To break my other half out of his cage by any means necessary so that he can pin hers beneath him and claim her just as thoroughly.
“It’s been a day, to say the least. I can come crash with you guys, though,” he cautiously offers, but Sabrina steals my phone right out of my hand.
Fully dressed besides her shoes, she flips on the bedroom light, grabbing her laptop off of her dresser and putting it in her work bag so that she can leave from our place.Not that she’ll be going.When she turns around to set the messenger bag on the bed to zip it up, I get yet another punch to the gut.
Now that darkness isn’t cloaking her features, I get a better look at her eyes. They’re still the same bright blue... with the exception of the coral-tinted ring now on the outside. Terrified for the confirmation I know I’m going to find, as I pull on my dress shirt and start buttoning it up, I discreetly take a deep inhale through my nose. Her signature coffee shop scent is the first thing that hits me, but now that I’m searching for it, I pick up on the faint undercurrent that reveals her asmore.A pheromone more than an actual scent, it sets off every one of my more primal instincts, recognizing her as one of us, asmine.
“Are you in the mood for comfort or solutions?” she asks, tucking her own phone into her pocket and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “We could hit a liquor store on the way over.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Nobody should be able to pick up on it unless they’re looking, and they’ll have all written her off as human after tonight, so maybe they’ll assume it’s our scents coating her? No, they’d be able to tell she was a pack-claimed human. Not like she’s the first human a pack around here’s taken in, giving up on the small hope an elusive female would choose them. They don’t set our wolves off beyond the acknowledgement that it would mean trouble if we touched her, like stumbling across a lost bear cub; you know there’s a bigger, pissed off bear waiting to maul your face off.
They’ll know. Especially with the way Adrian was laser focused on her all night, like he thought she was worth the risk of making a move against us. With only seven men left in our entire pack? He’d stand a solid chance if he could convince Malachai our truce isn’t valuable anymore, which he would agree with in a heartbeat if they discovered we were keeping yet another unclaimed female wolf right under their noses.
“Like Slade could stop all three of us from raiding his stash of the good stuff,” I dismiss with a scoff, forcing levity that I don’t even remotely feel into my tone. “Besides, I love myself enough to keep the bar in the rec room stocked.”
She frowns. “Of course you have a bar at home to go with your golden pool sticks. Why you ever leave your house is beyond me.”
Yes, home is fantastic and has everything you could ever need. Let’s go now and stay forever.
“Both?” Reid tosses out ambiguously, missing a hell of a lot of information beyond ‘my twin needs me.’ “But I don’t want to tear you out of bed if you’re comfortable, so I don’t mind heading your way. The reality of our situation is hitting me hard, that's all, so some company sounds nice.”
Her expression softens as we head to the living room and she slips on her sandals. “Consider it our penance. I feel pretty guilty, if we’re being honest. Not only for the sex when I should have had better control of myself, especially at such a high class event, but for running off and leaving you guys to deal with the fallout like a coward. Least I can do is go through the effort of coming to you.”
Fastening the last button on my shirt, I grab the keys to the Aston Martin. “Oh, fuck that. You don’t have anything to apologize for, gorgeous. Your sweet screams were some much needed spice to an otherwise painfully dull evening, so they should all be grateful.”
She bites her lip, looking at me sheepishly. “I’m not saying I regret it, just that it was easy to get carried away between the two of you terrible influences. And I’m sad that might have left Reid feeling like the odd man out.”
Reid, not ‘the others.’ Slade needs to get his ass in gear and quit hiding from her like a little bitch before she thinks he doesn’t actually have an interest. Especially with the current revelation.
Crossing the distance between us, I steal my phone back. “See you in thirty.” Ending the call and sliding it into my pocket, I tuck a lock of her ebony hair behind her ear. “Would you take it back if you could?”
Rising up on her toes, she kisses me softly. “Of course not. And even better, we probably embarrassed Slade enough that we’llbothbe banned from ever going to any more parties, so it was a win-win all around.”
I pull her against me, appeasing the angry writhing going on in my chest a fraction. “You know that it wasn’t a matter of trying to piss anyone off in that place that had us sleeping with you, right? No games, only you.”
“Would you hate me if I told you that the thrill of getting caught was the thing to push me into accepting that this could actually be a real thing?” she asks, and if I thought my chest hurt before, it’s nothing compared to now. “Knowing that you two were willing to shamelessly flaunt our relationship in public, I mean.”
Flicking my tongue over the seam of her lips, I coax her into a deeper kiss, wrapping an arm around her back to support her as I bend her backwards in an enthusiastic kiss that has her clinging to my shirt, afraid that she’ll fall. When we finally come up for air, I rest my forehead against hers.
“Sweet girl, I was raised fighting for even a scrap of my parents’ attention, only to be told at every turn what a worthless disappointment I was. There’s nothing you could do to make me hate you because anything you throw at me, I’ve already endured tenfold by hating myself.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “You know, back when I was a sad little kid constantly seeking validation until I hit my teens and had a change of heart, started looking at things from a new angle. The second that I gave up the silly notion that I needed to justify my existence to anyone, it was like a switch flipped, and I’ve never gone back to that miserable state of existence. I don’t need to earn the right to be happy, and I sure as shit don’t need anyone’s permission but my own.”
Licking her lips, she nods. “I get that. It’s weirdly nice that you embrace that things sucked and don't pretend they didn't affect you, but choose to flip them off and tune them out instead of letting them continue to make you miserable. I wish I’d gotten to that point sooner, too.”
Unable to stop myself as instinct rides me hard in the face of the sad lilt to her voice, I capture her bottom lip between my teeth, nipping gently. She jolts against me with a sharp hiss, fisting my shirt and arching into my touch. As the scent of her arousal taunts me, I nearly break and drag her onto the floor, but I’ve got my mind on the bigger picture.
I’m going to take her home so the others can help explain so that she doesn’t write me off as completely delusional. She’ll freak out, need some time to wrap her head around things, and then she’ll be happy that she chose me, that she staked her claim on me. We’re mated in every way that counts. Sabrina is officially a Hawthorne now, even if she thinks it was only a kinky fuck with her boyfriends.
She’s going to hate me for a while, but better me than Reid. It would absolutely destroy him if she looked at him in disgust for trapping her in a marriage that she didn’t choose, even if it was by accident, andtechnicallyher fault. I can handle it though. Gods only know that I can take a hell of a beating without breaking, and this woman is going to run my heart through the meat grinder, I can just feel it.
I may not be the most patient person normally, but for her, I’ll happily endure this rough patch without complaint, because I know what’s waiting for me on the other side of it.
Someone that understands what it’s like to scream into the void until your voice cracks, and your spirit right alongside it.
***
Reid’s sitting on thecement bench surrounding the fountain when we pull up to the house, immediately jumping to his feet when he sees us. Shutting off the engine and leaving the car in the driveway, we climb out, Sabrina walking over to kiss my twin without the slightest hesitation. While she’s been affectionate in front of most of us before, there was always a bit of reservation like she was testing the waters to see how we’d react. After tonight, those concerns have completely evaporated, accepting our shitty lives and the unusual relationship that stems from them as if it’s as easy as breathing.
Cupping her neck, my brother tilts his head and deepens the kiss, eyes popping open to give me a ‘what the fuck?’ look over her shoulder. Tugging my collar aside, I reveal the mark, gleaming in all of its ominous glory in the bright moonlight. His eyes widen in horror as I straighten my shirt, and they break off their kiss, my twin’s face instantly morphing into a soft smile before she notices anything is amiss.
