by Lynn Red
Jake laughed in a huge burst, but then immediately went quiet again, like he was ashamed at having laughed at a constipation joke. “Anything important?” Jake watched my face for a moment and then his grew stern. He threw his hands above his head, exasperated. “What won’t he stick his fingers in?”
George gave Jake a long glare with an arched eyebrow. His face turned bright red as he realized what he said. “Er,” he stammered. “I mean whatever. Ha, ha, yes I said something that could be vaguely sexual. Very good.”
“Just sayin’,” George said.
The memories were coming back at first in a slow trickle and then a flood. “We were at your mom’s house for enchiladas and he had just marked me, so—”
“I’ll rip his throat out,” Jake said. It was cold, calm, and absolutely terrifying that he didn’t carry on or shout or yell or anything else. Just flatly stated he was going to rip his brother’s throat out. “That’ll solve this thing once and for all.”
“I,” I started before trailing off. “Yes, well I guess it would. But I don’t think that would help anything except you to feel better. There has to be a better way than murder.”
“Better way? He forced you to mate. He claimed you out from under me, he screwed up the—”
Then the worst of it hit me. “The challenge?” I asked sharply. “He said something about that, too, which I just remembered along with the rest of this bullshit. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
George sat up stiffly. Jake opened his eyes wider than I’d ever seen. His nostrils flared, and for a second I thought he was going to throw his desk out the window. “It isn’t what you think,” he said. “It’s not a game. It isn’t because I don’t love you.”
Now I was going. It’s one thing for me to feel like someone’s screwing around with me, but it’s another entirely for them to do it, not come clean, and then act like I’m too dumb to understand what’s going on. “Oh it isn’t?” I asked, hands on hips. “Then please, Jake, explain what it is.”
“Jeez,” he said, “this got out of hand quickly. What say we have another sandwich?”
“No.” I put my foot down, and when I finally did that, I always meant it. Usually. “I got dragged into a pissing fight between a pair of brothers that resulted in me and my best friend being kidnapped and then me being dragged around like a puppet for a few days until he dropped me off here to taunt you. He still has Jeannie and he has Barney and they’re all holed up in that mansion.”
Jake took a step forward and opened his mouth to speak.
“I’m not finished,” I said, cutting him off. “What the hell gives you the right to mess around with my life and never tell me anything? I should’ve known,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes even though I was more pissed-as-hell than sad. “I should’ve known that some mysterious billionaire waltzing into my dumb-ass life, and acting like I cast some kind of spell on him—I should have known you were full of shit from the first second.”
“No! No, it isn’t like that,” Jake protested, trying to grab me. “It isn’t like that at all, just let me—”
I dodged his grabby hand. My cheeks and my neck just kept getting hotter with each passing second. “I want answers,” I said, pushing harder. “I don’t deserve this shit. I don’t deserve to be thrown into a world that I know absolutely nothing about, and then be expected to just swallow the fact that the guy who told me he couldn’t live without me was just trying to win some dumb fucking bet!”
At that point, George pushed herself off the desk. “That’s not like you, Jake,” she said. There was disappointment dripping off her tongue. “I’m... I need some time to think about all this. And you need some time to explain to her what the hell was going through your head.”
She paused on the way out the door and turned back to us like she had something else to say. Instead she just looked at Jake for a moment and smiled sadly as she shook her head. “Not like you at all.”
“Wait!” he shouted. “Is this really how this is going to work? Dilly, you know I mean what I said. You know I love you, you know I—”
“I do?” I asked. “It’s been two weeks since we met. Three weeks, whatever. I got carried away. I got swept up in a fantasy. And now I’m paying for it with my sanity, and my life, apparently. I’m owned by some asshole with an overinflated sense of self-worth who wants to start... I can’t believe I’m saying this shit – a war between humans and werewolves? What fucking planet is this? What the hell is going on? I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather be carving a damn dolphin statue than dealing with you and your brother.”
“Wait.” Jake grabbed my wrist this time before I could twist away. He wasn’t hurting me, but he wasn’t letting go, either. “You have to at least give me the chance to explain. You can give me that much, can’t you?”
I didn’t like it, but what the hell did I have to lose, right? I had actually gotten heated pretty quickly, come to think of it, so why not give the guy a chance to talk himself out of being an insensitive, obnoxious, frat-boy like idiot?
Crossing my arms, I stared at him pointedly. If I could, I’d have tapped my foot. No idea why, but I’ve never been able to do that without watching the foot, and then giggling and this was not giggle time.
“You’re right, of course,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back against his desk and exhaling in a long sigh.
“I can’t believe you have the nerve to—wait, what?”
“I said you’re right. I was an insensitive prick. But that’s not even anywhere near enough for what I did.” He rubbed his eyes and then flipped his hands upside down and shrugged. “I... can’t explain it. When Dane showed up at my office, the very damn day that I met you, it just seemed perfect.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “You’re telling me that he made this dumb bet before you met me? Then why was it me you decided to suck into your stupid little web?”
Jake shook his head and brushed the hair back out of his eyes. He stared at me for a moment, his gunmetal eyes shimmering in the sunlight coming through the window and pooling at his feet like it was bowing before his greatness. He opened his mouth enough that I could see his perfectly straight teeth and slightly oversized canines. But then before he spoke, he chomped them shut, squeezing his jaws taut, emphasizing the statuesque qualities of his cheekbones and his sculpted chin.
Finally, after just about making me weep with anticipation and longing for him to touch me again, he started pacing.
As I watched him, the fantasies rolled through my head. Why couldn’t we just run away from everything? Why did all this wolf bullshit have to matter? If he really loved me the way he said he did – if he really did feel all that hokey fate stuff – then why the hell did it matter what anyone else thought?
But as I watched him circle his desk and wring his giant hands – which, by the way made his forearms flex – another thought occurred to me. It mattered because it just mattered. I was just about to open my mouth to ejaculate my grand revelation when he cut me off.
“I want to run because I want to be someone I’m not.”
Talk about a way to kill a bunch of whining in the bud.
He was still wringing his hands, but added squeezing either wrist to his nervous movement repertoire. “It’s hard to say this stuff because honestly, I never have. I’m the alpha. I’m the leader, you know? Everyone looks to me to solve problems, and I generally do just fine at it. But the thing is, even though I put on like a big shot, I don’t feel like one.”
You could hear a pin drop across the alley and in the lobby of the bank across Denton Street. I thought about arguing with him, but kept my mouth shut. This seemed like one of those times not to spout off and try to get a word in. And besides, I really didn’t know what I was going to say.
“My brother, Dane, he’s... well he’s got his problems.”
“Lots of them,” I added, and immediately felt stupid.
“Yeah, no, he definitely ha
s plenty of problems. My dad – our father – he tried so hard to get Dane to think like a leader instead of a rebel. He spent his days here, working to build this massive commercial empire. And then he went home and spent his nights worrying about Dane and on the few nights my brother wasn’t out carousing somewhere, Pop tried to teach him things.”
Jake sat down, started the ball clacker thing to going, and got back up. The thik-thik of the balls matched the short, halting steps he was taking, and as it happened, the breath going in and out of my lungs. “I’m guessing it didn’t work?” I asked just to keep things going. I had no idea when Dane was going to show up, or call me home, or whatever, so I thought getting to the point might be good.
A chuffed laugh, and then a sigh as he shook his head were my answers. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it. The other way to put it is that Dane is like the living embodiment of the word ‘anarchy’, which I’m sure you know now that you’ve spent a few days with him and seen how he acts.”
“It bothered me,” I said, thinking back to dinner, “the way he talked to your mom. Greta was so nice to me, she talked and talked, and then he just...” I winced slightly, remembering his venom. “I get it, people don’t like their stepmoms sometimes, but holy shit was he wild.”
Jake nodded. “That was one of the things that made our dad take him out of the succession. Mom – Greta – she was never anything but nice to him. She bailed him out of jail more than once, and even lied to one of his teachers about him having some weird disease so he could pass high school botany.”
“He’s just so angry,” I said, as a cold chill ran through me. I hugged my elbows to hope for a little warmth past the towel I had wrapped around my shoulders. “When I’m near him I can feel the... the hate.”
Jake was nodding as I spoke. “And that’s exactly why. Our dad was panicked. Well, he never panicked. He was concerned, let’s put it that way. He worried that if Dane took over the pack, decades of work in keeping our kind safe would go straight down the toilet.”
“So you agreed?” I asked. “But you didn’t want to do it?”
“Bingo.”
“I gotta say, I never would have pegged you for the Gerald Ford type. You know, the reluctant leader? The whole alpha thing suits you really well.”
“Oh God,” he said, sighing. “Don’t bring up that statue of myself again, I—”
“No, no,” I said, taking a step closer. “That’s funny. If Dane did it, I’d think it was posturing, but with you it’s pretty obviously not. You don’t posture, you don’t pretend, that’s what I mean.”
Jake watched my face, looking a little confused.
“You’ve never heard this before?” I asked.
“We’re wolves, Dilly. We’re not exactly the most open and honest about our feelings.”
I took a step closer to him and grabbed both of his hands, holding them in mine. “Yeah, well, I’m a person and I’m not exactly super open either. There’s this... okay so you’ve been to a zoo before, right?”
He nodded, furrowing his eyebrows.
“So, you’ve seen the gorillas, yeah?” After he nodded again, I continued. “There’s always the male gorillas who play at being the alpha. They roar and bite and wrestle and act like idiots to try and prove that they’re the big badass.”
“Posturing.”
“Right. And then there’s always the one gorilla who sits off to the side, watching and waiting. And have you noticed which one the others go to for problems? Have you noticed which one of them is obviously in charge? Do I need to continue with this metaphor, or are you getting it by this point?”
Jake let out a soft laugh, the first I’d heard that sounded like a pure one. I could tell from the look on his face that he was sick with worry, but I think I got through.
“That might be the first time anyone in the world has complimented someone by calling them a gorilla.” That smile could have taken me to the stars if things weren’t so desperate and dangerous. “Delilah,” he said, twisting his hands around and grabbing mine. “We were meant for each other. Whether or not you believe in fate, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, I feel it deep in my soul. Every second you were gone, I ached to feel you next to me, to taste your kiss, to inhale your scent.”
“And that is where my knees go weak,” I said, smiling languidly and laying against him where he was on the desk. My body slid right against his, it fit perfectly. He was right, I knew, no matter how much I wanted to argue. Something about us was perfect. “I’m terrible at talking about my feelings, and I’m awful at not making jokes at totally inappropriate times.”
“I’m the leader of a pack of werewolves,” Jake said. “That must be at least as complicated as... five character flaws?”
“No,” I said, “it makes you perfect. You just said you were the leader. You’re not giving up on them.”
When I looked into his eyes next, his cheeks were a little flushed. “I can’t, Dilly,” he said. “I just can’t. I want to keep you safe, I want to make sure my brother pays for what he’s done, but the pack is my family. It’s my duty.”
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. “So before Dane appears and makes a big show, would you care to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about him?”
“There’s always murder,” Jake said with another of those damned smiles that could have stripped the hair off a donkey’s ass. “But I think that’s probably not the best idea.”
“The best idea,” I said, “is you kissing me and then throwing me across that desk and having your way with me like this was some kind of secretary roleplay scene in one of those movies that comes on Cinemax really late at night.”
The heat of his chest against mine burned through my flimsy, torn up tee. He breathed, inhaling me through his nose and then shuddered as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. I kissed his neck, relishing the warmth of his skin and the leathery, musky scent he wore.
Next I knew, his hands were on either side of my face, thumbs running along my cheekbones. He kissed me so hard, so urgently and hungrily that my head tilted back with the force. He ran his tongue around my lips and then between them, making me groan as he drank me in.
“I have no idea,” Jake said, his tongue running along my jaw to my chin where he nipped me softly and kissed again. “I have no damn idea what I’m going to do about him.”
“He thinks I’m under his control,” I said in between gasped breaths. “He thinks he sent me here to show me off and brag about how he won your little bet.”
“Yeah?” Jake laughed, kissing my neck and then sucking at the hollow of my throat. “How does this look for winning?”
I moved in between him and the desk, and wrapped my legs around his waist. The hot bare skin tingled between my thighs. “I don’t know when he’s going to be here,” I whispered as I nibbled Jake’s ear. “I don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jake growled. “We have each other.”
I felt his thickness against my sweetest place and yearned to let him have me. Everything in the world I wanted was right there, stripped down to the absolute naked necessity. That longing I felt in my soul was sated, the pain I felt when he was gone? Vanished. As long as we were together, everything felt right.
“We can’t do this,” I said, putting my hand flat against his chest and pushing softly. “The only thing we have going for us right now is that he thinks he’s got me brainwashed.”
Jake’s mouth hovered an inch from my skin. I felt his breath curl against me, and my nipples puckered in reaction. I felt hot flushes, and then a tingle go up my spine and between my legs. “I gotta go,” I whispered. “As much as I hate this, as much as I don’t want to, it’s the only chance we have. We keep him thinking he’s in charge, and then we spring a trap. What trap, I got no clue.”
A look of revelation went across Jake’s face, like a lightbulb flashing so brightly it exploded. “I have a plan,” he said.
I arched my eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Can you convince him to go to your studio and pose for a statue?”
I started giggling. “You sly bastard. You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you?”
“About the gorillas. Yeah. If I had a statue made, everyone would laugh and think how silly and ironic it was. But him? The only thing more offensive to a pack of wolves than being called dogs is being made to grovel.”
“You’re a genius,” I said. “Or I am, because of the whole gorilla thing. He gets a statue made, and it looks like some idiot playing at being a god. He’ll be shooting himself right in the ass.”
Jake cracked a smile. “Right in the ass. Get outta here. Wait,” he grabbed me, pressing his lips to mine one last time. “Stay safe. He’s stupid, but he’s dangerous. Don’t give him any clue that this is anything other than him being the biggest, baddest, most amazing wolf on the planet, and you just wanting to worship him the way he should be worshipped.”
“See you soon,” I said, stealing one more kiss.
That last one was quick, it wasn’t deep or hot or hungry, but it was the sweetest I’d ever tasted.
And walking away from Jake? The worst pain I’d ever felt.
-17-
“I have to admit, sometimes I impress myself.”
-Delilah
“What the hell do I need a statue of myself for?” Dane asked.
It had been a few days since my chat with Jake, and my forced mate was taking things in stride. He was comfortable that he was completely in charge, and that I was totally subject to his whims. One night, we were sitting around the lavish mansion watching All in the Family on one of the four local broadcast stations he could pick up, and it struck me as funny that I had somehow become Edith, and my Archie was a less racist, and a werewolf, but he did hate humans.
That one kept me entertained for a while. The things that can keep you going in the face of abject despair can be really odd sometimes, I’ve learned. Another is that we were in an actual mansion, and had to use rabbit ears to pick up a shitty signal on the seventeen inch TV set.
