by Mandy Rosko
With her mate here, the healing should go a lot more smoothly.
Katie’s throat closed when that thought rushed through her head. Jax wanted to break off the mating they had to give her the space she needed to recover. Funny how she didn’t want any space at all when the thing she wanted, the man she wanted, was suddenly no longer offering to be there.
“I know you think we should be apart for a bit,” she wasn’t going to even speak it out loud that this might be forever, “but I think if you were to hold my hand right now—”
“Already on it.” Jax took her hand and squeezed hard. The rush of good vibes and healing energy that pulsed through her the second his skin made contact was like a rush of cool relief over her aching neck and skull. Just what she needed.
“What’s going on down there?” Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs.
Katie clenched her teeth. Her plan to sweet talk Jax into rethinking this separation he wanted to do was thwarted by Garret.
She really was selfish.
“It’s us, Garret,” Jax called just as Garret, Dane, and what looked to be a couple of the betas appeared behind him in the hall.
He observed the scene, scowled at the man on the floor, then at Jax. “I said to leave him alone. What happened, Katie?”
“Nothing, I was just feeling a little faint.”
Jax, apparently, wasn’t having any of that bullshit lie. “She saw me questioning the guy and tried to intervene. I hit her. Not on purpose!” Jax’s dragon teeth came out in an angry snarl when the disgusted expression flicked across Garret’s face.
Garret looked down at her. Katie confirmed it. “It was an accident.”
“Uh huh.” Garret still eyed Jax suspiciously. He was going to get punished for this. Katie didn’t want him to be, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. If the alpha wanted it, he was going to get it.
Garret stood over the both of them, but his eyes locked onto Katie’s. “Will you be okay to move?”
While Garret asked, Dane went to check on the prisoner. The bear shifter whistled as he inspected the damage, but luckily, there seemed to be nothing overtly wrong with the guy other than a busted up face.
“I’ll be fine in a couple of minutes,” Katie replied to her alpha, though she was more interested in what was happening with Dane and the prisoner.
Dane picked up the man’s wrist, then checked for a pulse before he snorted, disgusted as he dropped it carelessly onto the concrete floor. “He’s alive. He’ll wake up soon enough to answer some more questions.” Dane glared at Jax. “Next time, don’t try to kill him. We need him to find out where Anna is.” Dane sent Garret a careful look at the mention of his sister.
Aside from a brief twitch in Garret’s eye, he didn’t let it show how much the reminder bothered him.
Katie couldn’t look at Garret just then. She was still eyeing the man on the floor. She’d gotten off lucky that Jax had only pushed her by accident.
Still, now he was making her hand cramp up. “Jax, my fingers are going to fall off.”
Jax let go of her fingers immediately, which hadn’t been what she was after at all.
“We can’t leave you in here,” Garret said, still glancing at Jax as if he was waiting for him to fly back into a rage.
Katie didn’t appreciate being protected like this from a man who was not her mate after she’d just said she was fine. “I just need another minute, Garret, then Jax can help me out of here.” It was a shitty tactic when he was trying to keep his distance from her, but Katie couldn’t help it. The need to take through any means was alive and well inside her.
Jax nodded. He didn’t fight it, though his mouth was pressed together in a tight line. “Yeah, I’ll help her upstairs.” He clearly didn’t want to do it, but that was just too damned bad for him if he thought he was going to make the decisions around here.
Katie wasn’t going to let him walk away so easily.
Chapter 11
What the hell was she doing? Jax was giving her the out she should have wanted, offering her the chance to be free of him, either for a little while or forever, and she wasn’t going to take it?
After about five more minutes in the basement, and after Dane had dumped water on the prisoner’s head, Katie had finally given the go ahead for Jax to pick her up and take her upstairs.
He didn’t take her to her room. She wasn’t comfortable with him in there anyway, so he brought her to the sitting room. There were only two omegas inside, playing on their iPads, which was fine, except for when Katie spoke to them.
“Guys, can we have the room for a couple of minutes?”
Jax tensed. What the hell was she doing?
The omegas looked at each other, then back at the two of them before quickly doing as they were asked, quietly leaving the room.
Jax watched them go, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think you should have been a beta.”
Katie smiled. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
She liked hearing this. Jax was glad to be able to compliment her.
“You just don’t always give off the vibe of an omega. You’re a fighter, you like guns, and the rest of the pack respects you.”
“The rest of the pack respects me because I’m practically a nurse and have set a ton of broken bones around here.”
“Including some from me.”
“Speaking of which, how are your hands?”
Jax set Katie on the couch. “They’re fine.” He stood. “Want me to bring you something?”
Katie glared at him. “I want you to stay here so we can talk.”
“That’s not a great idea.”
“It is a good idea,” Katie insisted. “We need to talk about this idea you have that you’re going to give me space, or whatever dumb shit you have in your head about us.”
Jax rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, it’s not dumb.”
“Yes, it is dumb, and it wouldn’t work anyway.”
“Katie, you don’t like it when people touch you. You don’t like it when your mate touches you. You don’t want me to claim you, and I’ve spent years hovering over your shoulder waiting to get the chance.”
“Okay, don’t make yourself sound weird. You were never hovering. We live in the same house. Of course we were going to see each other.”
Jax felt the ire and frustration inside him rising. Why didn’t she get it?
“If I have to be around you, I’m going to want to take you. Is that clear enough? I won’t be able to stop myself.”
Katie waited a beat, then responded. “You can do whatever you want to me.”
Jax threw his hands into the air. He couldn’t take this. He really couldn’t take this. He was going to lose his damned mind if he had to think about this for much longer. Already the scent of her was starting to overpower the blood lust he’d almost let himself fall into downstairs.
“I said I didn’t want you if you had to force yourself to be with me.”
“Did it look like I was fighting back a gag reflex the last times we were together? I do want to be with you.” Katie hesitated, a blush rising up her neck before blooming across her cheeks. “I’m just slow on the uptake.”
Jax shook his head. “You drive me crazy.”
“I know.”
“You know I want you, right? That I want to grab you right now and fuck you?”
She shivered, though there didn’t appear to be any hesitation or anxiety within her. “Well, hopefully you’ll wash your hands first.”
Jax looked down at his knuckles. Fuck.
He looked back at Katie, noting the little smile on her face.
He wanted to kiss her right now. He wanted to grab her and kiss her and tear her clothes off before claiming her as his own, making sure anyone and everyone within this house knew she was the mate of a dragon. That she was Jax’s mate.
The dragon inside him rumbled in approval. It wanted out. Jax felt the stirring of the creature beneath his skin, and it was so damned hard to hold it
back when Katie was sitting right there, looking at him with those big eyes.
“The only reason I’m not grabbing you and ripping your clothes off right now is because you’re injured.”
“Then let’s wait a few more minutes for my healing to kick in and you can go to town.”
Jax inhaled a deep breath through his nose. He could already picture doing just that to her, listening to the sounds of her pleasure, of her calling his name in his ear.
Jax clenched his fingers. “I swear to God, I won’t be held responsible for anything else I do if you keep goading me like this.”
“I know.”
He couldn’t believe it. She was serious. He could tell, and now the dragon inside him was clawing at the inside of his skull in a desperate attempt to dig its way out. Jax wouldn’t be shocked if there was scar tissue left behind in there.
“You can’t be serious about this. Within the time span of just a couple of minutes, you did a one-eighty and now you’re all right if I touch you? If I want to have sex with you?”
It was obvious that Katie didn’t have the time to do any proper soul-searching, not in the amount of time it took for her to follow Jax into the basement and see what he’d been doing to the prisoner.
“It’s been decades since what happened. Maybe some girls can completely move on, but I can’t. I’m always going to remember it, but I don’t want this to control my life and I don’t want you to feel like you have to walk away from me for my own personal health or something. That’s not right either.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m answering it right now,” Katie said, her eyes flashing the golden color of her wolf. “I don’t want to push you away anymore and I’m not forcing myself to do anything. I’m making a decision.”
“After I basically threatened to leave you.”
“Well good. I’m glad you did.”
Jax fell back a step. He honestly hadn’t been expecting that. “You’re glad?”
“Yes. I’m glad. I wasn’t at first. It hurt hearing you say you might break off the mating with me, but ultimately, I’m glad. You’re an alpha. You’re my mate. Stop treating me like I’m shattered glass and I might get around to not acting like it.”
The dragon ignited with fire inside Jax’s body. She was speaking his language. She was calling to everything inside him they’d both been repressing for decades now.
“If we do this, we’re still going to do it my way.”
Katie nodded. “Wouldn’t be a proper mating if I didn’t let you alpha out on me from time to time.”
Jax’s mouth quirked in a soft smile. He couldn’t help it. “The way you talk.”
“Does it make you want to spank me?”
Holy shit. He got that she was just playing with him at this point, but there was something in the look on her face that said she was also kind of serious.
“Sometimes, with the way you act, yes, I really do want to throw you over my knee and spank you.”
“Okay.” Katie rolled her shoulders, as if testing how much she’d healed up so far. “I’m going to head to my room. You go wash that blood off your hands and meet me there.”
She was going to let him into her room. She’d never done that before.
Jax had to know for sure. He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders, and he didn’t care about the drying blood on his hands. Alarm flicked in those golden eyes, but Jax didn’t let up his grip. “You look me in the eyes right now and tell me this is what you want. You say it, out loud, so there’s no misunderstanding. I need to know, need to hear it from you right now.”
The sound of her heart slamming against her ribs was heavy, indicative of raw emotion and lust, and even a little fear, but Jax needed to know.
Katie didn’t blink. She held Jax’s eyes as she swallowed and steeled herself. “I am saying, to your face, that even if you want to keep a distance from me, it better be a small goddamn distance because I’m not letting you break off the mating with me. I want you to keep having sex with me because I like the way it feels when you’re inside me, and I want to keep feeling that because it makes me feel alive. Does that sound good to you?”
“It does,” Jax said, yanking Katie back up into his arms. She made a small squeaking noise.
“Jax!”
“I know, I know. I’ll wash my hands upstairs.”
Katie looped her arms around Jax’s neck. “I was…just going to say you could use my bathroom. We could have a shower.”
It wasn’t quite a question, but not exactly a command either. More like she was letting him know the option was open, and God, Jax was so in love with this woman he’d let her command him all day. His alpha side didn’t care, so long as Katie got what she needed.
Also, he was looking forward to seeing her naked. That sounded amazing. “A shower sounds great.”
“Garret, you need to sleep.”
“No.”
“Then eat something. Rest, for God’s sake. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Garret growled. Miranda fell back a step, her mouth dropping. “Did you just growl at me?”
Outside of being playful, he’d never growled at her before. Not like that, and the hybrid fox-wolf inside her head didn’t like it. It really didn’t like it. The creature wanted to cower and present its belly, and that instinct translated over just enough that Miranda almost backed down.
The side of her mind that was still human, bristled, angry and offended. Miranda clenched her fists.
Garret shut his eyes, rubbing his hand over his face. “No, I didn’t growl at you.”
“You totally just did.”
“I didn’t mean to growl at you then. I’m sorry!”
Though it came out sounding utterly insincere and impatient, when Garret lowered his hand and gazed at her, his blue eyes tired as never before, something seemed to soften, in his expression and his voice. “I’m sorry. I just…I’m really fucking stressed. I’m not trying to take it out on you.”
Miranda sighed. She stepped forward when he turned away from her. The urge to touch him was great, so she did, partly because she needed to comfort him, partly to comfort herself, and partly because, in that moment, Miranda needed to make sure for herself that he wouldn’t push her away.
He didn’t. Miranda couldn’t comfortably reach her arms around his whole body. She had to hang onto her middle and index fingers just to hold the position, but the inside of her chest heated considerably when Garret reached up and held onto her fingers, as though he wanted to hold her hand.
Miranda pressed her lips to Garret’s shoulder blade. The tight T-shirt prevented her from putting her mouth right over his skin, but she was certain that next swell of affection she felt came from him.
Sometimes the bond she shared with her lover because they were both shifters was amazing, but it also meant she felt his frustration, and his fury. The frustration she thought she could help with; the fury…there wasn’t much she could do about that. It was something Garret was going to have to battle on his own, because Miranda was not going to shift and start fighting him.
“I can’t sleep, Miranda. I can’t eat. I can’t do anything. He could be doing anything to her.”
Miranda shivered. She’d never heard that vulnerability in Garret’s voice before, and it was off putting.
So far, there had been some ups and downs in their mating, though when Dennis had tried to kill her, Miranda had thought that was the worst it could ever get. When Garret helped her to safely transition from a human to a shifter, Miranda had assumed the worst was over, that she could have her happily ever after. The only thing she’d had to worry about lately was visiting her mother and making sure the staff was treating her all right. With Garret’s payments and generous donations, she hadn’t had to worry too much at all, except for when her mother might pass on.
“You sister is strong. She…I’m sure she’s giving them hell right now.” Miranda had no idea what else to say othe
r than that, but even before Garret replied, she knew how worthless her words were.
“God, that’s what I’m afraid of. She’s never known what it was like to fight, to survive like that. I never…I never prepared her for it. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“She’s you sister. She’ll pull through.”
Miranda hoped Garret couldn’t tell how she was pulling words out of her ass in a desperate attempt at comforting him. His stress seemed to prevent him from noticing. He shook his head. The hand that held onto Miranda’s fingers trembled.
“You don’t understand. It wasn’t just pack fighting and outdoor survival. I fucked up. I sheltered her too much. She’s with a pack of filthy, disgusting rapists and she won’t know what they want until…”
When Garret trailed off, Miranda was glad he did. Now she was starting to feel some of what he was suffering. “Is that really what they are?”
Garret growled again. Miranda felt the tightening of his massive muscles beneath her arms. “That’s exactly what they are, and if any of those motherfuckers…if I ever find out they touched her, I swear to Christ I will kill all of them with my bare hands.”
Miranda believed him, and she couldn’t exactly blame him for it either.
She hadn’t heard much about Dennis and his pack other than how they were kicked out by Garret’s father decades ago. No one really spoke about it to her, and she hadn’t asked too many questions. Miranda was new to the pack, and it hadn’t seemed right. Also, she had all the information she’d needed on him. Dennis had been trying to kill her, so there was nothing else for her to know.
“Anna’s smart. She’ll know to keep quiet and wait for you, but you need to be strong for her. You need to eat something. Get some vitamins and protein inside you if you’re really planning on hunting down and taking out that whole pack. Hey? Do you understand?” Miranda released Garret from her hold, but only so she could circle around to his front, forcing him to look at her. He was still so pale, still so small and fragile for someone was a strong, capable alpha.
Garret shook his head. “I should have taught her. She always wanted to know how to defend herself. I never taught her. I wanted to keep this from her.”