Chapter 3
She goes to Deucalion twice a week, giving her bruises and cuts some time to heal in between their sparring sessions. The injuries he leaves are never serious – he doesn't break any bones or leave any wounds that take more than a few days to mend – but he never offers to take her pain away either, afterwards.
When they fight, it's only ever his eyes and his nails that change. Allison is always tempted to ask him to wolf out, but he's enough for her to handle in his human form, and from what Scott has told her about the fight with the Darach, she's not even sure if she really wants to see Deucalion's Alpha form, no matter how curious she may be.
They don't talk, exactly, not beyond the banter they trade. But the jibes they exchange have lost some of their sharpness and are now more like a comfortable habit they keep falling back into.
Allison goes straight home when they've finished, treats her wounds and cleans herself up down at her own place in private, before her father comes home. If the bruises made him uncomfortable, she doesn't want to find out how he'd react if he saw some of the other injuries she's returning with. He'd probably confront Scott, and Scott would tell him that they stopped training together weeks ago, and that's a situation Allison would prefer to avoid for as long as possible.
They lose track of time one day.
It's a gloomy Tuesday in January, and Allison was running late to begin with because Mr Wincott, their new English teacher who was probably not a dark druid but just a regular human jerk, had given her detention for arguing with Isaac.
She doesn't make it to Deucalion's until an hour after their usual time, and even though he never goes easy on her, she gets the impression that he's particularly challenging that day, throwing her around like a rag doll and hardly giving her the chance to score. If he'd handled her like this two months ago, she would have quit after the first day. But over the course of those weeks she's been fighting with him, she's picked up skills and tricks she wouldn't have known then, and when he grabs her by her throat and slams her up the wall, she sees an opening and draws her dagger to his neck where his carotid pulsates, placing the pointed tip against it.
The choke-hold around her throat eases and he sets her down surprisingly gently rather than unceremoniously dropping her to the floor.
Sliding a single claw into the space between her blade and his skin, he pointedly pulls the dagger from the vulnerable spot.
She chuckles. "Scared?"
"It takes more than a small knife to scare me, Allison," he admonishes, amused. "But it was still a good move. Thanks for not seeing it through. It's always a pain to get those bloodstains off the walls."
Allison snorts. "I figured I owe you for not actually crushing my windpipe there." She pulls her sweaty hair back from her face and starts gathering her weapons. "I should get going. My dad's back at five and I want to be home before him."
"That might prove to be a little difficult. It's almost six."
"What? How did we– Shit!" If she comes back home now like this, her father is bound to ask questions, and even though she's reluctant to tell him the truth, she'd hoped to avoid outright lying to him. She swears under her breath, wondering if she could talk Lydia into covering for her without actually telling her what she's been up to.
"You're welcome to use the shower here and clean yourself up before you return to your father," Deucalion offers, and Allison gratefully accepts.
She winces when she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror and sees the ring of dark red bruises around her throat. There's nothing she can do about those now, but even if she had been home earlier, she wouldn't have been able to cover them up from her father. She'll have to wear scarves at school for the next week or so; maybe get some make-up tips from Lydia.
The hot spray of water makes her body ache, makes her feel each bruise and each sore muscle and joint more acutely. She normally enjoys that part, loves the way her body feels after a good workout. In the privacy of her home, she revels in spending luxurious long minutes under the shower, tilting up her face into the spray and letting the water wash over her like warm summer rain.
Here, standing naked in the bathroom of a man she doesn't quite trust, who's been an enemy until far too recently, she's unable to relax like that. She keeps the shower short and perfunctory, turning the water off as soon as she feels clean.
There are fresh towels on the rack, white and fluffy, like the ones they give you in hotels, and not for the first time, Allison wonders if the entire interior maybe came with the apartment because everything is so impersonal and exchangeable.
She dries herself off and wraps a towel around her body, twisting her wet hair up in a loose bun. The state of her clothes makes her frown. Would it be tasteless to ask if he still has anything of Kali's that she could wear? She doesn't know how close they were, if he mourns her death or regrets the way his pack seems to have fallen apart after the final showdown with the Darach. She decides just to ask for a shirt or something; it's not like her dad has a keen sense of fashion.
Deucalion is in the kitchen when she comes out of the bathroom, leaning against the counter and sipping from a bottle of water. He's still in his training gear, bloodstains on his grey tank top, and Allison feels a little guilty for monopolizing his shower, even though he offered.
"Do you think I could borrow–" She stops at the way he's staring at her, too intense, too focused, too hungry, like he's about to jump and tear out her throat, and she's not sure what she's done to provoke that. "What?"
He blinks and draws in a sharp breath, but his eyes continue roaming restlessly over her body. His voice, when he speaks, is oddly formal and controlled. "I apologize. It's been a long time since I've seen a woman."
"Oh." Allison's heart rate spikes. She feels a blush rising on her cheeks. Part of her wants to turn back to the bathroom and cover herself. She didn't think anything of it, but in hindsight it seems inappropriate to stand clad only in a towel in the middle of a man's living room, especially someone who's been deprived of his sight for so long. At the same time, however, the way his eyes linger on her makes her feel reckless and powerful, like she has some sort of hold over this dangerous predator who used to call himself the Alpha of Alphas, and it's a rush like no other.
She bites her lip and, trying not to examine too closely what she's about to do, with damp fingers she worries the edge of the towel until it comes loose.
The towel falls and crumples at her feet, leaving her fully exposed. Deucalion's eyes flash red for an instant. It takes all her courage to resist the urge to raise her arms and shield her nakedness from him.
"Don't start anything you don't intend to finish, Allison," he warns. His tone is mild, but there's an edge underneath that makes her realize that she's testing his patience to breaking point.
"Who says that I'm not going to finish it?" It's a challenge, not unlike earlier when she came at him with a pair of daggers, and just like then the knowledge that he's going to retaliate is at equal parts scary and thrilling.
His gaze flickers up and down her body, drinking her in like a man who'll die of thirst unless he has his fill. The way he looks at her makes arousal pool in her stomach like liquid heat. She never thought of him like that before, never allowed herself to look at him and see the man – not a monster to be fought, not a potential threat, not a reluctant ally. Now, suddenly, all she can see is a man who wants her, someone she can have without feeling guilty, someone she doesn't have to be afraid of hurting.
It's her who closes the distance between them, stepping over the discarded towel and approaching him. He sets the bottle down on the counter behind him and reaches for her, and Allison's breath stutters. His hands, which she's come to associate with violence and danger and bruises over the last couple of months, are achingly gentle on her flushed skin, his touch soft and almost reverent as he maps out her body, raising goosebumps in its wake.
A shiver runs through her, head to toe. He smiles at her reaction, clearly pleased with himself, and she'd begrudge him his smug attitude if he didn't choose just this moment to let his hand dip between her legs, the calluses on his fingertips dragging deliciously against her clit before he slides a single finger inside her. She's so wet, there's barely even any resistance at all at the breach; no burn, no lingering discomfort warring against the pleasure.
It draws a gasp from her lips, and he swallows it with his mouth on hers. The kiss is hard and relentless, a stark contrast to the tenderness of his touch, different from Scott's wet, hungry kisses or the shy, clumsy ones she exchanged with the boys who came before him. Deucalion touches her like he wants to worship her, like he's asking for permission, but he kisses her like he owns her, with a possessiveness that should worry her but his fingers are driving her insane and she can't think, can barely keep on her feet.
Her knees buckle when she comes with a quiet little scream, and he catches her and hoists her up easily with large, warm hands that span across her thighs and her ass as she wraps her legs around his waist. She gasps when the soft cotton of his shirt rubs against her clit, too soon after her orgasm, the overstimulation almost painful.
If it were Scott, she'd make a funny little quip like, You're overdressed, but sex with Scott always had a playful edge that she can't imagine with Deucalion, so she doesn't say anything, just pulls at his shirt until the hem slips free so she can drag it over his head. He walks her backwards and sets her down on top of the table, the wood smooth beneath her and quickly warming against her skin.
She reaches eagerly for the fastening of his pants, wanting to feel him inside of her so badly that she's shaking. His cock is thick and half-hard already when he finally steps out of his pants and shorts. She closes her fingers around the shaft and gives it a few firm strokes, pleased when she gets to watch him lose his unaffected air of cool and his face twists into a snarl, a feral groan ripped from his throat.
Allison loves that part, when she's the one to make them lose it like that – loved it with Scott, and loves it even more with Deucalion, who surely has a better handle on his control than a newly-turned teenage wolf and yet still can't hold on to it when she puts her hands on him. She smiles and trails her nose along his jawline, then fastens her teeth against his throat and bites down.
His reaction is instantaneous, his entire body jerking against her as if she'd tasered him. In a flash, her upper body is flat with her back on the table. The hand that pushed her down has sharp claws that have cut into her more than once in the past but now curve around her side without cutting the skin even a little, and fuck, that's hot! The fresh stab of arousal makes her insides clench and her head feel light and woozy.
"Come on," she gasps harshly. "Fuck me already."
"Such language," he chides mildly. His smile is fanged and predatory, but his voice is as unruffled as ever, and it's not fair that he can still taunt her like this when she can barely string two coherent words together. "Your wish is, as ever, my command."
It doesn't sound like he's done toying with her. She expects him to draw it out and make her wait, so she's unprepared when he ruthlessly slams into her, burying himself to the hilt inside her with a force that makes her back chafe against the table top. A broken scream tumbles from her lips and her hands futilely fumble for something to hold on to when he leans over her, bracketing her face with his forearms while his claws dig holes into the soft wood, and he starts fucking her ruthlessly with long, powerful thrusts that drive the air from her lungs.
Her second orgasm ripples through her, pleasure so sharp that it's almost painful, and when she tightens around him, his thrusts speed up and break their rhythm. Bonelessly, she lies back and catches her breath, losing track of time until he finishes, burying his head in the crook of her neck and dragging his fangs over her pulse point without breaking the skin. She feels his cock jerking inside of her, the hot rush of his come filling her, marking her from the inside.
It doesn't take him long to recover, and he pulls himself up and steps away, an unpleasantly cool rush of air wrapping itself around her body when he's gone. She doesn't want to move just yet, too tired and blissed-out to care about the goosebumps rising on her skin and the way the table starts feeling hard and uncomfortable.
He's already dressed, looking her up and down, with something she initially mistakes for hunger.
"My, my, my, Allison Argent." Something in the way he says her name makes her uneasy, but it isn't until he continues that she understands the scope of it. "I wonder what your grandfather would say if he saw you like that."
The warmth of the afterglow dissipates at once. It feels like someone had dunked her in ice water, the chill seeping into every pore of her body and taking her breath away. She wants to scream. She wants to curl into a ball and cry, but she won't. She's not going to give him that.
"I imagine he'd come after you with a pair of arrows," she says coldly, letting the implications sink in.
She doesn't wait for him to react, pushing herself off the table and hurrying out of the room. Her work-out clothes lie in a heap on the bathroom floor. She grabs them and puts them on quickly, not caring anymore if her father will question her whereabouts. It won't matter, anyway.
