Chapter 16
Hunter
When noon rolls around the day after Tess’s and my…
incident in the hot tub and I still haven’t seen her, it leaves me anxious.
I can’t help but worry that I overstepped somehow, because when I offered to help her, it was about her, and yet when she offered to touch me, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.
The memory of her small hands wrapped around my knot and the head of my cock resting in her mouth will be seared into my brain until long after I’m dead, to be sure.
I work through my anxiety by spending the morning in my other form; being on four legs always makes it easier for me to think, and if it means I’m farther away from the lodge and not constantly checking the stairs to see if Tess appears, all the better.
The snow under my paws is like a balm on my fevered brain, cooling the heat of the memories there.
It took every bit of my restraint not to ask for more from Tess, not to beg her to let me drag her up to my room and bury myself between her legs.
Hands, tongue, cock—I’m not even particularly picky about how.
I’m just finding that with every time I touch her, it only makes me want to touch her more.
And deep down, I know that’s dangerous. There’s a risk to keeping up what we’ve been doing, one that could end in the same heartache I’m more than familiar with, and yet… I can’t seem to stop.
I tell myself I could, if it came down to it. If Tess came to me and said she was all better, that she didn’t need my help anymore, I could put aside this aching want I seem to feel for her constantly and simply be her friend. But I know that the longer we keep this up…the less true that will be.
I’m plodding back toward the lodge when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky, deluding myself with platitudes about Tess not being the reason I’m heading back. That I’m not returning early only to check on her.
But that would be polite, right? I mean, after last night…wouldn’t it be gentlemanly to see how she’s feeling? What she’s thinking? I don’t know the protocol, and it’s starting to drive me up the wall.
My clothes are in a small bag tied to a tree just out of sight from the back deck, and I quickly change back into them before stomping through the snow toward the lodge.
I notice people piling out the back door as I approach—Tess’s brothers stepping outside, without Tess among them, I immediately note.
As I climb the stairs, I nod my head at Thomas, who does a double take, pausing what he was saying to Chase and Kyle as he notices me approaching. “Oh, hey, man.”
“Hey,” I answer.
“Settle something for us,” he goes on. “Who’s hotter, blondes or brunettes?”
I feel like this is a conversation I shouldn’t be having with the brothers of the woman I’ve been casually messing around with, but that doesn’t stop my mouth from opening to immediately answer, “Brunettes.”
“Told you,” Chase says smugly.
Kyle rolls his eyes. “I think both of you are idiots.”
“What about ‘blondes have more fun’?” Thomas points out.
“I think that only applies when they aren’t dealing with meatheads like you,” Kyle scoffs.
“You’re just still sore about Heather Jenkins,” Thomas says.
Kyle’s brow wrinkles. “Who?”
“That cheerleader from high school who called you a nerd,” Chase supplies.
Kyle, who is definitely not as beefy as his brothers, turns a slight shade of pink. “She didn’t call me a nerd.”
“She said you were too smart for someone like her,” Thomas reminds him.
“That’s code for nerd,” Chase adds.
I try to sneak past them, thinking that this conversation really isn’t for me, but Thomas stops me. “Hey, you coming to Fred’s tonight? Tess made a friend in town who invited all of us.”
“That would be Cat,” I tell him.
“Is she hot?” Chase asks.
My lips quirk. “She’s practically married.”
“Ugh, bummer,” Chase sighs. “This town’s too small. There are barely any women here.”
“You’d have better luck in Denver, I think,” I tell him.
Thomas nods eagerly. “We’re going there tomorrow. Boss is giving us the weekend off so we can go sow our wild oats.”
“And pick up supplies,” Kyle corrects.
Chase waggles his eyebrows. “Yeah, but if we find a little strange on the side…Know what I mean?”
“Not really, no,” I say.
Chase cocks his head. “You don’t have a girl?”
Don’t think about their sister. Don’t think about their sister.
“Not for a long time, no,” I answer. “My last serious relationship…It didn’t end well. Haven’t really had any desire to try to start over yet, I guess.”
“You know what they say about getting back on the horse,” Chase says.
Thomas nods with a shit-eating grin. “The horse you get on in this scenario being a hot—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Kyle groans. “Tess would have your balls if she heard you talking like that.”
Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t ask—
“Where is Tess, by the way?” I ask like an absolute jackass. “I haven’t seen her this morning.”
Thomas scratches at his neck. “Checked on her earlier. She said she had some dude to call. I can’t remember who.”
I feel my skin prickle, and I know that it’s none of my business, but suddenly I’m dying to know who that might have been. Surely there’s not someone back home she—
No. She wouldn’t let me touch her if she was already involved with someone. I know she’s not like that. She’s not like Chloe. She isn’t.
“You should come out tonight,” Thomas presses. “You don’t seem to get out much, dude.”
“I’m more of a homebody,” I tell him.
Thomas nods. “Yeah. Totally had theories that you were a vampire when I first met you.”
“What?” I can’t help it, I laugh. “Vampires aren’t real.”
“Dude, werewolves are real, why can’t vampires be?”
“First of all,” I say, chuckling, “ ‘werewolf’ isn’t really the proper term. Shifters can change at will. A werewolf can only change during the full moon. I would know.”
Thomas’s mouth forms an O shape. “Oh shit. Tess mentioned that.”
This gives me pause, wondering how much she’s told them. Surely if she’d informed them about what she was, she would have told me, right?
“She did?”
“Yeah, she said you were talking about accommodations,” Chase says.
“Dude,” Thomas chimes in, his face lighting up with excitement. “Can you show us? I’ve always wanted to see that.”
“You know I have to get naked for it, right?”
Kyle shoves Thomas’s shoulder. “You basically asked him to strip.”
Seeing a blush on the big man’s face is sort of hilarious.
“I didn’t think about that,” he mutters.
“Maybe some other time, yeah? I just got back in from a run, actually,” I tell him. “I have a few things to do.”
“Sure,” Thomas says with a bob of his head. “We’re out here waiting on a call from Dad. My phone gets shit service inside.”
This gives me pause. “Your dad?”
“Yeah. He’s calling to check in on the project.”
Despite it not really being my business, I can’t help but ask. “How is he? Tess told me a bit about his health.”
“He’s…okay,” Kyle says. “Or at least he pretends to be.” A sigh escapes him. “He doesn’t like worrying us.”
“Typical dad behavior,” I comment.
“Yeah,” Chase says. “It drives Tess bonkers. She likes to mother him.”
“They seem really close,” I point out.
Thomas laughs. “Oh, Tess has always been a daddy’s girl. I swear, sometimes I think she’s his favorite son.”
He doesn’t say it with malice, more like with fondness that comes from them all being so close. It makes my chest hurt faintly, remembering what having that was like.
“How did she end up the boss of this operation anyway? Is she the oldest?”
Thomas shakes his head. “Nah, I am. Then Kyle, then Tess, then Chase.”
“None of us really have a sense for business,” Chase tells me.
Kyle shrugs. “We’ve always been better at taking orders than giving them. It just kind of happened that way.”
“And it doesn’t feel weird? Working for your sister?”
“Nah, she’s a good boss,” Thomas tells me. “She’s got a great eye for that side of things.”
“That’s really cool of you guys to be so supportive,” I tell them. Deciding it’s best to extricate myself from the conversation before I say too much, I clap Thomas on the shoulder. “I’d better get inside. I have some paperwork to go over.”
“Sure, man. If you change your mind about tonight, we’re leaving at seven. We’re all going to pile into my truck.”
I can’t pretend that the thought of Tess in a bar with other men doesn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth, but I remind myself that it’s none of my business what she does.
She doesn’t belong to me. No matter what we’ve been doing.
Still, the surge of jealousy hits me so strongly that I almost cave right then and there.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell them.
“Cool,” Kyle answers with a grin. “Might be nice to have another guy there whose sole focus isn’t bedding the locals like these two.”
A chuckle nearly escapes me, and I’m gathering that Kyle is a lot more like Tess than he is his brothers.
“Oh, hey, Hunter…”
I turn back, finding Thomas looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“Yeah?”
He lowers his voice. “How do you feel about garlic?”
It takes everything in me not to burst out laughing, the seriousness of his expression making it even harder.
“You know, it’s always burned my throat. Never really could stand the stuff.”
Thomas’s eyes widen, and when I turn away to reach for the door, I swear I hear him whispering, “See? Are we sure he isn’t actually a—”
I leave them on the back deck, where I can already hear Kyle berating Thomas, and a quick sweep of the great room reveals it to be empty, no Tess in sight.
When I reach the front desk in the foyer, I glance at the stairs, feeling that same urge to go and check on her but unsure whether it would be weird or not.
I worry that she might feel weird after last night, and I worry that seeking her out might make it worse.
I tell myself that I should leave it in her hands as I settle on my stool behind the front desk, trying to distract myself with the bank statements I’ve been going through.
There’s plenty of stuff for me to do, and not thinking about a certain omega with big brown eyes and a mouth that literally haunts my dreams should be easy enough, given that.
Still doesn’t stop me from glancing at the top of the stairs every five minutes. I also tell myself that I should shut it down, try to put some distance between us when I’m not…helping her—otherwise I’m just setting myself up for heartache.
I glance at the stairs again.
God, I am so fucked.