Chapter 10 #3
“You won’t give me a single chance?”
“No.”
“Why? Because every man alive is a rotten egg?”
Her brows draw together. I take a moment before I add quietly, “Mia told me that one.” Her expression falters.
“You’ve got that little girl convinced every male on earth is garbage.
Think about what that does to her ten years from now.
You want her alone for good? Or so sure men can’t be trusted she never lets one near her? ”
Jessa swallows hard, and for a second she can’t look at me.
“I know you’ve been handed some bad ones,” I go on, gentler. “But she’s small, and she takes in every word out of your mouth.”
“I never meant for her to...” Regret colors her voice. “I shouldn’t have said that to her.”
“She’s young. She soaks up everything.” I hold her gaze. “One good reason for me to be near Mia is so she learns that not every man is bad.”
Jessa shuts her eyes for a breath.
I move in beside her at the counter and set my hands on the edge, one to each side of her, hemming her in without a single touch. Close to her ear, I drop my voice. “Come with us tonight. Let the girls watch us be civil. It’ll be good for them. Whatever misconceptions Mia has will be cleared away.”
“Misconceptions?” Jessa asks slowly.
“About us.” My lips curve.
“Mia has no misconceptions about anything.” Her breath shakes. “We’re acquaintances.”
She turns her head, and finding her that near makes me grin. There’s no shove this time. Her spine hovers a hair from my chest.
“You’re right,” I murmur. “Acquaintances.”
I press my lips to the side of her neck.
I feel her shiver, taste the change in her scent. Her voice trembles. “Stop that.”
“All right.” I do it again.
She doesn’t move away. Her pulse is going hard under my mouth, loud enough that I could count it, and the sound fills me with unfurling hunger. “It’s nothing,” I breathe against her skin. “We’re only acquaintances, remember?”
My wolf is up and circling, drunk on her, rolling over with no shame in him. I could stay here all night with my mouth at her throat and her trying to remember why she’s angry. She tilts her head a fraction, giving me more without meaning to, then catches herself and goes rigid.
My chest tightens with a strange pulling sensation that has my animal straining toward something held just out of reach, restless, hunting a thread in the dark it can’t close its teeth on. It rises and dies before I can get my hands around it.
Footsteps come down the hall, and Jessa plants both palms on my chest and shoves. I go stumbling back into the couch while she scrambles two strides clear. Righting myself, I let the smile stay even as I hear her ragged breath, smell the spicy edge to her scent.
She wants me. I bet if I put my fingers in her panties, she would be drenched. The thought makes my cock stir. An image flashes before me: Jessa bent over the counter, my fingers driving into her wet pussy. The sounds of broken moans as I push her to the edge…
I swallow my own groan as Jessa rushes out of the room, almost as if she knows what I’m thinking.
Adjusting my pants, I finally take stock of the place.
The first time I stood here, I didn’t get the chance to poke around.
Now I do. Framed photos crowd a shelf by the window.
Mia as a fat-cheeked baby, and in two of them, her shoulder is bare, the birthmark dark against the skin.
I lift one and hold it to the light. The mark sits high on her shoulder, dark against the baby skin, in the exact spot mine has been since birth.
Jessa told me once how hard those nine months were with no one beside her.
“Are you mine?” I ask the picture, low enough that no one hears it. The baby in the frame can’t answer me. She has Jessa’s mouth and a stubborn set to her brow I can’t place because I’m looking too hard to see straight.
I set it down and lift the next one. It’s Jessa and the baby this time.
The circles under Jessa’s eyes are deep enough to see even in a snapshot.
Mia can’t be more than a few months old, lying on the grass of some park in the sun.
Whoever held the camera loved them both.
I want to know who that was and whether it should have been me holding it.
I find the exhaustion she’d tucked under that smile, and I speak to it. “If she was mine, why didn’t you come to me?”
Except I know the answer, or half of it. She went to a door, and somebody turned her away. If that door was mine, if my own people sent her off pregnant and alone, then this anger I want to aim at her belongs somewhere else entirely.
I touch the shadows under her painted eyes, and my chest pulls tight. The truth isn’t mine yet. What I do know is that I want to be part of this life that she has built for her daughter and herself. For ten years I’ve told myself I didn’t need a family. Or want one.
I look toward the hall where Jessa disappeared, and I make myself a promise. If that girl turns out to be mine, I’ll keep both of them. And if not, I’m still keeping them.