Page 41 of Defiant
I debate doing it anyway but the pain must fuck with my poker face because she takes a smooth step backward and wags her index finger at me. “No sir. We’re working on raisin flicking like you promised.”
“I did flick your raisin,” I give her a wink. “But sure, I’ll do it some more. Come back over here.”
“Did that scratch turn you into a twelve-year-old boy? Not everything’s about sex.”
“Baby, your scent did that,” I confess. “I can’t be in the same room with you and not think about making you mine. It’s the blessing of an omega.”
“You mean curse. It’s fucking bullshit.”
I stop short, before taking another shot straight from the bottle. Well, I think that answers my earlier question about whether she’s drawn to me or just worried about her wolf right now. I take a deep breath and try to tell myself it’s not personal as the whiskey muffles the pain banging a set of cymbals in the back of my head. I’m not even sure if it’s pain from my wound right now or from the look that twists my mate’s face as she thinks over her fate. I try not to let disappointment color my tone or show on my face because as much as it feels like rejection, I need to sympathize. Empathize. Because I’ve been there.
I hand her back the whiskey bottle and take a deep breath, drawing on the memory of my father, standing in the kitchen after I came home missing a wallet and a tooth after one of my first alpha fights.
His brown eyes had crinkled at the edges and his lips had thinned but he hadn’t said a word. He’d pulled out a kitchen chair and gestured for me to sit while he went to the freezer and pulled out a steak. He’d slapped it on the side of my face and taken the seat beside me, the pair of us towering over Mom’s tiny pine kitchen table.
I remember the light flickering—I’d let a moth inside when I’d stomped home. It had made the whole thing eerie when Dad had unleashed his words of wisdom. The same words I tell Elena now. “Wolves are something that happen to you. Like looks. Like intelligence. They aren’t a choice. What you do with them once you’ve got them—that’s where the choice is.”
“Well, considering my wolf stayed all of two minutes and has proven herself to be a useless bitch who’s only given me a scent that makes my worst nightmare come true, I think I’ll pass. Thanks for that pep talk though. You should really go chat with Oprah. Maybe she can give you your own show.” Elena takes a final drink from the bottle before setting it on the nightstand with a loud thunk.
“Bitterness doesn’t suit you.”
“Suddenly you’re an expert on me?”
“I plan on becoming one.”
She rolls her eyes and I hold up three fingers, distracting her and making her brows furrow. “Um, should I even ask? Or are you checking your eyesight after that fight? I probably should have done that but I figured at your age you’d know if you had a concussion.”
I tick up another finger for the age insult, enjoying the play of emotions across her face as she slowly figures out what I’m doing. It’s not lost on me that her body responds—her nipples tighten under my t-shirt and she swallows hard.
“Maybe you can make the number of spankings I owe you go down a bit by teaching me how to turn dried fruit into deadly weapons.”
She fights a grin for a moment before letting amusement stretch her gorgeous face gently. “I suppose I don’t have anything better to do since I’m stuck here until I figure out how to get rid of this stupid scent.”
“Or embrace it,” I suggest, scooting gingerly over, trying and failing to avoid the wet patch left by the alcohol she poured on me. Fuck it. I hiss as the sting drags across my cut again and Elena hurries over to check on me.
“Hold on. Let me get a towel, you big man-baby.”
I lift up another finger and she rolls her eyes. “Please. Keep counting. Count to a hundred if you want. Infinity. But the day I stop insulting you is the day I’m dead.”
“Good thing I like spanking you then. We’ll have to make it a daily thing,” I tell her retreating form. She freezes for a moment, turning back to me. She chews on her lip for a second, like she wants to retort, but she swallows down whatever words are on her tongue and I don’t get to know if she was going to add another infraction to the list or try to reject me.
A dark, sullen part of me thinks it’s the latter, but I shove him away because I’m going to prove him wrong. And her. If Elena thinks she has a hope of walking away from me now, she won’t before the nights through. I’ll make sure of it. Once I’ve decided something, it’s always come to be. And I’ll be damned if the most important decision I’ve ever made—to keep her—will be ruined by anyone. Including her.
Elena comes back with a set of towels folded over her arms, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she leans across the bed and forces me to grab the little bowl of trail mix and roll onto my uninjured side while she lays the cold towels out on top of her mess.
“You know, if you were actually a good nurse, that wouldn’t have happened,” I point out helpfully.
“If you were actually a nice guy, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“Nice is boring.”
“No. Nice can be…” She trails off and I roll onto my back to look up at her, annoyed that she’s broken off mid-thought a second time. What I see stops me short. There’s a soft, dreamy look in her eyes—it sends a black dagger right into my chest.
Fury smacks me across the face and I yank on her hand, pulling her onto the bed, deliberately interrupting her thoughts about some other guy. I know what that look was. And I’m going to erase it. I’m going to erase anyone but myself from her mind. I pull her close, so close I can see the zebra stripes in her irises, and feel the warmth that radiates between us. If a look can generate this much heat, I can only imagine what will happen when we come together later. My eyes drop to her lips for a second before coming back up, pleased when she doesn’t pull away.
“Fuck nice. I want to be a lean, mean, raisin-killing machine.”
“Oh my god. You should hear the ridiculous things that come out of your mouth.” She does pull back then, with a roll of those gorgeous eyes.
