Chapter 6

She her cut her gaze away again, but not before he caught the luminous wash of tears glistening in her eyes.

Aw, hell. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to take it if she broke down—that he’d rather have her angry than sad— Razl curled his lips and said something guaranteed to piss her off and get her back up. “Some big burly man, huh? I get it now. You’re one of those women who has guy issues, aren’t you?”

She snorted, shooting him a withering look from the corner of her eye. “Not any more than you have women issues.”

“The hell I do,” he drawled, aware that he was taking some kind of perverse pleasure in verbally sparring with her. “I happen to like women just fine.”

Her head tilted slightly to the side as she studied him.

“I’m sure you like them when they’re on their backs. Other than that, I doubt you have much use for them.”

Razl gave her a slow, cocky smile and clucked his tongue. “Like I said…issues.”

She opened her mouth, no doubt to make some cutting remark, but then quickly pressed her lips together, choking off whatever she’d been about to say. Judging from the color creeping into her face, he figured she’d probably just realized she was revealing more about herself with this particular interchange than she wanted to, while accusing him of being…what? A guy?

Yeah, he liked sex. What man didn’t? Lately, Razl just didn’t like how he felt after he’d finished it—as if there was something better that he couldn’t reach. Something he wanted, but couldn’t get his hands on. Which was exactly how he’d felt an hour ago, muttering a low apology under his breath as he’d rolled off Cassie Cowell’s soft, warm body, extricating himself from her grasping arms as he’d turned his back to her and retrieved his cell phone to take Hendricks’s call.

Cassie Cowell was a full blooded Lycan, which meant that if he took her as his mate then all will be well and good and all was supposed to be well and good according to the norms of the pack. But still he could not bring himself to commit too her. It had been expected of him since he had become the Alpha of the pack that he had to take a mate and with the voracious appetite that Cassie had for sex, it was only fair that she would want to be the pack Luna. But he knew that she was not the one for him.

But what on earth did that exactly mean??

He’d felt bad about turning away from Cassie to answer the phone, but there was no denying that he’d been thankful for the excuse to remove himself from the Lycan’s clingy post-coital embrace. Never one to cuddle, it wasn’t the first time Razl had felt a piercing sense of relief at freeing himself from a woman’s hold once their passion was spent—though it seemed that recently, no matter how physical the encounter, his body was left burning with a restless hunger for something more. Not that there was anything wrong with Cassie, a well respected pack female who owned the local garden center in Shadow Peak. She was nice, pleasurable and more than easy on the eyes. No, the problem was his and his alone.

A shrink would probably tell him he was psychologically punishing himself—perhaps even seeking some kind of screwed-up atonement for the destruction his father had caused, but Razl knew it was more than that. Still, guilt poured through his veins as steadily as his blood these days, until it felt as much a part of him as an organ or a limb—just a constant, sickening acceptance that his life would forever be tainted by his association with Stefan Drone: father, pack Elder…and psychotic son of a bitch.

The weight of the shame he carried in his gut over the horrifying events that unfolded five months ago had yet to lessen with the passage of time, and the Runners often told him he was working himself into the ground to pay for crimes that weren’t his. But while there were some in the pack who had seemed to accept his innocence, Razl was aware of the accusatory sneers still sent his way…and he knew there were more than a few who blamed him all the same. For some, the sins of the father were often the hardest to forget…or forgive.

And yet, he was certain that this incessant hunger, this craving gnawing away at him from the inside out, had more to do with his future than it did with the past. Always one with a healthy sex drive, Razl had never before questioned his lack of interest in making a commitment to one of the women in his life. After being abandoned by his mother at an early age, he didn’t need to be psychoanalyzed to understand the wounds that had been cut into his emotional fabric— but his commitment issues had never interfered with his enjoyment of the opposite sex.

Later he had come to know that it was not his mother who had been at fault, rather it was because of his father that she had to flee. She had fled so that she could save herself and her unborn twins and in turn save Razl. Self preservation was something that Razl could come to terms with very well. But the treachery of his father….that was not something he could get over that.

Even now, the problem wasn’t that sex didn’t feel good.

Sex was sex, and it sure as hell didn’t feel bad.

It just didn’t feel…right, whatever the hell that meant.

And I sound like I’m losing my bloody mi—

“You know,” the human murmured, interrupting his irritating train of thought…apparently unable to hold back what she’d wanted to say before. “I realize this may come as a surprise to you, but just because you’re a guy who looks like God’s gift to women doesn’t actually mean that you are.”