by Sam Hall
“So just like that?” I asked, eyebrow cocked. “There’s a guy waiting for me upstairs, naked, in my bed.”
“And there are guys down here waiting for you too, the naked part is, of course, optional.”
“You were never like this, didn’t come on this strong.”
“Because I was a kid back then.” He reached out, taking the hand that lay slack on the table and holding it in his, his skin scalding hot. But I didn’t want to pull away, did I?
People talked about grief doing funny things to your head. One minute, you were lost in pain, the next, you forgot everything and were caught up in the here and now. Grieving seemed to put you in two worlds, the living and the dead, and you were the uneasy conduit between them. Declan’s skin, the firm stroke of his fingers, anchored me firmly in the right now.
“You’re trying to help, trying to stop me from grieving too hard.”
“I’m always here to help, Paige, you know that. But mostly?” I saw a faint frown form and then fade away. “Mostly, I want to touch you as much as I want my next beer. You still smell like you always did, sweet, floral, drowning me in your scent, making my fucking mouth water. We were just kids fucking around, working out what we wanted. Well, I know what I want now.”
The deadly serious tone of his made my eyes jerk up. Where was my sweet eyed joker right now?
“I don’t give a shit about the bloke you brought home, the other guys around this table, Mason, any of them. Tell me in what capacity I can get back into your life, and I’m there, even if it’s just as a friend.” I searched his face, hearing the wistful note in his voice. “The friend who strokes his cock every night, thinking about your tits.”
My fist balled, and I punched him in the arm, right as he burst out laughing. Had he been playing me, or was any of that serious? You never knew with Declan. He downed the rest of his beer and then put the bottle on the table.
“I gotta see a man about a dog, but think about what I said, please.”
Just before he got up, he dropped his hand under the table, sliding up my thigh to give the top of it a squeeze. He chuckled when I jumped, and then he was gone before I could belt him again.
“So, having fun catching up?” Stevie asked me, turning away from Will, who she’d been talking to.
“Yeah. Fun.”
“We need more girls if the only thrills I’m gonna get tonight is hearing Dec talking about almost getting a hand job in class,” Will said with a frown.
I picked up my phone off the table and thumbed through my contacts.
“I’ll call my cousins.”
Chapter 16
Somehow, this all ended in dancing.
Music was pumping, half my cousins over the age of eighteen had rocked up, and the room was full of drunken, shouting, dancing people.
“You need to get in there,” Stevie said, passing me a couple of shots before drinking down her own with a slight wince. “And I’ve gotta get back. I’m opening in the morning, so no rest for the wicked.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulder as we polished off our drinks. “Don’t let the Lupindorf shit get to you, not tonight. There’s plenty of time for all that bullshit tomorrow.”
“The town meeting,” I said, feeling my gut drop.
“The town meeting,” she agreed. “When you got out of here, got out from under the label of alpha’s daughter or heir or decider of the town’s fate, you must’ve had time where you could just be selfish, did whatever you wanted to do?”
“Yeah…” My eyes hit the floor. Those days where you rolled out of bed on your day off and you just did whatever. Chilled in front of the TV or went for a run. Hung out with Zack or went and had breakfast at a café. Long, lazy days to rest and recuperate.
“Channel that tonight, because after this…”
“After this, shit gets serious.” I turned to her, my head feeling slightly too big for my shoulders, swimming a little when I turned to face her. “Hey, you know all the town gossip. Any way I could relinquish the title as heir, give it to one of the cousins?”
“Not Selma,” she said, pulling a face.
“Or maybe scrapping the heir thing altogether. Make the town a democracy like the rest of the country.”
“You’d want that?” She just stared at me for a moment, then shook herself. “Um…not that I know of, but there’s some stuff I could take a look at. I’ll let you know.” She gave me a quick hug, then pulled away, putting the Patrón bottle in my hand. “I’ll see you at the meeting.”
And with that, she was gone.
“What’re you doing hanging out here with all the hot guys over there?” someone asked as I took a mouthful straight from the bottle, and when I looked back, my cousin Bridget was sauntering over. She took the Patrón and gave it a look before having a swig as well. “Is this the way it’s gonna be in the alpha house going forward? Because I, for one, welcome our new overlord.” She winced. “Mum’s not letting us move in. Said you wouldn’t be ‘a suitable influence right now.’”
“You just wanna get your grind on with the enforcers.”
“Can you blame me? I dunno how you did it, having a goddamned harem just down the stairs and out the back, where Daddy warned you to never go. I woulda snuck out, no lie. I’d just wanna dive on into that sea of man flesh and let myself drown.”
I smirked and took the bottle back.
“I did a few times, going to see Mason. Dad always caught me though.” In my mind’s eye, I could see him coming out from behind the staircase, stopping me on my way up. “He’d sit me down and give me lectures about messing around with grown men. ‘You might see him as a friend, Paige…’”
And with that, I was sitting in his office, wriggling in my chair as he spoke sternly to me. “But he sees you as a woman, with all that entails. I know the two of you are close. I want you to feel like you can trust and rely on my beta, but, sweetheart, you’re too old to sit on his lap and cry out all your problems.”
I knew that, Dad knew that, and Mason knew that, because he said much the same thing, but not before Mason heard me cry my heart out over Declan. Not before he held me tight, stroked my hair, the big hand on my back edging lower until it froze still. Then he’d pushed me off him, gently of course, but not before I felt a similar rush of power that I’d felt with Declan.
Declan was a boy, Mason was a man, but the fact that both of them could…respond to me in that same way? I felt my tears drying, my eyes growing hot as I catalogued all the differences between men and boys, and all the ways they were the same.
“He was smart, Dad. Knew that flying off the handle, banning me from seeing Mason would just prick my teenage pride. Instead, he made it a social justice issue. Mason was a man, he wanted to do what men and women did, and I wasn’t ready for that. I needed to preserve some distance up until such time as I was ready.”
“And when you worked out you were? What happened that night? Mum always brushed it under the carpet, never wanted to talk about it, and I…I didn’t think it was something I could just ring up and say ‘hey, what went down?’”
I looked into my cousin’s warm brown eyes, smiling at the riot of auburn curls, that broad, mobile mouth uncharacteristically thin right now. I reached out and smoothed the wrinkle in her brow.
“I realised I was ready, that Mason was the one. I asked to see him before the party, just as I was supposed to. Dad had given his approval, but it was tentative, I realise that now. Back then, I could see it—this great and glorious future. I’d finally be with Mason…” My eyes slid to where the man himself sat in a chair on the perimeter of things, drinking his beer. “I’d ask him to be my mate and he would love me and we’d spend the whole of my party being celebrated and then that night—”
“You’d get to ride the baloney pony into the sunset?” I spluttered at that. Bridge always did have a way with words. “Don’t worry, we thought that was the way it was going to go too. What happened? You both seemed so close, especially after you broke up with Dec. You
hadn’t been seeing anyone for over a year, were always talking and joking.”
I frowned, my view of that much more carefree man overlaid over the one we both saw now.
“Um…come in,” I said, gesturing stiffly, acutely aware of the freaking chaos in my room, but Mason didn’t see that. His eyes were slightly too wide as he took in my half nakedness. My eyes dropped down, seeing the sports bra and shorts, and I yelped, then strode over to the wardrobe, pulling out an oversized tee and then yanking it over my head.
“Your father said you wanted to see me?”
“Ah…yeah. Take a seat.” I went to brush past him, pull out my desk chair for him, but a hand on my arm stopped me. Just that one touch. I felt the warmth of his fingers reflected all the way down to my toes, and when my eyes slid up, I thought he felt it too.
Why else would he be frozen to the spot? Why would his breath rasp, his eyes be locked on mine? Why would I feel that tension in his arm? Why would his gaze drop to my lips and stay there, like the world’s secrets could be found upon them?
But he mastered himself, Mason. I’d seen glimpses of this before, and each time, he locked them up behind that wall, but watching him do that now made my nerves falter for a moment. Maybe he…? What if…? I swallowed hard, straightened my spine and then said—
“I’ll stand,” he said, pulling away. Damn, that hurt. Couldn’t he see what he was doing? No, I needed to be calm, say my piece, and then accept his decision. I’d spent my life—
He settled against the wall, arms across his chest, forming a barrier between me and him.
“OK…” My hands dropped down to play with the hem of my shirt. “You know it’s my eighteenth birthday today.”
“We’ve been hauling booze and food in all day, Paige. It better be, or we’re gonna be eating pasta salad for a long time.”
I heard his amused snort, his tone, but when I looked up, that died away. I’d felt so strong, so powerful with Declan. He’d seemed weirdly glad for my attention, despite the fact so many girls were throwing themselves at him. But he was a boy, and Mason wasn’t.
It felt odd somehow, getting ready to talk to him, not as Daddy’s little girl, not as the pack princess, but as a woman. Aunty Nance had talked me through the rite, made clear what I needed to do, so I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and said the words.
“Then you know what I’m expected to do. I have to choose a mate, Mason, someone who’ll become leader of this pack one day. Someone dominant enough, someone reliable, someone the community likes, someone who can keep us on the path Dad and Granddad set us on. There’s a lot of men who fit that bill. This is a good town, we have a strong pack, but, Mason…”
Today, looking back, I saw the fear, the reluctance, but back then, I’d been too much in my own head, forging ahead before my nerve deserted me.
“I have to choose someone to help continue that, and I…” My throat was bone-dry, as if that would be enough to stifle the words which were to come. “I want that to be you.”
Being brought up with my role as heir beaten into me from a young age, I’d imagined the moment I chose my mate over and over. I’d made my dollies kiss after Barbie chose Ken. I’d practised with my cousins, perhaps where Bryant got his ideas from. Every time I watched a romantic storyline on TV or in a movie as a tween, then a teenager, I’d seen me and…? He’d been vague in detail at first, then he was tall, had broad shoulders like Daddy, dark hair, then…
Then when Declan and I broke up, he was Mason.
I’d seen him over and over in my dreams, when I asked him to be my mate and he surged forward, grabbing my arms and pulling me to him in a brutal kiss that communicated all the hot simmering desire I thought I’d seen in those dark eyes. When he did move, when his hands wrapped around my arms, when his fingers bit deep into my flesh, when he held me, first at arm’s length, looking at me like I hung the moon and the stars, when those dark eyes burned as I burned for him, my heart swelled and kept on swelling.
This was it, the destiny I’d spent my life walking towards, and now it was here.
His lips were gentle at first, I hadn’t expected that, his arms trembling with the effort of holding himself back. He just brushed mine with his, emboldened when I gasped, when they parted, a whistle of air all that alerted me to what was about to happen.
He picked me up and shoved me against the wall in a way no one had ever dared, parting my feet with his and surging forward, pushing his body into mine until part of me fist-bumped internally. He was wild for me. He was fucking rigid for me. His hips bucked upwards, pressing something long and hard right where I needed it, his hands pinning my wrists to the wall as his mouth burned for me. His kisses stung, a nip piercing my lip, blood welling, but I craned my neck, trying to follow them, keep his taste in my mouth when they trailed down my jaw, then my neck.
Yes…yes… I thought. That’s where the mark would go, when he claimed me, made me his. He’d sink his teeth in right when he sank his—
“No!”
It took me a moment to feel it, the gap between the two of us, the heat of his grip still on my skin after he snatched his hands away. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, expecting to see my love, my mate, looking upon me with that mixture of desire and need the adult mates always seemed to wear.
What I hadn’t expected was the back of his hand to his mouth, like I’d hurt it, tainted his lips somehow. Like he’d been scrubbing away my taste.
“Mase?”
“Don’t take another step,” he’d said, but he hadn’t meant it. There was no real exertion of dominance in his voice, so I kept on coming. He rectified that. He pinned me to the spot, had me frozen, powerless in my own bedroom, forcing me to look at the man I thought I loved gaze at me with a mixture of fear, anger, and revulsion. “I can’t, Paige. I need you to understand this. You’ll find the right guy and forget all about me. I’m too bloody old anyway.”
That was the problem with being pinned by someone more dominant than you—I couldn’t move, couldn’t run down the stairs, couldn’t escape this. The command didn’t stop the tears from forming in my eyes, then burning as they fell on my cheeks.
“I’m not the one for you.” He was talking to himself more than me, I now realised. “You just think I am because of proximity, because…” He shook his head definitively. “I’ll always be there for you. Always. Remember that. I’ll always help you when you—”
“Help me now.”
I’d injected so much into those three words. Help me understand. Help me to work out what the hell had just happened, how I’d gotten this so wrong. Help stop the never-ending pain that rose in my chest right now, threatening to obliterate me. Help me by freeing me.
He knew. He saw. He gave me that particularly horrendous pitying look a man gives a woman when she confesses feelings he doesn’t share.
“I can’t, Paige!”
He’d snapped his response and stormed out of my room, his hold on me fading once he left, slamming my door behind him. My fingers had gone to my lips, feeling the split, the scratches his stubble had left that gave lie to his assertion, and then I’d turned to the pile of clothes, shoved them to the floor, and found my bag.
“How come two of the hottest chicks in this place are standing in here, looking so serious?” Will asked, sauntering close, Micah at his side. “We’re celebrating today because the pain starts when we wake.”
Bridget giggled, taking his outstretched hand and letting him twirl her close, dipping her in time with the music before waltzing her out onto the floor.
“I don’t dance,” I said, nodding to the crush of bodies beyond. “Fighting, yes, but dancing, I’ve got two left feet.”
“Do you want to though?”
Micah had an odd quiet stillness to him, like his words only came out when they really needed to, never just small talk to fill the gaps.
“I…” My eyes slid over to that chair, to that man, to the guy who walked around with a sharp knife in his hand, dri
pping with my heart’s blood, he just didn’t know it. “I want that release.” I nodded to the dancers. “Will’s got it right—it’s gonna hurt so much tomorrow.” It hurt right now, all of it. My voice wavered, the great subterranean beast inside me rising, rising, but I kept it down for now. “I want to forget, just for tonight, but I also want to remember him and everything he did.”
“I can do that,” he replied, moving in so close that I stiffened, but he just shot me a sidelong smile before he poured the rest of the Patrón into a couple of dirty beer glasses, then he held his up as I held mine. “Your dad was a good man. Every guy here will miss him. It’s gonna hurt, getting used to the fact he’s gone, but it doesn’t take away from that. Remember the way he was with people, the way he helped, supported, was everyone’s dad.”
Because he couldn’t be mine, I thought. But I put the drink to my lips and downed it when Micah did, and then he drew me to him, bringing my body against his in a way that dancing made OK.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said, a little challenge in those grey eyes. I did, feeling the sizzle of strange skin, the broad muscles there on his shoulders.
“Your hair is really soft,” I said, letting my fingers play with the loose strands for a second before realising that was completely inappropriate.
“Argan oil conditioner,” he replied with a smirk. “Now, I’m gonna put my hands here…” He put them around my waist, those long fingers sliding down to my butt. “And then your body follows mine.” He swayed back and forth, and I moved with him, letting my muscles go loose. I frowned for a second, then smiled, liking the heavy buzz in my limbs, the partial surrender of control of my body.
“OK, so where does the forgetting part come from?”
