“I’m not going to talk about it.” Ray told him he wasn’t going to ask. “Sure you weren’t. Just like every other time you thought to barge into my life. You’re as nosy as a woman at a fence line hanging wash.”
“You’ve been hanging around Carlton too much. And have I been barging into your life? Not the way I’ve seen it, but you have your little temper tantrum. In the meantime I’m going to ask you, where is the girl?”
“I didn’t hurt her.” Ray only nodded, and Steele got up to make his cup of coffee. “I don’t know where she is. I looked for her for an hour and no sign of her anywhere. She just took off without so much as…well, she just took off.”
“But you had sex with her first, right?” Steele nearly dropped his cup but nodded. “Thought so. Her being what she is and all, I’d suspect it was hard for either of you to keep your hands off each other. So you had sex. Did you bite her, or her you?”
“She bit me in the shoulder. Why?” Ray had to hide his smile behind his cup. The boy sounded panicky. It was a good look on the kid. He’d been locking his emotions up for so long, other than the brooding part, that he’d been worried about him for a while now. “She scarred me.”
“Yeah, she had to.” He took another sip before he continued. “She’s a panther. And I know you’ve no idea what that can be like for a shifter, but you’re her mate, I would imagine. And marking you would have come as natural to her as it was you having to be buried inside of her.” He watched the kid flush and smiled.
“I’m thinking by ‘mate’ you mean that I’m something to her. Like a boyfriend or something. I don’t want a woman in my life. I don’t want anyone in my life. I’m not into losing anyone again.”
“You’ve made that pretty clear over the years. I don’t need you to go on telling me how much you hate me either.” It hurt Ray that Steele had never been close to him. He’d snatched the boy from a life of crime just after his sister had been killed. Ray shivered when he thought of the day he’d had to tell the young Steele that his sister had been killed and his father had killed himself. He wondered if he’d ever gone to visit his mother in prison, but knew that he’d never do that. He’d washed his hands of everything and everyone that day. And Ray was pretty sure that if Steele hadn’t made the promise to young Aster, none of them would be here in his big house working together.
“I work for you, don’t I?” Ray nodded. “And I do what I need to do to make sure that each job is completed. But I’m not going to have a woman in my life. I fuck one when I need to, but they are happy and satisfied when I leave them.”
“You don’t want anyone in your life. And tell me, did you give her money before you left her? Like you do the women you fuck?” He had to take a slow breath before he continued. Ray did not want to get into another shouting match with Steele. Not today. “You’re lonely, Steele, can’t you see that? And this girl, Kari, she’s not just a woman you fucked. She won’t think of you as a boyfriend, and every time you see her, you’re going to want to mark her too. She’ll need it as much as you will.”
“I don’t want to have sex with her ever again.” But he did, and Ray could see it on his face. The need to be with her was burning at him. “And what do you mean, I need to mark her? I’ve never bitten her, I told you. And if you try to tell me differently, I’m going to know you’re full of shit.”
“No. No, you didn’t bite her. But you didn’t use any protection with her either, did you? The need to have her, to be with her, made you forget that rule, didn’t it?” He asked if she was pregnant. “Doubtful, but that’s not what I mean. Your semen; when you ejaculated inside of her, you marked her with your scent. That’s marking her.”
Steele sat down, his empty cup still in his hand. As it tumbled from his fingers, Ray picked it up and carried it to the counter. Filling it, he put it in front of Steele and sat quietly. He wondered what the boy would say next, wondered if he had any idea what this woman would come to mean to him. Ray doubted that she’d be any easier to convince that they were mates than Steele was, but she’d be better equipped to handle it than Steele was. When he looked up at him, Ray smiled. This was going to be good, he just knew it.