by J. D. Light
"Go back to the room," he said in a low, slightly growly voice that I was quite certain probably had knees knocking everywhere. "I'm just checking around." It only served to make me hard, and I grunted, smiling slowly as I leaned my head back and looked up at him.
Damn, he was sexy when he glared like that. If he expected me to turn tail and run because of the glowering presence of that sexy line between his eyebrows, he was humping the wrong camel, because all I wanted to do in that moment was climb him like a stripper pole. The last thing on my mind in that moment was walking in the direction that he was not.
He glanced back down the hall shaking his head. "I'm going to tie you up."
"Are we talking about sex again?"
He bit his bottom lip, grunting as he glanced down at my mouth and then back up at my eyes, stepping further into my bubble. He could get into my bubble any fucking time he wanted.
"You seem pretty preoccupied with the idea of having sex with me," he growled softly, brushing his cheek against mine as he moved closer to whisper in my ear.
I was preoccupied with the idea of having sex with him. I also wanted to blow him and let him blow all over my face and chest, but I was willing to go one or the other if I had to choose.
"You're the one who keeps talking about it," I reminded him, swallowing hard when he pulled back, his cheek once again brushing against mine.
He glanced back down the hall like he was really hoping the door to my room had somehow gotten closer so he could tie me to the bed like he'd said… Okay, he'd said tie me up, but I honestly didn't have the ability to imagine a scenario where I wasn't tied to the bed. What the hell else would he tie me to? The genital warts couch?
Taking a deep calming breath that most certainly was not a sigh, since I doubted the man knew how to sigh, he turned back to the task at hand and I moved closer, sliding up behind him and barely refraining from reaching out and running my hand up the center of his bare, beautifully muscled back, or down over the swell of his ass as I watched the globes flex and release as he walked.
He eased his head around the frame, and I did the same, but at his back, needing to see just like he did what the hell was going on in the kitchen, since I'd definitely heard a muted curse.
In the kitchen, Lane’s back was mostly to us, though if he hadn't been concentrating so hard on what he was doing, which seemed to be pouring some kind of powder into the coffee grounds.
I didn't make a sound as I reacted, but I did reach out and grip Gabriel's sides, easing back slightly before I did something stupid, like march in there and demand to know what the hell was going on.
Dragging me back to the room, he gently pushed me inside and then followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.
"What the hell?" I demanded quietly. "Is he planning on drugging us all?"
I didn't know why the fact that he'd been planning to drug Gabriel as part of his plan to get rid of Dylan and me pissed me off so much more than if he'd just been trying to come after just me and Dylan, but blood was boiling angrily inside of me, and the lethargic feeling from earlier vanished completely as I became suddenly antsy.
"He knows I'm a shifter, right?" Gabriel asked, tilting his head to the side and frowning. "That isn't going to work on me."
"Yeah, I told him you were a white tiger shifter," I said absently, as I began to pace the expanse of the floor in front of my bed, glad I didn't have a lot of shit in the temporary room that could potentially become a tripping hazard.
"How do you know what I am?" Gabriel asked, eyeing me. "Just how often do you and your friends sit around and talk about me?"
I ignored the question, deciding we had far more important things to worry about than whether or not I tended to ramble on and on about Gabriel Todd to anyone who would listen.
"It sounds like he went into his room," Gabriel said, looking toward the door, perking his ear in a way that indicated he was listening.
"He's going back to bed?" I demanded, getting even angrier. "It's that easy for him to poison us and then go back to bed." It was Gabriel's turn to ignore me as he silently opened the door and then headed back down the hall.
I followed, but stopped just outside of Lane's door, giving real thought to kicking the motherfucker in and dragging his double-crossing ass out of bed, so I could kill him. I even stepped forward, my body vibrating with anger, but my attention was snagged when Gabriel came around the corner, holding a baggie of coffee grounds, pausing only briefly to usher me toward our room with the tip of his head and a hand on my back.
"What are you doing?" I asked, once the door was safely shut again, blinking down at the coffee.
"I replaced the grounds, so we can drink the coffee as planned when we wake up. I'm texting one of the guys from the station. I need to know what this is. He'll be here in a few minutes. He'll take it to the lab."
"Purdy has a lab?" I asked, blinking in surprise.
I would have thought such a small town would have to send lab work off, but it was pleasantly surprising to find out I'd been wrong to assume.
"Kind of. We have the little healing facility on leap land. There is a guy who comes in and does the lab stuff there, and he also does small stuff for me. He'll probably have answers for us by morning."
By morning? That was even better than ours. Again, I shouldn't be surprised considering the people who resided in Purdy.
"And you don't think he's going to be pissed about waking up in the middle of the night?" I asked, trying to remember one of our lab techs that hadn't threatened my life when I tried to get them to rush anything after hours.
"No," Gabriel said simply, raising an eyebrow. "He really likes what he does."
"Are we talking about sex again?" I asked, unable to resist.
One side of his mouth actually ticked up into an almost smile, and I blinked in surprised.
"You need to get laid," he said, surprising me further.
A goofy laugh I refused to claim slipped out of my throat and I looked up at him with my mouth hanging open. Feeling stupidly brave, I licked my lips and stepped closer, putting us less than a foot apart. "Are you offering?" I whispered huskily.
I saw him bend slightly and then tight bands wrapped around the back of my thighs, and I just barely managed to hold on to the scream that was building in my throat as I was suddenly pressed up against Gabriel's body as the backward motion of my person stole my belly and then I was on the plush mattress, staring up at him in surprise as he pressed his body down into mine.
"Less than twenty-four hours," he growled, rolling his hips and pressing his very hard dick against mine, and making me cry out in surprise. "Hell, I'm surprised I lasted this long."
"What?" Trying to understand him in those moments was nearly impossible. His naked back was under my hands, and his weight was holding me to the bed, making it impossible not to move against him.
"I've been able to mostly avoid you for the last month," he growled, his moan of pleasure turning into a grunt of annoyance when he tried to take a long, sniff of my neck, only to find no scent there.
Delphinium. He hated it, and I relied on it.
A stray thought bounced around in my head, giving me the type of false hope that broke your heart when it turned out to not be true, but it was nearly impossible not to think that it was a possibility with just how drawn I was to this man. Because what besides a mate would make someone crave the presence of another so dramatically? Everything in me craved being near him, and the more time I spent with him, the worse it got. I honestly didn't know what I was going to do when he decided to leave.
"When I set out yesterday, I told myself it was to find out what you had going on, but deep down, I knew better," he said, his voice low and rumbly as the tiger prowled into his voice. "I promised myself I wouldn't let anything like this happen, because I don't want casual sex. I'm too fucking old for that shit, but I didn't even last twenty-four fucking hours before we got to this point."
He dropped his forehead to mi
ne, looking almost pained, and I frowned.
"Why can't you have more with me?" I asked in a husky whisper as he rolled his forehead against mine, closing his eyes tight.
"Forever is a long time with someone like me, West. I make no excuses. I'm a straight-up asshole most of the time and I like it that way." His eyes opened and he pulled back to look at me with those crazy eyes of his. "It wouldn't be you having to spend the next fifty years married to me. It would be you having to spend possibly the next thousand… or more."
I smirked. "I know how shifters work, Gabriel."
"That's a long time for someone like you," he whispered, and my one-sided smile slipped into a frown, as I took in the look on his face and the tone of his voice.
"Someone like me? What exactly is someone like me?" I asked, my chest suddenly aching. "Because you don't sound like you approve."
He sighed and the move was so unlike him, I blinked in surprise, not really sure I wanted to hear what he had to say.
"You know. Not serious. Everything is a joke to you."
It felt like someone had stabbed me right in my chest with a blade so cold it actually burned, and I shoved him off me, sitting up and scooting away. He looked surprised and then his eyes zeroed in on the way I was rubbing my chest where it ached the most and his eyes snapped up to mine.
"The things you don't know about me," I whispered, my voice choked with hurt. "Sure, I like to laugh. Regardless of what you think, laughter happens to be a good thing..." I swallowed hard, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. "...but maybe you're right. We wouldn't work out. I want a mate I can spend the next thousand or more years with who will actually enjoy being around me. It sounds like you're hoping for someone who will be very, very serious. I hope your next thousand years with whoever it is you finally mate will be filled with serious talks and lots of cold scowls."
I spun on my ass, throwing my legs over the side and climbing to my feet. I marched over to the light switch and flipped it on, turning to find him sitting up on the bed, blinking his eyes to get used to the light.
"There is nothing wrong with being serious," he said, watching me, a hard frown on his face.
I crossed my arms over my chest, taking another deep breath and swallowing down the lump so I could get my shit together. I didn't know why the fact that he didn't want me for more than a night of probably amazing fucking was bothering me so bad, but it honestly felt like my damn heart was breaking. "I never said there was. That's just how you are, and I actually find that kind of endearing. You're the one who seems to think I have a flaw." I held up my hand when he opened his mouth to argue, not wanting to hear whatever it was that he had to say, even as he stood. "It's fine. There are new shifters in and out of Purdy all the time. Someone is bound to find the things about me that you find so un-mateable to be good, highly mateable qualities. Hell, there was a lion at the grocery store yesterday who looked at me like...
He growled, springing at me and pinning me against the door, putting his face close enough to mine for our noses to brush. "No," he said into my face, his breath heating my lips.
If it hadn't been for my training, there was no telling how I would have reacted to all that, but thankfully, I didn't even flinch, blinking up at him dryly and raising a rude eyebrow. "No what?" I asked, feigning disinterest, and thankfully, I was pissed enough to pull it off.
"You're not mating that fucking lion," he growled down into my face, his cold veneer cracking into a million little pieces.
The sound of something buzzing barely registered as I raised my eyebrow at him, clearly expressing how unimpressed I was with his temper. He could get as mad as he wanted, he wouldn't hurt me, and I wasn't going to be intimidated by him.
"Why not?" I asked, shrugging. "You're going to mate someone who is absolutely serious about how serious your seriously long life is. I'm going to mate someone who can appreciate my well-timed comedic abilities and my uncanny ability to make other people feel better when they are having a bad day."
"No, you're not," he growled, leaning closer until his lips brushed mine as the buzzing continued in the background. "You're mine. And I do like you, West. I like everything about you, but you said it... I'm serious… and cold. Do you really want to be strapped to me for the next however long?"
I opened my mouth intending to tell him that he was right, the lion was probably a better bet, but then the reality of the situation hit me, and a small, disbelieving laugh chortled out of me. One look at his shocked face only made it worse, and before long I was laughing so hard, I couldn't breathe, letting my head flop back against the door while he held me up with the press of his chest against mine, while blinking down at me in confused worry.
"What the hell are we doing?" I asked, after a long sigh, somewhat recovering my feet. "We haven't even kissed and suddenly we're talking about mating. This morning you couldn't even stand to be in the same room with me."
It took him a moment, but a small chuckle escaped as he shook his head, and then nodded, pressing his face into the hollow of my neck. "That's not true, but this might have been the weirdest argument I've ever had."
"See, I'm just full of ways to make your life interesting," I said, once again letting my head fall back with a thunk against the door as the buzzing finally managed to register, and we both turned at the same time to see his cellphone lit up and buzzing across the top of the dresser.
He gave me one last, long look before easing back away from me and going over to look down at his phone.
He gave another deep sigh, and I wondered if sighing was something he did normally, but hid because it was an emotion, or if exasperation was something new he was experiencing because of me.
"He's here," he said, looking regretful as he looked me over again.
He moved toward me and the door, and I sidestepped, getting out of his way, so he could go meet his man, and then probably go sleep on the couch of bad decisions and regrets with an STD throw pillow for his head, and never step foot in my room again.
I was surprised when he stepped up in front of me instead of going immediately to the door, reaching up and running his thumb over my bottom lip. "You're not un-mateable," he said, creasing his brow. "And I don't want to be stuck with someone like me for the rest of my life. I want someone like you."
I blinked up at him, surprised, smiling softly. "You're not un-mateable either," I told him, feeling it was important that he know that his seriousness didn't make him any less desirable to me.
He leaned in, closing his eyes and softly brushing his lips to mine before speaking against the sensitive skin, the plushness catching and sticking to mine as they moved. "I'll be right back."
I nodded, and his lip caught and held on mine again before he pulled back, licking his lips and reaching for the doorknob… only to freeze, his eyes going wide as he let his tongue slide over his lips again.
I could tell he was torn between staying and going, and I had a pretty good feeling I knew why, since I'd already started to suspect it.
"Go," I whispered, swallowing hard. "I'll still be here when you get back and we need answers about what he put in the coffee.
He watched me until he disappeared behind the door, his eyes drilling into mine until the wood slid between us, blocking out my view of him. I must have been right. The look on his face said it all.
I glanced down at my bracelet, fingering the snap, and I swallowed hard as excited butterflies flittered around in my belly before standing and making my way over to my dresser where there was a small pouch inside a small box in my drawer that would dampen the scent of delphinium enough to allow him to scent me like he would any other human.
I was sliding the drawer back closed with shaky hands when the door opened again, and I looked up into intense white-blue eyes, scowl muted by the look of absolute shock on his face, and I bit my lip, trying to stop the giddy laugh from bubbling up out of me.
"Did you know?" he growled, easing into the room and shutting the door behind him.
Chapter Four
I handed the baggie of coffee grounds over, my mind still racing. It must have been written all over my face, because Williams looked at me like he was waiting for me to attack like a dog who broke the chain.
I didn't say anything as he took the bag from my hands and neither did he as he watched me leerily, even easing backward, clearly unsure.
I couldn't say I blamed him. I didn't know what my face was saying, but I was in shock and ready to get back to that room, so I could see if that one small taste of him had been a fluke. Had my mate been sitting right there under my nose for the last month, and I'd dismissed him as a possibility because he liked to have fun? Was I really that much of a judgmental asshole?
Closing my eyes, I shook my head, nearly whimpering when I thought about the look on his face when I told him he was serious enough for me to mate. The impact that look had on me even then, not knowing how important he was to me, had been enough to feel like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I'd immediately wanted to take it back, especially since I hadn't meant it the way it had come out.
It had never been that he wasn't good enough for me, or didn't live up to my expectations. It had been my worry that someone as fun and exciting as him would easily get bored of someone like me, who had trouble expressing my emotions because it had been drilled into me by my alpha father centuries ago that emotions made you weak.
He was young and happy all on his own. He didn't need anyone, and it just seemed like he was completely content to continue living that way. I'd been so sure that by the time he was ready to settle down, my window would already be closed, and I was sick of waiting, but the one thing I'd learned by watching all the mated couples in Purdy was that if you found your soulmate, it didn't matter how unlikely the pairing was, the joy each person received from the other was completely amazing.