Mark nodded. “He’s been to my cabin to run every night.”
“What?” I shot to my feet. “He’s still here? In Denver?”
Mark stood, too, looking surprised. “Well, yeah. You didn’t know that? I don’t think he’s capable of leaving you behind. As your mate, it’s his job to take care of you, even if you don’t want him around.”
It made sense now. Imagining that I’d seen Roy. The loft.
He’d been here the whole time. Watching over me. Taking care of me.
“Oh my God.” My whole body reverberated with something powerful. Love, maybe? Or the sense of honor that I could mean so much to another person.
I knew, suddenly, what my gut had been telling me for the past ten days: how much Roy meant to me. It didn’t matter how long we’d known each other. What we had was real, and I shouldn’t have thrown it away. Or been scared of it.
I needed to go to him. Right now.
My gut seemed to celebrate that decision. Happiness fluttered in my chest. An effervescence fizzed all around me. “I need his number,” I said, excited. “You have it, right? Where is he staying? At your cabin?”
Mark chuckled as he pulled his phone out and jotted the number on a sticky note. “No, he’s been staying at the Four Seasons. He wanted to stay closer to you, I think.”
He’s been in the same place all along?
I snatched the piece of paper from him and dashed out the door. “Thanks! I’ll come back later to sign the paperwork!”
“Yeah. No. You go. Your mate is waiting.”
37
ROY
* * *
I stood beneath the hot spray in the huge bathroom. I’d just returned from a night of running up at Mark’s cabin, trying to cut the edge, that sharp feeling of loss that didn’t seem to go away. No matter how far I ran, I couldn’t escape the agony of being apart from my mate.
I let my head fall forward as I braced one hand on the tile wall, the spray pelting my tired muscles.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself, the sound echoing off the steam shower walls.
It was getting harder and harder not to go to Brooke. My wolf needed our mate’s scent. I needed it, too. I wanted to get my face between her thighs and coat my skin in her cream. Burn that sweet scent in my nostrils. Get the honey taste on my tongue.
My dick pulsed to life at the thought of her. I was constantly hard because I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The silky feel of her hair, the smoothness of her skin. The way her nipples pebbled against my tongue when I sucked on those little tips.
“Fuck,” I groaned again, taking a grip of the base and stroking up from root to tip. It wasn’t tight or hot like her pussy. It didn’t clamp or milk the cum from my balls like she did.
My hand would have to do. There was no alternative. I would fuck no one else but Brooke. No other woman stirred my desires like she did.
I thought watching over her would ease my need to protect. That purchasing her loft would remind me that she would be safe. That she would be happy with the home of her dreams.
It hadn’t.
Nothing would.
Through the open bathroom door, I heard my cell ring. It would be Boone, I was sure. He and Ace were checking on me in turns. They could wait. I had nothing new to share.
And if thinking of my mate as I jerked off was all the pleasure I’d get, I wasn’t stopping. I’d call them back.
I pumped my hand faster, my balls drawing up, the tingle at the base of my spine signaled I was going to come. With one last tug, I called out her name as thick ropes of my seed–meant solely for my mate–sprayed on the tile and washed away down the drain.
“Fuck!” I shouted, lifting my head to the spray because my wolf wanted to howl in misery.