Free Web NovelChapter 51: WHAT MADE ME ANY DIFFERENT FROM SIENNA?
Chapter 52
Lumi
The moment Ren’s lips touched mine, everything vanished. There was no doubt or anything whatsoever.
Everything disappeared and I was left with nothing but my beating heart. It felt like everything slowed down and left us to control the pace, and we did.
His tongue parted my lips slowly, sliding into my mouth. I took a deep breath at the contact, my hands letting go of my bag.
It hit the floor with a soft thud as my arms went up, my fingers digging straight into the thick hair at the back of his neck.
He let out a low groan against my mouth, as his large hands came down to my waist, his fingers clamping hard into my skin, and pulled me completely off my feet.
My breath caught. My knees instinctively came up and I wrapped my legs tightly around his torso.
The moment my thighs locked around him, he took two heavy steps forward, driving me backward until my spine hit the flat surface of the wall.
"Ahhh...." The impact knocked a small gasp from my throat, but before I could even blink, his entire weight was pressed against me, as he pinned me there.
He didn’t give me a second to breathe. He tilted his head, his mouth biting down slightly on my lower lip before his tongue slid back inside, deeper this time, demanding everything I had.
A hot shudder ran straight down my back, I gripped his shoulders, squeezing the hard muscle through his shirt as I kissed him back.
My tongue moving against his in the same slow, heavy rhythm. I could feel the rough scrape of his stubble against my chin, rough and warm. The heat radiating off his skin was burning right through my clothes.
Ren’s hands shifted from my waist, sliding down to cup the bottom of my thighs, he squeezed tightly, lifting me a fraction higher against the wall so he could angle his mouth better.
Every time he dragged his tongue across mine, my heart gave a painful thud against my ribs. I could hear it echoing in my ears, completely out of control.
He kept pushing his chest hard against mine, leaving absolutely no space between us, his heavy breathing turning ragged and loud in the quiet room.
I hooked my ankles tighter behind his back, pulling myself into him until it felt like our hearts were beating against each other.
We stayed like that for what felt like hours, our mouths sliding together over and over again, slow and deep, completely lost in the taste of each other.
Slowly, his movements began to change. His lips grew softer, trailing away from the center of my mouth to take two short, heavy presses against the corner of my lips, as if he couldn’t bring himself to fully break away.
When he fully pulled his mouth back, I thought he’d lower me to the floor. But he didn’t.
Instead, his forehead dropped heavily against mine, his large hands locked tightly under my thighs, holding me up against the wall, while his chest heaved violently.
I clung to his broad shoulders, my own lungs burning. I was panting hard, my rapid breaths blowing straight into his face, mixing with the hot, ragged air coming from his mouth.
Neither of us moved nor said a single word.
The room was completely dead silent, filled only with the loud, echoing sound of our matching breathing and the hard thudding of our hearts against the wall.
With our eyes shut tight and our foreheads pressed together, the air felt completely different. The line was gone, and there was absolutely no going back.
Ren slowly let his grip loosen. His massive hands slid down the sides of my thighs, the rough friction of his palms dragging against my skin until my feet finally touched the ground.
The moment my weight hit the floor, my knees buckled slightly, trembling from the intensity of what had just happened.
He didn’t let go immediately. He kept his large hands resting firmly on my waist, stabilizing me, anchoring me against his chest until he was completely sure I could stand on my own two feet.
The silence in the living room was heavy, almost suffocating, broken only by the fading roughness of our breaths.
He leaned in one last time, his chest rising against mine as he pressed a soft, lingering kiss right against my forehead.
"The last hours has been exhausting, you need a good rest. Let me not waste your time and allow you sleep." he murmured against my skin, his deep voice still incredibly rough and completely spent from the long night.
I wanted to tell him that I’d rather keep kissing him but nothing came out of my lips.
I couldn’t say anything. My throat felt like it was coated in ash, my mind spinning so fast that words wouldn’t even form.
My heart was still beating against my ribs like a trapped bird. I couldn’t even look him in the eyes, I didn’t have the courage to see whatever was waiting for me in his gaze.
I just gave him a small nod, turned the handle of my bedroom door, and slipped inside, shutting it quietly behind me until the latch clicked into place.
I stood with my back pressed against the wood of the bedroom door for a long minute, staring blindly into the dim, quiet room.
The heavy curtains were drawn, blocking out most of the gray morning, leaving the space in a cold, heavy twilight.
My chest was heaving, my hands shaking so badly that when I tried to push my hair away from my face, my fingers tangled clumsily in the strands.
The heat of his mouth was still burning on my lips. It felt like a brand, a permanent mark left behind that no amount of distance could erase.
Slowly, I forced my feet to move toward the bathroom. I walked into the small, tiled space, closing the second door behind me as if adding another barrier between myself and the man in the living room could somehow save me.
I turned the faucet on, twisting the handle until the pipes groaned and hot steam began to billow over the glass shower doors.
I peeled off my clothes one by one, my movements slow and heavy. Dropping my shirt felt like shedding a layer of armor, leaving me completely exposed to the quiet of the room. fгeewebnovёl.com
Ten minutes later, I was standing under the steaming spray of the shower, my forehead pressed flat against the cold, damp tiles as the water rushed violently over my head and shoulders.
The heat was blinding, but no matter how hard the water hit me, I couldn’t wash the feeling of his mouth off mine.
My lips were still tingling, swollen and warm, and the memory of the kiss kept replaying in my head on a terrifying, endless loop.
Instinctively, my mind went straight to Callum.
He was the only man I had ever kissed in my entire life. From the moment I was old enough to know what a mate was, Callum had been the center of my world.
For years, I had genuinely thought that was just what kissing was. Kissing him used to be one of my favourite activities, because I thought it was beautiful and that It was a proof of our love.
I had never once imagined that it could be different, or that something better, something that could entirely consume you, even existed in the world.
But what had happened out there with Ren...had...had killed that thought immediately.
It had felt like a violent crash. Even though It was completely wrong, it had felt so right in all sorts of ways. It felt so right that it terrified me to my very core.
For a single, fleeting second, as the hot water slicked my hair back and blinded my vision, I thought I felt something shift deep inside my chest.
A tiny, long-forgotten spark, like a faint, weak heartbeat waking up after a long, freezing winter.
My wolf.
I froze under the water, my breath catching in my throat as my hand moved to press against the center of my ribs. Could she be stirring? After all this time?
I shook my head violently, blinking through the stinging water, forcing the thought away.
No. That wasn’t possible. I was being delusional. I was a dormant wolf. My wolf had gone completely silent a long time ago, crushed under the weight of everything that I’d gone through, and I was sure she wasn’t coming back until the day I died.
I was just exhausted, letting my mind play cruel, dangerous tricks on me because my emotions were running completely wild.
I reached out and turned the faucet off, the sudden, ringing silence in the bathroom made my chest feel instantly tighter.
I wrapped a thick white towel around myself, tucking the edge tightly over my breast, and walked out to the steam-fogged mirror.
I wiped a wide circle clean with the side of my hand, staring at my reflection through the glass.
My lips were bitten red, my eyes wide and dark with a panic I couldn’t hide from myself.
As I stared at my face, my mind helplessly drifted back to the living room, to the ease of it.
I thought about how effortless Ren had made it feel to be held like that. How deep and steady his rhythm was.
He was a good kisser. He was dangerously, devastatingly good at it. And then, like a physical slap to the face, a name popped into my head, shattering the fog entirely.
Victoria.
My stomach did a violent, sickening drop, and the entire mood in the room changed instantly, turning ice-cold.
Shit.
I’ve been so consumed by the terror over Theo, the hospital screens, and the exhaustion of the flight that I had completely blocked out reality.
Ren had a mate. He had a fiancée waiting for him back across the ocean. A woman he was legally and spiritually bound to by pack law and contracts.
But then why would he say those things to me if he has someone else? Why would he look at me like I was the only thing in the room if he belongs to Victoria? The question burned through my brain, making a bitter taste rise in my throat.
I leaned heavily against the edge of the sink, closing my eyes tight as the guilt began to claw at my throat.
Because you’re stupid, Lumi. You’re hearing what you want to hear.
I forced myself to replay his exact words from the living room, stripping away the heat of the kiss and looking at the cold facts.
He never said he loved me. Not once did that word leave his mouth. He said he hated seeing me hurt. He said he wanted to destroy whatever tried to break me, and that protecting me was something he wanted for himself. That was it.
It was an Alpha’s protective instinct, heightened by the trauma of the night and the drain of saving a child’s life. He was exhausted, and I was there. We both just needed an anchor.
So why did he kiss me like that? Why did he hold onto my thighs like he was drowning and I was the only thing keeping him alive?
God, I didn’t even know what to think or do anymore. I pressed my palms hard against my eyes, trying to force the dizziness away, but the darkness behind my eyelids only made his rough voice echo louder.
I needed to control my emotions. I needed to get a grip on reality right now before this thing dragged me down and ruined whatever dignity I had left.
If I kept doing this...if I let him touch me again, then what made me any different from Sienna?
