“I need to go, Tate.”
“You go when I dismiss you. Rule.”
He sits up anyway, climbs off the bed, and I’m paralyzed, caught in the web of his beauty that’s enhanced by the moon. It gives him an ethereal glow, and my mind struggles to make sense of what my eyes are telling it.
“Maybe when we’re married, big guy. I have a curfew to meet.”
He tosses my sweats at me, jostling me back to life. I sit up, watching him dress. He’s got several marks of my ownership stamped on him, purple hickeys up his torso, mixed in with the ones from the game I know were from McKinnon. His hoodie falls over them, the concealment doing nothing to cool my ire.
Ryan laughs again. This time softer. “Thinking about when McKinnon hit me during the game?”
I may have barked at McKinnon more than usual for that. Ryan’s fully dressed now, so I slip into my sweats boxer-less, and stand, crowding him against the doorway.
“Marry me,” I demand.
Ryan’s lip trembles with defiance. Is it because he’ll hate being owned in the way I want to own him? Or because he’ll love it?
“I …” he stammers. “I … maybe.”
Infuriating.The urge to break something burns through my veins. I curl my fingers and extend them, finally laying them across his chest, looking for something to calm me down. But his hoodie’s too thick, and I can’t find what I’m looking for.
“Are you looking for my heartbeat again?”
“Yes,” I snap. Can’t he see I’m not in the frame of mind for stupid questions?
Slowly, he places his tattoo-covered hand over my wrist, and I take a breath; my interest in what he’s doing overrides the skin-on-skin contact. He slides my hand up to his throat, till my fingers reach his pulse point. I place my thumb on the cotton hood, so its pulse point doesn’t interfere with detecting his, and I look for that rise and fall of his chest.
Some of the murder in my veins subsides. Enough that I can think about letting him leave the room.
What just happened? What the fuck is going on? This is a level of obsession that’s new to me. Is this what Uncle Jasper saw? What he worked so hard to prevent?
“That’s so fucking, weird, dude,” he says, and he’s …
Well, shit.
Is that a smile? It is. A real one. It hits like a puck to the face, disorienting, knocking me senseless. That little hook and pull sensation I felt when I saw him in the woods, it happens again, but this time the pull’s staggering.
Oh, dollface, you’re so done for.
If he’s smiling like that, he can’t hate my weirdness too much. It bolsters me. “You need proof, and I want to give it to you, but that means I’m going to have to find out about you, dollface.”
He lets his head fall forward to my chest. “Yeah, I know.”
Fuck. I don’t know what to do with him. This is where my emotional incompetence rears its ugly head. Is he upset? Tired? Do I pat him on the back? Or kiss him? I think I’ll go with kiss. Our kisses could heal even the deadliest of ailments. But then he shakes, his breath hitching. Is he … crying? Fuck. He was smiling less than a second ago. How do people do that? Smile their way into annihilating tears?
I’ve cried tears of terror and tears of pain, but never anything else.
Course correct. No kiss—yet. Embrace him. That’s what I’ll do. When people cry, they like to be embraced. Slowly, I slide my arms around his thick torso.
“N-Not too tight,” he says.
Ooookay.
I loosen my grip. “Ryan,” I murmur. “Tell me.Please.” I’m terrible at best with the crying thing. A crying Ryan could set off a murder spree. He needs to tell me what’s upset him so I can find it, destroy it, make sure he never cries again. “I have to fix it.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get my father to let me go to Shadowridge. Things are complicated and … and … fuck … I have to go.”
He tries to move. “Not a chance, Ryan.” Ryan’s jaw sets tight, glaring as the tears keep coming. He’s not going to tell me, and I can’t use my usual methods of extracting information on him. “He’ll say yes.”
