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“So, you’d react this way with any female?It has nothing to do with me?”

The muscle in his jaw jumped.“Yeah, I would, but you’re?—”

“You’re full of shit.”There was no holding those words in, they just slipped out.“We kissed, and I know you felt it.You felt what was between us.”

“Tell me you won’t put yourself in danger again.Promise me,” he rumbled, ignoring what I said.

I straightened my spine and hoped I hid my wince.“I don’t have to promise you anything.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, his voice now blended with his hound.

“Why do you care?”Confrontation usually made me want to puke, or brought on a panic attack, but not with Jagger, apparently there was no holding back.I couldn’t.

He snarled, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Or are you too much of a damned coward to admit the truth, even to me, where no one else will hear?”

His nostrils flared, and he literally ground his teeth.

I smiled wide and nodded.“Like I said.”

“I…care about you, about what happens to you, that’s why,” he said, the words sounding as if they were being squeezed out of him.His skin was visibly rolling along his tattooed shoulders as he attempted to hold back his desire to shift.Maybe the part of him that was all hound didn’t care about the way I looked or what I was.Maybe the hound was just as confused and angry as I was that Jagger was rejecting his mate.

“Why?Say it,” I rasped.

More teeth grinding.“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do, but you won’t say it because you don’t want me.Because you would rather fuck some random wolf shifter.Because you would rather be with any other female than me.”

“That’s not fucking true and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything when it comes to you.You run hot and cold.You stand outside my bedroom window for weeks after I’m hurt, then you vanish for three months.You start messaging me while you’re away, then you humiliate me in front of your whole pack.”I shook my head.“No, Jagger, I don’t know.”

“I just…I need to know that you’re safe.For some reason, I need that.Will you at least give that to me?”he said.

I flinched.Was he really going to pretend he didn’t know what we were to each other?That he didn’t feel it?This was probably my last chance to get it all out there on the table, so, and unlike him, I refused to hold back.“I don’t know if you know this about me, but when you earn my trust, when I love, I do it big.I give everything.I would have given you everything, Jagger, if you’d wanted it.But you don’t want that from me, and you won’t even tell me why.”

He released a ragged breath.“You’re wrong.We’re not mates, it’s impossible.What you feel for me, it’s something else.”

Impossible?He’d said that at the clubhouse as well.Was the idea of us being mates that awful or unthinkable to him that he refused to even contemplate it?“Impossible?Then why are you here?You won’t leave me alone.You’re the king of mixed freaking messages.You make me think you want me, so I open myself up to you, then you throw it back in my face.I try to forget you, but somehow, you’ve strong-armed your way back into my life, for how long, Jagger?Just long enough for me to have hope, before you leave again?”

He shook his head.“That’s not what I’m doing.”

He was sweating, shaking, his eyes were still scarlet and the veins under every part of exposed skin bulged.The towel around his hips hid nothing, and he was hard, tenting the fabric around his waist.

“You want me.You want to be with me.I know you do,” I said, and there was no missing the desperation in my voice.

His nostrils flared.“Yeah, I won’t deny I want to fuck you, but that doesn’t mean we’re?—”

“Mates?Fated?”

“Sutton,” he growled.“Stop.Stop this before…”

“Before what.”

“Don’t—”

“Before you lose control?I can see how hard you’re fighting it.”