12| Fire Meets Gasoline

DEKLAN MARIO 

“Can I kiss you?” Cedar asked, her eyes fixed on my mouth.

I don’t need women. They’re serpents, sweet-faced, silver-tongued, and dangerously capable of turning great men into grave men. If my own mother could betray and deny me… if my sister could turn her back on me, what then could a lover do? Far worse.

That belief has guided me for years. I avoid women at all costs. To me, they don’t even exist, especially now, when I trust no one. Not even men. My uncle committed a crime, framed me for it and locked me away for years, then no one deserves trust.

I don’t trust my shadow. I don’t believe in fate. Everything is in my hands, and I alone decide how to use them and what I do.

That night, when I heard Cedar's screams, I had been tailing Dominus. I didn’t know what business he had with the elders of the Crystal Moon Pack, but I waited in the shadows, until I heard her cry out. For reasons I still don’t understand, those cries pierced me deeper than I expected.

She was another kind of danger. Another pretty snare waiting to drag a man like me to ruin. Still, I intervened. I stepped in and stopped the twins and their warriors before they could end her life.

As they fled in fear, I caught the scent of my uncle heading back toward Oakwood. So I left Cedar in his path, thinking perhaps he’d show her mercy. Maybe she could still have a chance at life. Me? I had nothing, just my scars and my curses. If I left her there, she’d be dead.

It all came back to me the moment I stepped into her room. And as if fate were playing tricks, she walked in moments later, tossed herself onto the bed, screamed into a pillow, and began to undress, kicking her shoes off with frustration. She didn’t notice me at first. 

Then she did.

I expected her to freak out, but she just pouted her lips and rolled her eyes. No panic. No fear.

She left me wondering if this was the same terrified girl I saved that night? She should be running from me. If anyone could break her, it was me. I ruin everything that comes my way. I destroyed happiness and replaced it with pain so unbearable, people begged for death.

I should’ve walked away. I meant to.

But the way she looked at me, one glance that said I mattered… that I existed… that I was someone. That was all it took to freeze me in place. My gaze drifted to her lips, then lower, to her collarbone, her neck. My fingers twitched with the urge to touch her.

“Can I kiss you?” she asked again, her voice soft but daring.

I took a step back, caught off guard by her boldness.

“No,” I said with a crooked grin, tilting my head. I reached out and gently rubbed my thumb across her lower lip before she could turn away. “But I can kiss you.”

She froze, caught between surprise and anticipation. Her breath hitched, and the duvet slipped from her hands, falling from where she’d held it to cover her bare chest. Without wasting a second, I closed the distance between us in two long strides, pressing her back firmly against the wall.

“Oh, sweet little thing!” I pinned her there, watching her tongue dart out to wet her lip.

As her lips parted in a breath, I captured her mouth with mine. Hungry, possessive, and deliberate. Her scent flooded my senses. She exhaled sharply into me, and it felt like breathing her in woke something deep and wild inside me.

This wasn’t my first kiss. I had kissed my high school teacher who doubled as my home tutor. She came onto me one evening, and I didn't know how to stop her. She kissed me, gave me a blowjob, made me touch her. The next day, I was expelled. My parents’ separation followed. My life fell apart and that became a distant memory long forgotten. 

A lot of things happened afterwards that made me feel like women are battlefields I no longer want to walk through. I hated what they represented. I hated what she took from me.

But this… this was different.

Cedar’s kiss was fire and temptation wrapped in purity. It wasn’t just lips pressed together, it was a promise of something dangerously addictive. And the moment I kissed her, I regretted it. Because I knew I’d want more. I knew I wouldn’t stop.

My wolf stirred inside me, hungry, aroused. I deepened the kiss, letting my teeth tug lightly on her lower lip. My hands moved of their own accord, memorizing her curves like a map I never wanted to forget. She clung to me with desperate fingers gripping my shirt.

Her pants were half-zipped from when she’d rushed to pull them on earlier. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think… My left hand slid beneath the waistband, circling to grab the soft flesh of her ass. She gasped and arched into me, her nipples stiff beneath the thin cotton of my shirt. My right hand moved lower, grazing along her inner thighs, hot, slick, and soaked before I even reached her foreskin.

Then the fire alarm screamed through the silence, blaring and angry, ripping us apart.

We both stood there, breathing hard, the room echoing with the shrill alarm and distant shouts.

“If you don’t want to get poked, stay away from me, Bubble,” I growled, stuffing my hands deep into my pockets to hide what she’d done to me.

It was normal for her to shiver, but why were my hands fucking shaking?

Without another word, I turned and left. My body was still burning, head reeling. I couldn’t afford to look back at her for fear that I might take her right then and there, not caring what was wrong or right.

I shouldn’t have done that.

Whatever’s going on, the fire alarm might have just saved me. I don’t have time for this… for her. Cedar is a distraction, a dangerous one, and I won’t let her destroy me.

For all I know, she’s a trap.

A trap sent by Dominus.