Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 25

Taking advantage of Ambrose's momentary surprise, I get out of his car and let myself in the yard through the front gate. Pleased with my small victory, I greet Dougal with more than usual affection while refusing to turn and watch as Ambrose drives around the side of the house to park in the garage.

It feels like I've finally scored a point—finally managed to level the ground—and I smile to myself as I go inside and then upstairs to my room. A shower and a change of clothes are my top priorities, as the memory of the ashes and their strangely nauseating scent still lingers in my mind.

I'd much rather remember the look on Ambrose's face when I'd kissed him.

I wonder when it was he'd last been taken by surprise. The expression had certainly looked unfamiliar on his face.

Showered and dressed, and still feeling smugly satisfied, I step from the bathroom to find Ambrose himself sitting on the end of my bed.

He's taken off his jacket and shoes, his collar is undone, and his tie is loosely draped around his neck. He looks up at me from where he seems to have been studying the carpet between his feet, and my breath hitches a little as I see—even with my imperfect vision—that his eyes are lit with dark fire.

Standing, he comes towards me, and I fight the instinct to back away. We might be in his house, but this this my room, and I don't remember inviting him to come in whenever he pleases.

He stops in front of me, quite close, forcing me to look up to meet his eyes—which I do, defiantly.

"You shouldn't tease a dragon, little wolf," he says. "Not unless you want to be devoured."

Feeling strangely vulnerable without my glasses, I push past him, aiming for the bedside table where I'd left them.

"You have no idea what I want," I say.

He catches my arm, spins me around and shoves me hard. I fall across the bed with a yelp of surprise, then scramble to get up.

Ambrose is faster.

He grabs me and flips me over, and then in one swift, deft motion, he somehow slips the loops of his tie around my wrists and pulls tight.

"Ambrose! What the—hey!"

Sitting over me, he forces my hands over my head and fastens the tie to the posts of the bed. It's not so tight it hurts, but it's secure enough I won't get loose without a struggle.

Breathing hard, he looks down at me, and then he starts to undo the buttons of his shirt.

"Whoa, whoa—Ambrose, wait!" I gasp. "This isn't—"

"What you want?" he says, his voice hard and sharp. "No lies, Noah—not between us."

He continues to unbutton his shirt as he speaks, then pulls it off and casts it aside, revealing a finely muscled torso, broad across the shoulders and narrow at the waist, and an expanse of smooth, cream-colored skin. Next, his hands go to my own shirt and he starts to pop the buttons free, one-by-one.

"Ambrose!"

"Go ahead," he says. "Tell me to stop. Maybe I will. And if I won't, you're a wolf, Noah, and you're strong. You just seem to have forgotten that, somehow. I see it at the heart of you—wild and fierce, my little wolf—just like I see what it is that you desire. So go ahead and stop me. Just don't say that this isn't what you want."

With my shirt undone, he pulls it wide, exposing my body to his gaze, and my breath catches as his hands glide over me, giving off a deep and pleasant heat. He leans to kiss the skin of my shoulders and chest, and I shiver despite myself, and then, with something unfortunately like a whimper, I shut my eyes and turn my head aside.

He stops, and I feel him take my face between his hands, gently forcing me to look back at him. "Hey, now, little wolf. You've got nothing of which to be ashamed. You're beautiful—every inch of you. Look at me—look at how I look at you. Tell me what you see."

I blink up at him, feeling like I'm balanced on a knife's edge between giving in to this and breaking down in tears. I study his features—his fire-lit eyes and flushed lips, the dark lines of his brows, the shadows of his cheekbones and jaw, and the red-brown cascade of his wild mane of hair. It's his expression though, the combination of his features that offers a glimpse within, that makes my breath catch again.

It's something I've seen before—passing between Julian and Dane, and between some of my siblings and their mates: passion and longing, desire, devotion—the look of one soul that sees, in another, its match. It's a look I never thought I'd see directed at myself.

Thom, at least, had never looked at me at all.

"Hey, now," Ambrose says again, brushing away the shine of my tears, "what is it you're thinking of? If you want to cry, I'll make you cry, but they shall be such tears as would be sweet, and I'd much rather see you smile."

I look up at him and sniff, then tug at my makeshift bonds. "Untie me," I say.

His brows pinch at whatever he sees in my expression, but he nods, reaches up, and pulls at the end of the tie. Immediately, it comes undone. "It's a trick knot," he says, shifting off me and showing me the now knot-less strip of fabric. "I wouldn't ever hurt you, you know."

I sit up, wiping at my eyes, and nod. "I know."

And somehow, I do know it.

Ambrose isn't Thom, and he wouldn't hurt me. Not on purpose, anyway.

Moving to the edge of the bed, I sit facing away from him, finding it easier to speak that way.

"You're right, Ambrose," I say. "I do want you, but...not like this. I'm not something you can just see, and want, and take. I've been that already, and... I don't know if I have anything left to give right now."

I feel his hand on my back, warm through the fabric of my open shirt.

"I've got plenty, though," he says. "And I want you to see, and want, and take it all, little wolf."

His hand leaves me and I feel the bed shift. Looking over my shoulder, I see that he's lain back, his hair loose and spread across the pillows in a red wave. He smiles at me, slow and wide.

"Besides," he says softly, reaching for my hands, "dragons may be devourers of men, but surely it can be said that wolves are just as ravenous."

~ ☾ ~

In the end, Ambrose gets what he wants, and I get thoroughly fucked.

It starts tender—kisses and caresses, and a slow undressing—but gradually I am undone, and then—in the heat that passes between us, his fire and the burn of his tongue as he tastes my most secret skin—I let him own me.

I don't mind. I like it, if I'm honest, and it's like nothing I've experienced before. By the time we finish, me on my back and he burning me from the inside, I feel more seen, more known, than I ever have before, and—strangely—not at all ashamed.

Afterwards, he lies with me, trailing his long, pale fingers over the darker skin of my shoulders and arm, the side of my face, and down the center of my chest, as if he can't get enough.

I look back at him, curious and unable to quite fathom how, or why, but knowing that in Ambrose—as infuriatingly enigmatic and seemingly omniscient as he is—I have found something unexpected, and unique.

Unique to me, at least, as it is unique to every wolf.

I can't be entirely sure, of course—maybe because he's not a wolf himself, after all; but something inside me, small and bright and nestled at my core, is sure enough.

Ambrose is my mate.

I wonder if he knows that, too.