AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have no reason to need her to come to me. As you said, she has no interest in me.”
At least he was admitting it. “But you want to talk to her all the same. Maybe to give it one last shot at convincing her to see things your way, or maybe even just to have an opportunity to curse her out for rejecting you.” Teague didn’t see that it mattered why, because it wouldn’t work.
Of course . . . “It would have been a good plan if she was so easy to manipulate, but that’s not the case.” Teague tilted his head. “I would have thought you’d have picked up on that long before now. It’s not exactly hard to sense.”
“You talk of her with such authority. You think you know her so well.” There was a mocking note in Holt’s tone.
“I know her far better than you do—that much is clear, or you wouldn’t have bothered pulling this stunt. You would have been well-aware that it was pointless.”
Holt’s eyes flared. “Trust me, Sullivan, I understand my anchor well.”
“No, you only think you know her. The truth is, you never bothered to try. You did what all manipulators do—you set out to learn just enough about her for you to know what buttons to push to get your way, that’s all. And that’s what you did. Pushed her buttons over and over. You’re still doing it now, even though it gets you nowhere. I guess you just know no other way to get what you want from people.”
Holt looked away, sighing. “It would seem she has painted me as a real villain to you.” He gave his head a quick shake and then returned his gaze to Teague. “I may have hurt her, but I’m not the enemy here. I’m trying to do right by her.”
“If that were true, you’d be back in Canada now. You’d have respected her wishes; you’d have put them before what you want. But you haven’t. You won’t. So don’t bother claiming to be misunderstood and brimming with good intentions—it won’t fly with me.”
Holt’s mouth tightened. “You don’t understand me as well as you think you do.”
“Sure I do. I’ve met people like you many times before. You all think you’re so very clever. But you’re nothing special. And you bleed like everyone else—that is something you might want to remember. Because if you come back to Vegas again, you won’t leave it intact. If I don’t see to that, Knox will. And neither of us fuck around.”
Done with the asshole, Teague shrugged past him and walked straight into the stadium. His beast jerked up its head with a snort of derision. Why the universe thought that that dick out there would make a good anchor for Larkin would forever remain a mystery.
There was one thing that Teague could be certain of: she wasn’t going to take this well. Not even a little.
“I don’t get why Khloë finds it amusing,” said Teague. “What’s funny about my demon branding you?”
Cocking her head, Larkin watched from her seat at his table while he stood at the counter, stirring their coffees with a teaspoon. “She said it was funny?”
“No. She telepathically reached out to me just before my race. She said she saw the brand and likes it. Told me it’s great that my beast is happy to help you and me make the fake dating seem real. But I’m pretty sure she was mocking me.”
Khloë was likely entertained by how he hadn’t yet realized that the whole thing wasn’t fake anymore when his beast clearly had. “Did you ask her what she found funny?”
Teague plonked the teaspoon on his counter. “Yeah.”
“And?”
“She laughed at me and then ended the conversation.”
Larkin stifled a smile. “Well, that’s Khloë for you. She’s always chuckling over things other people see no humor in.”
He placed two mugs of coffee on the table. “Hmm, I guess.” He took the seat across from her. “It’s good that Knox, Tanner, and Levi didn’t give you a bucketful of shit over the brand.”
She’d told him most of what got said during her visit to Urban Ink, but she’d obviously left out that the reason the guys were fine about the mark was that they’d sensed things were now truly serious between her and Teague. “It is. Keenan took it pretty well, too.”
Initially, the incubus had given her a short ‘I knew you were bullshitting us and I’m so hurt that you lied’ spiel. She’d cut that off with a ‘Stop whining, I know that you’re nowhere near as wounded as you claim, so now who’s the bullshitter?’
He’d grunted, before then going on to express his amusement at how Teague had no clue he was the target of a harpy on the hunt. Mollified by the brand—or, more to the point, what it represented—Keenan had even then wished her luck in permanently ‘snaring’ Teague.
