Page 35 of Twice Bitten
“Lucky Arik,” I snarled.
“Not really, no,” Jack said flatly. “Look. Stick around. Please. The bond’ll be broken in an hour and then we can talk without that between us.”
I got right in his face—well, his collarbone, even standing on my tiptoes, but details—partly because I wanted to really make my point and partly because despite everything, he drew me in like a magnet.
“There is. No. Us,” I growled. “There is no we,weare not making any plans. There’s nothing between us, around us, among us, or any other prepositional phrase that would suggest any kind of connection—umph!”
With a low growl, Jack hauled me into his arms and brought his mouth down hard on mine.
And he didn’t hesitate, fucking my mouth with his tongue and kissing me desperately, like he wanted to own me.
For a long moment I opened my mouth and took it, clinging to him like I’d never let him go.
But he couldn’t own me. I had to let him go. He might be getting rid of his unwanted mate, but I couldn’t do the same. And no possessive alpha werewolf would be able to live like that, having me but never making me truly his.
Besides. This couldn’t be real. It’d been a couple of days.
I wrenched myself out of his arms and out of the kiss, stumbling back a few steps with my lips swollen and tingling and my cock hard and my chest aching with loss.
“I have to go, and please don’t try to stop me,” I gasped, clenching my fists at my sides so I wouldn’t reach out to him again.
“I need to—fuck,” Jack said. “Fuck, I need to—pay you back for your car.” And that didn’t sound like a man grasping at straws at all, no, not a bit. My heart leapt, though. He did owe me a car, didn’t he? I could give him my address. He could stop by—
“No, you don’t,” I forced myself to say. “Cheap car. Easy come, easy go.” I’d loved my car, but lies would get me out of here faster than the truth. “Besides, the Armitages run a junkyard and half of them are auto mechanics. They’ll fix it for me. And they can give me a loaner for now.”
As if conjured by some of the magic that’d given us the miracle of giant attack scorpions, a young werewolf came around the corner of the house and stopped, staring at us.
“Hey,” he said. “You guys okay?”
“Do you have a car?” I demanded.
He raised his eyebrows and took a few steps closer. I hadn’t ever met this guy, but he looked like he might be one of the pack’s mechanics, given the grease stains on his jeans and white t-shirt.
“Yeah? I mean, we have a few. Oh, right, yours got crashed.”
“Yes, it did. A hundred bucks if you drive me to Lancaster right now.”
The guy grinned. “Five hundred and you can drive yourself and keep the car. It doesn’t have air conditioning or a radio, and the trunk’s kind of rusty. Oh, and the right-side back window—”
“Don’t fucking care,” I interjected, already reaching in my pocket for the wallet I’d retrieved along with my phone from the pile of my ruined clothing that had been on the floor of that bedroom that I couldn’t bear to think about.
“Sweet! Be right back.” He jogged off around the corner of the house.
“Angelo, don’t,” Jack said, his voice low and urgent. “Wait. Please, okay? Wait for me to be done with the ritual. Then we can—”
I spun on him. “What, Jack? Then we can what? Ride back to Lancaster together with a werewolf chauffeur and Brent in the back seat with us? Sneak off before you go back to Idaho and fuck again in one of the pack house’s spare bedrooms?” My chest ached with regret, regret that only grew as I took in the wounded, miserable expression on his face and in those pale blue eyes. “There’s no ritual to get rid of my mate. There’s no ritual to make our—”
The words that would’ve finished that sentence stuck in my throat, almost gagging me.There’s no ritual to make our lives fit together. He hadn’t asked for that. I shouldn’t even want that.
When I turned again and walked away, following the grease-stained mechanic, Jack didn’t come after me.
***
My new car turned out to be an ancient sedan with Arizona plates, rust on many more places than the trunk, and mismatched tires.
But the engine purred like a satisfied cat when I started it up, and I forked over the five hundred without a qualm. The thing had surprising pickup, too, and I vroomed out of the Armitage territory like I had a whole army of attack scorpions right on my bumper.
I spent that night, and the night after, and the days and nights after that, trying not to think about it. Any of it. Jack. I tried not even to think his name. The shooting and the crash, and the way Jack had held me so tenderly when I’d been bleeding out. The taste of his blood and how I’d come apart in his arms. His grin, his scent, the glow of his alpha eyes. The intensity in those eyes when he gazed down at me as he pinned me down and knotted me.
