by Mandy Rosko
Dane barely contained a wince. He hadn’t exactly been gentle when he sent Lois from his room after fucking her.
And fucking was the only word he was going to use to describe what had happened, no matter what else it might have felt like.
“Dane?” Garret asked.
Dane nodded. “I’ll talk to her. Make sure she’s on the same page.”
Even saying it inspired a whole lot of nothingness in him. Except for maybe dread. He didn’t want to see Lois again, not because he was angry with her, but because of what he might do if he saw her red hair, her bright blue eyes, and the few freckles she had on that cute little nose of hers.
If he saw her again, and was forced to speak with her alone, he might not be able to stop himself from imagining what her bare skin had felt like under his hands, or the wet, tight clench of her sex around his cock.
Dane clenched his teeth, holding back a groan. He paced, just because he needed to be walking around. He needed to be doing something other than sitting there. He knew why he was so antsy. The need to get his mission underway, that’s what it was. Dane could not put this off any longer.
He needed to speak to Lois today. He’d been a real shithead, and regardless of how things ended between them, he needed to make sure she wasn’t hurt by this. If she was crying over Dane’s behavior, crushed that he’d slept with her and walked away, essentially using her…then he needed to make that right as fast as possible.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said, heading towards the door. Part of him was glad he’d gotten all this out of his system, but the other part wished he’d just gone and had a good, bloody fight. That seemed like the better way to burn off the steam in his body.
Jax mentioned something about going to do rounds around the territory, and Garret made an excuse about finding his mate and taking her out somewhere.
Maybe they were trying to make sure Dane had the chance to be alone with Lois. With Garret keeping his woman out of the way, it would give Dane the chance he needed. So long as Anna wasn’t there to make Dane’s life a living hell.
Since Dane was pretty sure all three women were together, he just followed Garret to Anna’s room. Her scent was strong up here. Not that Dane couldn’t place it in a house where over a dozen betas and omegas lived, but outside of Anna’s room, the smell was especially strong.
And with that smell came the reminder of the little noises she’d made when he thrust inside her, of how pink her lips had looked, how wild that red hair flowed around her bare, creamy shoulders as she threw her head back and sighed with pleasure.
Dane could still feel the pleasant sensation of her thighs squeezing tightly around his hips. Fuck, his dick was twitching and his loins tightening. If he didn’t stop, he was going to walk into Anna’s room smelling like a dog in heat.
Dane was positive Garret wouldn’t like that.
Dane thought unsexy thoughts, making it a mantra in his head. He threw in some dead puppies just to be sure he wasn’t going to walk into Anna’s room with a hard-on.
Garret knocked. Anna must have felt it was Dane’s presence on the other side of the door because she yelled at him to go away.
“It’s not just Dane, it’s me.”
“You too!”
Garret rolled his eyes, tried the door, and when he found it was locked, pushed his shoulder against it hard enough to crack the frame and get it open.
Anna shrieked at him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop breaking my doors!”
“He does that often?” Miranda asked.
Dane didn’t pay much attention to either woman. His entire focus was on Lois. She stood closer to the corner. There was a bowl of ketchup chips on the floor, suggesting they’d all been sitting around and chatting. Likely talking about what an asshole Dane was.
He just looked at her, saw how beautiful she was, even when she was hurt and angry.
Anna continued to yell at Garret to get out of her room, but Garret soon got fed up with it as he bypassed his sister and grabbed his mate around her knees. He hoisted her into the air over his shoulder. Miranda yelled, then laughed as she was carried out of the room caveman-style
Anna continued to hurl abuse and insults at her brother, despite how his kidnapped victim didn’t seem to mind being taken out of the room like that.
“Hi,” Dane said. God, Anna had a loud voice. The entire house could probably hear her.
Lois’s small fists clenched. Her lips thinned before she wet them. “What do you want?”
Dane couldn’t stop staring at her like a total idiot. “Are you wearing more makeup or something?”
“What?”
He looked back down at the floor. Of course. By the bowl of chips was also an open case that contained enough lipsticks and shadows—and a number of other things Dane didn’t know how to identify—that would make an artist like Lois happy.
Was it a woman thing for them all to make themselves look good after a heartbreak? Dane looked back into Lois’s face, and she stared at him like he was the biggest idiot she’d ever seen.
Fuck. Why did she have to look so good? Her lips looks puffier and darker than usual, and there was a shadowed effect around her eyes that reminded him of that sexy, come-hither look he saw on female models on the magazine racks.
“What do you care what I have on my face?” Lois asked, still frowning, still clearly angry with him.
Right. He needed to make this better. He stood straight and cleared his throat. In that moment, Dane almost felt like he was in front of his commanding officer, and one wrong word could have him doing drills until he dropped.
Contrary to popular opinion among some alphas and betas, that was a possibility among shifters.
“I came to apologize to you.”
Lois’s eyes glanced over his shoulder to the broken door, and she stared back at him with an incredulous expression. “So you break down Anna’s door and force your way in here to do it?”
“Garret did that.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Lois snapped, raising her hands and backing up a step. She spun on her heel and pretended to be looking at the various books, hair supplies, and other junk that was on Anna’s desk. “I do not forgive you.”
The urge to walk over to her, put his hands on her shoulders and comfort her was so strong that Dane could picture doing so in his head.
He refrained, even as he continued to ache. “I didn’t do what I did to hurt you.”
Lois snorted. “How’s your back?”
Itching, all of a sudden.
“It feels all right,” he replied.
“Great, good for you. I’m glad.”
“Lois.”
“No, really. I am glad that you’re not lying in bed bleeding through your bandages anymore. Honestly, I’m stunned you were able to bleed so much sometimes.”
“I’m not human.”
“Right, I got that,” Lois said. She crossed her arms, and he got all kinds of defensive vibes from her posture. “You don’t have to come in here and chase away my friends to talk to me.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“It’s barely been long enough for me to avoid you!” Lois snapped, then seemed to pull back, gathering her composure before she could keep railing on him. “I’m not a child. I went to your room. I was kissing you. I did that because I thought it could help you heal, and it did. You don’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe you anything either.”
Dane stared at her. She glared back at him.
“What? Why are you staring at me with that vacant expression?”
“I—”
“You’re seriously confused about this, aren’t you?” she asked, plowing ahead before he could answer. “You don’t get it at all. You don’t need to apologize. I’m perfectly fine, and I don’t want to be around you anymore.”
“If you’re so fine with this then why are you angry?”
She threw her hands up in the air, as if that was supposed to tell him anything.
“I’m not angry. I’m…You know what? Forget it. If you’re not going to go away, then I will.”
Dane tensed. He grabbed her by the arm when she tried to walk by him. “You can’t leave,” he said, then added quickly. “Garret doesn’t trust you with our secret yet.”
She didn’t bother looking back at him. “Let go of my arm.”
He didn’t. “Cut it out with this. You’re either angry or you’re not. Don’t play games with me.”
She rounded on him. “Don’t play games with you?”
Garret cleared his throat in the doorway. Dane looked away from Lois’s blazing eyes and up at his leader. “What?”
Garret stared back at him with a cool expression. “Pretty sure the entire pack can hear you both fighting. Let go of her arm.”
Dane obeyed. Lois huffed. She ran her hands through that wild red hair, making it look messy and sexy in a way that drove him wild.
“I don’t owe you any explanations for anything. We fucked once, and you don’t get to expect anything after that.”
“It’s not like you think it is,” he said, though it sounded lame, even to his own ears.
Lois glared at him. She’d make a great drill sergeant with a glare like that. “I don’t care what it is. Leave me alone.” She marched off, walking by Garret without so much as throwing the alpha a backwards glance either.
The inside of Dane’s chest chilled, suddenly feeling cold and hollow. Like someone had scooped out everything in there with an ice-cream scoop and blasted an air conditioner inside.
Not a pleasant sensation.
“I take it that didn’t go well?”
Dane clenched his fists. He shook his head. “No.”
Garret observed him, and came to a conclusion. “Want to fight?”
Dane looked at him, feeling that surge of adrenaline rushing through his veins and lighting up his nerves. “Yes.”
12
He was being a giant idiot. He was going to get himself hurt again, and Lois already made the decision that she wasn’t going to do anything to help him when the omegas refused to change his bandages.
She’d pretended Dane wasn’t fighting with Garret every day for the last four days since it really was none of her business what he decided to do in his spare time.
It was a little harder to ignore when he and Garret showed up to the dinner table with blue and black bruises on their eyes and split lips.
Miranda was not happy about that one.
“Can’t you at least talk to him?” she asked. The begging had come before, now it was a constant nag. Soon Miranda would get pissed. Lois was honestly shocked it hadn’t happened yet.
She was currently watching an old Bob Ross painting tutorial on YouTube with Anna, trying to teach the girl how to paint, and showing her enough online artists for when Lois inevitably left, just in case Anna wanted to keep learning.
She barely looked back at her friend. “If he wants to fight, let him fight. He’s a grown man and can do whatever he wants.”
“Do you know how strange it is to kiss a man who has his mouth swollen and eyes bruised shut?”
“So what? I thought he healed fast.”
“Not the point,” Miranda muttered, and now she really was starting to sound annoyed.
Lois was trying not to picture how Dane had looked, or wonder if he was still healing. Every morning he definitely looked better, though his bruises were always still visible.
Unlike Garret, who seemed to wake up every day with a fresh face on him. Lois tried not to think that was because of the regular sex he was getting from Miranda.
Lois banished it from her mind. She focused more on the soothing tone of Bob Ross’s voice as he added some more happy trees to his landscape.
“Alphas like fighting,” Anna said, glancing away from the screen briefly to look back at Miranda. “It’s in their nature to want to get their aggression out of them, and at least when they go at it with friends, no one really gets hurt. It’s healthy.” She turned away, trying to copy the strokes on her canvas just the way Bob was doing, so she didn’t see the way Miranda scowled at the back of her head.
“Thanks a lot.”
Anna shrugged, seeming to not catch the sarcasm. “No problem.”
“Do you fight?” Lois asked.
“No. I’m not an alpha.”
Anna glanced Lois’s way, seeming almost nervous that her claim might be challenged.
Ever since Anna suggested that Lois might be Dane’s mate, and that could be the cause for his strange healing, she’d seemed to walk on egg shells around her. It was one of the reasons why Lois had suggested teaching her to paint.
Or, getting Bob Ross to teach her to paint. Either way, Lois had wanted to tell the young woman, without actually saying anything, that she didn’t blame her for the way things had turned out. Lois had made her own decisions, and just because they’d turned out to be embarrassing was not her fault in the least.
At least Anna wasn’t worried about her older brother. She was probably so used to seeing Garret fighting that by now it really was a no issue to her.
Lois used that information to comfort herself, to remind herself that just because she saw Dane with a bloody nose and bruised eyes didn’t mean she had to worry about him.
And really, how dare he make things so hard on her by doing this anyway? He was the one stressing out Miranda by needing to get his manly testosterone out of him every day with the fighting. He was the one punishing himself because he’d already decided he didn’t want Lois around.
He’d made his bed. He didn’t have to put a guilt trip on her because he regretted his decision.
And she was definitely not feeling guilty. Lois only thought so much about it because she was a guest in this house, and she happened to see Dane every day, either while walking through the halls, or at supper time when he decided to grace the rest of the pack with his presence.
It was so irritating that Lois stopped paying attention to the way Bob was putting down his mountains.
“Shit.”
“You okay?” Anna asked.
Lois already knew how to paint with these techniques, so she should be able to catch up.
“Fine, fine. Was just thinking about something.”
Miranda continued on with her previous thoughts, regardless of how no one seemed to be listening to her anymore. “Maybe I can convince Dane to fight with Jax? He’s pretty much shown that he can hold his own.”
“Jax is busy,” Anna said quickly.
“Maybe Dane will stop being an idiot and stop fighting when I’m not in the house anymore.”
“You’re not leaving already?” Anna asked quickly, and at least this time she sounded disappointed and worried in a way that made Lois’s ego flare nicely.
She smiled. “I can’t live here, my life isn’t here. My mom and dad were worried sick when I finally got around to calling them.”
They knew Lois was an adult, and it was expected that they would be the ones doing a majority of the calling in order to get in touch with her. Even though she hadn’t been here all that long, it had been a while since she’d gotten around to returning their calls after Dane had picked her up over his shoulder and made off with her.
Naturally, she’d gotten something of a stern lecture from them when she did finally get around to making the call, but everything was fine now, and there was no longer a risk that she’d end up on a missing person’s poster.
“You could still stay here. We all like you here,” Anna said.
She honestly did sound like she was about to lose a friend.
Lois smiled. “You have Miranda and Katie here, and I’m sure you have lots of friends with the other people who live here.”
“I guess,” Anna said, her mouth set in a grim line. She didn’t sound too convinced of that, and not for the first time, Lois had to wonder if being the alpha’s little sister had somehow put a hindrance on her ability to make friends and socialize with her own people.
But that wasn’t Lois’s problem to worry about. Anna was a grown woman, a little sheltered maybe, but she had Miranda here.
“It’s not like I’m dropping off the face of the Earth,” Lois said, laughing and nudging the girl, trying to make the mood light again. “Of course I’m going to come back and visit you guys. Miranda’s here, and I happen to think you’re pretty cool, too. Besides, now that Miranda’s rich, she can treat you and me to shopping.”
“It was hers and Garret’s money before I came into the picture,” Miranda said.
“We’re ignoring that,” Lois said, turning her attention back to Anna. “So you see? I’m going to come back. And we’re going to hang out and drink lattes at the coffee shops, I’m going to teach you more painting, and you’re going to pose for me in your wolf form so I can practice my nature paintings. Sound good?”
Anna nodded, and her smile brightened her eyes. “Yeah, sounds really good.”
Miranda pulled up a stool and sat next to them. “Have you been talking to Garret about when you can go?”
Anna leaned down to the wireless keyboard, pulling it back so they weren’t so far behind Bob.
“Yeah, he says he thinks I can go soon. I guess he’s just worried about that Dennis guy causing trouble.”
“I can’t even get a part-time job because of his stupid worries,” Anna snorted.
Lois didn’t think a young woman with a billionaire brother needed a part-time job, but she was proud of her all the same for wanting the responsibility of one.
“I guess that makes sense,” Miranda said, watching both the video, and Lois and Anna as they painted along with it.
Lois refused to look her friend in the eyes. She pretended to be totally invested in what she was doing, just in case Miranda looked at her and figured out something was totally up.
Which it was.
The truth was that Garret had offered her the chance to leave yesterday. He said he would get Jax and some of his betas to escort her home. Hell, he’d even given the option of having some of his betas watch her apartment, just in case Dennis was around and she didn’t feel safe.
