Page 57

Ren

* * *

I sipped my coffee and sat back. Relic was in the chair beside me, telling me about the problems he’d had with his bike and what he thought was wrong with it. I hardly heard a word. All I could think about was Jasmine and if she’d come here to the clubhouse last night after she’d been at my place. After I’d kissed her like my world was about to end and she was the only thing that could save me.

I’d fucking kissed her, and nothing could have stopped me.

She acted like it was nothing, like it was just part of the job, which had sent my possessive instincts through the fucking roof. Were her other clients kissing her, touching her? My fox snarled. No, that wasn’t okay. We had to make sure that wasn’t happening. We had to put a stop to that if it was.

Like I had a right to demand she do…or not do…anything.

She’d said she had big plans, and she’d been fucking blushing, her face bright red. She’d left my place, the taste of me still on her lips, and she’d come here. Where else would she be going? She’d left me standing there trembling, fucking knees weak, body on fire after she’d decimated my emotions, after she’d let me hold her, kiss her, and she hadn’t looked back. She said it was her power making me feel this way—she was wrong. I’d felt this way for a long fucking time. Her power just drowned out all the noise, all reasons I couldn’t have her for a few minutes, and heightened the reasons I should.

When that high had hit, Jasmine was mine. Every part of me roared she was mine.

Until she pulled her power back and left me shaken and restless and confused.

I tapped my fingers on the table, unable to keep still. Was Jasmine here every night with Roman now?

I’d almost expected him to come to my place last night, to fuck me up. He had to have scented me on her. He had to know I’d kissed her. Unless Jasmine had washed me off, washed away every trace of what we’d done.

I wouldn’t blame the male if he had come for me. If I were Rome and had a female like her, I’d want her with me every night as well, but Roman wasn’t right for her, no fucking way.

“Did Jaz come by the clubhouse last night?” I said before I could hold it in any longer.

Relic shrugged. “Don’t think so.” Then he studied me more closely. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. She’s been helping me with some stuff at work, was going to ask her about it, but she’s not answering my text.” A lie, all of it, but I was positive Relic was part bloodhound, and if the male caught the scent of weakness, like me having some weird fucking thing for Jasmine, he’d stick his nose in my business. If he knew I’d spent most of the night looking at pictures of her on my phone like a fucking psycho, he’d never let me live it down. “So you think it’s the carburetor?” I asked, getting him back to the previous conversation.

He jumped straight back in, and I tried really hard to listen, but images of a naked Jasmine, coating her smooth inked skin with oil, kept slamming into the back of my skull. Fuck. I should never have let Bree in. She’d showed up with a bottle, and I knew she wanted more. I’d had no intention of giving it to her, but I knew what she wanted. My head hadn’t been right, far fucking from it.

After I’d seen Jaz and Rome that morning on his bike, her arms around the hound, plastered to his back, something had snapped inside me. I’d walked away, straight into the woods, shifted, and ran straight to my cliff.

I’d stood at the edge, the cool air on my bare skin, the wind whistling around me as if it were telling me to take that last step, to jump, to stop the awful fucking feeling inside me. Jasmine had been mine, in my head, she’d belonged to me in some twisted, weird, fucking way. We had that deep connection, she and I, like no one else. Yes, she thought I was an asshole most of the time, and yes, that connection was because of the people I’d murdered while I was possessed, but it was something.

It was fucked up, but it was something for me to hang on to. It was mine.

She’d been mine.

Now she had that with Rome. No, she had a fuck of a lot more than that.

She had no idea she was the reason I’d never taken that last step. And she’d never know the reason I’d stepped back from the ledge yesterday and used a knife on my skin to work through my pain instead was because I knew I’d see her that night.

That was the reason I’d still be here tomorrow morning, and not on the bottom of that fucking cliff, because I’d see her tonight as well. So yeah, I’d spent the night going through my pictures of her. Anything to still feel connected to her and to stop the images of her and Rome together from invading my head.

The door to the rooms out back opened and shut. Not the private dens below ground, but the rooms in the back of the main clubhouse, where the hounds hooked up with humans and others they didn’t want knowing about their inner sanctum. I looked up as a hound walked out, a female wrapped around him, her long blond hair a mess around her shoulders. They were making out as he carried her toward the exit on the other side of the room.

I recognized the hound’s boots, the chrome skulls on the sides, like his bike. Rome. I sucked in a breath, and my fox lost his shit, charging forward, snarling and growling. I barely kept my seat.

I felt Relic’s gaze slide to me, hearing the growl rumble from deep in my chest.

There it was, right the fuck in front of me. Rome and Jasmine. Something I’d never wanted to see. Fuck no. I wanted to scratch my fucking eyes out. She lifted her head and laughed.

I froze.

Not Jasmine.

Some other female. Human, not witch.