10. Rhone
CHAPTER TEN
rhone
After another uncomfortable public meal, we went back to the top floor. Harper covered the keypad with her hand while she typed whatever the new code for my apartment door was.
I wanted the code, obviously. I didn’t appreciate being locked out.
But her locking me out and keeping it a secret was a good sign. She hadn’t done something like that since she’d been living in the tower.
"Tell me if you throw up," I said, itching to pull her into my apartment with me but knowing it wasn't what she wanted or needed.
She rolled her eyes at me.
Harper had managed a whole taco at dinner. She'd looked a little green since she took the last bite, but food was important, even for vampires.
She just needed to find a new normal. That was what I'd been trying to help her figure out since the beginning.
She couldn't be the same person she'd been as a human. She'd experienced too much. Changed too much. Going through hell was too fucking transformative.
Having her own place was the first real step toward figuring out how she was going to move on.
In some ways, I was making that more difficult, but my possessiveness was unavoidable. I'd tried to fight it. Denying it only made it worse.
She belonged to me. There was no other acceptable truth.
"I'll knock at seven in the morning, Trouble. Open the door when I do."
Harper saluted me with her middle finger and waltzed back into her room.
I watched her go.
Shaking my head, I forced myself not to follow the woman and went into my own apartment.
The scent stopped me in my tracks, and I sucked in a deep lungful of her and me together.
She smelled like apples. Like home.
I'd heard of it before—werewolves who met someone they weren't fated to, who smelled like something memorable from their past. Sometimes they ended up fated. Sometimes it was fate's way of telling them that they would play a role in each other's lives. Sometimes it was nothing at all.
Fate liked to fuck with people in that way.
I'd never been driven to bite Harper so we weren't fated mates. Not yet, anyway. That kind of connection could happen at any point, but I didn't think it would. Didn't particularly want it to, either.
My possessiveness was difficult enough to deal with as it was.
I took deep, lung-filling breaths of her scent and mine.
Maybe I could understand why Maverick hoarded his female's clothes after all.
Not that Harper was my female.
She was just... mine.
Was there a difference?
For sanity's sake, I was going to stick with yes.
I bypassed the kitchen and living room entirely, going straight to my bed.
I hoped she'd been fiery enough to touch herself there. I craved the scent of her pleasure. Hell, I fucking ached for it.
I dragged the duvet off the bed and lifted it to my nose, inhaling deeply before tossing it back to the mattress.
No luck.
Tugging my hair free from the tie, I dragged a hand through it, grimacing against the pins-and-needles feeling that accompanied the motion.
Every fiber of my being shouted for me to go back to the little vampire's side. To take her home with me, or stay with her.
But she was supposed to be finding herself, and I wasn't looking for a mate. She'd be even more of a target if we were together, on top of every other reason I had to stay away.
Maverick would be more of a target, too.
Whatever was between me and Harper could only ever be friendship. Or whatever version of friendship we had, where I kept her alive until she could do it for herself.
But fuck, my cock ached.
I didn't know what I was going to do when breeding season reached its peak. Normally, I could just lock the door and suffer through a few days of intensely painful self-pleasure.
Harper complicated things.
The safest scenario for her would be to spend it in a long-time-mated couple's spare room and have one of them feed her when they had a few minutes of mental clarity, but that wouldn't exactly be enjoyable for her or them. I doubted she would agree to it.
And I went into a jealous rage at the thought of her biting anyone other than me.
The only way for me to feed her through it was to spend it with her, which I couldn't allow.
Or I could spend it with someone else while she stayed in the spare room, which I doubted would work. When instinct took over, all I would want was her.
I could put her in my bedroom with a lock on the door and strict orders not to come out under any condition. If I supplied her with an immense amount of my blood in bags, it could work.
The stash was doable.
She could technically stay in her own apartment with it, but I didn't think I'd be able to stay away from her if there was enough space between us that another male could technically be with her.
Particularly not after I scraped that fucking enforcer's cum from her body.
What if she wanted him?
I forced myself to breathe slowly.
We had talked.
She wasn’t going to try that shit again.
She was alone in her room, across the hall from mine.
It was incredibly fucking hard to control myself when it came to her. Having her scent in the air didn't help.
I needed to clear my head.
I stalked into the bathroom, shucking my clothes as I went, and was standing under the hot water with my cock in my fist moments later.
It took no effort at all to remember the way it had felt to hold Harper's body in my arms, pinned against the wall of her shower, her bare, slick core against my abdomen.
I was coming in seconds, with a snarl and a curse, because it wasn't enough.
It would never fucking be enough.
How many times would I get off to the thought of this woman while walls stood between us?
I had never ached for sex this way before. I had never ached for anyone this way before.
"We have a problem," Maverick said through the pack link, and I wanted to groan.
"Because we don't have enough fucking problems?"
"The entire system at the investment company just went down. The Guild must have someone else on the inside."
Fuck.
We needed to shut that company down entirely at this point.
"Or the asshole who built it is working with them," I said. "We never found Zach. The Wilder wolves wouldn't let us onto their land."
We hadn't pushed it at the time, or since. They weren't a pack we wanted to piss off. They were basically our rural equivalent.
"Either way, we need to find him if we're going to get it rebuilt in the next century. He'll have backups or something," Maverick said.
"There's only one way we're getting onto their land. I told you what they want."
They wanted a vampire. A stable, turned vampire, to be specific. They hadn't clarified why, or for how long they wanted them. It would be negotiated, if we ever agreed.
"They can't have Oren. Nolan leaving the pack with him would fuck with the link's stability. Our other turned vampires aren't an option either. We'll figure out another way."
There was no other way, but none of us were going to consider what they wanted.
"Just meet me in the lobby. We need to check for bodies," he said.
My gaze flicked in the direction of the apartment across the hall from mine.
If the Guild was finally making their move, I couldn't leave Harper behind. The Tower was technically safe, but as far as I was concerned, she was at risk any time she was more than five minutes away from me.
"I'm bringing Harper," I finally told Maverick, already buttoning my pants.
My cock still strained against them. Probably would until breeding season finally ended.
"Do you really think that's wise?" Mav's voice was measured.
He didn't want to say no, because he knew I didn't follow his orders, but the no was implied.
"No. Doing it anyway."
He sighed. "Don't tell Bloom. I’m sneaking out while she’s working in bed."
She was going to find out, and she was going to be pissed, but that was his problem.
I knocked loudly on Harper's door before unlocking it with the code. She hadn't changed her own, apparently.
As soon as it opened, her scent hit me in the face, and I had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself.
Apples, and salty pleasure.
She'd touched herself.
She had never done that in the entire time she'd been in the tower. I would've smelled it.
I took a handful of breaths to calm down, but the scent of her in the air made it nearly impossible. My cock throbbed violently.
Her shower was running, but the scent of her pleasure was on the bed. I gave myself a moment to walk over and inhale directly from the blankets—and found a pair of her shorts beneath them.
They were still damp.
Had she made herself climax? She’d been worried she couldn’t.
I lifted them to my nose. It took so much effort not to let myself lick her pleasure off them that I didn't notice the shower turn off or hear the rustle of a towel.
"Are you seriously licking my underwear, Rhone?"
My head jerked in the direction of her sarcastic drawl.
My sexy little vampire was standing in the bathroom doorway, a towel wrapped around her loosely. Her cheeks were almost as pink as her hair, which had faded slightly since that morning, and she lifted a single dark blonde eyebrow.
"What if I am?" I finally asked.
"I'd tell you to wait until the next time I bite you and get it from the source."
I nearly dropped the shorts then and there. "That's not a good idea." After I had her on my mouth, I’d crave her even more.
"What are you doing in here?"
I cleared my throat. "Someone took down the system at the investment company. Mav wants to go check it out. I'm not leaving you here alone."
Harper blinked. "You want me to leave the tower?"
I nodded. "No one will recognize you."
Between her hair and the weight she'd lost, she looked completely different. Even if they did recognize her, the media was already talking about werewolves protecting vampires.
"Okay, fine. Give me a second to get dressed. And throw me those."
I looked down at the shorts in my hand.
I should've licked them when I had the chance.
My fingers tightened on them immediately, but I managed to let go and toss them over after a short internal wrestle.
Harper disappeared into the closet.