Just holds me back possessively, his hands straying this time immediately to my ass.
I realize he’s wearing a trench-coat, rather than the shirt and pants he was wearing last night. Ty’s coat. I step back and glance at Ty.
“What happened to his clothes?”
Sam shrugs. “Just be happy he’s alive.”
“Thank you both, for this,” I say, my gaze staying on Justin. “How are you feeling?”
“Kind of stupid for not just picking you up and carrying you straight back to the motel room last night, to be honest,” Justin tells me, not even a hint of embarrassment in his expression.
“Yeah, well, we were attacked by that gator, so...”
“So now I am one.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Kind of like a possessive asshole,” Sam cuts in, waving his fingers at me. “Keys.”
I put his car keys in his hand, and he moves straight to the car.
“And he thinks I’m an asshole,” Justin murmurs.
It’s so odd. I didn’t realize how much becoming a gator would change his personality. I glance at Ty as Sam drives past, speeding up the minute he hits the main road.
“Is this permanent?” I motion to Just, keeping my gaze on Ty.
He smiles wryly. “It’s a testosterone overload thing. He’ll get over it.”
“Can you drive us back to the motel?”
“Sure. He needs to give my coat back anyway. It’s kind of the only one I have.”
Justin’s checking out my ass when I glance his way, and he doesn’t blush or pretend he wasn’t staring. I don’t know if I can get used to this confidence explosion. It’s so damn weird.
I take shotgun in the car and Justin murmurs something about barely being able to wait to get his hands on me in our room before he steps into the back seat. I feel my face flush, and Ty shrugs at me as we move out from the parking lot.
“I can knock him out for you until the overload wears off,” Ty suggests, earning a growl from the back seat.
“I’m sure I can handle it,” I lie.
“Well, if he gets too handsy...”
“She likes it when I touch her, so back off.” Justin’s irritable gaze makes me wonder if I should ask Ty to stick around for a while when we get back. I can handle myself, but I’m not so sure about shifter induced testosterone overload.
Ty keeps his mouth closed and the rest of the journey is a quiet one. I’ve started to think Justin’s cooled down by the time he pulls into the motel parking lot. He stopped making filthy comments, but Ty has stopped saying things to goad him into that so it’s really kind of hard to tell.
“I’ll walk you to the door.” Ty gets out of the driver’s seat.
I get to the door of the motel with Justin and he tugs at my hand, trying to get me to move inside with him. I glance over. “Go take Ty’s coat off so we can give it back.”
He doesn’t go inside and hand it out. No. He strips right next to me, giving me full view of his well toned yet kind of dirt-caked body and impressive, entirely erect manhood. I’m still staring as he passes the coat to Ty.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Ty utters, touching my hand. “If you need me...”
“I’ll call you, I promise.”
I follow Justin inside, clearing my throat. “We should...”
His eyes flash, and I see them become reptilian before they flash back to his usual deep, dark shade of brown. “A lot happened last night,” he begins, moving toward me slowly.
“That’s the understatement of the year.” I stay close to the door, but I realize I’m not afraid. This is Justin. A guy I’ve known for years. Someone I trust with my life. He saved mine last night. He’s not a monster. He’s just a little hopped up on the huge change I just caused to happen.
“Shifters are different from humans in a lot of ways.”
“True,” I say with a nod.
“We take mates.”
“Okay,” I say, figuring out where he’s going with this and feeling pretty damned uncomfortable.
It feels way too much like the last time I spoke to Sam. He’d started to tell me about mating, and I couldn’t understand why. Then he made it sound like he wanted me to be his. Which was insane. He didn’t like me like that. Being friends forever didn’t mean he had any romantic designs on me.
Turns out I was wrong, and his whole mating speech was supposed to be an honest to God declaration of devotion. No wonder he never spoke to me again. I’d stormed away from him that night, so damn angry I could cry.
“I want you, Misty. Ever since the day you walked into my life, it’s been you.”
“That would sound a little more romantic without the raging boner.”
He laughs, stroking one hand over it. “Is this better?”
He’s holding his hand over it, but I can still see it. Obviously. It’s fucking huge.
“I just don’t think we should be having this conversation when you’re riding some kind of testosterone high.”
He frowns, nods a little, and sighs. “I should really get rid of this boner.”
He turns on his heel and stalks toward the bathroom. I watch him go in a kind of daze. He pushes the door over but doesn’t close it properly. I hear the water start to run. It’s still not closed. Doesn’t he know how damn nosy am I? What am I thinking? Of course he knows. Justin would never announce he was going to jerk off in the shower, and then leave the door open a crack hoping I would come watch him. He’s still totally hopped up on testosterone.
I take a few steps closer to the door and then stop myself. It’s no easy task to quash the instinct to take a look, but I manage it somehow. I’m not going to act on something that’s temporary for him. Things are crazy enough. We don’t need added complications. I take a calming breath.
Now, I just need to get through the rest of the week. How hard could that be?
Twenty-Seven
Tyler
I hang around the parking lot of the motel like a creepy stalker, the night at the swamp still playing on my mind. Despite the fact that I’d spent weeks ignoring the urge to shift the release of giving into it had cooled that itch immensely. It was trippy, experiencing everything as a gator, and remembering every moment of it. That’s never happened before, and I don’t have the faintest idea why. Sam and Justin seemed to have the same experience. It has to be because we formed a congregation. There’s no other possible reason.
I stuff my hands into my pockets and head over to sit in my car, if only to stop myself from going back to Misty’s hotel room door. Justin seemed insistent that she was going to become his mate. I wouldn’t want to interrupt the honeymoon.
Well, I would, but it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Misty seems to have made her choice.
I lean back in the driver’s seat, sighing deeply. All this time and she still has the same effect on me.
I didn’t think anyone was ever going to capture her heart, let alone a shy work colleague. If it couldn’t be me, I would have expected it to be Sam.
We were both blindsided by Justin’s insistence that he’d been on a date with Misty when the gator attack happened. He’d blurted it all out this morning when we shifted back to human and told him why he was naked and muddy in the middle of a swamp. Neither of us had really believed what he was saying. It all had a desperate tint to it. He was so damned insistent and irritable.
Then I remembered how she’d looked in that tight-fitting green dress. He’d been wearing nice clothes too. Date clothes. They were practically right outside the Italian restaurant, after ten at night. It should have been obvious. I just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
My cell vibrates in my pocket and I take it out, hoping, idly for a message from Misty. I find a text from my last hook-up instead. A fairly vivacious woman from the outskirts of town. Older. Only interested in casual, on her terms. I want to ignore the message, pretend I didn’t get it. I almost slip the phone back into my pocket. But at the last minute,
I type two words and hit send.
Start the engine before I can think twice about it. Drive away from the woman of my dreams and her cloyingly sweet new relationship. I need to move on. It’s been five years since I kissed her. She’s moved past it, clearly. I should have as well.
I cast one longing glance back at the door to her room before I drive away. Only one thing cures heartache. Falling into the bed of another woman isn’t it, but it’s a start and right now that’s all I need.
Twenty-Eight
Misty
Justin comes back into the room maybe twenty minutes later, after some seriously sexy grunting noises over the sound of running water signal his climax. He turns off the shower a moment later, and comes back into the room dripping wet with a still impressive semi. I allow myself that one glance at his clean, naked body before gluing my eager eyes back to the screen of my laptop.
“Can we talk now?” he asks, a small smirk turning up a corner of his mouth when I glance his way.
“I’m in research mode. I think that’s what we should both focus on tonight, Just.”
He blows out a breath. “I feel wired, Misty. I don’t think I can just sit there all night, pretending to read a load of boring facts and figures about this town and its people.”
Well, that’s honest, I guess. I raise any eyebrow at him. “You were just pretending to read before?”
He shrugs. “It was busy work. You were looking up the real leads yourself.”
Oh. Wow. He really has my number.
“Why are you so afraid to let anyone in?”
He sits beside me and casually puts arm around my waist as he leans in, his head resting on my shoulder. I swallow, putting my laptop down on the ground after a second of indecision. He’s not going to let me walk away from this. Not while he’s in this commanding mood. I could run from it, but it’s my fault he’s like this so I don’t.
“It’s not...” I struggle to find the words. “I don’t mean to... I mean...”
“You don’t have a father,” he tells me, showing he knows more about me than I even knew. “But I don’t think that’s it. Or at least I don’t think that’s all of it. You can’t stand the thought of letting anyone in. It doesn’t seem to matter how much they love you. You have to have distance.”
I stare as he moves a little to gaze into my eyes. My vision blurs a little, an overwhelming of emotion stirring as I realize how deeply he cares about me. Aw fuck. This is why I don’t get close to people.
“I’ll give you whatever you need, but I won’t let you push me away,” he insists.
He leans in, to press his forehead to me, not to kiss me.
I gasp out a breath, tears rolling down my cheeks. “We can’t...”
“I can wait,” he assures me, stroking away my tears. “I’ll always be where you need me.”
We lay down together, and I try to stop crying. He just looks at me as if I’m his everything.
It should be enough to make me run, but I don’t. I hold him, and he holds me, and it doesn’t feel bad at all. I’m so happy he’s alive. Feeling his touch calms the panic I was stewing in before, waiting to find out if he’d made it. He did, and that makes my heart soar.
“Aren’t you wired? Isn’t this torture, just laying here still?” I ask, the only attempt I make to get out of his arms. It’s a weak one and I know it. God, what is happening to me? I’m going soft.
“Not when I’m with you,” he says, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Never when I’m with you.”
He moves a little, getting comfortable, and holding me close.
“It’s only torture when we’re apart,” he murmurs, starting to sound tired. “We can’t ever be apart again.”
He falls asleep next to me and I snuggle into his warmth to finally get some sleep of my own.
Twenty-Nine
Sam
I drive out past the town limits, feeling completely out of control. The world seems to be tipping and I can’t stop it. I’m falling and the ground is going to smash me to pieces when I land. Driving fast usually burns away that feeling when it comes. Not today.
Today, nothing’s going to make me feel better.
I was kidding myself thinking Misty would come back one day and fall into my arms. She rejected me once before. Why the hell would she change her mind? I haven’t changed. She hasn’t.
“Fuck,” I curse, pulling into a gas station before I wind up stuck in the middle of nowhere with an empty tank. I fill up and grab snacks to force myself to eat something before I start the drive back.
I don’t expect the chips and soda to do much to improve my mood. It’s funny how quickly they disappear. The sugar rush from the soda takes some of the tension from my shoulders but that’s about it.
The night at the swamp is going to take a long time to fade from my memory. I wish I could erase it, but what’s done is done. The night wasn’t the bad part, not really. There was something kind of cool about becoming a group like that. It was the morning after that killed me, like it usually does. That’s when the regrets came flooding in. They keep rushing through my head on a continuous loop. I can’t get rid of that look of determination in Justin’s eyes. Misty was his. He was so damn sure of it.
She was on a fucking date with him. That’s further than I ever got, further than Tyler got.
I can’t stand the thought of it. She finally opened her heart, and it wasn’t to me.
What do I expect? She left town. Everything we were died when she left. She didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t chase her. It was over. Everything we were crumbled to dust.
“Let her go,” I mutter to myself, trying to work through it.
It hurts like hell, but I have to find a way around this. She’s going to become Justin’s mate. There’s nothing I can do about that. It’s been time to move on for years. I’ve tried. Every time I met a woman who could make me laugh or at least smile, I tried. It never worked out. It wasn’t fair to them. My heart was never in it.
I don’t know how to change what’s in my heart. It wants her, and she’s all it’s ever wanted. How do I tell that to go away? How do I get it to stop?
I get back into my car and force myself to head back toward town. I need to check on my dad. I need to go buy groceries, and check my playbook for next week’s big game. I need to go for a run, and get my head straight. I need to stop thinking about Misty Gordon.
Trouble is I can’t.
It doesn’t help that Ty told me why she’s in town. The animal attacks. Something’s going on with those. They’re gator attacks. A shifter is killing people. We don’t know why or who. Misty’s digging around will likely land her in a dangerous situation. Ty’s aware of that. He’s keeping an eye on her.
I can’t help wondering if that dangerous situation already found her, that the gator who attacked Justin was there to take out the woman who might expose him as the killer.
I don’t like that thought, but it’s a little coincidental to think the attack was random.
I curse again as I realize what it all means. I can’t forget about Misty while she’s so close to a killer’s grasp. I have to join Tyler in watching over her. That means getting used to seeing her with another man. It means trying to be happy for her.
That sticks in my throat. I can’t swallow it. So I’m not going to try.
There are darker thoughts inside me that I learn toward whenever it comes to Misty. Possessive desires that feel too right to ignore.
Misty is mine. She always has been. This is just another obstacle in our path. I’ve never had any trouble clearing those. This one might take more time, but it will move. Even if I have to push it aside myself.
Thirty
Misty
It’s dark outside when I awaken, Justin’s warm naked body pressed tight against me. I move and his grip around me tightens. He mumbles in his sleep. I shift a little and feel the hard shaft of his cock against my thigh. His fingers rub my side. The gentle stroking starts to turn my thoug
hts to what it would be like to have him touch me in more intimate ways. My panties start to dampen as I imagine his fingers slipping under my skirt. Just thinking about his hands on my thighs, pressing into my skin as he pushes up the skirt of my dress, is enough to quicken my heart-rate.
The pounding is mirrored quickly by an external knocking. I gasp out a breath as I pull harder to break from Justin’s grasp. Someone’s at the door.
I pull the sheets over Justin’s naked sleeping form and hit the switch on the lamp by the door.
Then, I hesitate. There’s no peephole, and it’s kind of late.
“Misty, are you in there?” Sam’s voice calls out from the other side of the door.
I let out a relieved sigh as I unlatch and unlock the door.
He leans in, his gaze drifting past me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “What’s up?”
His gaze snaps straight back to me. “We need to talk.”
I nod. “Let me get my purse. Justin’s sleeping.”
I grab the purse and slip into my shoes, hauling Sam outside before he can try to get a better look at the room. “Twin beds, huh?” He sounds confused.
I close the door over and lock it as quietly as I can. “Not your business, Sam.”
“You don’t smell like you’ve mated.”
“Just because we haven’t slept together yet doesn’t mean...”
He breaks into a grin. “He isn’t your boyfriend.”
“Who says...”
“It’s not serious if you’re not fucking,” he tells me, sounding kind of smug.
“So, if you’re fucking a girl, then it has to be serious?” I stare at him and his smile dies.
“I never fucked Peyton.”
And that’s the last thing I expected him to say. “What?”
“I know there were rumors. It didn’t happen.”
Flashing Her Gators Page 8
