Claiming His Fire (5 page)

Turning the car around to head back toward the road, I shook my head and lied to my sister, something I’d never really done before. “I left so I didn’t get a headache. The smell from the new floor was getting to me.”

“It looks good, right?” Zuri asked, chipper and smiling. Completely oblivious to the giant, gaping holes riddled with guilt and shame forming inside my mind. “I’m just glad Shadow was able to come over and help. Phoenix can’t do that whole place by himself. He was going to ask Beast, but with the baby and all, he figured they needed some time as a family.”

I hummed, stuck on the fact that the man who would try to lord over my destiny was named Shadow. How very fitting. Shadows were made of darkness. They lived in creepy corners and dank basements. Shadows were the opposite of what I wanted or who I was. As a fire witch, I could light up the sky so bright, every shadow around me would be banished forever. And that’s what I needed to do…burn my end of the thread connecting us until there was nothing but ash left.

I would not be some dog’s little bitch just because the Fates said I should be.

Even if the look of pain that flashed across his face when I refused him would probably haunt me for the rest of my life.

The music blared, shaking the nearly-deserted dance floor. Most bars tended to be a little empty so early in the evening, but I hadn’t wanted to wait. Not after the day I’d had. The thread connecting me to Shadow had pulled and squeezed all afternoon while I’d been with my sisters. It suffocated me. Made me want to rage against its hold.

Even now, hours after meeting the dog, I could still feel the weight of his stare on my skin. The sensation drove me crazy, making me anxious and angry. A bad combination for a woman who tended to set things on fire when she got emotional. So I’d convinced the girls to head to the bar after our shopping trip. I needed a few drinks and a little time on the dance floor. I needed to surrender to the DJ as I fought off Shadow’s leash.

Amber and Zuri sat in a booth with Charlotte across the room. Charlotte was mated to the president of the Feral Breed den, another woman who ended up giving away her freedom to a trick of Fate. She was fully leashed—bite marks and all—though not yet pregnant if the dark beer she appeared to be drinking was any indication. The three laughed and chatted, but I didn’t have a single care to join them. I wanted to dance, to have the music take me someplace else. To let loose and find my freedom. To just be alone for a while.

“Hey there, beautiful.”

And just like that, my happy little bubble burst. I did my best to smile as Dull Doug walked over, but it was a struggle. To be honest, I was happier to see the two glasses in his hands than him, and I was not a big drinker.

“Hey, stranger,” I said once he was close enough to hear me. “Stalking me?”

He shrugged, attempting to look casual but not pulling it off very well.

“Just out with a few friends from work. I saw you dancing alone and thought you might be a little thirsty.” He held out a glass. “Jack and diet with a lime, right?”

I smiled my first real smile since I’d left Zuri’s house that morning after meeting…him. This was what I needed: liquor, dancing, and the possibility of a little untangled entanglement of the physical variety.

Biting back the sick feeling that thought gave me, I plastered on a grin. “You’re kind of my savior right now.”

He smiled when I took the drink from his hand. A bright, wide smile that made his eyes turn up at the corners. A real smile. Not one brought on because the Fates
wanted
him to smile at a particular someone or because some wacky need to reproduce forced him to. Doug may have been dull, but he was real. His feelings for me were real, whatever they might have been. And that was something I couldn’t ignore. Doug might demand, but he’d never be able to control me the way a red thread could. Never be able to hurt me…because he’d just never mean that much to me. Doug was safe.

I danced closer, downing my drink and letting my body brush his. “Dance with me.”

He smirked and placed both glasses on a nearby table before pulling me close. His hands gripped my hips, strong and rough. I let him yank on me, let him slide his knee between my legs as I pushed my breasts against his chest. I let him take.

Just as I was getting into the moment, as Doug’s hands slid from my hips to cup my ass, I felt a tug on my chest, a need to look toward the table where my sisters sat. A desire to…

Oh, hell no.

Phoenix, Shadow, and Charlotte’s mate, Rebel, sat with the girls. All six of them talking and laughing. The scene made my stomach clench, but I couldn’t look away. Shadow, wearing his long, dark hair in a low ponytail, sat next to Amber. He didn’t seem to be saying much, more listening as the others spoke. Attentive.

I wanted to ignore him, to forget he was there and get back to dancing with Dull Doug, but Shadow hijacked my senses. I could feel him, see him, practically smell him on the air. If he’d speak, I was sure I could hear him from across the room and over the loud music. By the Goddess, the draw to him, the need to move closer, was burning. Physically painful. And I hated him for it.

He looked my way, a small glance, but one that filled me with a sense of longing so strong, I almost headed straight for him. My thread pulled tight, my heart on fire, the desire to touch and taste almost too strong to resist.

Almost, but not quite.

Growing more pissed off by the second, I wrapped my arms around Doug’s neck and gyrated my hips with his. Let Shadow sit and watch me. I’d definitely give him a show. As I expected, Doug bent down, running his nose along the side of my face until he was breathing all loud and humid in my ear.

Sounding like a pig grunting.

“You are so beautiful.”

I kept my fake smile in place and twisted in his hold, rubbing my ass against him as his arms came around to squeeze me close. Ugh, something about being with him felt so wrong. So awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe if I just closed my eyes, I could pretend it wasn’t Dull Doug rubbing his probably dull dick against my ass like a high school kid at his first homecoming dance. Maybe I could picture myself with someone more my speed…a little wild, a little crazy, a whole lot sexy without being an arrogant douchenozzle.

As soon as the first image of Shadow appeared in my mind, my eyes popped open and my stomach revolted.
Fuck
and
no
. Not happening. Who cared that he was about ten levels of hot with his light, almond-shaped eyes and his dark, shiny hair? As if the fact that he was tall—way taller than Dull Doug—and obviously strong enough to toss me around if he chose to, was a reason to feel attraction to him. Fine, he was handsome with his ridiculous cheekbones, full lips, and smoke-gray eyes, but that wasn’t the only thing I wanted. That wasn’t what kept drawing my gaze to the table, to him, to the bulging muscles in his arms and the long, thick lines of his thighs.

Shit.

I danced with my eyes closed until the sick feeling in my gut became too strong. Until I couldn’t fight any longer. Needing a break, I pulled out of Doug’s hold, put some space between us. My stomach twisted and the rope around my heart tightened, dragging me down, making me dizzy with the pressure.

“I’m going to run to the ladies’ room.”

Doug shrugged, backing away, presumably to meet up with his coworkers. I spun and hurried for the stairs leading to the basement bathrooms, too afraid of seeing Shadow watching me to even glance at the table where he’d been sitting. I couldn’t see those eyes again, couldn’t resist the pull of their gaze.

Grabbing the handrail, I ran down the concrete steps that would lead me to the privacy I desperately needed. I made it to the second to last stair before my ankle turned, my hand slipping on the metal rail and my arms flailing as I stumbled forward. I had one sickening moment of mentally screaming oh-my-Goddess-I’m-falling before a strong hand grabbed my elbow, keeping me from face-planting on the concrete. A hand that felt as familiar as the fire that wrapped around me, that burned and licked and brought happiness and balance to my soul, more than I’d ever known. One hand, one touch. Only one person it could belong to.

I yanked my arm out of Shadow’s hold, stumbling backward. My face burned, my pride a little knocked down from almost falling in front of him, but that didn’t help my temper.

“You don’t need to follow me, you know.”

Shadow furrowed his brow, his forehead going all squished and lined and kind of adorable. Those unusual eyes of his focused right on my face. The hard lines of his body too close not to notice. To crave.

He had to be such an asshole to be so pretty.

“I was down here first.”

“What? No. You were at the table with my sisters.” I pointed up, only just taking into account the fact that Shadow stood facing the opposite way I had been headed, as if he’d been coming up the stairs as I’d been going down them. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He shook his head and bounded up the stairs two at a time. “The words you’re looking for are ‘thank’ and ‘you,’ by the way.”

I stood there, mouth literally hanging open as I watched him disappear around the turn. The jerk. He didn’t look back, leaving me behind as if I were nothing. As if I weren’t the woman the Fates had decided would be perfect for him. As if he didn’t feel the same connection to me that I did to him.

Not that I wanted him to.

The lingering bitterness of regret and frustration from the way I’d run up the stairs the night before had me rolling out of bed earlier than normal. Damn but Scarlett had walls. Huge, nonscalable walls with defenses that could cut a man to the quick in an instant. Walls that left me feeling like a failure and a coward for refusing to tear them down with my fists. Scarlett wasn’t the type of girl you pushed into anything, though. She needed to be wooed, to be enticed. She needed to make her own decisions. I just wished her decisions included giving me a fucking chance.

Back sore and dick hard, I stumbled into the bathroom, resigned to start my day…sans plan to win over my mate. I brushed my teeth while glaring at the erection that refused to go down. Fucker had been hard all night, waking me up to jerk off more times than I cared to admit. All because of a woman I couldn’t have. If I didn’t stop obsessing over Scarlett Weaver, I was going to suffer some serious chafing.

It’d been less than twenty-four hours since I first saw her, since she refused me on sight, and yet I couldn’t get her off my mind. That sexy hair, the mouth-watering curves, those jade eyes that about peered right through me. The lilt in her voice, the kindness in her eyes when she looked at her sisters. My every thought centered on her, my every need overshadowed by my desire for her. But being close to me was quite obviously the last thing she wanted…most of the time. Except when I touched her and her breath caught, or I looked at her and found her staring at me. Or when I felt the tug of our bond around my heart, indicating that, while she’d spoken her refusal, she hadn’t truly accepted it yet.

She was driving me mad.

Unfortunately, that was mad as in crazy and mad as in pissed at the same time. The way she let that guy hang all over her at the bar was such an infuriatingly immature move. Deep down, I knew she only did it because I was there, watching her, but man, did that cut sting. It’d been hard for me to sit with everyone else and watch the woman who was supposed to be my mate rub her round ass on some other guy’s junk as her eyes kept flitting my way. I’d been ready to shift right there in the bar, had felt an almost irresistible need to protect what was mine.

But the last thing Scarlett Weaver could be called was mine. She’d refused me outright. And though I felt the bond between us, and saw the desire in her eyes, she obviously had no interest in pursuing anything to do with me. A fact that didn’t help the situation that grew in my pants every time I thought of her swinging her hips on the dance floor. My mate could dance. And fate had a seriously fucked-up sense of humor.

The phone rang as I contemplated rubbing one out again, giving me something else to focus on. I almost didn’t answer it, knowing as soon as I saw the name on the screen that my day was about to go to shit. But apparently, being refused by your mate turned you into a masochist.

“What’s up, Phoenix?” I asked when I swiped to accept the call.

“Hey man, I was just wondering if you had any time today to come out? I know you put in a lot of work with me yesterday, but I’d like to finish the downstairs today so I can start the nursery tomorrow, and I need a hand with the trim. Zuri’s making ribs for lunch as payment.”

I rubbed a hand over my face, wishing I were the kind of guy who could say no to a friend who needed me. But I couldn’t… It wasn’t in my nature.

Sighing, I glanced at the time. “No problem. I can be there in an hour.”

“Thanks, Shadow. You’re really helping me out.”

“Anytime.” I ended the call and tossed the phone on the bed. What the hell was I doing? Scarlett might be at Phoenix’s place, and the last thing I needed was to spend more time trying not to notice every detail about her. But I couldn’t leave the guy hanging, so I’d risk seeing the woman who hated me enough to defy fate if it meant helping him out. We were only days away from the charity ride to Chicago for Blaze’s birthday celebration, and then I could blow out of town and not come back for a long time. Maybe ride with another den for a year or so as I swept up the remnants of my heart.

Lucky me.

Ten minutes later, I stood under the streaming water of my shower. The tile pressed cold against my hands, the water hot on my back, a nice juxtaposition of sensation to keep me grounded. Memories of Scarlett dancing flooded my mind whenever I closed my eyes, making me angry and hurt and horny all at once. Damn her for not giving us a try. She didn’t even know me, had never said a word to me until she told me no. Yet she let that carbon copy Ken doll rub all up on her, she talked to him, she smiled at him. And my God, she was so beautiful when she smiled.

I took my heavy dick in my hand, unable to resist the need a moment longer. Fingers slick with soap, I squeezed almost to the point of pain before tugging, sliding, working myself toward completion. I set a quick pace; this wasn’t a moment to draw out the pleasure. This was about getting mine and getting off for the sole purpose of relieving the pressure in my groin. Sliding my hand from base to tip and back, I tugged and squeezed, harder and faster, grunting when I purposely flicked the underside of the head on the way to the tip. Fuck yeah, that was good.