Chapter Five
Telling Anna she was already quitting was harder than Kit had thought it would be.
Tonight had been a beautiful distraction from her life.
She’d felt right at home in The Mark. It was so different than any bar she’d worked in before, and the people were so easy to talk to.
It felt as if she’d known them longer, and it was just a night full of moments.
Smiles exchanged like currency, the thank-yous that came so easily from happy customers, the good vibes in that place…
Some places she’d worked had been full of rude people and bad mojo. Her wolf was sensitive to environments like that, but The Mark? The Mark was a good place to be.
The elevator in her hotel dinged as she reached the tenth floor. Kit turned to the right, looking for room ten-ten, but someone was leaning against the door there.
“Bridger?” she asked softly.
He sat there with his knees bent, his forearms resting against them, staring at the wall in front of him. “I fucked up,” he murmured without looking at her.
Kit checked behind her to make sure no one else was coming down the other side of the hallway.
Slowly, she came to stand across from him and leaned her shoulder blades against the wall.
He lifted dark brown eyes to hers. His wolf wasn’t ramped up anymore.
There was such a raw, vulnerable look in his eyes that tugged at her heart.
“We just have to sign some paperwork. The matchmaker says we can’t do it online, so we have to print it out and then send it back with actual signatures, and we have to do it in front of a notary, so they can witness it.”
Her heart fell, and she dropped her gaze to his boots.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?” she asked without meeting his eyes.
“You wither when I mention ending our pairing. Why?”
She shrugged.
“I want to know,” he pressed her.
“Why?”
“Because when you do that, it makes me feel…feel…”
“Feel what?” she asked.
It was his turn to shrug now. “It just makes me feel.”
“I don’t know why I wither,” she whispered trying to search for an answer to his question. “I guess I feel like a failure.” She pursed her lips and shifted her weight, held her purse against her stomach like a shield. “I had a prospect in the McIver Pack. His name is Seth. He’s Second.”
“He wants you?” Bridger asked.
She nodded.
“But you don’t want him?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
She shook her head again, denying him intimate information about her Pack.
“Please.” There was something almost desperate in his tone now.
She inhaled deeply. “One of the females in the Pack…well she got hit by him. It happened two years ago, and as far as I know it was an isolated incident, but it made me not want to be around him. They had only been dating for a couple weeks. He was fast to react physically and every time I’m around him, I just get this…
this…sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
My wolf doesn’t like him. My hackles are up if I think he’s going to touch me. ”
“Does he? Does he touch you?”
She nodded. “He’s kissed me, and he looks for excuses to touch me when we are around each other. I’ve told him I’m not comfortable but he’s not the type of guy to care about that kind of stuff.”
Bridger’s eyes were lightening to a soft whiskey brown. He cleared his throat. “So that’s why you did the matchmaking?”
“Partly. I really tried to meet someone naturally. I really did. I did all the dating apps and said yes to dates with men at restaurants and coffee shops. I even dated a couple humans. I tried to be what men wanted or needed, or I don’t know.
I tried to be the perfect match, but I always fell short.
And then Seth came along and getting paired felt more urgent.
I think he will convince me soon, and I will become pliable, and I will try to be the perfect match for him, and I think I will lose everything I love about myself if I do that.
It’s hard to leave the McIver Pack. There has to be a good reason or they won’t release you.
They really try to keep their numbers up, and with females especially.
They pride themselves on how many they have.
The matchmaking was my excuse to leave. The second you…
errr who I thought was you paid attention to me, it felt like freedom.
I started planning my escape. I didn’t even care where you lived.
I just didn’t want to be around Seth anymore. ”
“When he kissed you, what did you feel?” Bridger asked. His voice was getting growly.
“I felt dread,” she answered honestly.
His eyes darkened. “And what did you feel when you kissed me tonight?”
“Oh no. You aren’t playing fair.”
“I’m not playing at all. I’m asking questions.”
“And I’m answering questions, but do you know what I’ve been doing for the last three months?”
“Hmm?”
“Answering your questions.”
“Not mine. Vic and Lyric’s.”
“But it’s unbalanced.”
Bridger leaned his head back against the door of room 1010. “What do you want from me?”
“An equal exchange, so I don’t feel as if I give everything and you give nothing.”
“Mmm.” He didn’t look happy. “What do you want to know?”
“How long ago did your mate die?”
Bridger stood smoothly and tipped his hat slightly. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Rothchild.”
“Was it recently?” she asked as he began to walk away. “I want to know how big the hurt still is.”
“As big as it can be,” he growled.
“How long?”
He rounded on her and now his eyes were gold again. “What is this?”
“An equal exchange.”
“I ask how you felt when you kissed me and you ask about Amelia? Doesn’t seem fair to me.”
“No, you asked me about the kiss, and you asked me about my Pack, and Seth, and how that kiss felt. I’m sorry,” she said, feeling defeated as he began walking away again. “I don’t understand loss like that. I’m overstepping.”
He rested his shoulder on the wall, facing away from her. “Ten years.”
“Ten years,” she whispered. She’d thought it had been more recent. “And you…you never paired up again?”
“Nor will I. A man like me doesn’t get that lucky twice. Her shoes are too big to fill. I’m good until the end just how I’m going.”
“You aren’t lonely?”
He turned, giving her his profile, and parted his lips to say something but seemed to change his mind. He pushed off the wall and stood there, taking up the entire hallway with his presence. “Tonight was the first time I’ve kissed a woman since…you know.”
A frown took Kit’s face. “You haven’t fucked a woman in ten years?”
He ducked his gaze to the carpet and back to her. “I didn’t say that.”
“But…you said you haven’t kissed a woman.”
“You don’t have to kiss to fuck,” Bridger told her.
Ooooh. A sudden vision of him railing some woman from behind consumed her mind, and she flinched.
“Sometimes it was nice to get out of my own head for a little while,” he admitted softly. “I’m still a man. I’m still part animal. I still have the drive to fuck. I just don’t want it to mean anything ever again.”
His words stung her heart. That was loneliness, and it was the bone-deep kind. Kissing was intimacy to him, and he had avoided it for all this time until Kit came along.
But she remembered the way he’d kissed her back. It was like fire meeting gasoline.
“Alive,” she said low.
“What?”
She inhaled deeply and straightened her spine, met his eyes as she said, “You asked me what kissing you felt like. I felt alive. I felt excited. My body liked it. I craved more. It felt naughty because you are a stranger. If you would’ve asked me for more, I would’ve done filthy things with you in the back seat of your truck.
I replayed the kiss in my head for the rest of my shift.
I liked the taste of you, and the way your hands were rough on me.
I liked feeling wanted. So.” She swallowed hard. “That’s what it felt like to me.”
He lowered his chin, nodding and she could see him run his tongue over his teeth as he thought. Those molten gold eyes slid back up to her, and she could see it there in his gaze—desire.
A thrill of excitement worked through her stomach, and Kit clenched her fists around the strap of her purse. Without another word, she pulled the hotel key out and tapped it against the handle to unlock, then pushed the door open. She waited for a three-count, then slowly began closing the door.
Bridger caught it, and the smile that stretched across Kit’s face felt so good.
She let her hand fall away from the door and rolled her eyes closed as his hand went gently to her waist. He pushed her inside and let the door swing closed behind them.
It was dark in the room, and she thought he might leave it that way, but he didn’t.
He reached over and hit the light switch, then turned her slowly in his hands.
He took the strap of her purse and guided it off her arm, then let it slip to the ground.
He removed his hat and set it on the table by the door, then peeled that black t-shirt over his head and let it slip from his fingers.
He was every bit as fit as she’d guessed he was under that shirt.
He had a six pack, and veins that traveled down his hips and into the top of his jeans.
His pecs were perfection, and the line between them was chiseled.
His shoulders were wide and layered with muscle, and on both biceps were veins. God, she was such a vein lover.
He wore a simple white gold chain around his neck. His Adam’s apple moved as he waited for her to finish studying his physique.
“I like the way you look,” she whispered before she could stop herself. He wouldn’t feel the same about her, and a wave of insecurity took her. It was her turn to take her shirt off, but he’d been vocal that she wasn’t attractive to him.
He reached forward and grabbed her hand and pulled it to the seam of his pants. He pressed her palm against his huge, hard-as-stone cock. “Don’t,” he murmured, as if he could tell she was beating herself up.