Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,43

making sure not to attract Nate’s attention, I drew a little bit of power and nudged Matthew into unconsciousness. It didn’t hurt him. I found that right at that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. But it did give me a little breathing room.

I sat up, propping myself on shaky arms. Matthew didn’t stir. He let out a soft snore, still smiling, and stayed completely out. His broad chest rose and fell, and his arms lay at his sides, one hand extended a little bit toward me like he wanted me to set mine in it.

He was dead to the world.

Well. Now I had time to think undisturbed. And I wasn’t sure that was a good thing after all.

Chapter 11

Cats Always Land on Their Feet

Thinking started with taking a shower. Matthew wasn’t waking up for a while, and my skin was crawling with the sensation of filthiness. Washing off Matthew’s come was priority one. It felt like he’d marked me as his, and I didn’t know what to do with the mix of reflexive horror — I didn’t belong to anyone, dammit! — and arousal that left me with.

Once I’d washed, extensively and thoroughly, it still felt like he’d marked me, like physically removing the evidence of how he’d had me wasn’t close to enough.

It was weird, because that wasn’t how it’d worked before. I was good at washing that man right out of my hair, to grossly misuse a really awesome musical number. After what Parker had done to me, I’d felt more lingering disgust over that shaman watching than over Parker himself. Yeah, I was furious, and yeah, I wanted revenge and would never forget how it felt — but I didn’t feel dirty. Once I washed enough to get his lingering scent off of me, I was clean. His touch couldn’t stain me. He didn’t have that power.

Matthew apparently did. I didn’t feel dirty or tainted. But I felt different, changed, like everyone would be able to look at me and know I belonged to an alpha. Like I would know, even if no one else could see it.

Any shifter who came within ten yards of me would know, anyway. One shower wasn’t going to remove the scent of that much come.

I lingered in the shower, but at last I had to get out and deal with reality. The bathroom was pretty spartan — not surprising, since Matthew didn’t strike me as someone who wasted time on the small luxuries of life; I mean, the guy drove a used Prius, he clearly didn’t have his priorities straight — but I managed to find a clean towel in a cabinet, a new toothbrush in a drawer, and some Q-tips in a small cup on the pitted blue-tiled countertop by the sink.

Clean ears. Fuck. Clean ears were highly underrated.

I stepped out into the bedroom with the towel wrapped around my waist. Matthew was still snoring. I stood and stared down at him for long minutes. Gods, he was handsome. And strong. And broad and tall and muscled, and everything an alpha ought to be. I could kill him here and now. Nate probably didn’t realize how skilled I was at using the little trickle of magic he'd left me. He thought I couldn’t get away with anything, what with a guard definitely sitting outside the room listening.

And they’d had quite a show. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I wouldn’t have cared so much if whoever it was had been listening to Matthew force himself on me; that would’ve been par for the course. But they’d heard me moaning like a slut. And that — well, that was private.

Anyway, I could definitely get away with killing him. A tiny bit of magic to make sure he didn’t wake up, and then slit his carotid artery with one of my claws. Quick and easy. It’d take a little work to keep the wound open until he bled out, given his enhanced alpha healing. The sheets and mattress would be soaked. Maybe his dark blue eyes would flicker open and fix, glazed and empty of everything that made him who he was. He’d be choking and gurgling and…

Bile rose up in my esophagus, and I gagged and fled for the bathroom again.

I spat a mouthful of slime into the sink and then straightened, wiping away some of the steam to look at myself in the mirror over the sink. Dark bags under my bloodshot green eyes, like