by Selena Scott
She was nervous, but not self-conscious, and let her eyes sweep over him just as he did to her. If they were different people, they might have apologized for their age, for the inexorable force that time exerts on a person’s body. But both of them could feel just how happy, relieved, grateful the other was to be there, in that exact moment, and they found that no apologies were necessary. Not in the least.
They crawled into bed with one another and naturally huddled close, searching out heat against the coolness of the sheets. Their search for heat turned into the roaming of strong, sure hands, turned into open-mouthed kissing, turned into moans, turned into exploration of secret places, turned into a passionate race to bring the other the most pleasure possible. When they finally came together—Elizabeth on her back and Bauer poised over top of her—they both knew, with an unusual certainty, that everything, everything, that it had taken to get to this moment, had been completely worth it.
***
“And probably nothing is going to happen. Bauer just thought that maybe I’m plateauing because we haven’t changed any of the factors. So, yeah. Inviting you is just changing a factor. That’s all it really is.”
“Jackson.”
“But I just really don’t want you to get your hopes up. It’s almost certainly not going to change much. It’s not like you’re in store for a big show. Most likely you’re just going to watch me meditate in my basement. The end.”
“Jackson.”
“Just because with Seth and Raph this kind of thing ended up working—”
“Jackson!”
Jackson finally cut himself off and turned to look at Kaya from where he sat at the wheel. He looked tousled, his eyes dark and his stubble a touch longer than normal. He looked nervous, she realized. The realization was accompanied by a squeezing sensation in her chest. She’d never really seen him this off-kilter and disheveled before.
Kaya leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, loving the scruff of his unshaven face. “It’s gonna be okay. If you shift, that’s great, if you don’t, that’s fine, too.”
He nodded, his eyes on the road. He’d picked her up from the mechanic because her car was still giving her some trouble. He’d asked her two days ago if she would be with him while he tried to shift without the full moon. After she’d said a vehement yes, he’d spent the next twenty-four hours attempting to talk her out of it.
“Kaya,” he said in a low voice. “What if I do shift?”
“That’ll be great! Just what you want, right?”
His eyes went even darker. “Do you have it on you?”
She sighed and reached into her pocket, pulling out the bear spray he’d insisted that she have on her if they were going to do this.
“Good,” he nodded. “Tell me how you use it.”
“I flip that and push this.” She showed him, keeping her voice in an exasperated monotone.
“Don’t roll your eyes. You might need it. I’m serious.”
“You didn’t hurt me at the cabin.”
“Yes, but that was my full moon wolf. This will be a spontaneous shift and I can’t know how it will affect me. If it even happens. That’s why we’re going to do it in my basement, where I can be certain you’ll be safe from me.”
Kaya frowned into the night as they drove through town. She didn’t want to push Jackson further than he was comfortable going. But she really thought him chaining himself up in his basement was pushing things too far. She knew, in her heart, that he wasn’t going to hurt her. But she supposed she could be patient while they did things his way for a while, while he learned to trust himself.
Although it seemed like they were only doing things his way these days. Over the last few weeks, Kaya had worn the sexiest lingerie money could buy. She’d smeared ice cream on herself and had him lick it off. She’d clawed and sucked and kissed and moaned and… nothing doing. Her virginity was still very much intact. She feared that she’d have to resort to begging. Not something that sat especially well with her personality. But what else was she supposed to do at this point? The man was locked up tighter than a steel vault! She wanted some ass and she wanted it now!
“What are you frowning about?” he asked. “Are you having second thoughts? Because we don’t have to do this. Seriously. I can drop you at your house. Or you can come over and we can just hang out.”
“Jackson,” she groaned, dropping her head in her hands with a little laugh. “Take me to your house and shift for me, you clit-tease!”
He barked out a laugh of surprise, his eyes widening for a second and then narrowing down into slits of male satisfaction. “Are you horny for me?”
She scowled at him. “Anyone would be after weeks of this torture!”
“Have I not been keeping you satisfied?” he asked, faux-innocently.
“No! You’ve been revving my engine with no finish line in sight and you know it.”
He laughed. “Well, maybe later tonight we’ll see what we can do about that.”
Her stomach flipped in a darkly excited way. She was very eager to move things along with Jackson. She’d never wanted anything the way she wanted him. Him and, ooh! Mexican food!
“Pull over! Let’s get takeout, okay?” She pointed out the window at one of their favorite restaurants.
He pulled smoothly into the parking lot and, to her surprise, took her hand as they walked into the restaurant. As they hadn’t told their families yet, they were a little stand-offish with one another in public. But it seemed that his resolve in that regard was thinning. They placed their to-go order at the bar and then stood off to the side to wait. The restaurant was crowded so he tugged her into his chest, his arms crossing over her front.
Kaya noticed a glance from many of the men in the bar, which was normal for her. But there was something uncommon in their reactions as well. They took lustful eyefuls of her, and then seemed to immediately glance away, like they couldn’t look away fast enough.
Kaya tipped her head back onto Jackson’s shoulder and looked up at him. “Are you scaring all the nice gentlemen in the bar?”
He glowered down at her, his eyes dark. “Trust me, none of these assholes are gentlemen. Do this many men look at you on a regular day? You know what? Don’t answer that. I prefer my blood vessels unpopped.”
He looked away from her, instantly glaring at someone else who’d deigned to glance Kaya’s way. She couldn’t say she hated it. Not one bit. She turned in Jackson’s arms so that her cheek rested against his chest. For the first time since she’d grown into her looks, Kaya felt completely safe in public.
Jackson’s attention eventually came back to rest on her. He played with her hair, fixing it one way and then the other. She’d left it down after her shower and it had dried in messy waves that he seemed to particularly enjoy.
Kaya felt so happy and content in that moment, waiting for good food, in the arms of the man she’d wanted for so long, about to go do something new and exciting together, that she felt she could almost drift right to sleep.
“Kaya?”
She stiffened like she’d been poked with a pair of sharp scissors. She’d know that voice absolutely anywhere. It had been stiffening her up since she was a little girl. Making her heart race in a bad way.
She felt Jackson’s muscles tighten as well and she knew that he also recognized the woman who’d just called her name.
Kaya turned in the circle of Jackson’s arms. “Mom.”
She was surprised to see her mother wearing the uniform of the waitstaff at the restaurant. She’d never, ever known her mother to be reliable enough to keep a job.
“It’s… good to see you,” her mother said in that raspy voice that showed just how many years she’d been smoking.
Kaya couldn’t say the same, so she said nothing.
“How are you?” her mother asked.
At that particular moment, looking her mother in the eye, Kaya was terrible. But in general, Kaya was living her best life. “I’m great.”
>
She couldn’t help but shrink back into Jackson’s arms again and his grip tightened around her shoulders.
The movement had her mother’s eyes glancing up at Jackson, narrowing for a second.
“Who’s this?”
Kaya had zero intention of introducing her mother to Jackson. First of all, they’d met before and her mother was a jerk for not remembering. Second of all, her mother hadn’t even called on Christmas. Why the hell should she expect to get an introduction to the people in Kaya’s life?
“Jackson Durant,” he said, leaning around Kaya and holding out a hand.
Kaya’s mom shook the hand, her eyes narrowing even further at the sound of Jackson’s last name. Natalie and Kaya had been disappearing off to the Durants’ house for so many years that her mother would have had to have been willfully ignorant for that last name not to ring some kind of bell. “Oh. You’re the oldest one, right?”
“That’s right.”
“A little old for my daughter, now, aren’t you?”
Instant fury threatened to engulf Kaya. She was seriously about to go down like a flaming barge filled with fireworks. There would be nothing left of this restaurant when she was done tearing her mother a new one for daring to have any opinion whatsoever about Kaya’s personal life.
But Jackson beat her to it. “We don’t think so,” he answered crisply, in a calm voice.
And it was the truth of those words that acted as balm to Kaya’s rage at her mother. She realized, all at once, that Jackson was being honest. He’d finally gotten over their age difference. The age difference that he’d been beating himself up over for years. The age difference that he’d used as a mortal weapon against himself. The age difference that he’d hated himself for. He was… letting it go. Moving on.
He was moving on with Kaya. Figuring out a way for them to be together. And that, more than anything, gave Kaya the resolve to get through this dumbass conversation with her mother. To move on from it like it barely mattered. Because it wasn’t important to her, not the way that Jackson was.
“Jackson!” the bartender called, holding up a bag of food.
“Our order is up, Mom,” Kaya said, stepping forward to get the bag. “We have to go.”
“Oh. All right. Well, if you come back in sometime—”
“Bye, Mom.”
Kaya took Jackson’s hand and didn’t look back. Tonight would not be the night that her mother spoiled. Tonight would be the night Kaya realized just how far Jackson had come.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Race stood in the shadows across the street from where Jackson Durant was pulling his black Jeep into the driveway. So. He wouldn’t be going to the farm tonight. Race had spent many hours tracking through the woods on foot to find the farm hidden back on the long dirt road.
It was hard to get to. Through the woods, over two ravines that required climbing equipment. But he did not want to run the risk of being seen on the road. And as he’d expected, the long dirt road led only to the single farm at the end, four miles down. Any person driving on that road who was not invited would instantly be suspect.
He’d made his way out there one week ago and spent the day in the woods with his binoculars. He’d seen a young redheaded man who reeked of being a cop, and his blonde-haired wife who always wore a baseball cap over her shiny hair and large sunglasses that obscured her face.
On the farm the two of them tended to all sorts of animals. At night, some of those animals, even the supposedly wild ones, were invited into their large, rickety farmhouse.
To Race, there was only one reason a perfectly sane couple would let a one-eyed goose, a fox, and a small black bear amble into their home for the night.
That reason being they were not, in fact, animals at all. They were shifters.
He’d seen one other shifter safehouse in his life and it hadn’t been nearly as put together as this one. But nonetheless, he’d felt the bile rise in his throat as he realized what he was looking at.
The next day, Race had returned on foot and he’d been lucky enough to be able to observe Jackson there with his pretty little girlfriend. They spent the afternoon in the barn, the animals filing in one by one.
Race knew then that he’d been patient for a reason. Using the camera feature on his birdwatching binoculars, he now had proof that Jackson Durant was aiding and abetting shifters and shifter housers. Not only could he get him sent to a shifter internment camp, he could get his girlfriend sent to prison.
Power swelled in Race’s heart, pumping through his blood like a poison that burned so good. He’d spent the last year utterly powerless. And now, all at once, everything was back in his court.
As his plan started to form in his mind, he kept up his surveillance on each member of the family. Tonight, he watched Jackson and his girlfriend get out of Jackson’s car and head into his house.
He knew from experience that they’d be in for the night. There wouldn’t be anything else for him to see. And that was a sort of swelling triumph within him as well. The Durants were a predictable lot. And by now, he knew their schedules like the back of his hand.
He walked slowly down the street, grateful for the four-mile lonely walk back to his house that stretched out before him. Because he needed the time to relish how close he was to the finish line. How close he was to ruining them. He only had to wait for the full moon.
***
Jackson opened his mouth as he set the food down on his kitchen counter but Kaya whirled around to face him, her palm clamping over his lips. “Don’t say it.”
“Say what?” he asked, his voice muffled by her hand.
“Don’t say that we don’t have to do this tonight.”
He frowned. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“I was going to say that if you’d rather we do it another night then—”
“Jackson!” She threw her hands up in the air and laughed in exasperation. “You’re impossible.”
“Kaya, when was the last time you saw your mother before tonight?”
She frowned. “I saw her from a distance at the Fourth of July fireworks.”
He took two steps, bridged their distance, and drew her into his chest, his arms tight around her. “God, I’m so sorry, baby. This whole situation is so screwed up. I never understood it.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” She sighed and tipped her head back. “It’s really all right, Jackson. Natalie loved me as much as a parent is supposed to. She practically raised me. And anything that she didn’t do, your mom certainly did. I’m lucky, if you think of it in a certain way.”
“I still think that seeing her out of the blue must have made you feel something. And maybe it would be better if we took it easy tonight. If we talked about it, watched a movie, ate dinner, went to bed early…”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “I don’t want to watch a movie and go to bed early. I want to watch you turn into a wolf and then I want you to finally make me come.”
Her hands were on her hips and her golden-brown hair was spilling everywhere. She wore a sweater dress and bright tights and boots to her knees, but she might as well have been in a lace g-string because Jackson suddenly felt his knees turn to jelly as all the blood in his body rushed to one place.
He took a deep breath. He refused to let the animal inside of him call the shots tonight. “I want that, too. But not as much as I want to make sure that we do right by you tonight.”
“Talking about it will not help me right now. I promise. I’ve done all the therapy. And at some point, I will let you in on all the nitty gritty details about my parents and you can gnash your teeth and curse the world. I’m not withholding from you, I swear. I just truly have nothing to say about it right now. She’s a shitty mother. But I really, really don’t want that to get in the way of what I want to do with you tonight.”
He scraped a hand over his stubble, eyeing her. So much of the time he spent
with her he was completely lost. The water was up all the way over his head. He’d never been foolish enough to think that a relationship would be simple, but he’d never expected it to feel like the two of them were speaking two different languages. He just had no idea what to do here. Should he push her in one direction or the other? Should he just take her at her word?
Kaya laughed again, just a little bit, shaking her head from side to side. “I can see the war that’s going on in your head, Jackson. And I love you for it. You’re fighting with yourself, aren’t you? The old Jackson wants nothing more than to wrap me up in an afghan, feed me these enchiladas and make me talk about my feelings. But the new Jackson is wondering if he should just trust me to know what’s best for myself.”
I love you for it.
The words hit him like a sledgehammer and it was all he could do to just stand there and look at her.
“You want to know what I realized when I saw my mother tonight? I realized just how much I trust you. Just how much I know you’ll take care of me. You told her, and you meant it, that you didn’t think you were too old for me. The old Jackson could never have done that. The old Jackson would have spiraled down into self-hatred at that suggestion. But the new Jackson, you held me tighter, and defended yourself because it meant you were defending me, too. And, yeah, I trust you, Jacks. I trust this person you’re becoming. So, no. I don’t want to make this night about old news with my mom. I want to make this night about all the ways that you and I have grown since we started doing… whatever this is that we’re doing.”
Jackson’s heart started beating like a kid playing a drum in an empty house somewhere around the middle of her speech. By the time she’d used his nickname, all the breath had left his chest as well. He’d never felt more excited or more blindly terrified in his entire life. This last month with her he’d been working so freaking hard to be the man that she deserved, that he hadn’t really stopped to check and see if it was working. But suddenly, all at once, he was forced to identify that feeling ballooning in his chest.