With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(130)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Then she tore her hands from his wrists and started to run but he caught her around the waist and tugged her straight back, front-to-front.

“Baby doll –” he started.

The tears hit her eyes at those two words and she shrieked, “Stop calling me that!” She pushed at his chest with her hands and struggled in his arms. “Stop calling me that when I’m not that to you. I’ve never been that to you. I’m only that in my stupid, stupid dreams!”

He barely controlled her struggles while whispering, “Honey, settle down and listen to me.”

Working hard to hold back the tears, Sonia stammered, “N… no!” and kept right on fighting.

But Callum kept right on controlling her thrashing so she had to do it harder.

She had to get away, far away. Far enough to get her head together and piece her heart together and find some way to get on with her hideous destiny.

She managed to break away but he caught her again and pushed her on the bed.

She rolled and almost got to her knees but his fingers wrapped around her ankles, twisted her back, yanking her down the bed and his big body landed on hers.

In a panic because this was not where she wanted to be (even though it was), she bucked and pushed at his shoulders, shouting, “Just let me get away. I need to get away!”

“Baby doll, you need to calm down,” he murmured softly.

Something in his tone struck her.

Her body stilled and her mind cleared but her hands still pushed at his shoulders as she looked away from him and stared at the side of the bed.

She took in a ragged breath.

Then she took in another one.

Then she realized what she’d said and what she’d done and how much it betrayed about how very much she felt about him.

Then, deflated and crushingly humiliated, she made an attempt to salvage a very bad situation, whispering, “You’re right.”

His hand rounded her jaw and he said softly, “Look at me, honey.”

She closed her eyes tight and resisted but finally, taking in a breath, she looked at him.

God, he was beautiful, watching her with tenderness etched in every feature.

Seeing him looking at her that way, she realized she was so caught up in the hurt, she forgot that he was dealing with a hideous destiny too.

“I’m sorry,” she was still whispering. “You don’t need this. You have a kingdom to worry about. I should have… I should… I should have just learned to deal on my own.”

He stared at her a moment then his eyes went over her head and she could almost hear him counting to ten in his.

Then his gaze came back to hers and he stated, “I’m not f**king around on you, Sonia.”

A hated sob welled up in her chest and she swallowed it down on the word, “Don’t.”

“Baby doll, I’m running at night.”

She blinked at him, sudden confusion swept through her at his words then she asked, “Running?”

“Transforming to wolf and running. I did it at the cabin too. I have to do it, compelled to by the wolf in me,” he told her and she stared because no one had told her that. “I couldn’t do it when we were in the city but I do it here all the time. You always slept through it, me leaving and returning.” He paused and then finished, “Until lately.”

She kept staring, trying to wrap her mind around this strangely logical fact.

“Do you… do you,” she shouldn’t ask, she really shouldn’t ask but, on a barely there whisper, she asked, “run with someone else?”

His lips twitched and he said, “No, little one, I’m a lone wolf.”

“But you smell like –” she started.

He cut her off. “I smell like wolf.”

“But, I’d never smelled it before except when –”

“The scent wears off quickly, definitely by morning.”

“But it smells like after we –”

He grinned. “Yes, honey, that’s exactly what it smells like.”

She thought that was kind of neat, and definitely sexy, and she felt her body getting soft under his. “So you’re not meeting someone?”

His face grew serious when he replied, “I’d never f**k around on you, Sonia,” then his face dipped closer when he finished on a growl, “never.”

Relief started sliding through her but she couldn’t let go. “But…why? You don’t want me. You said… and Caleb and Yuri –”

“Forget what Caleb and Yuri said.”

She was back to staring at him and getting annoyed so she snapped, “Forget?”

“I’ve lived for nearly four hundred years and you know I like to play,” he calmly explained.

Yes, she was definitely getting annoyed. “Right, so –”

“No, baby doll,” he cut her off firmly. “You said what you had to say. It’s my turn to talk.”

She clamped her mouth shut and glared at him.

He watched her as if waiting for her to defy him and then he went on, “I’ve had a lot of lovers but I’ve never had a mate.”

She opened her mouth and shot back, “A mate you don’t want.”

Now Callum looked like he was getting annoyed when he informed her, “Sonia, you’re talking.”

“Yes, I am,” she retorted. “There’s no reason to do this. I get it. I understand my place. You know I understand it, so it’s over.”

“But you don’t understand your place,” he bit out.

And yes, he was definitely getting annoyed too.

“I –”

“Sonia, shut up,” he clipped.

Sonia glared.

Callum scowled.

This lasted a while.

Sonia finally lost patience. “You wanted to talk… talk.”

“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she snapped.

His eyes narrowed and he lost control of his temper. “All right, baby doll,” he gritted out through his teeth, “I never thought this was the way I’d tell you but here it is. You’re perfect.”

Sonia stopped glaring and her mouth dropped open.

Callum kept talking, “You have to know, I didn’t think I would feel that way at first but every f**king second I was with you I realized it more and more. Every day, I would wake up and think you were perfect and every night I’d go to sleep thinking, somehow, during the day, you got even more perfect. If I could have wished what I thought was my perfect mate on the wind and had her come back to me in a storm, I could never have come up with anything as exquisite as you.”