Author's Note: Look who's back? Me, your least favorite author, who takes forever to update her own story because they insist on writing one-shot after one-shot, like an addict. Do forgive me — I try.

Alert: this chapter has an unreasonable number of curse words. Paul's dealing with a lot — leave him alone.


It was torture.

Whatever shit Paul had done in the past, it was all catching up to him at once, without a single pause — that was the only possible explanation. Karma was knocking at his door — or maybe just kicking its way in with a big fucking 'fuck it,' 'cause that whole situation was bullshit.

Paul was lying on Bella's bed, trying to be a good imprint and keep his promise of staying close. In theory, it should've been perfect — hours and hours of having his mate safe in his arms without a single distraction. In reality, things were not quite as simple. Mainly because he couldn't go to sleep while the leech was still breathing somewhere out there, and so, Paul had to keep both of his eyes wide open in case the bitch decided to finally show her face.

It shouldn't be such a problem. Paul was used to sleepless nights, to be honest, and since Bella, he had yet to sleep throughout the whole night even once, so he was fine with not getting to go to sleep alongside her. What he wasn't fine with, however, was having to stay in Bella's bed while she slept, sprawled all over his chest, wearing the flimsiest goddamn pajamas ever, while she had a fucking wet dream.

Fuck.

It was torture. It was.

Paul could feel the puffs of breath hitting his clavicle, hitting his skin, and tingling his senses. He could see her eyes fluttering ever so often as she moved around, whining and pleading in that gorgeous tone of hers.

She moaned, a soft, sweet sound echoing inside her mouth, all neediness, and frustration — almost as though she was asking for more.

He was hard. Of course he was hard. Paul's dick could easily cut through glass and it wouldn't even hurt — that's how bad it was.

Paul had never been so goddamn hard in his entire life, and he couldn't do shit about it. That, in itself, would've been tormenting enough to drive a lesser man insane, but to literally have his soulmate wiggling over him, practically dry humping him, her knees bent and her breasts rubbing against his chest with each new move, well, that was something else entirely.

Paul was shirtless, so the only thing standing in the way between his naked chest and Bella's was the flimsy shirt she wore, and the more she wiggled around, the more it felt like Paul was not imagining the way her nipples dragged across his stomach.

He tried to close his eyes, only for a second, hoping to focus on the noises coming from the woods, the nearby houses, the road, anything, but it was impossible when her scent clung to each corner of her room, so intense and intoxicating. Paul started testing just how long he could keep holding his breath before he needed oxygen again. The answer? Not long enough to get his brain to forget how wonderful Bella smelled to him right then and there.

If he had Sam's control, keeping it together would've been tough — even the strongest of will could bend with the right pressure, and an imprint was not something any wolf was equipped to resist. The problem was that Paul was not, in fact, Sam, and his control was being tested so hard at the moment that it seemed to be pure luck that he had yet to shove her aside and run out the door, as far away from her as possible. Or worse, that he hadn't shoved his face on her neck, pulled her hair, and gave her a wake-up call she would never forget.

So, yeah, it was torture. Actually, scratch that, it would've been torture if it had stopped there. But Paul's sins were many, and his mistakes had cut too deep, so fate decided to strike in such a way so that he had no clue on where to start resisting. And so, just as he thought the night couldn't get any worse, his mate began to talk.

And for God's sake, Paul needed her to shut up. He needed her to shut up so badly, and his dick twitched, and his hands fisted the sheet, and sweat started to pool on his forehead, and he cursed all names he could think of.

"Paul... I. Give me," Bella moaned slowly, her voice barely more than a mumbled whisper, while she rotated her hips. "More, please."

Paul released his breath all at once, tilting his head back on the pillow, hoping to put some imaginable distance between them, as he tried to get the message across to his dick that it needed to give him a break. Paul was just a man, and Bella was a demon personally crafted to destroy his sanity.

And he wanted. He wanted Bella with an intensity that was still so new to him, despite everything. Her shaved legs were soft, her skin was warm, she smelled more and more aroused as the minutes ticked by, and it became painful to resist the allure.

Paul didn't even have to touch his mate to know she was wet. He could smell the heavy, intoxicating scent of Bella, and with each breath he took, Paul's control slipped only the tiniest bit.

Don't touch her, don't touch her, don't you touch her, Paul Lahote.

His eyes flashed to the clock on her bedside table, and it was only 5:13 am, so he still had at least a couple of hours left of this to endure. Maybe he could wake her up beforehand? He thought to himself, even though he knew that she needed one good night of sleep for a change and he would never jeopardize that, even if it meant staying where he was for hours still.

Shit, no, fuck that shit.

If this weren't Bella — if she had any experience whatsoever with sex — Paul would've probably just shifted her enough to free his dick and jack himself off while she carried on sleeping. Honestly, it would've been great — the things she was saying alone would be enough to get him going. It was Bella, though, and he had no clue on how she felt about him masturbating on the same room as her while she slept, and the last thing he wanted was to trigger her in any form, so that was out of the question.

Paul felt he deserved an award, a medal, a trophy, something, anything, for remaining still, his jaw aching with the amount of pressure he was putting into keeping his mouth shut, lest he opened it and spewed all the dirty shit running around his mind.

His problem remained, though, and he was painfully reminded of that when Bella moaned quite loudly, one of her hands gripping his bicep in a steel hold.

Bella moved, turning her head so she could tuck her nose closer to his armpit, inhaling deeply, a groan of satisfaction dripping from her lips, her hips canting upwards, and Paul's jaw instantly snapped shut with the force needed not to growl in response. There was just something so instinctual, primitive, raw, seductive, really, about having his mate crave his scent, especially in a moment of vulnerability, when she was fast asleep and reacting rather instinctively to stimuli.

It would only take a second to lean up a bit to reach Bella's ear, where be could growl, slow and deep, if only to watch her reaction, to see if she would shiver in his arms, or if she would plead for more.

"Yes... don't stop...no. Please," she begged, and fuck, why did she have to be so polite? "Please, I want..."

She shifted again, throwing her bended knees all the way across his hips so that Paul's thigh slid in between her legs, and then, before Paul had the presence of mind to stop her, she canted her hips down and pressed her panties against his leg and began to use it to get herself off.

"Shit," Paul groaned, the fabric in his hands ripping quite loudly.

Pre-come began to leak from Paul's cock, the erection squeezed uncomfortably tight inside his jeans shorts, and he started to consider the legitimate possibility of losing his mind.

"Paul," Bella whined, her cheeks blushed in a gorgeous shade on red, all flushed and warm, and she needed something.

His mate needed something, and the wolf began to trash against the cage Paul metaphorically built in order to survive the night. Which seemed like a waste at the moment, 'cause as soon as she pouted, whining for him to give her what he truly wanted to provide anyway, his self-control began to crumple like a paper house.

Bella was so desperate for touch, for affection, for the feeling of being desired, craved, and Paul wanted to deliver. The bond was there, pressing against his middle, and he wanted to give her that, give her anything, and if his mate wanted to be touched, to come all over him, well, he was okay with that.

She kept on shifting — like she couldn't find a perfect position, and that was a pity. Honestly, between her panties and the thick denim of his short, she was probably hurting herself more than helping, and Paul had perfectly capable fingers, and a dick that would—

Shit!

Paul realized his hands had moved on their own accord and he had two fistfuls of Bella's ass, looking ready to help her along. Which seemed to be an excellent moment to accept defeat like a man, so he turned his shoulders, sliding his hands up and all but throwing Bella on her back, getting up from the bed with a jump.

For a while, it looked like she was going to wake up, and she trashed and moved, searching for him on the bed, while Paul tried to keep himself from digging holes on her furniture with his hands, but then she settled, whispering a bunch of nonsense, and Paul sent a silent thank you to Taha Aki.

Paul dropped his weight into the rocking chair behind him, covering his face with his hands, pressing the heel of his palms against his eyes, silently cursing and praising himself. He did it. He resisted temptation beyond his wildest imaginations, and yet the room still smelled so strongly of Bella that he could hardly breathe.

Paul wondered if it was worse to remain as he was, aching and confined to his shorts, painfully hard and so uncomfortable he had to readjust himself every fucking second, or if he dared to pop his button open, unzipping just enough to free his erection of its denim prison. He wondered if he had enough strength to keep his hands off his dick once it was no longer confined.

In the end, Paul decided not to risk it. He knew himself far too much. It was hell to resist even as it was, and too many times already had he allowed his hands to linger as he readjusted himself, a dark whisper telling him that no one would ever know if he just jacked off in silence and cleaned the evidence.

So he sat there, coiled and stiff, barely daring to breathe, counting the minutes, testing his self-control, his resolve, waiting to see if he would cave and, at the same time, knowing deep inside in his core that he would never betray his mate in that way.

It was almost enough for him to wish for a vampire attack.

Almost.


In the morning, Bella insisted on having breakfast outside, claiming that they had to enjoy the rare good weather while it lasted. Seeing as Paul had yet to learn how to say no to her, there they were, sitting down on the still damp grass, nursing a bowl of cereal each.

It was peaceful, and it helped to get Paul's mind out of the gutter for a few minutes.

Bella wrapped her arm around her bent legs, balancing her bowl on her knees. "Tell me about yourself," she asked, meeting his eyes. It sounded like a challenge. "I mean, we are always talking about me. About my problems and everything, so tell me about you."

Paul shrugged. "I'm just not that interesting, to be honest."

"I don't believe that." Bella shook her head. "Tell me about the fighting."

Ah, there it was. She resisted for a whole lot longer than he thought she would — it was usually one of the first things people asked about him. "Yeah, I've always wondered when you were going to ask about that," he admitted wryly.

The self-depreciate irony slid right over Bella's head. "Well, I'm asking now," she said, with a touch of stubbornness. "I've gathered that it's an important part of your life, on several levels. You are a teacher, so obviously you work with something related to fighting, but for you, that's actually quite mild, isn't it? You can't exactly beat your students to a pulp now, can you?"

Her line of questioning went the opposite way of what he thought it would. "I don't know about that. I've certainly got some students who literally beg me to beat the crap out of them," he admitted, not even lying about it. It took a lot of restraint on his part to resist, too.

"That's cuz they don't know the amount of damage you could do," Bella said, going for a reasonable tone, only she had no clue on how fighters worked sometimes.

"Probably," Paul concedes, keeping his own suspicions to himself.

"So, yeah, you—you're a teacher, that's what you work with, you're a shifter, a werewolf, so fighting against vampires it's kind of also your job. When you're not in the ring, you're here in the woods hunting predators, fighting to stay alive." She pointed a finger in his direction. "And then there's the cage fighting — which, don't think I've forgotten about it. I'm still waiting for the day you're going to take me."

"I haven't forgotten it either, to be honest. I just haven't gotten around to going lately — a lot has happened Bella. Believe it or not, we used to be a pretty tranquil pack, not much to do at all other than the occasional vampire who crosses our borders."

She tilted her head to the side, looking like she was fighting off a blush. "Should I apologize?"

"Only if you're going to do so to someone who isn't an adrenaline junkie."

"You are a dangerous companion for me, mister."

So said the temptress demon. "I sure hope so."

"Don't try to distract me — I see what you're doing." She ate a spoonful. "So, anyway, cage fighting. That's a whole nother ball than being a teacher, or being a werewolf. You don't have structure, help, and for what I've researched in my frankly abysmal computer, it's kind of a free-for-all. Come, beat the shit out of whoever has the guts to go against you, grab the money, and go. It's adrenaline and illegal money."

"I don't give a crap about the money. I mean, not to be a hypocrite, I still take the money, and I still use it, but I don't do it for the money. I do it because I can, I do it because the adrenaline is far too much of a rush to pass on," he explained with a small wince. "It's a little disappointing at times, whenever I'm actually in a mood, and I need to release stress. I can't exactly let go — I'd kill them."

"Which leads me to my next question, which is the part I'm most curious about... Jared," Bella said, pointing her spoon at him. "Your brother. Your packmate, your best friend, the person I hear you talk about the most. You beat the crap out of him constantly, and he does the same for you. Tell me about that."

How was he supposed to explain their relationship without freaking her out?

"It's different with us," Paul started, cautious. "I'm not even really sure how to explain it. The boys from the pack are inside my head, and they don't get it — they understand it, and they can respect it to a point, but it's not the same. I could give up on my job, I could stop cage fighting, and if it came down to it, and there was a way, I could leave the pack. I don't think I could with Jared. That's how it's always been."

She considered his words for a long time. "He doesn't strike me as a particularly violent person."

Paul nodded, understanding where she was coming from. He got that a lot when the subject was Jared. "Appearances can be misleading. Jared isn't me, I'll give you that, but he's far more violent than one would think, just having a casual conversation with him. Most of the times, I'm the one who comes to him, yeah, but it's not unprecedented for him to come to me. It's what we do. We don't even need words anymore. I can tell you exactly how he's feeling at the moment just by the way he's fighting."

"Don't you need to have a bit of anger towards someone to fight against them? Doesn't this... I don't know, taint your relationship somehow?"

"I suppose it should," Paul conceded, dropping his empty bowl next to his legs, already dreaming of eating some fucking bacon when he got home. "And in any normal case, it probably would do irreparable damage. We've always been different, though. When Jared met me, I was already an angry child — always far too furious, and more willing to resolve matters with my fist than with words." He paused. "I didn't have a lot of friends at school. In fact, I had none. I was the student no teacher liked."

Bella frowned. "Was it because of your parents?"

Paul unclenched his jaw. Talking about his parents never failed to get a reaction from him.

"Yeah. Yeah, mostly," he admitted, looking away from her. He didn't want to see her reaction. "I mean there's a lot of kids who lived the exact same situation I did and turned out okay, I guess. I don't know how much of it it's my personality, and how much of it was shaped by the things I've lived through. But yeah, by the time I met Jared, I was already past the line of possible redemption. And somehow, miraculously, he understood." Jared always understood his shit. There was no easy way to explain that. "He got me. Easy as that."

"But tell me about it," Bella pleaded, and she didn't sound revolted, at least. "I mean, Ana couldn't have been happy about you beating up her child."

"She wasn't. Ana is a saint, though. She hates it — she still does. But better than anyone else, she respects our decisions, and she never expects us to change. It's how we are, what we do."

Bella's hand landed on his thigh. "What do you like about it?"

"Everything," he explained, meeting her eyes once more. He knew there was a spark there — even if talking about it with her was harder than he thought it would be. "I'm a hot-headed guy — I've never claimed any differently. If I'm confused, or angry, or scared, or sad, my first reaction is to feel that intense need for violence. The adrenaline, the rush. It's freeing in a way that nothing else is for me."

"But why is it different with Jared?" She pressed, her chocolate eyes so bright in the sunlight that Paul could drown on them. "I mean, doesn't this reaction, this adrenaline, happens with anyone?"

"Again: yes and no," he sighed. "Yes, I feel the adrenaline and rush fighting with anyone, which is why I actually do the things we've talked about before. I've been fighting with Jarred my whole life, though, so it's different. Obviously, it's even more different now, because he's one of the few people who match me when it comes to strength. But it was already different before. I don't know what to tell you."

He struggled for words, but Bella quietly waited for him to sort his mess out, never saying a word.

"He indulges me," Paul finally confessed, his voice coming out softer than he intended. And it felt like a secret being shared, a piece of his soul lying on the grass around them. "He knows exactly what I'm looking for, and he likes it. When we're beating the crap out of each other, the only feeling we have is this euphoric rush."

He squeezed her hand, which is still resting on his thigh. "It feels good," he breathed out. "Amazing."

And he meant more than just the fighting.


Paul was a gentleman. Which was why, when they arrived at the school, he walked Bella all the way to the front door, holding her backpack and trying to mentally convince himself that he was above such things as distracting his mate to steal another couple of minutes with her. Bella had classes to attend to — it would be irresponsible to give her an incentive to skip, no matter how alluring the prospect was.

He had just decided to say goodbye, when a girl saw them and all but marched toward them, her footsteps echoing quite loud for a skinny person such as her. Paul's eyes slid up, and he had to bite back a wince. Whoever that was, the bond did not like. Her face was a gray blur, and she smelled so repulsive, Paul almost shielded Bella's body with his to protect her from getting close to it.

"Jess, are you—," Bella began, clearly confused, but the girl was not there for her.

She turned to Paul, the contempt rolling off her in waves. "You! How dare you show your face here!"

What? Shit. Was she one of the girls Paul had promised to call back? "I…" He tried, but the words died out on his tongue.

He had no clue who she was.

"You don't even know who I am?" She yelled, her hands on her waist.

"You two know each other?" Bella asked, tilting her head in consideration.

"Yeah, I know this idiot alright," the girl — Jess? — said. "Did your mother not teach you not to hit other people?"

Wow.

"Hold on. I've never hit a chick in my life," Paul swore, crossing his arms over his chest. "What the hell does that mean?"

She leaned forward. "I kissed you, and you pushed me off so hard I fell down, you asshole. What do you call that, hun? A fucking hug?"

Oh.

Oh.

Jessica. That was her name.

"Kissed him?" Bella asked, frowning, her eyes scanning Jessica, as though she was looking for lies.

Paul held back a wince. Yeah, he was an asshole to that girl. He probably deserved a proper dressing-down for leaving her like that on the dance floor. "Ah, I…," Paul mumbled, uncrossing his arms. "I didn't mean to— I hope you—"

"Ugh, is this the best apology you can give? I was humiliated! I'll never be able to go back there." She waved her hands, her voice rising and rising. "Everybody saw my underwear!"

Paul ran a hand through his hair. God, what will Bella think about this? How can he even explain what he was doing in a bar, dancing and kissing another girl? He kept fucking things over with her.

He was so uncomfortable. His jaw clenched, and he all but grit the words out. "I had a… stomach bug? Not my finest moment, I'll admit."

She stopped, took a deep breath. "A stomach bug?" she hissed, her hands curled into fists. Maybe she was about to try to hit Paul — it definitely seemed like a possibility. "You know what? I don't need this. Stay the hell away from me, you freak." And with that, she stomped her feet and walked away, leaving behind nothing but a stench of rotten fish and a deep sense of embarrassment.

Paul forced himself to turn to face Bella, bracing for the disgust he was sure to find waiting for him, hoping to come up with a better explanation in the meanwhile. "So…," he began, only to stop when he saw Bella trying to hide the tiniest smile behind her hand. "Are you laughing?"

"I don't know, Paul," Bella said, biting on her bottom lip to hold back the smile. "Did you really flash her panties to the whole club?"

"Maybe," Paul winced, scratching the back of his neck. "I didn't stay there to see."

"What happened?"

"She kissed me… Let's just say the bond was less than happy with that."

She hummed. "Sure. Of course."

Paul turned away. "I may have pushed her away harder than I should have." A pause. "And maybe I left without helping her to get up. Maybe."

Bella finally smiled full force, looking beyond amused at his struggle. She reached for her backpack, and he handed it over wordlessly. "You are an idiot," she said, still far too happy with herself. "I want the full story later, you hear me? Don't think for one second that you'll get away with this explanation."

"Sure," Paul agreed readily, suspicious at the lack of anger. If all she wanted were a full disclosure, Paul would consider himself lucky, nevermind the embarrassment.

"Great," Bella said, jumping to kiss his cheek before turning to head inside. She waved a little with a wicked smile. "See you later, Man Hands."

Paul sighed.

Awesome. Just what he needed.

Man Hands.