Page 2 of Rejected Sold Mate
Up until that moment, I’d been viewing Jayce through a lens of red-tinged fear, barely taking in what he really looked like, but as soon as he made his interest known, everything changed for me. Tall, at least six-foot-three, Jayce towered over me, but that was nothing new, considering I was five-foot-four on a good day and male wolves tended to be big. It was the rest of him that had heat flooding my body. He was gorgeous, deceptively so, since I was positive he could tear a man limb from limb without breaking a sweat if he wanted. Jayce had long, sandy brown hair pulled back from his face, eyes the color of an oncoming storm, and an Alpha’s aura that felt ice cold. In any other circumstance, he would have scared me to death, but we were in a unique position. Jayce didn’t know me, and I wasn’t supposed to know Jayce.
And the way he was looking at me was the opposite of cold. His gray eyes were heated, molten as he gazed down at me. Jayce thought I was pretty. It was a heady feeling.
I swallowed again and grinned. “Then try it and tell me what you think.”
He obliged, tilting the glass back and pulling some of the whiskey into his mouth. He considered it for a moment and then nodded sagely, as if he’d made an important decision. “I was right. You do have good taste. Let me buy you another drink to celebrate.”
I hadn’t even taken a sip of my first one, but who was I to deny an Alpha? “Find us a table and I’ll consider it. I should have put a little more thought into my footwear, and I’m dying to sit down.”
Jayce looked down at the heeled shoes I had on, and when his gaze ascended, it went very, very slowly, crawling up my legs, to my hips, my chest, and finally my face. “I like them. Come on.”
People moved out of Jayce’s path like he was a natural disaster, and that made it all too easy for him to secure us a semi-quiet place to sit in the corner of the bar. Once we were alone, he turned up the charm, leaning close as he spoke to me. I cut him off at two drinks, but I had the feeling that if I wanted him to, he’d supply me with liquor all night.
When he asked me my name, I hesitated for a moment, but figured if he didn’t know my face, he wasn’t going to know my name, either, so I gave it to him. When he returned the favor, I made sure to school my expression so there was no sign of recognition on my face.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jayce,” I said, raising my glass so I could clink it against his. “So, what are you doing out here?”
“Looking for a distraction.”
I leaned forward. “A distraction from what?”
He huffed a laugh. “Let’s just say…a distraction from work. How about you?”
“Running away to start a new life.” There was a kernel of truth in the statement, considering I’d joined a new pack to do just that, but Jayce didn’t catch on.
“Very mysterious,” he nodded, “What other mysteries are you hiding, Rhie?”
I smiled at him over the rim of my glass. “I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”
He took that as a challenge, just like I’d intended him to, and his attention on me became laser-focused. I loved it. There was no other situation, no other opportunity that would ever allow me to become the center of an Alpha like Jayce’s attention, and I was basking in the glow of his interest. When he spoke, his words were light, the opposite of the cold energy that radiated off him. Jayce was even more attractive when he was engaged, using his hands while speaking and laughing easily. He had a reputation as a wild card and an unknown factor, and I’d been afraid of him without even really knowing who he was before. That all changed when I was a stranger to him, and I pretended he was the same to me.
Was that the real Jayce, funny and attentive? Or was he playing a role, like I was, thirsty for another existence outside of the one he usually lived in?
Did it matter? It wasn’t like anything existed for the two of us together outside of that moment. When the sun came up, and we had to return to our respective packs, he wouldn’t ever see me again. And if he did in passing, what would he even think?
Again, did it matter?
I decided it didn’t, and when Jayce flirted, I flirted back. He’d reach across the table to hand me a glass of water, and our fingers would brush for an extended amount of time. It wasclear he struggled to give me information about his life without revealing who he truly was, but he told me he was a mechanic, and I told him I was a painter without any concern that it would set off any familiarity bells in his head. I painted under a fake name, after all.
Jayce told me that he was new to the area, and I told him the same. That, at least, was the truth on both our parts. He told me that he’d come to the Broken Barrel looking for something, but he didn’t know exactly what.
“So did you find it?” I asked him as the bar started to empty, the hour having grown late.
“Find what?”
“What you were looking for.”
His eyelids lowered slightly, and his smile was predatory, more like a lion than a wolf. “I’m not sure. What are you doing for the rest of the night?”
“Nothing,” I told him honestly.
“Then come home with me.”
There it was. The question that we’d both been barreling towards since he bought me the first drink. My body lit up with awareness, and my heartbeat kicked up a notch. Was I brave enough? Normal Rhie wasn’t, that was for sure, but what about mysterious Rhie, who had caught an Alpha’s eye and kept his attention?
“Yes.”
His grin widened. “Did you drive here? I...” he paused. “Ran.”
