Chapter Twelve – Rourke #2
As she walks off, disappearing with my knife, I call after her, “Just so you know, you’re tiptoeing on the lines of kidnapping.” But I don’t think she hears me. That, or she hears me and doesn’t care. Either way, I’m curious to see what she turns up with to restrain me.
When I’m alone with the two alphas, I say, “My name is Rourke Cunningham. You’re Asher Thompson, and I’m assuming you’re Mason Thompson.
If neither of you are trying to get with Ms. Dryers, why are we here?
Why run away, come to this place in the middle of nowhere, and not tell a single soul?
” I shrug. “What were you three hoping to achieve?”
If I can’t get a word out of Jess, maybe I’d get something out of these two. It’s worth a shot.
“At the very least,” I go on, “you two come from old blood. Certainly you could’ve matched with her without resorting to methods like this.”
“I’m not a part of this.” Mason says this to me, and based on the fury in his voice, I can tell he’s not lying or trying to pull one over on me. “I was here before they showed up with their stupid plan.”
“It wasn’t a stupid plan,” Asher tells him, keeping the gun trained on me, sort of. “It was the only thing she could think of—”
“Ah, so this whole thing was born from Ms. Dryers,” I say, having already assumed as much.
“How’d you find us?” Asher asks.
“It wasn’t hard to find her burner phone and get to the few messages she sent on it.
Those messages were to you.” Again, I shrug, and I try not to sound too conceited when I add, “Finding you was pretty damn easy after that. ‘Course, like I said, I’m able to skip the red tape. The police will show up here shortly, and you two don’t want that, so help me help you. Tell me why you two came up here.”
The way Asher glances down, hesitation written across his face, informs of what he’s about to say before he says it. “That’s Jess’s secret to tell, if she wants to. It’s not my place to say.”
“Will you still defend her like this when the police are barging down your door and handcuffing both you and your brother? Because that’s what they’ll do. You’ll both be under arrest. I can help smooth things over with the police, but like I said, you have to help me before I can help you.”
I’m well aware I’m not the most persuasive man under Alabaster Security’s umbrella, but at first glance, these two alphas don’t scream professional. This really was all Jess’s idea, and that makes them both collateral damage… unless they decide to help me.
“I can make your problems go away,” I tell them, and I mean it one hundred percent.
Right when I think I might be getting to them, Jess appears with sheets bundled up in her hands. “These were all I could find,” she says with a frown, and then she tosses the two Thompson alphas a glance. “I hope he wasn’t talking your ear off the whole time.”
Mason frowns. “Yeah, he was.”
Jess doesn’t look at me when she says, “Help me tie him up.”
Eh, why not? We still have time. I play the nice kidnappee and scoot forward on the couch so Mason can use one of the sheets to tie my wrists together behind my back. The other sheet she grabbed, she kneels near my feet and fastens around my ankles.
Only when they’re both done do I grin at her and say, “I’m Rourke Cunningham, in case you forgot. Though the circumstances are a bit murky, it is nice to see you again, Jess.” Hmm. Maybe I laid it on too thick there. As far as everyone else thinks, this is nothing more than a job.
A job. This is just a job. It’s something I kept repeating to myself ever since Darius assigned it to me, but no matter how many times I say or think it, each time it sounds less and less true. How could this be a job when it involves the omega who drives me crazy?
The omega who should be mine?
Jess stands, straightening herself out. She doesn’t have my knife in her hands anymore, and I wonder if she left it in whatever room she took these sheets out of.
Her amber eyes meet mine, and I’m momentarily thrown back in time to when we met at the Omega Garden, when she did her best to insult me and my appearance.
I wore all black, but you know what? She did, too.
“I don’t care who you are.” Her words should cut me, but I don’t feel any heart behind them, so they bounce right off me instead. She turns to the others. “We need to figure something out.”
“I’ll say,” Mason huffs. “If he found you here, it’s only a matter of time until someone else does, too. Can you imagine how pissed our parents would be if they have to bail both of us out of jail?” That’s asked of his brother.
Asher runs a hand through his blond hair, the stress he feels written across every feature.
He still holds onto my gun, but it’s no longer pointed at me; it aims at the ground, as if it’s unreasonably heavy for him.
I suppose it would be, if he’s never held onto a gun before tonight. It takes some getting used to.
Jess is slow to look at me, then back to the Thompson alphas. “Let me talk to him for a bit—alone.”
“What?” Asher shakes his head once. “No. You shouldn’t be alone with him. He’s tied up with sheets, Jess. What if he escapes?”
I cough and cause everyone’s eyes to dart to me when I say, “Yeah, he’s got a point there. For reference, I’ve gotten out of much worse situations than this.” I can’t help it, my gaze lingers on Jess when I add, “I’d never hurt her, though. You have my word on that.”
No, the idea of hurting her fills me with pain, sheer agony that constricts my heart and makes my blood run cold. If I’m totally honest here, I don’t even want to take her back and hand her over, because that means I’ll never see her again.
It means she’ll never be mine, and that is a fate worse than death.
Fuck. Is this omega my scent match? How can that be?
How can she drive me so crazy without trying, and yet she acts as though my presence barely registers?
It doesn’t make sense. I need to talk to Pax or Darius about this.
They both recently found their scent matches, so they’ll understand what I’m feeling and hopefully give me some kind of guidance.
But, at the same time, Darius is my boss, so he’ll probably tell me to bring her in ASAP regardless, and that means I’ll lose her.
Again, Jess says, “Let me talk to him. Go.”
Asher and Mason clearly don’t want to leave her alone with me, but they do.
They take their time in leaving the living room, and they keep tossing glances back at Jess, as if they would rather pull out their own teeth than go, but the omega doesn’t need to say it a third time. Soon enough, it’s just us.
And when she turns those big amber eyes to me? I feel the same thing I felt at the Omega Garden, like I’m falling, tumbling hard into the unknown. It’s the opposite of a bad feeling, however; my inner beast welcomes it, craves it, needs it as if she’s turned into the air I breathe.
Jess moves to sit on the coffee table in front of me, crossing her ankles as she rests her hands on her knees.
Her black and blue hair is down, a mess around her face, and she wears a baggy hoodie and some kind of stretchy pants that flare out around the ankles.
Bare feet, no socks. Even though she looks like she just rolled out of bed—or maybe she’s ready to go to bed—she’s perfect in every way. The epitome of beauty.
“Are you going to start, or should I?” I ask her with a smirk as I lean back on the couch. Not the most comfortable position, now that my wrists are tied behind my back, but I manage.
All she does is stare at me and pucker her lips, as if she’s lost in thought.
Oh, those lips. Those lips easily set my mind ablaze. I could do a lot of things to those lips. Kiss them, lick them, nibble at them, especially that bottom one. She’s tempting in a way I’ve never been tempted before.
Seriously, I’ve had to save omegas when they’re in the throes of their heat, and though it was always difficult, I was able to hold back. But Jess? If Jess started to writhe and moan and beg me for relief, I don’t know that I could. A man’s willpower could only be so strong.
“I’ll start, then,” I say, needing to speak, lest I spend too much time thinking about how weak she makes me feel. “The police will show up here sooner or later. If you want Asher and Mason to avoid any sort of repercussions for this, you’ll need to come with me.”
Jess shakes her head. “I can’t go with you. If you take me back—” Whatever she’s going to say, she stops herself by biting her bottom lip. Again, that freaking lip…
If she didn’t come up here with the Thompson alphas to mate with them, there must be another reason, a reason she doesn’t want to say.
“What’ll happen if I take you back?” I ask, needing to know more, needing to know the full truth. Runaway omegas are a dime a dozen, but I sense there’s more to this than a simple runaway. With the way she acted at the Omega Garden… it has to be related to her not wanting to match with anyone.
She folds her arms over her chest and looks away, and for a split second, she doesn’t look like the strong, confident, somewhat mean omega she was at the Omega Garden. Here and now, she only appears lost.
I want to help her. I can’t say I’ve ever wanted something more.
Whatever’s bothering her, whatever she’s trying to run from or avoid, I want to help her, to be her strength where she has none.
I only know what I was able to research about her before I tracked her down, but there’s still a whole world of her I’ve yet to discover.
I know she was in the car when her parents got into an accident ten or so years ago.
I know they died while she lived, but it was a hard, long recovery for her.
After that, her aunt and uncle moved in and became her guardians, and then a few years back, her uncle passed away, too, leaving her with her aunt.