Page 8 of Twice Bitten
Because I’d felt like even if I could never be truly free, trulycarefree, maybe Jack could have a better ending. And that would be worth my time: more karma, only this time hopefully working to my benefit.
“You conveniently turned all that around when you fed us your sob story,” I continued. “And now you’re hoping to use me to help you get whatever this is, with Brent, and whoever kidnapped him, and your brother, and, you know,me, as acceptable collateral damage. Stop me when I’m getting to the part where I actually need you to tell me something, would you? Maybe you could fill me in on why Brent’s kidnapper thinks you’re still on your way from Idaho, since the mundane details of how we deal with this situation, logistically speaking, would be a lot more use to me than another pile of half-truth bullshit.”
That came out way more raspy and bitter than I’d wanted it to. I winced and squeezed my eyes shut for a second, my hand gripping Jack’s phone tightly enough that I might break it myself if I wasn’t careful, and my other hand clawed into the nasty bedspread.
The ensuing silence felt like a two-ton weight balanced on my stylish bowtie. And the bowtie itself felt like it’d gone rogue and started to choke me.
I knew better than to give people, let alone fucking alpha werewolves—really any kind of male who thought of himself as superior to others—the benefit of the doubt.
They were users. Selfish. Cruel.
Just because I’d looked in Jack’s blue eyes and seen something else didn’t mean there was anything else there to see. It meant I’d been an idiot.
“Give me the phone,” Jack said at last. “I’m not going to break it. I’m going to put it on the bedside table.”
That startled me into turning my head so that I could blink at him in stunned disbelief. I found him looking back at me, eyes pale blue again without a trace of his alpha glow, and features even, with maybe the slightest bit of a furrow between his brows—but otherwise composed.
Like this conversation had left him perfectly calm.
Fucker. His heartbeat had evened out, too. I couldn’t feel it thudding through the mattress anymore.
Thefuck.
I released my clenched fist, and Jack reached over and carefully extracted the phone from my hand. My fingertips brushed his broad palm as he pulled the phone away, and I paradoxically shivered at that little hint of heated skin. He twisted around, set the phone on the nightstand, and then—resettled himself turned partly onto his side, his face only a foot from mine and his body a lot closer than it had been.
I couldn’t look away from his eyes.
And he didn’t seem inclined to look away from mine, either. What did he see in them? I didn’t have his striking coloring, at least not without a little assistance from the boxes of purple dye I bought at the drugstore. My eyes were plain hazel. Not brown, not green, and not blue. Kind of…boring, honestly.
Although they were probably mostly pupil at the moment. Anger, and confusion, and—the way all my cells seemed to light up at his proximity, sending me something that could have been a warning and felt a lot more like magnetism.
“Brent tried to murder my brother, and he stole that artifact,” Jack said quietly, the words sliding so smoothly into the little space between us that they felt like they absorbed into my skin rather than coming to me as sound. “And Brent’s kidnapper is—a fucking kidnapper. If either of them end up as damage, they’re not collateral. They’re the targets. Jake’s collateral damage, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. And he had sex with my mate. He’s not completely innocent in all this.”
Jack swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple shifting. He never looked away from me; he didn’t even blink.
“Butyou’renot acceptable collateral damage.” His voice dipped to a fraction above a bone-vibrating growl, and something in my chest seized up like a faulty engine. Gods. The look in his eyes. Like he fuckingmeantit, down to his own bones. “Do you really blame me for not immediately trusting you and your ice-queen boss? Of course I’m trying to keep the details to myself. It’s my fucking business, not yours. But now you’re involved,” he went on, as I opened my mouth to argue with that ridiculous sophistry. “So no more games. But Angelo.” My name in that gravelly voice made heat pool somewhere in my…well…okay, I felt hot all over. “I give you my word. I won’t let you get hurt helping me.”
“That’s not a promise you can keep.”
Jack smiled, this time without any fang at all on display. My heart stuttered.
“Okay, fine. I promise you won’t get hurt as long as I’m alive to stop it. That is a promise I can keep.” His smile widened into a grin, and…and…gods. That sparkle in his eyes. It didn’t owe anything to his alpha magic. “Least I can do for someone who shared his martini olives with me. Are you going to hit me if I call that an olive branch?”
That didn’t register for a second. When it did, my eyes nearly rolled back in my head, and I let out a helpless groan, the tension in me loosening at last. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jack!”
He blinked at me as his name hung in the air between us. Why did saying someone’s name feel like such an intimate act sometimes?
We didn’t have any intimacy.
Jack had a mate.
So we were on a bed.
Jack had amate. And so did I, technically, even if I didn’t think either of us owed our shitty other halves any particular loyalty. And he was still a werewolf. That hadn’t changed either.
So what if we were on a bed, and he’d cornered me up against a wall and acted like he might…do something about it, and I hadn’t stopped him. And our bodies were so close together the smallest movement would bring us flush against one another. And despite the stupid jacket and throwing the phone, he’d defied every expectation I’d had of him so far: no violence, no uncontrollable rage, no irrationality.
I had to get back to the point, and quickly. No more cheesy puns that bordered on the establishment of an inside joke after only a couple of hours of knowing each other. No more—intimacy of any kind.
