Arabella’s POV
I ran towards our wrecked car and searched for Alpha Luciano’s phone. I found it outside the car, the screen was broken and it didn’t come on. I checked the driver’s dead body for his own phone. It was a burner phone with its records cleared so I couldn’t call anyone.
The only phone numbers I had memorized were that of my former pack members and my dad. If I called either of them, I might as well kill Alpha Luciano with my own hands.
I was going to save my mate. I had to believe that there was a real reason the Moon Goddess made him my mate. He was a wicked, heartless man but when push came to shove, he’d saved my life. Someone like that wasn’t irredeemable.
If the fact that I was willing to forgive all he’d done made me a weak person, I would take that label. When he recovered, he could do even worse unspeakable things to me and I accepted that too. The one thing I had was my integrity. I would always do what felt true to me as a person.
In the same way, I had chosen to pick Margaret’s life over my freedom, I chose Alpha Luciano now.
But how could I save him? We couldn’t be here when the sun finished setting. The border guards would do their rounds and find us. I didn’t know who had ordered the hit on Alpha Luciano so I couldn’t let the guards find us in case they were in cahoots with the person who’d sent these men.
I decided quickly. Stripping off my clothes, I shifted and leapt unto the car trying to look for a place we could shelter for the night. I caught sight of a shed. I ran towards the shed in wolf form to check if it was empty. It was a former wine storage area. With a swipe of my paws and the padlock was taken care of.
Then I circled back to the accident site. I took a knife, a lighter, change of clothes from our bags in the car, the burner phone and Alpha Luciano’s shattered phone. I wrapped everything up and shifted. I hefted Alpha Luciano onto my back and carried the load between my teeth. I ran towards the shed making sure to obscure my tracks and adjusting ever so lightly to make sure Alpha Luciano didn’t fall off.
After we reached it, I searched for water. I found some that looked a thousand years old in some containers behind the house but it was clean, and I also found a half-drunk bottle of wine. The wine was alcohol, right? So it could work for disinfecting wounds. I hoped.
Then I stripped him naked to catalogue his injuries. He had a bullet wound on his left thigh and numerous lacerations and cuts. He had lost quite a lot of blood. That was why he had fallen unconscious. Disinfecting my hands with the wine, I took a deep breath and dug into the wound to remove the bullet.
He grunted in his unconscious state while I did that. I found it after some time and got it out hoping I hadn’t damaged his foot anymore by digging into it. I disinfected and cleaned the wound up. Then I proceeded to do that to the rest of his wounds before wiping his body down and putting him in his underwear. He had to shift to amp the frequency of the healing.
I was very sure the reason they didn’t do it to me after my leg injury was because Alpha Luciano didn’t want to give me another escape opportunity.
I shook him trying to wake him up. It didn’t work. He was passed out cold. I did what he said I couldn’t do. I slapped him. Once, twice. The third time as I lifted my hand, he caught it before it landed on his face. His eyes were partly open, his voice was rough and gravelly. “What did I tell you about hitting me?”
“Luciano.” I almost cried with relief. “You need to shift to heal.”
He hesitated then he began to shift. I moved back to give him space. He repeated the process three times before returning to his human form. I was in awe. He was strong. The injuries must have been beyond painful yet he’d still managed to shift several times.
He propped himself up weakly naked. “Are my men on their way here?”
“I don’t know. Your phone is messed up so I couldn’t call for help and I found this burner phone but I don’t know any numbers.”
I passed both phones to him.
He took the phone giving me a strange look. I ignored it and picked up a shirt for him to wear and a pair of underwear.
He made two short calls and I didn’t listen in on them but I heard something about the morning. I just assisted him with putting on his shirt. One hand in, another in.
“What are you doing, Arabella?” His voice was low and if I hadn’t been so close, I would have missed it.
“What do you mean?” I began to button his shirt. His hand covered mine stopping me and I looked into his eyes. His beautiful blue eyes framed with beautiful lashes questioning me. “I don’t know Luciano, I don’t know.” Then on impulse, I leaned in and kissed him.
He froze. His mouth felt soft and warm and hard at the same time. I pulled back feeling exhilarated. Alpha Luciano had never kissed me before, not while we fucked or anything. I could easily become addicted to this. I moved to kiss him again, only this time, he met me halfway.
Our kiss started out gentle and exploratory, I climbed into his lap, my hands on his shoulder and the back of his neck as the kiss deepened, we slid our tongues against each other and kissed almost aggressively. His hand fisted my hair bringing me even closer and making me gasp as the light pain.
I moaned rocking against his dick that had gotten hard beneath me. His lips left mine and wandered to my nape. I turned liquid as he nipped against a very sensitive part of my neck.
“Please, Luciano. Please. I can’t… oh Goddess.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head as his lips dipped to my cleavage. My torn-up dress made it extremely easy. He sucked on my nipples, biting, and nibbling and I felt my want for him rising. I needed him inside me now.
I pushed him down lightly and he let me, his eyes almost completely silver now. I positioned myself over him and aligned his dick to my . Inch by inch I lowered myself onto him until I was full to the hilt. I moaned as I began to move. Slightly then, faster as I acclimated to his size. I rode him to the ground, moaning and whimpering at every touch of him
Alpha Luciano looked up at me his gaze torching me from the inside out.
He gripped me by my hips and flipped us so that I was on the ground then he pounded away at me. Alternatively sucking on my nipples, he squeezed my tits.
He pushed my legs up so that my knees nearly reached my ears. I gasped as he entered me again, the angle made him feel unbelievably thicker and me tighter surrounding him. Alpha Luciano pulled out then pushed back in slowly then he picked up the pace and I nearly blacked out from the pleasure.
My orgasm was coming and I built up to it. When it finally came, I clung to Alpha Luciano like he was my life jacket and I was set adrift, unmoored. He shook and came inside me. He didn’t pull out immediately. Maybe he was thinking what I was thinking that for the first time, we’d made love not fucked.
The realisation humbled me and I couldn’t breathe. Alpha Luciano pulled out of me and settled behind me, his arm around my waist pulling me flush against his body as he fell asleep.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Even though I thought I would find it very hard to sleep, I fell asleep almost immediately.
He woke me up several times in the night taking me so thoroughly that come morning I felt unbelievably sore when I got up to wash my face and pee behind the shed.
Alpha Luciano was already up by that time and dressed up to go. He didn’t even look at me. I’d wanted to walk up to him and kiss him good morning but he looked too cold and forbidding. The man who’d looked at me with liquid heat in his eyes as I rode him to completion, was gone leaving only Alpha Luciano, the bane of my existence, behind.
“Get ready quickly. We need to meet the men at the road.” His voice was so curt and straight to the point that if I didn’t have the bruises and hickeys to prove it, I would have doubted if last night occurred at all.
Taking his cue, I didn’t say anything. I just washed up as much as I could with the water then wore my clothes and got ready. The walk was longer yet shorter. Longer because we were on foot not in wolf form. Shorter because with each step we took away from the shed, I saw Alpha Luciano assume his former domineering self. We could see the cars parked in a distance.
“Arabella.” I looked at him. At his devastatingly handsome face. “Thank you for saving my life.” I gave him a shaky smile, but he didn’t return it. “However this doesn’t change anything between us. You should have run while you could.”