This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,83
pain washes through me and… oh, damn…
It burns.
I gasp, my breathing becoming wild as the sensation of flames rushes through me, spreading through my body, making me shiver and sweat. At the same time, Tristan groans behind me, a sound of pure agony. His fingers splay against my chest, stretching and clawing again, more dangerous than before.
“What’s happening?” I gasp, trying to understand this new pain.
“Our wolves,” he groans. “They’re experiencing each other’s pain now. The darkness will follow. My wolf is tearing itself up like yours was. But now yours—” He writhes behind me, all the hard planes of his chest and thighs pressing up against me. His fingernails drag through the top of my bra, cutting through the padding, scratching across my chest.
He moans against the back of my neck. “Your wolf will feel what I feel when I’m near you.”
He said his wolf was slowly burning up.
But there is so much about burning up that he didn’t tell me.
It’s a different kind of ripping apart—not self-destruction from hurt and rejection, but two desires raging against each other. My senses fill with darkness and the recognition of a threat greater than any I’ve encountered before. I struggle against its pull, even though my mind screams at me that the darkness Tristan perceives is me.
I am the threat.
But on the other side of the battle is a wildfire, a burn that spreads through me and it doesn’t want me to fight the darkness. No, it wants the darkness. To become part of the darkness. To lose myself in it.
I pull air into my chest. Close my eyes. Let the heat wash through me in waves. Let the seductive pull of the dark drag me down.
Gripping Tristan’s hand, I twist, scissor my legs, shove his upper shoulder to push him onto his back, and straddle him, while somehow managing to keep his palm pressed against my heart.
On top of him now, I rest on his hips, ignoring the fact that he’s naked and that for the first time, he’s in too much pain to overpower me.
His breathing is shallow, his gaze unfocused, his stomach muscles clenched. The pain that was ripping me apart is destroying him. My own inner darkness, forged from rejection and pain is tearing him apart.
The fire rising inside me whispers to me to take whatever I want from him while he’s vulnerable. Take my pleasure from his body. Take control of his pack. Take his life. Succumb to the dark, know that I am stronger than anyone else, and do whatever I wish.
His biceps tense as he reaches up with his free hand to push my hair back—to see half of my face, the other half hidden behind the remaining curtain of my hair.
“Your eyes,” he says. “They show me everything I don’t want to see about myself.”
Gripping his hand, keeping it pressed against my heart—the only anchor I have—I lean close to him, balance myself on my fist beside his head on the pillow and fight the desire that rages through me, the overwhelming sensation of my heated skin against his. “What do you see now?”
“You’re going to kill me,” he says.
The rising fire inside me tells me to do it.
Do it now. Claim your freedom.
I shake my head, denying the burn.
It feels like power, but it’s just another form of destruction. Right now, Tristan is feeling what I was feeling, all my rejection and hurt. He warned me that our minds could be lost in each other’s darkness. If I give in to the impulses to dominate him, I’ll only be killing myself.
Slowly lowering my torso to his chest, I trap his hand between us and dip my head to his shoulder, turning my ear to listen to his heartbeat. It’s thready. Dangerously weak. Despite the power that thrums through me, I sense my own heartbeat slowing with every passing second. My heart is giving out.
The power I thought I felt is an illusion.
We’re both dying, drowning in pain and darkness, while our minds deceive us.
I refuse to accept that this is the end of me.
Sliding my right arm up along Tristan’s chest and neck without lifting my head, I brush my fingers across his jaw and into his hair, holding on to his head, the same way he’s holding on to mine.
“Breathe with me,” I say, my voice muffled against his chest. We got into sync once, we can do it again. “Breathe in… breathe out…”