Page 36 of Just One Bite

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Parker

If I am going to win the election and the tournament, I have to work harder. That means, as much as I wanted to stay with Olivia and stare at her in that dress all night, I had to step up as captain.

Ryker huffs as I hit the puck and it barrels toward him. He slapshots it right into the net.

“And you said you were washed up.” I’m out of breath too.

I’m glad I didn’t let him give up. He does have talent. He just needs someone to give him a chance.

I skate around the rink to hit another puck his way.

“P-Parker.” Olivia’s voice cuts through the air.

She’s on the other side of the rink, walking barefoot on the ice, stumbling toward me. Like a mirage in the dim light, her purple dress sparkles in the haze. Her feet are covered in dirt, and she slips, but I’m there in seconds to hold her up and keep her from falling into the ice.

“What’s going on?”

Anger rips through my throat. She’s hurt. There’s no other explanation for her to be walking around without her shoes. I smell the smallest tinge of blood from the scrapes on the bottoms of her feet. The thought of her bare feet on the ice makes me cringe, so I scoop her up and out of the rink.

“What’s wrong? ”

Ryker skates behind me but quickly places a hand over his mouth and nose and backs away.

I still don’t get it. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are glossy while the skin on her arms is warm. Warmer than it should be if she just came from outside.

“I-I need you,” she says.

“What?”

She grabs my face and kisses me. It’s so desperate it shocks me.

Then I smell it.

The scent coming off her sets the hair on my arms straight. I need her. My entire body eases forward to take her and satiate the need rolling off her in waves. Her scent has changed, amplified over a thousand times, making what is normally manageable, borderline intolerable.

I’m suddenly sixteen again, going through a rut for the first time. It’s that bad.

It’s unnatural. All-consuming torture.

“I need you. Please help me.”

My blood runs cold, and I search her arms and neck. “Did someone mark you?”

It’s the only reasonable explanation. She’s acting like she’s in heat, which is impossible because she’s human. But her scent—

I really need to fuck her. I push the thought out and hold my breath to bring my focus back to her. What happened to her at the party?

“Make this stop,” she begs.

“Who did this?”

“I was at the party and …”

I sniff at her neck, focusing harder. I have to know if someone else touched her. But her scent is clean, apart from the aroma filling the air and making me dizzy with desire. I linger there with my lips at her neck, licking my teeth. My head is swimming too.

I’m overly aware of Ryker, who is now on the other side of the rink, which still feels too close to her for my liking. I haul her into my arms and sling her over my shoulder.

“We’re going back to the dorm. Come here.”

“What’s happening? Do I need to call someone?” Ryker yells.

“I’m taking her to my room. Can you get a hold of Octavia Vix? Let her know I have Olivia, and check to see if she’s okay.”

He nods, and I grip Olivia while she squirms. My shoulders are back, and I’m ready to protect her from whoever might try to take her.

Someone did this to her on purpose, and I will find out who.

As soon as I shut the door, she’s on me, pulling at the buckle on my pants. She still smells like euphoria in a bottle, and every few seconds, I’m blocking out the image of me bending her over the side of my bed.

“Hey, we’re not doing this.”

“But why? You said if I asked.” She tries to strip my jersey off, but I stop her. There’s pain in her eyes from my rejection.

“Please, Parker. I hate this.”

Weres experience their first rut in adolescence, and it was one of the worst experiences in my life. I remember locking my door and counting the minutes till it ended.

“Baby, I know. But it will pass.”

“No. Make it end. I’ll feel better if you touch me … if you’re inside me. I want it to be you.”

I kiss her forehead and smooth down her hair.

“I can’t. I’m going to leave”— lock —“you in here and go figure out which one of them did this and how to fix this.” I omit the part about leaving the scene so gory the dean will scream in horror, but I need those fuckers to pay for this.

I need to rip someone’s throat out with my teeth.

“No! Don’t leave.” She’s looking at me like that’s the most horrible, shocking thing I could have suggested. I move to press a hand to her cheek, and, in the next breath, she breaks into a sob and all that alpha energy runs out of me. Any thought I have about leaving dissolves.

“You can’t go.”

“I won’t leave. Come here.”

I drag her into my bed with her squirming.

She keeps trying to kiss me, touch me. I’ve never been so uncomfortable while holding a beautiful woman.

The need to mark her jumbles around in my head like worms in my skull.

Every time I push it out, the thought comes back.

It’s maddening. But stars above, I need her to be mine .

I need her to smell like me so bad it’s all I can think about.

It’s obvious, isn’t it? That I’ve wanted to since the day I met her, but when she smells like that, it’s so permanent.

It’s a fact I’ve been able to hide from, but now it’s branded in my skin.

I rummage for my phone, then struggle to find the number in my call list. This is a potion. It has to be. And mypotions.net pulled up nothing, which means whatever the fuck it is, it’s forbidden.

And only one person can help me with that. Thankfully, he picks up on the first ring.

“Hey Coach.”

Olivia is running her hands over the inside of my waistband.

“Owens?”

“Yeah I … need your help with something.”

“It’s nearly midnight. It better be good.” His daughter is crying in the background.

Olivia’s hands are under my shirt, running over the scars on my chest. She smells so fucking good.

“I know. You’re just the best at potions, and uh … I have a friend … in the city who just called me, and we think she’s been drugged. She’s not a Were, but is experiencing heat-like symptoms and—”

“Is she safe?”

“Yeah, her, uh, boyfriend is on the other line trying to figure out what to do.”

“Is it having an effect on him? Is he Were?”

“Yes. I couldn’t find it on the web—”

I grab Olivia’s hand to stop her from undoing my pants, and she moves to kiss my chest.

“Adentium Colseum. It’s an ancient potion that doesn’t exist anymore. Or shouldn’t. It’s been scrubbed from most sources. It’s illegal to post the recipe on any website.”

“The one they used in the old mating rituals?”

My brain isn’t conjuring the source of that brief remembered information. Not while Olivia’s breath is by my neck. Just the remembrance of old stories I’d heard in my younger years of school.

“Yes. Well, that’s why it’s forbidden. The only way to stop it is to be marked.”

“Got it. Thanks. Fill you in with how it goes.”

“Parker—”

I drop my phone on the bed and steady Olivia with both hands. Someone drugged her so they could mark her, and still, she ended up in my arms. I’m angry. I’m relieved. I’m still so turned on by her but mostly just happy she’s safe with me and I can fix this.

“Don’t you want me?” I hate the sadness in her voice. She sniffles and her lip quivers.

“Oh, baby. I want you. But not like this … I know how shitty it feels.”

I haul her onto my bed and into my arms.

“But I want you … just you. I mean it. I want you to be my first.”

Her first ? Fuck. Fuck. I squeeze her and keep my eyes on the door. The safest place for her on campus is in my arms. Even if someone smells her and comes for her, they won’t get her.

“And we will. But not right now.”

“But it … it means something to me. It does. You have to know that.” She sniffles.

I move the hair from her face, smoothing the lines in her forehead. “Okay, I hear you. It means something. It does for me too. That’s one reason out of a very long list that we can’t tonight.”

She groans and buries her head into my chest. I have to think of anything other than her smell. I imagine watching her dance. Something neutral and awe-striking. It’s enough to dislodge the surging in my brain that tells me to strip her. Keeping her safe tonight is the most important thing.

“I won’t hurt you,” I say, rubbing the warm skin of her cheek and kissing it.

“Parker … you smell … you smell like …”

Like an alpha. Like she needs me to fuck her, but I won’t. As a human, finding the words would be nearly impossible, I imagine.

“It’s so good.”

“I’m going to fix this. I promise it won’t hurt.”

Her heartbeat is calmer now as I lay her down and move the hair from her neck.

This isn’t the way I wanted to mark her. This is far from how I wanted the night to go, but I can give her relief and that’s all I want.

Her fingers grip tighter and tighter in my hair as she tugs me toward her for a kiss, so I kiss her cheek and stroke her hair before running my lips across her neck.

I let go of my vampire instinct and focus only on my inner wolf, and it’s ready. Already on edge, waiting for me to sink my teeth into her. I’m not thinking of the taste of her when her blood hits my tongue.

The bite jolts me like a live wire in my veins.

My world snaps in two.

Gavin prepared me about the bond of it, but as soon as I feel the tug, I know it’s different. Nothing like what he described.

Oh, fuck. Olivia is …

She starts to relax. Her tight muscles loosen and her breaths calm. Her eyes grow heavier and heavier.

I’m still rigid as the mark dissolves under her skin.

She’s … I can’t believe she’s—

“Don’t leave,” she says, pulling me.

I’m not even the least bit tired as I bring her onto my chest.

“Never.”

Olivia is my mate. My linked mate. The fucking sky is purple.