Chapter 54
CONNOR
My girl is running.
It’s torment to be standing here surrounded by people—admittedly, they’re good people, I’ve got nothing against them—who simply want a moment of my time and are contributing to all the causes tonight’s gala is in support of. But it’s agonizing, nonetheless.
Now I’ve had to stand by and not only watch some shit-for-brains shmoozer ask her to dance, but something clearly upset her. Wren is racing away, and every muscle in me tenses.
The prick she was with doesn’t blink, simply brushes the front of his jacket before wandering off to the bar, where he starts mingling with other guests.
I’m torn between whether to go after him, which would be the fastest way to blow everything up, or whether to chase after her to make sure she’s alright, which could also end in fucking everything up for us.
But it’s only a few seconds later that I see Ace discreetly follow in her wake.
Well, shit. If he’s going, then I’m certainly not going to stand around on ceremony.
I quickly excuse myself from the crowd, mumbling some bullshit about needing to check in with a sponsor. The entire time, my brain is spinning.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Pulling out my phone, I’m trying to do the world’s most casual stroll with one hand in a pocket, one eye on the room, and one eye on the screen in front of me.
Brennan is nowhere to be fucking seen. I spotted him earlier, but right now, I can’t pick him out among the crowd.
It could be that I’m not paying close enough attention, but I can’t see Murphy either, so this is gonna have to be what it’ll be.
I send a quick text to Brennan.
Me:
Your birdie is on the move. Headed south.
Fucking hell.
My eyes follow the back of Ace’s head, tracking his every movement, and to my relief, he’s hot on her heels, even if it feels like I’m too far away. I want to be able to teleport the hell across this room in order to follow after her through a door at the far end of the crowd.
As I suck in a deep breath, it takes everything in me to forcibly slow my long strides.
No way can I be seen sprinting determinedly outta here like I’m making for the try line, it’ll draw too much attention.
The curse of being the superstar fullback that everyone says I am, and the last thing I need is to be whipping up rumors around why a rugby player like me is sneaking away, or more to the point, stirring up speculation about who I’m sneaking away with.
For once, luck is apparently on my side.
When I linger close to the door, hovering with my phone in hand and shoulders slouched against the wall, a loud commotion erupts at the edge of the dance floor.
An entire tray of champagne flutes hits the deck, and a server stands in shock as guests dive out of the way amid shrieks of surprise and chaotic chatter.
Every eye in the room is on the cacophony unfolding, and I don’t waste a second.
I do my best to slip through the heavy wooden doors undetected, only to find Ace standing on the other side, hovering in the shadows.
He’s out of direct line of sight, but he has his phone in one hand and the other palm wrapped around the back of his neck.
When I feed my shoulders through the smallest gap possible, light and noise bursts in momentarily, causing his head to whip up.
His expression goes through a rapid-fire sequence of stern get the fuck out, to a little wide-eyed, before visibly softening. “Okay. Good. It’s you. I was just texting…” He grimaces.
Shutting the door firmly behind me, I blow out a breath. Holy hell.
“Where is she?” I dip my chin, acknowledging his thank fuck expression with a mirrored version of that same look plastered on my own face.
She’s picked a good bolt hole at least, I realize, taking in where we are. Wren has run straight into the library, whether she intended to do so or not.
“Over that way.” He jerks his head in the direction of long, high-stacked shelves and we take off, shoulder to shoulder, in search of Wren.
I’m guessing, well, hoping, that the whole place is disarmed.
Either that, or there’s a silent alert routing to an office and a wall full of black-and-white, grainy camera footage somewhere.
Better keep our fingers crossed there isn’t a team of overzealous campus security guards preparing to descend at any moment and escort us out of here.
The place is deserted; nothing but heavy shadows, only the faintest hum of music and laughter if you listen hard enough.
Surrounded by the stillness and distinct air of archival glue and aged paper, we disappear into the deeper stacks.
The outside world becomes more muffled and muted the farther we weave our way among the bookshelves.
“Bambi?” I take the risk of calling out to her softly.
I suppose this is good. She disappeared into the depths of the library. It’ll buy us a little bit of time to react and make a plan if anyone comes in here.
Her sniffle is thinly disguised, even though I can tell she’s trying not to give it away. “Hey. I’m—I’m back here,” she replies in a small voice.
“Are you alright?” My strides lengthen, rushing to her, and my girl is in my arms within a second. I bundle Wren against me and take a much-needed inhale of her hair, burying my nose into her sweet, peachy scent.
“I needed to get some air. But I ended up here instead.” She sighs into the front of my suit. “Maybe I just needed peace and quiet.”
This is undoubtedly the type of situation where it’s public enough that I have to keep in mind we don’t have as long as I would like. However, trying to slip out of here without being noticed isn’t going to be a simple feat, either.
“That guy had his hands on you,” I growl into her hair. “He upset you, didn’t he?”
“What did the bastard say?” Ace appears in my periphery. His big arms are folded across his chest, murderous intent glowing in his hazel eyes.
Another of those goddamn teary sniffles comes from Wren, and I’m ready to go lay that motherfucker out. She shakes her head, as if she can read my thoughts. “No… he isn’t worth wasting any breath on. I don’t want to think about men like that.”
“What did he do?” The muscle in the side of my jaw tightens.
“Nothing.” She draws back and gazes up at me, lashes a little damp.
“Just said some shit about Omegas. Same old crap, different Beta mouthpiece. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before…
I guess I’m just extra sensitive with all this pre-heat bullshit inside me going on.
My hormones are out of whack, and under normal circumstances, I’d laugh it off.
But for whatever reason, tonight, it got to me. ”
“I’ll fucking get to him.” The possessive side of me rears up, ready to charge back in there in order to take him down in the type of bone-crunching tackle he’ll struggle to walk away from.
Every single cell in me is raging with the type of surging, heated demand I’m so unfamiliar with outside of going hard for my team on the rugby field.
To protect.
To fight.
To defend.
And then, there’s the scent match side of me. The primal creature who simply wants to knot the fuck out of my girl, to take care of her, to cover her in my cum until it’s smeared over every inch of her smooth skin. But logic tells me we can’t do that here and that I need to calm the fuck down.
Wren makes a whimpering sort of noise in the back of her throat. “I hate how this feels.” She shakes out her hands. “I need to feel something else. I need to feel…”
“I’m here. Whatever you need.” I cup her face with both palms and dip my head to brush my lips against hers. To give that silent reassurance that I’m in this with her. Always.
As the wetness from her lips meets mine, my eyes drift to Ace.
He stands there stoically, watching the two of us kiss.
Being so close to him, while sharing an intimate moment with Wren, all that tension inside my chest builds and fucking builds.
As much as I try to keep that dam sealed and the cracks plugged, right now, it feels impossible to hold back the torrent of emotion where the two of them are concerned.
Especially when his eyes are on me with such ferocity.
I pull back enough so that I can murmur against her mouth, but my attention stays locked on him. “You need taking care of, Bambi.”
The unspoken invitation is there. Ace can either choose to be part of this, or he can walk the hell away right now.
I’ve never hooked up with anyone in front of him before, never wanted to even glance at someone else when I’m in the same room as Ace, and yet it doesn’t feel wrong to be with Wren around him.
It just feels fucking confusing, because I want him to step up and be the one to make the decision to be part of it, too.
Especially when I know that he and Wren… there’s something that affects her where he’s concerned. Even if she doesn’t realize it or understand it herself.
“We shouldn’t… not here…” she hums, and even though those words leave her lips, breath gusting shakily against my mouth, it’s without any conviction. My girl means the opposite and is being too good to demand what she craves.
“Are you in another heat spike?” I ask, even though I already know the answer when I brush my thumbs over the apples of her cheeks.
That day we ended up falling together in the kitchen, when lust and desire took over her senses, she was roasting hot.
Tonight, she feels warm, but in a deliciously sensual, pliant, and calm sort of way.
“Not a spike.” Her chest rises and falls faster, hands clenching then unclenching over and over in the lapels of my jacket. “This is… not like that at all.”
Wren has a wariness in her eyes when she looks over her shoulder at Ace.
I can’t understand what it means, but I’m suddenly hit with a wave of…
something. Not jealousy, but more of an awareness that the look she’s giving him isn’t the type of look to give someone who is just her brother’s best friend.