Precious

She doesn't see him because he's too close, because he's always there to pick up the pieces. He's supposed to be there for her. But he doesn't want just pieces. He doesn't want to just pick up what's left of her broken heart. He wants all of her. It is a love that consumes. One that destroys. He's supposed to love her, but not like this.

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

"Do you think there's something wrong with me?" she whispers in the dark.

He startles. He had been close to falling asleep when her soft voice woke him. "Baby?" he asks without thinking and tenses.

She doesn't seem to mind, nuzzling up to him with a happy little sound. She's turns around some time when he was drowsing so that she's pressing her breasts to his chest, blinking up at him, the perfect picture of innocence. Surely she's doing this on purpose. "Do you think there's something wrong with me?" she clarifies.

"There's nothing wrong with you," he says automatically, arms tightening around her torso without thinking. It presses her even closer and he regrets doing it, immediately loosening his hold on her.

"There must be," she insists.

"What makes you think there's something wrong with you, baby?" he asks.

"Nobody wants to have sex with me," she says.

He sees red. He swears under his breath and shuts his eyes for a moment, trying to push away the thoughts of her and sex with someone else. "That can't be true," he says.

"It is," she sighs, like she's resigned herself to never having sex with anyone. "They have these parties in uni where everyone just sort of has sex with everyone and I'm never invited."

Because he would kill anyone who thinks they could touch her without taking full responsibility. She sounds just a little bit disappointed and he tries to think about it from her perspective. "What about Sam?" he asks and flinches when her scent sours with disappointment.

"I never really clicked with him," she says. "He didn't make me feel safe. Not like you," she adds that last bit softly. Then, like a lightbulb going off in her brain, she asks, "Would you have sex with me?"

He feels as though all the blood in his body has gone to his shaft. His wolf howls with joy. Yes, yes, yes. Mate. Claim. He chokes those back. "That's not- You can't ask that, darling," he says. He shouldn't have let her sleep in his bed the past few days. And he had been doing such a good job raising her prior to this too. He must have messed up at some point, done something wrong to make her ask something so perverse.

"Why not?" she asks, looking completely innocent, clearly expecting him to answer.