My Most Precious Human

I kept staring at my reflection in the mirror, and I felt as if I was wearing a seductive nightgown. Not in hell, I was going to indulge his senses by presenting myself in this dress. I looked at the clock; it was exactly 1 PM. I ran to my closet and took out my favorite oversized, loose sweater. It was white, and it was long enough to cover my butt.

I grinned wickedly, checking my look in the mirror for the final time. "Perfect!"

I ran down the stairs, looking for the dining room. The door on the right was wide open as if inviting me in. I cautiously passed the threshold and found myself in a spacious room with a long, massive wooden table running the length of the room.

"You're here." I heard a whisper right behind my ear.

I turned around. Draven was standing inches away from me. He was wearing jeans and a black fitted T-shirt, partially exposing the tribal mark tattoos on his upper arms. His eyes slowly roamed down my body. I gulped but forced myself not to turn my eyes away from him. I vowed to myself that I would not give him the satisfaction of becoming flustered and intimidated by his presence. He smirked.

"Are you cold, Lilith?" he chuckled, looking at my sweater.

"No." I wasn't going to lie about the reason why my whole outfit looked the way it did.

"Should I turn on a heater for you?" he asked, faking a worried face.

"I'm fine, thank you," I smiled, with the same kind of sincerity his voice had.

"Then perhaps you could take this off..." He gently grabbed the hem of the sweater at my neckline. "If you feel cold, I will gladly wrap you in my arms and make you hot." He looked at me with such insane confidence that it made my knees weak.

I swallowed hard, but I was not going to lose to him. "You don't seem to like my sweater, do you?" I smirked.

He gave out a nonchalant sigh. "I would say that I would prefer to see you in the dress I gave you, but you can also take the dress off and then stay in the sweater."

His arrogant smirk and intensive gaze were almost impossible to bear, but much to his disadvantage, I acted more rational when I was pissed, and his cockiness drove my blood to the verge of boiling. "Did you want to see me in this see-through dress this badly, Alpha Draven?" I asked daringly, slightly leaning towards him. "Did you want to see my panties underneath the fabric and fantasize about what it's like to get between my thighs? Or did you wish to see the shape of my hardening nipples, revealing themselves from beneath my lace bra?"

His eyes flared with a madly red glow. His lips parted, exposing his fangs while a ferocious roar escaped from his throat. Ok... I might have taken my teasing a little too far...

With his one hand, he swept me off my feet, lifting me in his arms, and then sitting me on the table and positioning me to face him. He did it so fast that I hardly acknowledged his movements. With his one knee, he forced mine to spread, making his way between my thighs. He pulled up the skirt of my dress, and with the bulge in his pants, he rubbed against the soft spot in my panties. I flinched and refused to admit the shiver of excitement that spread across my body. I wanted to move back, pulling myself further away from him on the tabletop, but he leaned over me, putting his hands on both sides of me to cage me. I gasped. He kept his eyes locked on mine. His anger, blended with lust, made an explosive mixture, which I was terrified to taste. My breathing rate increased, as his intoxicated scent surrounded me, overwhelmed me, and horrified me. But the scariest thing was the fact that at that moment, I might have wanted him too.

Draven drew his lips closer to mine, and surprisingly, I didn't move back. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face and the lustful roar vibrating within him. His scent was insanely rich in pheromones, turning on every primal instinct within me. Unconsciously, I closed my eyes, awaiting his caresses.

"If I knew it was so easy to arouse you, I would have claimed you the first night I saw you," Draven chuckled, moving his lips away from mine.

A wave of humiliation and anger struck me hard, killing the excitement within me. The rage initiated by my clenched teeth induced a wave of rising tension in my muscles that drifted down my arm, hardening each cell in my palm.

A slap.

"Screw you, Draven!" I roared and pushed him away, making my way to jump off the table.

With hatred overflowing within my gaze, I walked past him, heading towards the corridor and the stairs.

"Wait." Draven grabbed my wrist before I could leave the room.

I turned around, glowering at him. "What do you want... Alpha?" I hissed.

His gaze bared perplexity and hesitation as he tightened his grip around my hand. The shape of my hand was perfectly visible in the red on his cheek. That must have hurt. I was glad it did. Fueled by fury, I kept my decisive glare, going from his clenched hand on my arm back to his eyes, and waited for his reaction. Much to my surprise, he pulled me close, clutching me within his large, muscled arms. He sighed while letting out a soft chuckle. I tried to push him away, but that only made his grip around me stronger.

"You are driving me insane, Lilith," he muttered, pressing my head hard against his chest. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I just wanted to show you that if you tease me the way you did, I might lose to that burning urge to have you..."

I bet his words worked without fail on every naïve she-wolf in his pack. Sadly for him, I was different. He started this mess between us, and I wasn't going to let him blame me for his arrogant attitude!

I gathered my strength, increased by my annoyance, and pushed my hands hard against his chest. It turned out that I finally applied the right amount of force to set myself free from his grasp. He gazed at me, stunned.

"I suggest you don't try to force me into wearing anything like that dress ever again, and if you fancy this kind of clothes, get a sex doll. I bet rubber won't complain about anything," I snarled.

His gaze darkened, and his eyes put on a burning glow, but I wasn't intimidated in the slightest. I kept my eyes locked on him without even flinching, and it surely wasn't something Alpha Draven was used to. He took a deep breath, ready to throw a thunder, but I was quicker.

"One more thing... Alpha Draven," I smirked, exacerbating his rage. "I am grateful to you for bringing me here to your pack, and I am going to do whatever I can to prove that I might be useful to you and your pack... But I don't belong to you."

I made sure to seal my statement with a confident glower. He stepped back, both irritated and confused. I quickly figured it would be best to use his temporary distraction to get out of his sight before anything else happened.

"I think I will skip on the lunch. I lost my appetite," I tossed, turning my head away from him, and then rushing towards the door.

Thankfully, he didn't stop me or say anything, and I didn't look back through my entire way back to my room. Only once I locked my door did I feel I could breathe again. As the adrenaline was slowly leaving my system, my body began to tremble. Inside the room, I could finally acknowledge how intense my not-lunch with Draven was. I still couldn't believe how dangerously close to insanity all of my senses were.

I was still infuriated with what Draven did, but perhaps I should have been grateful. If he hadn't stopped, I would have surrendered to him. I would have definitely regretted it afterward, but I knew deep in my gu that I wouldn't have been able to push him away as long as he had given me the satisfaction I had craved.

I was more than aware of the reason for my edgy urges: I felt empty. Along with the pain I had felt, when I broke the blood bond, I felt as if I lost something, a part of my heart. My self-healing malfunctioned as I was incomplete, and my shattered to pieces heart ached for even the simplest physical fulfillment...

I didn't want Draven to become my remedy, not now at least. After my heart-aching relationship with Sariel, I was hypersensitive to arrogance. Certainly, it was hard to expect an Alpha to act docile and submissive towards a woman, but wasn't the mate-bond supposed to strip him of that superiority? It seemed like my mate-to-be had an oversized ego to begin with, and even looking into the eyes of his probable one-and-only didn't change a thing in his attitude.

One thing was for certain: with every hour I spent away from the Palace, I discovered how I didn't want to be treated, and what I didn't want in my life. In my next step, I was going to find out what I wanted and what I needed to be whole again. Then, finally, I was going to learn exactly what to do to grasp my happiness.