Exodus (3 page)

Matt hoped Rivvie was exaggerating. Not for the first time, he wondered what had made Rivvie go from flirting with him shamelessly, to disliking him so much.

Stopping in front of the smoothly sanded wooden door to Rivvie’s den, Matt took a moment to tug down his shirt, making sure it hung properly, and he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. He was nervous, and it made him angry.
Angrier
. He had to get his shit together or he’d turn into that obnoxious, prattling jerk he kept acting as more and more often of late.

Be calm. Be polite. Don’t talk all the time. Don’t think you have to prove anything. Maybe if you don’t act like a first-rate ass, Rivvie will actually smile at you again like he did that day, months ago.

And if he does that, I’d get on the ground and beg him to do things to me.
Matt shivered and his traitorous dick began to grow erect.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!
He gave the tip a thump that made tears come to his eyes.

The door opened.

“Of course,” Matt muttered, closing his eyes tight. One tear slipped free and ran down his cheek. Rivvie’s visage floated behind his closed lids, that cautious, disapproving look on his face.

“If you really don’t want to work with me that bad, I’ll talk to Valen,” Rivvie said.

“Again?” Matt opened his eyes and wiped off his cheek. “You mean you’ll talk to him again, as you did already, when you mentioned killing me?” he added as an explanation in case Rivvie had any doubts about what he was referring to. “I believe it was something along the lines of mudding me in between the interior and exterior walls?”

Rivvie grimaced and opened the door wider. “Shit. Who eavesdropped? Give me a name so I can punch them.”

“I wasn’t crying, either,” Matt said firmly, tipping his chin up. “I pinched myself.”

Rivvie beamed at him, and was so breathtakingly handsome that Matt gasped before he could control himself.

“Making sure you weren’t dreaming, then?” Rivvie asked, fluttering his white-tipped lashes. “I know I’m sexy, but I didn’t realize I was your dream lover.”

Matt didn’t know how else to describe the sound that came out of his mouth except maybe to say he squawked, “You aren’t!” Oh gods, he so was! “If you must know, a certain part of me was—” Matt sputtered wordlessly, realizing there was no way he’d tell Rivvie the truth, and no lie that he could come up with to finish that sentence.

But Rivvie’s face shuttered and he stepped back. “That’s right. You’re all about the ladies. How could I forget? You told me so in the first place.”

Matt glared at him. “That didn’t stop you from flirting any.”

Rivvie shrugged as if he didn’t care, and perhaps he didn’t. There was a tick under his right eye that made Matt wonder, though, if there wasn’t something Rivvie was trying to hide.

Matt, being who and how he was, had to prod. “You made it seem like you were irresistible.” He stepped inside, making certain to brush against Rivvie as much as he could without being too obvious about it.

That tick twitched faster. Rivvie closed the door and turned to him. “What difference does it make if I am? You said, quite clearly, that you only liked women. Then you set about proving it, didn’t you? And where are those two kids you’re supposed to have helped make? I’ve never seen you with any kids.”

Matt’s shame was thrown right out in the open—at least it felt that way to him. Anger flooded him and he gritted his teeth until he could hear his molars grinding together.

Rivvie sniffed, putting that elegant nose of his up in the air. The man was entirely too handsome, with his wide, hazel eyes, the brown and green irises flecked with gray. He had thick dark blond eyebrows, not as bushy as a lot of other shifters, and nicely arched. His cheekbones were prominent without giving him a feminine appearance. Wide-jawed and with a square chin that drew attention to his plump, deep pink lips, Rivvie was unlike any living man Matt had ever seen.

“You remind me of a god I saw once, years ago,” Matt said unthinkingly, his gaze tangled with Rivvie’s.

Rivvie’s eyebrows quirked. “A god? Where’d you meet a god? They’re not real, you know.”

And Matt came out of his lust-fueled haze with an audible thump—at least in his mind. He let the anger take over again, preferring it to humiliation. “I am well aware there are no such thing as gods, or if there are, they don’t care one whit about us. Why should they, considering that most of humanity has been careless and done themselves in? But you have no need to mock me when I was merely trying to pay you a compliment. An erroneous one at that. You are nowhere near as handsome as the etching of the god of war that I saw.”

Something shifted in Rivvie’s expression, and it gave Matt a chill of apprehension. “What?” he snapped at the shifter. “Don’t like playing second or third to an etching?”

“Trying to figure out why you’d compare me in the first place,” Rivvie said, narrowing his eyes. “After all, you tried so hard to make sure I knew you weren’t interested in me.”

“I—” Matt snapped his mouth shut. He could hardly swallow past the lie he’d been about to spit out.

“You fucked a whole bunch of women and made sure I knew it,” Rivvie continued, “then you act like you’re better than me? Well, maybe you are at some things, but I’m not an asshole who’d deliberately hurt someone just to prove a point.”

Matt stumbled back, shocked by the tone Rivvie used with him. He’d always heard Rivvie laughing and joking, albeit not with him, and Rivvie never sounded like he had the fury of ten men trying to escape from under his skin. Matt couldn’t even look at Rivvie for fear of what he’d see—hatred that Matt had rightfully earned.

“This isn’t going to work,” Matt whispered, feeling behind him for the doorknob.

Rivvie slapped a hand against the door, right beside Matt’s head. “Grow up,” he snapped. “I have.”

Matt took a deep breath. He’d run an emotional gamut in mere minutes. Even so, a new one popped up. Defensiveness. He found the backbone to glower at Rivvie. “I don’t know why you’re being such an ass yourself. I told you I liked women—”

“It’s not that you like them, it’s that you set out to hurt me because of your own fucking insecurity about it,” Rivvie shouted loud enough to make Matt’s ears ring. “Really, Matthew? You made sure to brag about it any time I was near! I don’t know why I wanted you in the first place!” Rivvie slapped the door again. He shook his head. “Why I thought you were worth flirting with—and waiting for.”

Matt’s eyes stung again, and he couldn’t blame it on anything but the overwhelming pain and disappointment that threatened to consume him. “Y-you would have waited? But I told you I wasn’t interested.”

Rivvie moved closer, until Matt could feel the heat of his body, but Rivvie didn’t press against him. “You lied. We both know it. I could smell your arousal when I was flirting with you.”

“It was from the battle, the adrenaline,” Matt lied, badly. “It happens.”

Rivvie grunted, his nostrils flaring. “You know what I think, Matthew?” he asked, then answered before Matt could even make a sound. “I think you wanted me. Maybe you still do, and it scares you. Unlike me, you don’t know how to open yourself up and embrace your sexual side—and before you point out all the women you’ve fucked, ask yourself…did you come so hard with any of them that you felt like you were being turned inside out? Like there was so much pleasure in the release, your body couldn’t handle it? Did any of them make you weak and make you soar? Did you ever
truly
understand why eons ago, one culture described an orgasm as a little death?”

Matt understood fucking and using it to make himself feel like a man. He understood being wanted and pursued, and being able to pleasure someone else. He also understood being a failure, having something inside him not work properly so that he couldn’t contribute to humanity as he’d been raised up to think he should.

And he most certainly knew what it was like to lie to himself—and to others—because he didn’t know how to be anything but what they expected him to be.

None of those were things he could admit to Rivvie, even knowing he’d hurt the man. In truth, he hadn’t thought Rivvie was all that serious to begin with. Matt needed to shift some of the burden of blame off him. “You didn’t even know me. You were joking.”

Rivvie growled.

Every hair on Matt’s arms and legs must have stood up in alarm.

Baring his teeth, Rivvie said, “If you thought I was joking, then why bother throwing all your conquests in my face?”

“They weren’t my conquests,” Matt protested. “I was theirs.” That sounded as lame when spoken as it had when he’d thought it and he struggled to explain. “They wanted me, and I needed to be wanted. I… It was easier to give them what they asked for—what they expected.”

As suddenly as he’d moved forward, Rivvie stepped back. He cleared his throat then strode to the small, ornately carved table a dozen feet away. “We have work to do. Either help me or leave.”

Matt wanted to run. He wanted to snap and snarl and make Rivvie yell at him. He wanted Rivvie to flirt with him again, and not give up on him when Matt did something stupid.

But he knew none of that would happen.

Chapter Four

As Rivvie waited to see if Matthew was going to join him or run out and fuck the nearest willing body—
female body—that is
—he tried to get his temper under control. He’d always reacted badly to being hurt, especially when it was done emotionally. Physically, he might bitch and moan about pain, but the internal kind of pain made him angry because he felt weak and stupid for having set himself up for such hurt.

When he’d fought against the marauders with Matt back in the village, Rivvie had known he wanted the man. Matt was shorter than him by over a foot, but he was incredibly built, all lean muscles and attitude. Rivvie was a sucker for attitude, though perhaps not the mean kind that it turned out Matt had. For all the flirting that Rivvie had done, he’d been serious, and Matt had ran off that very night to fuck someone else.

It was stupid that it’d hurt. Matt hadn’t shown any overt interest, though Rivvie had smelled his desire and had caught Matt checking out his body more than once. What Rivvie hadn’t counted on was how deeply ingrained Matt’s misperception of his own sexuality was. Rivvie wouldn’t push him again, though—not at the cost of his own hurt feelings.

Matt finally took a step away from the door. He tugged on his shirt and cleared his throat. Then he turned around, opened the door and walked out.

Rivvie’s jaw dropped. Then he closed his mouth and leaped from the chair. He’d had enough of Matt’s attitude, of his head games and conceit. Rivvie ran through the door then promptly skidded to a halt before he could slam into Matt, who stood just outside, staring down, his shoulders rising and falling with each great, gulping breath he took.

For all that Rivvie was furious he couldn’t miss the suffering Matt was going through. The why of it didn’t matter. Rivvie’s anger drained away from one heartbeat to the next. He’d never been able to hold onto anger for long, anyway, nor could he stand to see someone suffering.

“Are we bound to keep doing this to each other?” Matt rasped a moment later. “Just keep…keep throwing these verbal daggers?”

Rivvie closed his eyes and fisted his hands to keep from reaching for Matt. “I don’t know.”

Matt laughed bitterly. “I know I’m not a pleasant person to be around sometimes. Believe it or not, there are some people who happily tolerate my presence.”

Yeah, and you make sure to fuck them. Except for your family. They love you.
Rivvie kept silent until he felt he had to speak. “What else, Matthew?”

“What else?” Matt parroted, still looking down. Maybe he was wishing the earth would open up and swallow him whole. “What else. What else.”

Rivvie frowned. “Are you okay?”

Matt snorted. “No, I’m not okay. I am most definitely
not
okay.”

That alarmed Rivvie enough that he did reach for Matt, clutching him by the shoulder and tugging him around. “I’ll ask Valen and Aaron to put have someone else work with you. Aaron said you love to build things—structures—and I can do something else.”

Matt stiffened under his hand. “No. I’m not failing at this. You’re not going to get rid of me that easy.”

Rivvie yanked his hand back. “I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. Gods, you are a mess!”

“I am aware,” Matt said, raising his head up.

There was a hint of a smile on his lips that did funny things to Rivvie’s insides.

“I’m also not a quitter,” Matt continued. “Nor am I weak, like you shifters seem to think all of us humans are.”

Rivvie was on the verge of being irritated again. “I don’t think that, but it’s a fact that we’re bigger, and stronger—physically.”

Matt planted his hands on his hips. “Which doesn’t make your kind superior to my kind.”

“Your kind, my kind… What about
our
kind?” Rivvie asked. “How long until this isn’t a divided pack? Until we all learn we haven’t got anything to prove, and we need to think of ourselves as a damn pack, not as ‘us’ and ‘them’? Because until then, we’re all just a bunch of strangers camping out together. There’s not cohesiveness to us.”

Matt’s eyes widened. “Well, I didn’t know you had it in you to be so deep.”

That was it. Rivvie had had more than his fill of the obnoxious prick. “I’ll give you two seconds.”

“Two seconds for what?” Matt asked with a hint of wariness.

“To get out of my sight,” Rivvie snarled, curling his hands into fists. He didn’t want to hit Matt, and yet, he definitely wanted to smack him. “I’ve been insulted by you for the last time.”

Matt opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Argh!” He stomped his foot. “You’re threatening me and I’m supposed to be scared, right? Because you’re
bigger,
and
stronger,
and a
scary, scary
shifter!
Well, guess what? I’m not scared!” he shouted, a wild expression on his face.

Rivvie’s dick twitched under the cloth he had wrapped around his hips. “Then what are you?”