[ SilverHale Pack - Alpha Rowan's bedchamber]
"Look at me when I fuck you," Alpha Rowan Hale barked, voice rough, his lips close to his wife's ear. "Say my name, Amara."
But her eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling.
The shadows there seemed more comforting than the man moving above her.
Her chest rose and fell in a quiet rhythm, but her lips did not part.
The room was dark, save for the faint silver light of the moon bleeding through the curtains. The space between them was heavy, thick, the silence only broken by Rowan's breathing.
He let out a low chuckle,absolutely humorless. "Still pretending I am not here, huh? You are my Luna, my wife. You can't ignore me forever." He grabbed her cheeks, almost pinching them too hard, forcing her to look at his face. " Look at me when I am talking, Amara!"
A tear slid down Amara's temple, pooling in her hair. Her hands lay limp at her sides, her body stiff.
"You are mine," Rowan growled, more violently, as if to bind her spirit where her heart refused. "No one else touches you. No one else hears you cry like this. No one else can have access even to your thoughts.Only me."
His tone almost sounded proud.
Amara closed her eyes. Another tear slipped free.
He noticed, of course. He always noticed.But he never stopped. Instead, he leaned down, whispering against her ear, "Don't waste your tears, love. They don't move me."
The air in the Alpha's bedchamber felt very still, unmoving with the cloying scent of all the night blooming jasmine from the garden below and the sharper, muskier tang of sweat.
Rowan moved with relentless efficiency. His muscles looked deliciously corded and defined in the monochrome light…bunching and releasing with each thrust as he moved over Amara.
His breath vs his wife's shallow gasps.
Like she was a shoreline, and he was a mindless, crashing tide.
Rowan's rumble broke the humid silence again. "That's it," he murmured, his lips grazing her jaw, a gesture that might have been tender under a different circumstance."You feel so good, Amara. So tight for me. Nothing like those pack whores…they don't quench my thirst no matter how much they jump all over me…only you do…" He then took her lower lips between his teeth and bit hard. "... even when you are still thinking about that bastard! "
He waited, as if expecting a response…a slap,a gasp, a moan,maybe shock or perhaps the slightest shift of her hips to meet his.
But there was nothing.
Only the soft, wet sound of their bodies meeting and the distant cry of a night bird.
He tried again, his voice dipping into a rougher, more possessive register, a performance for an audience of one who refused to watch. "My beautiful Luna. Tell me you are mine."
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
"Come on now! I want you to say it!"
Amara's breath hitched, not with pleasure, but with the effort of suppressing another sob. A fresh wave of tears followed the path of the others. She did not speak. She did not look at him.
The bed creaked with every shift of weight.Rowan's rhythm was now torturous.
"Don't go quiet on me, Amara," he barked. "You know I like it when you talk back."
Her lips parted, but no words came out. Only the sound of her breath, shaky, uneven. Another tear slipped down her cheek and clung stubbornly to her jaw.
Rowan caught it with his thumb, smearing it forcefully…hatefully across her skin. "Always crying for him," he murmured. "Does it make you feel better? Or do you love it because it just makes me mad?" He laughed under his breath.
Then he let out a sharp angry exhale."You think I am not used to this?" His words came harsher now, each syllable bitten off. "You think I don't know you are lying here like a corpse, wishing I wasn't touching you because you would rather have that bastard Dante fuck you? Am I right? Oh, I am!"
Rowan's rhythm faltered for a fraction of a second, a barely perceptible stutter.
He was used to this. The silence, the stillness, the profound absence of her. It was the landscape of their marriage, this cold, lonely bed its center. He was getting sick of it… but his male ego, his Alpha male pride, wouldn't let him divorce her till she was completely ruined… whatever of her soul was left… gone.
He buried his face in her neck, not in passion, but perhaps to hide from the emptiness in her eyes, or to avoid seeing his own reflection in them.
He shifted his weight, his grip on her hips tightening, his fingers sure to leave faint bruises by morning…marks of ownership, not love.
He drove into her with renewed intensity, a futile attempt to spark a fire in the frozen tundra of her compliance. To prove of course.
"Come for me, Amara," he commanded, his tone slipping from attempted dirty talk to the familiar, impatient cadence of an Alpha used to being obeyed.
It was an order, like any other he gave throughout the day.Amara finally moved…just a twitch of her fingers against the sheet, a restless gesture she could not stop.
Rowan noticed. "See?" he whispered. "You feel me, even if you don't want to. That's enough. Your body knows it's mine…"
A single, shuddering breath escaped her lips. It was not a sound of pleasure. It was the sound of a soul holding on, waiting for the storm to pass.
Rowan's mouth found the faded scar at the curve of her neck…the mark that had bound her to him on their wedding night.
His teeth closed over it, hard enough to sting, sharp enough to remind her of what could never be undone.
The pain was brief, but it bloomed hot, radiating through her body like flint catching petrol.
Amara's breath hitched, her eyes squeezing shut.
Rowan groaned against her skin. "Mine," the word muffled against her throat as he released inside her, his entire body shaking. "Always mine. Don't you dare forget that."
He stayed there for a long moment, teeth pressed to her mark as though trying to drive the truth deeper into her flesh.
When he finally pulled back, his breathing was ragged, sweat slicking his temples. A cruel satisfaction curved his mouth.
He studied her face, searching for some sign…pain, anger, despair, anything.
All he found were tears.
He smirked anyway. "That's right. Cry all you want, Amara. Every tear just proves what I already know. You can hate me with every breath, but your body will always belong to me…and me alone."
The moment he was done, Amara sat up, wound up like a toy, and bowed. " Yes, Alpha!Whatever you say!" She slowly pulled up her bra, panties and then her satin gown. Sliding out of the bed, she bowed again, " I am going to take a shower now! Please excuse me! " And she left… leaving Rowan fuming like never before as he smashed the bedside lamp across the floor, in frustration.