Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint-Chapter 89

Alpha Terrell’s POV

Sleep was not happening.

I had established this within four minutes of lying down.

I was on my back staring at the ceiling with my hands folded on my chest like a man laid out for burial, which was exactly how I felt given the evening.

My ears kept doing it without permission.

Straining. Reaching down the corridor toward the room where my mate was currently spending her wedding night with my brother, trying to catch... what, exactly? I didn’t know. I told myself I didn’t want to know.

My ears disagreed.

What were they doing right now?

Merrick was not - he was not incapable. That was the problem. He was extraordinarily capable, in most areas, and he had a way with people that I had always recognised and never envied until this exact moment in my life. Was he already...

Was she already falling for his seductive charms...

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

Don’t.

But the question sat there anyway, waiting. Patient. Merciless.

Silence from the room.

Complete silence.

Which meant either nothing was happening or everything was happening quietly, and knowing Merrick...

I sat up.

Stood up.

I’m just getting water, I told myself, and opened my door.

The corridor was dim and quiet.

I stood in my doorway in the dark for three seconds, contemplating if I should just walk past their room, or just listen from a distance.

Then I heard the footsteps.

Merrick appeared from the direction of his room, dressed - still dressed, I noted, which told me something - and moving with the particular energy of a man on his way somewhere important.

I leaned against my doorframe.

"Running away from your matrimonial duties, brother?" I asked.

Merrick stopped. Turned. Looked at me with the slow assessment of a man clocking exactly how long I had been awake and drawing accurate conclusions about why.

"Is it the thought of me carrying out my matrimonial duties," he said pleasantly, "that’s keeping you up till this hour?"

I chose not to answer that. "Where are you going?"

"To grant my wife her wish."

My wife. The two words landed like two separate small punches and I absorbed them without expression through pure force of habit.

"What wish."

"Freeing Lyra."

I pushed off the doorframe. "Now? It couldn’t wait until..."

"She asked tonight. So tonight."

"Lyra committed treason."

"Lyra helped her friend." Merrick’s voice was easy but underneath it was something that wasn’t. "She did nothing wrong."

I stepped into the corridor fully, closing the space between us until he’d have to go through me to continue. "She’s my prisoner," I said. "Mine to free or mine to deal with. Not yours."

Merrick looked at me.

"You’re being difficult," he said.

"Am I."

"Angel belongs to both of us. She asked for this. Why are you making it about you?"

"Everything became about me," I said, and the control in my voice was costing me something, "when you tried to run off with my Luna. Then as if that wasn’t enough, you get the first night." I held his gaze. "So no. I don’t feel like releasing any prisoners tonight. My territory, my prisoner, my word."

Merrick was quiet for a moment.

Then he decided to try a different approach: "Terrell."

"No."

"Would you just..."

"No."

He exhaled. Looked at the ceiling briefly. Looked back at me. "What would it take," he said, with the patience of a man negotiating, "to get permission tonight? Just tell me what you want."

I looked at him.

He already knew. We had known each other since before we had language for knowing anything. But he was asking me to say it, so I would say it.

"I want tonight," I said simply. "You’re taking her back to your castle tomorrow. Before she goes - I want one night." I held his eyes. "That’s the trade."

Merrick’s expression shifted. "Terrell. She’ll never accept you. Atleast not right now. She’ll need time..."

"Not as me,Merrick." I interrupted.

Silence.

Understanding moved across his face slowly, then completely.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"You said you wanted to free the girl."

"I’m not letting you..."

"She won’t know the difference." I kept my voice level. "We’ve been doing this since we were twelve years old. Same face, same voice. She’s known us for weeks and she still finds it difficult to..."

"She is our mate," Merrick said. "Not a chambermaid we’re confusing for a prank."

"I’m not going to touch her," I said. "I just want..." I stopped.

Merrick waited.

I looked at the wall. "I just want to be near her," I said, quieter. "One night. In the same room. Before she leaves and spends God knows how long at your castle pretending I don’t exist." I looked back at him. "That’s all."

The corridor was very quiet.

Merrick looked at me for a long moment with an expression I recognised - the one that meant he had found the argument and lost the will to keep making it.

"If she finds out," he said, "she will never forgive either of us."

"She won’t find out."

"You have less control around her than you think you do."

"I’ll manage."

Another long pause.

Then Merrick began unbuttoning his coat.

We exchanged clothes in the corridor like two men who had absolutely not done this before and were definitely not practiced at it.

The coat fit - it always fit, that was the specific inconvenience of sharing a face and a build with someone. I straightened the collar, ran a hand through my hair in the approximate direction of Merrick’s usual style, and looked at him.

He looked back at me wearing my shirt with the expression of a man who had made a decision he expected to regret.

"Don’t," he said, pointing, "do anything I wouldn’t do."

"That’s an enormous amount of latitude."

"Terrell."

"I told you. I just want to be in the same room."

He held the look for one more second.

Then he turned and walked toward the direction of the dungeon, and I turned and walked toward his room, and somewhere in the middle of the corridor I understood with complete clarity that this was either the best or worst idea I had ever had.

Possibly both simultaneously.

The door opened quietly.

The room was warm - firelight low, the good cedar smell of Merrick’s rooms - and there she was.

Angel, on the bed, the covers drawn up to her chin, her dark hair loose across the pillow. She turned when she heard the door and when she saw me...

She smiled.

The genuine, unguarded smile of someone seeing a person they feel safe with.

That smile. Directed at my face, was meant for someone else.

I almost stopped walking.

I didn’t.

"How did it go?" she asked softly.

I crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it and found Merrick’s easy manner from somewhere inside and said: "Settled. She’s been freed - guards will escort her to her family tonight."

The smile widened.

And then she moved.

She shifted across the bed and put her arms around me - her head against my chest, her arms around my stomach, her whole soft warm curvy body settling against me with the simple trust of someone who felt completely safe - and said, quietly, into my shirt:

"Thank you."

My arms went around her before I even knew what I was doing.

The scent of her hit me at this range like something physical - vanilla and warmth and that sweetness that had been haunting me for weeks - and I closed my eyes and simply breathed.

Don’t, I told myself. Don’t you dare. Or you’ll find yourself loosing control.

I held her. Carefully. With the firm control of a man standing at the edge of something very high, acutely aware of how far down the drop was.

Her hair was soft under my chin.

Her breathing was slowing - the long slow rhythm of someone unwinding from a very difficult day. I could feel her relaxing, degree by degree, the tension I had learned to recognise as her permanent baseline releasing itself into the quiet.

I breathed her in through her hair and stared at the ceiling and thought: this is the most exquisite and specific punishment I have ever experienced.

We stayed like that.

Long enough that I had started to believe she was asleep.

Then she spoke.

"Remember that book you gave me?"

I kept my face neutral. "Mm."

"The Immense Pleasures of Gloria." She shifted slightly, settling more comfortably against me. "You said if I had any questions, I could come to you. I have questions now."

I went very still.

Merrick gave her that book!?

The extensively detailed erotic book I’d seen her guarding so zealously? The same book I’d seized, promising to show her the real thing?

That book had been from Merrick?

And he’d even told her to come to him with questions?

I stared at the ceiling as I thought about Merrick’s parting words in the corridor.

Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

I closed my eyes.

He has done everything.