by Lexi C. Foss
I was tugging down my T-shirt when she answered, and I suddenly yanked so hard I nearly ripped it. Then I stalked over to the bed and bent down, caging Rowan between my arms. “You’d better be fucking joking, Rowan.”
My wolf seemed to sense the reason for my anger, and he growled menacingly. It was a damn good thing that Camden Dupont was in another realm, or I wouldn’t have waited for Rowan’s response. My wolf would have broken every bone in my body if he’d had to and then ripped the slayer to shreds without a speck of remorse.
“About the pictures?” she asked innocently, rapidly blinking her eyes.
“Don’t play with me, Rowan,” I growled. “I’m hanging on by a fucking thread. So, unless you want to spend the day with your legs in the air while I fuck you to within an inch of your life, I suggest you answer the question. And it better be what I want to hear.”
Rowan smiled sweetly and petted my chest, somehow knowing she needed to soothe man and beast. “Relax, Jax. And tell Wolfgang to chill. I haven’t even thought of another naked man since you bulldozed your way into my life.”
I felt a little less homicidal and my wolf retracted his claws, though he was still snarling.
“And I’d just like to point out, you really shouldn’t threaten someone with a punishment that makes them want to do the crime.”
She rose up and pressed her mouth to mine, further settling me and my wolf. I slid a hand into her hair and twisted the strands tightly in my fist, holding her head steady while I plundered her mouth with savage desire. Rowan moaned and I pushed her gently until she was lying on her back before slipping a hand into the gaping neck of the shirt she wore and palming one of her shapely breasts. My lips began gliding south, tingling with the need to have her stiff peak in my mouth.
“I’m not sure now is the best time to be ripping into each other like a couple of virgin teenagers,” Emerald called out. “We’ve got shit to do, people.”
Rowan started laughing, but I grunted in frustration and nipped her lip, making it bleed.
“You bit me again,” she gasped. “Would you stop that?”
I shook my head and licked at the spot, wishing it had been even bigger. Rowan didn’t have the accelerated healing of a shifter yet though, so I had to be careful when leaving marks on her. “Just reminding you who you belong to, baby.”
“Come on, Hulk,” she said in a teasing tone as she pushed against my chest—making absolutely no impact. “Emerald’s right. We’ve got shit to do.”
When she didn’t argue over my statement, my wolf stopped everything and quietly curled up and relaxed. There was still a buzz of tension that would be there until we’d claimed Rowan, but it was the calmest he’d been since I’d bitten her at the club.
Rowan put pressure on my chest again and, this time, I released her hair and her breast—reluctantly—and allowed her to sit up. Needing to have her close for just a little longer, I scooped her into my arms and carried her to the bathroom. When I reached for the hem of her shirt, she playfully smacked my hands away and rolled her eyes. “I’ve been undressing myself for well over a century, Jax. You really don’t need to stay and help.”
I wanted to protest except I knew a wet, naked Rowan would be irresistible. “This time,” I grunted before hotfooting it out to the living room.
Emerald was in the kitchen, making pancakes, from the look and smell of it. “Good morning,” she greeted me as I stepped up to the bar.
It was just after noon, but I was gathering that the life of a slayer was on a different clock than most. I lifted my chin in reply and picked up my cell phone, which I’d plugged in the day before when we arrived at Asher’s. I’d almost forgotten it was in my pocket since I obviously hadn’t used it while chasing Rowan’s cute little ass through another reality. I had several missed calls from my mother, a few texts from my siblings, and one from Camilla, which I deleted without reading. She’d tried to talk to me over the last couple of months, but I’d still been too angry and hurt. I didn’t feel that way anymore, but I deleted it because I simply didn’t care. Nor did I want Rowan to see it and have anything else to feed her doubts about us.
Emerald set a plate in front of me, piled high with pancakes and smothered in butter and real maple syrup. “Thank you. You didn’t have to cook,” I said as I entered the kitchen to put on a kettle of water to make Rowan some tea.
She shrugged and went back to the pan on the stove. “I was hungry and wasn’t sure whether you were going to finally talk Rowan into letting you tap that ass—and yes, that is a double entendre, since you shifter types seem to have a thing for the rear door.”
She gave me a cheeky grin and I bit back a laugh. This girl was a trip.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, pizda,” Rowan groused as she walked into the room, freshly showered and dressed, with her long hair braided over one shoulder. “If you’re this focused on my sex life—“
“Or lack thereof,” Emerald inserted.
“—then you obviously need one of your own.”
Shaking my head, I pretended not to be amused and shoveled some pancake in my mouth so neither of them could try and pull me into their good-natured ribbing. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to risk saying the wrong thing, which was sure to cock-block me in the end.
I listened to them squabble a little more as I added a tea bag to a mug and filled it with water. Emerald dished up some food for each of us before she and Rowan sat at the bar and dug in.
While they ate, I handed Rowan her tea, receiving a beaming smile that sent warmth through my chest, and stepped a few feet away where it was a little quieter to listen to the messages from my mother. The first two were sad attempts to talk me into coming to dinner. The next one was a guilt trip to talk me into dinner. And the last two were passive-aggressive threats to get me to come to dinner. I chuckled all the way through those since my mother was about as vicious as a teddy bear and one of the kindest people on the earth. Unless you messed with one of her cubs. Momma bears were no joke.
My sister wanted to know if I’d talk our parents into letting her go on a date—why the fuck she thought that would ever happen, I had no idea. And my brothers wanted to watch the game at my house the following weekend. Which meant Mom was driving them nuts, and more than likely, Dad would show up as well. I shot back a hell, no to Joss, and a maybe to Jase and Jordan. Then I shoved my phone back into my pocket.
“What should we do while we wait for Dorian to return from Russia?” Emerald was asking as I walked over to stand behind Rowan. I braced my arms on the edge of the island on both sides of her and dropped my face into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply. Her lavender and vanilla scent was mixed with the sugary smell of syrup and I was suddenly assaulted with visions of pouring the sweet, sticky, substance all over her body and licking it off.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “It’s not like we can just sit around.”
Rowan snorted a laugh. “I’d pay money to see you try.”
A snicker escaped my lips and Rowan set her hand on my arm and gave it a gentle squeeze before I suddenly felt like I’d touched an electrified fence. I shuddered and grunted in annoyance before locking my teeth around a tendon in her neck and bit just hard enough to make her jolt.
“You two have very interesting methods of foreplay,” Emerald announced, her voice laced with hilarity. I raised my head and rested my chin on Rowan’s crown, choosing not to comment, and smirked instead.
Emerald cocked her head to the side and gave me an appraising look. “Shifter thing?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Rowan and Jax thing.”
“Fair enough.”
I doubted Rowan even noticed that she was slowly relaxing back into me, but once she’d plastered her back against my front, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her neck. The little shiver that went through her this time had me thinking about another cold shower.
It was perfect timing to bring up an idea that had been percolating in my mind. And it helped get my
thoughts off of my mate’s sexy body and the delicious little sounds she made when I kissed her in just the right spot. Shaking away my lustful thoughts, I voiced my plan. “Why don’t we head to Silver Lake and regroup?”
This would give me a chance to show her my home, maybe have her meet my family, and it would give me the perfect opportunity to convince her to tell me all of the shit she and Emerald were holding back. I was flying mostly blind and that pissed me off because it made it more difficult to protect my mate.
“Silver Lake, New York?” Rowan clarified, dropping her head back and gazing up at me. “As in where your pack lives?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her they were her pack too and it would soon be where she lived, but I was pretty sure that would blow my chances at getting her there all to hell. My hope was that when she reached my home, she would feel how much she belonged there.
“Yes. I need to check in with my family and Nathan is home. Since I didn’t call him last night, it would give you a chance to talk to him now, rather than waiting until he comes back to the city.”
“I suppose…” Her expression turned thoughtful but was still a little wary as she looked to Emerald. So, I went in for the kill.
“It would be the perfect place for Emerald to stay off the grid. Dorian clearly thinks whoever he is searching for is in the city, and I highly doubt it would occur to him to check with a pack of wolves four hours upstate. I’ve got a guest suite attached to a portion of the back of my house. She can stay there.”
“He’s got a point, Ro,” Emerald interjected, tapping a finger against her dark red lips. “It’s actually a decent plan.”
Rowan nodded, bumping her head against my chin. She leaned to the side and turned her face up to look at mine. “This could work. Thanks.”
I bit back a calculating and satisfied smile at her capitulation. I placed a soft kiss on her lips, then raised my eyes only to have them catch with Emerald’s. Her look said I wasn’t fooling her, but then she winked and walked off. “Let’s peace out, people!”
30
Rowan
When we drove into Silver Lake, I found myself a little enchanted by the wide-open spaces and rustic feel. I was a city girl through and through, so I hadn’t expected to like it there. One thing that surprised me was the lack of security around, and within, the town.
“Does your pack have a ‘don’t fuck with me’ reputation or is there some kind of evacuation plan to protect everyone if your pack goes to war?” My magic was humming softly, and I wasn’t sure if it was from pleasure or simply our need to always be moving or doing something.
Jax laughed and squeezed my hand, which he’d immediately taken when we got in the car and kept on his thigh throughout the ride. “A lot of the former, but we do have security. It’s just not obvious. In fact, we have a higher number of enforcers than most packs because our boundaries, and pack, are so large. There are usually two, at the very least, doing perimeter runs 24/7. There are only four main entrances to the town which you must pass through to get to the area around the lake, and each one has a guard shack. They simply look like regular houses. There are also several other measures taken beyond those.”
“Why be so discreet?” Emerald asked as she stuck her head between the two front seats. She was sitting in the center of the back seat, with Malfoy in a little carrier on one side and all of his essentials on the other—though Jax didn’t have the same view of “essentials “ as Em and I. “Wouldn’t you want a show of force to keep other groups of shifters from trying to come after your territory?”
Jax shook his head as he drove into a quaint little downtown area complete with a town square sporting a gazebo and small amphitheater. “Silver Lake is also inhabited by humans. A few are aware of what we are, particularly if they have a family member mated with someone in our pack. But most of them have no idea and some of the families have been here since the town was established, which is why we've worked to gain the, as Rowan put it, ‘don’t fuck with me’ reputation.”
The fact that the Silver Lake pack, who’d likely settled there long before the humans, had allowed them to take up residence and made such an effort to work around them said a lot. Nathan wasn’t exactly a warm and cuddly guy and Jax had mentioned that he owned a well-known security company, so the security measures made sense to me. The other stuff seemed awfully soft-hearted for the guy, but then again, people weren’t always what they seemed. Something I never forgot and one of the reasons I rarely gave my trust to anyone.
I’d only known Jax for two days, though it somehow felt like much longer. And yet, when I really considered things, I was taken aback by the realization that he'd found a crack no one else had discovered and worked his way in. In my heart, I knew I could trust him. In two days, I’d put more faith in him than I had in decades with Cam. I honestly wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge at the moment. It was both scary and comforting. Just like Jax.
He turned onto a road that had houses, or driveways to ones we couldn’t see due their landscaping, on both sides. The ones on the right appeared to back up to the lake, so I surmised that the road circled the body of water. After a couple of minutes, he pointed to a gravel drive that led to a gorgeous, Cape Cod style house. It wasn’t overlarge but looked as though it could house a decent-sized family. “My parents live there, along with my sister, Jocelyn. My brother, Jase, has his own house on the other side of the lake. He’s an enforcer and works for Nathan in cyber security. My youngest brother, Jordan, lives in town in an apartment above his law office.”
“You’re the oldest?” That definitely fit with Jax’s personality. Mates were overly protective and possessive of each other, but Jax’s instincts to safeguard others was in his nature.
“Yes. Jase is thirty-two—three years younger than me. Jordan is twenty-five, and Joss is fifteen.”
Large age gaps weren’t odd among shifters. They lived unnaturally long lives—at least several hundred years. And while the women weren’t fertile their whole lives, they were able to have children quite a bit longer than humans. Which meant they could spread out the babies if they so chose.
Finally, Jax drove onto a long stretch of driveway that led to a sprawling house that was all wood and windows. It was a log cabin style, but modern and…wow. I was instantly in love with it. He parked his truck in front of a garage that was concealed on the side of the house and pointed to the lot that was now behind us. “I own the next lot over as well. It’s where my workshop is located.”
“This is gorgeous, Jax,” I told him as I continued to look around with wonder. If ever I were able to be happy living outside the city—which had seemed incredibly unlikely until today—it would be somewhere like Silver Lake. When my magic vibrated louder in my ears and sent little sparks off in my mind, I knew it was agreeing with me. That was definitely an interesting development. Life out here would be slow and easy, words that had never been used to describe me or my magic.
He squeezed my hand again and when my eyes drifted to his face, he was smiling with genuine happiness and a little relief. Had he cared that much about my opinion?
“I’m glad you like it, baby.”
“This place is banging, Fido,” Emerald quipped as she opened the back door, grabbed Malfoy’s carrier, and hopped out. “Let’s see about getting you settled,” she cooed to the cuddly furball.
I was about to follow when I felt a tug on my arm and glanced back at Jax.
“Let me,” he requested before drawing me close and giving me a kiss that made my toes curl and my stomach do flip-flops. After he was done devouring me, he licked my bottom lip before burying his head in the crook of my neck. I felt his teeth clamp onto my flesh in the exact spot where he’d bitten me the night before, and I smacked his shoulder. “Would you quit marking me, dog?” I complained. We both heard the lack of conviction in my voice—being branded by Jax was growing on me and I found myself aching for him a little more each time. Jax laughed softly, then darted his t
ongue out to lick the bite before lifting his head.
“If you really meant that, I might,” he acknowledged with a smug glint in his beautiful blue eyes. “But we both know you don’t.”
Then he released my hand and exited the truck, quickly rounding the hood to open my door. He encircled my waist with his big hands and lifted me out, bringing me flush against his body before slowly sliding me to the ground. Heat coursed through me and I was tempted to fan myself. Not that it would help the sticky situation between my thighs. “Yo-moyo, that man is hot,” I mumbled to myself. Obviously, not quietly enough because laughter boomed from deep in Jax’s chest.
“I guess between the two of us, we’re going to burn up the sheets in bed,” he teased with a sexy wink.
I knew he could smell my arousal and it kind of annoyed me because it was making him mighty arrogant, which was also hot. Bozhye moi, I needed to get away from him and stop this vicious cycle before I tackled him in the driveway.
Spinning around, I marched toward the front door, but stopped short when I saw Emerald talking to a strange man by the entrance to the house. He glanced up and a familiar, lazy smile stretched across his face, leading me to conclude that he was one of Jax’s brothers.
My wolf slung his arm around my neck and led me over to the duo. “Jase,” he greeted, not unhappily, but not exactly welcoming either.
Jase’s blue eyes were a little darker than his brother’s and they scanned me from head to toe. Jax growled and tucked me tighter into his side. “This is my mate, Rowan,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
Jase’s eyebrows practically disappeared into his hair as his eyes zeroed in on the mark Jax had refreshed on my neck. Jax’s actions back at the truck were starting to make a little more sense. The jackass had been marking me with his bite and his scent, and making sure any shifter with a decent nose would smell the fact that I wanted Jax. I rolled my eyes and tried to step away, but his arm was immovable. I considered letting my magic have a little fun, which it was rooting for, but I ultimately decided not to use it in front of a stranger, even if it was Jax’s brother.