Elara's POV
"Someone is at the door." I gasp.
I feel disconnected by the heavy knocking, but Cassian doesn't seem so, like he hasn't heard it. His face comes up to brush against mine, and I place my hand on his chest.
"Don't you hear the door?" I ask.
"Oh … the door."
The banging stops at the same instance, and the room seems to hold more silence than before.
"We're okay now," he says.
I raised my eyebrows at him. "What did you do?"
"I talked to the lady outside."
"But… you never left me."
"I could never leave you, mate, you know that."
"I mean… the door, how did you know it was a lady? How did you talk to her?"
Am I asking too many questions? Or over reacting?
But I believe it's a question everyone would want to ask.
"I mindlinked her."
"Mindlinked?"
"Yes."
"What's that?"
The word sounds familiar, but strange. I must have heard someone say it, but I can't remember any instance of it.
He sighs. "Thought you would know. I mean you dated a werewolf before me."
Before me.
He is already assuming a relationship I am yet to accept. Our lying together on this bed? A sudden lust has made me get to this point, nothing else.
His fingers touch my nipples. "Mindlinking is about speaking through the mind."
The oil he'd poured on me hasn't dried up, making his hands rub seamlessly on me. The heat is holding up in my body again, higher than a minute ago.
"So you spoke through her mind?"
"Exactly."
I want to ask him more questions, but the pleasure makes me forget the questions. It feels like his hands are also caressing my mind.
Now, I want this intense pleasure. Nothing about the door.
"Please don't stop… don't."
And I'm saying words I don't intend to say.
His fingers are working skilfully as they trail down my neck to my boobs, touch my belly button, and resumes a fervent work on my clit. They go from different angles, different circles—small circles, bigger circles—before coming to rest.
"It's good, isn't it?" He smiles.
"Yes… Go on… Go on."
And then, he takes things further.
He rubs his hardened rod at the entrance of my pussy lips, teasing me before going deep. And then he strokes a different rhythm. He starts slow, then fast, slow again, slower, fast again, mixing up the rhythm.
I'm almost becoming unconscious at the peak moment when my body gives way to orgasm, and his fluid shoots into me.
We lie on our backs, gasping for breath.
"We consummate," he says.
A minute passes.
The pleasure and the moment we have started to fade. When our eyes meet again, he is lying on his left side, looking at my body.
I suddenly feel too exposed and bare to him. This moment… The moment, the pleasure. It no longer feels right. His scent of rain on grasses has become so low, and that chaos I feel around him seems to return.
"Cassian." My lips move; I don't realize I am going to call out his name.
His eyes are empty. No tenderness in them. No brutality, just empty and complicated. I would have preferred if I could read through them rather than just being uncertain about what he has in mind.
"Elara," he calls in response.
Then he sits up to face the other side of the bed, paying so much focus on the wall.
I blink.
For a second, I see blood all around me. I see my parents' dead bodies placed on the bed. When I blink again, the room returns to its normal state.
"What's all this about?" My fingers start to quiver, my voice becoming shaky.
Cassian looks at me, but he doesn't utter a word. And I think he plans everything, that he leads me to his bed. Is that so?
"I have to leave," I say, picking up my dress from the floor.
He just nods.
"This shouldn't happen."
He still wouldn't speak. His action of staying silent creeps on my nerves, and I fear I am going to lose control, to go all out with him, to tell him he's been using me for his own pleasure, to speak rudely without a care that he is the Alpha of this pack, and that I am in his camp.
At this point, that doesn't matter to me anymore.
"You should at least say something!" I shout, my breath racing.
It's becoming hard to breathe, like his presence is sucking the air from me. It isn't as it always happens to me. It's because of his touch.
I suddenly feel like a piece of trash. I really hate this feeling.
But his fingers are shaky… the effect of the curse, its effect is coming again.
No, this isn't it. If it is, the fur would have been growing out by now, and his face would have been pale so I can't stand to look at him without trying to help.
It should be something I shouldn't care about.
"Fine." I wipe my palms against my eyes to confirm they aren't wet.
I won't let another tear escape my eyes.
But why does his speaking to me seem so important anyway?
It isn't!
I shouldn't believe it is.
I get to the door, but it is hard to turn the knob. I should get him to say something to me; perhaps that would clear the bad feeling that is beginning to flood my mind. It was a good time, wasn't it?
But why do I feel like trash?
He hasn't called me such, so why the chaotic feeling?
I'm guessing it's one of the craziest feelings that always comes to take a toil on me. Deep down, I know it's hiding beneath the memory of my parents' death, each time it comes. It always creates an illusion, as it is at this moment, trying to convince me I've been used.
I take in another breath as I'm trying to suppress it.
I turn the knob, but wouldn't pull it. Now, it's breeding shame on me. It's telling me my body is stained with dirt. Dirt from making myself so cheap.
I don't even know why it claws at my parents' death. Crazy.
It isn't the first time I'm having sex, and so, I can't explain this.
I'm trying to hide this feeling, but even if I succeed in doing so, it's already engraved on my skin.
I pull the door like I'm opening the gates of hell.
But I stop as cold air shoots at me.
"Ve… Velora…" I stutter. "You've been outside this door. You knocked…"