“It’ll be fine.” He says back at me in a calm voice that I need to hear. I nod my head and look back at my food and suddenly realize I’ve lost my appetite.
“Eat.” Booker commands, nodding his head towards the food. I pick up my cutlery again as Booker pockets my cell phone. “Eat.” He says in a firmer voice at me watching me closely. I look at the fried chicken and scrambled eggs on my plate. “All of it, every last scrap or we don’t leave this diner.” Booker says at me and I blink and start scooping up egg. I put food in my mouth and chew but I don’t think I remember tasting it my mind is in bye-bye land and my emotions are fast following it.
“Good?” Booker asks looking across the table at me and down at my plate. I look down at my plate, the eggs are all but gone and I realize with a slow dawning horror I’ve been moaning when biting into the chicken.
“Yeah, actually.”
6
After the soul food we walk back to my house, again in silence. This time it’s not angry and strained. It’s comfortable and knowing. But it’s not until we’re back inside in the dimness of the house that Booker hands me back my phone.
“Thanks.” I say taking it off him.
“Now, words I thought I’d never be the one saying,” He says softly “But are we going to talk about what is going on, about us?” Booker asks me. I nod my head and put a hand out to indicate we should sit in the lounge room. We sit down on different seats and again the silence overcomes us.
“Why don’t you tell me how he found out?” Booker says trying to start the awkward conversation going.
“I had a dream about you. I was talking in my sleep and I said you name a few times.” I answer him and watch Booker’s eyes widen in surprise.
“What was the dream about?”
I sigh and look away. “It’s not important, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Bg it might be, look how strongly he reacted to it, look where you are now because of Paris’s feelings towards it. Maybe I can help you figure out what is going on, what you can do about it?” I hold back a bitter laugh.
“Out of the two of us, I can’t believe you’re the one giving me relationship advice. Talking even.”
Booker smiles and laughs lightly. “I know, right. Come on, let’s figure out what the hell is going on here, you lost it back there in that café. So tell me about the dream, maybe its some small detail that he doesn’t like or its just that you mentioned my name instead of his or,”
“You were fucking me. It was a wet dream.” I blurt out and Booker’s mouth drops open. He wipes his hand over his mouth.
“Like a wet dream, as in,” He nods his head “Like you had an orgasm, wet dream?”
“Yeah.” I mutter and flop back against the armchair and rest my hands on the arms of it. “It’s stupid.”
“You dreamt about me making love to you, and it was so powerful to your unconscious mind Bg that you had an orgasm in your sleep,”
“You forgot to add, while calling out your name.” I reply back at him unimpressed. Booker slides off the sofa and across the floor to me, so he’s on his knees before me at the foot of my armchair.
“That’s not stupid. It’s love.” He says looking up at me. “I think you need to acknowledge what some part of you, clearly already knows.” Booker says softly but with an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.
I tilt my head to the side. “Oh yeah and what’s that?”
He smiles brightly at me. “That you love me, deep down, you love me and you have always loved me.”
“Other than that being a mitigating factor in my current relationship breakdown, what does that have to do with anything?” I fire back at him, dropping my head back and looking up at the ceiling.
“Perhaps you’re with the wrong guy after all.” Booker suggests causing my head to snap down and look at him. “Maybe you’re meant to be with me, after all this time.” Booker says shrugging his shoulders.
“If you wanted to be with me, after all this time Booker,” I say pausing for thought. “Then why, oh why did you never come back after me and try again?” I hold his gaze. I really want him to think about this, to think about it from my point of view. Does he get how rejected I felt when he pushed me away?
His words sputter to life, “You were with Conall!” He blurts out. “By the time I realized I wanted you back, you’d already moved on from us.” He looks annoyed now and slips off his leather jacket, but stays, sitting on his knees before me. It hasn’t escaped my mind that this our dynamic, I am the alpha in this relationship, I always have been. With Booker being the beta wolf, the less strong, the weaker if you will. Total role reversal to our actual beings. So it’s not so unusual, that he would be comfortable with me in a more dominate position over him, when we’re talking. Booker is familiar with this dynamic, even unconsciously and familiarity is comfort not confrontation. In the kitchen, it was confrontation, we were evenly placed. But now, I can hold court with him and actually get him to open up to me.
“Really, that’s your excuse. The love of your fucking life has split from you, because she thinks you don’t want her anymore, so she’s moved on with her life and you want her so badly that you decide to just let her move on? Come on Booker, be honest here. Who’s fault is it I’m not with you now?” I say straightening up in the chair. “Because you know what? I didn’t break up with you. And you can not expect someone who has been told they aren’t loved, to hang around when all the signals say go away.”
“I never told said you weren’t loved.” Booker says back at me sternly. “Never.”
“Not verbally Booker. But we’re animals, we sense things in other non verbal ways. You would be emotionally distant to me, it was like a light switch, at night, it was love, enthralling love. In the morning it was reality and you couldn’t deal.”
“So it’s all my fault that we’re no longer together?” Booker fires back at me.
“Yes.” I reply back at him firmly. “I was in love with you Booker. I was yours, whole heartedly yours. There was no one else for me. There was nowhere else to look. I didn’t need to. Do you get that?”
“So what happened to switch from whole heartedly to this,” he waves a hand around in front of me “need to push me away, keep me at a distance from you now? When clearly you still have feelings for me given your recent wet dream experience.”
“What changed?” I repeat in disbelief back at him. “You changed. You kept your damn distance from me. You kept me at arms length and only in company of others that relied on pack business not social. You made it clear to me, that I was doing the right thing by hooking up with Conall Wakely!”
Booker groans and rolls his head. “He was the worst guy you could’ve moved on to.”
“The point is Booker, you never stopped me, you never called me up, you never made an effort to recapture anything we had. You just let me go and move on with Conall. So how the hell was I not to know that we were over for good?” I say raising my voice and anger level at him. I feel like we’ve probably had this conversation before, and it seems repetitive and I wish Booker would take responsibility for acknowledging he was the first male, the first wolf, to break my fucking heart.
“Fuck!” I scream and push up out of the chair, vaulting over the arm rest, so I don’t have to step over him. I march out of the room angry that I feel angry, angry that my feelings over Booker don’t seem necessarily gone, just dormant. Angry at myself for not figuring out if that means anything to me.
“Baby Girl,” Booker yells after me. I whirl around instead to yell back through the house at him, but he’s already out of the lounge room and closer to me than I was ready for.
I wave a finger at him. “Don’t fucking call me that. You have no right!”
7
He steps closer to me cautiously. “You can’t just keep calling me that name.” I say almost desperately at him. It’s what he called me when we were together and I loved it. “Every time you call me that,” I stop.
; “Yeah,” Booker says taking another step towards me.
“It’s like a little hurt you inflict on me and it has to stop.” I answer him. “Because you’re the guy who’s never meant to hurt me.” He walks up to me and slides his arms around my waist. Holding me in the hallway. Just holding me.
“If I’m meant to be that guy, isn’t that a little unfair. You hold me to a secret expectation you’ve placed on me. And you place it on me for what reason if you don’t want to be with me?”
I am standing in the hallway of my house, and my ex lover, the first love of my life is holding me. The light is fading and my mind is muddled. I feel my emotions drain out of me and my words dry up. “I don’t know Booker. I guess I just didn’t want to think you were a bad guy. Because too many lycans are bad guys.” I say softly looking up into his eyes. “And I’m trying not to let what happened to me cloud my personal judgment of all other lycans.”
Booker frowns deeply. “I’d never force myself on you Bg. Never. You have to know that.” He says loosening his hold on me and I breath deeply. “I would never inflict myself on you like…that.”
“Right.” I say breaking his hold and pushing his arms off me. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing here Booker. It seemed clear in my head when I was coming back to Brooklyn. But in all honesty, I think you and I sort of missed some sort of step in our break-up. So maybe the purpose of this weekend here, this talk that I called you for,” I sigh and pause looking away from his eyes. “Isn’t about me picking which wolf I want to be with.” I drag my eyes back up to his face. I can not be a coward about this. I have to do this properly, the way it should have been done all those years ago. “Maybe it’s about breaking up with you too.” I say back at him. “One break up is already bad enough, but I don’t need to have messed up two of them. Not when it’s so simple that all we all need is one thing.”
“And what’s that?” Booker says defensively, crossing his arms over his broad chest suddenly looking intimidating.
“Clarity on where we all stand.” I reply.
8
Of course, the weekend goes too quickly. Or maybe it just feels that way when you’re petrified of what lays ahead for you.
“What torrid little lives we lead.” I say brushing my hair as I look into the mirror and back at Booker. It’s the first time I’ve brushed my hair all weekend. And put on make up. Last night, Booker made dinner. Again we ate in amiable silence, and when it became obvious I needed to sleep, I retired to my bedroom. Booker accompanied me. But we both remained clothed and slept atop of the covers, facing each other, occasionally talking until we both dropped off to sleep. And in the morning I awoke with my back to his back on the bed. It’s time to go home now. Time to face my pack mate and see what will be. I’ll see if I can’t speak to some Breukelen elders, see if they know about soul mate bindings with werewolves, or if there is such a thing, if there is a lycan equivalent . How they work, what you can do if that’s even whatever this is between me and Booker. Maybe I’m just delusional and needing to justify my mixed up feelings.
In the mean time I’ll stick to my regular werewolf routine. After all, forming habits is how we keep our werewolf selves in order, and out of the spotlight. And how will I feel having to face Paris again anyway? Now that I know what I know about how he helped Booker? I don’t know. But I’m not meant to, am I? Torrid little life, remember, make of it what comes at you. Pretty much the werewolf way, fall on your feet, run or stand, make a choice. It’s what you can control, the choices you make.
I run my hands down the sides of my dark blue leather skirt.
“Ready?” Booker Parish says sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Seems like I should say no.” I say back at him. “But let’s go anyway.”
Booker stands up and swings his car key chain around his fingers. “Head first all the way Baby Girl, sorry,” he says holding up his hands as if to surrender and holt fire “Bg, It’s how I came into this life.” The lycan’s right. I’ve left this as late as possible, it’s getting close to midnight. And Manhattan does not sleep at midnight.
I turn around to face Booker and come face to chest with him, putting a hand on his chest, before stepping back for a bit of space. “Maybe I should call some one else up to drive me.”
“I’ve practically been here, all weekend, why stop now?” He replies back at me.
I sigh. “Why indeed.” I mutter picking up my overnight back and watching as Booker takes it off my hands.
“See,” He says at me. “I can play my role. Like a good little lycan.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say clearly, he’s been doing that for fifteen years. But I bite back that snide and upsetting comment. The bitch me backs down. Neither of us need hurt.
“You might be several things Booker Parish, but little isn’t one of them.” I reply as we head out again, onto the merry-go-round that are our wolf lives.
9
I look at the apartment keys in my hand and wonder if I should use them. If I have the right anymore. Then I chide myself internally for being a chicken-shit. I was issued with an ultimatum of sorts, not that my pack mate said that to me, but I can read between the lines. I pause to realize how out of hand this has gotten. Welcome to my crazy life. Just when you think things are going well and quiet, shit stirs up again and it’s always more than it seems. A wet dream equals ultimatums of fidelity and revelations of dark deeds done by lovers past and present. Not that I wasn’t faithful beforehand. Just his ego going bug-nuts over me coming in my sleep because it wasn’t him making me come. Alpha male, why am I surprised?
Try to do the right thing, figure it out, confront your past to move forward with your future and what do you end up with? What I have now.
I put the key in the door and turn it. Push open the front door and look inside the apartment. It’s silent in it’s own darkness, and that makes it seem sinister in it’s own way. When it should just be home to me. I sigh and lean back against the door closing it, and locking it with one hand, without bothering to look at the task at hand.
“Yeah, lock yourself into the situation you have to front up to.” I mutter not liking what is ahead. “Chicken-shit.” I mutter to myself and push off the door and carry my overnight bag with me to the bedroom.
The door to the bedroom is open and I pause to lean against the door frame and look in on the room. Again, it’s in shades of black and night. The shape of a male presence in the bed is unmistakable. Paris is lying down his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He notices me at last and looks at me. I can’t tell what his reaction is. He is the king of masking his cool. I drop my bag beside me on the floor and start stripping out of my clothing. There isn’t much. A jacket, a top, bra, skirt, shoes and socks. He watches me strip at the doorway. Doesn’t stop me. I take this as a good sign. So I know now, what to do.
“Paris, I’m going to tell you everything you want to hear. All you have to do, is ask me.” He stares at me hard and I know I’m pushing him to open up those emotions of his. A proud werewolf male who has no problem fighting, negotiating business and controlling an entire pack, but speaking about his feelings, well, that’s just a fail. I watch the rise and fall of his chest but he remains silent. “Silence doesn’t work for you. It creates a lot of negative, misleading energy in your head and in my world.”
I pick up all my clothing and grab the bag off the floor and carry it all over to the bed and drop all my clothing that I wore back onto the bed beside him. “I haven’t showered, all weekend. Just deodorant.” I say tossing the bag away again and crawling into the bed. “So if you don’t believe me when I say I didn’t fuck him, go ahead and see what you get on my clothing. But it won’t be much more interesting than my scent.” All he has to do, is scent me, if he dares.
Paris’s arms drop from behind his head and he moves to sit up quickly. Reaching for me. “I love that scent.” He mutters heatedly. ”I was so angry and stupid.” He pauses but then conti
nues to grab me and pull me down onto him.
Werewolf Consort Page 4
