Page 17 of Hate Me

And then the fucker licked his lips. “Interesting.”

“You think this is for you?” I teased.

He shoved a hand through his spiky hair, mussing up the vibrant-blue and black strands. “I think it could be. All too easily with how on edge Ash being like this is making you.”

Hmm. Well, I couldn’t deny that.

“Shame he’s ordered me not to go there with you unless he’s a part of it.”

“If he comes to you for that again, it only happens in my presence. Are we clear?”

While Ash had been away, I’d comforted Jonah in the way he’d needed. With some intense sexual exorcising so he could purge all the volatility building within him and threatening to make him lose control while Ash had been held captive, while we’d been fighting to free him from it all.

When Ash had found out about it, he’d been happy that I’d been able to give Jonah that kind of comfort in his absence. But he’d also exhibited jealously and no small amount of possessiveness, hence him wanting me to make him that deal of only touching Jonah in his presence.

“Which he can’t be when he’s like this, so it’s moot.” He stepped up closer. “Besides, aren’t you the guy who doesn’t take orders from anybody these days? The lone wolf acting by his own wants and desires?”

“I guess we’ll see.”

With that, I turned from him and walked out.

I needed a fucking smoke.

To say I was right on the edge and beyond sexually frustrated right now didn’t cut it.

It looked like I was about to fall right over that edge too.

I paced the bedroom that had been assigned to me like a caged animal.

And that was exactly what I felt like right now—a fucking animal.

Raw. On edge. This unbearable need to unleash. So much stress and intensity building to a burdensome degree.

It really hadn’t helped that a few hours ago when their woman, Aurora, had arrived here with her father, it had drawn uncomfortable parallels to Skylar. The wish I’d tried to bury since I’d been away from Rossun of wanting her back, to be reunited with her and Cas and Bastian.

The brutal difference was that it really didn’t seem like it was in the cards for us.

For so many reasons, her being in the wind only one of them, one of so many complications.

Aurora had come accompanied by her father, Lance “Revenant” Carlyle and Ash had given into his beast and attacked him, punishing him for fucking him over. It had taken me and his other long-time ally, Aaron Wakefield, who was a former Infidels member turned Asher’s greatest supporter and surrogate father figure, to calm him down. That wasn’t all that bastard was, as I’d known long before he’d walked in here and introduced himself to me while me and Asher’s boys had been trying to track Ash down. He didn’t know that I knew the truth about him, and there hadn’t been a need to call him on it. It would only antagonize an already volatile Ash, and that was the last thing he needed. Besides, what Aaron had been up to unbeknownst to Ash didn’t take away from the fact that he was loyal to him through and through.

The only person it really impacted was me.

And I was fine with that—for now.

The house was quiet, everybody asleep, getting their rest while they could, before the big battle to take down the Infidels came, something we’d be strategizing any day now.

Once that was done, I needed to get gone.

I had become too involved, too close to everyone.

My connection to Ash was gnawing at me, along with the painful similarity of it to my relationship with Caspian.

I was falling into that trap again and I couldn’t allow it.

I just… wasn’t ready.

I stopped pacing and spun toward my made bed.

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