“Here. Whatever,” Adri muttered.
The grip on his neck tightened, and Adri rolled his eyes. The asshole wasn’t going to give up until he’d got what he wanted. Tipping his head at the slightest angle possible that could still be considered baring his throat, Adri forced his eyes down to Marco’s chest, breaking the eye contact stand-off they’d been in. Damn wolves and their posturing. A rumbled complaint came from Rafe behind him as Marco leaned in to rub his rough stubble across Adri’s neck before stepping back and turning to Silas and carrying on their meeting as if he hadn’t just turned Adri’s world on its head.
Adri’s nose wrinkled as he smelled Marco’s scent layered with his own. Sensing his discomfort, Rafe nuzzled in close, and Adri let his head fall further to the side, exposing more of his neck.
“You did good,” Rafe murmured, his teeth and lips working over his throat until Marco’s scent was half-buried beneath his own and Adri’s cock was throbbing in his pants.
Mortification filled him as, instead of telling the doc to shut up like he wanted to, a rumbling purr started vibrating his chest and he butted his head under Rafe’s chin as his cat’s instincts overrode his better judgement.
Fuck, his jaguar could be a slut for it sometimes. Adri had lost track of the conversation in the chaos of his thoughts and Rafe’s possessiveness. He tuned back in as the discussion lulled and looked up to find he was once again the centre of attention as knowing eyes took in his position—basically putty in his mate’s arms. Fuck it. If he wanted to be affectionate, he could be. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t lash out the next time someone got on his nerves.
“I’m glad I got to see you finally pull your head out of your ass and admit you have a mate before I left,” Viviana said.
Adri flipped her off, but still pulled away from Rafe so he could go clasp her hand in farewell. “I’ll take good care of them until you’re back,” he promised.
Viviana shook her head. “They’ve always been more loyal to you. I’m not going to try and take my job back when I return. It’s yours now.”
“But you will come back?” Adri asked.
Viviana’s eyes flicked to Marco and then back to him before she shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Fuck you, Vee,” he said, pulling her into a hug.
She snickered into his shirt, squeezing him back, before making her way around the room to say the rest of her farewells.
Adri returned to Rafe as he watched the woman he’d worked with for so many years prepare to disappear from his life. Between her management and Rafe’s work behind the scenes, they’d transformed his life from what had been basically slavery to one where he was free to choose, free to help make sure the other young fighters never had to go through the hell he had.
Her eyes found his one last time as she shepherded Leah out the door, understanding and acknowledgement passing between them as the knowledge of his new responsibility settled on his shoulders.
For all his dramatic acceptance of the position, it was weirdly easy for Adri to take over management of the fighting ring. He hadn’t been worried about the people side of it. He’d always been deeply involved in coaching and smoothing out the tensions that came with two dozen fighters living in close proximity. It wasn’t until he’d taken over Viviana’s office that he realised the sneaky shifter had been training him as a successor for years.
Each time she’d asked him to take over dealing with their suppliers for a week because she was going to be away, or take over scheduling and dealing with promoters for a big eventbecause Marco had a more urgent task for her, he’d shrugged and got on with it. It was only now that he could see she’d made sure he was familiar with every aspect of what she did. Taking on the responsibility was like donning the suit he wore to enter the venue of high-profile fights. It looked fancy, but at this point, it was so familiar it had become just another reassuring aspect of his routine. The designer fabric didn’t change who he was underneath.
Although now that he thought about it, those suits had always just turned up in his wardrobe when he needed a new one. He’d thought Viviana had been responsible, but as he reviewed the budgets, he couldn’t see any allowance for it. His sneaky mate had been dressing him even when they never saw each other, and he was so far gone that the knowledge only made him smile.
Speaking of his mate, Rafe had understood his need to stay at his apartment above the gym with the rest of his people while he figured out his new job. Adri’s fighters were stressed by Viviana’s disappearance and the recent deaths. There was a huge amount of work to do to try to close any security breaches. Viviana had had Adri to help balance the workload, but he hadn’t had time to find anyone to fill the gap his promotion left, which meant he barely slept as he worked around the clock. He’d thought maybe Rafe would come stay with him, but the doc had been caught by his own responsibilities, managing a flurry of clinic appointments before flying to visit a university out of state to get a second opinion on the neural chip Adri had found.
It had been strange not to see Rafe for the last couple of weeks. The regular food deliveries that showed up at his door and the constant stream of text check-ins only exacerbated his jaguar’s desperation to smell and touch his mate again. He wasall but climbing the walls with the need to make sure Rafe was protected.
Marco and Angelo had reassured him numerous times that they had increased security around the clinic and had people shadowing Rafe 24/7, but it still wasn’t enough. No one could watch the doc as well as Adri could. His instincts were screaming at him to drop everything and go to his mate, but he couldn’t abandon his fighters, and Rafe’s plane wouldn’t land back in the city for another three hours anyway.
“Watching the clock isn’t going to get him here any faster,” Jay teased from the doorway to his office.
Adri rolled his eyes and turned to one of his oldest friends. “I was just timing their drills,” he said, gesturing out the mirrored glass towards the last two fighters training in the gym.
Most of their people had long since headed to bed. Rafe was on a red-eye back to New Trinity first thing in the morning, and Adri had been far too keyed up at his impending return to seek out his own bed.
“They finished drills ten minutes ago. They’re stretching,” Jay pointed out, his sharp vampire fangs flashing in the overhead light as he grinned.
Adri scratched his jaw with his middle finger, flipping off his friend and making him smile even wider.
“You need to catch a couple of hours of rest, and then you need to go meet him at the airport,” Jay said.
“I don’t have time for that,” Adri replied, turning his attention back to the complex scheduling he’d been failing to drag into line. Running a fighting ring across three crime family territorieswhen tensions were so high and you needed to constantly change up your venues to avoid being a soft target for terrorist attacks was no easy task.
“Come on, man. The doc’s going to kick my ass if he realises I let you work yourself to the bone. You look like shit. You’re wearing yesterday’s clothes, and you can barely make your eyes focus from lack of sleep. Get the fuck out of here. The schedule will still be there tomorrow.”
Leaning back in his chair, Adri pinched the bridge of his nose, the relief from closing his eyes almost instant. Maybe Jay was right.
