Spring Feve

by Emerald Wright

  I stared at him, drinking in the dark stubble, his fierce eyes and carelessly perfect hair. “Nice suit,” I said, although I think only about half of the words were actually audible. “It’s, uh, soft.”

  I realized that I had grabbed his lapel, and pulled my hand away quickly. Then I smoothed the lapel back down where I’d apparently pinched it. The heat from his chest – his muscular, hard chest – was even more thrilling than that from his hand.

  How can anyone be this hot? Like physically this warm of a temperature?

  “Do you feel okay?” I asked. “You’re kinda hot.”

  “Warm natured,” he said in a growly whisper. “Runs in the family. Twenty-five thousand? For the dog?”

  I was nodding. “I woulda taken five hundred bucks.”

  “Call the rest a tip. I’ll be back next week.” His thumb brushed my wrist, leaving a hot trail that seemed to stretch all the way to my ladyparts which, indeed, tingled. “You’re brilliant. You’ll do my statue and I’ll pay you plenty. Who do I make the check out to for the dog?”

  “Dill—Delilah Coltrane,” I said, not quite believing what I was saying. “And are you sure?”

  He whipped out one of those longer-than-normal checkbooks that usually only businesses use, and filled it out quickly.

  “About which part?” he asked, capping the pen. A second later, he took my arm again, circled his thumb against my wrist and I thought I was going to explode. Wouldn’t that be a sight? “The dog? Or the statue?”

  “Both,” I said.

  “Well, I just wrote a check for the dog. And as far as the other bit, yeah, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”

  The finality with which he spoke; the gravity, the intensity, it was all just so... perfect?

  He lifted my hand to his lips, pressed them to the back of it. His eyes never left mine. It felt like they were boring into my soul, and making parts of me surge and tingle that had not done either of those things in quite some time.

  “Ne-next week?” I asked, more to move my mouth and keep myself from either drooling or jumping on him and humping tis poor guy’s leg like a Chihuahua in heat.

  He kissed my hand again and slid his fingers in a dance along my inner arm, finally inserting the check between my fingers in the instant before he dropped my hand, which fell limply to my side. “Next week,” he said again, never once freeing me from that burning, wonderful gaze. “Wednesday afternoon. I’m not much for mornings.”

  I curled my fingers, for some reason expecting to feel the heat from his skin one last time, but all I got was a fistful of my cotton blend skirt. He turned back from the doorway, smiled once more, and then closed the door behind him. Jeanette was standing in the studio. In all the, uh, whatever it was that just happened, I hadn’t even noticed her.

  “Growly, huh?” she said, watching him out the window.

  His perfectly firm butt moving just the right way underneath his beautifully tailored slacks made me think about my definitely less-than-perfect butt. It didn’t seem to matter how many flights of stadium stairs I ran, it never got the way I wanted it. I didn’t have time to worry about that though, too much to do. Too many dog statues to finish.

  “He bought the Scotty,” I said in a hollow, confused sort of voice that turned upward at the end.

  Jeanette sucked in so much air when I handed her the check that she could possibly have inhaled said Scotty statue, if it were still here, anyway. “Twenty... twenty-five thousand dollars?”

  I nodded. “He must’ve liked it,” I said. “Wait, twenty five? He said he’d give me twenty.”

  “I like him,” Jeanette responded. “I like you Jake Somerset. That’s his name, it’s on the check.”

  “God,” I whispered. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. I like you too, Jake Somerset.”

  His name on my lips tasted manly, musky, and before I knew it another of those tingling sensations shot through me.

  As I sat there, still watching him through the window, Jake Somerset ran a hand through his hair in a completely non-pretentious way, and climbed on the back of a long, black motorcycle. It wasn’t a Harley – Jake Somerset wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to make a lot of noise. He just was the noise. He didn’t have to try to be in charge, he just was.

  “I got a dog to do,” I said as he sped off. I reached over to the table where the Scotty had been, and picked up my coffee. Black, one sugar, tepid. The way I always seemed to drink it.

  “I think that’s illegal,” Jeanette offered, helpfully.

  Snorting, the tingling in my ladyparts became a much different kind of sensation – the burning of coffee in the nasal cavity. “Thanks,” I said, sniffing and coughing. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Just tryin’ to help.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. “I’ll do my best.”

  -3-

  “No, I’ve never read any romance novels. Why do you ask?”

  -Jake

  He slammed his fist down hard, rattling the pen cup, executive ball-clacker, and whatever the coaster-holding thing was that sat on his desk.

  It was for practice. Jake wasn’t angry at anything just then, but he knew at some point, he’d need to do some fist slamming, so he may as well be good at it.

  Especially since his office was empty. Hell, the whole floor was empty except for his massive corner office that still had the remnants of a putting green his dad wasted untold hours with piled up in the corner. He hadn’t found any golf clubs. Even if he had, Jake wasn’t exactly the golfing type.

  “You’ll do what I say and you’ll do it now!” he shouted, pounding both of his fists onto the desk this time, which tipped over the coaster holder. He decided it was supposed to be either an eagle claw or a giraffe’s hoof. “No delays, Franklin! I said do it now – and I mean this instant!”

  With his hair a little ruffled and his testosterone flowing, Jake took a deep breath and looked around his office. It was bare, except for a couple of very large portraits that his father had done of himself, and one with his golfing-slash-drinking buddies where everyone was smiling and laughing, all a little red-faced.

  “Old man never smiled around us,” he said with a sad, reminiscent smile. “Can’t blame him much though, with the brother I had. Have. Ugh, yeah I still have him.” He’d taken to talking to himself out loud due to a slightly lonely childhood, but when you’re the one of two possible alphas in a pack of werewolves who can hardly stand one another for long enough to get through Thanksgiving dinner without at least a little bit of blood, sometimes the only things you have to talk to are the cat and yourself.

  He also spent a lot of time talking to his cat.

  His eyes slid to the single Post-It stuck on his desk calendar, which struck him as quaintly old-fashioned. Jake was glad for it though, as he’d never learned to use the one on either his phone, or his computer, past making sophomoric jokes that somehow spelled out naughty words with scheduled events.

  “Dane – Meeting – 1 PM,” the note read, in Jake’s bold handwriting. Every stroke of a writing instrument he made was determined, purposeful, and he usually wrote in Sharpie, which helped with the masculinity of his penmanship despite his propensity for curlicues. He clenched his fist tight, this time on instinct, and squeezed until his short fingernails dug into the palm of his hand, leaving tracks that itched slightly.

  An urge struck. Jake strode across the lavish rug that covered the majority of his father’s office floor – and that’s how he still thought of it, even though he’d been running the place for six months – enjoying the way his bare toes squished in the silky red carpet. His mind returned to being fifteen, stalking back and forth across this exact same rug, thinking more or less the same thing he was thinking right then – why the hell do I have to deal with my brother?

  Remembering why he’d walked across the room in the first place, Jake mashed the button on ancient, wood-grain intercom that was bo
ught used when his dad built this place in the 70s. Still worked though, so why replace it?

  “George?” he asked into it when no one immediately responded to his button pressing.

  The sound of a pair of heels hitting the floor came first, followed by the creak of an old office chair swiveling. Her last act before responding to him was to put down the paperback she was reading with a decided pop. “What’s up?”

  George was... not your garden variety assistant. She’d been with Jake for most of his life as the regional pack alpha. He was in charge of an area that spread across most of Texas – although the south part was a different region – Oklahoma, and most of the South East. Miami, like south Texas, was a different jurisdiction. Good thing too, because Jake had a hell of a time learning Spanish.

  She was only a couple of years older than he was, and if it weren’t for her husband and her four kids, he wouldn’t have minded one bit making a little mating action with her. That had never been on the table though, probably for the best. Jake had a way of flubbing relationships once they got anywhere near serious.

  “If we’re going to work here, we have to be more formal. The riffraff is going to start thinking we’re a couple.”

  She laughed her nasal laugh that was just like home to Jake. “I think they care more about being called riffraff than who the boss is fucking.”

  “George!” he hissed. “You can’t say that! What if someone hears?”

  “Say what?” she asked, genuinely confused. “That thing about not wanting to be called riffraff? Who would like that? It’s very insulting.”

  “No, George,” Jake said. “The other thing.”

  “What other thing?”

  Unbeknownst to him, she had turned the outgoing volume on the intercom to high.

  “That we’re,” Jake pursed his lips. “Fucking,” he whispered.

  Immediately, the entire front office staff – which was light that day, thankfully – erupted into laughter and a couple of wolf whistles. Well, not actual wolf whistles. In the entire building there were two souls who knew about the whole werewolf business, and one of them was busy harassing the other.

  “Okay very good,” he said, as the laughter died down. “You got me. Can you come up here? I need to ask you some things about pa—”

  Jake gritted his teeth. Of all the things about acclimating to life among regular people who had absolutely no knowledge past stories and weird teen romances that his people existed, was the first rule of werewolfing, which was that you never talk about werewolfing.

  Not with a human, and not with a witch or a vamp. The last thing in the world the pack needed was to be hunted to near extinction again, like had happened when the United States was a gleam in Ben Franklin’s eye. And anyway, everything’s easier when you don’t have to constantly watch your back.

  “Yeah,” she said, heading him off. “Be right up. Gotta clean the riffraff off of my fine textiles before I present myself to his majesty.”

  “I’m sorry!” Jake said, playfully, before switching off the intercom.

  He’d been worried about taking the company because, first of all, he didn’t know the first damn thing about international banking, or investment banking, and to be perfectly honest, all of that stuff made his teeth hurt a little. He’d always been the political black sheep of the family, and the idea of being some self-important billionaire with a thousand employees or whatever he had just didn’t appeal.

  Then again, getting a statue made of himself to replace the one his father had made of himself? That... held a certain delight that appealed to Jake on a very deep, primal level.

  And then there’s the girl making it, he thought, as he stared out the window of the tallest building for miles. From his lair that was right out in the open, right out in the midst of polite, ignorant society, he could see the entire city.

  Franklin City was a weird place.

  Not in a bad way, it just didn’t fit. It was a university town in the middle of nowhere, so everyone looking for a cheap degree ended up going through this place at one point or another. Not many stayed, though, since outside of the community college and the four year, there wasn’t much of anything. A few tech startups, sure, and a fairly flourishing arts district, but that was just about all there was in Franklin City.

  Never in my whole life have I met someone – anyone – like her. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts to focus on pack politics bullshit, but he just couldn’t. The way she smelled, the way her skin tasted, her lotion, or whatever it was; her hair with that funny kink, the way she smiled and laughed...

  “What’s up, boss?” George unceremoniously threw open the giant oak door and let it swing free until it hit the extent of the hinges and thumped against the wall. “Is it about Dane?”

  “No,” he said, obviously trying to not talk about what was actually bothering him. “I ordered a statue and I need to go model for it.”

  “Er,” George chuckled. “You commissioned a statue of yourself?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “From a woman in town – Delilah Coltrane – her other stuff looks good.”

  “Oh yeah!” George got excited. “A couple weekends ago I went to an exhibition of hers. If you’re going to get a statue of yourself, you probably picked the right girl to do it. How big?”

  He shrugged. “Big, I guess.”

  “Isn’t that a little bit, I dunno, ancient Egyptian of you? A colossus of yourself in front of your palace?”

  Jake smiled, a smug grin on his lips that made George laugh, but made pretty much everyone else in the world a little weak in the knees. “If it was good enough for Ramses, it’s good enough for me.”

  “Good job, you watched a documentary. So you do remember that he was the God-King of an entire empire, right? And you’re just... a pack alpha?”

  He scoffed. “I’ve got one thing going for me Ramses doesn’t.” He thought for a moment. “At least one.”

  Tapping her fingers against her chin, “a chariot pulled by lions?”

  Shaggy brown hair shook from side to side.

  “You and your elite body guards destroyed an entire army by yourselves?”

  “Close, but no.”

  “Father to a hundred some odd children?”

  He laughed. “I hope not, anyway.”

  “Then I give up,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I,” Jake announced dramatically, “am not dead.”

  George stared at him for a moment before she began slow-clapping. “You are also a master at deflecting reality. So I’m to take it that your entire derail there was to hide that you are, in fact, upset about Dane?”

  Jake was frowning deeply, but didn’t realize it until George made a remark about how he looked like he’d just eaten a lemon, rind and all. George laughed after her comment.

  “So it is about Dane, huh?”

  Jake grumbled a yes. George stared at him for a second, and he realized he wasn’t going to get away with being vague. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with him. Why am I even meeting him in the first place? He’s been gone... what, five years? Since he just up and left?”

  She looked at her phone. “Yup. Well, five and a half. And to be honest with you, I don’t know why you’re meeting with him. Part of me being me, and keeping my job, is that I don’t mess with pack politics.”

  Jake hunched his shoulders, squeezing his hands together so hard the knuckles cracked. “I mean, what could he possibly want?”

  George had a look on her face that said she knew more than she was saying. “Well,” she said, “I don’t mess with pack politics, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any ideas.”

  He leaned heavily on his desk, fists balled up and shoulders tense. “I’m all ears.”

  “Well,” she began, “you remember why he left, right?”

  “Sure, because pops named me the alpha.”

  She nodded. “And do you think that might have s
omething to do with this meeting?”

  “How could it?” Jake shot at her. He was angry, though he didn’t mean to be – at least, not at George. “He’s the one who left. I didn’t have a single thing to do with that. And anyway, even if he is somehow still angry, what the hell good is it going to do?”

  A silky voice wafted through the open door. “I’m going to challenge you to a mating. And if you don’t manage to succeed, the whole thing is mine.”

  “Dane,” Jake hissed. He went to slam his hands on his desk like he’d practiced, but somehow, that didn’t properly express the venom he felt coursing through his veins. Instead, he just clenched his fists and glared. “How dare you come back here after abandoning the pack? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Dane, with his short-cropped brown hair, clean-shaven dimpled chin and startlingly blue eyes, just smiled. “I’m the real heir to our father’s fortune. You’re a pretender who decided to play funny business with the pack.”

  The corner of Dane’s left eye twitched. Jake didn’t remember very much about his estranged brother, but he did recall that when Dane lied, his eye twitched. Of course, that didn’t seem to matter much.

  “You gonna try me?” Jake snarled.

  George started to feel a little flushed. Both wolves were hunched over, flexing their huge muscles and apparently about to rip one another’s throat out. She backed up to the single chair in the office, and tried to make herself as small as possible.

  “It’s my right,” Dane said. “You find a mate first, or I do. Whichever of us does? He’s the rightful alpha.”

  Between clenched teeth, Jake hissed, “What are the stakes?”

  Dane swept his arms in a grandiose way. “Everything, brother,” he said with a smug, arrogant chuckle. “Everything.”

  -4-

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I just never liked Baywatch.”

  -Delilah

  “The thing is though, he wasn’t trying.” I said, placidly as I slapped a wad of clay on a model to figure out exactly how I was going to make a statue of him. The details didn’t matter, it was just the general size and shape I was aiming for. I had a pretty good memory, and anyway, him? I remembered every line and angle.