Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RíO
A h, ah, ah, getting into a bit of a bind, aren’t you, Yoyo?
I knew that there was a dopey smile on my face, but I couldn’t get it to flatten. Nor could I completely ignore the familiar voice in my mind that steered me from trouble and dark places.
I took a pull from my straw, gulping down the Coke to chase away the saltiness of my fries. I squeezed my arm, pulling Ramona even closer to me. The lights inside the fast food restaurant were way too fucking bright for this time of night, so we were sitting at one of the tables outside instead. Cars stopped and started in the drive thru line, break lights painting Ramona and I with a ghostly wash of red.
“So, what was with the airhead act earlier, Princess?” I crunched on a fry and watched her face go sharp, but the little wrinkle between her brow showed her contemplating my question. Don’t get me wrong, submission in a… partner was exciting as fuck. Not that every shifter liked it, but my natural instincts lended very easily to pindowntakefuck . Didn’t mean that I wanted her to give in to me in that way, though.
I took another slurp of my Coke to give her time. See if she was gonna keep up this end of the deal to be honest with me. At least when it came to how we acted with each other. Not like I could promise total honestly about my past.
Ramona avoided my eyes, looking at the line of cars before us. “I… I don’t,” she made a little growl of frustration and clenched her eyes, “You said the movie was a date.”
I tried to loosen the moment, “Didn’t say it was explicitly. But go ahead.” And, yeah, I was a bit of a hypocritical asshole.
Ramona munched on a handful of fries like they’d offended her personally. “I don’t know how to act on a date, okay?” She shrugged, but her lashes fluttered with nervousness as she continued to avoid my gaze. “Thought that’s what you’d want. That’s what I’ve observed men like, anyway.”
As sad and fucked up as that was, her words made me smile because, in a roundabout way, she’d let it slip that she wanted to please me. “Is that what your Pack Leader brother expects of his mate?”
She pursed her soft lips for a second, enough to distract me with the thought of them on mine again. “No. But. Sylvie isn’t… like me. She’s sweet and caring. I’ve been called a bitch enough to know that I don’t come off well sometimes. Guess I get that from my mom. And—” she sighed and picked her burger back up “—she’s different when my dad’s around.”
“Hm, okay, I get it now, Princess.” She’d initially grumbled about me sitting on the same bench as her instead of across or adjacent, but when I put my arm around her shoulders, she cuddled up to me so that our sides molded together. It was gross to eat so close to someone, she’d said, but now she was munching and slurping just fine. A small purr started involuntarily in my chest, and I let it be, offering her the reassurance of how I felt. Seemed like I couldn’t stop offering her things. “I hope you know now that I don’t want you to be any way but yourself. Prickly and all.” She grumbled but didn’t pull away, and I took that as her agreement that I was right.
“Hey,” she took another bite of french fry and tilted her head up to face me, “what’s with the glasses?” For emphasis, she tapped the corner of the frames I’d had since I was fifteen.
I set my drink back down on the table and furrowed my brows at her. “Who knew you were so nosy, Princess.” She didn’t take the bait or back off, and maybe I hadn’t expected her to.
Give me credit for stalling. I rubbed my nose, jostling the frames a little while I relieved the pressure there. Mostly, I wore the contact lenses, only taking them out when I was turning in for the night in my human form. As soon as I’d tucked Ramona into my bed—because that’s apparently what I did now—I’d taken them out to give my eyes a break and gotten under the covers with her. Blame the fear of night terrors for my sitting up twenty minutes later with my sketchbook. Certainly not the churning in my chest and stomach that brought on a torrent of questions about what the hell I was doing.
I sighed, but it really wasn’t a hardship to give her more, “I got injured as a kid. Fucked up my eyesight.” Her lips turned down in understanding, but the pity was missing, just like I’d hoped. That would surely crop up if I told her how I’d gotten hurt. Who’d ordered it and who’d carried it out. My back itched and my chest constricted until I took a deep breath, forcing them both to clear.
Ramona continued studying me with those honey eyes, and I had the dumbass thought that I would explain anything to her if she asked. “Even when you shift?”
Now, Yoyo, you never reveal your weak— “Yeah.”
She took a slurp of her Sprite, mapping the shape of my glasses with her eyes. “Is that hard?”
I shrugged, nudging her head at the same time and earning myself a beautiful scowl. “Got used to it.” It was disorienting and depressing as fuck when it’d first happened. When the rest of my body healed but it felt like I’d almost lost a limb. Shifters already had heightened senses, and to have my sight damaged enough to be weaker than the average human’s was a fucking ego hit, too.
But, I learned to manage, other senses got worked harder to compensate. “I like the glasses. Makes you look cute.” My head jerked back at Ramona’s deadpan assessment. Well, there was that, too.
“Cute?” She nodded, and I shook my head. “Gotta say, Princess, ever since I started getting tatted and pierced, nobody but my mom ever calls me cute.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up the last half of her burger. “Just accept the damn compliment.” A grin stretched across my face, only to grow as I watched Ramona take a giant bite, nearly finishing her double cheeseburger altogether. Her cheeks were adorably round as she began to chew, but when I grabbed her jaw, she gave surprised and indignant mumbles before and after I planted a kiss on her puckered lips.
I licked a little ketchup off the corner of her mouth, letting the flavor swirl around my tongue while I waited for Ramona to furiously swallow. She stared daggers at me. “That’s so gross.”
I leaned in for another kiss, and as much game as she liked to talk, she melted for me almost immediately. Sure, some shifters could be persnickety, but I was not one of ‘em. I gladly licked my way into Ramona’s mouth, fighting with and forcing her tongue into submission while tasting the meal she’d been eating. Savory and salty and sour from her soda but sweet in the way she yielded to me. Her hands crumpled the fabric of my t-shirt, similar to the way she’d clung to me when I slid into her for the first time.
Her first time. I still couldn’t believe that.
What more did I need to see or experience with her to know that I was in deep, deep shit? Because every moment I spent with her was trying to convince me that she was mine.
A car honked its horn at us, making her jump in my arms, and I flipped them off while kissing and licking down her cheek and the side of her neck.
“Get a room!” the asshole shouted from their rolled-down window.
I had to remind myself to take a breath, otherwise I’d be crashing through their window, claws and fangs drawn. I was fully intending to curse the motherfucker out—really, they were stuck with cars in front of and behind them, so it was stupid to pick a fight in the parking lot. But Ramona beat me to it and leaned viciously over the table.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself you piece of shit? Sit and wait for your food and shut the fuck up .” She didn’t yell, but her words rang with a cold promise to retaliate.
The guy sputtered, surprised at her reaction, but the drive-thru line moved, saving him from having to say anything. I, on the other hand, was now trying to keep myself from blurting something really stupid like, ‘be my mate.’
Instead, I watched in awe as she smoothed her features, erasing them with an expertise that was at the same time arousing and unsettling. If I didn’t clock the flush on the tops of her cheeks, I could’ve almost forgotten she’d said anything.
Ramona angled her body toward me again, “What?”
She pulled at her sleeves yet again, a tick that revealed the limit of her collected facade. We’d both kept our shirts on earlier, so I hadn’t thought anything of it, but for all the times I’d appreciated those mile-long legs, I’d never seen her arms bare.
I ran a finger along her forearm and catalogued the flinch she tried to stifle while I did it. Interesting.
Her shoulders wilted a bit, like fearful acceptance of what was coming, and I swallowed the question that was bubbling in my mind. In its place, I scooted closer until she was where she belonged, plastered against me, and asked, “You wanna wait for that fucker to pull around and watch me kick the shit out of him for you?”
She chuckled through an exhale, releasing the hesitance that’d been creeping up and straightening her spine. Rolling her eyes, she took another slurp of her soda. “You’d commit assault for a girl you barely know? Assuming you win the fight in the first place.”
How was it that I wasn’t deflated in the least when she insulted me? I leaned into her ear, brushing the shell with my lips. “Don’t let the glasses fool you, Princess. If I barely know you, you barely know me and the things I’ve done. If you want, I could crack open his skull, sever his spine, and gift you his brain before you finish that Sprite of yours.” I feathered a kiss to punctuate my threat. I’d done worse for far less, and maybe it was better she realized a taste of who she’d let inside her. Even if she thought it was a joke.
Going along with this whole theme of surprises, though, was the shudder and lust pouring off of her. It was one of the easiest things to identify with scent, and Ramona’s was like the richness of grapefruit that’d been reduced to a syrup I wanted to lap up completely.
I kept her pinned to me, let the heat between us fog up my glasses, “You like that? You smell like you want me inside of you again, Princess.” My fingers snaked their way between her legs that were slightly parted. I didn’t press on her clit, where I could already sense her heart beating, but high enough on her inner thigh to make her squirm. Her cheek brushed mine, pressing into it while she shifted in her seat to make my hand connect to where she wanted. “You like to spit a lot of insults, but I know you’re already a slut for me. Aren’t you.”
She retracted, leaning her face away from mine but not enough to relieve the pressure of my fingers. Those honey eyes tried so hard to fake like they were freezing me out, but I knew her game, now. “If I’m a slut, then you’re a stupid fuckboy?—”
My teeth sinking into her lip stopped her short on a yelp, and I licked away the sting and taste of blood I’d caused. “You can do better than that, Princess. The way you cling to me when I’m fucking you is evidence enough that you’re my slut.”
A slender but strong touch wrapped around the base of my throat and forced me back, putting breathing room between us. Enough for me to take in the frazzled widening of her pupils, the irritated sneer of her swollen lips. “Fuck you,” the words were lacking heat or ice, and I smiled. Ramona swallowed, lashes fluttering before she whispered, almost tenderly, “What’s your favorite color?”
Like a record scratch, a hidden flavor of a lollypop, she switched so fast on me to reveal an almost… shyness.
When I was a boy, my mother used to discourage me from my tendency to maintain unflinching eye contact, saying that it was rude, that it made people uncomfortable. That it reminded her of my sister.
Sure, we both wanted to know, to see inside past all the bullshit, but where Mara wanted to twist and distort it to eviscerate, I wanted to understand. To learn. And what I’d learned so far about my princess was that she was a symphony of dichotomies. Willing to rip a stranger’s head off for shouting out a window, turned on by the prospect of me killing said stranger, but timidly sweet when I had my arms around her. She’d beg me to fuck her harder but look back at me now with the liquid gold stare and ask me one of the most innocent questions I’d probably been asked in my entire life.
“Red. Yours?”
Her tongue swiped against the last bit of blood that welled where I’d bitten her. “Black.”
Minutes passed between us, the muted bumping of people’s car speakers vibrating against the relaxing air around us. It wasn’t churning with sexual tension anymore, my hand on her thigh a still point of contact that now felt softer and more intimate. Hers on my throat flattened into a caress at the top of my chest where that string pulling me toward her was wound even tighter.
“You spending the night with me, Ramona?”
An adorable little wrinkle formed between her eyes that dropped to that space between us, and I gave her time, watching her mind work and turn over my question that I didn’t want to admit to either of us was a request.
If she said no, that’d be fine. We’d throw away our trash, and I’d give her a ride home on my bike so that I could feel her arms wrapped around me. And then I’d go home alone, sleep in my bed alone and have the space to remember why this couldn’t fucking work. I was on the run, would be for the rest of my life that was barely one to begin with.
As much as I relished the idea of bringing her into my darkness, just for a little bit, I already liked her too much to do it.
“Okay,” she said, firmly, and I cursed myself while I smiled and led her back to my apartment.