Chapter 10 Kieran #3
The most recent text on his phone, from a number that wasn’t registered as a contact, was short and sweet.
How long are you going to ignore me? I know you can’t be that busy, pretty boy.
Narrowing my eyes, I peered at him over the top of the phone. “Who the hell calls you pretty boy?”
“Uh, no one?” He answered me incredulously. “You seriously think I’d let some guy call me that?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said defensively. I was pretty sure he would have let me call him that if I’d wanted to. But I guess he didn’t consider me some guy. “Maybe some kid you went to school with, trying to get your attention.”
“I don’t know anyone who would call me that,” he said. “But I guess it probably is just a stupid prank.”
“Have you answered any of them?”
“No.”
I started to say that maybe he should, maybe the person would end up revealing some information to show who they were, but before I could begin to theorize, another message came through.
Your little buddy is here. Why didn’t you come with her? I was hoping to get to see you.
The message seemed nonsensical to me, until I thought about it for more than a second.
“Hey, did I just get another text?” He asked, springing up from the table and walking around to read the screen over my shoulder.
“Is Dani at a party tonight?” I asked, ignoring his question. Jordy gave me a confused look.
“Yeah, why? Oh,” he realized. “This text is talking about her, I guess. She invited me, but I said I didn’t want to go. She ended up going with her boyfriend.”
“Why don’t you ask her if that asshole alpha from Kevin’s party is there, too?” I suggested, between my clenched teeth. My words seemed to shock him, like he’d never considered it.
“You mean Andrew?”
“If that’s the fucker who had his hands all over you, then yeah.”
“I…” He hesitated, looking confused and upset. My fingers twitched as I suppressed the urge to pull him into my arms and hold him against my chest. “I never gave him my number or anything, but… I guess he could have gotten my contact information off my paperwork for the youth center.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I growled out, rising from my chair. Jordy gripped onto my arm, looking alarmed.
“Wait! You don’t even know where he lives.”
“You think it’s going to be hard to figure out where there’s a fucking party going on tonight? I have Dani’s number too, you know,” I added caustically. I’d had enough of that bastard causing discomfort and unhappiness for the person I was supposed to protect from all of that.
“We don’t even know for sure it’s him,” he reasoned, not letting go of my arm even when I tried peeling him. He was like a beautiful little burr, clinging to me no matter what. “Just forget about it, Kieran. It’s not worth it.”
“It’s worth it to me.”
“No,” he argued, shaking his head. “I don’t want you getting in trouble with all the work stuff you have going on right now. And you’re supposed to go on that trip this weekend.”
“Ugh,” I groaned in frustration. “The fucking trip.” The last thing I wanted now was to leave for the weekend.
I had no doubt in my mind that creep had also swiped our address from Jordy’s contact info along with his phone number.
And our parents would be gone all day working, leaving him alone here.
“How’d you even know about that?” I hadn’t mentioned it yet to anyone but Barbie and Ritchie.
“I saw the post that guy tagged you in about bringing you out to do the tattoo,” he said, before frowning disapprovingly at me.
Like I wasn’t trying to protect him or something.
“The last thing you need right now is some kind of scandal like getting arrested or doing something crazy. And for no reason.”
“No reason!?” I snapped. “He’s fucking harassing you!”
“I can handle it!” He insisted. He opened his mouth to say something else, probably something as equally stupid, but Chester’s voice rang out from the living room.
“Everything okay in there, boys?” He asked, sounding a bit concerned. I guess we’d gotten a little loud. Probably mostly me.
“Everything’s fine!” Jordy answered back, with an annoyingly genuine-sounding little giggle in his voice. “Sorry if we got loud! We were just having kind of a… Heated debate,” he said.
I wasn’t the only one that Jordy played like a fiddle on a regular basis. And it had been like that between them since the day my mom had introduced Chester to me as her fiancé.
A memory of right after Jordy had presented as an omega flashed into my mind.
Chester had brought up the idea of separating our bedrooms, one of us moving downstairs.
Jordy had whined and cried about the idea, saying he didn’t want anything to change, and that had been the end of that.
As far as I knew, it’d never gotten brought up again.
“A heated debate about what?” My mom asked, sounding amused at our antics. If only she knew. I didn’t bother saying a word, knowing Jordy would confidently spout out a convincing lie.
“Just this dumb zombie show we watch,” he said. “The last episode ended on a cliffhanger and I totally think one of the characters is going to turn into a zombie, but Kieran thinks it’s just a red herring.”
It was sort of creepy how well he could do that.
“Oh!” My mom responded, still sounding fondly amused.
“We’ll take it upstairs,” he assured them. “Goodnight!”
They told us goodnight, and Jordy ushered me up the stairs, mostly against my will. Luckily I’d been taking bites of my food between sentences so I wouldn’t starve overnight.
With his own phone back in his hand, Jordy made a show of deleting the message that I was fully convinced was from that bastard Andrew, and blocking the number it had come from.
“See?” He said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “Everything’s fine now. No need to charge in and defend my honor.”
“Deleting the text doesn’t change the fact that he’s practically stalking you,” I answered flatly. “Maybe I should cancel my trip.”
“What? No!” Jordy insisted, looking horrified. “You’re finally being recognized for all your hard work! You’re not going to jeopardize your reputation over some moron sending me anonymous text messages.”
“And what are you going to do if he decides to stop by and pay you a visit?” I asked, resisting the urge to grit my teeth at his stubbornness. Part of me knew he was right, but… I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him alone and vulnerable to another alpha.
“We live in a house. There are doors with locks. It’s not a cave where he can just muscle in and club me over the head.”
What he was saying made sense, but it wasn’t enough for me.
Just the idea that he would be scared and by himself, even if he was safe, was too much for me.
I knew I wouldn’t even be able to focus on tattooing the client anyway.
I’d be checking my phone every five minutes to be sure he didn’t need me.
“I don’t know,” I finally said, after a long stretch of silence where my mind was concocting horrible scenarios of Jordy being in danger.
“You really worry about me that much?” He wondered, giving me that adoring, affectionate look again.
“Of course I do,” I said, somewhat begrudgingly.
It was weird, expressing all these feelings for him that I’d been hiding for so long.
“You’re…” You’re the most important person in my life.
That’s what I wanted to say, but knew that I couldn’t.
“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. ”
He took a step forward, closing the gap between us.
Laying his ear over my heart, he wrapped his arms around my torso, nuzzling into me.
His body fit against mine so perfectly, like we’d been created with the sole purpose of fitting together.
His sugary scent wafted up into my nose, flowing through my senses until the tension ebbed out from my muscles so I could relax.
“Jordy, we shouldn’t be doing this,” I said, but couldn’t make a move to push him off.
“I know that’s what you think,” he responded quietly, but only tightened his hold around me. “You’re just wrong. I don’t know what else to say.”
Closing my eyes, I exhaled a long breath before lowering my chin to press a kiss onto the top of his head. His hair was softer than silk against my lips, and sweetly fragrant. “You’re so damn stubborn,” I murmured, but without much heat in the statement.
“You’re the stubborn one,” he corrected me. “And there’s no way I’m letting you miss that trip and jeopardize your career. I don’t want you ruining your life for me.”
Couldn’t he see that was exactly how I felt about him, and what I was trying to protect him from?
“I…” Shaking my head, I raised my gaze up to the ceiling and groaned. “I don’t know what to do. If I go, my head’s going to be here the whole time anyway, and the tattoo’s probably going to end up looking like shit.”
Sighing, he shifted to hook his arms around my neck so he could stare up into my face. “I won’t go to the center on Saturday like I normally do. I’ll stay home.”
It was a nice offer, but it wasn’t enough for me.
I knew I was probably being paranoid, but I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling I had about that guy.
When I didn’t answer, obviously not convinced, Jordy raised up on his toes to peck a little kiss onto my lips.
It surprised me, ripping me out of my morbid thoughts.
“Just don’t cancel or do anything rash yet, okay? I’ll figure something out,” he promised me.
I tried to ignore how much his innocent little kiss had affected me, which I’m sure I failed miserably at.
It was too difficult pretending he wasn’t the most beautiful person on the planet, with the softest, prettiest lips and the shiniest hair and the smoothest skin.
And a body so fucking perfect, it’s like it was printed onto the back of my eyelids so it was all I could see every time I closed my eyes.
He was smart, sweet when he wanted to be, and incredibly thoughtful.
Someone I would never get bored with or get tired of being around.
He was everything anyone could ever want in a partner.
I’d known that for what felt like forever now, but I’d never anticipated having to actually reject advances from him.
Why the hell was someone like that so infatuated with someone like me?
“Okay,” I finally said, even though I wasn’t entirely sure there was a solution that would really fix the issue.
He blinked, the corner of his mouth perking up into a naughty little grin before he glanced down between our bodies. “Kieran…”
“Don’t,” I warned him, shifting my hips so my stiff cock wasn’t pressed against him. I watched him mentally fighting with himself on whether he wanted to argue with me or not.
“I could fix that for you,” he offered, sounding just a bit out of breath.
I swallowed, before clearing my throat. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
“So just let me,” he requested, biting down into his lower lip and giving me the sexiest, most pleading expression I’d ever witnessed outside of actual porn. “I just want to…”
“I know what you want,” I bit out, cupping him under the chin so he’d stop gazing down at where my cock was tenting out my pants. “I told you, that’s not happening.”
He pouted, poking his plump bottom lip out, but seemed to relent more easily this time than before. Maybe because he could sense the kind of mood I was in.
“Can I at least get a goodnight kiss?” He asked, and I scoffed.
“You think I’m falling for that again?”
“I won’t do anything,” he promised, but he was smirking a bit.
“You already got a kiss.”
“That doesn’t count because you didn’t kiss me back.”
“It’s just going to make it worse,” I warned him, furrowing my brows together. “For both of us.”
“Not for me,” he said softly, and the tiny note of pain in his voice made me want to jump off a cliff. “Getting anything from you is better than nothing.”
I groaned, squeezing my eyes closed. I hated myself for always giving in to him. But I felt like I would hate myself more for turning him away when he was looking and sounding so delicate and vulnerable.
“One kiss,” I said, giving his jaw a little warning squeeze. “Don’t misbehave and make me regret it.”
“I’ll be good,” he promised, before rising up on his toes again to press his lips onto mine.
Every time he kissed me, it was like my mouth was being coated in sugar, sweet candy melting onto my tongue.
Every touch and sensation was magnified, like all my senses had honed in to only process him.
The way his hands clutched at the back collar of my shirt, the way he leaned onto my chest for balance, and the little whimpers he let out against my mouth were being burned into my brain as vital details I could never forget.
By the time he pulled back from me, we were both panting.
“You’ll think about me tonight?” He wondered softly, still clutching my neck, so his breath fluttered out against my lips.
“Just like every other night,” I answered, wanting to lighten the intensity of the moment, which suddenly felt like it was crushing me.
“Okay,” he said, seeming to accept my answer, like he’d only be satisfied if my mind was plagued with thoughts of him.
If that was how he felt, then he had nothing to worry about.
“If you need me, you know where I’ll be,” he said with a note of humor in his voice, gesturing toward his bedroom door, before disappearing inside.
After closing my door, I collapsed onto my bed with a little groan, smashing my face into a pillow.
Somehow, between fantasies of forgetting about protecting Jordy and just letting myself fall into his perfect, sticky, seductive web and terrible ideas of what could happen to him over the weekend if I left on the trip, I managed to fall asleep.