Jacob Michaels Is... The Omnibus Edition: A Point Worth LGBTQ Paranormal Romance Books 1 - 6

by Chase Connor

  “Are you in there, Rob?” Lucas’ voice and another round of soft knocking sounded from the door.

  “Yeah.” I croaked, then cleared my throat. “Hold on.”

  Ernst looked over at me warily.

  “Hide for now, Ernst.” I winked at him. “It’ll be okay.”

  Ernst nodded, then hopped off the bed and disappeared underneath. Whether he was hiding under the bed or had used the shadows underneath to just…leave…I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. I bounced to the side of the bed and slung my legs over. Since I knew that Lucas wouldn’t be ignorant enough to bring Oma to my room with him, I quickly unlatched the door and swung it wide. Lucas was standing there, a crooked smile on his face. He had on his work jeans, a long sleeve flannel, his Carhartt, and it was evident that he had been working all day.

  Before I could stop myself, I had twisted my fingers in the front of his shirt and pulled him into the room. I slammed the door and locked it behind him and had shoved Lucas towards the bed before he could utter a word. Lucas looked at me with wide eyes as I pulled him into me and smothered his mouth with mine. My fingers traveled down to his waist to tug his shirttail out of his jeans before they moved to the front to start undoing buttons. Lucas looked up at me with wonder as I pulled my mouth away from his to work on extricating him from his shirt.

  “What’s gotten into you, babe?” He chuckled appreciatively.

  “I missed you so much.” I exhaled.

  “I missed you, too.” He reached up and ran a thumb along my cheek as my fingers continued working.

  “How much did you miss me?” I asked as I pulled his shirt open and pushed it over his shoulders and off of him.

  Lucas reached up and took my face in his hands.

  “I know where this behavior is leading,” Lucas whispered through a toothy grin. “And…I don’t want to keep you from wanting to do that, babe. But what’s going on here?”

  “I told you,” I said as I leaned forward to kiss him again. “I missed you.”

  “A few days ago, you didn’t even want to admit you wanted me around, Rob.” He moaned happily as my mouth moved to his neck. “And now you miss me all the time? I’m not complaining, but…unh!”

  My hand had snaked its way into the front of his pants as I kissed and bit at his neck. Lucas’ hips pushed forward of their own accord as my hand began to move and I licked a trail from the side of his neck down to his collarbone. Lucas’ fingers found my hair as my tongue traveled down to the middle of his chest and my knees slowly bent, taking me to lower places. As my tongue trailed over his stomach, and my knees connected with the floor, I looked up at Lucas, grinning evilly as he looked down at me, his eyes wide, his fingers tugging at my hair.

  “I hope you never stop missing me.” He breathed out as I ripped the front of his jeans open.

  Later, as the sun was starting to set, the sky turning pink, I was laid alongside Lucas in the bed. We hadn’t gotten as far as removing the rest of our clothes, though both of us were completely satisfied. My head was just below Lucas’ chin, pressed against his chest, both of my arms wrapped around him as I held myself against him. Lucas’ fingers were raking through my hair gently, a gesture that would be soothing in most situations, but only kept me on the edge of hunger and satiated. My face nuzzled his chest as he kissed the top of my head, his breath wispy in my hair.

  “What do you know about amnesia, Lucas?” I asked softly.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re a college boy.” I chuckled throatily. “What do you know about amnesia? Or memories?”

  “I didn’t go to med school.” He replied, kissing my head again. “English. Remember? They didn’t really explain neurology or anything like that much.”

  “Oh.” I kissed his bare chest, my eyes moving to look at the top of his jeans, still flapped open.

  Lucas was tucked away inside of his boxers, but just seeing his pants unbuttoned and wide open made me warm and think thoughts that were not conducive to what I wanted to achieve.

  “I feel like I have so much to make up for.” I whispered against the tight flesh of his chest. “So much time to make up.”

  “Well, you were gone for a decade,” He laughed lowly. “That’s a lot of years you weren’t spending with me when it’s obvious you should have been.”

  “Obviously,” I replied. I wasn’t being sarcastic. “A few days ago, I was sure that getting into a relationship…with anyone…was a huge decision. Now I feel like I should have run back home years ago—back to you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Rob.” He was pulling my face up to look at me.

  Lucas planted a kiss on my lips then stared into my eyes.

  “When did we first meet?” I asked.

  He shrugged lazily. “I mean, Point Worth has three school buildings. I’m sure we initially met in kindergarten or first grade. I don’t know. We never really ran in the same circles, so it’s hard to pinpoint.”

  “I can kind of remember you from freshman and sophomore years,” I said. “But, it’s hazy. Like I don’t really remember you there. And I feel like I’ve missed you since then. But I also feel like if we went to the same schools for so many years, I should have a better memory of seeing you around.”

  Lucas stared at me for a long time, his fingers trailing through my hair gently, slowly, as he thought. I could practically hear the wheels clicking in his brain as he considered what I was saying.

  “What’s this about, Rob?”

  “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “You played guitar a lot. And sang. And you were in plays, and the choir and…you were the special kid. The one everyone else wanted to be, even if they wouldn’t admit it. Half the kids hated you, and half of them loved you—but they all wanted to be you. You never gave anyone a reason to hate you…or love you for that matter.”

  He laughed.

  “But you were extraordinary.”

  “That’s pretty vague.”

  “How is that vague?”

  “You told me that you’ve been enamored with me since high school.” His fingers stopped moving. “That night we first…made love.”

  “Yes.” He breathed the word.

  “Which locker did I have in school?” I asked. “Where was it? Do you remember a time you looked up at lunch and saw me walking by your table? What was I wearing? Did you ever talk to me in class? Ask me for a spare pen or pencil? Did we accidentally bump into each other in the hallway and chuckle and say ‘excuse me’ or even ‘Go fuck yourself’? Do you remember me raising my hand in class to answer a question? Who were my friends? Give me some details.”

  Lucas just stared at me.

  “I can’t.”

  “I didn’t think you could.” I nodded.

  “So…what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But…I’ve been having flashes of memories and weird dreams.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt my vision get blurry. “I can’t remember after I have the flashes of memories or the dreams. But I remember how they made me feel.”

  “They make you miss me?”

  “A lot of them, yeah.” I nodded.

  “I’m not sure what that means, Rob.” He said, then kissed my lips again. “But I know that I always felt like I was supposed to be with you. It’s why I was so upset when Mrs. Wagner tried to set me up on a date, and it wasn’t you. I wanted you so badly…but I also knew that I was supposed to be with you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense either.”

  “Obviously.” He chuckled.

  Both of us laid there, curled up in each other’s arms, Lucas’ fingers trailing through my hair again as I nuzzled my head against his chest and I held myself against him with all my might. In the furthest reaches of my inner self, I knew that it wasn’t quite normal to have someone you barely knew feel like home. However, that same part of me told me th
at it wasn’t normal to reject something that felt like home, either. Everything about Lucas made me feel warm and safe and…like Rob. Everything I was felt tied to this person whom I had only known well for fewer days than I had fingers and toes. Lucas made me feel like I was really getting back to being Rob.

  As I lay there, Lucas stroking my hair, wondering if Oma was going to come knocking on the door to ask if we were going to have dinner or at least text, I felt a nagging feeling in my gut. Surely, there was some way to figure out why I was having weird memories and dreams that didn’t make sense. If I couldn’t figure out why I was having them, maybe I could at least remember what the memories and dreams contained. As if testing a hypothesis, I reached up and laid my hand against Lucas’ cheek, trying to make it look like a loving gesture and nothing more. Lucas smiled at me and looked into my eyes.

  Nothing.

  How I felt about Lucas remained, but I didn’t get a flash of a memory or a weird jolt of feeling. We were simply in bed together, doing what couples in…what couples in love do. That thought was more telling than any memory or dream I could have and then remember. Since my experiment had half-failed and half-succeeded, I leaned up to give Lucas a soft kiss.

  “I hope you never want to stop kissing me.” Lucas sighed as I pulled away.

  “Highly unlikely,” I whispered. “Would you humor me if I wanted us to check something out?”

  Lucas grinned evilly.

  “Not that.” I laughed.

  “Well,” He was still smiling, “then what?”

  “I want to go to the football stadium.”

  “Really?” Lucas cringed. “It’s like a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Athens, and I have to work at grandpa’s store tomorrow, babe, and—”

  “Not Peden, silly.” I laughed.

  “Well, Cincinnati is like four hours away, too.”

  “Not Paul Brown, either.” I reached up and thumped him gently on the forehead. “The high school football stadium. I’m not crazy. I don’t think.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “But why?”

  Another kiss.

  “Maybe it will jog some memories that I can remember?”

  “Even if it doesn’t, can we make out under the bleachers?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Of course.” I snorted. “But you have to let me look around first.”

  “Can’t I get some head under the bleachers?”

  “You’re pushing it, Lucas.”

  He laughed loudly before giving me another kiss, this one a little more aggressive than the last. I tightened my arms around him as our lips pressed together, savoring our final few moments in bed together.

  “Well,” he finally pulled away with a sigh, “if we’re going, let’s go. I want to get back in time to get head in bed.”

  “You’re a horny bastard,” I shook my head. “And that rhymed.”

  “What?” He winked. “You don’t want to?”

  I just stared at him.

  “Fine. Let’s go to the stadium, and we can go back to your place.”

  “In case we get loud?” His eyebrows were wiggling again.

  “Yes.”

  Lucas pushed me away and bounced to the edge of the bed, quickly coming to stand beside it before buttoning his pants hurriedly. I watched as he found his shirt on the floor at the end of the bed and pulled it on. I’d never witnessed a man button a shirt so quickly. Once Lucas was pushing his feet back into his boots, he glanced up at me on the bed.

  “Get moving, babe.” He urged me. “I want to get this over with so we can get back to having fun.”

  “Going to the football stadium with me won’t be fun?”

  “Going to my house with you will be more fun.”

  “Fair enough.” I chuckled as I slid out of bed and did my pants up once again.

  Lucas waited, semi-patiently, as I pulled on my shirt and shoved my feet into a pair of kicks, then raked my fingers through my hair. Luckily, my hair had been cut in a way that made it always look stylishly sloppy, so I didn’t have to try too hard to get it back into place. There was no set place for my hair. It did whatever it wanted to, and that was how it was supposed to look. I reached up to scratch my chin, feeling the beginnings of whiskers that would need to be shaved away soon. When I had shaved off my beard, I thought I was saving myself the trouble of trimming my beard regularly. Having to shave daily if I wasn’t going to have a beard was a task I had forgotten about after so long of not shaving.

  Lucas grabbed my hand and pulled me in for another quick kiss, and then we exited the room together. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Ernst climbed out from underneath the bed. I’d hope he hadn’t just stayed under the bed and witnessed everything Lucas and I had done. Sexuality and sex were probably not as taboo with Kobolds, but I still didn’t want Ernst—or anybody really—witnessing what I did in my bedroom.

  Down in the living room, once we had made our way down the stairs, I could hear Oma banging around in the kitchen. Literally. She was making much more noise than was necessary, which let me know that she was still agitated about the incident in the cellar. Instinctively, I wanted to go into the kitchen and hash things out with her. Whether we fought it out or hugged it out didn’t matter, just as long as we settled the tension. Taking the fight to Oma’s doorstep would mean delaying going to the football stadium, though. Lucas cringed as he looked at me and Oma banged things around.

  “Oma!” I shouted. “We’re going out. I’ll be back later!”

  “Do I look like I give a shit?” She snarled back.

  Lucas cringed harder. I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “She’s cussing at me. Things will be okay.” I winked at him.

  Lucas produced a nervous smile and let me lead him to the door.

  “Don’t worry.” I shrugged as I reached for the knob and opened the door. “Things always work out one way or another around here.”

  Of course, when you least expect it, another assault comes. When I opened the door, that’s precisely what happened.

  Chapter 8

  “JACOB!”

  “JACOB!”

  “JACOB!”

  “Over here, Jacob!”

  The screams and flashes were coming from every direction. Lucas vapor locked in the doorway as the cameras went off and paparazzi screamed at me. Immediately, a friendly smile came to my face, and I affected my best “Friendly, Accessible Jacob Michaels” look I’d used with the paparazzi a million times before. Since I hadn’t stepped outside yet, I nudged Lucas away from the door and let the door swing shut. Then I locked the deadbolt and turned to my boyfriend as he stood in shock beside the now closed door.

  Estimating from the crowd I saw outside of Oma’s door there had to have been at least twenty people waiting to scream a question at me or snap a photo. Automatically, I went into assessment mode, going through my head what happened from the time I opened the door until I had closed it. Lucas and I had been holding hands. No big deal there, everyone knew I was gay. They didn’t know I had a boyfriend, but that wasn’t that big of a deal, either. Unlike my heterosexual counterparts, the consensus was that if a celebrity was gay, people actually liked them more when they were in relationships, so it was a good thing that Lucas and I had been holding hands. I had smiled and had “twinkly, friendly eyes” for at least half of the photos, showing that once I was surprised by the paps, I had taken it in stride. Then I had shut the door without saying a word, so any made up quote could easily be fought by my team. Things had gone better than they should have.

  “Babe?” Lucas peeped.

  “Yeah?” I turned to him, chewing at my lip.

  “What…the actual fuck?”

  “I guess Sarah Jean phoned a friend.” I shrugged.

  I shook my head, kicking Jacob Michaels out of my brain. In Point Worth, especially at Oma’s house, I was Robert Wagner. Robert Wagner did not stand in the foyer assessing a situation with the paparazzi. That was a Jacob Michaels activity, and I wanted no part of
it.

  “What the fuck is goin’ on out there?” Oma stomped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands with a kitchen towel.

  “The reporters found Rob.” Lucas groaned.

  “Paparazzi.” I corrected him. “Reporters don’t behave like that.”

  “What?” Oma’s expression changed from angry with me to concerned for me. “Who found you?”

  “You have a porch full of photographers.” I sighed. “I guess people finally found out that Jacob Michaels is in Point Worth visiting his grandmother.”

  “Well, shit.” She slung the towel onto her shoulder and put her hands on her hips. “It was goddamn Sarah Jean Dennard. She’s like a Christmas Goose with a bell up her ass. Makin’ noise is all she does.”

  “That was my assumption.” I nodded. “None of us are getting out of this house without them harassing us now.”

  Lucas looked ashen but was slowly coming back to himself.

  “Want to be my date to my next premiere?” I teased.

  He turned green.

  I took that as an outright rejection of my invitation.

  “Sonsofbitches,” Oma grumbled as she stomped over to the closet stairs and nearly ripped the door off of its hinges. “I’ll be damned if a bunch of papa-whatevers are gonna park themselves on my porch rent free!”

  “What are you gonna do?” I snorted. “Go out there and charge ‘em twenty fucks a gander?”

  Oma turned her head to gawk at me.

  “You think they’d pay that?” She asked.

  “Of course not.” I laughed. “How did you not know that they were there anyway? Didn’t they knock or ring the bell or make enough noise to make you suspicious?”

  “Someone’s been knockin’ every now and again for the last thirty minutes.” Oma went back to rummaging around in the closet. “Thought it was them damn Kelly kids—ugly assholes—or Wesley Dennard’s tubbly ass. I didn’t have time for none of that.”