Page 66 of Why Cruise

I never knew what triggered it or the train of thoughts that would lead him to his own personal hell. I knew the cause. Parents too dumb and poor to understand that locking a child in a closet as babysitting would cause damage. I had realized early on that if I could get him to focus on what happened, the events that actually took place, his logical brain would kick in long enough for the adrenaline and cortisol to wash out of his system. And then he could hold himself together with his impeccable control.

“She fell. Into a ravine. Scraped her knee. My fault.”

Okay. Scraped knee wasn’t a mortal injury. I knew who Justice was at his core, his very being. I didn’t know the exact flavor all those alpha instincts would take for him, what kind of alpha it would shape him into. I stroked my thumb along his jugular. His eyes fluttered but didn’t shut.

“She fell into a ravine and scraped her knee. It was my fault.” He closed his eyes tight. “All I could smell was her blood.”

That would do it. We didn’t like to acknowledge how controlled we were by scent and pheromones. And for Justice, who blamed himself for everything, to be cut off from the scent of someone he was starting to see as his? That would have melted his brain. It was probably her scent that had held him together long enough to get back. Or her aura.

I took a deep, audible breath and blew it out. Justice followed me as always.

“Ah, complete sentences. Good boy.”

His eyes narrowed.

Well, shit.

“Fuck you.” He pushed at my shoulders again. He brushed by me and grabbed the door handle. It turned, but the door did not open. His eyes flew around the room.

“Too small,” he muttered. He reached for the ceiling again. He could lay his palm flat against it.

And now we were in real trouble. He growled, low in his gut. He wedged his fingers in the crack of the door and pulled. His aura surged. The metal creaked.

I slammed him, face first, into the wall this time. I forced my aura to eat up all the space around us. I held him down with my body weight and my forearm across the back of his neck. I was counting, hoping, really, that he wouldn’t tap into his alpha strength against me. But he might actually hate me.

I planted my hand next to his face and rhythmically tapped my thumb ring against the metal wall. I kicked his legs wider, unbalancing him. The only thing keeping him upright was me. And I kept up with the tap, tap, tap, tap.

After a bit, he shook his head like he was trying to shake off the constant tinny thud of my ring. It was incongruous, out of place, and annoying. All the things that would capture his attention. He still fought me asfreezeblew right pastflightto get tofight. Justice was never one tofawn.But he was distracted, now. Tap, tap, tap.

I slid my hand across his stomach, making sure my pinky got under the waistband of his shorts.

And we were right back to freeze. Which, all things considered, was the best option.

I tapped the ring rapidly to bring his focus back.

“Remember Lunar Rift.”

We had been cornered. There had been no way out. I had even been freaked out, and I didn’t have parents who stuffed me in a broken chest freezer when I cried, leaving me crippled. He hadn’t been able to logic his way out that night. It had been too loud to talk him down. The only other option had been to drop into his body and so that he could feel something.

“This,” I tapped the ring again, a little more gently, “is technically yours. That’s what I was doing at the mall that day.”He knew which day I was talking about it. “Buying it for you. It’s just like Griffen’s.”

Lunar Rift had released a new song just before the concert. The cover was Griffen’s hands clasped together with just a thumb ring. We had had a running joke about using rings as cock rings and what Griffin’s thumb ring might feel like.

“After that day, what I did, I needed something of you on my body.”

Justice shook his head and tried to push off the wall. I slid my hand between his legs. His cock instantly responded.

“Fuck off.” He wanted that to sound angry, but it didn’t.

I leaned into him hard and put both hands on the button of his jeans.

“Tell me to leave, Just.” I kept my voice neutral, or as neutral as I could now that I was desperate for him.

I’d wrestle with the morality of this later. It was a pretty shitty thing to do to use his unwanted lust to beat back a panic attack and steal something for myself in the process. Especially since Theo’s scent was all over me still.

He banged his head against the wall. He didn’t want to want this. He didn’t want to want me. But he needed this.

Ineeded this. I was going to be dead or in jail, or worse, when this little adventure was over. I was taking another piece of him with me.

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