Jasmine opened the door on the second floor of the building complex and allowed me to brush passed her before closing the door to any prying eyes from the outside world. Unbelieving I had this glowing goddesses all to myself, I walked a few paces in and turned to find her hanging up her dark blue blazer on a free-standing wooden coat rack before a small, yet fully functional kitchen.
“Would you like a beer first?” she asked, turning her head slightly my way.
I nodded yes, not trusting suddenly dry lips to form any comprehensible words, as I wondered why I had a powerful urge to rip her clothes off. Maybe it was the realization I really did have her all to myself, or the way she looked when she tossed her hair and asked about the beer. Then again, perhaps it was the intoxicating scent her body gave off, combined with her female odors which permeated the air in the room like a dense fog hanging over a field of lightly waving wheat in the morning light. Whichever it was, I decided to take a moment and look over her Hawaiian-decorated studio apartment to get my mouth operating and my mind back into focus. However, I discovered more distractions when Jasmine moved her arms and pulled over her head the light blue T-shirt she wore in one smooth motion. Eyes bulging, and my mind short-circuiting, I froze, barely five feet away from her absolutely creamy, bra free, bare brown skin.
Jasmine turned then, with a knowing smile on her lips as to what she was doing to me. “I hope you don’t mind my undressing. I find clothing very restrictive.”
With no comment to add to such a sentence, I swallowed. Well actually I tried, because my racing heart kept crawling up into my throat while my eyes drank in every inch of her naked flesh, which she was still exposing with delicate fingers that now worked on the belt strap of her lavender skirt.
“If you like, I have lasagna or spaghetti,” she continued without embarrassment, letting her skirt fall to the floor so she could work off nearly transparent pink bikini briefs. She put a hand on the wall for balance to kick off her shoes and stepped out of her briefs before she bent over to pick up both skirt and panties to hang them on the last peg. Then she used both hands to move her hair behind her ears before she gazed up, wearing absolutely nothing but her beautifully flawless skin, and wet her lips with the tip of her tongue in an intentionally provocative manner before she asked mischievously, “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to let out that animal in your pants?”
The next morning Jasmine spoke of a class friend who suggested I might be able to help her sexual desires. She also revealed she’s a werewolf in heat, and in need of a mate. This fact would have been rather surprising to most people, but I wasn’t most people; hell, I’m not really human. And now that she’d explained this, it made perfect sense why her scent had captivated me from the onset, and why I wanted to rip her clothes off and pound her hips unmercifully.
On the other hand, the fact I’m single and not a member of any Pack took Jasmine by total surprise. You see, I grew up in a country town in Connecticut. My father, a full werewolf, rejected his heritage and somehow forced my half-wolf mother to live away from the Pack life. Normally, Jasmine informed me, females are the controlling factor in the wolf society.
Regardless of this unforgivable action my parents committed, Jasmine seemed intrigued, and considered me an unknown challenge as a mate.
So here I lay, a few months later after graduating from college, under Jasmine’s slow, seductive movements, two months her husband. Oh—uh, husband or wife is really not right, at least that’s what Jasmine says. The two words separate male from female in a bond that should not be distinguished between the two. So the Packs prefer the word “mate.” But their concept is nowhere near my own.
We were in a new home some miles outside the southwest border of Spearfish, the size of which would take me years to save up to put a down payment on, trying hard to understand my luck. We’d arrived that morning and rolled up a gravel drive, lined with vintage irises vying with each other to show off their beauty, only slightly overshadowed by small leafy trees. This battle of plants lasted all the fifty yards to our two story, three bedroom, two and a half car garage country style home.
Once stopped on the concrete skirt before the garage, I climbed out of her brand new, white, drop-top sports car, and gaining her side, stared at the size of the double-door entranceway of dark walnut and whistled. “You’re sure this is the right place?”
“No, silly,” she laughed, walking up to unlock the doors to push them open. “I intend to kick out the residents and claim it as our own.” For a moment I thought her serious, but when she turned back, Jasmine saw my expression and laughed aloud. “Oh, Jonathan, you are a gem. Of course it’s ours. Anita mailed the keys and directions last month.” She walked to where I still stood and put her arms around my back to hug and kiss me with good strength, then she bent and swept me off my feet with a laugh and tightened her hold, to my sudden alarm.
“Jasmine—what?”
“Hold still, silly,” she laughed, walking with ease to the front doors. “I believe it’s customary for the meat-gatherer to carry her new mate over the threshold of their first home. Is this not so?”
“Yes,” I agreed, nervously trying to wrap my arms around her small shoulders, not telling her it’s more customary for the men to do the carrying, while hoping I didn’t overtip her—a problem my Jasmine’s without. For, you see, even though Jasmine is smaller and lighter in body weight then I, all of 120 pounds, she’s a full werewolf and thereby two times stronger than a normal-size athletic male my height, while I am a half-wolf, weighing 196 pounds, and one-quarter times weaker than her. Yeah—it doesn’t make sense to me either.
Jasmine put me down once inside, then planted her lips on mine before she walked into the living room, stripping off her clothes with a sigh of relief, leaving me to follow, or go back to the car and get our luggage. As the luggage could wait, I closed the doors and walked in, passing a small walnut knick-knack table and oval entranceway mirror in my investigation of the home.
An untreated maple floor, inviting bare feet and sensitive noses to enjoy its woody sensations, and the soft pine wood walls on all sides, that ended only after intersecting the top rafters, gave the area a feeling of openness and old world charms.
As I passed midpoint of the room, my fingers trailed across a circular stone fireplace for four, filled with lava rocks, waiting patiently to come to life below a black smokestack. Still further, under a dinette set of cherry wood, a checkered linoleum floor turned a corner to a kitchen with all the amenities of a well-stocked processing center. Not entering the kitchen and ignoring the back door for now, I passed a walnut phone table on the right wall, and looked through a doorway into the empty garage with cedar paneling. To the left, after the kitchen, a door to a full-size bathroom, complete with shower, garden tub and vanity, ran behind a wall under a set of maple stairs that traveled up a floor and a half to an indoor balcony.
If you followed the stylish English railing up, you’d be confronted by three soft-white oaken doors. To the left, the master bedroom, while ahead and right were guest bedrooms, all furnished with the finest amenities of furniture and bedding. Below the balcony, three rows of book cabinets, a stereo center worth five times the cost of my truck, and a 42-inch plasma flat-screen all sat in the wall a few feet away from a plush, dark brown couch, the very couch in which Jasmine and I were currently preoccupied.
Uh—to save time, I’ll tell you Jasmine and her kind dislike wearing clothing of any kind, if you hadn’t noticed. Only social gatherings and public appearances make them put on the restricting material. When at home, the clothes are off and remain so till necessary. Being male, this bothers me not at all—after all, when was the last time you could walk right up to your wife and partake of her sweetness without fumbling with clothing?
****
Jasmine was laying on my chest, content with listening to my settling breathing, when the grandfather clock on the far wall next to the bookcases chimed three times.
&n
bsp; “Damn. It’s three already.”
“So?” I caught her up in a tight embrace.
“Jonathan, I’ve got to get ready for the Pack gathering today, and so do you,” she complained, avoiding my lips and wiggling out of my arms to stand.
“Does it have to be tonight?” I frowned, not wanting to move, while lightly rubbing my hand up and down her inner thigh. “I mean, we just got here today.”
“Yes it does,” she sighed, slapping my probing hand away. “We were supposed to be here yesterday. Had I any sense at all I wouldn’t have allowed you to distract me at our last motel. Now do as I say, and take a shower in the spare bedroom while I do the same in our room.”
“Can’t I join you?” I asked hopefully, giving her my best puppy eyes, still hoping to talk her out of this meeting. A meeting I wasn't looking forward to.
She smiled and shook her head at my attempts to persuade her to stay. “Of course not, silly, and you know why. So stop frowning. I told you I have to be on time to this meeting if to no others.”
I watched her with misgiving of the coming night as she padded up the stairs and to the left. But stopping momentarily before our bedroom door, she looked sternly on my unmoving body and yelled, “Jonathan, move it! We haven’t time for games.” With that, she slammed the bedroom door.
If there’s one thing Jasmine is, it’s unpredictable. She could be in the throes of happiness and the next instant I’d find myself facing a snarling beast. It wasn’t till later I learned all she-wolves are this way. The unpredictable temper demonstrates their dominance over us males, and I’m not kidding. I’ve sailed across the room more than once, so when she looks at me that way, I tend to do as she requests. Yes, that does mean I kowtow to her will, but the perks are well worth it.
****
Dressed in blue jeans, a red and black checkered long-sleeve flannel shirt, red and yellow windbreaker and leather hiking boots, I felt like a big sissy compared to Jasmine, who only wore a short-sleeved light brown dress as she walked past me running a brush through her black hair.
“Won’t you get cold like that?” I inquired once outside the back door, looking up on an autumn skyline clouding up and seeing remnants of snow on the ground.
“Not for long,” she smiled and dropped the brush on a light green outdoor patio set I hadn’t known was there. “Once the meeting starts, I’ll change into something with more warmth.”
For a moment I puzzled, trying to find the clothes she meant, till she giggled and I realized what she’d said.
“Oh, you—” I mock growled, grabbing her waist from behind and swiftly raising her squealing high into the air. Shifting my hold, I ducked to set her on my shoulders. Jasmine moved her dress out of my eyes as she caught her balance. “Now I’ve proof you’ve been riding my back.” I laughed. “Not to mention other parts.”
Still giggling, Jasmine hooked her luscious legs under my arms, which of course made them perfect targets for playful bites. Thus holding her calves, I walked the acre of fenced-in overgrown weed farm our past tenants left in the backyard, while Jasmine described the rugged hills, tree varieties and scattered shrubs included in the Pack’s seventy miles of mountain wilderness beyond our back fence in the Black Hill National Forest. As she did so, I noticed our neighbor kept horses in the back of their lot. Which I thought strange, for they and other animals can smell our wolf scent even in our human disguise. I guess that goes to prove if you can get an animal young enough, they can get used to almost anything—even the scent of a wolf.
Through the back gate, Jasmine found the one path among many to the meeting place she once visited more than thirty years ago. Oh—I think I should mention our ages. I turned twenty-four last month while Jasmine turned one hundred and three yesterday, but she looks no older than twenty, don’t you think?
The path she led us on took an hour and a half to traverse under trees afire with brilliantly colored leaves of golden brown, sprinkled lightly in varying degrees of red and yellow. When we reached a small glen filled with knee-high browning grasses with two sunken areas, a few trees still bearing green leaves, and a rolling stream yards away, we joined a varied group of milling adults, a female child, and one baby.
As we came into view of those gathered, Jasmine slid off my shoulders with a squeal and a bounce when a older female about five-eight, white skin, silver hair and wearing a simple pullover silver dress, separated from a conversation with other females. Oh—another note here, since the Wolf Packs are not human. The terms man and woman don’t fit. They prefer male or female. Yes, we appear human but the clinical terms describe better what we are.
The female came running with open arms, calling, “Jasmine! My dear child. How good it is to see you after all this time.”
Jasmine received this female’s enthusiastic embrace with happiness. “Anita, it’s so good to see you too!”
Like two schoolgirls, they giggled for a few minutes till Anita said, “It’s been way to long. You could have at least written once or twice.”
“Yes—I am sorry, Anita, but after I lost Ken, I just couldn’t get myself together for a long time.” Jasmine’s sorrow for her first mate years back was so plain, she lowered her eyes in remembrance. For myself, it’s hard to be jealous of a dead man, still, knowing she was with another, tweaks a nerve now-and-again.
Anita patted her back, comforting and sympathized. “It’s ever so with these half mates my dear. How old was he when he passed?”
“Oh, Anita.” Jasmine’s lips quivered. “He lived till sixty-seven, but even with cancer eating him up at the end, he was so full of life and I loved him so. It’s just—”
“Yes, dear, I know. But if you don’t challenge a female for a full-blooded mate, you’ll only end up with another heartbreak. Like the one now beside you, I suppose?”
Anita was looking at me with brown eyes—judging—after saying that, and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t amused. Yeah sure, it’s true Jasmine would outlive me by a few hundred years, but did she have to rub my nose in it?
Jasmine regained herself, seeking out my right hand with her own, squeezing, distracting me from saying something really stupid, to tell Anita in a dreamy tone, “Can I help it? He’s so good-looking. I just couldn’t pass him up.” Jasmine smiled up at me with those lovely eyes of hers, so I bit my tongue to bask in my moment of praise. Yep—I’m a sucker for her smiles. Then she turned all formal and introduced me. “Anita, this is my mate, Jonathan Barker. Jonathan, this is Anita Suan, the Pack leader for the Spearfish area.”
“Jonathan,” Anita said, with ice dripping off each letter in my name, watching me with a cool expression.
“Mrs. Suan,” I answered just as frostily, folding my arms and deciding right then and there to put her on my shit list.
“Jasmine tells me your parents broke Pack laws, leaving you without a family and ignorant of our ways. Is this so?”
Not so! Mom and dad were family enough until I left home. Besides, while I grew up, Mom explained the life as a Pack member, and while she didn’t really tell me about the controlling factors females like to do over their mates, I’d seen it manifested many times when Mom became bull-headed about something and fought ferociously with Dad till one or the other gave in. Seeing this conflict often, I grew up believing this to be normal for married couples and decided I wanted nothing to do with that type of life. That was until Jasmine. Go figure.
“If you mean,” I said snobbishly, thinking of the revelations Jasmine had been telling me, things that now explained a lot about my parents, “I like to think for myself, then yes, that’s true.”
“Jonathan!” Jasmine slapped my butt as if disciplining an errant child. “That’s no way to talk to your Pack leader!”
“Be still, Jasmine,” Anita snapped, stepping into my face. Her eyes turned hard and a low rumbling growl escaped her throat as she stood there toe to toe with me, looking up into my eyes and waiting for me to back down like a whipped puppy and apologize. But if there’s o
ne thing I learned from my dad, it’s stubbornness, while my mother gave me pride.
“A lesson, I think, may be in order,” she threatened, and this from a female weighing fifteen pounds more than Jasmine. But being a full werewolf meant I was in a lot of trouble even if she was thirty pounds lighter, not to mention she’d had hundreds of years’ experience in the field of fighting. So the better part of valor would be to give in to her, swallowing my pride, but you know I couldn’t do that, well—yes I could, but no. Since my fat was already in the fire, I thought I might as well jump in with both feet. But I’d try a little tact. You see, I can be reasonable.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Suan. But if you expect me to crawl on my belly because you can wipe up the floor with my face, I won’t. I’ve fought my dad many times, and he’s heavier than I.” You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about winning any of those fights. And whether I did or not, I’m not saying.
Anita began to raise her hand but an African fellow approached in worn blue jeans and a white/blue cowboy shirt. He said, “A point, my dear, Jasmine’s mistaken.”
“Richard,” Anita growled his name, not bothering with turning.
I’ll say one thing, I may not always end a fight, but I will throw myself into one. All it would take is for that hand to strike.
“Pardon, dear,” he tried again, “but Jonathan is not officially part of the Pack as yet. So he does have the right to speak as he likes without being reprimanded, even if you don’t like it.”
“Did I ask for your help?” She snarled through clinched teeth, still holding that hand part way to her intentions, while to my right Jasmine fought with herself, trying to decide whether to help or let me take the beating I was asking for.
Braxton Snow P.I. (The Snow Adventures Book 1) Page 25