But the corners of my mouth turned up, and as I turned back around, I saw Jonathan’s had too.
Maybe it was silly to be so frustrated about all of this.
It’s just that every time I thought I had some of the mess sorted out, something else came along. I just wanted to get my head above water for a moment. And I had a lot to learn about this werewolf stuff.
Well fine. Sheppard clearly wanted me to stay with the pack, and the only way I was going to figure any of this out anyway would be to watch them and listen. So fine. I crossed my arms and settled back in my seat again.
But we were already in the parking lot of another apartment complex. I hadn’t even been paying attention to where we were headed. The buildings were all finished with old stone façades, and they all had a vintage, historic feel to them. Ivy crawled up the sides and corners of the buildings, almost staining the walls with its red and gold fall colors.
As we exited the Jeep, I inhaled deeply, trying to smell whether vampires had been by. If they had, it hadn’t been anytime recently. At least, not that I could smell.
Jonathan led the way to one of the first-floor apartments and unlocked the door.
We stepped into a crisp white hallway with dark hardwood flooring.
“There should still be some cold sodas and water in the fridge,” he said. Help yourself to whatever you’d like. There may even be some snacks in the pantry, but I’m not sure how long they’ve been there.”
The apartment smelled a little musty, but there were also faint hints of perfume along with Jamie’s motor oil and Jonathan’s woodsy warmth. I tried to shake the feeling that I was intruding on the space. Maybe the woman I smelled was a girl Jamie was seeing.
Mine, whispered that voice again.
But he wasn’t. Not really.
What if that perfume belonged to some girl Jonathan was seeing? Was he the type to sleep with someone else if he already had someone?
God, what was wrong with me?
I growled and tried to clear my head. I needed to talk to him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that in front of the others. Maybe pack didn’t keep secrets, but it still felt like something you don’t just air in front of everyone.
Jonathan stopped at the entryway closet and handed Ian grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt.
“Thanks,” Ian said. “Dibs on the first shower!”
He brushed past me into the living room down the hall—a living room that might as well have been the size of my whole apartment. There were a pair of black leather sectionals set opposite each other in that huge room, with a couple of grey throw pillows on each. A flat-screen TV was on a stand set on a diagonal across one of the corners of the room, and a stone fireplace framed by dark wood that matched the floorboards occupied the other open corner. There were no ashes in the fireplace, though a couple of logs waited for the next cold night.
There weren’t any pictures on the mantel or TV stand, nor on the walls. Weird.
The dining room to my right was small, compared to the living room, but it held a chrome table topped with smoky glass and four black leather dining chairs.
Ian ducked into what I presumed was a bathroom through a door off the living room and the water turned on.
“My room’s over there,” Jonathan gestured to a door on his left, opposite the entry to the dining room. “Jamie’s is to the left through the dining room. Why don’t you watch something while we get our showers done?” He handed me the remote from the TV stand. “I should still be logged in to stream movies.”
Jamie had disappeared, presumably to his room, and Ian was still in the shower. I met Jonathan’s eyes as I took the remote. “Can we talk? Maybe let me get my head wrapped around some of this?”
Jonathan’s eyes softened, and a smile played at his mouth. “Sure. Follow me. You can sit outside the bathroom door and talk to me while I shower. Unless this is the sort of conversation that merits me staying covered in ashes?” There was mischief in his eyes again.
The thought of water dripping down that body had my face getting warm, along with other parts of me.
I shook my head, hoping he didn’t see the color in my cheeks. “No, no. Clean up, for sure. I’ll come talk with you.”
I suspect he did though, because he peeled off his shirt and then turned to open the door to his room.
To the right, the door to the en-suite bathroom stood open. I followed him into the bedroom, where a king-size bed with crisp white sheets and a grey and black duvet dominated the room. Despite that, there were two black leather armchairs around the room that would have matched the sectionals in the living room. One was next to the door of the bathroom, the other was in a corner facing the foot of the bed. He closed the door bent to remove his shoes before stepping into the bathroom.
I turned my back to the room when I heard the zipper. He had made no effort to close the door. The rumble of Jonathan’s laugh came as soon as my back was turned.
“You’ve already seen me naked,” he said, mirth filling his voice. “You’ve even slept with me, but you’re still going to turn your back as I undress.”
It was dumb, but his laugh made my stupid little heart sing.
“I’m just trying to give you some privacy!”
I felt the warmth of him close behind me then, the smoke-covered woodsy scent wafting over my shoulder.
“I need no privacy from you, Dreamer.” His voice was husky in my ear. “I have nothing to hide.”
My heart pounded in my ears. I was certain he could hear it. But, at least his heart was pounding too. I took a breath and tried to ignore the warmth of him.
“Then who—” I swallowed “Who’s perfume is that?”
God, I just asked that question like a jealous girlfriend. Dammit.
Jonathan’s forehead hit my shoulder.
“Some girl from one of the clubs downtown,” he said, his breath warm against my shoulder blade as he spoke to the ground. “Elaine. She was just looking for a good time; I needed to blow off some steam. We had a fun night, but never even exchanged phone numbers.”
He lifted his head, but I didn’t turn around.
“You aren’t even sure you want me, and yet here you are riled up about some weeks-old perfume in my apartment?” He sighed and then kissed my shoulder. “You territorial little thing.” The mirth was back in his voice. “That was weeks ago.”
The good thing about this internal truth-o-meter I had somehow developed upon turning into a werewolf, was that there was something liberating about just knowing something is true.
I sucked on the inside of my bottom lip. “Would you still have slept with me if you were still talking with her?”
“Lynn.” He tugged at my shoulder, turning me to face him. “We can’t really have worthwhile relationships with regular people. We can’t say anything about being a werewolf, so there’s always this distance. I don’t know if you know this, but people don’t like to be kept at an arms distance all the time. Particularly not if they want to be in any kind of meaningful relationship with you.”
I tried to keep my eyes glued to his face, but they kept drifting south. After one or two course corrections, he smiled at me. The smug bastard.
I echoed Sheppard’s words to me: “People aren’t ready for werewolves.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“That doesn’t actually answer my question, though.”
His green eyes met my own. “No. I wouldn’t have still slept with you.”
I could feel the stupid truth to that too. Well at least there was that.
Something mischievous glittered in his eyes. “But I definitely would have ended it with her as soon as I got the chance, so I could try.”
I gasped at him in mock surprise. There were butterflies in my stomach and something warm settled between my thighs.
He winked and disappeared into the bathroom. The water turned on immediately after.
He still hadn’t shut the door.
“God,” he said a moment later. “
No wonder you took such a long shower! I forget how this soot clings!”
“You forget?! How many of these house fires have you helped clean up after?” I sat down on the closed toilet. If he wasn’t going to shut me out, then there was no point to shouting throughout the apartment.
Not that I really needed to shout anyway—when he replied, I could hear him clearly despite the water running. “This is at least the third. They try it in nearly every town we go to. I guess since we wipe out the brood that does it, word can’t exactly travel at how ineffective it is.”
“Doesn’t it get expensive to keep moving like that?”
“Of course it does,” he said. “But remember, the pack has money tucked away for things like this, and Sheppard always gets the highest level of homeowner’s insurance he can get.”
“He said Daniel’s a big-time lawyer, too, right?”
“Yep,” he replied, “and Daniel fights tooth and claw to make sure the pack is never shorted on claims.”
I fell quiet again, thinking.
The water started up in the other bathroom. I hadn’t even heard when Ian finished his shower. The steam filling this bathroom was heady with wood and warmth. His soap and shampoo added another layer to his scent, reminding me vaguely of the detergent aisle in the big-box store, but his scent floated above it on the steam.
Mine, declared that little voice again.
I sighed. “You could have said something sooner about your age, you know.”
The water turned off and Jonathan’s scarred arm grabbed the towel from the rack.
“When would have been appropriate? Between telling you that your bloodline goes all the way back to the family of Jesus and Matt letting slip that your first change could mean you have to die?”
The shower curtain opened and gold flecked green eyes bored into mine. The towel was tucked around his waist.
“You say that like you actually did plan to say something.”
He ran a hand through hair that looked black with the water. “You’re right. Like I said before, it truly never occurred to me.”
Water dripped down his chest and those stomach muscles, tracing the lines of his scars.
He rolled a shoulder. “Not that there would have been any good time to mention it even if I had planned to.”
The warmth returned between my thighs and the butterflies settled into the pit of my stomach again. I licked my lips and stood, taking a step toward him before I stopped myself and closed my eyes, trying to clear my head again.
Why did I always just want to throw myself at him every time I saw him? I took a breath, but it was filled with his woodsy warmth and practically crackled with the electricity between us. And why did it always feel like that was exactly what I was supposed to be doing every time?
He took a step toward me then, closing the distance between us.
“You’re going to outlive those friends of yours, Lynn,” he said, his voice low and soft.
They weren’t really my friends. I mean, I guess they were the closest things I had. But I didn’t really fit in with them. And I always got the feeling they were only inviting me along for things because they felt sorry for me.
One of his arms curled around my waist and pulled me closer to him. His other hand brushed my cheek.
“You’ll outlive practically everyone you know now. But not us, not pack.” He bent his head and closed his mouth over my own as his hand tangled in my hair.
The kiss tingled through my entire body, right down to my toes, settling in that warm spot between my thighs. He was hard against me, and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to rip my own clothes off and lay with him there on the bathroom floor, nevermind that there was a perfectly serviceable bed only steps away. His heart hammered in his chest, its rhythm matching my own.
I wondered then if Kaylah’s ever matched Daniel’s, or if Chastity’s ever matched Matt’s. It was a silly thing to wander through my mind at that moment and I smiled against his mouth.
He pulled back then, looking at me. There was a heat in his eyes like there had been on the couch this morning. “We really don’t have the time now.” There was a sorrow to his voice. “Not the kind of time I’d like. Not for this.”
I pouted at him. “It’s a wonder if we ever will have the kind of time you’d like.”
I ran a hand down his back and over his butt, releasing the towel from his waist. I kissed him again as my other hand wrapped around his hardness.
He inhaled sharply at my touch and twitched in my hand. It only stoked the heat in me and I ran my hand up and down his length. He growled and picked me up, sitting me on the bathroom counter, and took a step away from me, effectively placing his hardness out of reach. His hands were on the counter, on either side of my thighs, and he rested his head against my forehead.
“I want you so bad I could crawl out of my skin just to take you,” he said thickly, sending yet another wave of heat through me.
My heart hammered in my ears and at my throat.
“But I’m also not willing to rush things before I know you really want this.” His eyes met mine, the golden flecks had grown so that hardly any green remained. His heart beat just as hard as my own, the rhythm continuing to match. “I just want everything to be perfect with you. As perfect as it can be. I know life is messy and what we are is messy. But you...” He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to my forehead. “God. There is nothing more that I want than to give you the entire world if it would just make you smile.” He placed his head against my forehead again. “And I’m ready to tear apart anyone who could stand in the way of that.”
A shiver ran through me.
“And that terrifies me,” he continued, his voice quiet, but husky with need. “It’s scarier than anything I’ve ever known.”
I swallowed around a lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. Biting on my bottom lip and sucking on it, I raised my hands to his head, tangling in his hair as I brought his face up to meet mine. I stared into those too-golden eyes for a long moment.
“I’m trying to give you the space you need to decide for yourself what you want,” he said.
I closed my mouth around his, tangling my hand in his hair as the other wrapped around his shoulder. We stayed like that for a long moment before I pulled back from him.
“If we are as long-lived as you say,” I said. “As long-lived as Sheppard says, then there is time for us. If there is ever to be an us, there is time for it. I just need to figure you out first. Maybe this pack and wolf stuff too. But definitely you.” I closed my eyes and placed my forehead against his, rubbing his nose with my own. “It’s pretty obvious that I want you too, you know. And that’s pretty scary for me too. It hasn’t exactly gone well with anyone I’ve dated in the past, and what you’re talking about sounds so much more serious than just dating.”
“And that’s what I mean about coming around to a place in here,” he pulled his head back and gently bumped it into my forehead again, “where you don’t want any of this.”
“That’s not at all what I mean.” I placed a quick kiss on his mouth. “It seems to me to be pretty obvious that I at least want part of this. I just haven’t yet decided on the rest.” I met his eyes, a smirk pulling at my mouth. “Maybe you’ll have to convince me.”
He kissed me, and I could feel the relaxation flow through him. Which, again, set my stupid little heart to singing.
Mine, declared that insistent little voice. And maybe, just maybe, it was right.
NINETEEN
IAN’S PLACE WAS THE basement apartment below a retired lady’s Victorian-style home on the west side of town, in Old Colorado City. He mentioned on the drive that since he showered at Jonathan’s, he only needed to pick up a few changes of clothes from his place. There was no hint of the scent of vampires here, just as there hadn’t been at Jonathan’s.
Ian wanted to make it a quick stop, so we didn’t follow him in. He came back to the Jeep a few moments later with a black duffel b
ag, presumably full of his clothes. As he settled back into the backseat, clicking his seatbelt into place, Jonathan’s phone buzzed. Then mine did the same, and Jamie’s, and Ian’s. It was a group message.
Sheppard: Matt’s back. Waiting on you.
I didn’t even know I had his number, though I guess I just missed it scrolling through my contacts before.
“Glad we made it a quick stop here, then,” Ian said, tucking his phone back into his pocket.
Jonathan: On our way.
Jonathan’s reply buzzed around the phones in the Jeep before he was back on the highway. I apparently had his number too. I scrolled through the contacts in my phone; all of my old contacts were there, but Sheppard must have added all of the pack’s numbers when he activated this phone with my SIM card. Well that was handy.
The freshly cleaned scents of Jonathan, Jamie, and Ian were relaxing. Jamie’s motor oil scent was now tinged with a lemony freshness, the same lemony freshness that seemed to enhance Ian’s citrus-y cocoa scent.
I wasn’t ready to think about long-term stuff with Jonathan, but I saw no problem in spending time with him in the meantime. Besides, it would help me to decide, right? Maybe I would just get sick of his face.
He caught me watching him again and smiled at me.
Or maybe I’d just keep awkwardly staring at him for the rest of my apparently long life. I rolled my eyes at myself and turned to look out the window.
Jonathan’s warm hand fell on my knee and, aside from shifting gears at the appropriate time, stayed there until we reached Sheppard’s house. It only stoked the song in my stupid little heart.
These guys felt more like home than anything I had been able to produce since moving out of my parents’ house four and a half years ago. It was bizarre, but comforting.
At the box-like glass house, Jonathan was left parking on the street. A white Mercedes was parked next to Sheppard’s black truck, with Matt’s gorgeous red and black Camaro behind it. My purple Del Sol was on the street in front of the house, with a blue Ford Mustang in front of it.
Chastity pulled a huge package of paper towels out of the back of Sheppard’s truck as Jonathan parked in front of the blue Mustang. We got out of the Jeep, and she pulled another huge package, this one of toilet paper, out of the truck bed. Jonathan opened the door to the house for her and we followed her in.
A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1) Page 16