“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You wanted to show me how vanilla Hunter is. You wanted to win in your pissing match against him. Do you feel better now that you’ve won?”
“That’s not . . . that’s not what this was.” Not entirely. In fact, it’s growing to be so much more of a problem than I anticipated. I want to gather her back in my arms, nuzzle her neck, and kiss her softly. Resisting the urge causes me physical pain.
“Really?” she asks, but the question is rhetorical. “Because we both know you are all about you. And while I can appreciate your masculine Were need to swing your dick around, I don’t care to be in the stakes in claiming territory.” She sounds so cold, so distant, it makes my chest hurt.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she sighs heavily, “while I might have these intense sexual urges . . . I still have feelings. And if you keep this up, I might start to develop the same delusions I had about Hunter. And that would be bad for both of us.”
With that, she walks off, heading home again. I hang back in the shadows. I should run to catch up with her. Make sure she isn’t unattended, watch out for dangerous entities, ask her again if she has reached out to her grandma or maybe heard anything. I should brush off everything we just did and what she just said.
Instead, I stand here like an open wound.
I have to complete the mission. I need to kill her grandma.
But for the first time, I don’t know if I can.
Chapter23
If You Give a Friend a Cookie
RED
Studying the coffee in the bag, I seriously consider dumping some of the grounds straight into my mouth and chewing on them.
With a side glance at Brexley, I find him still standing by the window, staring out at the morning light like a watchdog. He looks as rested as I feel. And I feel like a train wreck on fire. I’m sexually satisfied beyond anything I’ve experienced before. So much that my hormones haven’t uttered a peep and it has been six hours since Brexley took out everything he had on me. But there’s a hollowness in my heart that wasn’t there before. By all accounts we both should have slept like the dead, but no dice.
I think better of chowing down on the grounds and instead pour them into my coffee filter.
We haven’t spoken since I got up.
Not only did Hunter’s surprise appearance sting like salt in a wound, but the way Brexley challenged me, baited me into fighting and then fucking him. . . I’m more than a little confused. My heart squeezes and yearns to the point of pain, but I’m not sure what for.
Brexley, my brain whispers.
I shake my head to myself. I’ve tasted enough loneliness to know when someone isn’t in this for me. I hate the sudden sting of tears at the backs of my eyes. I hate that I shared so many things that make me vulnerable, even in the heat of a fight. Brexley doesn’t deserve my secret longings or my pain, yet it keeps unfurling in front of him anyway.
And now, I have all but revealed that I want him, and that I’m incapable of keeping my heart out of it.
Will I ever stop being so pathetic?
No amount of leather, tattoos, or piercings will amount to enough armor to deny my weakness.
Even if Brexley is attracted to me, he has no intention of being serious about me. Which is just fine, because there is zero room in my life for sadistic werewolves with filthy mouths.
Maybe I’d made a mistake sending Hunter away? At least with him, I got used to the score.
The very thought of letting Hunter back in gives my stomach a sick twist.
Could I get away with sending them all away?
Then I remember the ice mage, the Ogre, and the glamor mage. So my options are to suffer from sexual humiliation and negging by a dangerously sexy werewolf, or get taken?
I find myself still weighing the options when my front door unlocks and opens.
Brexley is at the door in a blink, while I grab the closest makeshift weapon, an oversized mug with skull and crossbones and a quote from my favorite vampire romance. “Bloodsucker in the streets, Vamp in the sheets.”
