“Nessa somehow keeps finding or stealing or…” He shrugged. “She seems unarmed until she suddenly has a weapon. Niamh is plying her with drinks.” His disapprovalwas plain. “Nessa isn’t safe for these garhettes. And while the garhettes are challenging and deserve the outcome, I’ve been repeatedly told that Nessa should not, in fact, kill them. For some reason.”
Tristan grinned at the shifter, and then outright laughed.
“You’re in for a real rough ride, alpha.” He slipped by the man and grabbed a seat from the bar, pulling it back to sit next to John. “I don’t know your story?—“
John grabbed the last remaining empty bar chair. A gargoyle saw it moving and turned, ready to fight about it. John stared the gargoyle down.
Though half his age, bulkier, and taller, the gargoyle barely blinked before spinning and finding something else to occupy his focus. He did not want to mess with the crazy-eyed shifter.
That made two of them. Tristan loved to rile up shifters, and enjoyed getting challenged, though it so rarely happened, but John was one man he would mind his manners with. This shifter might just ring his bell. It was a humbling reality.
“I don’t know your story,” Tristan repeated when John had sat down. “I honestly don’t really care. But I know you were trained as an alpha, and I am learning how very buttoned up those are. You are currently stepping into a reality where there are no rules. Not on Jessie’s side of things. With her, you take things as they come, and you adapt. Trust me when I tell you that. On my very first detail as a beta, I was blindsided by a vampire and saved by Austin Steele. I repeatedly froze on the job. I was way beyond my comfort and expertise level. It was a hard reality to face at first. Maybe just a hard reality to face, full stop.”
Tristan laughed, catching Natasha’s attention. Her eyes were hazed with alcohol and face flushed. She was further gone than he’d ever seen her. Phil alone seemed to handle the nights out with Niamh.
“Hey,” she said, drawing all his focus. She reached out for him, and then stumbled, falling into his side.
He grabbed her, helping her stand, and slid a hand along the small of her back. Pulling her close, he breathed in her intoxicating smell and felt her heat soak into his skin.
“Hey,” he murmured, taking in her beauty.
She furrowed her brow and then slapped him across the face. Seeing him smile, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Arousal flared through him. Their tongues tangled before he backed off.
“Hi,” he murmured against her lips. “Having fun, little mate?”
He didn’t miss her full body shiver at his words. She liked the term.
She threaded in between his knees, her hands at the back of his neck now, her chest nearly pressed against his. “You set me up,” she said loudly. She’d lost control of her volume. “Since when do you have entire territories trying to get in your pants?”
He ran his hands down her back, stopping just above the swell of her butt. He longed to keep going, to grab her athletic ass and pull her harder into him. He’d be taking advantage of her in the moment, though. She had zero inhibitions right now.
He settled for rubbing back up her sides and again along her back, enjoying the contact. Enjoying her eyes closed in pleasure.
“Since always, little angel,” he answered arrogantly. Her eyes opened, her gaze now traveling his face. “You just never noticed because you had no interest.”
“I still have no interest,” she whispered, though more to herself. She swayed a little closer, as though a magnet, its other half tugging.
“No?”
“No. I have no desire for you at all.” Her energy caressed every bit of him, exposing her lie. “I detest you most of the time.”
“And when you don’t detest me?”
Her resolve broke. “I want you so badly it’s hard to think.” Her lips crashed into his, needy and insistent. She chased his tongue with her own and her body pressed up against his sensuously.
“Okay, angel.” He pulled away before he was lost to the feeling of her. His groin pounded for release. “Let’s take a second.”
She snuggled into him, resting her head on his shoulder.
“I’m legless,” she murmured. “That’s what Niamh says. It means ‘incredibly drunk’. But in fairness— “ She pushed away from him so she could take a deep breath. If she wasn’t already spinning, she would be soon. He needed to take her home. “I really did hold my own. I really did!” She breathed out heavily in alcoholic fumes, closed her eyes, and burrowed her face into him again. “I totally get what Jessie is always saying about a night out with Niamh. I thought—how bad can it be? Well. Let me tell you!” She yanked her upper body back. He held onto her to keep her from pitching backward. “It can be vera bad. Vera—ver-eee bad!”
“I’ll take you home now?—“
She slapped him again. Then her hands reached into his hair, clutched painfully, and she slammed her lips onto his again.
His arousal roared through him with the treatment. A tidal wave of passion threatened to take him away. Mustering all his strength, he wrapped his fingers around her upper arms and, as delicately as he could, pried her off.
