Page 17 of Twice Bitten
Which I’d been desperate to get out of. Ah, the grass was always greener.
Jack leaned up casually against a tree, ankles crossed and hands in his pockets, looking totally at ease.
I put my hands in my pockets, too, and then stood there awkwardly without a tree. Trees had moss that’d stain my suit and bark that might snag it.
“You can lean against me if you don’t want to risk your precious houndstooth against a tree,” Jack said.
Was he fucking kidding me? He couldn’t actually read my mind, right?
And had he totally forgotten about being angry with me? Did his temper really ebb and flow that quickly? Yes, probably, given what I’d seen over the course of the day and night.
If I went over there and leaned on him, a thought that tempted me much more than it should have…yeah, I’d end up on my knees, ruining my suit after all, swallowing his cock like a slut and getting ambushed and murdered by Brent and his thug boyfriend. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I wanted Jack, and I wanted him badly, and we were the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Thanks, but no,” I managed, trying to sound dismissive bordering on rude, and ending up somewhere between sad and regretful.
“Suit yourself.” His grin flashed white in the gloom. “So to speak.”
I glared at him and then turned my attention back to the cabin.
It would’ve been a miserable wait if we’d been human, what with the dank chill and the icy breezes, and the quiet boredom of it.
Given our supernatural constitutions, it was merely mildly annoying.
My supernatural constitution couldn’t do a damn thing about the constant urge to take Jack up on his offer, though. He wasright there. And I’d been more or less celibate for years, unless you counted one half-hearted fumble in the back of a bar that didn’t even get to third base. My stunted mate bond always lurked in the back of my mind, in the depths of my soul, tainting every sexual thought I had. And no one ever appealed to me enough to get past my wariness.
Until Jack.
At long last, I caught the sound of a car engine faintly echoing up the hill. Jack pushed off his tree and came to stand beside me, his ears as sensitive as mine.
“So do we just jump them when they get out of the car?” he asked. “That’s my play. Not very subtle, I know.”
I shrugged. One werewolf who wasn’t even an alpha, and one human. Hardly even sporting odds. And I wanted to get this the fuck over with.
“Works for me.”
Jack cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take Hendler and you take Brent,” he said, sounding apologetic. “If I touch him…the mate bond might take over. I don’t trust myself not to let him get the drop on me. If the alternative is hurting him, even a little bit.”
Well, that certainly confirmed that he wasn’t the sort of dominant alpha to abuse his mate. Bitterness suffused me all over again. Brent had no idea how lucky he was, the little fucking son of a bitch. Jack obviously still cared about him even after all his betrayals. And I had no one but a cat and a sadistic mate I couldn’t get rid of for good, no matter how much distance I put between us.
“Fine,” I choked out. I wouldn’t have any qualms about hurting Brent, that was for sure.
Hendler’s gray sedan pulled up in front of the cabin with a squeak of the brakes, and the engine shut down. The driver’s side door opened, and Hendler stepped out, the passenger door opening a second later.
Jack and I turned our heads, making eye contact for a moment, and he nodded at me.
And then we both moved.
I half expected something dramatic to go wrong. Hendler would secretly be a powerful warlock. Brent would produce a machine gun from thin air after all. Ninjas would erupt from the cabin, previously hidden from mine and Jack’s enhanced senses by some kind of fuckery.
But instead, we burst out of the trees at a speed no human could match, Jack tackled Hendler to the ground and subdued him within two seconds, and I rounded the car, grabbed Brent, and shoved him up against the side of it face-first with his hands pinned in half a second more.
“What the fuck! Who the fuck are you? Jack!” Brent cried out, struggling with me and trying to buck me off. He had a few inches of height on me (because who didn’t), and probably thirty pounds as well (because again, who didn’t), but a mere werewolf couldn’t match a vampire of my age for strength or dexterity. I yanked on his arms until I heard the distinct meaty one-two thunks of his elbows dislocating one after the other, and his protests cut off in a high-pitched yowl as he slumped against the side of the car and gave up the fight.
I tried, and failed, to feel no satisfaction whatsoever, and ended up grinning at Brent’s leather-jacket-clad back.
Because of course the little fucker had a leather jacket. Although his was sky blue and appeared to be some kind of designer brand.
Condolences to Jack’s credit card, I guessed.
