Cursed With Desire For The Alpha I Swore To Kill

Chapter 4: Finally In His Bed

Ivana's POV

His arm was heavy across my waist, and for one unguarded second, still half asleep, I let myself lean into the warmth of it.Then I remembered why I was there, and the softness in me shut like a fist.I lifted his hand off my body an inch at a time and studied him in the grey light — the scar through his eyebrow, the slow rise and fall of his chest, a man with no idea how easy it would be to end him right now. My knife was still strapped under the heel I'd kicked off by the bed. One clean line across the throat while he slept. I'd trained fifteen years for exactly this moment.I didn't move.Not yet, I told myself. Not until the document was signed, not until I had his Beta and his warriors lined up behind him for the same fall. But that wasn't the only reason my hand stayed still.Something low in my body was building, an ache that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the way his scent was filling the room, warm and dark and wrong in how good it felt. I pressed my thighs together and it only made it worse. A sound came out of me before I could stop it — low, needy, humiliating — and Killian's eyes snapped open.For one long second neither of us moved. His gaze dragged down my bare skin, unfocused, and then something else surfaced behind his eyes, something with teeth."Lady Ivana." His voice had dropped an octave. "You're in heat."I didn't correct him. I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to — he'd already flipped me onto my back, and whatever answer I'd meant to give dissolved into his name, said wrong, said without the title, said like I meant it. We surfaced sometime later to a fist hammering the door hard enough to rattle the frame."Killian! Open this godsdamn door, I know you're in there!"He went rigid against me like he'd forgotten, for a handful of hours, that a woman existed who had the right to ask him that."Selene," he muttered, and the guilt that crossed his face told me everything the pieces hadn't yet — the man at the party, the wine, the wrong name. His mate. His Luna."Killian!" Another round of pounding, then a guard's voice, low and unconvincing. "The Alpha's in a meeting with a visiting Alpha. He can't be disturbed.""Do you think I'm stupid?" Selene's voice climbed a full register. "You think I don't know what a meeting smells like versus what this smells like? I am his Luna. Open this door or I burn it down myself."Killian swore under his breath, pulled free of me, and rolled off the bed. I lay still, my whole body still humming, aching, insistent in a way I didn't have a name for and didn't have time to examine."Don't make a sound," he whispered, already typing something into his phone. A ping answered from somewhere beyond the door. A minute later, footsteps retreated down the hall.I filed that away too — whatever leash he had on Selene, it worked fast.He turned back to me, and whatever had been in his eyes an hour ago was gone, replaced by something colder, more careful. "Who are you," he said. "And what are you."I made myself small under his stare, pulled the sheet higher, let my voice shake. "Lady Ivana. Of Glendale.""Glendale." He said it like he was testing it for lies. "No one in three territories doesn't know I'm mated. So tell me who sent you to crawl into my bed anyway.""I—" I let my chin wobble, let the tears sit right at the edge without falling. "You asked me to dance. You poured me the wine. You brought me here." My voice cracked exactly where I wanted it to. "And now you're standing there asking who sent me?"It landed. I watched it land — his jaw working, the anger draining out of his shoulders and something closer to shame moving in behind it."That's not — " He dragged a hand down his face and reached for his trousers. "That's not what I meant, Lady Ivana." A pause, and when he spoke again his voice had hardened back into something he could hide behind. "This was a mistake. You'll leave the pack today. You won't come back.""I don't have anywhere else to go." I let that sit in the room exactly as long as it needed to.He was already digging into his coat, and a moment later a fold of cash hit the mattress beside me. "Start over somewhere else. Forget this happened."I looked at the money, then at him, and didn't touch it. He wanted to buy his way out clean, except his eyes kept dragging back to my shoulder, my collarbone, lower, and staying there half a second too long each time. He wasn't as finished with me as he was pretending to be. Good. That was the only leverage I actually needed."You're just going to throw me out." I let my lip tremble, let one tear finally slip loose and catch the light.His throat moved. "It's not that simple. I have a mate. A pack. I can't—" His hands curled into fists at his sides like he was trying to hold onto the sentence before it finished itself wrong.I stood, slow, unhurried, and didn't reach for a single piece of clothing."One more time," I said. "And then I'll go quietly. I promise."He didn't make it to promise before his mouth was already on mine.