Charles backed toward the door, but his gaze didn’t leave Jessica’s.
For the first time in her life, she thanked God for the smell of vomit masking the tantalizing scent of her two burly mates. It was probably the only thing keeping her from melting into a sexual frenzy right there in the school.
Finally, Charles turned and left the room to sign the release papers in the adjoining office. His friend did not. He stood as though on guard, watching Jessica until her skin pimpled with goose bumps and a chill made her shake. It wasn’t cold. Nope. Nothing that simple. First the smell of throw-up disappeared, replaced by the smell of lemon Pine-Sol. And then that quickly faded when the nurse walked out of the room, leaving Jessica alone with the scent of this unnamed mate of hers.
Well, perhaps those other smells hadn’t really faded but instead were just overshadowed by the pheromones emitting from the blue-eyed stalker, who was now inching toward her as though she were prey. With each step, she got a stronger whiff of him, and she had to squeeze her legs together to keep from trembling. Or maybe trembling wasn’t really her primary difficulty right then. All her blood ran to her core, sending a new shiver down her spine. Her sex tightened with the strongest need she’d ever experienced.
Moisture pooled between her legs. Thank God it was casual Friday, and she’d worn jeans. If she’d been sitting there in just a skirt or thin dress pants, she’d have been visibly leaking through the material.
Get a grip, Jess. She shook her head to clear her mind and turned back to Miranda. “I’ll carry her out.”
She needed fresh air, and she needed the opportunity to at least exchange pleasantries with these men before she went back to class.
How the hell was she going to go back in and finish this day? Lesson plans? She suddenly had no idea what first graders needed to learn. Maybe she could pop in some sort of educational video until she could pull herself together. Three hours. That’s all she needed, and then it would be Christmas vacation, and she could sort this bizarre, unintended mess.
Jessica scooped up the girl, who was almost asleep now. She stood just as Charles returned to the door. “All set?”
“Yep. Let’s get her in the car.” He turned and high-tailed it toward the entrance to the school as though his pants were on fire.
Jessica followed. Mr. Blond brought up the rear. Right on her heels. Without turning around, she knew only inches separated them.
At the entrance, Charles held the tall glass door open and waited for Jessica to squeeze through with her sleeping bundle.
No one spoke on the walk to the car. Nor when Charles opened the back door of Tessa’s van and stood back for Jessica to put Miranda in her booster seat.
She buckled the child in with shaking hands and hoped she had done it correctly in her foggy state.
When she ducked her head and backed out of the car, both men stood there on either side, still as statues, staring her down as she balanced on one foot and then the other and whipped her gaze back and forth between them.
Charles pushed a button on the remote, and the sliding door slid shut automatically, the movement and squeal of the motor behind Jessica making her jump.
“Sorry. I…” Charles closed his mouth.
“I’m Reese. Reese Becker.” Jessica turned her gaze to the blond god as he set his fingers gently on her biceps. The simple touch sent a jolt of shock down her arm, and her body shook. As those fingers trailed down her arm to her hand, she never let her gaze release his. She was lost in his mesmerizing deep blue gaze, unable to control her reaction.
“You must be the infamous Jessica,” Charles stated. He didn’t touch her, but he did lean closer, inhaling long and slow. “Fuck.”
That had been her exact thought numerous times in the last few minutes. How long had they been in this standoff?
She swallowed hard and turned just her head slowly his way, not releasing the gaze Reese held her captive with until the last second. Her gaze whipped toward Charles when her neck craned too far in his direction.
Reese still held her fingers in his own, just the merest of touches.
Charles’ mouth slowly tipped up on one side in a wry smile. He leaned his forehead against hers, the warmth of his breath mingling with her own. Way too close.
Jessica ducked from between the two men crowding her and making her head spin.
She took two steps toward the building and then spun on her heels. “I have to go back to work … finish the day.” Not stopping her momentum for fear she’d get sucked into some sort of sexual vortex and be unable to escape, she kept backing up. Her hands shook at her sides. Her chest fluttered as though she were exhausted from running.
Charles and Reese stepped in her direction. She put a hand out to stop them. “I can’t … do this … right now.”
“Later, then.” Charles narrowed his gaze. “What time do you finish?” He wasn’t going to give her an inch of space, a single second of time to contemplate this development.
“Three-thirty, but—”
“We’ll be here.” Reese spoke this time. His voice was a shade deeper than Charles’ but just as gravelly. Did they always have that tone that sounded like they were in the middle of having sex? Or was it just now, just because of this initial meeting?
Jessica shook her head. “Not here. I work here. I can’t—”
“You can’t avoid this, Jessica. We have to discuss it. Work it out. Talk. Justin told me about you, about your reluctance—”
“I don’t care what Justin told you, or Ryan. You don’t know anything about me.” She planted her hands on her hips and paused ten feet from them. She gave them a glare.
“Babe, we just want—”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me. I’m not ready for that. And I know what you want. Please, give me space and time to figure this out. Think. How about tomorrow?”
Tomorrow? What am I? Crazy? That wasn’t nearly enough time to think about what she wanted to do next. Now that she had a few feet of distance between her and these brutes, her head was clearer. Okay, maybe not clearer exactly, but somewhat sharper. She’d spent her whole life dreading this moment. Now? Fuck.
“Uh-uh.” Charles shook his head. “No way. We’ll be here when you get out, and you can either play nice and meet with us or suffer the repercussions of causing a scene in the parking lot in front of your coworkers.” His words were harsh, but his tone was not. In fact, he was grinning.
He had her.
“Fine.” Jessica turned and stomped back into the school, not glancing back even for a second.
Her blood boiled, but she had no idea if it was from anger or arousal, and that just made her madder.
Chapter 3
Charles paced back and forth, stumbling occasionally on a rock or a tree root that had dared to peek out from the dirt, cussing at the audacity of the fucking roots as though they were purposefully in his way.
“Now what do we do?” Reese said, asking the question neither one had the answer to.
Charles ran his hands through his hair for the thousandth time and turned to stare at Reese where he sat leaning against the trunk of a tree. How can he be so calm?
“Dude, don’t look at me like that. Don’t forget I can hear your thoughts just fine now. Just because I can control myself better than you outwardly doesn’t for one minute mean I’m not boiling inside. And, for your information, my dick is just as hard as yours.”
Charles glanced around at the dense trees. “Yeah, and you being in my head is just weird. My brothers can do that with their mates, but it still gives me the chills. Do you think Jessica can hear our thoughts too?”
“No. If she could, she’d have run from us in the parking lot.” Reese grinned. “Apparently we have to claim her before she’s privy to our thoughts.”
“Well, I’d sure rather be inside her head than yours right now.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
A chill crept up Charles’ spine, bringing with it a sensation the two of them were h
iding from something or hiding something. “I feel like we’re sneaking around.”
“Yeah, well, we are. Do I need to remind you there is a woman in your parents’ house who came home with us? Remember Alyssa? The one your mother is currently entertaining?”
Charles glared at Reese. “I’m aware of the problem.” He resumed pacing. “She’s a conundrum all of her own. Suggestions?” He hadn’t exactly forgotten Alyssa, but he definitely didn’t have her in the forefront of his mind. It sure as hell wasn’t convenient he and Reese would meet their mate less than a day after bringing another woman home.
“Me? Why do I have to solve everything? I don’t have the faintest idea what we’re going to do about her. Getting her out of Oklahoma was easy. Why didn’t we consider what would happen when we got here?” Reese shook the thought from his mind. “I can’t deal with that issue right now. My brain got overrun by a sexy minx with deep brown eyes who blocked out the first twenty-five years of my life in less than an instant. Meanwhile we’re hiding out back in the woods plotting… What the fuck are we plotting?”
Charles ignored him. “Let’s consider the facts.”
“Go ahead,” Reese muttered. “Do you have any new ones that have come to light in the last few hours?”
Paying no attention to Reese once again, Charles held up a finger. “First, the elusive Jessica is a wolf. Second, she doesn’t like that idea one bit. Third, well, shit, she’s our mate.” He resumed pacing.
“Good job, Sherlock. Like I said, do you have anything new to add?” Reese jumped to his feet. “Look, we are running out of time. We have to get back to the school before our sexy little pixie decides to make a run for it. By the look on her face, I wouldn’t be surprised if she jumps in her car the first chance she gets and hightails it out of town.”
“What do we do about Alyssa?”
“Alyssa who?”
“Ha ha. The sexy blonde girl?”
“Was she blonde?” When Charles turned toward him, once again widening his eyes in shock, Reese laughed. “Oh, good grief. I know what color her hair is. I’m just pointing out what portion of my brain is actually focused on her.” Reese turned and stomped toward the opening in the trees. Taking advantage of their new ability to communicate silently, he spoke directly into Charles’ mind. “You coming, or am I going to claim Jessica alone?” There was no need to shout or turn around now that they’d found a mate. Their friendship had just taken an about-face.
“Do you have to be so crude?” Charles grumbled, but he didn’t care. This situation was sticky at best; it had disaster written all over it at worst.
“You want me to sugarcoat it?” Reese spun around in front of him, his nostrils flaring. “We’re fucked.”
“Hey, it’s not our fault. We’re innocent in this whole thing. How the hell were we to know we would meet our mate today of all days? People, wolves too for that matter, have lives. This surely happens.”
“Of course it does, but a very nice woman came halfway across the country with us for the holidays. You want to tell her or you want me to?”
Charles cringed again. Reese was right. Furthermore, Nancy Masters, Charles’ mother, was not going to be very happy if her son treated anyone, wolf or otherwise, with anything but respect and courtesy. He could hear it now. “Son, you invited this charming woman to spend the holidays with us, so now you must reap what you sow and deal with it.”
Reese craned his neck forward, waiting for an answer.
“Let’s figure that out later. First, we have to go talk a reluctant Jessica into … well, I don’t know quite what, but something.”
“At least we agree on that.” Reese turned on the balls of his feet and headed directly for the truck. “No sense stopping by the house now. We’re out of time anyway.”
* * * *
Jessica peeked out the small window in the corner of her classroom for the fiftieth time. It was the last day of the semester. The first day of Christmas break. Why the hell was anyone still in the building?
There were three cars outside. Her Honda Civic. An unfamiliar black truck right next to it with steaming windows, which could belong to no one other than either Charles or Reese. And last of all, the assistant principal’s Mercedes. Obviously Carrie’s husband had a better job than she did.
Stalling was Jessica’s middle name this afternoon. A confrontation with two hunky men was inevitable, and the last thing she wanted was witnesses.
She’d been waiting, rather impatiently, for the last few people to leave the school for a half hour. Normally, everyone scrambled within moments of the last bell to begin a break, especially a long break. Not today. No. It was taking an excruciatingly long time for everyone to vacate.
Butterflies bounced around in her stomach. Her head was so light she’d already stuffed it between her legs three times since school got out.
“Jessica?” The soft voice made Jess nearly jump out of her skin as she twisted herself around to face her assistant principal. Her hand got tangled in the blinds she held open to stare out the window, and they clanked against the frame, the noise louder than a freight train in contrast to the silence of the nearly abandoned school.
“Oh. Sorry. You scared me.” Jessica put her hand over her chest and heaved breaths. How had she managed to be oblivious to the approaching footsteps of Carrie St. Martin? The woman tromped around in tall heels every single day. It was nice because she could never sneak up on anyone’s classroom. Everyone could hear the woman coming a mile away as she clacked down the hallway.
Although somehow Jessica had been so far off in space, she’d managed to completely miss the woman’s approach even in the total silence of the afternoon.
“Are you okay? Why are you still here?” Carrie didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she angled herself around the desk and peered out into the waning winter day. “Is someone waiting for you?”
“Yes.” Jessica scrambled to stuff papers in her bag. Clear her desk of debris. “I was just finishing up.”
Carrie laughed as she turned back around. “Well, I’m leaving. I just thought I’d check on you when I noticed your car still outside. You’ll be okay? Do you know those people?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll be right behind you. Friends. They’re waiting on me.”
Carrie looked concerned. Her brow furrowed as though Jess were lying. “Okay,” she drawled, seeming to realize how ridiculous that would be. “Everything’s locked up. Just make sure to pull the door closed when you leave.
As Carrie left the classroom, her heels resonated like tap shoes, echoing on the linoleum floor. She turned back one more time at the door. “Go. Enjoy your vacation.” She smiled and disappeared.
Exhaling a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, Jessica scrambled to gather her things, flipped out the lights, and headed for the front door.
Now what are you going to do, smarty pants? Perhaps it would have been better to leave while there were still teachers all over the parking lot than now when it was ominously empty.
As soon as she stepped outside, the chill bit at her cheeks and fingers. Large flakes were delicately drifting through the air toward the ground, in no hurry to reach their destination. Apropos, seeing as she had no spur on her heel to reach her destination either.
Fortifying breaths. She just needed to face these hunks and get out of here as fast as possible. Preferably before she succumbed to the lure of their scent as she had earlier today. This was not in the plan.
Charles and Reese stepped out of the dark truck parked next to her Civic and leaned against the bed. Their matching stares stabbed into Jess like four sharp daggers.
The afternoon had given her the opportunity to stiffen her spine and gather her wits without the ridiculous male pheromones to cloud her judgment. In fact, she practically held her breath now so she could think, and she stopped several feet from the men, spreading her legs a foot apart in the standoff. With her hands plastered to her hips, she could only hope she demonstrated a da
unting presence.
Breathing in through her mouth to avoid what she’d already experienced earlier today, she began. “Listen, this isn’t going to work. I know—”
Charles laughed, practically in her face. “Are you kidding? Did you just become a lupine last night?”
His expression changed from mocking to sober to contrite as she glared. He didn’t continue.
“Listen, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not extremely versed in the ways of your—our—kind, but I know enough. I know I do have the right to refuse you, and that’s what I’m doing. Exercising that right.”
Charles took a step forward before Reese grabbed his arm and hauled him back against the car.
Reese took a few deep breaths, tipped his head back, and then narrowed his gaze at her again. “Why would you do that?” His words wafted toward her on the slight breeze, faint, almost unintelligible.
“None of your business. Please, let me be. Find someone else. I don’t want this.”
Charles had more difficulty controlling himself than Reese. He yanked his biceps free of Reese’s grasp and stepped toward her. “It doesn’t work like that,” he began. “If it did—”
“There is no need to make this difficult,” she interrupted. “I. Don’t. Want. A. Mate.” She separated the words and enunciated them succinctly to ensure there was no misunderstanding.
“Jessica—” Charles tried again, but this time Reese cut him off.
“Believe me, we didn’t head out this morning in search of a mate either. In fact, it’s downright complicated for us, but that doesn’t change the fact we are drawn to you on a level we can’t resist … and you are just as affected by us.” He lowered his voice and tucked his chin as he stated this last part. “Denying a mating is … rare.”
“It would be difficult. Unimaginable,” Charles finally managed to squeeze in. He even had the audacity to adjust his crotch.
Jessica’s gaze went from his face to his groin, taking in his stance that appeared almost painful. Neither man wore a coat, even though it was hovering near the freezing mark this afternoon. The bulge in Charles’ jeans grabbed her attention and held her gaze. She actually had to shake her head to wipe out the image and draw her attention back to his face.
Jessica's Wolves (Wolf Masters, Book 3) Page 2
