Page 10 of Threadbound

“Ugh.” Jamie let his forehead rest on the table.

“You don’t want to do that, Jamie,” Trixie warned him. “These tables are filthy.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jamie muttered, although he picked his head up again anyway, then took another swallow of his tepid beer. He’d been hoping that a little alcohol would shift his standards back to their customary levels, but so far that hadn’t been the case. Instead, he was just getting even more morose about the fact that he hadn’t had the guts to even talk to the guy at the museum, much less see if he was interested in a coffee or a drink.Or if he was gay, Jamie reminded himself.

It was like his brain just couldn’t conceive of the guy from the museumnotbeing a romantic option. Like it couldn’t imagine Jamie dating literally anyone else in the world. So of course it couldn’t imagine that the guy wouldn’t be gay or pan or bi or whatever.

I’m a complete moron. Jamie put his head back down on the table.

“James.”

He groaned.

Trixie sighed, then petted his sandy hair. “Maybe we give it a couple days, then try again?”

“’Kay,” he mumbled.

“Let’s get you some greasy takeaway fish and chips, yeah?”

He lifted his head, then threw back the rest of his beer. “Yeah.” At least food still sounded good.

It was worsetwo days later.

Rob came out with them, convinced by Trixie to play wing man. Rob, who was tall—although not as tall as Jamie—thin, with carefully kept dreadlocks, steely grey eyes, and cocoa-colored skin, had never in his life had trouble picking up men or women or anyone else. And he was doing an admirable job of bringing every eligible human being onto the dance floor with them, but Jamie wasn’t having any of it.

Even though Jamie had talked himself into putting on his tightest slightly-ripped jeans and a form-fitting t-shirt in a shade of rose that made his eyes look almost royal blue, the effort felt completely wasted. His body just wasn’t interested in any of it. Not in dancing, and definitely not in dancing with anybody else. Even Rob and Trixie—his closest friends—caused him a very weird feeling of slight revulsion when they danced too close.

Normally, Jamie liked dancing. He liked feeling the music moving through his body, liked watching other people dance, liked dancing with them. But now he was going through the motions, sipping his whisky, moving his body in time with the music, even letting some of the guys Rob had dragged over put their hands on him as they danced, but… None of them appealed. There wasn’t even the slightest flash of interest from either his head or his sex drive. In fact, feeling another man’s hands on him, even over his clothes, made his skin crawl.

He forced himself not to actively squirm away—after all, he’d clearly been sendingdance with mesignals. So he’d finish the dance, then make some excuse to go sit at the bar, to get a glass of water, to go to the bathroom. Anything to get away from them. All of them.

Not that his sex drive had gone into hibernation.

It just wasn’t the least bit interested in thinking about anyone or anything other than the guy from the museum, which is what he’d jerked off to the last two consecutive nights, followedby plenty of self-recrimination for being a completely hopeless coward because he hadn’t even tried to say so much as hello.

That also meant that he was spending a lot more time than he usually allowed himself wallowing in bad memories.

Bill Eckel’s accusations of being a chicken who was too afraid to ask a girl to the junior high dance, or to high school homecoming, or to high school prom, because how else was a pansy like him going to get laid?

The nearly constant teasing he’d endured throughout grade and high school about being a sissy girly boy because he didn’t want to get into fights and being a fag because he didn’t date girls.

He didn’t date girls, but he hadn’t dated anyone at all before college. Between his natural shyness and the fear of what Bill Eckel would do to him if he found out… Jamie had strong enough survival instincts to know that he needed to avoid the problem entirely. For all he knew, there hadn’t been a single other gay kid in Maynardville, although it was probably just that they—like him—had kept it to themselves for fear of what might happen if they admitted it out loud to anyone. He knew people had been beaten to death for less in similar small towns all over the US.

The combined pain of his bloody nose and Christopher refusing his calls after their movie-date-gone-wrong in Knoxville had stopped him for a while, although eventually he’d at least managed to find other students who were queer and had gotten more dates after that. More dates on which he’d been very careful about public displays of affection, although as long as he avoided particular bars it was mostly okay.

But now that he found himself unable to feel any sort of attraction toanyone… The feelings of being completely alone, of being woefully inadequate, this strange and broken thing that didn’t belong—they all came rushing back.

And Jamie had no idea why. It wasn’t like anything particularly bad had happened. School was fine. Work was fine. He had Trixie and Rob, and they hadn’t gotten in any arguments. His admittedly mediocre dating life wasn’t great, but it hadn’t been any worse than usual in the past several months. He’d had a date most weekends, and sometimes those dates resulted in second dates and make-out sessions and the occasional hand or blow job.

But even though nothing had changed, everything was different.

Bran mac Cairnwas deeply unsettled, and he knew exactly why.

He was stuck with this apparently incredibly stupid half-breed human as a bondmate. Bran did have an answer now for why the half-breed spent so much time in the museum—he worked there, apparently. Which made sense, Bran supposed, since in the modern human world the half-breed had to work somewhere.

But although Bran had spent the better part of an hour in the same room with him, he hadn’t heard the man say a single word to anyone. He had seen the half-breed drop at least a half-dozen different things while trying to fix one single exhibit, on which he also hadn’t appeared to make much progress during all the time that Bran was there.

Clearly, the man was a bit… intellectually stunted, despite all the time he spent in the library.

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