Chapter 8
I camein my pants like a fucking teenager. Twice.
If I wasn’t so fucking attracted to my female, I would’ve been embarrassed.
But I was attracted to her.
Painfully so.
And I had to fight like hell to resist wrapping my fist around my cock and jerking off to the memory of the way she’d felt around my fingers.
My hands dug into the counter as I leaned against it, gritting my teeth against the need.
I wanted her.
Needed her.
But she was determined not to be mine.
She’d asked me to call August, so when I’d steadied myself enough, I went looking for the device. It took a few minutes, but I finally found it in a drawer. Ignoring the missed calls and messages from everyone else, I called him back.
“Hello?” He sounded much calmer than I felt, for once in our damn lives.
I wanted to get back to the time when I was the laid-back one.
“Hey.” I gritted my teeth against a surge of need to check on my mate.
She wanted space, clearly.
“You okay?”
“Peachy,” I ground out. “Miranda wants to know if your sense of smell went back to normal after your bond broke.”
There was a beat of silence. “No. Elodie’s scent was still everything to me. I could smell her emotions on my clothes when I was in prison.”
“Great.”
August gave me another moment of quiet.
I closed my eyes and let out a long breath before opening them again.
“How’s it going over there?” he finally asked.
“Badly.”
He waited.
I didn’t offer more information.
“Care to elaborate?” he finally asked.
“She’s hiding from me in the bathroom right now, if that tells you anything.”
August chuckled. “Yeah, that happens on day one.”
“It’s not day one.”
“Heat started less than twenty-four hours ago. You’re still in day one, Jas. Don’t sweat it; you’re supposed to be a mess on day one.”
“I suggested being a team. She thinks she has to muscle through all four weeks on her own,” I said. “What am I supposed to say to that? She thinks I’m a fucking problem. I solve problems. This is—it’s just—” I fought a snarl. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
“This isn’t what you want to hear, but she needs time. She’s not going to adjust to this in a day any more than you have.”
“We don’t have time, August.”
“Is she in the room?”
I hadn’t taken my eyes off the bathroom door, so I didn’t have to think about it. “No.”
“Then listen. No one survives heat without a mate bond. I survived it—and the connection between us was still too strong to walk away. This woman is your mate, Jasper. She just hasn’t accepted it yet. Give her time and space to accept it for a few days.”
“I can barely think straight. How am I supposed to stop myself from touching her?”
“You can’t stop yourself from touching her. Quit fighting it. She’ll be stubborn about it at first, but she needs your touch or she’s going to be in constant pain. Fighting heat is useless. If you want to resist it at all, you have to work with it.”
“I tried explaining that to her, but she won’t have it.”
“Elodie says she’ll explain it to Randa the next time they talk. For now, stop beating yourself up over losing control. No one is entirely sane during heat. Give it a few days and she’ll be just as crazy as you are.”
“Fine.”
There was a pause. “Elodie wants to know if she survived the dreams last night.”
“What dreams?”
“The demons in the prison give unmated humans in Mate Mountain sex dreams. I told you that.”
Shit.
I hadn’t even thought about it.
I hadn’t even been sane enough to think about it.
“She survived them. I’ll talk to her about it when she stops hiding from me.”
“There’s a good chance she won’t be able to sleep there,” August warned. “You might have to bring her back to Scale Ridge.”
The beast in me reared my head at the thought.
Not a chance in hell was I taking her back.
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Go easy on yourself, Jas.”
“Thanks.” I hung up before he could lecture me any more, then opened my messages.
There were a dozen from a number I didn’t recognize, but when I saw a recipe in the message, I knew exactly who it was from.
Scrolling through the messages revealed more recipes, and a text at the top.
Vi
DON’T LET MY SISTER STARVE, ASSHOLE
A harsh breath escaped me.
If we couldn’t fight heat, which seemed pretty damn likely, I was going to have to figure out a way to win over my mate’s twin sister.
Even though she happened to hate my younger brother.
Maybe we could find a way to bond over that.
Who was I kidding? I was the guy you called to fix the broken shit, not to make new friends.
I didn’t have the energy to learn new recipes at the moment, so I didn’t respond to Viola’s messages.
Then I started pacing the living room.
Staying sane with a door separating me from my female was nearly impossible.
I continued pacing until my instincts took over and had me storming toward the bathroom.
I couldn’t be away from her any longer.