“Oh shit.” I mutter softly looking back at Paris.
“What?” He growls.
“What if he followed us down here?” I hold Paris’s gaze and see him tighten up. Just as his opens his mouth to respond, Booker pulls up beside us.
We both turn our heads to look at him. “Hi, Bg,” He says at me directly holding a beat before adding “Paris,” with a curt head nod and glance at Paris. My newly wed husband straightens up and I feel his arm slipping out of my grip on him. “I need to talk to you.” Booker says now focusing on me again and just me. Ignoring Paris completely. Something in the old days when they were both friends, he would never have done. Been so damn disrespectful. I pat Paris’s arm and his attention diverts back to me.
“Let me handle this.” I say softly and he gives me a little head nod, before leaning forward to plant a chaste kiss on my lips and looking at Booker as he straightens up. It’s not a friendly look. Their friendship is over.
“Sure, uh, let’s go out back. “I say pointing to a side door to the bar and Booker starts to move. “I’ll be right outside that door. Just, right outside.” I say back at Paris as I follow Booker outside. He holds the door open for me as I approach, I pause, waiting for him to move to catch the door myself. He moves out into the side alley next to the bar and I follow with the door closing behind me.
I don’t even wait or given reason for pause. I’m so fed up with this bullshit from Booker. Holding on to some agonizing love from seventeen years go. We’ve past this, so many times before.
“What the hell!” I start yelling at him. “I thought we had this sorted out. You can not be following me everywhere I go! Hell, you can not even be around me.” My temper is rising and I know that I am going to say all kinds of bad shit at Booker but that he has also earned all of it. “I have no more patience for your bullshit!”
“I know this will come as a shock to you. A surprise even,” Booker starts stumbling over his words, he’s never really been a big talker. Why is it I land the guys that are great looking, fantastic in the sack and will love you with their heart, but can not use their words to say what you need to hear?
“How the hell did you find out where we were? Nobody knows.” I see a shift across his face and I know he’s holding some sort of secret from me and I want to hear it.
“You know how, we uh, tracked you down when you went after Conall that time the Manhattan Maen had him?” Booker says to me. My eyebrow shoots up as I recall exactly the time he is talking about. It was so long ago.
I frown. “Yes, that was ages ago.”
“Right, I still have access to the tracking software that’s still linked to your phone.” My eyes go wide and my hands go up to my head.
“Oh my god. Have you been watching me from a distance, for all this time? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” I start pacing around in a circle. “This has got to stop. It’s a sickness. You’re obsessed!”
“Cadey, I love you.” He says back at me using an abbreviation of my real name as if to make a point. “I have always loved you and I will always love you and it should be me with you not him!” He yells pointing back towards the door and symbolically, Paris. I am shaking my head and wondering how I am going to make sense of this, so that Booker understands me, finally.
“You need to get the hell over yourself because you are fast becoming a passing blip in my life.” I growl at him.
“I don’t want that.” He says back at me.
“Benico you really have got to let me go.” I plead with him. Why does it always end like this with my boyfriends? It’s got to be that they are werewolf males who do not deal with loss easily.
“Benicio? Now I’m Benicio?” Booker says in surprise back at me. I stare back at him. I said Booker, didn’t I?
“It’s your name.” I reply frowning. Which is true enough. Benicio Parish is his actual, birth name, Booker’s just a nickname we all came to know him by that he likes to use. Besides he started the whole using our real names stuff.
“Every other time you call me Booker. The only time you call me by my actual name,” He says lowering his voice and stepping in close to me. I could back up, but I refuse. “Is when I’m making love to you.” The way he says this and the look in his eyes, tell me exactly how he desires me. This is not going to be easy for him. It may never be. “Even the last time, you still said my name as you came.” I can feel the heat burning my face. It’s not shame. But I remember all too well the last time Booker made love to me. It was after all, the first week I started dating Paris.
“You remember.” He says softly. Not necessarily in a complimentary way.
I’m embarrassed because of how he had to see me, and how he could make love to me, when I looked. I was injured, bloody and decimated. I needed to recover and the fastest way to do that was through a shape shift which needed to be brought on quickly. When my sister offered me a wolf for assistance, knowing it would lead to sex, I asked for Booker. She didn’t question why. But I’m sure I gave her something to think about. Because nobody outside of Booker, Paris and I know I dated Booker when he first joined the Breukelen werewolf pack. And the thing is we’ve never given anyone a reason to think we ever had anything between us. It’s always been on the down low. Till recently.
“You need to put a past tense in there.” I reply looking into his eyes as I feel the heat between us, so close, proving his point. Just getting close to me ramps up his temperature and I’d be lying if I didn’t say my heartbeat picked up its pace. But it doesn’t mean anything, anymore. Not like it used to. I loved him once and my heart knows that I loved him fully flawed. When Booker couldn’t handle love and wasn’t ready to be loved. And that’s when he broke my heart.
“Do I?”
“When you made love to me. Past tense. In the past. Which kind of proves my point. We were the past. You had first shot at me. I practically threw myself at you and you all but ignored me Booker. I was in love with you, I wanted nothing more than to be with you, even before you joined the pack and you just put up your barriers and kept me at a distance.” I say watching the sting of my words hurt him. It’s the truth and we both know it, but he doesn’t want to face it ever. Booker wants to live in hope that one day, someday he’ll be able to try and recapture his regret of letting me go.
“You didn’t’ want me. I had to accept that.” I watch the emotion twist in his face.
“That’s not,” he lets out a sigh of regret trying to get himself back under control and away from desperation. “I was naive back then. And angry, real angry. But I’ve always known what I wanted when it came to you.” He says not moving away from me. Instead his eyes look me over and his hands move as if to rest on my hips. Like he’s coming in for a kiss, to sear me with that heat, and remind me of what it’s like when we used to touch. That can’t happen.
“I don’t want you.” I state moving away from him.
“I don’t believe you.” He says back at me. “I can tell Bg, the way you’re body reacts when its just close to me, without even touching. You’re wolf and mine they’ve never forgotten one another.”
“Then why are they not together Booker? Why did you throw me away?” I yell at him angrily. If this is what it takes to break his focus on me, then this is what I will do. Besides, I deserve to be angry. He was the first true love of my life. My first experience with love, sex and wolves. “You’re deluded! I’ve been with others, so have you. For fuck sakes, you have a girlfriend now! Does she even know about, about this thing you have for me?”
His whole body becomes tense, his face grim. Which as good as a no as I’m going to get. Especially since I just brought him back to reality. He looks larger than large. Imposing in his contained rage. I want to yell and scream at him. I want to explode. He’s asking for it. I want to cry. I want to hate him but I don’t. I’ve had more than enough of his behavior and this illusion of what if!
“Uh yeah, that girlfriend thing, not really a relationship kind of thing.”
&nbs
p; Oh shit no. “What? Since when?” He doesn’t answer me and I shake my head, probably already knowing the answer. I need to get this situation under control. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”
His mouth drops open and he lets out a huff of disbelief and puts his hands on his hips. “You’re freaking out.”
“I am not freaking out.” I growl at him angrily.
“You are so freaking out.” He says back at me keeping the space between us for now. “You backed away from me because you feel it too. The connection between us, it only intensifies when we get closer to one another.”
“I am not freaking out! I am telling you, I do not belong to you. Me, my wolf, my heart, belong to Paris.”
“Then you’re in denial about our connection.” Oh my fucking god, he will not hear what he does not want to hear.
“Do you think a relationship can survive on just physicality? There is more to love than sex. There is more to being with someone than just physical attraction? Have you even thought about that?” I can see a little bit of shock in his eyes. I don’t think he has. I think his lycan wolf memory enjoys the sensation of revisiting our sexual encounters and that’s lead him astray with what I mean to him. Or at least, what he thinks I mean to him.
“You’re so tunnel vision focused on the nostalgia of what once was, and of physical chemistry, you don’t see all the other things that we didn’t have. Either, you let this obsession you have with me go and move on with your life Booker, or I will advise the Breukelen Pack alpha and hierarchy that are you not allowed anywhere, near me ever again. I will specify that you can not be called upon to assist in any role that requires me to seek assistance from the Breukelen Pack. You will be cut off, demoted and if you’re not careful, ostracized. I will advise the Manhattan Maen pack hierarchy of the same thing and between both packs, they will ensure that you don’t get not just anywhere near me, but anywhere near where I might be. And that includes where I am regularly, which is anywhere, both hierarchy’s preside. Do you understand me now? You’ll be out of a job and if you’re not careful, out of the pack.”
A flash of anger crosses his face and I watch him contain it. I know it’s not wise to challenge an alpha wolf, even an alpha lycan such as Booker. But Booker is playing hardball and I need him to stop. Because I’m not going to let him ruin my relationship and marriage to Paris.
“You’re threatening me now? Really Bg? A threat?” He says back at me angrily. But still he stays put.
“You’re not leaving me with choices here Booker. It’s not meant to be a threat.”
“But it’s your game plan, the way you’re going to control me, right? That’s what this is really about isn’t it?”
“Booker,” I start
“I love you.” He blurts out at me. “I have been in love with you since the day I laid eyes on you, the first time we met in that hospital room. Do you understand that Bg, I’ve been in love with you for years. It should be me you’re with, you should be waking up every damn day with me in your bed.”
I let the silence hang, because despite all my big talk, this isn’t news to me. I’ve always known, even when he let me go, that he loved me. He just wasn’t capable at the time of loving me the way I should have been loved by him.
“Just because you’re ready now, some seventeen years after our break up to love me, does not mean, I have to go back to you. It does not mean I have to love you back. That’s what this is about Booker.” I state back at him unhappily.
I watch the anger soften from his face, he gets it. He has always known this about us. But he wanted to hope. He wanted me back. “No more chances.” I state. “No more outbursts, no more seeking me out, no more calling upon me without permission, or purpose from the pack. No more us. I am in love with Paris D’arenberg and if you ever attempt to sabotage my relationship with him again, I will show you exactly how badly I can be the girl of your nightmares in the worst way possible.” I wonder if he gets it now or if he thinks my words are just hot air, and bravado.
“Bg, I could never,”
“You already have.” I say cutting of a circular argument “Remember the club? You hit me. You’re no better than Conall Wakely.” I lash out him angrily. It seems my temper with Booker could be endless without trying. He winces at my words.
“That,” he waves a hand about as he looks at the ground and moves, pacing. “That was an accident, I told you that.”
“It’s so beyond the point Booker. You’re out. You don’t even get that. Paris doesn’t talk to you anymore, you’ve ruined your friendship with him and you’re about to ruin what little friendship we have. You’re losing me, do you understand that, do you understand why and that it is all on you?”
“I don’t want to loose you.” He says his voice breaking.
“You don’t get a choice in this. We’re beyond that privilege. You really don’t know me anymore Booker, so stop pretending you do. I have no temperament for you. We are done here.”
And without a further look, I turn and walk off on him. The time for talk is done and gone. I yank open the bar door just as two tall males walk out past me, and I get a whiff of their scent. They’re very obvious werewolf scent and glance back out the door, as it begins to close and see them growling and sizing Booker Parish up. He looks at them and back at me. I turn away, deliberately as the door closes and walk back into the bar completely. I wonder if Paris paid some locals to go out there and beat the crap out of Booker. I’m not sure when it comes to me, that it’s beyond him.
I look back over the way I had come, for Paris. Trying to get my emotions under control. I will not this Booker Parish interlude ruin what is supposed to be my honeymoon. The room seems to have swollen in capacity somehow, in what felt like only a few minutes that I was outside. But has maybe been longer. Paris is hard to miss and he has company now, no real surprise there. Nobody in New Orleans it seems, wants to be alone. That and Paris is incredibly hot to look at.
He’s also unmissable, a large guy, who has a lot of presence thanks to his physical size, with muscles that are obvious despite the clothes he wears. It of course helps that he also has great looks with a square jaw, and mysterious dark blue eyes. He is a dangerous allure that I am sure many females think means one thing or another about him. But tonight is not the night to go after my alpha.
I start pushing my way through the thick throng of revelers and get up to the bar on the opposite side of Paris and his overly talkative companion. She’s attractive, they always are. My height with blonde hair that is in no way natural. I ignore her, and get the attention of the bar attendant while Paris glances over at me and looks back at the woman talking to him. So kind.
Gag. I say to him telepathically and receive a smile on his lips while he keeps eye contact with the blonde and laughs, telepathically back at me. Good to see he’s good mood is returning and willing to keep our telepathic connection open rather than shielded. If it was shielded I’d know he was pissed off at me for taking the lead in dealing with the Booker problem.
“Hey, uh, a white wine and whatever he is drinking.” I state pointing to Paris’s drink, he turns smiling at me then.
“Are you buying me a drink?” He asks curiously breaking contact from the blonde. Let’s face it, it is usually the other way around.
“Yes.” I reply smiling back at my lover, husband and pack mate.
“Hey now, sister, who are you?” The flirty female says quickly cutting in on us and noting me, with a very obvious once over of the competition.
“Bg Sommers,” I say extending my hand to her, she actually reaches for it and shakes it. I’m a little surprised.
“Susanne.” She says back at me in her best Marilyn Monroe, happy birthday mister president kind of voice. I look back at Paris and raise an eyebrow at him.
Making friends huh? I ask Paris.
“Paris,” he says out loud shaking my hand as it comes back to me. So he does want to play along. Time to have some fun.
Always. I’
m a friendly sort of guy. He replies smirking externally.
Werewolf Consort Page 13
