Bite Marks (The Lycans 5)

“I mean, what if I needed some R&R because I was tired of looking at all your ugly fucking mugs?”

He nodded slowly and shifted on his feet.

“I should kill you on the spot, but that rug you’re standing on is new, and I don’t want to make more work for the housecleaners. They deal with enough from my demanding ass. I’m trying to, you know, think things through more.” I grinned, but it was far from easygoing.

“And because your mate is here?”

I growled and was on James a second later, my forearm pressed to his throat, my other hand gripping the hair at the top of his head and keeping his body pressed viciously to the bookcase in my study.

“Man, James, you’ve been pushing and pushing, butting up against me for a while now, yeah?” I leaned in and added more pressure to his trachea with my arm. “Wanna tell me why the fuck that is? You trying to gain supremacy, to take me down and gain control? Is that what all this bullshit is about?”

His mouth opened and closed, and he tried to shake his head. Even though I’d asked him a question, I was making sure the fucker couldn’t talk, let alone breathe.

“I’m trigger-happy on a good day, James, bloodthirsty when I’m in a good fucking mood. But you here, now, intruding on my time with my female… even speaking about her in any way, man—”

“I—” he wheezed out.

“Nah, you even thinking about my female makes me want to take you apart bit by bit, slowly. Real fucking slowly.” I added even more pressure, enough that his trachea was on the precipice of being crushed. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would fucking suck for him and his healing process. I waited another heartbeat, then one more for good measure, James’s face becoming an enticing shade of purple by this point.

I let him go and took a step back, not enough to get out of his personal space though. The prick needed to feel the tension and danger rolling off me.

I hadn’t told anyone about Kayla aside from Kane and Sebastian finding out. I knew they wouldn’t have said shit to anyone though, so James assuming anything about my mate meant every other soldier in my army probably assumed the same just by the change in me.

And that just pissed me off.

“I tried calling, but it kept going to voice mail.”

“Maybe you should have sent a carrier pigeon,” I said blandly. “Or, I don’t know, take a fucking hint that if I’m not answering, that means to leave me the fuck alone.”

James cleared his throat and nodded.

I stared at him, and he stared… everywhere but at me, his body language nervous as fuck. “You know, James, I think you forgot that I don’t give second chances.” He snapped his head up and locked gazes with me. “You should keep that in mind next time you say anything about my mate—hell, if she even filters through your head.” Yeah, I was still pissed about that. “Thought maybe you would have remembered that from the one and only chance I gave you all those years ago, yeah?”

As if James were pulled back to the past, he lifted his hand and ran it over the scar across his neck.

“You remember the day I gave you that one and only chance, James?” I watched as his throat bobbed when he swallowed.

He nodded slowly before saying through clenched teeth, “Yeah. Believe me, I remember. And I didn’t forget my gratitude.”

“Good.” I clapped my hands together. “So now, tell me why you showed up uninvited to my place of residence, fucking up my night and wasting my time.” On the outside I would appear calm, collected. But on the inside I was a prowling, chaotic mess, as my thoughts were only on Kayla. She was right upstairs, so fucking close. I could go to her room, kick the door open, and let the intense sexual chemistry and angst moving between us finally free. Because I knew she was close to breaking. So damn close.

She was fighting this, fighting me, and a part of me didn’t blame her. Her human mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around any of this. She wanted me with a wildfire that burned out of control inside her. We didn’t know each other, had hardly spent any time together, and to her, all of this shit was moving at light speed.

But for me, it painted a whole different picture. I’d waited one hundred and twenty years for her. And so only “knowing” each other for a few short days, and being unable to claim her, was fucking brutal and the worst kind of torture.

And that was saying something, since I’d experienced some hard-core pain in my life.

I gestured for James to get the fuck on with it.