Page 14 of Twice Bitten
“Brent hates this song,” Jack commented. And then he started to hum along with it.
My cock got just the tiniest bit harder, the head nudging my zipper in a way that would become painful in a few minutes.
And I probably had three hours of this to go, knowing my luck.
I pulled out my phone and sent a friend of mine who worked in the Lancaster police department the license plate number of the sedan, since that seemed like the best candidate for Brent’s friend’s wheels. Jack nodded when I told him what I’d done, and then subsided into his seat with a sigh. Irritation started to nip at my heels. He didn’t seem to be all that affected by sitting here with me, the bastard. I glanced sidelong, as subtly as possible. He had to have a huge cock, right? With that build, and being an alpha? Surely I’d be able to see it if he had an erection, even though his black jeans weren’t that tight.
Jack chose that precise moment to lean forward and start shrugging out of his leather jacket, totally blocking my view of his lap.
And then he casually dropped the jacketonhis lap.
Those shoulders really weren’t a lot less distracting than a visible erection would’ve been.
Wait a second.
He’d put the jacket on his lap. On purpose? Did he have something to hide?
My heart started pounding again. He felt so close, and in the near-silence, with only our breathing and the faint, far-off racket from inside the bar, he felt even closer.
“What’s bothering you?” His low voice wrapped around me like the smoke from incense, like the effects of a drug. That question could’ve sounded annoyed or accusing, but from him it sounded—like he actually cared about the answer. “You’re not freaked out about having to deal with Brent, or whoever he’s with. None of this scares you, and I’d be shocked if it did. So what’s wrong?”
I stared out the windshield at the glowing bar sign, the pink neon flickering a little at a frequency that probably would’ve been too fast for human eyes to pick up on. Sort of like Jack noticing how fucked-up I was, maybe. No one ever noticed. They saw what I wanted them to. Maybe, somehow, I flickered at a frequency only Jack could see.
What a horribly unsettling thought.
“If it’s me, I can wait outside the car,” Jack went on when I didn’t answer. He sounded incredibly awkward again. Awkward, but completely sincere. “If you…if I bother you. Because I’m an alpha, or something. I didn’t mean to…”
He trailed off into something between a growl and a whisper, staring out the front of the car with his jaw set.
The urge to simply—tell him everything, every bit of it, washed over me like an unexpectedly large wave on an otherwise calm beach.
I turned my head, sucking in more deep breaths through the window. Pine. A hint of woodsmoke, maybe from a cabin nearby. The freshness of the coming rain. It’d been a rainy day when Louis kissed me, when he asked me to be his mate. Damp stone and the scent of the river…nausea welled up, and I swallowed it down, almost choking. Gods, I’d spent so long trying to forget. To put it all behind me, even though I knew Louis was still out there somewhere, at the other end of the blood bond I couldn’t escape.
It hadn’t hit me this hard in a very long time—years. I’d had episodes of panic before, but I’d thought I’d finally conquered that weak, pathetic part of me. I kept my emotions locked down so tightly that I almost couldn’t feel anything except annoyance, anger, and amusement. Those were safe. Those were an outward projection rather than an internal struggle.
Grief, and fear, and shame, and regret…those I couldn’t afford to feel.
No, no, not now, I couldn’t. Not now of all times.
The smell of rain…
My head swam and everything had blurred into a sickening nothingness, my senses in disarray. But I must’ve made some betraying sound, or some unconscious motion, though I couldn’t hear myself.
“Angelo,” Jack said. “Jesus, come on, come here—”
Big hands found my upper arms, pulling me half out of my seat, and then my face was buried in a warm, solid shoulder, Jack’s arms wrapped tightly around my back, one hand cradling the nape of my neck.
I shook, the tears I hadn’t known had started to fall dampening the cotton under my cheek.
Shame hit me nearly as hard as the flashback memories, and I tried to pull away as abruptly as I’d fallen into his arms.
But Jack didn’t let me go, and after a moment, I stopped wriggling. Not that I’d been trying that hard in the first place. His heat and strength felt so fucking good.
But then again, so had Louis’s, at first.
I shuddered in every limb, squeezing my eyes shut, colder than I could ever remember being.
Jack leaned down and pressed a kiss to the side of my head, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. I shivered again, but this time not from the cold spreading through my chest.
