Chapter Five
Hayley dreamed that Marius was holding her against him. Her legs were wrapped around his waist and she was held up by his arms, wide open for him. He was lining up his cock, and just as he was about to press forward, thrusting into her, she woke up.
She swore and threw her pillow to the floor.
Three days after meeting him at the bar, and she still couldn’t get him out of her head. She’d had numerous dreams featuring Marius, each of them more explicit than the last. But in none of them had she found release, and each morning she woke up more frustrated than before.
He’d asked her out. She could have found all kinds of release this weekend. Maybe they would have gone out on Saturday night, for dinner like he’d asked. And afterward…more kissing. Kissing that would lead to his penis coming out to play, and she could have been enacting every one of her dreams for real.
Climbing out of bed, she pulled a hooded sweatshirt on and made her way across the studio to the kitchenette. Coffee. Coffee and…she looked outside. Raining. Again. It looked cold out there, and worse, they weren’t going to be able to move forward on demolishing the old house.
The stack of application paperwork sat on her little breakfast table, mocking her. She’d been putting it off all weekend. Too busy thinking up reasons for why she’d turned down Marius’s invitation to go out.
Date Marius? Ha. She barely had a handle on her own life; she certainly couldn’t deal with a relationship.
Plus, and most damning, he’d scared Summer. Hayley could forgive a lot of things—harsh words, sharp tempers, stupid miscommunications. But Marius had scared a woman. And Hayley couldn’t make that okay in her mind, even if Summer and Jackson seemed to have forgiven him.
She had to get him out of her head. Coffee was brewing, and she had a long rainy day of nothing ahead of her. The good news was that their family’s trust made it so she didn’t have to work. The bad news was…the same. Without a job dragging her out of the house, she was at risk for getting super bored. She needed to do something. Make something, or expend energy in some other way.
Her pillow, still on the floor, caught her eye. If she’d gone out with Marius, she was pretty sure he’d have tired her out.
Mind out of the gutter, Hayley, she told herself.
Marius had mentioned a good place to run, up by Mount Rainier. The weather wasn’t ideal, but she remembered the spot from when she was growing up, and maybe it would be nice to revisit it. In her animal form, the rain wouldn’t bother her, and maybe she could tire her brain out enough that she’d stop thinking about Marius so much.
*
Hayley parked her Volkswagen Beetle at the base of the trailhead. Dang, it was beautiful up here. The air going into her lungs even smelled beautiful. Piney, woodsy, notes of vanilla. Her family’s property had a similar scent, but without the sharp coldness coming off the mountain.
Invigorating. She felt more awake, she felt new.
She went to tuck her phone under the front seat, when it started ringing in her hand. The number on the screen was unfamiliar. Usually she wouldn’t answer, but a small part of her was maybe hoping it was Marius. Only so she could turn him down again, of course. Was she as present in his mind as he was in hers? The thought sent a tiny zing of pleasure through her chest.
She swiped the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”
“Is this Hayley Jaynes?”
It wasn’t Marius’s voice, and immediately an alarm started buzzing in the back of her mind. She leaned back against the rear door of her car and stared out over the gravel parking lot. “Who is this?”
“This is Boris Lockman, alpha of the Spokane Pride.”
She sucked in a breath. His voice held all the power of an alpha. She’d been intimidated by him as a seventeen-year-old, and now she felt that same trepidation. After letting her breath out slowly, she said in her calmest voice, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He gave a dark chuckle. “We need to meet in person. Your pride promised something to my pride four years ago, and if that isn’t delivered, there will be problems.”
“We lost the war,” she whispered.
“That doesn’t nullify our agreements. December first, eight p.m. I’ll text you the address when the day gets closer. You can come alone, or you may bring your brothers, but we will come to an accord regardless.”
“I’m with someone,” she whispered.
“That sounds like a lie,” he said carefully.
“It’s not.”
“December first, eight p.m. Be there.”
Hayley took her phone away from her ear and jabbed the “end call” button. She couldn’t seem to suck in enough of the thin mountain air, and she was glad for the solidity of her car behind her back. At the moment, she didn’t think she could hold herself up.
The Spokane Pride couldn’t seriously be interested in keeping the agreement if Hayley was unwilling. That agreement was four years old, and the war had been lost.
But if they wouldn’t take a simple “no” for an answer, Hayley would need to get creative.