by Dawn Steele
Terry winks back. “Anytime.”
Dinner continues – a raucous, chatty affair. Peter regales them with stories of how his father came to America with nothing but the fur on his back and stresses once again on the importance of family.
When the dishes are being cleared, Jeff Hirsch pulls Jake aside.
“Just so you know, I’ve got my eye on you,” he says in a low voice.
Jake pulls his arm away from Jeff’s loathsome touch. “Good for you.”
“I did some digging up on you. Quite a little corporate climber, aren’t you? And you’ve completely lost touch with your canine self, according to a little wolfie who told me. Almost human now, are you?”
A frisson of nervousness dances down Jake’s spine. “Well, believe everything at your peril.”
“Or maybe it should be your peril.” Jeff grins unpleasantly. “Funny how you should show up with a wife overnight. The same little wolfie can’t recall you ever being with a girlfriend, let alone a wife.”
“The same little wolfie recalled wrongly, I suspect.” Jake moves away. “Now if you will excuse me, I will have to go up to bed with my wife.”
He strides to Terry. “Come on, honey, let’s grab our bags and go upstairs.”
Martha says, “Jake, Terry, we haven’t had a chance to let you settle down yet. Apologies for rushing you off to dinner like that.”
“It’s OK,” Jake says. “We didn’t want to keep everyone waiting for us anyway.”
“I have to see to the maids, so is it OK if Mika shows you to your room?”
Mika is slinking nearby, trying to make herself inconspicuous, and she immediately scowls when she hears her grandmother.
“Now, Mika, don’t make that face. Back in the old country, they used to say that when the wind changes, your face would freeze in that exact expression.”
“I don’t know which room you’ve assigned them,” she shoots back.
“It’s the last one on the east block. Upstairs. Go on now. I’ll see you all at breakfast, which will be at eight. Then Peter has a very busy day planned for you.”
I’ll bet, Jake thinks.
“Your room’s haunted,” Mika announces.
“No, it isn’t, Mika. Don’t tell lies now and don’t go around scaring our guests,” says her grandmother.
“But it is. I saw an old lady drift out of it. She was all in white and her feet were off the ground.” Mika grins at Jake and Terry. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room and the chest she sleeps in, which is at the foot of your bed.”
Jake grabs both his and Terry’s bags. They follow Mika upstairs. It is suddenly weighing very heavily on Jake’s mind that he will be sharing the same room with Terry. All night.
OK, they discussed this on the way down.
“No way I’m sleeping in the same bed with you,” Terry said in their ‘discussion’.
“OK, so I’ll sleep on the floor. Big deal.”
Honest to truth, he doesn’t trust himself sleeping in the same bed with her. He might accidentally grab her tits in one of his wet dreams.
Mika takes them to one of the wings and goes to the end of the short passage.
“This is your room,” she says.
She opens the door and sends it flying so that it bangs against the wall. The bedroom inside is the size of a hotel room, but without the trappings of a mini-refrigerator and a wall safe. The king-sized bed is covered with a green comforter and strewn with more pillows than there are people in the room. The large bay window looks out into the forest. As Mika warned, a large decorative chest sits at the foot of the bed.
“Where’s the ghost?” Jake prompts her.
“Sleeping. She’ll come out after midnight. Don’t make too much noise or you’ll wake your neighbors.”
“We have neighbors?”
Mika jerks her thumb in the direction of the only other room in the wing.
“Yeah. Your rival and his preggers mate. He’s already been telling everyone he wants to stew your guts in brine. So go make some noise and keep him up all night, yeah?”
She flashes them a grin and scoots away.
Jake and Terry eye each other.
“Remind me never to have children,” she says.
“They’re not all half bad. They could turn out like me.”
“Remind me never to have children,” she repeats, deadpan.
“Anyway, you did good.”
“Huh?”
“At dinner. You did good with the library and the shotgun wedding story.”
She grimaces. “That actually sounds like the title of a bad romance.”
Jake can’t help laughing. “You know, you’re actually not so bad when you’re being funny.”
“I’m funny?” she bridles.
He holds up his hands. “Hey, don’t deck me. I’m your husband, whom you have sworn to love, honor and obey.”
“My ass.” She stalks off to the bathroom.
Jake can’t help smiling at the sight of her tight ass moving out of his sight.
Now what the hell is he going to do tonight?
8
When Terry comes out of the bathroom after her shower, Jake has already shoved the (empty and ghostly) chest out of the way and made his bed on the floor out of a spare quilt he found in the closet and the generous bounty of pillows.
She stops short.
“You’re really going to sleep on the floor.”
He raises his eyebrows quizzically. “You’d deck me if I don’t, right?”
“Yeah.” Part of her is disappointed he isn’t going to make a play for her on the bed. But what does she want, really? Isn’t this just a business arrangement?
“OK, I’m taking a shower. Right after that, I’m going to sleep.” He strides to the bathroom, taking off his shirt as he does so.
She can’t help looking. Hell, is she looking. She glimpses nicely toned muscles under taut golden skin as he vanishes into the bathroom and closes the door. Damn. He may not shift much anymore, but he still has a body to die for.
Damn!
She changes into her long cotton sleep T-shirt. Before coming here, she had briefly contemplated buying some sexy lingerie to tease him, and then decided that would be sending the wrong signals. After all, she doesn’t even like Jake Savage, right? (OK, he’s not half-bad when he’s being civil.) So she was determined not to make any changes to her routine.
They have to share the same room. Big deal. They are both adults, and she is not going to make one iota of effort to make herself look more glamorous than she usually does for bed.
She is under the covers with the lights off but for a single bedside table lamp when he finally emerges from his shower. She pretends to be asleep, but her eyes are half open. He comes out of the bathroom, toweling his hair dry and clad only in a towel around his waist.
Her stomach does a little funny turn and her mouth goes ever so slightly dry.
There he is, bathed only in the soft light of the bathroom. His muscles are nicely sculptured and she notices he has the six-pack on his abs that makes a sudden heat come between her legs.
Gawd, but he is sooooo sexy.
He looks over to her and she quickly shuts her eyes again. Her ears are on the alert, and she can hear every sound he makes. The pad of his feet on the carpet. The unzipping of his bag as he delves into it to take out whatever he’s wearing to bed.
She wonders what he is wearing to bed.
She opens her eyes a smidge and glances at him again.
Oh!
He is in the midst of taking something out of his bag on the floor, and he is bent over. His towel has slipped, or else he has taken it off, and his smooth buttocks are showing. A spool of desire uncurls in the area just above her intimate parts and her pussy contracts with sudden need.
How long has it been since she had sex?
Oh yeah, since that bastard, Burt, left. Since then, she hasn’t been much in the mood.
But her body is certainly responding
to the sight of a delectable shifter male now. A very desirable shifter male. She watches as he slides on a pair of comfortable shorts – the type with an elastic waistband. His buttocks vanish in a smother of cotton.
He turns, and she quickly shuts her eyes again. Her pulse is drumming a frantic beat at her neck.
You’re behaving like a teenage schoolgirl.
Jake busies himself with his quilts, shaking them out and making quite a lot of soft, flopping noises. Then he fluffs his pillows and pats them thoroughly. She keeps her eyes tightly shut as he pads to turn the bedside lamp off.
It is dark now when she opens her eyes. He is a dark shape moving towards the foot of the bed. He sinks into his bed on the floor and vanishes from her sight.
She sighs inwardly and squeezes her legs. Her mind burns with the imprint of his body – his buttocks and his strong back muscles. She envisions her legs twining around that back as he grinds himself inside her.
Her pussy clenches.
Oh!
A knock on their door startles her.
“Quick!” Jake hisses. He gathers his makeshift bed and throws everything onto the main bed. Terry is suddenly buried under an avalanche of quilts and pillows.
“Ooof!” she says.
Jake dives into the bed beside her. It is quite a crowded fit, and elbows get into mouths and such.
“Ouch!”
“Ssssh!”
The knock comes again, louder than before.
“Who is it?” Jake calls.
Whoever it is out there doesn’t reply but knocks again. Loudly. Insistently.
“It might be important,” says Terry, scrambling to turn the lamp on. She can feel Jake’s thigh against her hip . . . and something else. She doesn’t quite want to think about what that something else is right now.
“I’ll get it.” Jake slithers out of bed. He is naked but for his shorts, and he doesn’t pull on anything to cover the top half of his body as he lopes to the door.
He opens it a tad.
“Yes?”
From the bed, Terry can see Jeff and Cassie Hirsch standing outside. What the hell are they doing here? Then she remembers. Oh right. They are in the bedroom next door. Still, what the hell are they doing here?
Cassie, of course, timidly cowers behind her husband. She peers into the room, meeting Terry’s eyes. Terry is immediately sympathetic towards the older woman’s plight. What does Jeff do or say to make her so scared all the time?
“What? You’re in bed already?” Jeff says.
“We had a long drive and so we thought we’d tuck in early,” Jake replies smoothly. “Anything I can do for you?”
Jeff’s shifty eyes try to scrutinize the bed and everything on it.
“How do you sleep with so much stuff on your bed?” he asks.
“What’s it to you what we like to do in bed?” Jake retorts. “Anyway, what do you want?”
“Cassie here has run into a bit of a problem. It’s a woman’s problem, and so she needs something from your wife.”
The way Jeff says ‘wife’ implies he doesn’t quite believe it.
Terry gets off the bed. She is decently dressed anyway. How far we are from the wild ways, she muses. When shifters were more feral in general, they didn’t care what people thought of their bodies.
“I can help,” she says. “Cassie, what do you need?”
Jeff doesn’t retreat, as most men do in women’s matters. And so Jake doesn’t back off either. The two male shifters stare at each other as if they are about to spring at each other’s throats any minute.
Cassie says nervously, “I have a bit of spotting. I didn’t bring any sanitary pads. Would you happen to have any?”
“Spotting?” Terry says.
“She means bleeding,” Jeff puts in.
“Oh my God, that’s serious. Shouldn’t you be going to a hospital?” Terry says, worried. Her eyes roam down to Cassie’s very pregnant abdomen. Third trimester bleeding can’t be good.
“It’s OK,” Cassie replies. “I have a bit of it now and again. The doctor says I should go in only if it’s more than a couple of spots.”
“You sure?”
“She’s sure,” Jeff says. He still hasn’t taken his eyes off Jake, who won’t budge an inch either.
Terry knows this posturing is common among antagonistic shifter males, but still – it’s stupid.
“I’ll see what I can find,” she says, going to her bag. She rummages through it. She doesn’t have her heat right now, but she always carries a packet of tampons with her everywhere just in case. She fishes this out. “You’re in luck.”
She goes back to the door to hand it to Cassie.
“I only need one,” Cassie says.
“It’s OK, you can have the whole box.” Terry smiles at her to reassure her.
Cassie darts frightened eyes at her husband, and he nods.
“Take everything that’s being offered to you. Isn’t that what I always tell you, Cass?”
“Thank you,” Cassie says to Terry.
“If you need anything, just call me.”
“I will. Thanks again and goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Jake addresses this to Cassie. He shuts the door and turns to Terry. He grins. “Now where were we?”
She clicks in exasperation. “We weren’t anywhere. Did you see how scared she is of Jeff? I’m worried about her. Bleeding in your third trimester can’t be a good sign. We should get her to a hospital just to be sure.”
“Try telling that to her husband.”
“You tell him.”
Jake chortles. “I might as well try swallowing a live boa constrictor. You heard her. She’ll be all right. If it gets more serious, we can always drive her to the hospital.”
“I’m just concerned her husband won’t care.”
“He’s her husband.”
“Yeah, but he’s so driven to get this job you’re after that he might just be the sort to put their baby in danger.”
“You talk as if you know him,” Jake says. “I don’t think any guy would willingly put their careers over their families when something like this happens.”
“Obviously, you don’t know guys as well as I do.”
Jake raises his eyebrow. “Excuse me? What am I?”
“You know what I mean.” Terry thinks of Burt and shoves him out of her mind. “Sometimes you guys don’t know what you do to other people. You don’t care who you hurt.”
She has to admit being so close to a half-naked Jake is very distracting, especially with his shorts being quite full around the crotch area, even though they are meant to be baggy.
“Are you referring to the photo I took of you? I didn’t post it on Facebook, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I know.” She is ashamed to remember that she did post his photo on Facebook in a moment of utter illogic. And also partially because she wanted her friends to see how dishy her neighbor is.
“I’m sorry I took it, OK?” He does look and sound sincere.
“OK.” If he hadn’t taken it, they wouldn’t be here and she would be three thousand dollars poorer. So it couldn’t have been a bad thing.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Jake declares.
“Fine.”
Jake takes the covers and pillows which make up his bed and arranges everything on the floor as it was. Terry smoothens everything that is left on the bed. She is about to turn the light off when Jake suddenly jumps onto bed beside her.
“What’re you doing?” she cries.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m not going to touch you, don’t worry. But I want to give Jeff Hirsch something to grind his teeth over.”
She watches, incredulous, as he shoves her pillow against her headboard. He bunches his fists against it and starts rocking the entire bed in a familiar rhythm that makes her cheeks burn. The bed creaks and groans as he escalates his rhythm.
“God, that’s good, don’t stop!” he moans rather loudly. He flash
es her an evil grin. “Terry, that’s sooo good. Don’t stop . . . oh, oh, oh!”
She is speechless.
Jake practically thumps the headboard against the wall. His breathing grows harsher, and he punctuates each thud with a moan of utmost pleasure.
Then he finally shouts, “Terry! I love you!” He grabs the pillow off the headboard and pumps it into the air in a gesture of triumph.
Terry’s ears are still reeling from the entire episode. She feels as though she has been sucker punched in the gut. The words ‘Terry, I love you’ clang in her mind like an alarm bell. She knows he doesn’t mean a word of it, but still . . . it’s nice to hear it.
Terry, I love you.
Has anyone other than her parents ever said those words to her?
OK, the whole thing was ridiculously childish but also curiously enjoyable . . . on her end. But she is not going to berate him for it. Jeff deserves a bit of comeuppance.
Jake vanishes below the bed again, out of her line of sight. Shaken, she turns off the lamp. They are in the darkness once again, lit only by the pale moonlight floating from the bay window. She can hear him breathing softly. No other sounds issue from the next room. Jeff and Cassie certainly aren’t reciprocating with their own musical medley.
Jake’s breathing grows slower.
“Jake?” she whispers.
No answer. He is sound asleep.
She closes her eyes, the events of the night still spinning in her head until they merge into her dreams.
9
Breakfast the next morning is an equally raucous affair. Martha has made buttermilk pancakes and fried bratwursts for everyone. There are orange juice and fresh milk and cornflakes and oat bran. Jake has never felt so at home for a long, long time.
“Had a restful night?” Jeff asks with a sneer.
“Pretty peaceful,” Jake replies. He turns to Cassie, who is rubbing her tummy in the manner of an afterthought. “You OK, Cassie?”
She smiles at him. “I’m OK.”
“Did you see the ghost?” Mika says. She wears earphones which are connected to her IPhone, and some sort of disembodied music is floating out of them.