Rogue (Shifters #2)(42)

“That’s all I want. You should know that by now.” But I saw in his eyes that he didn’t know that. He didn’t trust me not to hurt Marc. After all, I’d done it before.
I closed my eyes and smoothed my hair back, trying to get hold of myself both physically and emotionally before I went inside.
Parker pulled the door open and I stepped over the threshold, dripping rain on the scarred hardwood floor. Jace and Vic stood side by side at the foot of the stairs, blocking my way. Their arms were crossed over their chests, forming a physical barrier, another wall to knock down.
I wasn’t up to it. Not anymore. Outside I’d had strength. I’d been willing to tear down the whole house to get to Marc if I had to. But now I was almost there, and I was tired. I was already sick of fighting, and I hadn’t even reached the ring.
“Come on, guys,” I said as I approached them. “Give me a break. Please.”
The conflict on Jace’s face was torture to see. I knew how he felt about me, but I hadn’t really considered how he felt about Marc until I saw how far he was willing to go to protect him. From me. Even from me. If he could, Jace would take me away from Marc. But he wouldn’t let me hurt him.
I met his beautiful cobalt eyes and nodded. It was the best I could do at the moment to acknowledge his pain and the awkwardness of the situation. Apparently it was enough, because he stepped aside.
Vic didn’t. My shoulder brushed his bicep as I walked past him and up the steps, still dripping, and now shivering from the air-conditioned breeze on my drenched skin.
The lights were on downstairs, but the upstairs landing was dark. If not for a bright flash of lightning through a rear window, I might have tripped over the throw rug at the top of the stairs. As it was, I had to feel my way past the bathroom and the first bedroom—the one Jace and Vic shared—with one hand on the banister. I felt along the opposite wall until I located Marc’s door.
My hand found his doorknob, and I hesitated. I let my eyes close and my head fall back as I listened to the rain, wondering how on earth I was going to get him to hear me out. Finally, I opened my eyes—not that it mattered, I couldn’t see a damn thing—and let go of the doorknob. I knocked instead. He would only react in kind if I started things off with discourtesy and aggression.
Of course, by being polite, I was giving him the opportunity to deny me entrance. Or to ignore me completely, which was exactly what he did.“Marc?” I called, knocking again. He made no reply, but a light went on in his room, illuminating my soaked sneakers from the crack beneath his door. “May I please come in? I owe you an apology and an explanation, and I’d like to give them to you face-to-face. Please.”
Wood scraped wood on the other side of the door: dresser drawers opening. “Fine,” he said. “I have something to explain to you, too.”
My pulse spiked. That couldn’t be good.
I opened the door slowly, and the first thing I registered was his scent. The entire room smelled like Marc and literally made my heart throb. I swallowed, and blinked tears from my eyes as I breathed him in. He was everywhere. He could leave at that moment and his scent would still be there ten years later.
Marc crossed the floor with a pile of clothes in his arms, and his movement caught my eye as I stood in the doorway, staring into his room. He dropped the clothes into a suitcase open on the unmade bed, balanced half on a pillow and half on a crooked mound of covers.
“What—” My voice croaked, so I swallowed and tried again. “What are you doing?”
“Packing. I thought it was kind of obvious.” He walked back to the dresser without even glancing at me. “I’m taking some time off.”
“Time off?” I heard myself and regretted the fact that I sounded like a brainless parrot, but I was helpless to stop it. In the nearly eleven years Marc had worked for my father, he’d never taken a single day off. Not one. Which meant he probably had quite a few coming…
I inhaled deeply, preparing to say my piece. To change his mind. “I’m sorry you heard it like that.” I tried to catch Marc’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me, nor would he stop packing. I cleared my throat and started over, tracking his movement back and forth across the room. “But you didn’t hear enough to understand what happened.”
“I heard plenty.”
“It was an accid—” I grabbed his wrist as he walked past me, another pile of shirts under his opposite arm. He froze in place. His head turned slowly, and finally our eyes met. His were blank. Empty. He jerked his arm from my grasp and continued toward the bed. “Marc, could you please look at me? This is hard enough without you…packing.”
“Well then, let me make it easier for you.” He dumped the shirts on top of the pile in the suitcase and looked up at me. “I. Heard. Enough. You infected Andrew. Your carelessness—and whatever freaky, furry game you were playing—condemned a man who was guilty of nothing more than fucking my girlfriend to a life of solitude and violence. Even worse, you’re responsible for everything he’s done. Those missing women are on your conscience. That’s all I need to know.” He flipped the top of the leather bag over and tried to close it, but the zipper resisted. 
Furry game? Was he serious?
“That isn’t all you need to know. Will you—” I grabbed the handle of his suitcase in exasperation and pulled it away from him. Already strained to its limits, the zipper slid back and the suitcase popped open, spewing socks and underwear all over the bed and the floor, like an explosion from a cotton volcano. Marc growled and bent to pick up a shirt. I snatched it from his hand and held it behind my back. “Will you forget about the clothes for a minute and listen to me? Please?”
“Fine.” He kicked aside a balled-up pair of socks and folded his arms across his chest. “You want to explain? I’m listening. Explain how you somehow forgot to mention to me over the past three months that you infected your college boyfriend. Explain why you didn’t think that was significant enough to bother telling me before he started taking his anger at you out on other women unlucky enough to have black hair and green eyes. Not that I blame him for being pissed off. I know pretty damn well how that feels!”
Marc picked up his now-broken bag and hurled it across the room. I flinched as it hit the far wall, next to the window, and fell to the floor in a heap of worn leather and rumpled clothing. “You stood me up at our fucking wedding, and I begged you to come back. I just rolled over and took it, even though every cat in the country was laughing at me behind my back. But apparently my complete humiliation wasn’t enough to satisfy you. So why don’t you explain how you expect me to react when the entire werecat community finds out you created a replacement for me out of some preppy, khaki-wearing college boy who’s more familiar with waiting in line for his iced latte than with the finer points of self-preservation. Explain to me just what the hell you were thinking, Faythe,” he shouted, and I winced with every sarcasm-laced barb. “I think I’m ready to hear that now.”
I took a deep breath, doing my best to remain calm and to resist yelling. He had some valid points, after all. “I wasn’t trying to replace you. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t figure it out until tonight. I did bite Andrew, but it was an accident. Well, the infection was an accident,” I said, my words rushing together as I backpedaled. “I bit him on purpose. Kind of.” I flinched as the last words left my mouth, uncomfortably aware that I wasn’t helping the situation.
Marc blinked at me and his expression hardened even more, which I hadn’t thought possible. “Do I even want to know why you bit him?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Probably not.”
Outside, a sudden gust of wind pelted the window with rain, drawing Marc’s attention away from me. When he met my eyes again, his were flaming in fresh anger. “Well, I gotta give college boy credit for that, at least,” he spat, his tone dripping with enough acid to eat through the hardwood floor. “The way Vic described him, I didn’t think he would have the balls to go for any fur-and-claws action, especially considering how much damage you can do with your human teeth and nails. And with your damned dagger of a tongue.”
Speaking of sharp tongues…I sighed. This was not going well. “I never Shifted, Marc.”
“What?” Confusion flitted across his face briefly before the angry scowl settled back into place. “Then how the hell did you infect him? Spit in his drink when he wasn’t looking? Inject him with your blood in his sleep?”
“Ha, ha.” I perched on the end of his bed, dripping rainwater onto his comforter as I wished for my punching pillow. Alas, as luck would have it, there was nothing in the room I could hit without breaking my promise to Parker. Marc sat against the headboard, facing me. He took one look at the grip I had on his comforter and tossed me one of his pillows.That small act floored me.
Marc was hurt, humiliated, and pissed off. He was madder at me than I’d ever seen him, and he was scared of losing me to either the council or to Andrew. And on top of that, he felt mortified by what he apparently saw as the ultimate act of cuckolding. Yet he knew what I needed and provided me with it without a moment’s hesitation, or probably even a conscious thought.