Chapter 509 Chapter 509
Tripp reached over and pulled the curtain aside for the tenth time watching for her to come back. His cat wasn’t happy their mate was out there alone. Both wanted to go for a run, but he wanted to wait and face what he already knew was coming. Rubbing his hand over his face, he got up. Marking a female without consent was all kinds of wrong, to begin with—doing it to Amari Hughes, every fiber of his being told him that was going to be all kinds of bad.
He went into the bathroom and flicked the light on and stood and looked in the mirror. He should shave some of this scruff off his face. Turning his head, he lifted his hair up and looked at it. He should shave the sides of his head again. Of course, neither was going to happen until he got back to his SUV where all his gear was.
Thinking about that brought him back to the care package Amari’s teammate had sent her. Gummy bears. That was stopping. Now. If she required a fix of gummy bears, he’d be getting them from now on and not some other male. His cat stilled inside him. Tripp froze in reaction, then he heard the door to the room open. She was back.
He didn’t get out of the bathroom before she came through the door and nudged him out of the way and leaned closer to the mirror. Tripp watched her reflection as she held her hair out of the way and looked at her neck. Yep, there it was for all to see, his mark. He should say something, he thought—then his back was slammed hard against the wall before he could open his mouth.
Amari held him in place with her forearm across his pecs. “What the hell is this, Tripp?” She used her other hand to pull her shirt collar down.
He looked down at her neck, “my mark.”
She leaned into him, thudding him back against the wall again, then dropped her arm away. “I know what it is.” She hissed out a breath and glared at him, “why is it there?”
A dozen words went through his mind, that he should say, but didn’t.
She looked at his chest then back up at his face, a strange look in her eyes, then she leaned closer and inhaled deeply. He knew the moment she understood when her whole body stiffened.
At least she had the ability to smell now, was his first thought. His second or more his cat’s thought was ‘fix this’. He would have gladly obliged if he had a clue how.
Amari stepped back from him, “did you know?” She motioned to the tub, “before?”
Tripp shook his head, “all I could smell was the fuel.”
“Shit.” She turned away and put her hand through her hair and held it there.
He stood perfectly still, and his cat did the same, waiting. It was ingrained that a male be cautious with their mate before they were fully bonded. Tripp realized at that moment that he did want to be bound to this woman in front of him. No other type of female would ever accept his job or his ways. He jammed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor, trying to sort through that realization. He didn’t know when he had accepted this. After the shock of their first few moments together on that mountain, he’d been intrigued and even admired her for not allowing precedence to dictate how she should be, but she was Hughes’s, daughter…
For the third time since she’d come back, he found himself shoved into the wall, she gave him a hard look. “Don’t expect me to mark you and be the happy little housewife you probably want—”
Tripp reached with slow movements and touched the side of her face, “do I strike you as the type of man that wants a woman that sits at home and smiles pretty when I come back from work?” She didn’t brush his hand away and he took that as a small win.
“This is fucked, Tripp.” The cold look she had been giving him softened slightly. “You were supposed to be a fun distraction.”
He kept his teeth clamped together so he wouldn’t say that’s all he intended too. She may not want to be marked but telling a woman she was just supposed to be a quickie never ended well.
Amari released him and stepped back once more, he let his hand drop to his side. “I couldn’t smell shit until just,” she waved a hand at the door, “when I just shifted.” She shook her head and then froze and looked back at him, “have you told anyone?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled quietly before he spoke, “Kenzo.” He ran his hand over his head and brushed his hair out of his face, “I was freaking out, marking without consent isn’t exactly something the Alliance is going to accept.”
“Shit.” She backed up and leaned against the counter, “what is he going to do?”
Tripp shook his head, “nothing. He’s leaving it for us to work out.”
Amari nodded her head slowly and then looked down at the floor, “good. I don’t want you to lose your position on the team for something that,” she waved her hand around and then looked at him, “well, it wasn’t your fault.”
The anxiety coming off her was almost smothering him. “If I’d known…”
“You would have turned me down?” There was something in her eyes, that he didn’t have time to process, he knew enough about females to know that pausing too long in the middle of a volatile conversation never ended in his favor.
He took his time looking her up and down, a slight smirk on his face as he did. “No. I would have just kept my teeth away from you.”
Her smile was slow but told him he’d given the correct answer, which also happened to be the truth. “I should have known,” she said quietly, “my cat liked you.”
He raised an eyebrow, “that’s unusual?”
She shrugged, “yeah, she’s never liked anyone I’ve hooked up with.”
Tripp wasn’t sure if it was his reaction or his cats, or both were on the same page, but he stepped across the room and cupped her jaw in his hand, “not,” he looked at her lips, then back to her eyes, “a good idea to discuss other bedmates with me right now.” He inhaled, his cat needing to take her scent into his body, “clear?” The scent of their combined signatures filled him, calming his animal down.
Amari’s eyes were ultra-focused on him, the blue was being drowned in grey. “As crystal.” She ground out between clenched teeth.
Tripp released her and stepped back before he picked her up and took that mouth that had been driving him to distraction since she’d walked out of the bathroom with that pink shit on her lips. He spun on his heel, “I’m going for a run. My phone is on the table, in case someone tries to reach me. His phone is right beside it.” He grabbed his run pack on the way by the dresser and jammed his feet in his boots. He didn’t care if it was minus forty out, he wasn’t pausing long enough to get his jacket. He needed to put some distance between them. Grabbing her and tossing her on the bed was all he wanted to do right now and that wasn’t going to give her time to process this.
He walked to the end of the motel and headed down through the ditch, not even caring if anyone was watching him. Tripp had always struggled with his temper but hadn’t seen that coming at all. Of course, he knew she’d been with other males, that was a given. It wasn’t like he’d never been with a woman before either. Hissing out a breath, he gave his head a shake, this was going to get crazy—and right now in his shifter world it was the worst possible timing ever. The last thing he needed when they were so close to ending the atrocities of the Tomas family was a mate to worry about. Yet, there was no way he was walking away or regretting his mark on her neck. It was a complete mindfuck and he needed to get back to work and get his brain focused on something else. Killing was the first thing that popped into his head. He started jogging, he needed to get out of sight faster and shift—go burn this whatever was wrong with him off.