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The second the door closed behind Jack, I rounded on him, hissing low so Carlo wouldn’t hear us if he’d decided to loiter in the hallway. “I’m not fucking sleeping with you!”
A smirk tipped his lips. “I didn’t ask you to.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.” I flung an arm wide to indicate the bed.
“Well, sweetheart, unless you heard something I didn’t, there are no available double rooms at this hotel, so it seems like our options are this or… this.”
A growl rumbled from my chest as I paced to the window.
“Calm down, Cal. It’s not that big a deal. We’ve shared a bed before. This time, I’ll stay on my side, and you can stay on yours.” Lifting his eyebrow, Jack gave me what could only be described as a come-hither look, and my traitorous cock had the audacity to twitch in my pants. Of course, being a self-proclaimed master of observation, Jack noticed, and his lips tipped up in a devilish smirk. “Unless you don’t want to stay on your side.”
Being this close to Jack was hard enough. The confined space on the plane was almost torture. Dealing with his innuendo when I knew exactly what it felt like to have his cock filling me was just this side of impossible. But sharing a bed. There was no way I was going to be able to do it without tipping my hand. Add in the number of times I’d jerked off since we’d left Seattle in an effort to avoid climbing Jack like a goddamn tree and the persistent voice in my head and my heart begging me to claim Jack and let the world know he was the one fate had decided should be mine and I was screwed.
Figuratively, not literally.
Definitely not literally. Because if I let Jack give me what I really wanted—him—I wouldn’t be able to take it back. I wouldn’t be able to walk away, and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to move into my family’s estate with me and my brothers. Therewas no reality where that worked out well. I needed to remember that this fake-husbands thing wasn’t reality at all, even if that kiss at the airport hadn’t felt fake, and the lingering tingle in my lips didn’t feel like a lie.
And then there was that conversation about fated mates on the boat.
My emotions were already too close to the surface after that little chat, and it had taken every drop in my ridiculously small well of willpower to keep from pulling the collar of my shirt aside and saying,See this? This is how an orca shifter knows he’s met his fated mate. If you were an orca shifter, your saddle patch would match mine, and we’d both know.
So, no, I couldn’t calm down because sharing a bed with Jack was going to mean something different to me, even if I didn’t want it to.
Before I could tell Jack more than I wanted to, someone knocked on the door.
Jack was closer, so he looked through the peephole, then opened the door. Carlo had returned.
“Mi scusi, signori. I forgot to give you these.” He held up a set of keys on one of those puffy floating foam key rings. “Signore Reuben asked me to rent you a boat. It is docked downstairs. If you want to come with me, I will show it to you.”
Jack started to leave, then glanced over his shoulder. “You coming?”
I shook my head. “You go.”
He gave me a funny look but followed Carlo down the hall while I proceeded to have a mini breakdown.
It shouldn’t have surprised me when my phone rang a second after the door clicked shut. I hit the screen to answer it after the second ring.
“Cal, what’s wrong?”
Nero and Julius called the bond I had with Quin our freaky twin thing, but I was grateful for it the moment I heard Quin’s voice on the other end of the line. Quin and I hadn’t been close for a long time, but hearing his voice, knowing he was looking out for me from a continent away, made me feel good. It always had. It was the only thing that had gotten me through some of my worst days in the sandbox and some of my loneliest ops since.
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, right. You know you can’t lie to me.”
I flopped down onto the bed. If Quin were here, he’d be giving me shit about sitting on the bed in clothes that had been on the plane, and that made me smile. “I know, but I also can’t get into it right now.”
There was a beat of silence on Quin’s end, then, “You sure you’re okay?”
“I am, and I feel better hearing your voice.”
“Same.” He took a big breath. “I know you said you’re fine, but I’ve also been getting these vibes like you’re sad or something, so I’m trusting that you are okay and that you’d tell me if you weren’t, but you know I’m here if you need me.” The words all came out in a rush, which I understood. Neither of us was very good at anything having to do with feelings.
Despite our twin bond, Quin and I had grown apart. We had the same face. Well, sort of. I had a short beard where Quin preferred to keep his jaw clean-shaven, and I had a scar through my left eyebrow from the night Jack and I had tried to kill each other in Budapest. Other than that, we were identical in appearance, but we couldn’t be more different in almost every other way. When we were kids, that meant Quin got good at lying to cover for me before I got caught doing something stupid, and I beat up, or threatened to beat up, anyone who dared to call him a nerd. As we got older, our differences felt bigger thanthey probably were and we let them push us apart. Quin was smart, posh, and refined—he definitely owned more than one dress shirt—and I was anything but. The fact that he’d reached out meant a lot to me, and it settled some of my internal turmoil. There was nothing I could do about the bed situation without making things awkward for Carlo or giving away our cover, so I’d deal with it.
The rest I’d try to forget about for now.
“I know, Quin. It’s just been a long day. I need to eat and crash. I’ll feel better in the morning.”
