by Lynn Red
Not that I need anyone. Not really. I just... I don’t know, outside of Jeannie, I didn’t really have anyone to depend on, to trust. And laying all my bullshit on her wasn’t fair, so I was once again just bottling. Bottling it up until something, somewhere, popped. I knew it would happen, it was just a matter of time. And just like that, the cork began to slip.
Some road noise from behind pricked my ears, particularly because there was hardly ever any road noise out this far from the schools, especially in the middle of winter, and especially after dark.
I’m not normally a nervous person. I’m not normally insecure or afraid of the dark, but for some reason – probably my run in with Jake’s brother – I had become hyper aware of everything around me. I hated the twist in my stomach and the little tinge of fear in the back of my mind. “Get this car going, Dilly. Stop panicking and just do this.”
My awareness shifted from the harmless road noise back to the
The familiar thrum of nervous energy in the back of my skull struck up. That’s how my anxiety makes itself known. I get a little hum of tingling in the back of my head, and then I start with the heavy breathing and sometimes sweating. Although in this cold, if I started sweating, that’d be bad.
Gritting my teeth, I very consciously held tightly on the wires.
“Why does this have to happen right now?” I asked the universe. I bit down on my lip, trying to force myself to keep steady just long enough to get the damn car going. “Just get it started, Dilly, just get the damn thing started. You can sit in there and warm up, and forget about how unless you make some wild ass sales in the next couple of days, you’re gonna have to seriously think about Waffle House.”
The thing is, it wasn’t true. I had some socked up, I owned my building, owned my tools. There was nothing reasonable for me to be afraid of, but there I was, crouched down on the dirt, and my goddamn hands were shaking like I was detoxing.
The wires touched, just long enough for one spark to shoot through Bertha’s ignition. With a heave, the engine turned over once, and I let go of the wires, thinking I’d managed to get her going. After the one crank, the vigor in Bertha’s voice started to falter, her strength began to fade. I tried to catch the wires, but one of them had recoiled back under the dashboard.
I reached for it, but lost my balance – somehow I’d managed to trick gravity into letting me go. My chin popped against the leather bench seat, clacking my teeth together smartly
Prickly cold in the back of my head began to swirl around and before I knew it, the little points of darkness poking through my vision were starting to take over. I forced myself back to my knees and got one foot underneath me before I felt the hand.
“Delilah?”
It was like buttery maple syrup on a piece of bacon. Those burning hot fingers wrapped around my arm, and then when I fell backwards, he caught me. “Are you okay? Talk to me,” Jake urged. “Say something.”
His voice was caressing me, lulling me into a weird sense of security. “Something,” I managed weakly, and smiled. I looked up at him, those burning, iron-colored eyes and his shaggy hair cascading along the sides of his face as he stood over me. He laughed a little, probably more out of wanting to calm me down than because it was actually funny. Which, thinking about it, given the context and the timing? Not too bad a one-liner really.
“Let’s get you up,” he whispered before effortlessly hauling me to my feet and depositing me inside of Bertha’s maw. “Shit, it’s cold in here. Here, this should help.”
Opening his jacket, Jake guided my arms inside and underneath his. He held me tight, apparently unconcerned with Dilly the thermal vampire leeching off all his heat. Never – not once in my life – have I ever gone from freezing too comfortable in less than, like, four hours. But that time, with myself wrapped around Jake?
“There we go,” he whispered. It was like his voice was inside my head he spoke so softly. “All better. Or at least you aren’t shaking so hard anymore.”
I gulped and looked up at him. “Th-thank you. I don’t know what happened. I was just trying to get...”
With the tip of one finger, he touched my lips, quieting me. He shook his head. “Whatever happened, I’m just glad I was running late. You’re okay.” Jake was petting my hair, calming me more with each passing moment. “Everything is fine. Although... you have to hotwire your car?”
I snorted a laugh because that’s all I could do. I nodded. Something in his gaze was fierce, feral, protective, and even possessive. He held me closer against his body, his heat burning through the shirt he was wearing, which I just realized was flannel. I opened my hands, flattening them against his muscled stomach, until my fingertips trembled and I had to pull away so he wouldn’t notice.
“You okay for a second?” he asked. His lips were so close to my forehead that I felt the heat from his breath against my skin. I nodded, consciously leaning forward until my head touched his chin.
“There’s something about you,” he said before trailing off. “Something I can’t...”
The lips brushing my forehead sent goosebumps down my neck in a crawl. I felt my scalp tingle, my nipples pucker up underneath my bra. I’d never felt this sort of reaction before, sometimes not even right smack-dab in the middle of sex. With just a touch, a soft, completely harmless kiss, Jake Somerset had me ready to jump in his lap and ride into the wild blue yonder. My first inclination was to be embarrassed because, well, who wouldn’t be?
That feeling just wasn’t there. I had no trickle of regret, no ugly warble of self-doubt in the back of my mind. Right there, with this guy I barely knew, whose brother threatened to kill me if I didn’t ignore him, I felt like I was riding on top of a cloud.
He was a really warm, comfortable cloud with really big arms and a bulge in its jeans that clouds don’t normally have.
Okay, so that time I blushed a little, but it faded quickly. He brushed my forehead again, his lips warming me deliciously. “Hotwire?”
“Oh yeah,” I said with a little bit of a giggle. “Sorry, I got kind of carried away with my head.”
“You’re not the only one.” His voice was low and rumbling.
Ladypart tingles ahoy!
“The wires – are they under the dash like normal?”
I nodded. “Yeah, they’re—”
Just like when his brother had crossed the studio and grabbed me without my noticing his movement, Jake was bent under the dash, and then a split second later, Bertha was humming right along, engine thumping in time to the beating of my heart.
“For a car you have to hotwire, this thing sure does have a nice sound to it.” He climbed back in the seat, throwing his arm around my shoulder.
“I feel like we should go to a drive-in or something. Arm around my shoulder in the front seat of a mid-70s Caddy? I’m getting a real James Dean feel out of this.”
“Are there any drive-ins around here?” Jake asked, he sounded like he was honestly curious.
“Not that I know of,” I said, snuggling back down into the crook of his arm. “Dinner wouldn’t be bad though.
I looked up in the rearview in time to see him cock an eyebrow and tilt his glance down at me. “Steakhouse?” he asked. “I’ve got a... damn, now that you mention food, yeah, I could use a steak or three. Where’s good?”
From a boring day at work to a freezing cold panic attack underneath my car to... a steak dinner with Jake? What in the hell IS my life?
I looked at him for a moment longer, and made the decision, right then and there, that I wasn’t going to worry. I wasn’t going to analyze and overthink. For once – for one night, at the very least – I was just going to enjoy my improbably ridiculous life, and try to forget the nibbling anxiety in the back of my head about Captain Growly’s evil brother.
-6-
“No, only four potatoes. You must be watching your figure.”
-Delilah
“Oh my God,” Jake groaned as he pushed back from the table. “I can�
��t believe... how many was that?”
He wiped his mouth and groaned again for emphasis. “I’m serious,” he said with a laugh that made his slightly puffy cheeks flush. “I can’t remember the last time I ate that much. How many was that?”
“Four,” I said and then looked at the plate between us with the bones piled up. “No, make that five. You just ate five three-quarter pound ribeyes,” I said, staring in awe at the creature before me. As it turns out, there aren’t really any steakhouses here worth a damn, so I got all bold and brought Jake to the grocery store, and then back to my place. In the freezing-ass cold, we fired up the grill and he kept me warm next to his radiant body for the approximately forty seconds that the steaks were cooked.
“And the potatoes,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “How many of those?”
“Just four, but you did have bacon, sour cream, butter, and for some reason a fried egg on them.”
“It’s great,” he said. “Just great, you really should try it sometime. Fry the egg just barely, and the yolk almost makes its own sauce. Was it good for you?”
The way he asked that made me laugh. “Well, yeah of course. I love steak, and potatoes, and salad and beer and pie and more steak and another potato.”
For my part, I’d eaten most of a ribeye, my entire potato sans the fried egg, and a couple of rolls. Oh, and the Key Lime pie. Can’t forget that. He’d eaten the rest of it with my piece gone. “But I’m stuffed full. I feel like my guts are gonna run out of my ears. I have no idea how you inhaled that much food, but I’m glad you knew you would. I’d hate to have a hungry Jake running around.”
“I’m not gonna be running any time soon,” he said. “Why the hell did I eat that whole pie?”
“More like ‘how’, I’d ask. There isn’t an ounce of fat on your body. I’ve never seen anyone eat like that, especially not someone who looks like you. Did you learn some kind of wild secret from Dr. Oz?”
Jake’s gaze fell on me, his eyes warming my soul the same way that touching him warmed my body. “No,” he said with such gravitas that it kind of made my stomach quiver. “I just have a fast metabolism. It, uh, runs in the family.”
“Man, you have a hell of a family,” I said, a smile crossing my lips before I realized what I’d said.
Son of a bitch, why did I drink that fourth beer? Now I’ve gone and done it. His crazy brother told me not to say anything, so what’s the first thing I do? Get lubed up with alcohol and start blabbing. Jeez, Dilly, way to go. Of course, he also is a stranger who threatened me, so... maybe singing like a canary isn’t the worst idea.
“How do you mean?” he got very serious all of a sudden. I mean, I knew that I had prodded a sore spot – or at least I figured as much – but I didn’t expect the sudden shift. “Did something happen?”
“Er,” I looked at the table and shoved my potato around the plate before sticking my knife in the side and taking another bite just to have something in my mouth except for my foot, which was currently taking up a whole lot of the room. He waited patiently while I chewed and swallowed. “I mean, we all have crazy families. Right? We all have crazy brothers who... I mean, sisters, too. And dads. Holy shit, in my case it was totally my sister and my dad.”
Slowly, Jake closed his eyes. “Is that so?” he asked, with them still shut.
Open mouth, insert beer, and then insert foot. Don’t stop with the foot though, go ahead and jam it in there up to the ankle. Maybe even the calf. Fantastic work, Dilly, you got him to come to your house, you made him a pile of meat, and then you immediately start talking about his brother. And THEN you try and cover it up with really obvious, and if we’re being honest here, shitty, lies. Perfect plan.
“Yeah,” I opened my eyes wider, like I was trying to use willpower to get him to open his telekinetically.
I have this thing I do. It isn’t like normal nervous rambling. When I get nervous, or scared, or in the throes of a panic attack, or apparently after four high alcohol beers, I say things before my brain manages to calculate exactly what I’m saying. Everyone does that, but with mine, it doesn’t stop there. My brain will panic, and then my mouth will yammer some other inane crap, and then my brain will panic more and more until I’m suddenly just saying words that hardly make sense and then...
I crammed another hunk of potato in my mouth.
This one was a little too full of delicious toppings. Sour cream ran down my chin and a piece of shredded cheese that had escaped melting stuck to my lip.
Jake finally opened his eyes, regarded me for a second, and then quirked the corner of his mouth up in a grin. I could have kissed him for grinning right then. Or I could have kissed him for any of the other million reasons that rushed through my mind right then.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to bother.
Another burst of speed so quick I didn’t even see him move resulted in Jake with his hands on my upper arms and his lips hovering about three inches from mine. “How do you keep doing that?” I asked. I felt my breath hitting Jake’s face and coming back toward me. “The fast bit, how do you keep moving so fast?”
He cocked his head to the side and grinned again, instantly melting any shred of self-denial that I could possibly have. I moved my head forward a little, so did he.
I got close enough that I could taste his breath.
Jake inhaled and closed his eyes. “I’m a werewolf,” he whispered, and then kissed me harder, deeper, more fiercely than I’d ever been kissed in my entire life. Luckily I managed to swallow the potato the second before he did.
I’m talking more urgent than hurried high school makeout sessions; I’m talking wilder than the most indiscriminate of college mistakes. He pushed my mouth open with his, and slid his tongue along the inside of my lip, exploring every bit of me. When he pulled away, it left me aching, yearning to have him back. Those hazel eyes opened slowly as I watched, and they moved back and forth, studying my face.
“A werewolf?” I asked with a snorted laugh.
“Yup.” He laughed too. “Werewolf.” He wiped the sour cream off his chin and then licked it off his finger.
The next kiss was slower, harder than the one before. His strength pushed my head backward until I felt the wood of my chair’s headrest against my ponytail, and then he pulled me up and out of it.
Our lips fought, clashed, our tongues wrestling for position as he pushed me backwards, and when I hit the wall of my open concept living-dining room, my breath was already gone – there was none left to be knocked out. I whimpered softly, and bit at his tongue
Jake sucked my bottom lip, nipping and letting his teeth clack together when he pulled away.
“Howling at the moon, biting our mates, fighting over territory,” he whispered.
If I died right that second, it would have been just fine. Except... then I would have missed the rest of what happened.. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”
I went for another kiss but he turned ever so slightly. I managed to run my lips along the side of his neck and down to where his flannel shirt hung open. Heat bubbled inside me, like he was transferring his body’s warmth into mine.
He just laughed as I licked a slow path down the cords in his neck and to where his collarbones ended and his pectorals began. I curled my fingertips against the backs of Jake’s arms, and he threw his head back to let me kiss lower on his chest. For some reason I bit the button on his shirt, and it fell open. I smiled as I buried my face against his skin, biting gently and kissing him again.
“Harder,” he whispered. “Bite harder. Wolves like it when you get rough.”
I scoffed another laugh. “You and the werewolf thing. What’s next, you’re going to tell me you’re half vampire?”
That time, he didn’t laugh, but he didn’t say anything else either, mostly because he was too busy clutching me to his chest and moaning as I sunk my teeth into his burning hot flesh. “But seriously,” I whispered in between kisses sucked on his skin. “How do you mo
ve so fast?”
The grin he gave me would have melted the panties off a frozen cavewoman. If they, you know, wore panties. “But seriously,” he said in a slightly mocking, but mostly playful, tone. “I already told you. Not my fault if you don’t believe the truth.”
With his hands sliding up underneath my flimsy, old Freddy Mercury emblazoned t-shirt, and his lips warming first my neck and then my collarbones and then slightly lower, I got all confused and immediately forgot all about the damn wolf stuff.
“Bite me again,” he growled. “And don’t treat me like a baby, really get in there after it.”
Because I’m me, I took that as a challenge more than just pillow talk. I was still reeling slightly from his kissing and sucking, but I grabbed his shirt and went to unhook the next button. My lips brushed his chest, then one of his nipples when I pulled his shirt away from his skin. But then, I got an idea.
Biting my lip, I looked up at Jake’s face, snarled a little, and ripped at his shirt as hard as I could, trying to pop those damn buttons right off. It... didn’t go as planned.
The first button popped, but I grossly underestimated the strength of flannel. “Son of a bitch,” I snarled, pursing my lips and trying again. “Is this made out of woven steel?”
I pulled again, this time the fabric got a runner and split a little, but nowhere near enough for me not to look like a jackass who couldn’t rip some flannel. Jake quirked a smile at my dismay, but then he nodded and placed his hands on top of mine. “Let me help,” he said.
Straining so hard that it looked like his eyes might pop out, Jake grimaced and grunted. “Maybe you weren’t wrong,” he said with a little laugh. “This is... hnnnng! God almighty! How hard could it be to rip a cotton shirt apart?”
“You’re joking,” I said in disbelief. “Really?”
