Regina coughed and straightened herself in her seat. Gone was the familiarity and comfort she’d thought she had. He was the Alpha and she was the shifter of another Pack. She needed to remember those lines and keep them in place. How had they even slipped away in the first place?
“No, it’s alright! I don’t know if anyone has ever called me dude before. It just…caught me off guard.”
“Is that so?” Regina let the space between them stretch again. She’d come to help a fellow shifter, not to get chummy with Oscar.
Then, he groaned. The sound made Regina’s attention snap to him, both alarmed and slightly…turned on. She swallowed back the second feeling, trying to ignore it ever happened, while trying to figure out what his problem was.
His eyes slid to her, leaving the road for a second. “If no one has ever called me dude, does that mean I’ve never had friends?”
She guffawed. She couldn’t stop the laughter that poured out of her. Despite her laughing in his face, Oscar smiled. It was a small gesture, but one that warmed his eyes so that they became molten chocolate. An errant thought passed through her mind.
Would his lips taste like molten chocolate, too?
She was appalled at herself and the lust that kept rearing its head around him. While tumbling in the hay with such a man would be fun, she knew there would be ghosts hanging over his head the entire time. The death of his mate had never left him. His wounds were still raw as if it had only just happened.
So, Regina kept smiling, but she leaned back in her seat.
“I can’t believe I’ve never had friends.”
“That’s not right. The guy that gave your profile to Nessa is your friend. Even if it was a joke, I’m sure the gesture came from a good place.”
“Do you really think so? I think if he was playing a joke on me, he wouldn’t like me very much.”
Regina snorted. “You should have seen how Nikolai and Monica courted each other. On the first date, he stole her car keys. The next morning, she wrapped his truck in plastic wrap and spray painted a giant panther with a dick for a tail on it.”
Fear widened his eyes for a moment. “My Monica did that?”
“Honey, she certainly was not your Monica. But, yes. The Monica that was once a part of your pack did that to her future mate. Last I knew, Nikolai sabotaged her couch for an excuse to buy a new one for their new house.”
Regina studied Oscar’s face. In it, she found a mix of alarm, pride, and confusion. It brought a small laugh to her lips, one that brightened the interior of the car. Being around Oscar was easier than she’d thought. He was intimidating, from the way he looked to the way he held himself, but in the small space, she watched his layers crack and fall away.
She wanted to stay near this new version of Oscar. She liked the version that could laugh at himself and smile at his own failures. Yet, the fact that he hadn’t known all that much about a shifter he’d claimed as his was upsetting. Monica had lived with his Pack for more than eight years. It felt like he’d known almost nothing about her.
He also didn’t think of any of them as his friends. Perhaps they thought of Oscar as their friend, from the way his packmate tried to help him with the dating profile, but Oscar kept a wall between him and his pack.
She felt bad for him. He’d retreated from his pack, a system that was supposed to help shifters connect. What was the point in being part of a pack if they couldn’t help one another? Even as an Alpha, a shifter deserved to be loved.
“You’re quiet again,” Oscar noted.
“Does that bother you? Are you afraid of the things I might not be saying?” She felt mischievous and powerful. It was like toying with her prey. She raised her arms above her head and stretched, arching her back and puffing out her breasts. Immediately, his attention slithered down the V of her dress.
Electric sparks raced along her bare skin, making her shiver. She was playing with fire, but she didn’t want to stop. With a flick of her fingers, she leaned the seat back. Her feet were warm in the patch of light on the dashboard.
Oscar became so distracted that the car veered toward the ditch to the right. Regina gripped the seat beneath her and laughed at the way her stomach plummeted. She told herself she was being mean. He was still holding a candle for a dead woman. She shouldn’t have been playing with him the way she was, but she reveled in the way his attention made her feel.
It could have been the sense of victory, pulling this man out of his mourning with her body. It could have been a vicious streak that made her enjoy what she was doing. All she knew was that this road trip wouldn’t last long enough.
Chapter Six
“I’m starving,” Oscar growled.
Truth was, he was starving for something other than food, but he couldn’t tell Regina that. Every spare moment he had, he was looking at her, hungrily devouring her with his eyes. He watched the way her dress slid up her pale thighs as she crossed her legs. Even more alluring was the creamy expanse of her breasts, showcased by the deep V of her dress.
He tried not to think about what the choice of clothing meant, told himself that she hadn’t chosen it for him. All the same, he enjoyed it a bit too much. Each time he tried to focus on the task at hand, which happened to be driving, his bear would tug his head to the right again.
“We could eat once we get there,” she offered, with a look of concern.
He didn’t have the sense of mind to try to read into it. All he knew was that he needed to get out of the small space for a while. Twenty minutes in a car with her and all he could think about was having her legs straddling him. Desire made his stomach tight.
Food would help. He would fill his stomach with sustenance to see if it would fill the emptiness inside him and allow him to focus while in her presence. At the first sign of a pancake house, he pulled over.
The air smelled of maple syrup and butter. He thought of a stack of pale pancakes, drenched in a berry sauce. He wanted them as big as his head and just as high.
“You must be awful hungry,” Regina noted.
He hadn’t realized he was speed walking. Fist clenched at his side, he forced himself to slow down and wait for her. The wind tugged at her dress and hair, caressing her like a lover. He was suddenly jealous of the wind. It touched her in all the ways he wished he could.
For a moment, he considered dragging her back to the car and having her for breakfast.
“What’s wrong?” Her face was so sincere, eyes wide as she looked up at him, lips parted as she waited.
“Nothing. Just…hungry.”
She nodded. It didn’t seem like she could read him, and he was grateful. Regina didn’t need to know how slippery his control was around her. The way she kept glancing over her shoulder made him want to pull her into his embrace. He could see the muscles in her jaw working, tension taking over.
Her nostrils flared, whatever she scented inciting fear rather than hunger. The bear growled. Neither could figure out what was frightening her. He hoped it was not him. She’d seemed comfortable, if not relaxed in the car. That had changed once she stepped out. Oscar did what he could to help her, stepping closer, hoping his scent would chase away anything that bothered her. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but closed it again.
For all he knew, she had someone following them. It could be Nikolai, two steps behind just to make sure his shifter was safe in Oscar’s hands. He wouldn’t put it past the man to follow them without telling her. He was half tempted to call the fellow bear and tell him off, just for making Regina nervous.
Inside, they claimed a booth seat and waited for the waitress to find them. Leaving the confines of the car had reignited the awkward air between them. Regina leaned back in the booth and crossed her legs. She turned her head, letting the wall of thick hair fall between them as she gazed out the window.
Oscar didn’t know how to bridge the gap. Inside the car, it had seemed effortless. Now, she felt a million miles away even though he could reach out and to
uch her. He was the Alpha of a Pack, not a teenage boy who didn’t know how to strike conversation.
Still, all he could do was slide his foot across the floor until the toe of his shoe touched the toe of her shoe. Regina slowly turned back to him, a small smile on the corner of her mouth. His heart did backflips.
The bear found that exact moment to be the right time to unpack the confusion Oscar had pushed back the night before. Without the aid of silver to quiet the beast, it threw everything to the forefront. The fact that it hadn’t craved their mate the way it craved Regina. The fact that while they’d loved her, she might not have been their mate at all.
Oscar reared back. He jerked his feet under the seat. Regina’s face fell, and the veil of hair fell between them again. His heart thumped, not quite racing, but still uncomfortable. He wanted to ask the bear why it’d never mentioned this fact. He wanted to demand an apology.
His soul felt empty, a part of him ripped away by the truth. As he leaned back and let his eyes graze over the world outside, his head spun. Everything he’d thought for the past ten years had been a lie. He’d gripped the memories, the short time he’d had with her, as if it would be the only years he’d would know happiness.
The bear had opened the future for him, but Oscar looked at it warily. He didn’t know how to be happy anymore. He didn’t know the first thing about connecting with people. Time had allowed him to withdraw so far into his own mind that everything happening around him was nothing more than moves on a chessboard.
His beast gripped him and turned his head toward Regina. She slouched on the table, her head in her hand, clearly miserable. Gone was the light laughter she’d shared in the car. Gone was the woman who’d nearly put them in a ditch with her stretching. She closed in on herself. His beast roared at him to fix it. It demanded he make her smile again.
Oscar didn’t know what to do. He was at his bear’s mercy, yet empty handed at the same time. Before he could speak, the waitress came over. She was an older woman with graying hair tied into a messy bun atop her head.
“Couple’s fight?” the waitress asked.
“Oh, no. It’s nothing like that.” Oscar fumbled over his words. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the bear’s revelation. “We’re just going to a meeting together.”
The waitress wasn’t convinced. It didn’t help that Regina didn’t deny it. Instead, the vixen straightened her spine, held up the menu, and ordered French toast stuffed with chocolate and peanut butter. He looked at her small frame and wondered where she would put it. The glare she gave him was defiant, almost challenging.
She would put it wherever she damn well pleased, that look said.
He ordered a stack of pancakes with strawberry syrup and waited for the waitress to retreat. Once she was gone, he opened his mouth to say something and came up with nothing. His lips flapped, but Regina didn’t notice. She’d gone back to sulking.
Once Oscar realized he was trying to find a way to tell her about his revelation, he asked himself why he was bothering at all? It wasn’t Regina’s business. She didn’t need to know that he’d never had a mate at all. Still, the urge to tell her sat on the tip of his tongue, as if it might change the very fabric of the world.
The air jumped with electricity, the space between them charged with a kind of awkwardness that neither knew how to handle. Oscar was used to commanding his Pack. He told them what to do and when to do it, but he didn’t spend much time with them. He didn’t have dinners the way that Lia and Miles liked to do. It seemed like fraternization to him, but now he could see how distancing himself had crippled him to a point.
Now, he didn’t know what to do with the woman before him. Hell, he didn’t even know how he’d upset her.
“What made you come along with me? You seemed almost stricken when I first told you.”
Regina lifted her head, the veil of her hair falling away. He was caught in the glow of her beauty, in the shine that graced the top of her cheek. It was probably artfully placed make-up, but she still looked angelic
“Foxes are different. They don’t usually find themselves in packs. Not like you or me. To hear that one was just roaming around California, it was…” she mulled over her words, her jaw working as if she were rolling them around her mouth. Oscar found himself focusing on her lips, now noticing a faint golden glimmer in the raspberry gloss. “It was startling.”
He chewed on the end of his straw, trying to distract himself from the desire to reach across the table and taste her lips. Having the table between them helped his control, but when they got back into the car, he would be a wreck. Now that he knew his lover had never been a mate, his world was shattered. It waited to be put back together. It waited to become something new.
The force with which he wanted Regina to be the one to put it back together was alarming. The bear rumbled and clawed its way toward her, making his head throb. She clearly was not interested. He needed to behave himself. While he digested what she’d said, he spared a moment to rein in his bear. The beast wasn’t happy, but Oscar managed for now.
He swallowed, trying to get back on track. “There are so few packs dedicated to a single kind of beast anymore. You definitely couldn’t find one in any metropolitan area. The diversity is just too rich to cater to that.”
“You’d be surprised,” Regina said, pausing when the waitress delivered the plates.
The waitress glanced between them, her lips pursed as she measured the situation. The way her eyes lingered on Oscar, scrutinizing and almost accusing, he knew she thought he was the wrong kind of man. People rarely trusted people of his skin color, let alone those inked as much as he was.
He offered her a polite smile, trying to silently promise that he would take care of Regina. He didn’t think the waitress bought it, but she finally left the two of them alone again.
Two days. It’d taken two days for this woman, a shifter under the protection of another Pack, to become important to him. She was soft and supple, a goddess that walked the earth. Oscar didn’t know why the connection was so strong. He told himself it was because he’d spent too much time alone. His beast had become lonely, and it attached itself to the first shifter he’d spent more than twenty minutes with.
“As I was saying,” Regina began. “There are some shifter families that like to keep it just that, a small family.”
Oscar scowled. “How the hell do they mate? Having children with your sister isn’t exactly smart or even…” He couldn’t finish his statement.
“You’re telling me. The families often arrange marriages, trading sons and daughters between a network of little packs. That’s how I started life, in Mom and Dad’s family unit.”
“You aren’t there anymore.”
“Astute observation, smartass.” Despite her words, she smirked. He would have thought she was being playful if she wasn’t also jerking her knife through her breakfast. The smirk covered whatever lay beneath it. When she saw he was still waiting for an answer, she went on. “Don’t worry yourself over it. Everything that brought me to this point in my life is in the past and it will stay that way.”
***
His plate was empty, but Regina asked for a small to-go container. He paid the bill and went to the bathroom, leaving Regina doodling on the Styrofoam of her container. She probably wouldn’t like it if he pulled over on the side of the road to take a piss later. He could envision her face, red-cheeked and full of indignation, if he tried.
It’d been a long time since he enjoyed anyone’s company. For years, he’d done what needed to be done before retreating back into his home. The most he’d interacted with his Pack had been when he commanded them to search for Lia’s sealskin, the key to the coastal territory. He couldn’t say he’d been nice about it. Instead, he’d barked orders to keep up appearances and even resorted to kidnapping her.
Oscar knew he wasn’t the kind of person who deserved happy days, but he was grateful to have found one. Each moment he got to spend in Regina’s
presence made his life a little brighter. It could have been the ruby color of her hair, or the way she challenged him left and right. She didn’t roll over when he made commands. Instead, she pushed back.
He found himself eager to get back to her company.
When he came back from the bathroom, the booth was empty. His heart flipped inside his chest. Quickly, he scanned the dining room for Regina. She was nowhere to be seen. His bear raged, the beast’s emotions like a punch to the gut. Quickly, he lurched outside.
He told himself he feared for her because she was under his protection. That was why his heart slammed with each passing moment. He’d borrowed her from Nikolai and he couldn’t tell the other Alpha that he’d lost her. For a moment, he hoped that it was Nikolai who had her. Perhaps he’d revealed himself and they were outside arguing.
Oscar didn’t listen to the small voice in the back of his mind, the one that tried to whisper that there was another reason for his fear.
The air smelled like raspberries and peanut butter. He followed the scent back to his car. For a moment, his panic quelled. Then, he caught a spicy scent on the air. His bear surged forward, almost ripping free of his human form. Pain prickled along the inside of his skin. It bit at his mind as he staggered forward.
Behind the restaurant, near Oscar’s car, a male shifter had Regina backed up against the truck. He wasn’t touching her, but Oscar felt the white-hot rage of his beast all the same.
“You need to clean your ears. I already said I wasn’t interested.” Regina’s voice was barely more than a growl. She’d ducked her shoulders in a defensive stance, but she was still nearly a foot shorter than the male shifter.
“You aren’t listening to me. I said we could be mates, baby. Why won’t you give it a chance?” The male shifter reached and pushed aside a lock of Regina’s hair.
Her Alpha Mismatch Page 5