Free Come Moonrise by Lucy Monroe Page B

inside
her. This was so not the way she’d thought the morning after would
be conducted. "How can you be like this after what we shared?"
    "You mean the sex? I suppose I should take
comfort in the fact that my mate is a real firecracker in the sack.
Not all humans can keep up with a werewolf, but you held your own
last night. I’m surprised your ex-fiancé let you go so easily. Most
men would kill for a response like yours."
    She stared at him. The
words were border-line insulting, but he sounded jealous not
mocking. Only he had nothing to be jealous of. She wasn't the one who had made
love to him after only the day before having plans to marry someone
else.
    She curled her lip with derision at his
obtuseness. "If I’d been able to give it to my ex, we would be
married right now and last night would never have happened."
    But she hadn't loved the other man. She
loved Ty even if he was too stupid to see it.
    "Well, you’re with me now," he said through
gritted teeth. "I suppose I should feel honored there haven’t been
any other men since your ex-fiancé. You obviously like your
sex."
    That was definitely an insult and it was one
too many.
    She punched him in the chest. Hard. But it
had been like hitting a rock, make that a petrified rock.
    Her hand stung and she
rubbed it. " You jerk ."
    "Maybe...probably..." he
admitted with an angry shake of his head. "But I’m your jerk."
    "Oh no. Olivia can have you. With my
blessing." It wasn’t a rational thing to say, not after what he’d
told her about the permanency of mating, but she was so mad, she
almost meant it.
    Did she really care if this condescending
idiot spent the rest of his life without sex? She would do the same
with the rest of hers. If she walked away... But it would be a cold
day in Hades before she admitted that to him.
    " Oh yes ," he growled. "You knew I
wanted her, but you seduced me anyway. Now, you get me, Frankie.
For a lifetime."
    "You didn’t want Olivia," she yelled in
frustration, totally unwilling to stomach that lie on top of his
nasty attitude.
    Maybe he hadn’t wanted to mate with Frankie,
but he didn’t desire Olivia either. Not really. His head might say
the femwolf would make a better mate, but his body had not been
engaged. She refused to believe on top of everything else that
she'd been a stand in for another woman.
    Her heart could not accept it and she was
going to make him admit it. "You two fight like brother and
sister."
    "Not everyone courts with roses and
poetry."
    "Even the most unromantic guy in the world
treats a woman he wants with more warmth than you treated her
yesterday."
    "You saw us together one time. You are
hardly in a position to judge. You have no idea what we were like
together when we were alone."
    She wrapped her arms around herself, trying
to control the mushroom cloud of pain imploding inside of her. "I
can’t argue that, but you still went to bed with me last night. Not
her."
    There had to be some significance to that
fact.
    "I wouldn’t have, if you had stayed on the
couch."
    The words slashed through her with a
finality that left no room for rosy dreams and hopeful fantasies,
decimating her defenses with the power of a nuclear blast. One
time, fourteen years ago, she’d felt this way. Like someone had
reached inside her chest and ripped out her heart.
    The day she was told of her parents’
deaths.
    She’d felt just as empty, just as bereft,
and every bit as scared then as she did right now.
    "I was just a stand in. She wasn't here
and I was," she whispered in agonized acceptance.
     

CHAPTER
SIX
     
    She rolled out of the bed onto her feet,
dragging the quilt with her and wrapping it around her now
trembling, naked body.
    She slapped at his hands
when he tried to grab her. " Don’t touch
me ."
    "Frankie, come back here."
    "No."
    "We’re not done talking."
    "Yes, we are."
    He got out of the bed, not bothered by his
own nudity as he stood in front of her, glowering down at her. "You
are my mate, not