Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  “Well I wasn’t—I was waiting for you! Work with me here, Teague—we were partners and suddenly we were, you know, like partners and the only time we communicated was when we were having sex! Your pecker was talking loud and clear but my heart couldn’t speak that language!”

  “Was the sex that bad?” Teague asked, stricken.

  “The sex was great!” Jack shouted. “It was wonderful! Best sex ever! But apparently I’m the woman as well as the bottom, because I needed some fucking reassurance that I wasn’t just a new kind of toy!”

  “Well Jesus, Jacky—why didn’t you just ask me? I would have told you…” Teague’s mouth set and for a moment the terrible vulnerable look disappeared. “I did tell you I loved you! Wasn’t that enough? You had to wait until I was all bare and…naked and…” his voice trailed off and Jack couldn’t stand it.

  With a dark look from his blue eyes and a half-angry rub to his jaw he moved a little closer to Teague, close enough to take those restless, talking hands in his own, close enough to rub the backs with his thumb, close enough to lean forward and touch foreheads in a gesture that was surprisingly Green-like.

  “Teague…buddy…” and didn’t that sound lame? He remembered Green’s word for Cory, for Adrian, and suddenly it was the right word to use.

  “Teague, beloved,” he tried again, “why is it so awful if somebody sees you naked?”

  “You’ve seen me naked lots, Jacky,” Teague smirked, “before we decided to go all gay for each other, remember?”

  Jack shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. What is so wrong with Teague Sullivan that the things in his heart can’t be exposed to air? What’s so wrong with your body that you don’t want me to touch it? Why is it so awful that I want to see you bare?”

  Teague closed his eyes and breathed out slowly. Jack could feel those restless hands shaking, even in his tender grip. “If you listened, Jacky, if you really listened, you’d know the answer to that.”

  Jack nodded. He did indeed. Love hurt, and then it hurt some more, and then it ripped your heart out and gnawed on your thrashing corpse.

  “You know what I heard, Teague? I heard pain. And courage. And nobility. And vulnerability. I heard all the shit that I fell in love with because I hoped it was there—except suddenly I didn’t have to hope for it anymore. It was right there, words in the dark, something to hold onto while you got your shit together, ‘kay?”

  Teague nodded, swallowing hard. “’kay.” Suddenly his body started bouncing and he pulled away reluctantly. “Jacky—it’s getting grayer out here. That thing we’re doing—we’re leaving before dark…”

  Jack backed up and shook himself out, the painful, private moment swept away by necessity—and by Teague’s need for some space. “Okay, Teague—lead the way, but, uhm,” suddenly he was the vulnerable one, “don’t leave me behind, okay?”

  Teague flashed him one of his brilliant, trademark, fuck-me grins. “Princess, if you don’t want to be left in the dust, you’ve got to learn to pick up your feet!”

  And like that they were off, running companionably in the deepening gray twilight.

  They reached the top of the hill breathlessly as the sky turned a dirty concrete color, laden with not quite enough moisture to rain. The ambient, everpresent light in the Goddess Grove made the fantastically (and erotically) shaped trees glow with warmth, and showed them Katy, sitting patiently on the marble bench in the middle of the grove, doing some sort of needlework sampler as she waited.

  Katy

  Werewolf Lessons

  “Aw, shit,” Teague groaned. Katy caught his apologetic look at Jack, and smiled to herself—whatever they had been talking about, it had been serious and important—and it had nothing whatsoever to do with her. His next words confirmed this, “Katy, darlin’, would you take it wrong if I told you that you were the last thing on our minds out there?”

  Katy rolled her eyes. “No, Papi—I hear you. We can talk tomorrow. Cory wanted me to tell you that they’re ready when you are.” Cory had also, she thought with warm satisfaction, given her this lovely needlepoint sampler with three wolves printed on the front of it. The instructions were pretty simple, mostly, and Katy was flattered—it was like being invited into the little club of women that gathered together in the hill.

  “Shit!” Teague growled, hauling ass towards the staircase. Jacky made a sound—a bereft little sound that confirmed her suspicions about how serious their conversation had been, because Teague looked back at him and flashed that fuck-me grin.

  “Don’t worry, Princess—I’m just going to go get changed. I’ll be up in a sec to kiss you bye-bye.”

  He disappeared, leaving Jack shaking his head. “Do you think he’s going to be calling me ‘Princess’ forever?”

  Katy flashed him a grin that had the same brilliance and intensity as Teague’s. “Well, mijo, you are the most delicate man I ever met.”

  Jack shook his head and rubbed his jaw. For the first time Katy noticed the swelling. Wow. Whatever they had been talking about, it had been more intense than she first thought.

  “So he’s ‘Poppy’ and I’m ‘Me-ho’,” Jack asked curiously. “What’s that mean?”

  Katy laughed a little and scooted on the bench. There were squishy pillows over the marble, in brilliant colors, and it made the bench warm and welcoming. She patted the spot next to her and Jack gave a sigh and plopped down.

  “Mijo is a child’s nickname—Papi is a man,” she said tranquilly, and Jack grunted.

  “Oh yay—one more person who thinks I’m a child.”

  Katy pointed to his jaw. “I don’t think he did that to you because he was treating you like a child.”

  Jack fingered his jaw again and shook his head. “No.”

  “What happened, Jacky?” she asked gently, wondering if he’d tell her. Jack liked to talk—a lot more than Teague, anyway—but a man had his pride.

  Apparently the need to talk to someone who would understand outweighed pride. “I…I snuck a peek, I guess,” Jack murmured. “I saw him vulnerable.”

  The image of Teague screaming at her under a gray sky would be etched forever behind her eyes. Very carefully she added a stitch to the vine-stitched outline of a blonde/brown wolf.

  “Bad things happen to him when he’s vulnerable,” she replied sadly.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he asked bitterly. “I…I just want him to know they won’t happen when I see him that way.”

  Katy nodded, and felt that maybe she owed Jacky her own truth. “I told him I was a smackwhore, and that I loved him—you know what he said?”

  “It’s bullshit for you to call yourself such an ugly name?” Jack asked irritably.

  Katy actually felt tears start as she turned back to her needlepoint wolf. You’ll have to love Jacky too. Not such a chore, really.

  “He told me he wasn’t good enough for me.”

  Jack closed his eyes tightly. “Of course he did.” Suddenly those eyes—the guileless color of a spring day—opened, sharpened, concentrated on her.

  “You told him you loved him?”

  Katy put the sampler down and looked right back. “I’m not trying to get rid of you, Jacky. I wouldn’t do that to him—what kind of love would that be, once he finds someone who makes him happy and I get all bitch-kitty on him and try and kick you out?”

  “Then what?”

  “You been here a week, and you really have to ask that?” She arched her brows at him and tried to look confident that such a thing would really work.

  Jacky wasn’t stupid. “So we take turns, is that it? I get him most days and you get him weekends?”

  “That’s no way to mate in a pack,” she returned grimly. “No, Jacky—he made it very clear that I would have to love you too. And when you’re not being a pissy little bitch, that’s not such a chore, you know?”

  Jack stood up restlessly and swing his arms, as though trying to shake off an image of something. “So…we’re just all one big h
appy puppy-pile? Share the same bed? You and me are the little women in his werewolf harem?”

  “You got to make it sound nasty?” she asked, hurt. “What’s the matter, Jacky—I know you like women. Don’t tell me something different never crossed your mind. You never fantasized…”

  “About you?” And there was just enough panic in his voice to give her a little hope.

  She stood and moved closer—no plan in mind, just the animal idea that it was easier to read a person up close. “Okay—that’s a start. You never think about me naked? You never dream about the way I look, or feel or…” she was up close to him now, and his back was against a tree. She could see the dark ring around his iris, the fairness of his skin under the dark hair. He’d chipped a tooth sometime in his adulthood, and the way he smelled… she closed her eyes and inhaled, smelling the same things Teague loved—innocence, spice, surprising strength.

  “You smell like vanilla and cinnamon,” he said, echoing her exact thoughts. “I dream about the way you smell.”

  “Did you think of me last night?” she purred.

  “No,” he murmured, and she was hurt enough to study his face. “You had to be there,” he said with a little laugh, and she answered him with a little smile.

  “I’d like to be,” she murmured.

  He blinked unhappily, still doubtful, and the smile she gave him back was all woman—and mostly bravura. Her previous sexual experiences had been the ones she’d had when high. Mostly, she’d just lay there and ride the chemical vein-wave. She’d never had to think about liking the act, liking the touches on her skin, liking the person she was with. But looking at Jacky, knowing that he was the sort of person Teague would die for, knowing he thought she was beautiful…it was like discovering she was a whole new person, someone who could seduce a pretty college boy under a tree.

  “What’s the matter, Jacky—you never thought about being the creamy filling in the Oreo cookie?”

  Jacky’s instant erection, his instant high of arousal saturated the air with his smell and stunned them both with its ferocity.

  Katy took a deep breath and stepped back, her eyes dropping immediately to his groin, where the scent of desire came from. The tip of his engorged erection was peeping at her from the waistband of his loose sweats.

  “Oh gees,” he protested, and from behind the both of them Teague made a snorking sound between a laugh and a whoop.

  “Jacky, I could have sworn you told me you didn’t normally start fast!”

  Katy cast a dismayed look over her shoulder and saw Teague, fresh from the world’s fastest shower and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, looking at the two of them with surprise, amusement and… she closed her eyes, let her werewolf do the thinking…

  “This makes you hot, Teague,” she told him with a blessed, blessed shiver. She wasn’t off base, she wasn’t making random guesses—he wanted this. He wanted her. This could work.

  “Yeah, Katy,” he muttered, shaking his head in what was nearly sorrow. “Of course it makes me hot. But I’ve got places to go—if you’re going to finish this, you’d better do it now.”

  Katy was suddenly panicked. She hadn’t done this since… since…Jacky reached down and cupped her cheek, grinning a little bit in what amounted to pain.

  “You don’t have to,” he murmured. “We don’t have to rush…”

  It was all the incentive she needed, and she dropped to her knees before she knew what she was doing, shucked his shorts just low enough to let his engorged manhood and testicles flop out, and swallowed him to the back of her throat.

  Jack made a sound between a grunt and a howl then, his head cracking backwards against the tree. He tasted like sweat—he’d been running, of course he tasted salty—and like clean and like long, smooth stretches of skin. He wasn’t small but he wasn’t huge either, and she could fit him to the back of her throat, and when his hand knotted in her hair in encouragement, not force, she did it again and again and again.

  Jack whimpered a little, and she tasted the salty beginning of the end, and licked his head enthusiastically. He wanted her. He was young and beautiful and smart…and Teague’s hungry eyes were fastened on them both.

  She felt Teague’s movement behind her, and his shadow darkened over her. He was leaning in from the side and…his fingers knotted in her hair with Jack’s, and Jack’s grunts and whimpers were suddenly muffled.

  Oh Goddess. They were kissing, they were kissing, and she could smell them together, could smell Teague’s desire, could even feel his erection where is body bumped her shoulder, and his fingers rubbed her scalp tenderly and…

  She whimpered herself, in desire, in satisfaction, and Jacky tensed under her mouth, under her hands which were pressed against his still-covered thighs, and she heard Teague chuckle, Teague who knew Jacky’s noises, maybe even knew his smell by now, and then Jacky was spurting in her mouth and she was swallowing, happily, thrilled that sex could be good, that she wanted Jacky too, that she’d done something wonderful and that Teague, her Teague who had always seemed too old, too beaten, too gone from their suck-ass hometown to reach, seemed to approve of.

  Jacky gave one more spasm against her, and leaned back, the tree and Teague’s strong arm the only things holding him up. Teague moved then, and reached down, helping her up and bending down to brush off the knees of her jeans and pull up Jacky’s sweat pants.

  She was staring at Jacky’s closed eyes and slack, ecstatic expression in wonder.

  Teague was suddenly looming right above her (not too far above—Teague wasn’t tall) his hand on her chin, and she realized she was dripping a little bit of Jacky’s spend down her the side of her chin. Her hand came up to wipe it off and Teague stopped her in mid-motion.

  “You tell him about werewolf mating while I’m gone,” he told her seriously, and she nodded. “And you remember this moment until we talk tomorrow, ‘kay?”

  She nodded again, and was going to say ‘”kay’” back, when he dipped his head and stuck out a pointed tongue, taking the last of the come from the corner of her mouth. His lips brushed hers, and suddenly she had to take—she had given, right, and she wanted something in return. She wanted his kiss, and he gave it to her, his warm chest surrounding her, his mouth on hers, wet and hungry and tasting her and Jacky as though it was all he wanted in the world. He pulled back after a moment, sucking on her tongue a little, and then gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead.

  Then he moved to Jacky and gave him a quick kiss—but one that tasted, so they would all taste together on his tongue—and then he shook his head.

  “You two are certi-fucking-fiable. If you two can make this happen, I’ll take care of you. I still think you both could do better.”

  And with that he was gone down the trap door, leaving them both breathing quickly in the glowing dark. Jacky was still leaning against the tree with his eyes closed, but when he opened his arms, she knew enough to burrow into them and shudder in his embrace.

  They stood there, shuddering, for a couple of moments, before Jack chuckled lowly. “That was, uhm, pretty wonderful. I didn’t think it would feel that good with anyone but Teague.”

  Katy shrugged. “He was there. I think it helped.”

  Jack leaned down and kissed her temple. “I love the way you smell,” he said softly, invitingly.

  Katy nodded. “I love the way your eyes get darker when you look at Teague.”

  “I love the way Spanish comes out of your mouth when we’re not expecting it.”

  Katy laughed. Of course, Jacky hadn’t heard her speak ‘dirty-Nor-Cali-Mex’ yet. “I love the way you defended me from myself.”

  They could have gone on, she thought. They could have gone on, finding reasons why they could love each other, why this idea could work, but something caught Katy’s attention: a spectral set of autumn-sky blue eyes, floating out of one of the erotic tree sculptures. They didn’t float for long—after a moment they formed coherency into a medium-tall young-man’s body, with white-
blonde hair and a lean, haunted face.

  It was the same face carved into the side of the bench that Katy had been sitting on.

  “Adrian?” Katy whispered, hesitantly. They all knew he was there. He was, like, legend—he was the reason for Katy and the other werewolves. His legacy of finding the lost, the dispossessed, the addicted and the lonely, and bringing them to Green’s Hill had lasted beyond his death. The werewolf who had found Katy lying on a dirty mattress and offered her a choice between vampire or were had been one of Adrian’s saved.

  Adrian’s passionate love affair with Green and Cory had become the Hill’s epic anthem.

  Tonight, Adrian was wandering restlessly from tree to tree, hunting something unhappily. Katy was pretty sure Jack was staying still for the same reason she was—he was so lost, so lovely—they didn’t want to disturb him.

  Abruptly the trap door into the house opened, and Green emerged, his own movements hurried and urgent.

  “Beloved…”

  Adrian’s ghost looked up, and the smile that whispered across his features was heartbreaking in its joy.

  “Where is she?” The voice was so faint, cocky, cockney British, they could almost swear they imagined it. “I came because she needs me…where is she?”

  Green, tall, inhumanly beautiful, serene and kind Green, closed his eyes in what must have been a crippling pain. He opened them again and managed a sweet, crooked smile.

  “She’s gone on an errand…”

  “A dangerous one!” Adrian accused, and Green conceded the point with a bow of his head. With a sigh he folded his long frame onto the marble bench, and Adrian came to stand before him. Green picked up Katy’s discarded needlework sampler and held it up as several tiny, sparkly little beings surrounded it and abruptly disappeared, sampler and all. Then he held out his hands, and Adrian took them, and although there could be no touch of flesh, the gesture looked as natural as if it had been Cory before him, taking his hands the same way.