Free Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) by Hettie Ivers

in it. He wasn’t, was he?
    The tip of his nose grazed mine, and his breath fell over my slightly parted lips. It smelled of mint and chocolate. Sadistic murderers weren’t supposed to smell this good. Or administer amazing cranial massages as they casually talked about killing you.
    I decided there had to have been something in one of those drugs Kai had given me to cause me to react to Alex this way. I willed my tear ducts to behave and deprive him of the satisfaction of seeing me break again. I didn’t dare open my eyes.
    “For over a century it’s been our law to dispose of the blood relatives of those who betray this house,” he explained. “Always terminating the innocent as humanely as possible. I’d have taken your life so quickly and painlessly you’d never have known what happened.” He sounded almost wistful as his lips ghosted my brow.
    “It’s never been personal. And I regret that circumstances are such with you that I must make an exception and insist you live.”
    Wow. His propensity for apologizing was piteously stunted.
    I was feeling loopier by the second, but it sounded as if he was actually applauding himself for some misguided sense of magnanimity within his unnecessary practice of murdering his enemies’ family members, just because he’d convinced himself he was being merciful about it.
    I wondered how many of those innocent blood relatives had mistakenly taken his “humane” killing of them personally? It was obvious even to my doped-up brain cells that I was dealing with a devout sociopath. And then he threw down his full hand of crazy cards.
    “I’m afraid you smell far too delightful to die,” he said in a covetous tone that set off every innate warning bell I possessed, despite my impaired state. “My wolf wants you very much alive.”
    God, help me, what did that mean?
    It took multiple tries before my eyelids responded to my brain’s command to open. And several more blinks before Alex’s two sets of blurry features merged into one. He was startlingly close to me!
    His dark eyes were half-lidded, and looked as if they were about to swallow me whole as they canvassed my features. At some point his fingers had deviated from encasing my throat to massaging the vertebrae along the back of my neck, and it felt undeniably fantastic, particularly combined with the sensations induced by his other fingers working their magic on my scalp. He was evil incarnate.
    When the pink tip of his tongue peeked out to lick across his full bottom lip, I felt my cheeks heat with unease and trepidation. I lowered my eyes in an effort to look elsewhere. They had nowhere to settle next but on his broad, naked shoulders, and then to his bare chest hovering over my blanketed form.
    His olive brown skin was smooth and his chest and arms muscled beyond anything I’d ever seen or imagined possible for the human male body. I had to remind myself he wasn’t human. Dear Lord, was that an eight-pack? I felt my heart rate spike despite the medications within me as an unwelcome pulling sensation began in the pit of my belly, horrifying and sickening me.
    I must have appeared petrified as I drew my eyes back up to his face, because he frowned and reassured me, “I won’t hurt you, Milena. Not …” He shook his head. “ Never like that.”
    His words were spoken as if in earnest. And fuck it all, but I was too wasted to follow whatever mind game he might be playing. I could scarcely keep up with his changing moods, and I was almost certain I preferred when he was outright angry and threatening compared to this new twisted tactic he was taking.
    I didn’t like the way he was saying my name now either. Like he was savoring it. Never before had my name sounded so luxurious and exotic as it did falling from my would-be killer’s lips.
    I didn’t like it. Not the way he was looking at me, not the way he was touching me, and not the way he was talking to me.
    Why hadn’t the stupid sedation medication