Page 18 of Scars of the Sun
I heaved a long sigh. As much as I wanted to do my own thing tonight, I did feel bad for worrying my sister-in-law.
Río looked at me over his shoulder and raised a brow. “You gonna be okay, Princess? I can take you somewhere else if you want.”
I winced at the warning growl Orion gave and shook my head. I swung my leg around and stood beside the motorcycle. My hands straightened my skirt and smoothed the long sleeve shirt I wore. “I’m good. Thanks for the ride.” Wisps of his hair floated around his sharp cheekbones, and I really wanted to twine my fingers around the soft waves. Now I was worrying that I’d never get the chance.
Río didn’t seem annoyed by my brother’s territorial display, though. He grasped my waist, brushing the sliver of bare skin above my skirt, and pulled me closer. I shuffled as close to him as I could, and he lifted his chin expectantly. Without thought, I lowered and was met with a soft kiss on my cheek. In my ear, he whispered, “See you around.” It wasn’t a question, which made me deflate a bit, but he pressed another kiss on the shell of my ear.
When we pulled away from each other, Río looked back at my brother and his family in the doorway. With a wry smirk, he winked over O’s shoulder. “Hey, pipsqueak.” Orion’s answering growl would’ve raised anyone’s hackles, but Río just snickered, put his helmet on, and started up his bike.
Without another glance at me, he backed out and left, gravel dust flying up in his wake. I watched him go, disappearing intothe darkness within the woods, and the rumbling of his bike loud in the stillness of the night.
“We’re going to talk about this in the morning.”
I shot my brother a narrow-eyed look, but he just returned it, unimpressed. “You’re not my parent.God, did you have to act like such an asshole?”
Orion’s brow scrunched and he let loose a gust of air through his nose. “You go to a party on your own, with people you don’t know, ignore my mate’s texts to see if you’re all right, then turn up smelling like acat.”
Heat blazed on my cheeks, and I let out a frustrated noise. Fuck shifter noses. And fuck territorial Wolves. I stomped closer to my brother and glared at him. “I’m a goddamned adult, and I don’t need you scaring off the people I meet. It’s none of your business.”
Orion looked at me, not backing down. “Any shifter on pack landismy business. Especially any shifter that associates with my sister.Especiallyany shifter that knows my daughter. Care to explain that, Mona?”
I threw up my hands. “He’s at the skatepark sometimes, okay? Fuck, I thought you weren’t with this ‘get off my land’bullshit.”
He huffed. “I’m not.”
I gave a dry cackle. “Oh,sure. Whatever, I’m going to bed.” Without giving Orion a chance to volley something back, I swerved around him and bounced up the wooden steps and onto the porch.
Sylvie backed away to give me room and offered a reassuring smile. I patted Dahlia’s head and mumbled an apology to them both as I quickly took off my boots and lined them up by the door. I felt three sets of eyes on me as I retreated into the guest room but couldn’t be bothered to explain myself any more.
CHAPTER NINE
RÍO
Being a manager fucking sucked.
Truthfully, it’d been one of the first jobs I applied to when I blew into town, and on each application, only a small portion of my information was accurate. Including food service experience. It wasn’t like I would be able to write down my actual work experience without getting arrested by authorities, human and otherwise. Or, I shuddered to my core, my family would catch up to me.
It wasn’t really all that hard, I’d found. Vinny’s was a pretty well-oiled machine, the menu simple, and the mixture of townie and student employees were far more chill than other… associates I’d dealt with in the past.
But when some perfect storm of food poisoning, no-call/no-shows, and summer vacations hit, I was the one it fell back on. When Robby had started looking pale and slightly green, I’d sent him home despite his protests. We hadn’t been busy by any means, but there was a large gap between manning a closing shift with one other person and doing it in your own. I’d never be frightened by a human, but wow, people got fuckingdifficultwhen it came to their food. Combine that with having to makethe food and take the ordersandshut everything down on my own, I was ready to get the fuck out of here.
One of the last things on my checklist was to take the trash out, and the final task had my skin buzzing with the knowledge that I’d be free soon. The skatepark would still be hopping, alive with people out, and I could already feel the vibration of my wheels rolling on the concrete. Metal and sweat and fucking air. They were all waiting for me.
And maybe a certain honey-eyed girl.
While I lifted the trash bags into my hands and nudged my hip at the door to get it to swing open, I replayed the feeling of her mouth on mine for the thousandth time. How the hot suction of her pretty lips almost did me in. Christ, how she saw Alex kneeling for me, and instead of turning that little nose up and running out of the room, she’d just sunk down beside him.
The first trash bag flew into the dumpster with a heavy, plastic thud, and my back shivered with the memory of Ramona clinging onto me while I touched her. How she’d done it again while I took her home. One was with my fingers swirling between her legs while the other was while I handled us on my bike, but both were her giving me her trust. She handed her body over to me so easily and beautifully, just the barest flash of it in my mind’s eye had my heart picking up and my cock plumping in my jeans.
I flung the last two bags over and into the dumpster, the noise more muffled now. What I wouldn’t give to brush my teeth over Ramona’s soft skin again. For her to let me peel back all that she’d slathered over herself to try and hide what those gorgeously haunted eyes screamed anyway. Would she be able to do the same thing to me? Flay me open and leave tears streaming down my cheeks and my fangs coming out?
My chest started a weird pulling at the thought, and I yanked the hair tie from the top of my head. I breathed a sigh, tryingto get my futile desires for Ramona to clear as the tension on my scalp released. My hair fell across my back in a comfortable, swishing weight. I wiped my hands off on my jeans.
Nah—my heart twinged, but I pressed on with the reality check—any long-termthingcouldn’t happen.
I locked up quickly, whistling the newest song the band was working on, and climbed onto the back of my bike. Night creatures chittered, barely audible beneath the engine rumble and the whistling of humid wind as I made the ten-minute trip to the park. There were no screaming cicadas within the symphony of sound, which kept me from truly sinking into the comfort, but the heat seeped into my skin, burying in my pores. Dios ayúdame if I ended up sticking around through the winter.
I pushed that awful thought away at the sight of the white fluorescent lights and illuminated concrete. The chain-link fence surrounding the skate park just outside of town was a transparent shadow that kept the place in its own sort of bubble.