“Hess!” I raced toward him, my arms outstretched.
“Whoa, not so fast. I need answers and then you can go on your merry way and into your fiancé’s arms.” He stopped me in my tracks. How could he not long to be in my embrace?
My skin was buzzing, the need for his touch causing it to cry out in its own way. Hess’s scent enveloped me, pulling me to him and causing my wolf to howl, making it impossible for me to hear what was happening around me. At least it was all in my head. I couldn’t imagine what Hess would think if my wolf’s howl came out of me.
“It’s complicated.” How could he leave me so close and yet so far?
Forgotten was the other guy, the man who’d just been accusing me of being a car thief. If I had any self preservation, I’d have been out of there already. The last thing I needed was someone calling the human authorities about a car. Was I legally allowed to be driving it? Sure. Did I want the hassle? Absolutely not, especially since humans had a tendency to treat you as guilty first, ask questions later. My beast would not do well behind bars.
“No. The guy I’m supposed to marry owns this car, so fess up. Who the fuck are you?”
My brain wasn’t braining. Nothing was making sense. Not. A. Single. Thing.
When I came to the motel, the last thing I expected was to be accused of being a car thief? Wait, was that even what happened? All the words were swirling together in this big pile of letter salad like they used to make on the old cartoons I watched as a kid.
He’s ours.My beast was being a butt. As if I didn’t already know that part. That wasn’t the issue. Everything else in this chaotic mess was.
He is ours, but we can’t have him.It wasn’t as if I hadn’t explained all of this before. My beast didn’t give a rat’s ass. He knew what he wanted, and that was that.
I pushed him down, fearing he was going to rip through and claim Hess already. Now that he’d had a taste of the deliciousness that was being with our fated, he wanted nothing less.
It was going to be a problem when we had to live up to our end of the bargain. But some things were outside of my control and unfortunately, that was one of them.
Oh, what it would be like to run away with Hess. We could start a life together and have a minivan full of kids and be happy from morning until night. And then we’d enjoy each other’s bodies until we were sated and exhausted, falling asleep in each other’s arms, only to wake up and do it all over again.
Wouldn’t that be the life? Only it wouldn’t be like that. I’d be dooming my mate to a life of sixty-hour work weeks, the two of us never seeing each other and never making enough to get by. Our cabin in the woods would be a beat-up old trailer we salvaged from the junkyard and were going to fix up ‘as soon as we saved some money’, which would be never.
“Say again? And slowly please. I’m… I’m so confused.” If I couldn’t be honest with my mate, who could I be?
Only I hadn’t been honest with him, had I? Not really. He had no idea I had a wolf, much less that my wolf was calling out for him, wanting to make him our one and only forever. And that was only the tip of the iceberg as to the lies by omission and sometimes, outright lies, I’d told him.
“I said you’re a liar. The guy I’m supposed to marry owns this car, not you. So fess up. Who the fuck are you?”
The guy I’m supposed to marry…. It couldn’t be. But also, wouldn’t that kind of make sense? Fate didn’t mess around. Why would they give me a mate that could never truly be mine? Or maybe that was me being all sunshine and unicorn and cotton candy wishes, because life had shelled out bullshit after bullshiton my behalf and this time I wanted something good. Something of mine. Something… Hess.
“I think I’m the one you are supposed to marry.” Never in a million years did I think marriage would be end game for me. Why would it be? I was a wolf and wolves mated. But now, hearing those words from my mouth? They sounded kind of nice.
I watched as emotion after emotion ran across Hess’s face, hoping the one he settled on was either pure joy or smexy need. It was neither.
“Fuck you.” He closed his eyes. “How dare you fucking do that to me? Do you not care about anyone but yourself?”
He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me beyond confused and oh so terrified.
“Don’t leave,” I croaked, my voice failing me.
He froze, but didn’t turn around.
“I don’t know how we got into this mess. I think because I thought I was off limits and that anything I wanted was going to be yanked from me. But that is neither here nor there. I messed up.”
He turned around, but his eyes were focused on the ground. It was a step. A big one and I wasn’t going to waste it.
“What we had that day? That was real. I like you. I more than like you.”
“Then why are you toying with me? My life is shitty enough without being teased like a cat with a freaking laser beam. I don’t want to keep going after things, only to have them disappear asI get there.” The raw honesty in his voice had my guilt meter running high.
But also, we were both to blame. He had no problem getting naked with me when he was promised to another. This wasn’t one sided.
“I’m not toying with you. If you are supposed to marry the person with that car… “ I took a breath. I had to connect all the dots and what if I was wrong? “I’m making a leap here. The car is registered in my brother’s name. Roy. He’s not getting married but my father arranged a marriage for me. Is it too much to hope that you’re him, Hess?”
