Page 18 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
Chapter 6 - Olive
She was annoyed with herself. Truth was that she was quietly fuming. What was it with this guy? She’d thought that she was over him and here she was driving him to the hospital and then sticking around to hear from the doctor and then driving him home. She should’ve just left, but what did she do instead? She stayed. She fell asleep. And now she was in this mess. She was deep in it even though the mess had just been made. She didn’t know how she would get out of it. She had a feeling she’d be stuck cleaning it all up. And she had no idea where to even begin.
“What’re you muttering about?” Peter asked, three-and-a-half yards behind her.
“I’m cursing my consistent string of bad choices,” she replied.
“Ah,” he said. “What was the last one not involving me?”
“I ordered something online I really couldn’t afford,” she replied.
“What?”
“A portable charger. It was really fucking expensive, too. I should ask you to pay for it, actually,” she said.
“How come?”
“Because unluckily for me, I’d put it in my jacket pocket earlier today because I have a tendency to always leave it in the car when I should put it in my purse. Since it was the only thing available to me, I chucked it at the head of that other wolf to help you get away from it,” she replied, glancing back at him.
He really did look pathetic with her jacket barely covering his cock and ass, though he couldn’t very well walk down the street naked. He’d cause traffic accidents. And cricked necks. Eyes would probably grow so big they fell out the skull of the onlookers because his cock and ass were that appetizing. Like… going cartoon-eyes-poking-out-of-one’s-head appetizing.
She clenched her teeth. She was not going to stare at his barely covered cock.
She focused ahead again, stubbornly ignoring how the way he was holding the jacket together by the arms on one hip, stepping gingerly with his shoeless feet on the slabs of the sidewalk made her want to protect him. As well as how he was wearing a stunned expression, as though he couldn’t believe anyone would chuck away precious and pricey belongings to save someone they didn’t like very much from some sort of monster-come-to-life.
“I’ll pay for it,” he said.
She didn’t want to smile at him.
He was a monster-come-to-life after all.
But even with her eyes focused forward, she still found her mouth tugging upward.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
She had been wondering the same thing for the past twenty minutes. The second she turned on her heel and ran back to the park, she had asked herself what in the blue balls hell she thought she was doing. But she hadn’t been able to just leave him there to possibly get hurt or killed. If he was going to get himself in trouble then at least she wanted to be there to bear witness so that she would know, so that someone would know, what had happened to him.
“I don’t know,” she replied evasively. “I just thought you might need some backup. I wasn’t wrong,” she said, turning around with a meaningful lift of one eyebrow.
It made him smile.
They were almost at his place.
And once she had seen him off at his—fingers crossed—freshly installed new front door, she should take her jacket and go. She was resolved to go. She had a place of her own. With a comfortable bed. No need to spend the night on the sofa of anyone. Or anywhere else in anyone’s apartment either, for that matter.
But she could still feel the almost hypnotic influence he had wielded over her when he approached in the alley. She hadn’t been able to move or scream and she hadn’t wanted to. She had stood there, waiting for him to reach her. For the wolf to reach her. Not knowing what it wanted to do to her and not caring. She felt as though she would die if she didn’t have it close to her so if it wanted to devour her it might as well. It was all that mattered. To offer herself willingly…
She swallowed, focusing ahead on the awning of his apartment complex and the thought of his new front door through which she would not enter.
Not now, not ever.
“Good evening, sir,” the doorman greeted Peter, opening the door for them both.
“Evening, Marshall,” Peter said with a lopsided grin, nodding to the undressed state of him and adding, “A bit of a wild one.”
“Of course, sir,” Marshall acknowledged without so much as a downward glance at Peter’s barely concealed package.
Olive and Peter stepped into the elevator, grateful that they were the only ones in it. She pressed the button for the third floor.
