“They’re the pack,” I said. I felt my chest swell with pride. “Our pack. And this wolf,” I grabbed Jake around the waist, “is the one who won me. Not the one who kidnapped my friends and threatened their lives.”
“Game, set, and match,” Jake said, winking at me.
It was really hard not to roll my eyes, but I appreciated the effort. Dane, however, judging from his howling, wasn’t so amused. He rose to his feet, and tried to run, but Barney stuck out a foot, tripping the giant naked man and sending him sprawling to the ground. “Bad form, Mr. Somerset,” he said. “To run from a challenge? Shameful.”
“I didn’t!” Dane was protesting. “I didn’t run from anything. I won! He cheated, he...”
Jake strolled casually to where his brother lay on the ground, face a mess of dirt and blood and sweat. “Don’t look like a winner to me,” Jake offered.
Once again the crowd was roaring, in a way that reminded me of what it must’ve been like at the Coliseum in Rome right after a massive battle between two famous gladiators. The knife that Jake had dropped when he turned into a wolf, found its way back into his hand. He looked down at the curved, jagged blade, turning it around in his hand.
Then, he looked at Dane, who had pushed himself to his knees and was sweating profusely, breathing heavily, and in general, just a mess.
“Do it, then!” he hissed. “You want to prove you’re the big alpha? Do what you have to do.”
He tilted his head back. Jake grabbed Dane’s sweat-soaked hair and touched the tip of the knife to the place where neck met jaw. He dug the tip in just enough to draw a drop of blood. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t need to kill you.”
The knife fell to the ground with a clatter of metal on wood. “I don’t need your blood on my hands. Get up,” he said.
The hush in the audience returned. Everyone looking on, watching, waiting to see what happened next.
“Kill him!” someone shouted. Soon others joined in with calls from Dane’s head on a stick. Someone said something about dessert.
The cries were so loud a few seconds later that I could hardly hear myself think. Finally, at length, Jake lifted a hand to quiet them. “This isn’t us, brothers,” he said. “Senseless violence, murder in the name of tradition. This isn’t us. And anyone who thinks it is doesn’t belong in my pack.”
Dane’s eyes lit up.
“Anyone who thinks that our kind can survive with all the blood soaked things that Dane seems to love so much, feel free to join him.”
He turned his eyes on me. “Seems to me we have a whole lot of food and drinks and decorations to not have a marking,” he said. A smile crept across his face that warmed me to the core. “That is, if she’ll have me.”
“Yes!” I shouted, leaping up and throwing my arms around his warm, bronzed skin. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“Get out of here, Dane,” Jake said, punching at his brother with a toe, knocking him off balance and once again into the dirt. “No one wants you here. I hope this proved it.”
Jake grabbed me roughly around the waist and turned me to face him. He smiled through the busted lip and cuts all over his face, and pulled me in. I inhaled deeply, the smell of sweat, dirt and iron filling my nose.
When I pulled away and looked toward the setting sun, an almost red, deep orange color against the horizon, it was all I could do not to stare at Jake. The sun caught my attention though, and when I squinted into it, I realized Dane was still there.
“I’ve got more important things to do,” Jake snarled at his brother. “Get out of here and don’t try to come back.”
With a snarl, and a snap of his jaws, Dane looked like he was actually going to make another lunge. Two very large, very bald-headed wolves sidled up next to him and grabbed his elbows. “Want us to take care of him?” one of them asked.
I looked at Jake, waiting for the answer. I wasn’t the only one. The entire audience was staring at him in something that could only be described as awe.
“No,” Jake said. “But thanks for the offer. He’s going to turn into a wolf, and scurry off. Just like he did before. Isn’t that right, Dane?”
Dane snarled and gave a sour look to the bald monster to his left. “Let me go,” he said with a hollow, defeated voice.
With one last look at Jake, Dane turned around, and did exactly as he was told. He was limping slightly, but he didn’t waste any time in making tracks.
“There,” Jake said with a smile and then turned to the crowd. “Now who’s ready for a marking? Who’s ready for a real party?”
What had been a chant for blood only minutes before turned to a chorus of voices calling for a marking. I guess no one really did care what happened, as long as something did.
-21-
“That... was certainly something.”
-Delilah
“I’m not just a butler, you know,” Barney said with a sly grin. “I’m also the second oldest wolf in the pack. And since Greta is related to him, pack law says I perform the ceremony. I hope that’s okay with you?”
I just smiled. The whole thing was over the top, the whole thing was ridiculous and wonderful and bizarre all rolled up into one delicious, lupine jelly roll. Which I know sounds dumb, but when you’re standing on a dais with a busted up, sweaty, long-haired, muscle bound, naked werewolf? You think a lot of stupid things.
“No,” I said. “Of course not. But I’ve just got jeans on. That’s not very formal, is it? Shouldn’t I wear something nicer?”
“My shirts torn up, barely hanging together. My pants are shredded below the knee, and my mate-to-be is worried about looking nice. God, I couldn’t possibly be more in love with this woman.”
Jake shot me one of those knee-melting looks as he pulled his ragged clothes back on. In the deepening dusk, his eyes glittered with the moon’s light. His hair thrown back over his shoulders caught some of the quicksilver sheen.
A voice from behind me piped up. “All I’m missing is the giant ice cube she said she’d carve.” It was Greta, but the ones that joined afterward came from most everyone. A chorus of the most honest, raucous laughter I’ve ever heard rose up. The mood of the entire group seemed to shift when Dane was gone, even from the few who’d followed him in the past.
“Next time?” I asked, turning around and trying not to cry. “I promise I’ll make the biggest, gaudiest wolf ice sculpture the world’s ever seen for the next one that comes along.”
“Deal,” she said with a wink. “Now get on with it, you two have more important things to do than to entertain a bunch of gawking wolves.”
A blush crept down my neck. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hoo boy,” Jeannie said, ruffled up but unhurt. “Does she ever have someone... er, I mean, something better to do. Jake,” she said, “do you do that wolf thing when you do it? Or is that just a fighting thing?”
“Depends on how good it is,” he said without missing a beat. “If it’s a real toe curling go, then the fur can definitely come out. You’ll find out all about it if you hang around here long enough.”
She was staring at him, wide-eyed and in awe. The last time I’d seen Jeannie speechless was when she got a six hundred dollar combination speeding, red light running, and no insurance ticket. “Huh?” she asked after a moment.
“You fit in pretty well with all of us rough and tumble wolves.” He grabbed her shoulder and smiled. “Stick around. You belong here, just like she does. That is, if you want to be here.”
“Are you kidding?” Jeannie said with a smile. “You’re telling me I’ve got a chance to get with a calendar hunk werewolf, and then you turn around and ask if I want to be here? I was willing to get in between that brother of yours and you. I was going to get my head torn off to get between the pair of you. Ask her, I’m not lying.”
“No,” I said. “She certainly is not lying. This woman would do pretty much anything to get herself a big ol’ lunk of a werewolf.”
After another long interlude of laughter and cheers, we all took our places. Barney stood at the front, with Jake and I on either side. Jeannie and Greta flanked us, one on either side in a sort of bridesmaid way.
“Music?” he asked someone at the back.
Expecting a bunch of organ honks and some hymns, I was both surprised and delighted when instead of the somber, normal human wedding music, we got some guitar solo and a pounding drum beat.
“I feel like I should be going to a wrestling ring,” I said out the side of my mouth. Jeannie giggled at first, trying to stifle it, but apparently everyone else in my immediate vicinity heard too. That’s when I found out that when he thinks something is really funny, Jake, my beautiful wolf, the alpha of this pack, both in-laughs and snorts.
“Real dignified,” I said with a grin as he turned first red and then slightly purple from laughing.
“All right, all right,” Barney said. “Simmer down. Let’s get this marking on the road. These two kids don’t want to be here all night.”
“Damn right,” Jeannie added.
More laughs. It seemed like I really did belong. All the laughing and the cheering and the total inability to care what someone was wearing fit me perfectly. That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t just found a mate, I realized as I stared into Jake’s eyes. Someone had lit a fire – a big one – a few minutes before, and the orange light bathed both the dais and reflected in his eyes. “I’m home,” I whispered.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, smiled, and nodded. “So am I.”
“Well, let’s just get to the point,” Barney said after the introductions were finished. “Jake Somerset, pack alpha, do you take this woman as your mate? Do you accept her as vita of the pack and mother of all these wolves?”
Without taking his eyes off me for a second, Jake said, “I do.”
“And Delilah Coltrane, do you accept not only Jake as your mate, but the responsibilities that come with being the vita of the pack?”
“Absolutely,” I said. I could feel the prickles running down my chest, the goosebumps creeping down my forearms. A little chill, carrying just a hint of the scent of coming rain, swept through the crowd. It ruffled hair, and shuffled clothes. A tendril of Jake’s wavy, brown hair fell across his eyes.
“Let’s have you do the first marking, Jake. I think hers will be a little more interesting.”
Lifting my wrist to his lips, Jake caressed my skin with his lips. He sucked gently, kissed my skin, and then opened his mouth. I didn’t even feel the bite, if that’s what it was. Every sense was erupting to life. It was like volcanoes were erupting in my head and hurricanes were blowing in my heart.
When he removed his mouth, he kissed my wrist again. The tingling that coursed through my entire body hummed with deep, vibrating warmth that seemed to radiate out from my center. I looked down at my arm and saw a crescent of pin pricks that looked more like a semi-circle of birthmarks than a tattoo. Maybe that’s what they were, really. Just fate’s way of showing what I’d been born for.
No – what we had been born for.
“I can’t do that,” I said, as I took Jake’s arm in my hand. “I don’t have special teeth, or... whatever it is that lets him do that.”
Barney just smiled. “It’s the effort that counts,” he said after a moment. “Symbolism and all that.”
“So I just bite him?”
“Pretty much.”
I lifted his wrist, kissed it just like he had mine, closed my eyes and chomped. Jake let out a yelp, the entire lupine audience let out a wild cheer, and that was that.
“Unorthodox,” Barney said with a barely-contained chuckle. “But it’s the thought that counts. I pronounce you mated and marked, now get outta here you crazy kids.”
The next few minutes, most of them spent on the back of a motorcycle, clutching Jake’s waist and snuggled against his back. I’ve never much been one for motorcycles, but... that was the best ride I’ve ever had.
*
“What’s all this?” I asked, pushing open the massive, carefully carved, oak door of the mansion. The smell of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and about forty other delicious things hit me all at the same time.
“I think Barney made dinner,” Jake said.
From the back of the house, I could hear singing and whistling. “How did he get back here so fast?”
Jake chuckled softly. “As fast as I was driving, when you can turn into a wolf and ignore stoplights, street signs, and roads altogether, you’d be surprised how fast you can get around.”
“And I cooked most of it before I left this morning,” Barney said, emerging from the kitchen and into the dining room, which I noticed had been completely restored to order, minus the vase.
“How did you get everything fixed so fast?” I asked.
“Haverty’s replacement plan. Too bad they don’t offer such things for priceless antiquities,” he shot a nasty look in Jake’s direction. “Regardless, the missus and I are going out for the night, so I wanted to make sure you were taken care of. How’s your arm?”
“Me? Fine,” I said.
“No, I was more worried about his,” Barney said with a grin. “I didn’t think you’d bite him quite that hard.”
And with that, a chuckle, and a swish of cloth as he spun and his blazer jacket flapped, Barney was gone. We were alone. For the first time in way too long, Jake and I were the entire world.
“Strawberry?” he asked, plucking a chocolate covered fruit off a tray. “I have to admit though, I’m finding it really hard to think about food.”
Yeah, but I’m both starving, and want to tease the hell out of this big bad wolf, I thought.
“I mean,” I started and then slowly crossed the room, pushed Jake back into one of the high backed dining chairs, and sat across his lap, draping my legs over the arm of the chair. “I know what you mean. God,” I said, shivering a little. “Do I ever know what you mean. But if I’m going to wear you out for the next twelve or fourteen hours, a girl’s gotta have energy, you know? Plus, these strawberries are—”
He stopped me short by sticking the end of one of the chocolate covered orbs of deliciousness between my lips. As I bit down, my teeth cracking the sweet milk chocolate shell and then sinking into the perfectly ripe, red flesh beneath, Jake kissed my neck.
There isn’t enough wine in the universe to make me feel as good as the combination of those two delicacies made me feel. And these two things don’t make my head spin, or give me a sulfate headache the next morning.
His lips trickled down my throat as I chewed and swallowed. A second later, Jake kissed up my neck to my lips, licking a trickle of the juice from my lips and letting out a soft, pleased whisper of a groan.
“The world could not be more perfect than it is right now,” he said, sweeping my hair out of my face and sucking my bottom lip between his teeth. “Well... I just thought of one way it could be...”
“Oh yeah?” I slid out of my chair and onto his lap. One of my legs went around the left side of Jake and the other went around the right. “Maybe like this?”
I felt his heart beat thumping between my legs and relished the intense warmth of his skin. “Is this better, would you say?”
His hands found their way down my back and settled on my hips. “The only thing now is that you’re still wearing all those clothes.”
I snorted a laugh as he reached behind me for something and let out a groan of effort as he grabbed whatever it was. Seconds later, a cool trickle ran down the back of my neck and I felt the tip of a strawberry make its way along my jaw. The sweet depth of aroma met my nose and instinctively I opened my lips as soon as he touched them.
“We can fix that,” I said in the instant before I bit. The mixture of the fruit’s tart, sweet juice, and the enveloping smoothness of the chocolate, caressed my tongue. And then, a split second later, Jake’s t
ongue replaced the berry.
I groaned as he explored my lips and our tongues wrestled inside my mouth, then his, before we parted. The instant he was gone, I wanted him back. I ached to taste him again and to feel those warm, red lips against mine.
“Yeah,” he said, “we can, can’t we?”
Effortlessly he hoisted me up on to the table. He followed me up, pushing my knees apart and shifting me against his body before reclining me down against the heavy oak table. “But before we do,” he said, “you told me you were hungry. I hope you like chocolate.”
His stormy eyes moved away from me for just a moment, and then glittered with mischief. I never took my gaze from him, not even when I felt warmth on my lips. Instantly I knew what it was – I’d know that rich, wonderful flavor anywhere. Opening my mouth just enough for him to stick the tip of his finger inside, I swirled my tongue around his finger, imagining it was a different part.
A warm shiver tingled through me, sending tendrils of pleasure up and down my back. I could hardly stand it, but the teasing somehow made me want him even more than I already did... which is honestly a little hard to imagine. As he kissed me again and again, I fiddled with the buckle on Jake’s thick, leather belt. For a moment I fantasized about him giving me a good whack or two with that thing right across the ass, but then I started in blushing again for no good reason.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, apparently sensing my embarrassment.
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just... it’s nothing.”
He pierced me with his eyes. “You can tell me anything. That’s how this works.”
“I know,” I said, “it’s just kind of embarrassing is all.”
“Nothing about you is embarrassing, get it?”
I swallowed, hard. I’d never admitted to anyone I was with exactly what kind of fantasies I had, because I always thought they were kinda weird. “When I was taking your belt off, I... started thinking about...”
Instead of admitting what I was imagining, I gave him a playful swat.
Spring Feve Page 95