Finally Her Turn

Chapter 30: John

I’m disappointed that Marissa seems to be hell-bent on finding somewhere else to live, not to mention worried, but I’m taking solace in the fact that Will brushed her off and decided to make her someone else’s problem, so I get her for tonight. I plan to make the most of it, though I’ve already learned that the best way to do that is by taking the opposite approach than I would with anyone else.

I plan to give her space, and let it be a super chill evening for us. I’m taking her home, but I’m not letting myself plan anything beyond that. We’ll play it by ear, and I’ll let her decide how we’re going to spend our time together. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll manage to convince her that living with me won’t be so bad. Perhaps by morning, she’ll have reconsidered her plan to ask Delta Eric for a dorm room so she can live with the other warriors.

Because I don’t want to upset her again or make her feel like I’m questioning her choices I’m not going to say anything more to her about it, but I still have plenty of concerns about her plan to join the warriors. Not only is she refusing to take the opportunity to consider what other options might interest her, but she’s insisting on being difficult about it. I don’t know why, but she’s demanding to do things the hard way, possibly even guaranteeing herself more work, difficult work, physically tasking work, when Will was literally hand-feeding her an easy paycheck.

But even more concerning than that is what Uncle Ben was saying about how the other warriors here might respond to her wanting to violate our traditions concerning female warriors. It’s not that I disagree with them doing the same jobs as men, but I don’t like the idea of my co-workers, some of whom I consider to be friends, harassing my mate. I’d like to think that they’re better than that and that Uncle Ben is just being overly cautious, but honestly, I don’t know.

I trust Stevie to have her back, but he and George are only around when Uncle Ben is, and they don’t train with us. They train with the Elites. He’s here now, though, so maybe it will make a difference. There are a couple others that I’m close with, but honestly, peer pressure is a real thing. If it comes down to choosing between loyalty to me and doing whatever will gain them the respect of the others, I’m not certain that it’s me who will win that one.

And then there’s the issue of Marissa wanting to live over there in the dorms. She’ll be on her own, living in the midst of a lot of single, unmated guys who might not be all that pleased with her coming in and shaking things up. Who knows what that will mean for her, and since she doesn’t want me intervening, I’m not even sure if her connection to me will help her much.

I suppose the part I’m trying not to admit is that I mostly fear what the other guys will think about her not wanting to live with me. It’s not the way that mates usually do things, and I don’t want them getting any ideas about how taken she is or isn’t based on us living separately. They’ll have easy access to her, and I won’t, and I really hate that. I think I hate that the most, in fact. I want her with me, in my apartment, in my bed, wearing my mark and smelling like me so that no one gets confused about her relationship status.

She’s mine, end of story, but her decisions and the things she wants me to go along with send a lot of mixed signals about that. Not just to them, but to me. It made sense when I thought she was just shy and anxious, but quite honestly, she’s all over the place. She’s bold and outspoken when she really wants to be, and I honestly cannot figure her out.

Once we finally get inside my front door, I pause and stand there awkwardly, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. I’ve never been embarrassed about where I live before, but now that I have my mate here with me, I’m suddenly feeling inadequate. She deserves more than this, considering that I just ripped her from her home and her family and dragged her across the country. I hate that all I have to offer her is this tiny garage apartment and some flashy electronics, which I’m not even sure she’ll have any interest in.

“Sorry, I know it’s not much, but as just a single guy, I’ve been enjoying the economical advantages of living over my parents’ garage. It doesn’t cost much, which means I have plenty of disposable income to spend on spoiling myself,” I explain, gesturing at my wall of electronics.

She takes a moment to look it all over, nodding her head slightly.

“It’s fine,” she decides after a few seconds. “Actually, it’s pretty nice. A lot nicer than I’m used to.”

I have a hard time believing that. I know she’s been living with her dad, who is also a warrior, and if he’s anything like my parents, his place is much better than what I’m offering her. But I appreciate the sentiment anyway.

“Not that it matters, though, I suppose. I know you’re planning on moving into the warrior dorms anyway,” I remind us both, hoping that it doesn’t come out sounding the way that it feels.

She gives me a look that tells me that it came out sounding exactly like that, and I wince. I’ve really been trying not to have that conversation or give her any hint of how I feel about her plan because I already know it will just upset her.

“I’m still thinking it all over,” she admits, the look on her face much less angry than I expected, maybe even a little bit sympathetic. “I kind of want my own space for now, but I’m also kind of worried about living with a bunch of strangers who will probably hate me after tomorrow.”

“Honestly, me too,” I decide to confess since she brought it up. “And not because I think they’re going to hate you. I actually don’t know how they’re going to feel about it, but I will tell you that our warrior squad has kind of turned into a bit of a men’s club. They like having the freedom to let loose and just be obnoxious men, burping and farting and being lewd, and I don’t know if they’ll appreciate having to let women in. I hope that they don’t turn out to be a massive disappointment to me, but I just don’t know. If I had to guess, it will be their fear that letting you in will mean that lots of other women will suddenly want to join up too, and then they’ll lose that freedom to just be a bunch of assholes all the time because they’ll have to start remembering their manners around the ladies.”

She walks over and sits carefully on my couch, taking the far seat. I assume she’s thinking about what I just said, but I don’t know. Maybe she was just tired.

And then she finally says, “I’m no threat to the boy’s club. I don’t care about burping and farting and being a bunch of unruly assholes. Piss all over each other for all I care. I just want the opportunity to have a job that keeps me working so hard that I can’t even move by the end of the day, and that leaves me eager to get up the next morning and do it all over again.”

They really do breed them differently at New Horizon. That is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard, and I decide to tell her that.

“You’re insane,” I accuse her teasingly, shaking my head as I go over and join her on the couch. “My cousin offered you an easy paycheck, and your complaint is that it’s not going to hurt enough at the end of the day?”

“Well, I mean, not specifically,” she says, blushing profusely as she tries to explain herself. “I just mean that … well, I mean, there are a lot of reasons that I don’t even know how to explain, and stuff that I don’t expect you to understand, but I just … I don’t want to be put in a box and told that that’s all I’ll ever be able to achieve. Like, I just … I want the same opportunities as all the rest of you, you know?”

Well, that I can understand. And if it’s really that important to her, then I’ll help her get it, however much she’ll let me anyway.

“Plus, I mean, I’m strong,” she goes on. “I’m a lot stronger than anyone even knows, too, and it just feels like in a new place with new people is a good time to finally let it out. Like Audra, she … well, she’s been through a lot, and she has always been intimidated by Alpha Kane.”

“Me too, Audra. That man is terrifying,” I agree, hoping it will help or at least make her smile a little.

And it does, so I silently pat myself on the back as she finishes what she was saying.

“So, she would always hide when we were put on the spot for, like, placement testing and all that, so it was just me every time. I don’t even know what kind of warrior we are because I’m not a wolf. I was just faking it, you know?”

Actually, I don’t know. What she’s telling me is confusing. Even an omega wolf won’t hide when her Alpha is calling on her like that. What did he do to her?

“Did Alpha Kane –,” I start to ask, but she hurries to cut me off.

“No, it wasn’t like that,” she insists. “It wasn’t his fault that she was always hiding. She’s always been like that. My dad made her that way.”

As soon as she says that, she gets a panicked look on her face that tells me she didn’t actually mean to reveal even that much. But I get the impression that she has a lot of respect for Alpha Kane, and it was important to her to set the record straight, though it leaves my mind spinning with new thoughts.

What did her dad do that made her wolf so skittish that even the Alpha couldn’t get her to come out? The same wolf that I distinctly remember exchanging flirty texts with not that long ago, who decided to come out because it was Marissa being skittish then. I’m so confused now.

“It’s not … I mean, I didn’t mean …,” she starts to explain, pausing to sigh with frustration. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want to be stuck on patrols forever, okay? That’s all.”

“Okay,” I concede, sensing her shutting down and not wanting to push her.

It’s not okay, and I desperately want to know more, but I’ll leave it alone for now. I decide to change the subject to something much more neutral and non-threatening, hoping not to scare her away since she admitted to still being undecided about where she wants to stay. Maybe I still have a chance of convincing her to stay here with me if I can manage not to push her too much or do too much poking around in all her sore spots so soon.

“So, I’m pretty big into video games,” I declare, exhaling with relief a little when I see her shoulders relax some. I think she appreciates that I’m steering the conversation away from her now.

And she continues to just quietly listen as I ramble on and on about my games and all the other electronics in the living room. I don’t really know what else to talk about that won’t seem too intrusive for her, but now that I’ve exhausted even that, we’re just sort of quietly sitting next to each other.

It feels very real, very much like I’m on the spot now that she’s here with me. She’s in my space. I don’t know all that much about her or what she’s into, and I can’t really tell how she feels about the things I’m into. I can’t even tell if she’s as stressed and nervous as I am because she’s kind of just sitting there, looking more bored than anything.

“So, what do you think about –,” I start to ask her about the first thing that pops in my head, which is of course my television since we’re sitting here staring at it. I figure we might as well put something on it that we can watch.

“Let’s just skip over all this awkward nonsense and get right to the point,” she suggests, cutting me off. She’s been just staring in the general direction of the wall where my TV is mounted, but now she turns and looks straight at me, stealing my breath away with those vibrant green eyes of hers. “I think we should go in your room and have s*x so we can just get it out of the way and get back to acting like normal people again.”

Wait, what? Did she just proposition me for s*x? Is that seriously the first thing she wants to do now that we're alone together?

I’m still sitting there gaping at her in stunned silence when she adds, “Or not. Sorry, I’m not good with reading signals, but it’s been really feeling like there’s all this crazy tension, and Audra has been driving me nuts about how you smell and all that, so I just thought –”

“Yes, definitely,” Raj cuts her off this time, jumping in and taking over my body for a few seconds.

And then I’m on my feet, reaching for her hand so I can drag her with me in my rush to get to my bedroom. But it feels all wrong, and I’m still trying to fight him off along with all the crazy urges to just do what she’s suggesting.

I don’t think her heart is in it. I think she’s using it the same way I was just using all my games and stuff, as a distraction because she’s uncomfortable, and that’s not how I want things to be between us going forward. I don’t want her trying to offer me her body every time that she thinks I might be getting too close to learning anything about her.

It’s extremely difficult for me to put the brakes on this already moving train, though, especially now that she’s standing next to my bed and yanking her shirt over her head. That body of hers looks about as nice as I’ve been imagining for weeks. Lean, muscular, with some lovely curves in the right places to add soft edges and smooth everything out. She’s not as busty as Serena is, but I like it. And once she drops her jeans, I can see that her butt isn’t as big and jiggly either, but I like that too. I can’t wait to see if it feels as firm as it looks.

“Clothes off,” she commands, reminding me that I’m still just standing there gaping at her.

“I can’t,” I tell her breathlessly, kicking myself as I say it, even knowing that it’s the right thing to do for now. “Not now, not like this. It isn’t right.”

“What do you mean?” she demands angrily. “I’m your mate, and this is what mates do. It’s inevitable, so let’s just get it out of the way.”

“No,” I insist firmly. “I don’t want it to be mechanical like this, just a thing we do because it’s expected. It feels too much like we’re just hooking up, and I don’t want to hook up with my mate.”

“Well, that’s just great,” she grumbles, reaching down to pick up her clothes so she can start tugging them back on angrily. “So, who do you want to be hooking up with then?”

“No one. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I make my way around to her, but she steps back out of my reach.

“Then what did you mean it like?” she demands, and now that I’m here, I can see the hurt on her face.

“I’m not rejecting you,” I promise her, slowly reaching for her again. “I just want it to be special between us. I want some romance, and I want to take it slow and make sure everything is exactly right. I want us to work our way up to this and wait until we’re really feeling it. Not just our primal urges, but like, all the angst and desire from our human brains and bodies too.”

“I’m not really into romance,” she protests, and I should have seen that coming.

Of course she’s not. She doesn’t really seem to be all that into affection either, but I’m getting a strong sense that it’s not because she doesn’t like it. Or I should say that it’s not because she won’t eventually like it. I think there’s more to it than that, and I’m just now scratching the surface of everything that goes on in that head of hers.

That’s why I’m so certain that we need to wait. I don’t want to risk throwing myself and our first time on top of the pile of all her bad experiences that she just needs to get through and move past.

“Well, let’s go back into the living room and relax, maybe watch a movie or something,” I suggest, trying to get us out of the bedroom and back to how we were before this unfortunate detour. “Does that sound good to you?”

“Fine, whatever,” she agrees dismissively, brushing past me as she puts her shirt back on, pulling it over her head as she heads through the doorway. “But no romance. I’ve had about enough of that from Aly and her mates.”

“Understood,” I answer her, chuckling to myself.

I do distinctly remember her telling Elder Vivian that all the loving bonding between Aly and her mates is disgusting to her. I suppose that means that I really have my work cut out for me, and now I’m back to wondering if I should have just taken her up on her offer. Maybe she was right all along, and it would have resolved some of the tension between us, and maybe she’s even right that she’s hopeless when it comes to romance.

I’ve never been the sort of guy to turn down an offer for a romp between the sheets when it’s offered to me by someone I’m attracted to, and I’ve never been as attracted to someone as I am to Marissa. I don’t know why I’m suddenly trying to be someone I’m not, but I do hope it turns out to be a decision I don’t soon come to regret.