Chapter Four – Angela
Chapter Four
Angela
Mark and I drove back to his place in silence in the backseat of the sedan, each of us firmly on our separate sides.
When we got out, Paco greeted us at the door and assured me Rabbit was safe, but that didn’t stop me from running upstairs to make sure.
I found him curled up into a peaceful ball on his bed, and I sat down beside him, watching him snuggle tighter.
Tonight, oh my God, tonight. The last bead on a long necklace, strung with insanity. I watched Rabbit’s chest rise and fall with each of his sweet breaths. Everything I’d done, I’d done for him, and he didn’t know it. How much longer could I protect him from the truth?
And thinking of people who I couldn’t protect anymore—I swept up to standing, and walked back down the hall.
By the time I came down, Mark was ensconced behind his bar. “Drink?” he asked, and started making me one without waiting for my answer.
I kicked off my shoes and stepped down into his living room, feeling the plush gray-green carpet against my feet like silvered moss. “I tried to tell you. Honestly.”
“Uh huh,” he said, concentrating on his stirring. “How long have you known?”
“That I’m a werewolf? Ever since I was pregnant with Rabbit.”
“And Jack?” He handed a drink out to me, and I took it only to set it back down.
“Wine cellar. Earlier tonight. I didn’t know vampires were a thing before that—although I probably should’ve guessed.”
He took a long sip of his drink, and I had a feeling it was something stiff. “Did you know it was going to be like that?”
“No. If I had, I never would’ve allowed it.”
He nodded, and set his drink down. “That…was expensive.”
“I’m sorry. You were willing to kill a man for me. I assumed that money would be less bothersome. But—I had no idea.”
“Me either,” he said, a little too forcefully. I didn’t lower my gaze—I just took my drink and walked over to the couch.
If he wanted to yell and rail against me now was the time—and as he started to pace back and forth in the room, all I could think was, Here it comes.
He finally brought himself to a standstill in front of me. “I won’t believe it until you show me.”
“Why not?”
“Because—otherwise it sounds insane.”
“Like having a three-way with a woman neither of us knew? Wait, that sounds totally like us.” I slumped back, took a long sip of something warm and amber, and tucked my legs up.
“What about like having a woman order you to unholster a gun—that I didn’t know you were carrying by the way—and you just doing it on her command? ”
“Yeah.”
“And the part where,” I pointed to my mouth with two fingers. From his vantage point behind her, had he been able to see her teeth?
“And the mind control bullshit. The way I wanted to be with her, even when I knew I wanted you.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “All of that aside though—I still want to see.”
I took a moment to search through myself, like I was rummaging through memories. My wolf was ignoring me. “I can’t.”
“You won’t? After all we’ve gone through tonight?”
I shook my head quickly. “No, Mark. I don’t know how. I’ve never let her out before—and after my mom died—I drank her away.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “Your mother?”
“No, my wolf. There was so much blood at my apartment—I was so mad—my wolf wanted out, to protect me—and I burned her down.” I got a flash of my wolf again—with a jagged streak of furless skin from ear to muzzle-tip, and knew that I had done that to her. Would it grow back? “Here—wait.”
I ran upstairs, grabbed my vial of silver, and returned. “See? It’s colloidal silver. I drink a little every day, to keep her in check.”
He took the bottle from me, uncapped it, and smelled. “This?”
“Yeah. I give Rabbit some, too. I don’t know what else I can show you.” I’d built an entire life around not having any proof.
For a second I was worried he was going to add it to his drink. But then he closed the bottle and set it down on the bar, like a new mixer. “Can you do it to me?”
It took a moment for me to parse what he was asking. “Change you?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding with determination. “If I were like Gray, I could fight him.”
“No. Gray’s a wolf through and through. I don’t think anyone bitten in would have a chance. Besides,” I said, plucking at the skirt I wore, “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.”
Mark leaned back against his bar, setting his elbows on it behind him. “Where is this going, Angie?”
“We break the connection between me and Rabbit and the Pack, we breathe for a few days, and then we keep going.”
“I can’t just leave here. Vegas is my entire life.”
“I wasn’t really asking you to come with me,” I said quietly. There it was. The words I’d been trying to say for so long. Mark looked stunned.
“But—I love you.”
“And I love you.” I set my drink down and raked my hands through my hair. “But I’ve been trying to put my foot down with you for weeks, Mark, and you kept not letting me. You always think that you know what’s best—”
“I didn’t sign all those contracts tonight to lose you, Angela.”
“And I didn’t let you sign all those contracts so that you could die!
” I picked up my drink, slammed it back, and set it down.
“I’m sorry—I’m sure it seems like I’ve been using you—but what it really was, was hope, Mark.
Hope that someday we’d come across a solution.
You murdering Gray seemed like it was going to work, it really did.
But now that my mom’s died, and the Pack is clearly planning something—I can’t lose you, too. I couldn’t bear it.”
His eyes narrowed and his wide jaw clenched. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
I gave a tiny nod. “Yeah, I do.”
He started to pace again, this time in circles. “I can close up shop. There’s other places—the family will understand.”
“There’s nowhere on earth like Vegas, Mark. And you—you belong here. It’s your home.”
“You don’t get to tell me where I belong. I know where I belong,” he said, thumping his chest with one hand. “I belong beside you. No matter where you run off to.”
I was so tired of crying and yet I couldn’t help myself. This was it, we were through. “You can’t be beside me anymore, Mark.” I said it so quietly it was hard to hear—but if I listened closely I thought I could hear his heart breaking—or maybe it was just mine.
He didn’t say anything, and he waited so long I was afraid that that was it, that we were finished—the moment I’d both longed for and dreaded, finally come to pass.
“Angela, please. Just—one last time,” he whispered.
And like some kind of fool, I ran across the room to land in his arms.
What followed was a fucking of desperation, on both sides.
We kissed until our lips swelled and bruised, our hands sought out every piece of skin, and our clothes might as well have been ripped off of both of us.
I wound a leg around him and he used it to pick me up, holding me bodily to him, and I reached down between us to help his cock slide in.
Mark grunted as he landed deep. I reached my other leg up and kept my arms wrapped around his neck, his mouth at my throat.
Both his hands were on my ass, holding me up and he bounced me as he thrust, grunting again.
Whatever he wanted, however he needed this to be—he wanted to use me, and I wanted to be used.
He paused, looking around, and I knew he was searching for a suitable location for fucking. Without consulting me he picked me up and off of him, and then spun us both around, turning me to face the bar.
I knew what he wanted without asking. I lay down on it, ass up, only the tips of my toes managing to touch the ground, and he growled low as he entered me again. His hands ran up my body and then took hold of the bar’s far edge, using it to propel himself even deeper inside of me.
“Oh God,” I whispered, feeling myself spread wide and him slide so deep—the edge of the bar cut into my thighs, and my breasts were cold against its metal surface, but I didn’t care. One of his hands wrapped into my hair, yanking my head back for him.
“It doesn’t matter where you go, what you do, who you do,” he said, punctuating himself with long thrusts, “No one else is ever going to love you like me, Angie.”
I had a feeling that was true—that it’d been true for the entirety of our relationship. Mark’s love was like he was, big and strong and bright, and each time he pushed in me my pussy wanted to grab around him and never let him go.
And me? I wanted him to love me this last time in every place I had. I let go of the bar’s edge and, reaching back, spread open my ass.
It took him a second to realize what was being offered—and then I heard him make a guttural, animalistic, response.
He rode my pussy hard for three more strokes, and then pulled out slowly, languorously, leaving me aching inside.
Then he let go of my hair to take hold of his cock and play its wet head against my tightness.
I shivered, missing what I’d had, nervous about what was to come, as I felt him press in, ever so slightly while I tried to relax. He teased me there, with greater control than I would have had, bobbing the head of his cock in and out, deliciously stretching me until I wanted more.
“This?” he asked, politely from behind. I nodded against the bar’s cool metal—and gasped as he finally pushed in.
It…took a while. I’d never been stretched quite like that before. But the tension of him restraining himself to not hurt me, plus the way that it felt as I got more and more of him inside—I slid a hand between my legs without thinking to rub at my clit just as he started his final slide.
“Oh God, Angela,” he said, using my thighs for purchase this time, pulling me against him, as his cock went deep and he held it in me. “Your ass feels amazing—I should’ve been fucking it all along.”
The way he was making me feel—I should’ve let him. I arched into him as much as I could in answer and brought my other hand underneath me, to hold myself up on my forearm, letting the cold metal of the bar lap at my breasts, as I was moved by his thrusts.
“It’s good, right?” he asked me, with a note of concern. I’d been quiet because I didn’t want to give him hope—but I didn’t want him to doubt me, either.
“It’s so good, Mark—so good,” I said, earnestly, and let myself start to moan.
After that, we didn’t need words. Just the slick sound of him thrusting, the damp slap of his balls against my dripping pussy and fingers, each satisfied grunt he made as he went in, the long quiet moans I made as he pulled out, and a tiny metallic swaying from a series of barware that’s base must’ve been bolted down.
Neither one of us wanted to come—if we did, this was over, all the way—but our bodies had other plans.
His balls hit my fingers just so, as he pulled out and then landed back in, and the rhythm of that added to what my body was already unconsciously doing, rubbing and stroking my clit.
And as for him, I could feel him start to speed up without meaning to, needing more of me, more from me, as my ass began to clench—my toes kicked, looking for purchase, wanting to send myself even higher for him as he plunged down, hands on my shoulders now, riding me hard, his grunts giving way to growls giving way to snarls—I felt his cock stiffen straight inside me, I knew he was close, and knowing that—made me come.
“Mark!” I cried out his name while writhing, feeling my ass grasp him tight as all of me spasmed, grinding my ass against him.
“Oh yes—Angie, yes,” I felt him rear back and shove his cock deep for me to take, and then felt him stroke in and out of my tightness, filling me with his load.
“Yes,” he said again, still thrusting, hips twitching back and forth, and I knew if I’d reached my hand down I could’ve felt his balls tighten as they finished pouring into me.
“God, yes,” he said, and then leaned over me, still inside me, kissing my neck, my shoulders, my back.
I could’ve reached back and kissed him then. We’d fucked all night before, my man was insatiable, it would’ve been nothing to move to the couch and wait for round two. But that wouldn’t have been right—right? I pressed myself up onto my elbows instead, waiting for him to move.
He put his hands on either side of me and slid his cock out slowly, making both of us hiss. We both waited, panting, and he broke the silence first. “I can’t believe I’m never going to get to fuck you again.”
I swallowed and turned around as he made room for me. “I will never, ever, forget this, Mark.”
A sad smile fluttered across his face. “You’d better not. And…if you want to come back someday, you’ll know where to find me.”
I nodded and gave him my own sad smile in return.
He stood. He wanted to kiss me, I could feel it, but he knew if he did I might pull away and ruin this memory.
So instead he stooped to gather up all of his articles of clothing, giving me one last look before walking up the stairs. “Good night, Angela.”
“Good night, Mark,” I said. I waited for five minutes to firm my resolve before doing the same, but turning the other direction at the top of the stairs. I took a shower, pulled on boxers and a t-shirt, and went to sleep beside Rabbit, for whatever good it would do if the Pack attacked.