My Brother's Worst Enemy Craves Me

5

Chapter 5

Thorne’s POV

“I—I don’t understand‚” she said‚ her voice breaking. “How could you do that to me and not give me my job back?”

Tears slipped from her eyes. As she stared back at me‚ I could see the anger and hatred clear on her face.

She hated me.

The thought hit me hard in the chest. It hurt more than I expected. But deep down‚ it also stirred something dark inside me. Something hungry and possessive that wanted her to feel every single emotion she was feeling right now, as long as those emotions were directed at me.

Hate me, love me, fear me, want me, I didn't care which one. I just needed her to feel something for me so intensely that she could never walk away from it.

My wolf growled low in my chest, agreeing.

I stared at her for a long moment, watching the tears fall and the anger burn, and then I made a decision that I knew would change everything.

"I have another proposition for you," I said.

She blinked, caught off guard. "And what could that possibly be? Another chance for you to humiliate me?"

"Resume tomorrow by nine," I said, keeping my voice flat and steady even though my heart was hammering against my ribs. "Don't be late this time."

---

The rest of that day was completely useless.

I sat through two meetings and didn't hear a single word anyone said. I stared at reports on my screen without reading them. I signed three documents that my assistant put in front of me, and I honestly couldn't tell you what any of them were about.

All I could think about was her.

Skye.

My former best friend's little sister. The girl I had watched grow up from a distance. The woman whose scent had been burned into my memory for over a decade.

My mate.

My fated mate.

The universe had a sick sense of humor, pairing me with the one woman on earth I was never supposed to touch.

I discovered the truth when she was thirteen. I had gone over to Ethan's house for dinner like I did every week, and the moment I walked through the front door, something shifted inside me so violently that I had to grab the doorframe to keep from falling. Her scent hit me like a freight train, sweet and warm and completely overwhelming, and my wolf surged to the surface so fast that my eyes flickered gold for a split second before I forced him back down.

She had been sitting on the kitchen counter, eating cereal and swinging her legs, completely unaware that my entire world had just rearranged itself around her.

Thirteen. She was thirteen years old, and the mate bond had just snapped into place like a chain locking around my throat.

I wanted to throw up.

Every visit after that became torture. Her scent clung to the furniture, the hallways, the air itself. My wolf clawed at the inside of my skull every time I was near her, demanding that I claim her, mark her, make her mine. And every time, I shoved him down so hard that my hands shook and my teeth ached from clenching my jaw.

I couldn't touch her. She was a child. She was my best friend's sister. She was off-limits in every possible way that a person could be off-limits.

But the bond didn't care about any of that.

Then came the night I lost control.

Ethan had invited me over to watch a game. It was late, past midnight, and he had fallen asleep on the couch. I should have left. Every rational part of my brain screamed at me to walk out the front door and drive home.

Instead, I went upstairs.

Her bedroom door was open just a crack, and her scent poured through that gap like smoke, thick and intoxicating and impossible to resist. I told myself I just needed to be close to her for a moment. Just one moment, and then I would leave.

I pushed the door open.

She was asleep on her back, one arm thrown above her head, her lips slightly parted. She wore a thin shirt that clung to the small curves of her breasts, and her blanket had slipped down to her thighs, revealing the soft cotton of her panties stretched over her hips. She looked peaceful and innocent and completely unaware of the monster standing in her doorway.

My body reacted before my brain could stop it. I was hard instantly, painfully hard, the kind of arousal that borders on agony. My wolf howled inside my chest, and before I knew what I was doing, my hand had slipped into my pants and wrapped around my c**k.

I stroked slowly, watching her breathe, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, imagining what it would feel like to climb into that bed and press myself between her thighs. I imagined her waking up beneath me, her eyes wide with surprise before they softened with want. I imagined her whispering my name, pulling me closer, wrapping her legs around me as I sank into the tight heat that belonged to me by fate.

My hand moved faster, my breathing grew ragged, and I was so lost in her that I didn't hear the footsteps behind me.

"What the f**k are you doing?"

Ethan's voice hit me like ice water.

I spun around, and the look on his face was something I would never forget as long as I lived. It wasn't just anger. It was horror. Disgust. Betrayal so deep and raw that it twisted his features into something I barely recognized.

He saw everything. My hand wrapped around my c**k. My eyes locked on his sleeping sister. The truth of what I had been doing written across my face in guilt and shame.

His fist connected with my nose before I could say a single word. I heard the crack before I felt the pain, and then blood was pouring down my lips and chin and dripping onto the hallway carpet.

"Get out of my house," he said, his voice shaking with rage. "Get away from my sister. If I ever see you near her again, I will kill you, Thorne. I swear to God, I will kill you."

"Ethan, listen to me, please just let me explain—"

"Explain what?" he shouted, shoving me backward so hard I hit the wall. "Explain why you were jerking off while watching my fourteen-year-old sister sleep? What possible explanation could you have for that?"

I wanted to tell him the truth. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, "She's my mate. She's my fated mate, and the bond is tearing me apart. I didn't choose this. I can't control it. But I would never hurt her, Ethan. I would die before I ever hurt her."

But Ethan was human. He didn't know about werewolves. He didn't know about mate bonds or fated pairs or the primal, unbreakable connection that tied two souls together whether they wanted it or not.

To him, I was just a twenty-four-year-old man with his hand on his c**k, staring at a sleeping child.

There was no explaining that away.

So I left.

I walked out of that house with blood running down my face and shame burning through every cell of my body, and I never went back.

The guilt stayed with me. It lived inside my chest like a second heartbeat, constant and heavy and impossible to ignore. For ten years, I carried it. For ten years, I hated myself for what I had done, for what I had almost done, for what my wolf still wanted me to do every single day.

But the obsession never died.

I watched her from a distance as she grew up. I kept track of her through people I trusted, learning about her life in small, careful pieces. I knew when she graduated high school. I knew when she chose management science over medicine, and I knew her brother gave her hell for it. I knew when she started college, when she made the dean's list, when she became one of the top students in her graduating class.

I watched her turn from a girl into a woman, and with every passing year, the pull grew stronger, the hunger grew deeper, and the voice of my wolf grew louder.

Mine. She is mine. She has always been mine.

So on her graduation day, I made my move.

I sent a representative to her convocation with an offer she couldn't refuse. Ten thousand dollars a month for a fresh graduate with no experience. It was absurd, and I knew it. But I also knew she needed to prove her brother wrong, and I used that need like a key to a lock.

I fired my existing secretary to make space for her. I arranged everything down to the smallest detail. Every single step was calculated to bring her into my building, onto my floor, and into my life.

And then I ruined it by firing her on her first day because my wolf couldn't handle the rage of watching her walk in late, looking flustered and beautiful, while every man in that boardroom stared at her legs.

"f**k," I muttered, shoving off the bed.

It was past midnight, and I was lying in the dark with my c**k so hard it ached against my stomach. The memory of what I had done in that elevator played on repeat behind my eyelids, every detail sharp and vivid and maddening.

The heat of her. The impossible tightness of her walls gripping my fingers. The way she moaned, soft and desperate and ashamed, like she couldn't believe her own body was betraying her. The wetness that coated my hand, so warm and slick that my wolf had nearly broken free right there in that elevator.

I could still taste her on my fingers.

I groaned and rolled out of bed, stalking to the bathroom with heavy steps. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror, jaw clenched, eyes dark, chest heaving with the kind of need that no amount of cold showers or self-control could fix.

My hand wrapped around my c**k, already slick at the tip, and I stroked once, slow and firm, squeezing at the base the way I imagined her hand would feel.

She was so beautiful it made my chest ache.

I remembered the way she looked pinned against that elevator wall, her wrists locked above her head, her back arched, her breasts pushing against the thin lace of her bra. I remembered the sounds she made, those broken little whimpers that went straight to my c**k every single time. I remembered how she clenched around my fingers when I found that spot inside her, like her body was trying to keep me there forever.

My strokes grew faster. Rougher. I braced one hand against the bathroom counter and let my head drop forward, my breathing turning ragged as the pressure built at the base of my spine.

I imagined bending her over my desk. I imagined pushing into her slowly, feeling her stretch around me, watching her back arch as she took every inch. I imagined the sound she would make when I bottomed out, that sharp, breathless gasp that would tell me I was the first man to ever be that deep inside her.

Because I would be the first.

And the last.

And the only.

"f**k," I groaned through clenched teeth as my release tore through me. My body jerked hard, and thick ropes of c*m spilled over my fist and onto the counter, the pleasure hitting in violent waves that made my thighs shake and my vision blur.

But even after everything, the hunger was still there. Quieter, maybe. Duller. But not gone. Never gone.

It would never be enough without her.

So I did the one thing I never thought I'd ever do.