by R. E. Butler
She stormed through the shop and back to his office, looking mouth wateringly tempting in a very short dress and sexy suede boots. He would love to take her with those boots on, spread her thighs wide and dig his fingers into her calves through the suede.
"You summoned me?" Her voice was angry, bitter, and it made him cringe, the sweet vision of her taking him inside her evaporated.
Don't be a dick, he told himself. "I understand you're in need of a job." He tried to sound casual.
She snorted, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe. "What do you care?"
She wasn't going to be nice, was she? "I care," he ground out, snapping the pencil he'd been holding in frustration, "because you are my friend and I need help."
Her brow furrowed and her whole posture changed, softened, and he nearly launched himself over the desk at her. But just as quickly as she had changed, she changed back, hardening her gaze. "I don't need your charity, Jason. I will find something on my own, here or somewhere else."
He growled under his breath. "Look, I need a front manager, okay? The guys have been rotating for, well, years, and that means that either my customers are waiting around for someone to come to the front, or they're away from their work to help. You know bikes and cars enough to hold your own, and you have a business degree and can do the books and inventory."
"So what, you want someone to take over all your responsibilities so you can hang out in the back and not do anything?" He closed his eyes at her jab; she just wasn't going to make things easy for him at all. Not that he'd expected her to be compliant. She was a true alpha female, and the only place he'd want her compliant is the bedroom, and even then he wasn't so sure about the compliance thing.
"I am so buried under things in here that I can't even get payroll done on time, and I've got people wanting me to do custom work on their bikes but I can't get everything done. I'll give you anything you want, just, hell Cadence, just come work for me. You need a job, and I need someone I trust, and there's no one that I trust more than you."
Her phone buzzed and she lifted it and saw the caller ID and smiled. "I'll let you know." She said off handedly to him, ignoring the blatant truth he'd shared, turning and answering the phone as she walked away. He heard very clearly, "Hey Chris," her voice happy and a practical skip in her step. He wanted to club her over the head and drag her back into the office and shut the door, tell her everything. He heard Linus stop her in the shop on the way out of the station and invite her to a get together on Friday at his house. Linus had offered to Jason to have something kind of private for them, just a few wolves and Cadence, to get her into a controlled situation and try to spend time with her and thaw her out.
"I've got plans." She said, telling Chris she would call him back.
"I'm sure Jake won't mind if you're late to work. Everyone's coming over at 7." Linus said.
"I've got the night off on Friday; actually, I'm going up to a club in Rivertown with some of the girls."
"Our girls?" Michael interjected. "I haven't heard about that."
She scoffed, sounding defensive. "Not your pack, Michael, Jake's girls."
Michael sounded angry suddenly. "So what, you're going to go to Jake's pack?" He said exactly what Jason was thinking. Jake's females were accepting of her because although she was single, the alpha female position was locked in, and Renee loved Cadence like a daughter so everyone treated her with respect. Jason's pack females hated her, because they all knew that he loved her. His lack of claiming her had caused an enormous amount of problems within his pack, all of which would be alleviated if she would just remember what the fuck he'd done when she was 9. Damn it all to hell!
She sounded so angry and hurt when she told Michael to go to hell and left, the engine roaring to life as she gunned it a little extra like a growl, and peeled out of the parking lot, music blaring.
He walked out into the shop. Linus gave him a sorry look. "She said she'd show up, maybe, but only for a few minutes. Sorry, man, I did the best I could. I'm afraid, I'm afraid you're losing her to the Garra pack." He walked into the garage from the shop and Jason wanted to scream his head off and pound his fists through the wall.
"Did you talk to Jake?" Michael asked, moving back around the counter and giving him a wide berth.
He put his head in his hands on the cool counter. "Yeah. He said that he already talked to Chris about backing off, but that if she chooses to give in to Chris' advances than it is out of his hands. I suggested he could order Chris to back off, and he said that he thought 14 years was long enough to mark a woman and not touch her, and that he would do nothing to either encourage or discourage his son." He'd also suggested that Jason could order his females to treat her with respect, because part of why Cadence was so miserable was because she didn't feel like she belonged anywhere. He couldn't force the females to change a natural behavior any more than he could control the sun. The only way the females would respect Cadence is for her to claim her rightful spot as alpha and kick some ass.
He had left the bonfire as soon as she and Chris did, stripping in the woods and shifting, running to her house as fast as possible. He stayed in the shadows of the trees surrounding her home and had watched with a trickling low growl as that bastard Chris kissed her. She'd stopped it, it hadn't gone very far for which he was glad, but then once Chris was gone, she had gone into her house and started to cry, and then she’d screamed. It wasn't a sound he had ever heard her make before, raw and hurt and it made him ache to hold her and comfort her. He was just so far removed from her life at this point that he had no idea what was causing her so much grief. Even though it warred against every instinct he had, he didn’t go to her because he knew she wouldn’t accept him right now.
He'd stayed by the house for hours, until he was sure she had fallen asleep, and then he'd gone back to find his clothes in the woods and go home.
He spent the next few days waiting to hear from her, one way or the other. It was true that he needed help. He was a mechanic, not a paper pusher, and she was tough enough to handle the baddest looking customer, human or wolf, and smart enough to fix the mess he was pretty sure he'd made. The question was whether she would want to be around him, whether she hated him so much that she couldn't stand to be near him for an entire work day.
Finally, on Thursday, she had left him a message on the shop voicemail, purposely calling at 4 a.m. Her voice had been hard and tired sounding. "I'll take the job, Jason, pending some key points. I'll come in Friday morning. Be prepared to negotiate."
He'd anticipated Friday morning like a kid at Christmas. She strode into his office like she owned the place, her hair pulled back into a ponytail that swung back and forth as she walked. She was wearing a deliciously short camo skirt with olive knee high socks and suede ankle boots, a black tank that peeked out through a ripped off the shoulder beige top. Sliding into the chair across from his desk, she crossed her legs and snapped her gum, raising a brow at him.
His whole body lit up for her, tightened nearly painfully, and he had to remind himself that she'd hardly react the way he wanted if he acted like a caveman. Or an actual wolf. As it was, he was just one peek at her ivory thighs away from humping her leg. "Five days a week, 40 hours plus overtime as I need it from you, and I can give you 25k to start, plus anything you need done to your car for cost."
She breathed in and out silently, her breasts rising and falling with the motion, as she contemplated what he offered. "Anything less than 30k is an insult to my bachelor's degree." She swung her foot in thought. "I want this office for my own, but a nicer chair, a tank of gas a week, and you can install an upgraded sound system in my car, at no cost."
He tried not to smile. She'd actually given some thought to her negotiations. He wasn't about to rollover for everything, though. "I can't go higher than 27, and it's not an insult, it's just business."
She made motions to stand up. "Oh, well. See ya."
He nearly roared. "Wait, you're walking away f
or three grand? Hold on, there has to be something else I can give you in exchange. Name it."
He saw the look cross her face and thought with chagrin 'uh oh'. "Paint my house."
"What?" He sputtered.
"You heard me. It's going to take me forever to paint everything; I've only gotten my bedroom done. So paint the rest of the inside of my house, and I'll grace you with my amazing business skills and save your ass."
"I meant I'd give you anything related to the garage."
She grinned and he knew that she knew she had him by the balls. "Sorry. I've made my final offer. 27k, nice office chair, weekly tank of gas, and my sound system, plus, painting my place. And I know you'll do a great job. I expect you in overalls. You can start on Saturday, and I'll start on Monday." She crossed her arms in a final way and he almost laughed. Almost.
"You have to buy the paint." He growled.
"I already did."
"Fine." She stood up with a grin, such a sweet look on her face that it nearly brought him to his knees, and extended her hand. He took it, her warm hand in his something he'd wanted to feel again for such a long time. "Tomorrow, then. Make sure there's coffee."
She hummed in her throat. "Bright and early."
She wrinkled her nose in happiness, and he wanted to hug her but held himself back. That was the girl he loved, the one that loved to win arguments and torture him because she loved doing it, not because she was so miserable. He watched her leave, listened to her engine as it faded away, and went out to procure help for painting her house, and to find a suitable chair for her.
Linus' home was small but comfortable. He was just a little older and had been married for a while to a human, who had thought it was sexy to be with a wolf. What Linus hadn’t bargained for was that when they got married she’d had the belief that he could just leave the pack. Linus was fourth ranked in the pack and too powerful to turn his back on them, and when she figured it out she left him, but not until she made him thoroughly miserable. He paced on the small back patio where Linus had lit a large grill. Werewolves could pack food away like carnivorous camels. The pile of raw meat on the trays in the kitchen attested to that fact.
"You're making me nervous." Linus said as he scraped the metal grating with a wire brush.
"I don't like this whole thing with Jake's females." He admitted. "Where the fuck is Callie? She's supposed to be here."
Michael leaned out of the back door. "She's on her way, I just called her. It's only 6:30; don't get your panties in a bunch.
When Callie arrived, she was at least as nervous as Jason was because she missed Cadence. Without her best friend to shore up her self-confidence, Callie had taken an even lower position with the females who saw her as weak on her own. It made him angry, because Callie had been loyal to him for years, sharing information when he asked for it even though she felt it was betraying Cadence to do so. But Callie had to stand up for herself whether she had her ball-busting best friend with her or not. He watched as Callie threw herself off the porch and into Cadence's arms when she showed up finally at 7:30. She was sobbing, explaining that she'd never betray her, that she'd never even think to do anything to hurt her at all, and it was like Callie was saying what he was thinking. Why was it so simple with women, but so difficult when it was the opposite sex?
She had teared up but not actually cried at Callie's admissions and apologies, and her emerald eyes were bright green now, and she looked happy. She also looked fucking incredible. She had on a sweet little plaid mini skirt with white thigh high stockings with little black bows in the front, black heels with a strap across the top, and a belly baring white sweater. She completed the unabashed school girl look with two ponytails high on her head, with little pink ribbons and soft makeup. Michael turned around to give a look to Jason that said exactly what he was thinking, "holy shit!"
He watched as she looked around at the people in Linus' house and gave him a suspicious glance but didn't say anything except hello to the men. He'd chosen his highest ranking people, and with Callie as the only female, he had hoped that Cadence might stick around longer to protect her friend from the others, but she was beeped on her phone almost immediately. "I'll be there shortly, I'll call." She said to a female, but he wasn't sure which one from the voice.
She and Callie fell right back into old habits, talking together and mostly ignoring the men. Michael hung with them and tried several times to draw him and the others into their little world, but even though Callie tried to throw conversations his direction, Cadence seemed unmoved by the attempts. She was buzzed three more times in a half hour, and then finally announced she had to go. She'd barely said anything to him and his heart fell into his knees. She kissed Linus on the cheek and thanked him for the invite. Swiping a carrot stick from the counter and giving a half wave to the room in general, she left, the skirt fluffing up behind her and revealing the barest, tantalizing view of the back of her thighs.
His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of the holster to see a text message from her, "Don't forget bright and early tomorrow."
He laughed, sadly, because she hadn't cared at all about talking to him or being around him. "I'm sorry, Jason." Callie said. "I don't understand why Jake's pack is being so accommodating to her all of a sudden. It's almost like they are purposely trying to sway her to their pack. She couldn't wait to get out of here."
"I know." He groaned, a feeling of unhappiness settling over him. He hadn't meant for this to happen. He hadn't meant for any of it to happen at all.
"Do you think that's possible?" Linus asked.
"What?" He snapped.
"That Jake's pack is purposely being nice to her, like maybe a certain alpha wannabe has asked it of his mom, or the females?"
Clay, his fifth in rank, said, "Makes sense. If Chris snagged her, their pack would have an advantage. His mom and your mom were nearly equals, kept your dad and Jake in line and kept a good balance, but Cadence is tougher and meaner than any female out there. There isn't a girl in our pack that can compete with her if she doesn't come to our pack."
That was an unexpected revelation, but it made perfect sense. Jason knew that Chris liked her, maybe even loved her a little, because she was hard to be around and not fall in love with, but if he was actually courting her right now, while the time was Jason's, then it didn't bode well for him. Cadence's history with Chris was much less tormented. Chris had never been outwardly mean to her because of Jake, but he hadn't been fall over himself nice, either. He was starting off from a much better place than he was, that's for sure. She didn't hate Chris. In fact, she clearly liked him and was in the mood to be swayed.
"Callie?" He said finally and the look she gave him told him that she'd been privy to a conversation he didn't know about yet.
"I'm sorry, Jason. She told me, earlier before she got all jealous and confused, that she thought she'd been single long enough, and that if no one stepped up to the plate from our pack, then she'd move on. To Jake's pack."
If a broken heart could break further, his did. His mate, his sweetheart, was lonely, and was turning to Chris because he was nice and she clearly didn't realize his intentions. He was certain she hadn't realized it, but Chris had been eye-fucking her on the stage the whole time they were singing, and she had sounded incredible and looked amazing and damn it all to hell if it hadn't made her even more irresistible to the males in the bar. He was certain that Chris would waste no time in making his intentions clear, marking her and mating with her as soon as his time was up.
After he left Linus' he went to his parents' home. Partly to make sure Cadence made it home okay, but partly because he needed advice. "I'm sorry that I made the decree, son, if that's any consolation, although I'm certain it's not. I never would have guessed that after being surrounded by us for so many years that she wouldn't have figured out what you did and asked about it." His dad took off his reading glasses and settled back in the easy chair. "I wish I could fix it. Alpha decrees are binding, forever, tha
t's the point of them."
His mother perched on the arm of the chair. "Isn't there something that you can share so she is aware that you've loved her for so long? She has to feel the connection with you. I know she was young, but she's still part wolf."
"I don't know what I could tell her without breaking the decree. Every time I start to open my mouth around her, the decree pops into my head. Callie said she feels like I abandoned her. How could she not understand that I stayed away to protect her?"
"Because no other wolves did what you did to such an extreme, son. You were so worried about her safety that you didn't just keep her at arm's length, you shoved her away as much as you could. You were cruel, because you thought you had to be; she didn't understand because your actions were so different. You went from walking her to school every day to barely being able to be in the same room with her."
"Dad, what did you say to her? That day? I remember her running home and her hair was down. She never even asked me about the marks. Which isn’t really in her personality. She just doesn’t let things go. Ever.”
His father took a breath, two, in thought. “When I sent you in the house, I picked her up off the ground and looked at the marks, which were already healed but her skin was tanned from the sun and they were pretty evident. I was worried about her father calling the police. That would be something they wouldn’t ignore for me, you know, it was just too big. I pulled her ponytail out and told her that you were playing a game with her and your teeth descended accidentally and grazed her skin. I told her that if her father saw the marks and asked about them, that she should say she fell playing at her house and scratched her skin on that prickly rose bush at the side of the house. I threw my power into my voice, told her it was nothing and made it a decree for her. She’s wolf enough to obey.”
“Can’t he mark her again? If she was so young and doesn’t understand what happened, can’t he just jog her memory? Or mark her verbally now, like you did for me first?” His mother looked at his father hopefully.