Temptation (Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow)

by Tarrah Betts

  “She really doesn’t take her liquor very well,” I thought as I grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and plunked her in the bathtub.

  “Take your jeans and top off in the bathtub and leave them there, they’re full of puke,” I said as I stood there and watched to make sure she didn’t fall down and knock herself out on the tub spout.

  At least that’s why I told myself that I was still in the bathroom.

  Carefully bending down with exaggerated slowness, Aspen gingerly took off her shoes and tossed them, where they landed with a clunk against the tub. Frankly, I was surprised she’d even managed to bend over without falling down in her current state.

  Then she started unzipping her jeans.

  “Umm, turn around before you start peeling your clothes off Aspen,” I said feeling a little rattled by the prospect of seeing her undress in front of me.

  Me, the big, tough, male Were and Beta of my pack, rattled by a sixteen year old girl!

  I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t seen Aspen in various states of undress before. Lord, the bikini she’d worn last summer was borderline scandalous with it’s hot pink, teeny tiny triangles that barely covered her breasts and ass. I’d nearly had a fit over that one, that is until Sorcha showed up at our house wearing the exact same bikini, only in teal.

  My teenaged mate was going to be the death of me!

  Aspen turned away from me and started to push her jeans all the way down her slim legs until they fell into a puddle at her feet. Kicking her jeans aside, she pulled her tiny, black lace shirt up over her head and then turned around and looked at me.

  “What do I do now?” she asked. Seeing her half naked, exposed and vulnerable was working a number on my anger. It was genuinely difficult to stay angry when your dick was hard.

  “Take a shower to wash the vomit out of your hair. But I’m only leaving you in here alone for a few minutes, so be careful that you don’t fall down, okay?” I said as I reached passed her to turn the tap on.

  The water was warming up as Aspen stood there, shivering and half dressed, in the tub. She regarded me with her head cocked to the side, like she was thinking or attempting to calculate some feeble plan in a bid to get out of being grounded.

  I could just imagine what wild excuses would come out of her mouth in her current state. I didn’t have to wait long though as she reached over and attempted to grab my wrist.

  I could have backed away and stopped it, but I was curious to see what she was up to as her dainty fingers tried, and failed, to curl around my large wrist.

  “I see you staring at me sometimes when you don’t think I’m looking. I think you like me, Roan,” Aspen declared quietly, “I like you too. You think I’m too young to make you happy. But I’m not, you know,” she said boldly, her eyes gauging my reaction like a hawk.

  I stood immobile, my breath catching in my throat and stared at her, hard.

  I wasn’t anticipating this conversation to take place right here, right now, with her half naked and drunk in the tub but that was a mistake on my part because based on her reactions to me lately, I should have been expecting it at some point in the very near future.

  It was only the natural progression of our mating bond. Aspen was getting older and therefore she was experiencing a stronger physical and emotional attachment to me. It was only natural that she was finally starting to notice and express her feelings towards me.

  Soon enough, I would blood bond with her and then she would be following me around like a love struck, female in heat. And then I wouldn’t have to worry about all the Justin Meyer’s of the world getting in the way. God, I looked forward to that day.

  No male on earth would have a chance in hell against a blood bond.

  I should have felt happy about Aspen’s drunken confession. After all, this was it, my chance to take what I so desperately desired.

  I could go for it right now and claim her as my mate. She had admitted that she liked me; it would be so simple, just a matter of formality, to take her and make her mine.

  Ten years was a long time to wait and no one in the pack would fault me for taking what she so willingly offered, even though she was still young. I wanted her so badly, I could taste desire filling my mouth and trickling down the back of my throat.

  But I was stuck. Frozen.

  And the seconds ticked by as we stood and stared at one another as the water ran from the tap in the background. It was time to stop torturing and berating myself and to just make a decision and stick with it. Either claim her as my mate or wait until she was older and truly ready and begging for me.

  “Get over yourself, Aspen,” I said sharply, as I flicked on the shower nozzle and forcefully ripped the curtain across the tub. “And make sure you wash that makeup off, you look like a prostitute” I said as I stalked out the bathroom and slammed the door closed behind me.

  Chapter 18

  ***

  I'd made my decision. I would continue to wait for Aspen until she was mature enough and genuinely ready to be my mate.

  My heart was pounding heavily in my chest as I stood in the hall outside the bathroom. It had been so close. I had nearly given in and taken what she so innocently offered to me.

  I wanted to run, to run as far as possible from Spruce Hollow and get away from Aspen for a while. Through no fault of her own, she was killing me and I was miserable inside.

  I leaned with my back against the wall and frantically ran my hands through my hair. My mind was careening from Aspen’s admission that she’d had feelings for me. What had possessed her to say such a thing as she stood in front of me wearing only her bra and panties?

  The alcohol swimming in her veins, that’s what. I couldn’t believe how brazen and unafraid she’d been as she’d looked me right in the eyes and let the words spill from her beautiful pouty lips. Ahh, alcohol, the great lowerer of inhibitions.

  While I had no doubt that she did like me and had romantic feelings of some kind for me as she had followed me around constantly like a little, lost puppy dog, from the time she was six years old, she was still only a teenager and teenagers were notably unpredictable and flippant in their romantic affections for one another.

  What had ultimately swayed my decision to walk out of the bathroom was the fact that if I did take her as my mate and bit her and turned her Were right now, she’d still be a sixteen year old Were with a Were metabolism and therefore would take even longer to age. So, I needed her to stay human for a little while longer yet.

  Besides, when she was truly old enough and ready for me, she wouldn’t just be telling me that she “liked me”. She would be begging me to change her, to mate with her and to be mine in every sense of the word.

  The sound of Aspen throwing up in the shower cleared my head and brought me back to the present.

  “Roan?” she called out weakly.

  “What Aspen?” I said as I cracked open the door.

  “Can you help me, I need a towel and I don’t know if I can get out of the bathtub because the room is spinning,” she said.

  I stalked back into the bathroom and pulled back a portion of the shower curtain to check on her. She was completely naked and plastered against the shower wall in an attempt to keep herself upright.

  At least her hair smelled cleaner and the slutty makeup was completely gone.

  “You’re completely plastered, aren’t you?” I said as I picked up a fluffy white towel from a wicker basket on the floor and proceeded to wrap it around her, while trying not to stare at her intimately or give her any indication that I was interested in her in any other way than the manner in which a patriarchal figurehead would for a young female under his care.

  I stood back and looked at her once she was covered up. She didn’t look very good and her coloring was way off. She was normally pale and kind of pink cheeked but right now she was looking a little pasty and her blood still smelled strongly of alcohol but it was impossible to tell from smell alone whether it was at a dangerous leve
l or not.

  “Come here, little girl,” I said as I picked her up out of the bathtub. She put her arms around my waist as I stood her up and she laid her cheek gently against my chest. She seemed so tiny and fragile standing in such close proximity to me.

  “I love you, Roan. You’re mine,” she murmured drunkenly.

  “Oh am I, am I? How can you tell?” I asked, curious to hear her answer, as humans tended to be more earnest when they were intoxicated.

  “Because, I feel it inside me, right down to my bones. I missed you when you were gone, Roan. I didn’t like it, I felt so lonely for you. Did you miss me too?” she asked hopefully as I half walked, half carried her to her bedroom down the hall.

  “Yes, Aspen, I missed you quite a bit. You’re much more important to me than you think you are,” I said softly.

  I figured I’d be truthful with her for once, what the hell, it’s not like she was going to remember any of this tomorrow.

  Her bedroom was a mess, like a tornado had blown through it while she was getting ready for the party. Every single piece of clothing she owned was either on the floor or on the bed, like she had tried it on, then decided it didn’t look right and threw it on the floor instead of putting it away and then taking out something else.

  I pushed all the clothes off her bed and peeled back her pink covers with tiny yellow stars. She was wobbly on her feet and fell, rather than sat, on the bed, with her legs hanging over the edge. She turned her head towards me and in a small voice said “Roan, can you lay down with me and rub my back until I fall asleep? I don’t feel very good.”

  She hadn’t asked me to do that in a very long time, probably since she was a little girl.

  I used to babysit her all the time, as Valerie frequently had to go away on business trips for her job. As a child, Aspen tended to have a lot of anxiety due to her neglectful upbringing and one of her biggest fears was being left alone in the dark. She would pitifully beg me to stay in her room at bedtime so the monsters wouldn’t come and get her.

  I’d long suspected that the monsters in Aspen’s imagination were largely due to the drug dealers, lack of stability in her formative years and most importantly, being confined with her dead mother for days before someone found her. I often wondered how long Aspen would have stayed there with her, had that social worker not come knocking on the door? She had been a pathetic, scrawny little thing with very deep emotional scars as a child, and as I looked down at her right now, passed out on the bed, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe not much had changed in ten years.

  She was still small and skinny and she still had deep-seated anxiety and fear of abandonment. I wasn’t excusing what she had done tonight but my leaving her alone for almost a week had done nothing but cement those fears in her head.

  Having said all that, I was still reluctant to rub her back and touch her any further tonight as we’d had more physical contact in the last hour than we’d had in the past six months in total.

  Besides, I was conflicted. Part of me still wanted to penalize her for what she’d done tonight but then a bigger part of me wanted to curl her into my side like a fluffy little kitten and take care of her drunken ass.

  I rifled through the clothes on the floor until I found the longest t-shirt I could find.

  Why the hell were teenage girl clothes so freaking tiny and revealing? “Here, Aspen, sit up and put this t-shirt on. You can’t go to bed in a soaking wet towel,” I said as I sat her up. Her head gently flopped forward and she started snoring softly.

  Oh great, she’d passed out. Could this night get any better? With my luck, she would throw up and choke to death on her own vomit in her sleep.

  I pulled the t-shirt over her head and put her arms through the sleeves, then laid her down and went off to her drawers, in search of underwear. Rifling through her underwear drawer made me feel like a creep, so I picked out the first pair I found. They were pink, with the word “Beautiful” written across the ass in rainbow colors. I shook my head as I pulled them up her legs and over her little round butt. Touching her intimately like this was not very conducive to keeping an emotional and physical distance between us.

  I’m not going to lie; I saw everything she had to offer. It was kind of hard to dress an unconscious naked person and not see their entire body. All I can say was that I was going to be a very happy man when she finally matured and filled out some and got some meat on her bones.

  Once I dressed her, I stood back and watched her. What the heck was I going to do with her now? I knew before the thought even had time to fully form in my head.

  Aspen was sleeping with me, in my bed, tonight.

  It wasn’t sexually motivated at all but an idea born out of desperation. If Aspen threw up while she was passed out and choked to death on her own vomit, there was no way I would never be able to forgive myself. I would be unable to deal with the grief of waiting for her for so many years, only to lose her to something so stupid.

  I knew if I did nothing and just left her here, the feelings of loss and guilt would haunt me forever if I could have prevented her death and did nothing about it...at least, that’s what I told myself to assuage my guilt over having her in my bed with me.

  I bent down to pick up her unconscious form and slung her up and over my right shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Her body was completely slack as her arms flopped against my lower back as I carried her to my bedroom; she was out cold. There was something about carrying her in this manner that made me feel like a Neanderthal carrying his sexual conquest back to his cave.

  Aspen’s breathing was even but her coloring was pale and wan as I placed her on my bed. I snickered to myself as I pushed her damp curls out of her face; she looked like an exhausted little girl who had bit off a lot more than she could chew tonight.

  I lay down next to her, the mattress creaking with my added weight. Gathering her into my arms, I pulled her over and snuggled her into my chest like a much-loved prize. She was so short and tiny, compared to my large mass. It was amazing that this one little body could hold so much spirit and tenacity. Aspen sighed in her sleep as I pulled the covers up over us and tucked them up under her little heart shaped face. She looked good in my bed, like she belonged there. Please grow up, Aspen. I’ve waited so long for you.

  I remained completely clothed under the covers, in jeans and black t-shirt, incase my wolf got any bright ideas and tried to influence me throughout the night. He was getting impatient waiting for Aspen. She looked and smelled ready to mate with me, at least in his eyes. And he was absolutely correct; she had all the right parts. And those parts were all physically prepared for mating. However, what my wolf didn’t understand was the concept of being “emotionally ready”. And Aspen was nowhere near emotionally ready to be my mate.

  Her body was soft and pliable in her drunken state, her cold arms and legs tangling with mine as she molded herself to my chest. She would warm up soon, my body instinctively sensing that her core temperature was low and reacting by heating up in a bid to bring hers back into normal range.

  I kissed her gently on the forehead, my lips brushing her soft skin. It was confusing caring for her so intimately and having her so vulnerable in bed with me, it made me want things that I shouldn’t and couldn’t have right now.

  I sighed and pushed her away from me in the bed. She grumbled, seemingly irritated, rolled back over and melted into me again. Subconsciously, she knew she belonged at my side and looked peaceful and content to be there.

  Which was a hell of a lot more than I could say for the way I felt at the moment.

  Chapter 19

  ***

  Aspen woke up three more times throughout the night to throw up.

  She was crying softly, in the bathroom, the last time because she had nothing left in her stomach and her body was wracked with the dry heaves.

  My wolf hearing could pick up her sniffling tears and I was filled with a perverse sense of satisfaction that she was suffering some sort of retribut
ion for what she had done.

  I knew in my head that how she had acted was pretty normal for a teenager. Hell, I’d done worse and more in my day.

  But my heart was hurt and feeling emotionally hurt tended to make me feel angry towards the person who’d caused said hurt. I didn’t want Aspen going out with other guys and having them grope and kiss all over her.

  She was my mate and I loved her.

  However, I wasn’t a fool. I knew this situation was a doubled edged sword, as technically I was doing the exact same thing to Aspen that she had done to me.

  By going out without permission to a party with an older boy, Aspen was essentially doing the same thing I was to her, by having a girlfriend. I was a hypocrite and I knew it.

  But Weres were highly sexual and my drive to mate with Aspen repeatedly and get her pregnant was overwhelming and almost impossible to resist.

  So, I slaked my lust off on other women. It was not an ideal situation by far, but it was better than the alternative. Right now, I didn’t think Aspen needed to be a sixteen-year-old mate with my baby in her belly. At least, not yet anyway.

  “Aspen, you’re going to drive me completely insane,” I whispered softly to her as we lay in my bed, snuggled together.

  Aspen was still sick and nauseated. In her more lucid moments, she continued to ask me if I could rub her back and I ignored her.

  At first.

  But she kept asking in that pitiful, little girl voice that called to my gut instincts as her mate. “I’m sick and I need you,” it said to me. There was really no way I could refuse that, it called too strongly to our mate bond, so, I finally agreed.

  Lord, wasn’t it bad enough that she was sleeping in my bed? Touching her while she was in my bed was the icing on the pervert cake.