Resisting Fate (Predetermined)

by Heather Van Fleet

  My head titled to the side and my neck went completely limp, my arms and legs did as well. The buttons on my jeans were ripped away, as he started to pull me down underneath him on the steps. The carpet burned my back, as he pushed against me. I cried out, but the sound was a wasted effort. Vomit began to pool in my throat at the thought of his hands on me, so with the last breath in my lungs, the last muscle in my arm, I let him have it again. Bucking, biting, and fighting so hard that he finally had to stop apparently. He grabbed hold of the stair railing, and finally fell off of me.

  What happened next was like something out of a horror movie. Not one of those Jason or Freddy movies, but more like that movie, Twenty Eight Weeks Later, where all those people had that zombie like virus, and attacked and killed everyone around them the moment they became infected with it. Because seriously, the animal that appeared behind the step-douche was vicious and mouth foaming of course, except for the fact that his eyes were so blue that the only word I could possibly have described him as was beautiful. And zombies were not beautiful.

  Wolves kind of were…

  A scream tore from my throat as this beautiful creature, tossed the step-douche towards the front door with his teeth. I scrambled to stand upright, struggling to keep my pants up, as a loud thud sounded against the wall. I blinked, and raced down the steps, noticing John’s limp and unmoving frame passed out on the floor. I covered my mouth, noticing all the blood, the blood that was currently gushing in waves from his neck. There were puddles everywhere. The faint smell of rust permeated the air. The sight was gruesome, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline pouring through my veins, then I probably would have passed out.

  “Wait…” I cried as the animal hovered over John’s frame again. I may have hated my stepfather, but I didn’t want to see him get murdered in front of my face. Beat up, tore up, maybe even choked a little too, but I didn’t want his death on my hands, or on this innocent wolf’s paws either.

  As if the animal before me understood, he stopped, but instead of looking back at me, he turned to stare up at a dark form that appeared in the doorway. I gasped, pressing my fist to my mouth. My nerves were shot, so I went running, right straight into his arms, Adrian’s arms. I needed some sort of safety and I didn’t give a damn who provided it.

  “Shh, hey, it’s okay…” he soothed, as he threw some item of clothing over my head. His body was anything but relaxed as he awkwardly patted my shoulders. Before I had the chance to even think rationally about who I was hugging, the flat out reality of the situation hit me full on, wracking my body with panic and dread and crap…tears.

  “Oh, God…” I sobbed, embarrassingly loud as I clung to Adrian’s neck. I was practically climbing to his body like a ladder, but if it made me better, then I’d sure as hell keep doing it.

  A deep growl emitted from the wolf’s throat next to me, and I paused as Adrian nervously chuckled in my ear. “Um, I don’t think my brother likes it too much when you are um, hugging me like this sweetheart.”

  Embarrassed beyond mortifying belief, I backed away from him, throwing a hand over my mouth and my stomach as I did. I barely made it to the garbage can to heave the contents of my gut into the plastic. I retched and cried, and gagged like a son of a bitch, vaguely aware of the sounds of bones cracking behind me as I held tight to the edges of the sides.

  Damn…and I seriously thought my stomach was stronger than that!

  ”Go, Adrian. Take care of things. We’ll meet you back at the Martins in a while.”

  My heart jolted up into my throat as I swung myself around. Oh crap, the wolf was now a shirtless, shoeless, and panting Jack. And he was standing right there in my kitchen. If I wasn’t feeling so loopy, then I probably would have been drooling. Badly. Because as shirtless, rippled up Jack was too damn hot not to stare at…

  “You okay, Strawberry?”

  I blinked and nodded, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt as I nervously took to glancing around the room.

  “Where…is he?” My voice trembled as I moved tentatively towards Jacks side. Surprisingly, the fear over the suddenly missing John took a distant second as I stared up at the face of this beautiful boy, this beautiful man was more like it, the man who apparently could calm me now, by simply looking at me. I didn’t question it though. There was no point.

  “Adrian took care of him.” He cringed as he looked back over his shoulders towards the front door. My hands gripped my still churning stomach again. God, I hoped took care of it meant knocked some sense into him instead of actually…well, you know, killing him.

  Jack finally broke the distance between us, slowly moving to stand in front of me. His arms were clenched to his side as if he was submitting to me in some way, letting me know that he wasn’t going to hurt me, I was guessing. It’s a little hard to believe that Jack was a wolf literally five minutes ago, attempting to eat the step-douche like he was a juicy raw steak. Then again, I wasn’t surprised by it either. Nothing surprised me anymore actually, because at this point in the supernatural world of witches and wolves and warlocks, everything was now fair game.

  With Zachary as a wolf, all I felt was his hostility, his anger, towards everyone around him, me included. With Jack, things were…different, in the sense that he was protecting me from the step-douche, even seemingly able to understand me when I told him to stop. He was more controlled and tame, I could already tell. He was like a regular housedog, only with giant, snarling fangs and paws two times the size of my feet.

  “He didn’t uh, kill him, did he? I mean, he was in pretty bad shape I think…” I worried my lower lip, hating myself for caring about someone who so obviously wanted to rape me, and also not too long ago, tried to kill me. I guess I was so scared that Jack would get in trouble for it, especially since he was the one who did the extreme damage.

  “No Emmy, he didn’t.” The air in the kitchen seemed to change, a tension formed between us that I hadn’t necessarily felt before with Jack. And that was saying something, seeing as though I had already felt almost every emotion written in the dictionary with him.

  His narrowed eyes, he was pissed at me, and it wasn’t the normal you’re an idiot girl, pissed at me either. “God dammit, Emmy! Who in their right freaking mind would really care if that piece of trash died anyway?” His arms flung around in violent circles, his temper fumed, and I jumped when he shoved a chair to the ground, “You shouldn’t care about him. I sure as shit don’t, especially since he tried to…to…Christ, I’m not going to spell it out here…” Jack’s frame shook, his fingers especially as they ran rapidly through the wild, black spikes on top of his head.

  “Jesus Jack, I don’t care about him, I care about you getting in trouble for it!” My confession shocked him into a standstill. He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t so much as even blink as he glared down at me. Something else appeared in those blue orbs of his though. That wasn’t admiration in there I was seeing…was it?

  I sighed and reached for him. I couldn’t control myself because when he looked at me like that, all those emotions I swore I wasn’t going to follow through with were back, and more powerful than ever.

  “Hey,” I smiled up at him softly, taking a few cautious steps until I stood within inches of his jumpy body. I didn’t think twice as I reached for his hand, drawing it close to the center of my chest. I spread out his fingers, placing his palm directly over my thundering heart. “Don’t you see? I could care less about him.”

  He edged forward until our knees connected. Those ever present waves of electricity vibrated between us. I tried not to react to them, but the simple touch of his fingers made everything around us cease. All the pain, the heartache, I couldn’t help but not feel it. Experience the power of it all, our connection.

  I stared down at our other hands. They were interlocked. When had that happened? I noted the redness under my fingertips first, probably from clawing at the step-douche so hard. But that’s not what really caught my attention. It was the black tatt
oo crossing over his knuckles that drew me in. The word, I was assuming it was a word, had never been there before, or at least not that I’d seen.

  I swallowed, losing all my inhibitions. I had to touch it. I was drawn to it–like it was meant for me or something. I was losing it, seriously. I didn’t like tattoos, at all, but this one…this one was different. I brushed my fingertips over the surface. It was rough. Weird…

  Jack sucked in a breath, and I looked up at him, fascinated. His face though, continued to appear strained, like my touch was almost painful to him. It wasn’t though, right?

  “You’ve got a tattoo.” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “It’s beautiful, what does it say?” I bit my lip.

  “It means…” he sucked in a breath, and pulled away, covering it with his other hand as he did, “…taken.”

  “Taken?” He nodded, but dropped his gaze to the floor.

  “Let’s go, Emmy.” He choked out his words, his face looked anguished, eyes pulled together, his face pale. And then he turned away from me.

  I curled my lip at his backside; I was tired of him running away. It was time we hashed this out. Whether it ended in a passionate kiss, or flailing hands, it didn’t matter. I needed answers, answers about him, about us, nobody else.

  “When did you start to change, Jack?” His bare back went ramrod as he hit the arch leading into the kitchen. He didn’t respond. This only pissed me off even more. “I said, when did you change into a—”

  “I heard what you said, Emmy,” he sighed, his shoulders drooped, “I heard you.” He turned abruptly, moving forward to grab my wrist. He pulled me alongside of him, and like the good little girl I was not, I followed anyway.

  His nails dug into my skin, and the only thing his dominant, controlling move did was piss me off even more, if that was even possible.

  “Answer me Jack. I’m done with you side stepping around everything. You do it…Kelsey does it…Hell, even Zachary did it and he’s supposedly in love with me still.” I threw my free arm in the air, and Jack growled as he pulled me through the front door, down the sidewalk, and towards his always there-like-a-bad-dream-gone-good, Harley. “I am not going to get on that bike with you Jack. Not until I get some answers.”

  I freed my wrist, tapping my foot like a temperamental kid. I didn’t care that he had begun to laugh at me. I didn’t care that he shook his head at me with his evil, devil grin. I needed to know about us, especially if I was inevitably supposed to be part of it all. I got some answers from his aunt and uncle, but not the answers I needed.

  “Fine, you stubborn little…” he paused, running a hand down the front of his face, “I’ll tell you anything you need to know. We need to leave first because I’m not sure when, or if, your step dad will be back.”

  “Where did Adrian take him? And how did he do it so quickly? The step-douche was not a little guy, you know.”

  “Well, Adrian is a warlock. He has his…ways.” His sideways smirk was enough to set my heart into triple overdrive speed. Damn the guy for being so cute. “You’re staring at me again, Strawberry, you do that a lot, you know,” My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I followed suit and jumped on the bike behind him. I shrugged. He stared at me a lot too. But I wasn’t going to stoop to his level and point it out.

  Three times now, three times I’d been on this bike with him, and I was seriously starting to like it, too much actually. The noise, the power it inflicted in me, the way my hands felt wrapped around his body. And now, the icing on my chocolate cake was the fact that he was shirtless. I loved his body, no matter how much he annoyed me… And our connection was growing on me too, probably more than I should have let it.

  “Crap, my mom, Jamie. I can’t leave them.” I gripped his waist tighter, and he leaned his head back until his cheek was almost pressed against my lips.

  He whispered low, the sound rocketed through me, and I shuddered, digging my fingers into his stomach. It was rock hard. Damn, his abs went beyond washboard. “Don’t worry about them. I’ve got people watching the woods.”

  “People? As in wolf people?” I whispered back, trying not to let his nearness affect me too much. But with my lips practically molesting his face and his hand gripping my leg with his giant fingers, that was an almost impossible thing to do. He chuckled and shook his head, but didn’t answer me as he squeezed my leg one last time before turning back around.

  Okay yeah, I didn’t like the idea of wolf people watching over my house. He grumbled, the heavy noise vibrated down into his stomach. In turn, I felt it under my fingers. They itched to squeeze him tighter, to draw out more noises.

  Sweet Jesus, I knew this was going to happen. Every time I touched him…“Stop,” I growled to myself. Jack laughed, as if he knew what I was thinking. The jerk.

  “Fine, but you started it.” He laughed harder.

  I leaned my forehead against his back. What the hell was I going to do with myself? I was beyond messed up and totally in over my head. But too, I’d never felt more alive in my entire life then I did in that moment.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Okay, so going with Jack definitely wasn’t my brightest idea in the world, especially when he chose the furthest cliff-side in all of Jackson County to take me to. It took us forty-five miserable minutes to get to this little hideaway, and it was all done on the back of his Harley…in the freezing cold…with nothing but a sweater on.

  Nope, not the most stellar plan by any means. Still, it was beautiful–serene even here, so in a way the cold, ride was worth it.

  Jack gripped my elbow to help me off his bike. One of his hands settled on the small of my back and I grinned up at him from under my lashes. I wasn’t above flirting to get what I needed, even though I knew it was pretty damn wrong. Flirting was sort of engrained in me anyway, especially when it was with a guy like Jack-the-sexy-snarky-wolf.

  Wow. Did I really think that?

  I shook my head. I was definitely in another time warp here because I was not, by any means whatsoever, a girly girl. Still though, I played it up, not a bit ashamed to admit that his weird, tender side was causing me to feel exactly like that. His normal hard ass attitude was getting old anyways, so to see it all go away, if only for a brief period of time, was more than worth the damsel in distress routine on my behalf. His eyes had light in them that I hadn’t seen before, and I didn’t know if it was the mountain-cliff thingy that was causing it, or if he was that mentally unstable with his emotions.

  We strolled away from his bike towards the edge of the cliff. Neither of us said anything, and it made the moment all that more perfect. So perfect in fact that I almost forgot that I was now living in a world that was completely unfamiliar to me. Jack’s face was so much more at ease on the other hand, that I tucked my little pocket of angst towards the back of my head, and went with the moment. Whatever that moment was going to bring was fine with me.

  He dropped his hand from my back, and immediately my legs wobbled like Jell-O. Damn, I didn’t literally want to be needy like that, but the absence of Jack’s warm body pressed into my side was certainly noticeable. I shivered as the cool evening air blew through my thin sweater, watching regrettably as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. I sighed, I had to get over this obsession, really, really soon.

  We walked side by side and a comfortable silence passed between us. I should have been pissed at him for being so ridiculous with me at my house before we left, but he did kind of save me too, so I guess that right there was enough of an incentive to forgive him.

  The October trees surrounding us were growing thin. Branches appeared lonely as they swayed in the autumn breeze all around us. I took in the view. My breath hitched in my throat as I gazed out at the distant, snow-covered mountains. In all the years that I have lived in Colorado, I’d never once seen a view like this one before. It was amazing.

  “So damn beautiful…” Jack murmured from beside me, and I nodded in agreement. When I turned to face him, to final
ly bring up the questions I had been contemplating on the way over, I discovered that he was not, in fact, talking about the mountain after all.

  It was me he was focused on, one hundred and fifty percent.

  “Jack?” I questioned softly, tilting my head to the side. My heart began betraying me again with its quick pitter-patter movements. And then he turned, and inched closer. Holy balls, my heart was definitely bordering heart attack speeds again.

  “I can’t even believe…” he sighed, brushing a tendril of my hair that had fallen loose from my ponytail, behind my ear. He watched the movement, and I almost wished I could too, but watching him was far better.

  Every bit of his caress, every tiny molecule from his skin against mine, sent waves of pleasure throughout my body. I was all of two seconds away from jumping him, right then and there. He sighed after a few more strokes of his hand against my skin, finally backing away to sit down on an outstretched rock nearby. My body was still frozen in place as I tried to figure out what kind of spell he continued to place over me.

  “What can’t you believe, Jack?” I whispered as I moved to join him. My breathing was not exactly erratic, but it was pretty, darn close. Slow deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth, I had to remember, I hadn’t come here for this.

  “Nothing…never mind.”

  “You don’t have to do that, you know…hide things from me constantly. I’m the queen of keeping secrets.” I turned to face him, tucking my hands in between my legs.

  “I do, secrets are far better off with me than they are with you anyways…” he nudged my shoulder with his.

  I could hear the grin in his voice and I smiled back in return, giggling myself. When in the hell had I turned into a giggler? Without even knowing it, I somehow or another, found my head on top of his shoulder. Crap. I’d crossed the line, big time. This went beyond our kiss. This went beyond the neck licking and sniffing thing too. This was far more…lovey.