distance.
Slowly and carefully, I slide my fingers over the back of his, taking control of his hand so I can lean forward again.
My lips press to his fully for the first time, fitting to the curve of his mouth. He inhales sharply as I explore the shape of his lips, traveling the upper and lower curves.
The taste of his mouth is intoxicating. I moan against his lips, nudging at them, wanting to feel more.
The muscles in his arms flex across my back, the hand with which he holds my head gripping me painfully.
“Tessa,” he says. “Leave while you still can.”
He’s giving me another choice.
For a long time, I didn’t think I had any choices with Tristan, but he has always given me options. Live or die. Fight him or fuck him. Leave or stay.
“I’m staying.”
His forehead creases, his eyes narrow, a moment of distrust. His grip on my head changes, pulling me closer, pausing while his gaze scorches mine.
My heartbeat is rapid inside my chest, my wolf’s energy rising to the surface, but I focus on maintaining my calm, determined not to taint this moment by losing control of my power.
His lips nudge mine, a testing pressure, before he pulls back to assess my reaction. The brief contact is tantalizing, the insistent question in his eyes unrelenting. I sway toward him as close as I can without kissing him, waiting for him to make his own decision.
With a throaty snarl, he swoops toward me and demands full access to my mouth. His lips push mine apart, his tongue grazing across my tongue. Scorching need bursts through me, both mine and the need he has kept under control since… Damn… His emotions tell me that he’s kept his need for me under control since the night he first laid eyes on me.
I respond by releasing his hand and running mine up his back into his hair, holding him as firmly as he’s holding me.
He breaks the contact as suddenly as he started it, casting a withering glance at the flipped table, which is of no use to us, before he strides with me to his bedroom.
His scent envelops me as soon as we enter, a relentless mix of fury and desire as he carries me to the bed.
“I want you naked,” he says, his lips meeting mine in a blistering kiss that ignites the ache in my center.