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Alright, fine.
He had my full attention.
I didn’t speak, or open my eyes, but I was listening.
“The first time we met was at Elliot’s place. Lizzy caught me staring at you after you and I had already met and my wolf didn’t react. I couldn’t look away, but didn’t know why. She asked me why I wasn’t talking to you, and told me I should be your friend. You could ask her about it if you don’t believe me—I told her then that it’s never a good idea for a werewolf to befriend beautiful women when he hasn’t met his mate. Statistically, it only leads to heartbreak, and sometimes rejection.”
I felt my body warm slightly.
He had told Lizzy he thought I was beautiful?
I would ask her to make sure, but… I believed him. He’d never lied, not to me or to anyone in the many texts of his that I’d read.
Of course, I could’ve been wrong. I tended to see the good in people when I should’ve been looking for the bad, and to get far too hopeful. That was why I’d done the sex thing, but never the cuddling or sleeping-together thing.
“I know it probably sounds crazy, but as a werewolf waiting for your mate, you have to act and think like you’re already married, and in a rocky relationship that could combust at any time. You can’t let yourself form close friendships with people you’re attracted to, because close friendships can lead to romantic feelings in a situation like that. You can’t let yourself fall for someone other than your imaginary spouse.”
He continued, “You have to be very, very careful about staying loyal because it’s really fucking lonely, but if you stray, you could destroy not only your own life but the life of two people you care about as well. That’s why I didn’t try to become your friend—that’s why I stayed aloof, and didn’t sit around and chat with you.”
Damn.
I didn’t think it was possible, but… I was starting to understand where he was coming from.
Sort of.
Not opening my eyes, I countered, “While we were in jail, I read your texts from when you were setting me up with all those guys. You didn’t correct them when they called me ugly, or disagree when they called me weird, or stand up for me in any way. You weren’t just trying not to develop feelings for me.”
He made a noise of disagreement. “Why should the opinions of those assholes matter to me, or to you? I was setting them up with you in hopes that I would meet my mate so I could stop obsessing over you, Sabrina—not because I wanted them to be attracted to you. And the moment I argued with them would be the moment they got more interested in you—and the moment they spread the news, which my parents would inevitably hear, that I was interested in a human woman who wasn’t my mate.”
Obsessing?
He had been obsessing over me?
“As far as calling you weird, you are weird. Not in an unattractive way—it’s fucking adorable. It’s weird that you were looking for a werewolf to be your mate, and it’s weird that you work as a waitress when you apparently don’t need to, and it’s weird that you were making friends online just to set me and some other single assholes up with other human women. Weird isn’t an insult—if it is, I’m fucked for life. I’ve always been the weird guy in the pack, and the school, and pretty much everything else.” He was getting a bit worked up, his voice taking on a growly edge, and it was kind of hot.
Kind of really hot.
“You seemed to think that our bond isn’t real because you decided that I wasn’t attracted to you before it set in, but that’s a fucking joke. You were in my thoughts, in my mind, and even in my fucking dreams, Sabrina. Constantly. It was a battle with my own conscience to keep myself from coming over here and begging you to be mine until fate cut us off—but I respected you too fucking much to do that.”
He went on without pausing to breathe, “I know our bond is real because for me, you were an obsession, a craving, an addiction, even when you barely bothered to fucking look at me when we were in a room together, on a date together. So if one of us is going to doubt the validity of our bond, or the honesty of the other’s feelings, it should sure as fuck be me, not you.”
If he had been worked up before, he was furious now—and I loved it.
“That was a lot of fucks,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.
My thoughts were spinning, my body was flushed, my mind…
Well, it was caught on what he’d said earlier.
About being obsessed with me.
“I give a lot of fucks about you, Sabrina,” he growled back. “Every damned fuck I have to give—they’re all yours.”
“You turned me down in the hospital. Changed your mind about the oral sex,” I countered, finally sitting up and opening my eyes to meet his gaze.
Shit, he was passionate about this. Fiery, and angry, and… sexy.
Really, really sexy.
“Because I was terrified you were going to change your mind,” he practically snarled at me. “If it had been about me, I would still have my face buried between your thighs right fucking now.”
Shit.
Fuck, I wanted that.
So I ignored every doubt I had, every question that had gone unanswered.
Something told me there was probably an answer for most of them—one I was absolutely not expecting at all.
And instead of worrying, or stressing, I said, “Prove it.”
