Chapter 15
TRAVIS
Rylee won’t stop looking at me. She has a smug, satisfied grin on her face, and I raise an eyebrow when I catch her staring at me for the third time.
“Yes?” I ask, wiping down the bar counter.
“How’s Blair doing?” she asks.
“If you want to ask something, just ask it.”
“You guys seemed chatty last night,” she says knowingly.
“Hmm.”
Chatty wouldn’t be the word I would use. Heartbreaking, awkward moments with ill-timed confessions, sure.
A lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Including not being able to say goodbye to her this morning.
I slept through her departure and only found out afterward that Ryland and Rowan took her home.
I didn’t say goodbye to my scent match.
I had hoped for so damn long that it was her—and it was.
She is my scent match.
“You’re happier, too,” Rylee adds. “Like someone flipped a switch in you.”
“Am I?”
Happy doesn’t begin to describe it.
I found her. She’s the one.
My instincts were correct.
I was fucking right.
“Hey, sorry I’m late!” a voice calls out, and I’d recognize that sweet sound anywhere.
Blair walks in through the front doors to the bar, and it is like a switch has flipped in me.
She’s all I can smell; all I can see.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
I grip the cleaning cloth and clench my jaw, nodding subtly at her. “Hey, you.”
She’s in the shortest black skirt I’ve ever seen her wear—one of my favorites by far.
The kind I fantasized about when I wrapped my hand around my cock late at night, shamefully touching myself to the thought of her, back when she was just a friend.
Her corset top shows off her cleavage beautifully, and gold glitter shimmers across her collarbones and the top of her chest. Her hair falls in golden waves around her, and dark liner rims her expressive eyes.
She looks like a goddess.
And she’s in those lace-up black boots that match her skirt.
All the blood rushes to my cock, and I think I might combust.
My scent match is in front of me, dressed in my favorite outfit.
I’m not going to last this shift.
“Hey, Blair,” Rylee says easily, looking at me knowingly. “Good to see you. You’re only like, two minutes late. I’m sure Travis doesn’t mind.”
I roll my eyes and go back to polishing glasses, holding on to the last bit of my self-control.
“Yeah, well, I hate being late,” she murmurs. “But we got caught up with some kitten wrangling, then Piper spilled a can of cat milk everywhere.”
I shrug, trying to be nonchalant and not act like my dick is about to explode through my jeans. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
She smiles.
It’s a true, wide smile, full of joy. Her eyes even crinkle, and it makes my breath catch.
She’s so beautiful it’s ridiculous.
“I’ve got to set up for tonight,” Rylee says. “Talk to you two later.”
“Just us tonight?” Blair asks as she glances at the clipboard that hangs on the back of the bar. “Some more call outs?”
“Just us,” I reply.
When I saw that it was just her and me tonight, I almost jumped for joy like an obsessed teenage boy.
I have her to myself.
“Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to you earlier,” she murmurs, grabbing a glass from me. She picks up the other rag on the counter and begins to polish. “You were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s fine,” I grumble.
“No, it’s not,” she says, raising on eyebrow.
But that soft, playful look is still on her face, and it’s hard to stay frustrated.
I was pissed when I woke up this morning with a stiff neck and Ash purring loudly on my chest. Blair was nowhere to be found, but her scent was all over Ryland and Rowan.
When they told me they had dropped her off at her apartment, I was sick with jealousy.
Rowan has spent all day looking like he’s won the goddamn lottery, and Ryland has a goofy smile that hasn’t left his face.
My packmates are pleased, and that’s something.
“As long as you got home safe, that’s what matters,” I tell her.
“Thank you for last night,” she adds. “For giving me a place to stay and not judging me after what I told you.”
“You always have a place to stay with us. You’re always welcome,” I tell her.
She huffs. “Even if I knock over your trash cans again?”
“Knock ‘em all over, sweetheart.”
The pet name slips from my mouth, and her scent sweetens.
My inner Alpha rumbles in delight.
“I usually don’t run away from circumstances,” she adds quietly. She turns her back to me as she polishes the glasses, and I catch the way her shoulders hunch slightly. “That’s not who I am. I don’t run from things. I face them head-on. I don’t like that you saw me like that, Travis. I was weak.”
Her? Weak?
“You are not weak,” I growl, and she stiffens. She still won’t look at me, but she nods curtly. “You’re the strongest damn person I know. I admit a bunch of shit to you in the middle of the night, and you drop everything to help the cats. That’s not weakness.”
She turns back to me, her eyes slightly misty. “Yeah,” she croaks. “If you say so.”
“You want to talk about weakness? I’m the one that didn’t tell you about my packmates. I could say I did it because I didn’t want to overwhelm you, but I was scared as hell to.”
She furrows her brow. “Of what?”
I swallow. I don’t want to tell her this part. I’d rather keep it in for the rest of my life than admit what a coward I’d been.
“Ryland thought you wanted nothing to do with him. And if that were true and you found out he was my packmate, I thought you wouldn’t speak to me again.”
It’s part of why I wanted Rowan to stay away from her, too.
We had decided to leave the decision up to Blair if she wanted to reach out to Ryland, but I was selfishly able to still be around her.
Only Ryland and Rowan would suffer because of it.
She shakes her head. “You’re an idiot,” she says, surprising me.
“Wait. What?”
“You should have told me about Ryland, you’re right,” she says. “Also, you shouldn’t have told Rowan to stay away from me.”
I nod, chastised. “Yeah.”
“And I wouldn’t have stopped speaking to you. You’re my…we were friends first,” she says.
“But you avoided Ryland,” I say, confused.
“Yeah, because I was scared. I wasn’t expecting to find my—” she looks around quickly, making sure no one is listening. “I wasn’t expecting to find Ryland, or Rowan, or even you this fast. So, yeah. We both messed up.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nods. “Me too. But I think after last night, all is forgiven.” Her eyes soften. “It’s also the first time I’ve ever been happy for shitty weather.” She sighs deeply, and I’m reminded of her past.
I hate that she went through that nightmare. When I see the distant look in her eyes, I want to pull her out of those memories.
She blames herself for something she couldn’t have controlled.
I know what that’s like, though.
To lose someone that’s important to you, when you convince yourself you could have changed the past.
If you had just done something different, maybe that person wouldn’t be gone.
One day, if she lets me, I’ll tell her about my own demons.
“I’m glad you stayed,” is my only response.
“Me too,” she says, smiling softly. Her face flushes as she looks at me, and sweetness fills the room.
Now that we’ve scent matched, I can pick out her aroma anywhere.
My cock still aches, and my fingers twitch with the effort to not pull her to me.
Fighting my Alpha instincts is torture, especially when she looks at me like I’m worth something.
Like she sees more than just a forty-year-old bartender.
“Hey,” she says suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts. “If you take a picture, it will last longer.”
I didn’t realize I was staring at her still, and my face burns with embarrassment.
She snickers and begins to prepare the garnishes for the drinks.
The shift goes by in a blur, mostly because I’m so focused on Blair.
The way she smiles.
The slight bit of sheen on her skin from rushing back and forth at the bar.
Her violent scent is twinged with a hint of her sweat, and I swallow back a mouthful of saliva as I inhale her like a man starved.
Her mating gland is on full display, and customers have to repeat their drink orders to me because I’m so damn distracted by her.
She’s mine.
Mine.
At one point, Rylee takes a break from her DJ booth to say something in Blair’s ear, pointing at me. Blair responds with a quick glance at me and a smirk.
By the time I’m walking her to her car like we’ve done for almost a year, I’m achingly hard and ready to go home.
I’m not above jerking myself off just to relieve some of the ache inside me.
“You seemed distracted tonight,” she muses, a hint of teasing in her voice.
“You know damn well why I’m distracted,” I mutter as we reach her car.
“Those new drinks are hard to memorize,” she continues.
“Uh-huh.”
She parked further away than usual, away from any other cars. Usually, she’s next to mine or Rylee’s, so I frown.
“Why so far away?” I murmur.
“Privacy.” We stop at her driver’s side door, and it takes a moment for my brain to catch up with what she says.
“Privacy,” I repeat, meeting the mischievous gleam in her eyes.
“Yeah,” she breathes. Her pupils are wide, her scent strong, and it suddenly hits me.
I’m overwhelmed by the scent of her arousal, sweet and delicious.
Holy. Shit.
“Travis,” she whispers, and I hold my breath and stare, entranced by her beauty.
But I recall how terrified she was last night; how she was ready to go home and reject us.
This is all so fucking delicate that I don’t know what to do.
But Blair does it for me.
Her hand caresses the side of my face, and I close my eyes and lean into her touch, letting out a deep exhale.
She’s touching me.
She’s touching me.
“Last night you said we were friends,” I murmur against her hand. Chills race down my spine, and my mind grows fuzzy.
“We are,” she answers. Her knuckles stroke my cheek, and I stand there, letting her touch me however she wants.
Whatever she gives me, I’ll take.
Her fingers trace my face, ghosting over my lips, and trail to my scalp. She grips my hair and gently pulls at my strands, and I growl softly in response.
She feels exquisite, but I don’t know what she wants yet.
Never mind that I haven’t been touched like this in years—my inner Alpha roars to life, the urge to take and claim overwhelming my body.
Her fingers ghost over my lips again, and when I open my eyes, she’s staring at me intensely, her lips slightly parted.
Her eyes search mine, and she furrows her brow as if contemplating something.
Like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to solve.
As if she doesn’t know already that I would do anything she asked me to.
I would fall to my knees for her, grateful to just be in her presence.
My scent match.
My Omega.
Mine.
“Do friends do this?” I ask her quietly, murmuring my question against her fingers.
She moves her hand away and lets it fall to her side. Her eyes narrow and she tilts her head slightly. “No, they don’t.”
The air is charged with arousal. Her sweet scent has me hard as stone with my heart pounding in my chest.
I can smell her sugary slick in the air.
I force my hands to stay at their sides while Blair frowns, looking for something in my face.
Whatever she finds there must satisfy her, because she sighs softly and smiles.
“Travis,” she says, her voice breathy.
I swallow. “Yes?”
“I want to kiss you.”