Enough
1376 Words
Nick’s POV
I stare down at the text on my phone, reading it once, then twice, then a third time—letting it truly taunt me as it sinks in.
Sabrina attacked Ren last night.
It’s nine o’clock in the morning. Nine. What time did this happen? Why didn’t anyone wake me up? Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner? How did Caine know before me?
When did my heart start pounding this hard?
I lurch out of bed, feeling a blind, panicked rage overtake me as I beeline for the door of my room.
I feel a few sets of lingering eyes on me as I walk down the hall toward her room. I didn’t stop to put on a shirt, I realize as I pick up speed, or even real pants; I’m still wearing the sweats I went to bed in and nothing else.
I don’t care.
I reach for the handle of her door as soon as I reach it, but it’s locked.
So I pound on it.
“Who is it?”
That isn’t her voice. It’s f*****g Archer’s.
What the f**k is Archer doing in her bedroom at nine o’clock in the morning?
I pound harder as the rage creeps its way deeper into my blood. “Ren?” I shout. “Are you in there?”
A short, painful pause, and then, “Nick?”
It’s her.
She’s okay.
I exhale with more relief than I’ve ever felt before, but the rage is still there, too. Why the f**k is Archer there? “Ren, let me in. Please.”
Another, excruciating pause. A few mumbles I can’t quite make out between the two of them. Then, finally, footsteps—the dainty, sweet ones that could only be hers.
And she opens the door.
“What happened?” I ask her immediately, stepping inside the room so fast, she’s forced to step backwards. I scan her from head to toe, heart lurching with every new wound that I see. Her hands are cut up; there’s a s***h on her arm; there’s even one on her face. I reach out to touch her cheek, a growl forming deep in my throat at the thought of—
“Don’t touch her,” snaps Archer f*****g Saros as he slaps my hand away from her.
The growl in my throat depends as I turn my furious gaze on him. “She’s a guest in my castle,” I spit at him, “and this is my room. I’ll damn well touch her if I like. You’re lucky I haven’t kicked you out already.”
“Your castle?” He laughs. “This is your stepdaddy’s castle, not yours. Now, why don’t you do us both a favor and stop pretending to care about Ren? You never looked twice at her until now. Which is it, Nick—that she’s about to be of marrying age? Or that she grew t**s?”
My growl finally escapes me in a shriek of fury as I launch myself at him, punching him square in the nose and then tackling him to the ground.
Unfortunately, Archer Saros is a f*****g beast of a wolf, and while I’m big for a vampire, I’m still not nearly as big as him. So, when he hits me back, it f*****g hurts.
We go at it for several minutes, trading very painful blows, until, suddenly, Ren lets out a shriek so bloodcurdling, we freeze in our tracks: “Enough!”
Interesting choice of word, I can’t help but think as I remove myself from Archer. The same word I used to shut up Sabrina. A similar tone, too.
“Archer,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “Just give us a minute.”
I’m not sure what makes me happier, that she’s asking to be alone with me or that she’s asking him to leave. I’m certainly enjoying the furious expression on his face.
“You can’t be serious,” he whines. “He—”
“Five minutes,” she interrupts. “And you can come barging back in to protect me. Okay?”
He clearly doesn’t like it, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Archer Saros these past eight years, it’s that he’s obedient to her. So, reluctantly, he leaves.
He doesn’t close the door behind him, but I do.
I have no idea what’s about to happen, but I know that I’ve never wanted to touch someone so badly in my life.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, closing the gap between us a little too closely. My face is inches from hers. She smells so good—like fire and rain, all at the same time. It sinks deep into my lungs, and I don’t ever want it to leave them. How have I not noticed it before? “If I thought—if I knew that she—”
“Nick,” she interrupts, looking up at me with those deep, scarlet eyes that are giving my heart a really hard time coping. I’ve never had a view of them this close. They’re almost the color of blood… delectable. “Why did you do that?”
She’s referring to the way I attacked Archer, I realize.
Why did I do that?
It’s nothing I care to put into words.
So, instead, I grab her and kiss the hell out of her.
Well, what else am I supposed to do? What choice did I really have? She’s standing there, inches in front of me, eyes the color of the most intoxicating thing in the world to me, smelling like nothing else I’ve ever smelled before, looking like heaven, and my f*****g psychotic ex-girlfriend just tried to kill her, and—
God, she kisses good. Her mouth is so much warmer than Sabrina’s—even warmer than I imagined it, all the many times I imagined this moment. Her tongue is sweet and soft, dainty in its reactions to my own, which pried through her lips with the hunger of a mad dog, and the way she arches herself against me, the way her short, shallow breaths feel against my upper lip as I kiss her deeper and deeper—
I want her. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I have to have her.
Unfortunately, she pulls away from me.
My hands are still glued to her, one clinging to her hair, the other pressed against the small of her back, both begging her not to take another step farther from me than she already has.
She doesn’t, but she doesn’t step toward me, either.
“Did you hurt her?” she asks me suddenly.
I blink, confused. “Hurt… who? Sabrina?”
“When you broke up with her.” Her voice is raised—just a hair louder than she usually is—but the emotion is impossible to miss. This question is important to her. “Did you f**k her? And did you hurt her?”
Ren Crescent doesn’t use the word f**k. She uses the words make love. We’ve already established this.
What the hell did Sabrina say to her?
And why can’t I just lie and say no?
“It’s not… like that,” I stammer. “It wasn’t… I mean… It was consensual, Ren. It’s different, with—”
But before I can even finish my sentence, she walks away from me.
- Writer
