by Amy Lane
It was the smell—comfort, softness, sweet acceptance—that calmed him down.
In the morning, that softness was right up against his body, and Jacky was wrapped around his back, thrusting a man’s usual morning condition hard against Teague’s thigh.
Teague grunted, his hips undulating, and Katy let out a pleasurable groan. Teague gathered her in his arms, and it felt so right, so normal, so wonderful that he couldn’t make himself stop and think about it. His hand found her breast under her T-shirt, her nipple popping up into his palm, and she gasped. He buried his nose in the hollow of her neck, liking the smell of her hair, and liking the way Jack’s body felt behind him. Jack’s prick had slid between Teague’s thighs, and he was slowly thrusting back and forth, growing slick against Teague’s skin.
But it wasn’t until Teague’s own erection prodded at the edge of Katy’s underwear that his eyes truly opened.
Teague never slept naked. Where were his tighty-whiteys? Where was the T-shirt he often slept in? Where were Jacky’s boxers?
Memories of the day before crashed behind his eyes like ice into a freezer, so loud and so cold that he was surprised he couldn’t hear a clatter.
And just that abruptly, Teague was crouched on the bed between them, then leaping over the end and standing in the middle of the room with wild eyes.
“Oh fuck!”
Jack sat up, his body still hidden under the covers, and spoke gently, like a child to a rabid dog. “Teague… Teague, it’s okay. We’re… we’re mating, right? We like each other?” Something about Teague’s anguished look made Jack reassess that statement.
“We love each other?”
Teague nodded jerkily. “Yeah. No. It’s okay. It’s fine. We’ll do this. But I’m late. For a run. I need to go for a run. I always go for a run in the morning. I’ve got to go.” He punctuated his words by rifling through his drawers, making a hash of the neat, duffel-folded piles. “Where the fuck are my clothes?” he muttered. “Where are they?” He held out a pair of Jack’s boxers. “These aren’t mine. WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY UNDERWEAR?!!!”
A long-fingered, masculine hand came into Teague’s vision, steadying itself on Teague’s blunter, more powerful one. “They’re in the drawer below this one,” Jack said softly. “Teague, buddy,” swallow, “beloved, there’s no reason to freak out.”
Teague ripped open the drawer and pulled out his underwear, found his running shorts and a T-shirt, and threw them on with movements so quick he almost blurred. “Not freaking out.”
“Teague, papi,” Katy said gently from the bed, “you are the definition of ‘freaking out’.”
“Not freaking out.” Teague laced his running shoes, forcing himself to slow down so he didn’t snap the laces. “Not freaking out. Not…swear I’m not… it’s just…” He looked up at both of them, swallowed and closed his eyes. A mini-porn movie featuring him and Jacky played against the back of his eyelids, and his rope officially snapped.
“I love you,” he said hoarsely, looking at Jacky. “I love you both, but I have got to get the fuck out of here!”
And then he was gone, pounding across the floor, the door slamming behind him.
Jack
Different Colors
Jack sank back onto the bed, mindless of his nakedness next to Katy, and scrubbed his hands through his overlong hair.
“That could have gone better,” he said randomly, and then flopped backwards to stare blankly at the ceiling.
Katy turned on her side to look at him, resting her head on her arm. “Mijo, a prison riot would have been better than that.”
Jack turned his head to grin at her, and to appreciate again her soft prettiness. “A prison riot might not have left me quite this sore.” Blink. “Holy God, what the hell happened to the walls?”
“I thought you’d know, Jacky—whatever happened with you two, Cory came home and got busy. This happened about an hour after Green told me I might want to watch over you guys as you slept.” She was frankly curious, and Jack, looking at her—frowzy, desirable, puzzled, and obviously a little bit hurt, figured she had earned the right to know.
“I… I turned yesterday,” he said hesitantly, thinking about his snarling hatred of his parents, his slavering anger and need to hurt the people so obviously trying to harm his mate. “I… Teague turned with me.”
Katy blanched. “Oh Goddess… did you kill anyone?”
Jack was surprised. “No—no! He just…” The blush felt like it swept around his neck and down his chest and up his face. “Uhm. Uhm. You know…” Oh, Goddess… suddenly he couldn’t breathe, and Katy’s gentle hand feathered on his cheek and he could again.
“Buggered you shitless,” she suggested bluntly, and her word choice only made the blush worse.
“I think I took my last dump on mom’s marigolds—but the rest is about right.” He covered his face with his hands again, blocking out the pleasant room and the bright colors of the wall—purple, yellow, red. The colors of arousal and embarrassment, the same colors he saw behind his eyelids right now.
“I think I see why Teague freaked out,” he muttered, not wanting to imagine the Lady of the house and her lover watching him and Teague go at it like gay porn on speed.
“You’re not freaking out on me, are you Jacky?” Katy’s voice was so unsure, so hesitant, and Jack felt an unfamiliar pressure of having to pull himself together for someone else. Teague always let him do the falling apart, always picked up his pieces. There had only been that one time, right before they’d confronted Katy as a wolf and Jack got bit—once and once only, when Teague had gone running in the rain…
“Aww shit!” he swore, and pushed himself to his elbow, then looked at Katy ruefully, touching her face in turn. She closed her eyes and rubbed up against his hand and he stroked her hair back and leaned in to kiss her mouth. She opened for him, and he felt her hurt recede, felt some of the self-confidence that had bled away replenish itself.
It should have surprised him that nothing about this arrangement between them seemed cumbersome, or odd. It seemed necessary. They would even each other out, keep each other safe. Make sure that when one of them went flying off the deep end, the other two would be there, anchoring, supporting. For the first time he actually saw how Green and Cory and Bracken and even Nicky fit together like puzzle pieces.
“No, sweetheart,” he said, remembering Teague’s caution about treating her like a princess, “I’m not freaking out. And neither is Teague—not really. He just needs his run. Needs to pull his guts back in and stitch them up down the middle and pretend he never hurt.”
Katy frowned, little white teeth nibbling on a lovely full lip. “But he did hurt, Jacky—why you think I’m in your bed to start with?”
Jack closed his eyes. “Because Teague whimpered in his sleep like a little kid?” Of course he knew. He’d just been pretending not to see for the last two weeks.
“What you think he dreams about?” she asked seriously, and he shook his head. Even when he was listening to Teague in the middle of the night, he’d never heard truly what the dreams themselves were. But he had a pretty good idea.
“He dreams about hurting us,” he said, and Katy made a whimpering sound.
“I can’t believe we just let him go,” she muttered, and Jack shook his head.
“I can’t believe he won’t let us in,” he muttered. “I can’t believe he’s not safe enough with us to do…” He threw himself on his back again and his hands made a vague, encompassing gesture, and he sighed. He was getting cold—he should either get under the covers or shower and dress.
“This?” Katy asked, and Jack turned to her tenderly and touched her face again and grinned.
“This. This is good. You’re becoming essential to us, Katy—he just needs to be here for it, that’s all.” Jack rolled over and kissed her, and she responded, but both of them pulled back, conscious of Teague’s absence like they’d be conscious of living without their skin.
“He didn’t
even bring a jacket,” she said fretfully as he pulled away, and Jack looked out their little skylight window and saw the gray slashes washing the glass. Another wave of sadness and worry and love swamped him for his emotionally naked werewolf lover, running in the rain.
And that was incentive enough. “Is it raining in the grove?” he asked, rolling out of bed, and Katy thought for a moment.
“No—I don’t think so. Not today.”
Jack sighed, and decided to take a shower then. “I can’t catch up with him, but I’ll go wait.”
“Should I…?”
Jack shook his head and leaned over and kissed her again, just because she tasted good and he didn’t want her to feel bad. “This one is between the two of us, field mouse.” It was Teague’s pet name for her—he’d heard Teague use it before. He liked it.
She smiled briefly, as though she could enjoy them both calling her that. “I… I want this so badly, Jacky,” she murmured, and his heart broke a little at the nakedness on her face. “I can feel him reaching for me sometimes… feel him want me… and I’m just afraid he’ll stop himself from it. Something like this… he’s so…”
“Damaged,” Jack said with a swallow. “He’s damaged. He knows it. He doesn’t want anybody else to be hurt by his damage.”
“I’d rather be hurt by his damage than be hurt because he pulls away,” she said honestly, and little tears trembled on her lashes. “To almost have him this morning…and then he runs away?”
Jacky swore, and moved in closer, brushing a teardrop with his thumb. “He was running away from… from what happened between us. From being out of control. From… from fucking me into the backseat of the car instead of ripping my throat out—which is probably what I deserved!” Oh, God, that hurt, but it was the truth. Jack had lost himself, had lost his identity, had been so bent on killing the bad guy that he’d not reckoned on the cost to the person who meant more to him than anything.
He sighed again and looked outside. “He’s going to need us when he’s done—I… he’s done this before. If we’re lucky, it won’t be so long.”
“Dinner is a half-an-hour after dark.” She sounded apprehensive, and Jack remembered her talking about a new dress she’d bought for the dinner alone.
“Teague will knock on your door to take you up,” he promised. “Weren’t you going to go help this morning?”
“Yeah,” she sniffled, and Jack kissed her again, just to make the tears go away.
“I promise you, Katy. I fucked this up. I’ll fix it!”
She grinned at him suddenly, the expression like sunshine in the grey-filtered light. “Jacky, you have no idea what it means, that you two care enough for all of this. It’ll be okay.”
Jack nodded, hoped he could make it true, and jumped off to the shower.
Teague
Wet Heroes
Teague ran so quickly and so blindly that he didn’t hear Cory in front of him until he almost plowed over her.
As it was, he blinked the rain out of his eyes and grunted a ‘scuse me’, and would have just passed her but she called out, “Wait up, we need to talk about,” wheeze, “tomorrow!” She sounded winded, and her movements were jerky and tight. Concern alone made him look at her again, and he realized that, like him, she was out in a T-shirt and shorts, and that, unlike him, she had slid once and fallen and her shorts and knees were plastered in mud.
“Who let you out without a jacket?” he demanded, and she rolled her eyes. Somewhere beneath the pattering of the rain and the thunder of his own heart, he heard something that sounded like an exasperated grunt from the direction of the trees, but his own self-involvement hammered right over it.
“I could ask the same thing,” she said sourly, seeming to get a rhythm with her feet after a moment, “but I’m pretty sure you woke up and ran the hell out of your bedroom like a jackrabbit instead of a wolf, so I won’t.”
He was silent for a moment, trying to think of a good comeback, but he remembered his behavior of just minutes before and couldn’t.
“How did you know?” he asked after a couple of moments where only their feet and their breathing mattered.
There was a suppressed laugh. “Goddess Teague—do you think you’re the first human to end up here?”
Teague swallowed, and risked a look at her. “I’ve seen what you do,” he said after a few moments. “You’re not human.”
She shrugged, the gesture hard to see in their running pattern. “I was when Adrian brought me home. He knew different. Arturo knew different. Green figured it out in a sweet hurry. But I didn’t.”
“When’d you figure it out?” he asked, and there was another strangled laugh.
“Mmm… I think it was the morning after Adrian and I had sex in the garden, and I healed his heart in front of the entire fucking hill.” She said it matter-of-factly, but his werewolf could smell the embarrassment coming off her from something that must have taken place a while ago.
“On purpose?” Dumb question. Asinine question. What the hell was wrong with him to ask such a question? But it didn’t seem to phase her.
“No, Teague, not on purpose—the sex, well, that was between me and Adrian. But the sorcery—I didn’t know about that yet. The whole hill turned out because Green needed to contain us, and I was just a freaking power explosion without a clue.” The self-disgust was hard to hear—not from someone he respected so profoundly.
“You must have been young,” he said comfortingly, and the look she gave him was enigmatic.
“Yeah. Once upon a time I was young.” She was panting and moving stiffly and suddenly she drew up short and grunted, leaning her hand on a tree and stretching out her calf and thigh with urgency.
He stopped too, and realized that his new werewolf muscles weren’t nearly as offended as his old human muscles would have been. He wasn’t warm—it was cold and he was wet—but his body didn’t need him to run in place like he would have needed to when he was just Teague Sullivan, white-trash survivor.
“Fuck…” she hissed, massaging her muscle. “Goddamned-mother-dicking-cockroach-sucking-sonovabitch-eating-pigeon-rutting-clusterFUCK!” She gave a hearty groan and pounded the tree with her fist, and Teague watched her in helpless sympathy. Finally, the muscle spasm passed, and she took a couple of tentative steps in the direction they were going. Her ponytail was dripping down her back and her bangs were plastered to her eyes. Her T-shirt was sticking to her body and he could see the outline of a white lace bra—cute, but not the type of thing you’d run in. His own self-absorption faded, and he realized that her shorts were much too big for her—they were knotted at her waist—and she was running without socks.
“Lady Cory,” he asked, when she’d proven she could limp a few steps on her own, “why did you come out here to run?”
She smiled brightly at him through the pain and the rain. “Why, to stay in shape!” She was not great at lying.
“Okay—why did you want to talk to me, then?”
Her smile cranked up a notch. “Well, to plan about picking up the So Cal alphas—right?”
He shook his head—this was well-covered territory—but her cranked-tight smile dared him to call her on it.
“Screw that,” she sighed, coming clean. “What I’m trying to say now is that we get it. That morning-after with Adrian would have ended me. I would have run away to be a hermit in a cave if it hadn’t been for Green.”
He looked away then, and made as though to run again, and her voice rose in desperation because she was obviously in no shape to keep up with him.
“Teague—how do you think I felt the morning after we created the Goddess Grove?”
He stopped so short he almost slid in the mud. “That was you?” he asked, suddenly blushing furiously. Looking at the trees in the Goddess Grove had made him hard and Jacky happy more than once in the two weeks since they’d been there.
“Well I had help!” she spat cantankerously. “But it was only a few weeks after I healed Adrian—and
suddenly, not only did the whole world get to SEE me have sex in public, they got me in a threesome, sculpted in living wood!”
Teague swallowed. Ouch. “It’s not just the sex,” he muttered involuntarily.
“I know,” she retorted, limping gamely along. “Do you…think I…don’t know?”
He looked at her hard, and realized her teeth were chattering now that she was no longer running. “Goddammit—you need to go inside…”
“Just shut up!” she snapped. “Look, Teague—you’re afraid because you think you screwed it up. You think Oh my God! I lost complete control! I suck worse than any sucker in the history of suckage! Am I right?”
Teague found himself laughing in spite of the spiked lead weight in his stomach. “Yes, Lady Cory, I suck worse than any sucker in the history of suckage,” he answered, trying not to giggle.
Her slug on his arm completely surprised him. “And that’s where you’re wrong, you dumb motherfucker!”
“Hey!” He held up his hands in self-defense.
“You’re wrong. We’ve been telling you and Jacky for two weeks that this was dangerous for you, but you haven’t been listening. It was dangerous—but it was more dangerous for Jacky. His self-control is non-existent—he’s the type of guy who holds it all in and then beats up a wall to let it all out, and there he was, in an emotionally volatile situation, and suddenly it wasn’t beating up walls, it was killing someone. You know who the hero was there, Teague?”
“You, for stopping him?”
“No, asshole, you for stopping him. I may have stopped the initial charge, but you had the same idea—and you did stop his second one, and that’s pretty damned impressive. And as for the sex,” she added, when he was going to bring it up, “the sex was your other option. Green told you—he told me, he told Katy—you guys have two choices when you first change. You can fight it or fuck it. You could have ripped him open—you’ve been dreaming about it, it’s your worst goddamned fear.”
