Page 13 of Twice Bitten
His eyes bored into mine and I couldn’t look away.
I leaned forward.
Jack leaned forward.
The world fell away, narrowed down to just the intimate little space in the front seat of my car, the air separating us.
A Harley engine started, with a choke and sputter and roar, and I started and flung myself back in my seat like I’d been tased. My heart pounded, and the world came rushing back in.
Jack had moved back into his own seat as if he’d never been a fraction of a moment away from…doing things we couldn’t do. Didn’t have time to do. Shouldn’twantto do.
I rubbed my hands over my face and blew out a long, shaky breath.
Focus. I had to focus. Idiot-Brent and his raspy fellow-criminal were in that bar, and we needed to get them out of it. Preferably without any casualties, property damage Esther would take out of my pay, or damage to my suit, in reverse order of importance.
Jack’s breathing was ragged, too, and I could hear his heartbeat racing along, very slowly starting to calm. That made me feel a bit better. At least it wasn’t only me having this inappropriate whatever-it-was.
Of course, that made it worse, too. It meant therewasa whatever-it-was in reality, and not only in my lonely, deprived, desperate imagination. It meant I had to acknowledge that the first man to interest me in years was an alpha fucking werewolf, leather jacket and potential fur and all.
A mated alpha werewolf.
Right.
“There has to be a back door,” I said at last, forcing myself to get my thoughts in order. “You should sneak in that way. I’ll go in the front. No one will be looking anywhere else once I walk in the door, I’m guessing.”
Jack frowned. “Yeah, they’ll be looking at you, and they won’t be friendly. I don’t want you going in on your own.”
A little glow of warmth bloomed in my chest. And lower down, dammit. Quite a bit lower down. He could’ve criticized the plan on the basis of its likelihood of working, but instead his first thought had been for my safety. If it’d been coming from someone else, I might have felt patronized given the way I looked, but from Jack…somehow it made me feel protected instead.
Not that I needed it.
“Unless someone opens fire on me with a machine gun, I’ll be just fine,” I told him. “If I had a dollar for every time I’d wiped the floor of a bar with some uppity assholes who thought I was easy pickings, I’d be set for top-shelf martinis for life. Human bar, remember? Not a problem.”
“Brent’s a werewolf, and we don’t know what his asshole buddy is, though,” Jack pointed out. “Are you sure? It might be easier to wait for them to leave and grab them without an audience to get in the way.”
He had a point. It might very well be easier. It’d also mean sitting here, in this car, with Jack. For hours, potentially. I glanced at the dashboard clock. Still only eleven. Yeah, if they stayed until the last stragglers got kicked out we could be here for three hours, more than long enough for…anything to happen.
But he had such a good point that I didn’t really have a good argument against it. I turned it over in my head, how it might go down. I couldn’t think of a good way to lure Brent and his co-asshole out of the bar. I couldn’t mesmerize them both at once; I had to keep eye contact for that, so it was one at a time. And I wasn’t worried about losing a bar fight, whether with them or with the bystanders, but it’d be easy for one or both of them to get away if chaos ensued.
“Fine,” I said with poor grace. “We’ll wait.”
But I couldn’t wait like this. My half-hard cock pressed against the zipper of my trousers, and my head was swimming.
I rolled my window down a few inches.
Oh, thank Christ. I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs over and over again with damp, pine-scented air and a strong tinge of motorcycle exhaust. It could’ve been anything and I’d have sucked it down like salvation. Not minty, rich, golden-threaded alpha scent. My head cleared within seconds, making me realize exactly how dazed I’d gotten sitting in an enclosed space with Jack for so long.
In an enclosed space. With Jack. For even longer.
My cock got a little harder, if anything.
Fuck.
Jack shifted in his seat, the faux-leather creaking. Someone in the bar put “Sweet Home Alabama” on the jukebox.
I loved this song. I really hoped it wasn’t Brent who’d put it on. I didn’t want to have anything in common with that bitch.
Well, anything but Jack. That already sucked.
