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Rafe held her close. Any closer and she wouldn't be able to breathe. But Jess was so warm and comfortable that she didn't want to move an inch. A glance at the clock on his bedside showed her that it was only a little after four AM. The sun wasn't anywhere near cresting the horizon and the birds wouldn't chirp for at least an hour.
And yet Jess felt wide awake. The initial feel of comfort quickly faded, replaced by a growing sense of panic. She was in the alpha's arms, in his bed, and completely at his mercy.
The night before had been amazing, if she was willing to put aside the crazed werewolf who tried to do her harm. Really, it was only amazing if she focused on the things Rafe did with her. And to her. She was delightful sore and plenty pleasured and she was afraid he'd left some sort of imprint of himself on her soul.
She needed to get out.
Jess extricated herself from Rafe’s arms. It was a delicate procedure, she didn’t want to wake him. If she spoke to him, she knew she would stay. She wouldn’t be strong enough to go. Because even though she knew that staying was unwise, she really wanted to see what would happen if she did.
Of course, he could just wake up and tell her to get out. He’d taken his fill of her - several times as a matter of fact - and perhaps he was now sated. If she saw dismissal in him, it would break her.
So better to leave than risk it.
Jess gathered her things as quickly and quietly as possible. She slipped into her dress and held her shoes in one hand. Her hand was on the door before she remembered that her cell phone was still hidden in the alpha’s closet. The door to that closet was closed and on the other side of the room. She spared a glance at Rafe and then looked back at the closet door.
She couldn’t risk it.
Jess opened the door slowly and silently. She stepped into the hallway and closed it behind her. The click when it shut completely sounded as loud as a gunshot, but she couldn’t hear Rafe moving around in his room. She wasn’t home free, not yet. But she had cleared the first obstacle.
No one tried to stop her as she walked in near silence through the now familiar halls of Rafe’s castle. She’d only been there for a few days, but this place felt more comfortable than any home she could remember. Pretty fucked up considering she had been a prisoner here, she thought. But, then again, what girl didn’t want to live in a castle?
Jess expected the entrance to be guarded, but she didn’t expect that Mac would be waiting for her.
“I wanted to see if I was right about you,” he said without preamble.
If Jess hadn’t seen him a second before he spoke, she would have jumped out of her skin. “Were you?” What right did he have to make judgments about her? It was this damned pack that had done her wrong, not the other way around.
“Yes.” Mac leaned back against the stone wall and crossed his arms. In the dim light, he was more shadow than man.
“Are you going to get Rafe? Or are you going to let me go?” Despite Jess’s show with Martin earlier, she wasn’t a fighter and if Mac wanted to challenge her, she couldn’t win.
But Mac stepped aside. “You can catch a cab down the street.” He opened the door to the outside, “None of the guards will stop you. The alpha gave you free passage and we respect his wishes.”
It felt like a rebuke, but Jess stepped through the door and didn’t look back. She walked through the center of the nearly deserted town for several minutes until she was able to flag down a taxi and give the driver her address.
Twenty minutes later she was home. Her apartment seemed smaller after days spent in a fortress, but Jess was too tired to care. She took a quick shower, got into her most comfortable pajamas, and collapsed on her bed into a dreamless sleep.
Sunlight woke her up hours later and at first Jess was confused. It took her several moments to realize that she was back in her own bed in her own apartment. The pang of disappointment that the thought conjured was something to be ignored. A glance at the clock told her it was nearly noon and it took Jess several more minutes to summon the energy to push the covers off of herself.
As the urge to go back to sleep passed, Jess got out of bed and made a pot of coffee. She easily slid into her routine, cooking a simple breakfast and eating it while she looked out the window onto the street in front of her apartment. It was only as she went to check her phone that she got the first of the day’s reminders of where she had just spent her time.
Jess put her dirty dishes in the sink and then went to her desk only to discover that her computer was gone. Rebecca must have taken it days ago when she broke in. Jess hadn’t needed it that day before work so she hadn’t noticed. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the flash drive. She had no phone, no computer, and nothing else that could read the contents of the drive. With no way of determining what it contained, she could think of three options.
One, give it to Rebecca and be done with it.
Two, send it off to Rafe.
Or three, destroy the thing and never think of either of those people ever again.
Number three was impossible for too many reasons. But it sounded incredibly satisfying. No, she knew what she had to do. The information was Rafe’s and he should have it. Rebecca would escape and be home free of the alpha’s reach within hours.
And Jess would get out of town. But she was sure as hell going to miss this town. And its alpha. With the little bit of distance and little bit of time that she had allowed herself, Jess could admit it. In the days they’d had together, she had fallen for Rafe Blackwood.
Hard.
And she was going to miss him for the rest of her life.
So why was she leaving again?
Jess sat down in her desk chair and leaned back, pondering the question. Why was she so insistent that she needed to get out? Was it her instincts urging her on? Or was it fear? She trusted her instincts. They had seen her out of more than one dangerous situation in her life. But the cost of those feelings was that she could be overly cautious.
Her mother would tell her to get out. Her sister would tell her to get out. But neither of them lived Jess’s life. Hell, Jess hadn’t spoken with her mother in years and Rebecca only showed up when she was out of other options. Both of them would tell Jess to run not out of any concern for her, but because it would be inconvenient for Jess to have a life where she wasn’t willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice.
She’d been moving away from that for years. Falcon Point was her home and she couldn’t imagine a city more suited to her. She was old enough now that starting over seemed more trouble than it was worth. She liked who she was and didn’t want to become someone else.
If she stayed, she would have to join the pack. She’d only been spared that duty because no one knew what she was. Now it would be impossible to avoid. But Jess could accept that.
Who was she kidding? From the second she had entertained the thought about staying it was all about Rafe. She didn’t want to leave him, not if whatever there was between them was real. And she couldn’t fool herself about it.
She stood up. She had an alpha to go see.
