Jason's Mate

by Abigail Raines

  “You’re not fine,” I grumble. “You’re wasted. Come here.” I manage to finagle her arm around my shoulder. She’s falling down drunk but I’m not taking any chances.

  “You’re cute,” she says, kissing my cheek. “In that stupid brooding way. Like a vampire from a TV show. About vampires.”

  “Okay.” I roll my eyes and grab Carrie’s purse and we make our way outside as Gary rousts the other two drunks who don’t want to leave. Carrie doesn’t seem to want to go home right away though. She lights a cigarette outside and leaned against the front of Casey’s, enjoying her leisurely smoke even though she’s got to be freezing. She’s not even wearing gloves. I’m freezing too but if I’m honest, I like spending time with Carrie even if it’s a terrible idea.

  “What did you do that was so bad?” Carrie says now, taking a drag.

  I glare at her. We’ve been through this. “Still not telling you. Assume I’m an asshole.”

  “Right, right.” She only laughs, and it echoes on the street as the drunks trudge home away from us. “I don’t want to get mixed up with you, is that it? You’re bad news for a small town girl like me?”

  “I wouldn’t describe you as a small town girl,” I say with a snort. She offers me a cigarette and I take one.

  This is the kind of things humans do all the time, at least from what I’ve seen on TV. Humans stand outside a bar at two in the morning and smoke and talk to the person they want to get into bed with. Wolves don’t- or anyway, not at Hardwidge. Because there were no bars and there wasn’t much in the way of flirting. Every minute I spend even in this tough and sad little town of Grayling is better than a minute at Hardwidge. It’s hard not to think I was lied to my entire life. We should’ve been enjoying the best of being human and the best of being a wolf. Not shitting on humanity altogether.

  “I am a small town girl,” Carrie says, looking up at me with her big eyes. “I’ve lived here all my life. Just because I don’t look what you imagine that to be…”

  I mutter, “I’ll tell you what you look like…” I think better of myself and shake my head.

  At Hardwidge all I needed to get a girl in bed was a smirk and a wink and that was usually enough. The women there wanted to find a good mate, partly as a form of protection from other men. I was considered strong, well positioned, powerful, and good looking. I was a complete asshole but most of the guys were.

  I look at Carrie and I think of my sister and I start to feel even worse for how we treated each other at Hardwidge. We were taught to be brutal, so we just kept being brutal.

  “I look like what?” Carrie smiles up at me, looking a little mischievous and like she doesn’t have the first clue what I was thinking about.

  There’s a sweetness about her. It’s easy to see that she’s had a hard life, yet she hasn’t gotten all hard and she certainly hasn’t gotten mean. I can tell that much. A chilly breeze blows a lock of her hair around and I push it back behind her ear.

  “You look beautiful,” I tell her.

  She smiles at that, like she’s satisfied with herself. It’s cute. “I don’t want to go home,” she says softly. “I don’t want to go home drunk. It makes me sad to come home drunk. I didn’t think I’d be out so late.”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Carrie…”

  “You got any place to sober up?” She looks at me hopefully. “The diner’s closed. There’s a Denny’s outside town though. But you don’t have a car. Well, we could shift and run over real quick-”

  “Not going to Denny’s.” I can’t smile though. She doesn’t want the night to end, and honestly, neither do I. Against all of my better judgement, it does feel like something is happening between us and even though there’s nothing about that, the night feels magical and she’s looking up at me and her eyes are glittering.

  “Can we go to your place?” She wags her eyebrows and it makes me laugh. “Just to sober up. I’ll sleep a couple hours.”

  “My place is literally a shack,” I mutter. It’s not entirely true, it’s more like a tiny studio apartment (I’ve been told). I’ve lived in shacks before. But I also know, in general, what a decent place looks like and mine isn’t one. It’s hard not to feel embarrassed.

  “I don’t care.” Carrie is nearly my height. She’s leaning into me and I can smell her and it’s making me a little hard.

  “Just to sober up,” I tell her. “That’s it. You can crash there if you need to.”

  “You have coffee?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good good. I’m tired of feeling drunk. Let’s have coffee.”

  We finish our cigarettes and chat a little and she makes me laugh. It feels good to laugh. She’s charming me. I feel like she knows that.

  It couldn’t be a shorter walk to the room I’m renting behind the bait shop. Carrie takes my arm and we stroll over and around the corner to my door in the back. The building is small and gray but there’s a little stoop at the back door and a couple pots of flowers doing their best.

  I don’t remember ever being ashamed of where I lived at Hardwidge and the living quarters were so much worse. But when I open the door, Carrie doesn’t seem particularly judgemental as she eyes the small bed that’s only half-made, and the tiny kitchenette and the two doors in back; closet and bathroom. I don’t even have a chair to sit in yet. I just have the bed.

  “Sparse,” she says, plopping down on the bed.

  “Right,” I mutter. I take off my coat and hang it up and she takes off hers too.

  Coffee. I was going to make coffee. My head is buzzing because Carrie is in my room, sitting on my bed, and looking at me with hungry eyes. That should be great but it’s throwing me into a tailspin. I learned how to make coffee from instructions that came with the coffee maker that Anna from the bait shop was nice enough to include with the room. I dutifully fill up the pitcher and pour it in the back and throw out the old grounds and scoop coffee into the filter again before switching it on.

  “You’re unhappy,” Carrie says. She says it like it’s an accusation and I raise my eyebrows at her. “You are. Aren’t you?”

  “Now why would I be unhappy?” I spin around, chuckling. “I live in a shithole and wash pint glasses and kick drunks out of a bar every night. I’m a wolf shifter but apparently, you’ve gotta be pretty light on your feet around here or you’ll get shot out in the woods. And that’s it. That’s my life. No friends, no woman. Shouldn’t have one either. What’s to be unhappy about?”

  “Those hunters aren’t all there is to be afraid of,” Carrie says darkly. “Around here.”

  I frown at that. “What’s that supposed to mean? What else is there to be afraid of?”

  “You haven’t met our alpha yet,” Carrie says.

  “No…” The coffee’s done and I pour us two mugs, relieved that I only have one visitor over because I only have the two mugs. “But I’m a lone wolf anyhow.”

  “He still runs this town,” Carrie says, looking mournful. I hand her the coffee and she nods her thanks before taking a sip. “Runs this town. Our lives. Everything. There’s no escaping Remmy.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen him yet.” I take a sip of my coffee. I don’t like the sound of this alpha. Sounds uncomfortably like Dax. But I guess if he doesn’t have some brutal manifesto for how everyone should live, he can’t be that bad.

  “Count yourself lucky.” Carrie frowns into her coffee before taking a long sip. I think she’s about to open up and tell me why she was so very eager to get drunk tonight but instead she asks me, “Why don’t you deserve friends? Or a girlfriend?”

  “You’re drunk,” I say dryly. “I’m not. Not getting into that story.”

  “It just sounds to me like you probably did some shitty thing, maybe a lot of shitty things. But it seems like you know that and you’re trying to make up for it.” She looks at me hopefully. “Maybe you deserve friends.” She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe even a woman?”

  I give her a long look and say, “Drin
k your coffee.”

  “Tell me about the shifter prison then,” Carrie says, nudging me. She takes a sip of coffee as if proving a point. “You don’t have to tell me what you did to get in.”

  I take a deep breath. I’m not used to talking about myself, not really. I am used to being selfish, although from my point of view, that was also a matter of survival. Talking about myself was never really on the docket. Maybe it should’ve been. Maybe if I’d talked to my sister Alice once in a while, really talked to her, I wouldn’t have been such an asshole to her. Hardwidge wasn’t big on talking.

  “You ever heard of the Mulligan?” I say softly. Carrie only shakes her head. “It’s a shifter prison. I guess it covers the Pacific Northwest but not Alaska, you probably have your own, maybe it’s with Canada… I don’t know. Anyway, that’s where the bad wolves go. It’s not the worst really. I’ve heard human prison is awful. But for a wolf...I mean there are no runs. No going outside. Just a little cell. It’s just big enough to pace in without getting to stretch your legs at all. I’ve heard shifters can lose their minds at the Mulligan just because they can’t run. Can’t hunt. Their wolves can’t handle it. I don’t know how I didn’t lose mine. Eventually I just stopped shifting, or at least until it hurt and I got to feeling so sick that I had to. But most of the time, I just sat there. Thinking. It was about two years. I escaped twice-”

  “You escaped from prison?” Carrie says, seeming almost impressed.

  “I’m tough,” I say, shrugging. “I grew up pretty tough. It wasn’t your average childhood, I guess. Took down two guards, it was a piece of cake after that. That place needs better security, honestly.”

  “But then they caught you again,” Carrie says slowly.

  “Yeah, well. I let them.” I fidget with my lip, staring down into my coffee. Carrie finishes hers and I take her empty mug and wordlessly hand her my own even though she seems pretty sobered up already.

  “Why would you let them catch you again?”

  I set the mug down on the floor and when I sit back up, Carrie leans against me and I have to sigh because it feels so nice. I’ve barely touched a person without any violence involved, unless it was for sex but there was no affection to it. I’m sure that was more my choosing than not. But it feels nice now as Carrie leans against me and I feel that incredible attraction to her, and more than that I feel warm. I feel kind of like I’m home. On impulse, I wrap an arm around her and she leans into my chest and lets me embrace her.

  “I let them catch me,” I say quietly, “because I wanted to serve my time. I wanted to try to make up for what I’d done if I could.”

  “Then why did you escape in the first place?” She looks at me, waiting for something real. I’m terrified to give it to her but I also kinda want to.

  “I escaped to go talk to my sister,” I say carefully. “And...what she said, made me think and...it made me want to try to make up for shit.”

  “Interesting.” Carrie puts down her mug and looks at me and smiles and I feel abruptly and utterly helpless. Apparently this pleases her because a slow smiles spreads across her face. “You’re adorable.”

  That can’t possibly be true and I open my mouth to argue but she kisses me first.

  Carrie is beautiful and I would expect that kissing her would be nice and all but I wasn’t prepared for this. I feel a fire in my belly. At the same time I feel like I’m coming home. I cup her cheeks between my palms and nudge her mouth open and her tongue curls around mine. She hums into my mouth and that fire burns as I pull her closer, kissing her more deeply. She’s wearing a soft sweater and when I wrap my arms around her she’s so soft, her breasts swelling under my hands, yet I can feel her strength and somehow it turns me on. My cock swells in my jeans and Carrie’s hand slides down my chest and she palms me until I’m gripping her tightly, short of breath, resisting the urge to thrust rather embarrassingly into her hand.

  “This is only one night,” I mumble against her mouth.

  I feel like my heart is laughing at me but I mean it. I need to mean it.

  Carrie doesn’t seem concerned. “Right, okay,” she says, breathless in my arms. She shoves me down on my back and I’ve never experienced that. Women didn’t particularly take charge at Hardwidge. Not at all. But she’s straddling me and leaning over to grip my wrists over my head and I didn’t know this about myself but it’s so hot, I squeeze my eyes shut, thrusting up into her. Carrie rocks into me and I throw my head back. I can’t even speak. If this feels so good, I can’t imagine what being inside her is going to be like.

  She kisses me, hot and wet, and says, “I’m gonna ride you so hard.”

  “Fuck yes,” I mumble, as she shoves my shirt up and helps me take it off.

  She’s wearing a slinky, meshy long-sleeved top and when she takes it off, I sit up and I grasp her again, kissing her neck and biting her there as if teasing a mark, and sinking my teeth into her shoulder until she cries out, her nails raking my back.

  This shouldn’t be happening. I know that, but I can’t help myself. Carrie slides off of me and peels off her tights and I use the time to unzip my fly and take my cock out, stroking myself as I watch her shimmy out of her skirt before she climbs back on top of me.

  “Don’t touch,” she says, smirking before she reaches down to wrap her hand around me. She knows just what she’s doing and I groan, gripping her hips in my palms. I sit up to kiss her. She’s looked mischievous all this time and it was a bit of a relief. I could tell myself it doesn’t mean anything to her and that’s for the best, even if it means something to me. But now she sits up and her face is soft and serious as she looks into my eyes as she guides me inside her. I watch her mouth drop open and her whole face changes. She looks at me like she’s just realized something so important and for a moment I feel so understood and known in a way that makes me shake in her arms even as her tight, hot heat engulfs me.

  “Jason,” she whispers. “Jason…”

  “Goddammit.” It’s awful. It’s crushing. It can’t happen. I feel bad for her.

  She’s my mate.

  I cover her mouth with mine and she rocks against me. I wrap my arms around her and hold her. I expected that tough Carrie to come out and ride me hard, just like she said. But it’s different. Nobody is dominating here. We’re holding each other like we know the other person is fragile and precious and important. She rests her forehead against mine even as I thrust up into her and she squeezes around me, making me moan into her mouth.

  “Carrie…”

  “Jason, please…”

  I twist us around so I’m on top and press her down to the bed as she wraps her legs around my back and our eyes lock, our breath mingling as I thrust hard inside her and she cries out, never looking away. My arms are shaking as I hold myself up, this impossible kind of heat rushing through me, making my head buzz. She wraps her arms around me and we’re joined, melding into each other and I don’t even know if I’m inside her or she’s inside me for how much I feel as if we’re the same person. I reach down and find her clit and rub it furiously and she screams into my shoulder, her nails like claws digging into my skin, but even that feels like a kiss. I feel my orgasm coming fast and intensely, a bullet train, and she clenches around me as I pulse within her, rubbing circles around the little nub that’s making her cry out and bite my shoulder as we both ride the crest of pleasure, pressing into each other, shaking and breathless until finally we rest.

  Chapter Seven: Jason

  I don’t know when Carrie leaves. I haven’t slept well since I was first put in the Mulligan but with Carrie in my arms, I sleep like a little baby pup. I sleep like I’m resting in a princess’s bed, warm and happy with a good woman in my arms. I don’t remember what I dreamed about but I’m pretty sure it was something.

  I shouldn’t be let down that Carrie’s gone when I stir and wake up, feeling so good and well rested. I wanted it to be a one-time thing. It has to be. Yet my bed feels cold and empty when I realize she’s gone.
She must be pretty stealthy too- I’m a pretty light sleeper.

  I start at Casey’s in the late afternoons a few days a week, working there until they close late. I wanted to work every day if they’d have me but Gary told me the bar’s barely worth opening the rest of the week because so many regulars go to The Ring. When I asked him what The Ring was, he just laughed. I’m guessing it’s one of those Grayling things I don’t get yet, but I suppose I’ll find out. I wonder if it has anything to do with their alpha?

  It’s nice to be able to sleep in. My bed is small but it’s not uncomfortable. It might as well actually be a prince’s bed for all the experience I have with beds. At Hardwidge we often slept as wolves. Wolves don’t sleep in beds. When we slept as humans, we had shitty little mats sometimes full of straw. At the Mulligan, I had a crappy cot, and most guys there also slept as wolves just for the sake of comfort.

  The point is, I’m comfy and I can sleep in and take my time getting up in the morning. I’ve got actual food in my room that I bought at the general goods store since apparently hunting is risky, at least until I get a better sense of the woods. I don’t really know how to eat properly as a human. But I did my best and bought stuff that looked pretty good. I bought a couple of pots and pans too since I’ve got a little stove so I can cook if I want to. I don’t feel like making breakfast this morning though. I’ll just have coffee and maybe some toast.

  I roll over and face the cool spot in my bed where Carrie was sleeping, curled up with me like we’d always been in each other’s arms. Like that was how it was always supposed to be. My hand wanders down to my cock as I think about the sensation of being inside her; how pleasurable and perfect it felt. I also can’t help remembering that absolute and abrupt assurance that she’s my mate and the thought of that only makes me sad. I wouldn’t wish myself on anyone as a mate. There was a time when I would have thought of myself as a great catch. But not now. Now it seems like an unthinkable idea. I have to think that Carrie realizes that too. That’s probably why she took off.