“Really? You’re using sarcasm now? Really?”
“What do you want me to say, Mary Ann?”
“When did it happen? Tell me that much.”
“Before I met you.”
And that made it okay? “What about before you dated her sister?”
A nod, as if he didn’t hear—or didn’t care—about her disgust. “Yes. Before then. I’ve never cheated on a girlfriend, and I never will, so this argument is pointless.” Pointless.
“Screw you,” she said. Then, “Oh, wait. Fifty percent of the people in this circle already have!” Her math was off, but she didn’t care. No wonder she’d always been so jealous when she watched him with Victoria. No wonder the pair was always at ease with each other. They’d seen each other naked! And once tasted, forbidden fruit was that much easier to taste a second time. And a third.
Mary Ann was proof of that. How many times had she made out with Riley when she shouldn’t have?
“Look, it was awkward, all right?” Now he was the one throwing words like weapons. “Like she said, there’s not going to be a repeat performance.”
Again, as if that made everything okay. “Why don’t I sleep with Aden, then, and we’ll see how pointless—”
Riley leaned down, getting in her face, all hint of placating her gone. “You will not sleep with Aden.” There was so much fury in the undercurrents of his rasping voice, she felt the brush of it all the way to the bone.
She could only blink in surprise. Now, here was a reaction she hadn’t expected from him. It meant he still cared about what she did—and who she did it with. “Why? Because I’m still your girlfriend?”
A moment passed. The fury melted, and he straightened, gathered his wits. “I…I don’t know. Neither one of us is the same person we were a few weeks ago.” Honesty. Well, that she had expected, and now she wanted more. “Just say it,” she said, forcing the issue despite their rapt audience. Please don’t. Please don’t say we’re through. That we’re over, done.
A muscle ticked below his eye. A sign of his upset, and something that had happened quite frequently lately. “I’m practically human. I can’t protect you anymore.”
If that was his only argument, he’d never get rid of her. “You did just fine back at the motel.”
“And what about when a pack of wolves decide to make you their lunch?”
“So, if you could still shift, you would stay with me every second of every day?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Lock me up?”
“No.”
“Then how would you have protected me from that before, huh? I could become someone’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, whether you shift or not. Stop making excuses and say what we both know you want to say.” Don’t listen to me.
He was breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring with the force of his inhalations. “We’re…we…”
“Say it!” No. Don’t.
A hard hand settled on her shoulder, and Mary Ann whipped around with a startled yelp. A frowning Aden stood beside her. Riley snarled at him, realized what he’d done to his king and cleared his expression.
“Let’s head to Tonya’s. I’ll get Victoria there. Riley, you get Mary Ann there.”
Warmth flooded Mary Ann’s cheeks. Okay, so now she cared about her audience. “Why do you want to go back to Tonya’s?”
“She has answers about Julian that I can’t find in the papers and photos. So, meet us there in…” He glanced at a wristwatch he didn’t have and had never worn. “Half an hour?”
Enough time to work through their current problem, he was saying.
Riley nodded. “Fine.”
“Good.” Aden and Victoria sauntered off, hand in hand.
Way to rub it in.
“Come on,” Riley grumbled, taking off in the other direction. He rounded the far corner, Mary Ann close to his heels. Rather than picking up where they’d left off, he picked out a car to steal.
She didn’t protest as he popped the door lock, removed a chunk of plastic around the ignition, then cut and twisted the exposed wires. She just acted as lookout and slid into the passenger side when the engine roared to life.
Soon they were winding down the roads a little too swiftly for her peace of mind, winding in and out of traffic. Which still wasn’t heavy, but come on. Only took one vehicle to get in your way, and hello, wreck.
“Slow down.”
“In a minute.”
He’d never driven this erratically before. Not with her. “If I say what you wouldn’t, will you slow down?”
His fingers curled around the wheel, his knuckles quickly losing color. “I don’t need you to say it. I can.”
She wouldn’t react, she wouldn’t react, she wouldn’t freaking react. “Then do it.” Good. There’d been no hint of turmoil in her voice.
“I can’t,” he said, contradicting himself. “I try, part of me wants to, but I can’t.”
There was no comfort to be had in his claim. “Can you ever forgive me for what I did? For what you asked me to do?”
He reached up, adjusted the rearview mirror. “That’s not the issue, Mary Ann. If I hadn’t done what I did, if you hadn’t done what you did, you wouldn’t be alive. And I’d rather you were alive and my animal dead than the other way around.”
That, she could take comfort from—but it cost her. Suddenly she was bathed in shame, her skin tingling with it. “I wish I could give him back to you.” But she’d absorbed him and must have chewed him up bite by tasty bite, because she couldn’t sense him inside her. Not on any level.
“You can’t,” he said, confirming what she’d already known.
“If that’s not the issue, then why are you so angry with me?”
“I told you. I can’t protect you like this.”
“Riley, I never liked you because of how well you protected me. I liked you because of how hot you look in your jeans!”
“Funny.” The word was laced with sarcasm, but his lips were quirking at the corners, delighting her, uplifting her.
“But kind of true.”
All too quickly, he sobered up. “My pack, the vampires, they all hate you, fear you and will be out for your blood.”
“Even though I’m no longer draining?”
“Yes. A drainer has never been rehabilitated before. They won’t believe you’re no longer a danger to them.”
And he didn’t either, apparently. “A few weeks ago you would have said they’d never follow a human king, but look at them now.”
He flicked her a glance, and the car at last slowed down. He was still breaking the sound barrier, but she took heart. “Do you want to be with me? Because I seem to remember you pushing me away again and again.”
Now or never. She may as well lay it all on the line, since she was asking him to do the very same. “Yes. I want to be with you.”
“And if you start draining again, will you run from me again?”
So not the response she’d craved. “I—” Crap. She had no answer for him. Would she? Wouldn’t she? She didn’t know, and then it didn’t matter. Blue and red lights flashed behind them. A siren blared. “I think we’re being pulled over.”
Riley slowed the rest of the way, easing over to the side of the road.
Panic beat through her. “Does he know it’s stolen? Is that why he stopped us?”
“No, or he’d have his gun out and aimed. Just stay calm, and say nothing.”
A few horribly agonizing minutes later, the cop was standing beside their car, his elbow resting against the open window, and Mary Ann was battling a panic attack.
“Do you know how fast you were going, son?”
“Nope.” And Riley didn’t sound as if he cared.
“Thirty-five miles over the speed limit.”
“You mean the sign wasn’t just a suggestion?”
She wanted to curse. Why was he being so antagonistic?
Gaze narrowing, the cop focused on her, his lips turning down in a scowl. “License and registration. Now.”
“Can’t,” Riley said easily. “This isn’t my car.”
She really wanted to curse. What was he doing? Did he want to be arrested?