Chapter Twenty-One
Demi
I stretched as the sheet slipped over my skin, and I stared at the ceiling for a count of ten while memories rolled back in slow waves. His hands. His voice rough in my ear. The promise in the way he touched me.
Claimed. It should’ve felt like a collar. Instead, it settled over me like a vow I’d asked for and refused to return.
He wasn’t in the room. The shower hissed through the open bathroom door. A shadow moved behind the glass of a familiar outline that tugged heat into my cheeks before I could decide whether to be annoyed or thrilled that a silhouette knew every inch of my body.
I found my shirt on the chair but opted to grab his hoodie. I dragged it on and it swallowed me. The sleeves fell past my knuckles, and the weight of it felt indecently intimate. The mirror caught me with my hair wrecked and my mouth still a little swollen from all his kisses.
The shower cut off. “Demi,” he called.
“Uh, yeah?”
A beat, then a sound that lived somewhere between a laugh and a growl. “You dressed?”
I looked down at his sweatshirt. I was adequately covered. “Uh, maybe?”
“Get dressed,” he ordered. “We’re going to your place.”
He came out, toweling his hair. He wore jeans, still unbuttoned, and nothing else. I tried not to look. I failed. He saw me fail and didn’t look away, and that was somehow worse and better in the same breath.
“You look good in my clothes. Maybe put some pants on, too,” he smirked.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my jeans from the floor. “I’m keeping the hoodie.” I pulled on my pants and piled my hair on top of my head.
“We’ve got eyes on us today.”
“We had eyes on us last night,” I said, arms crossed. “And you didn’t seem to mind.”
His gaze flicked to my mouth, lingered, then dragged up to my eyes with effort. “I minded,” he said quietly. “Just not enough to stop.”
The admission carried a danger all its own. He closed the distance, and I thought he’d kiss me, but he pressed the back of his knuckles to my cheek instead. Gentle. Abruptly tender. Like I was a thing he didn’t trust his hands with.
“Why can’t we stay here?” I asked, because wouldn’t it just be easier to stay here?
“Not today.” He looked past me, toward the window. “Word’s out. Tremor is stirring the pot, so it would be best to stay away from here until things blow over.”
“Tremor.” The name tasted like poison. “He enjoys pushing you.”
“He enjoys seeing weakness.” He tipped my chin up with a knuckle. “Don’t give him a read on yours.”
“And what are my weaknesses, exactly?” I asked and held his stare.
A slow, deep heat passed through his eyes. “I’m learning them.”
It was nothing like a kiss and exactly as dangerous. My breath hitched. He noticed, of course he did, and stepped back first, like he always had to be the one to pull himself away or we’d both go under.
“Come on,” he said, and tossed me my shirt. “We’re going to your place. You stay with me until we get to my bike, Demi. I mean it. Two steps either side and I won’t be polite about how I bring you back.”
“Your charm never fails.”
“Not selling charm,” he said. “Selling survival.”
The ride back to my apartment was thankfully uneventful, other than just enjoying being pressed against Werewolf.
At my door, he stood with his back to the hall while I unlocked it. A wall with tattoos, knife scars, and a patience I hadn’t earned but took anyway. “Inside,” he said. “And keep the blinds closed.”
“Bossy,” I muttered, and slid inside.
“Protective,” he corrected, and I couldn’t even roll my eyes because the word hit me right in the heart.
“Am I okay to shower, or maybe you could join me to make sure I’m safe?” I suggested.
His gaze raked up and down my body. He opened his mouth to answer, but his phone rang. He pulled it out, and any interest he had was now on his phone.
“I’ll just shower while you take your call,” I muttered and waved my hand over my head as I headed down the hallway to the bathroom.
I showered in record time. I scrubbed the scent of Werewolf from my skin until I hated that it faded.
I toweled off and ducked into my room across the hallway to dress.
Werewolf’s voice was a low murmur while he still talked on the phone.
I pulled on a tank top and then pulled his hoodie back on.
It was going to have to be pried out of my cold, dead hand before I ever gave it up.
When I stepped back into the hall, he was leaning against the opposite wall, staring at nothing like it had offended him personally. His eyes flicked to me, down my body, and then back up.
“Approve?” I asked.
He nodded. “You could wear a trash bag and I would approve, babe.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “We’ve got a change of plans.”
I frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Prez called. We’ve got church.” He paused. “Club meeting. I need to be back for it.”
Well, that certainly was a change of plans. “Is that a bad thing?”
Werewolf shrugged. “Won’t know until then.”
I looked down at what I was wearing. “I look okay for your wolves?” I asked.
“You look like mine,” he said, so simply it set off tingles under my skin I couldn’t control.
We were quiet on the way down the stairs. I noticed his hands hovering at the small of my back without touching, the almost-contact making my body overreact like he’d branded me. At the curb, he scanned the street. Something in his stance changed, stiffened a degree most people wouldn’t catch.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He didn’t move for a count of three. “Get on.”
We cut through the city to the clubhouse, the neon skull still buzzing even in daylight.
The lot was busier than when we had left.
Bikes lined like a shining warning, while men and women were scattered in loose clusters all around.
Heads turned the second we rolled in. I made myself look past them and kept my palm flat between his shoulders as he eased the bike into a spot near the back door.
He turned the engine off. The sudden quiet rang.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” I said truthfully.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Honest. I’ll take it.”
Inside, the air was thicker with the music low and a TV murmuring in a corner.
A few faces I recognized from the garage watched with open curiosity.
The women’s looks were cleaner cut: evaluation in one glance, verdict in the second.
A brunette in a leather bustier, with winged eyeliner, drifted closer on long legs and a sharper smile.
“So this is her,” she said, not bothering to make it sound like a question. “Tremor said you were too soft to bite a claim, Wolf. Guess he’ll eat those words.”
I made the mistake of meeting her eyes. Hers dipped to the hoodie drowning me. “Cute,” she said. “He’ll hide you in his clothes until you forget what you are.”
“And what’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice level.
“The flavor of the month,” she sneered.
“Enough,” Werewolf said to her, his voice quiet but like a razor. He looked at me. “With me.”
He steered us to the back hallway. We’d barely passed a door when Tremor’s voice called, “Wolf. Bring your shadow in here.”
Werewolf’s hand tightened a fraction at my hip. “You don’t call her that,” he said without raising his voice.
Tremor lounged by a desk with tattoos crawling up his throat like ivy looking for something to strangle. “What should I call her then? Your future problem? Your present distraction?”
“Try her name,” I said, surprising even myself. “Demi.”
Tremor’s eyes cut to me. Flat. Interested. A snake deciding which way to strike. “Brave. You teach her that, or did she arrive defective?”
“I was born like this,” I said.
“Most are,” he replied. “Then something breaks it out of them.”
Werewolf slid half a step in front of me. Not enough to block my view. Enough to remind everyone in a ten-foot radius he could. “Church in an hour?” he asked.
Tremor’s mouth twitched. “Wouldn’t miss it, and neither should you.” His gaze skated over me one last time, then he headed out of the office.
I exhaled slowly. “I don’t like him.”
“Good instinct,” Werewolf said. “Keep it.”
“What does he want?”
“To find the seam.” He angled his head toward the door to a storage room and nudged me inside. It smelled like old metal, lemon cleaner, and dust. “Yours. Mine. Ours.” The door clicked shut. The noise of the main room dulled to a hum.
“Why are we in a closet?” I asked.
He didn’t touch me at first. Just stood there. The room was small enough that his presence ate it. My skin prickled with awareness. The hoodie felt suddenly too warm.
“To talk without ears listening. You okay?” he asked without looking at me.
“Define okay.”
His eyes connected with mine. Whatever he saw in my face softened something in his. He closed the distance slowly, like he was approaching something skittish. The calloused backs of his fingers skimmed my jaw. My breath misbehaved.
“They’ll talk,” he said. “They’ll push. It’s how they see where you bend.”
“And if I don’t bend?”
His mouth curved, not a smile so much as a show of teeth an inch before one. “Then they try to break.”
“I’m not easy to break,” I said.
“I know.” His thumb traced the corner of my mouth like he was memorizing it. “That’s half the problem.”
“Only half?”
“The other half,” he said, and now his thumb was under my bottom lip and I couldn’t stop the catch of breath, “is that I want to keep you from finding out how close you can get to the line.”
“What if I want to know?” I asked. The words came out barely above a whisper. The room seemed to fold inward with them.
His hand slid to the back of my neck. He brought me in slowly, as if every inch mattered. The first brush of his mouth was a promise. I rose on my toes to answer it and let the world outside the door dissolve.
He kissed like I was his next breath.
He broke away a fraction. “Too much?” he asked, and the fact that he asked at all undid me almost more than the kiss.
“No,” I said. “Not enough.”