by Selena Scott
“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.
That was pride.
He thought that she was right. He believed her.
I love you for it.
I trust this person you’re becoming.
He’d never had this feeling before, deep in his gut, but he didn’t have any trouble identifying it. For the first time in his entire life, Jackson felt worthy.
Worthy of this life he was fighting for. Worthy of his family. Worthy of Kaya.
So, why wait? Why push this off a second longer? He strode forward and took her by the hand, his heart still dancing the rumba in his chest. He tugged her toward the basement stairs, turning toward her when they were halfway down. “‘Whatever this is we’re doing,’” he informed her, “is called a relationship.”
She was one step above him, which brought their faces level.
“I’ve… never really had one of those before,” she whispered, her face flushed with pleasure and trepidation.
“I’ve never had one that matters.”
“What if I’m really bad at it?”
“We’ll be generous with the learning curve. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “Step one in any relationship manual is definitely to see your boyfriend shift into a wolf in the middle of the moon cycle.”
He laughed, kissed her on the stairs, and took her the rest of the way down to the basement.
***
It broke Kaya’s heart to look down at the chains and manacles that Jackson used on the full moons when he shifted in his own basement. How freaking depressing.
“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re so scared of getting locked up for being a shifter that you’ve been chaining yourself up for being a shifter?”
He raised an eyebrow at her and started to undress. “The irony has been pointed out before.”
“By your brothers?”
“And mother. And Bauer. And Natalie. And Sarah, too, come to think of it.”
“Everybody gets it but you.”
“I’m starting to get it,” he said, smiling at her and folding up his clothes. He was completely naked and beautiful, but for once, Kaya wasn’t completely distracted by the utter and complete hotness of his body. She was too anxious for what was about to come next.
She couldn’t help but let out a noise of distress when he clamped the chains around his neck and the manacles on his wrist. “Jackson, are you sure you have to do that?”
He gave her the eye. “Kaya, I’ve come a really long way in the last month to even be considering this. Just meet me halfway and let me ensure that no matter what happens you’ll stay safe.”
“Even if I know, in my heart of hearts, that you’re never going to hurt me?”
He rolled his eyes in a loving, self-deprecating way. “Even then.”
“Carry on, then.” She sat down on the bottom step where he’d told her to sit. If he went violent or rageful, he wouldn’t be able to reach her there. And if he broke the chains, she was supposed to use the bear spray on him without hesitation.
Jackson sat down on a towel he’d laid out and she winced at how chilly the basement must be on his naked skin. “Explain the theory again to me?”
He sighed. “Bauer thinks that you might be the reason I was so calm during my last full moon shift, considering…”
“Considering…”
“Considering I’d never once been that calm in my wolf form before. No matter what zen tricks he’d tried to teach me to use.”
“But you weren’t always calm around me. Remember when you attacked a couple of years ago?”
He winced and dropped his head into his hands. “Yeah. I remember. It was the only time I’ve ever shifted outside of the full moon. And I was completely out of control. That can happen sometimes when you’re terrified. I’d never been more scared in my entire life. Seth was telling us that he was in love with Sarah, that he wanted to tell her our secret. I saw our entire way of life going up in smoke. I saw our secret being blown. I saw my brothers getting dragged away to a shifter camp, and I knew that it would be all my fault for not raising them the right way.”
“Jackson,” she whispered sadly. He used to be able to turn anything into his fault. He would find a way to blame himself for a wildfire three states away if he could have.
“And then suddenly there was Sarah. She was coming around the side of the house and I was absolutely freaking out. I thought to myself, she can’t know our secret, I have to stop her. And I was shifted into my wolf, completely out of control and sprinting at her.”
“But I was there, too. You were sprinting at me, too.”
“I know. But I didn’t truly realize it until after Seth attacked me. I wouldn’t truly realize the extent of what I’d done until after everything was over.”
“If you had made it all the way over to us, what would have happened? Would you have snarled and tried to scare us away? Or would you have attacked?”
“I… honestly don’t know. And that was enough to make me hate myself for years afterward. But I’m starting to think that if I’d truly registered you there, if I’d caught your scent, even for a moment, I might have been immobilized. A wolf will never attack his mate.”
She naturally wanted to argue with the whole ‘mate’ business, but now didn’t seem like the time. “Shift for me, Jacks.”
He smiled softly at her use of his nickname and took a deep breath. “Seriously, you might just watch me meditate for twenty minutes. No promises
.”
She nodded and he lay onto his back, his palms up on either side of him, taking deep breaths and letting his eyes close.
Kaya did her best not to distract him. But her heart banged in her chest as she watched his large ribcage work up and down with each breath. He always looked tall, but naked, each limb of his body looked especially long. His hair was longer on top than she’d ever seen it before, the dark waves starting to form into the hint of a curl. His perfect face was just that. Perfect. Maybe his brows were a bit too prominent, his nose too blunt, his eyes too shadowed. But these were the things that drew Kaya to him the most. For a glimmering second, she understood exactly what he meant when he described her as his mate in the cosmic sense. It was almost as if some greater being had designed the two of them to be attractive to the other. There was a sort of undeniable magnetism in this man that she would never, ever be able to turn from.
But all thoughts fled from her head as suddenly Jackson’s back arched. His head curled back in what looked like pain. She shoved down her sounds of distress, not wanting to distract him. Silently, she burned the images into her brain. Jackson curled, his bones cracking, pure white fur racing up over his body. His face changing, but no less beautiful. It looked painful and pleasurable all at once. And then the wolf, shackles and all, was scrambling to his feet, shaking himself off down to his snowy white tail.
“You did it,” she whispered, tears in her eyes, her hands over her mouth. Then all the blood in her body froze solid when the wolf swung his vision over to Kaya and stared her down.
Again, she got the same feelings she’d had at the cabin. There was no hint of Jackson inside this creature. Nothing human to soften the wolf’s animalistic appraisal of her. Spiders of fear crept down Kaya’s spine but she made herself sit still, knew better than to retreat in the face of a wild animal.
If he was any more human or aware than the last time, if his training this month was working at all, Kaya certainly could not tell. The wolf moved so fast she gasped. Suddenly he was at the end of his chains, his nose sniffing at the air, just three feet from where Kaya sat.
He tugged at his chains. Her hand curled around the bear spray. He tugged harder at the chains, his eyes feral and warlike.
“Don’t, Jacks!” she ordered, calling up reserves of strength. “You’ll hurt yourself if you pull at the chains.”
To her shock, the wolf stopped pulling. Instead, he paced a small line, as if he were trying to find just how far the chain could go, just how close to her he could get. When he realized the pacing wasn’t helping him get any closer to her, the wolf lay down in a huff, his paws under his chin, and let out a long, thin whine.
Kaya couldn’t help but laugh. “Jackson, are you pouting?”
He lifted his head at the sound of his name, tipping it to the side like he was trying to understand what she was saying.
“Can you understand me?”
He tipped his head again.
“Okay, let’s try this. Look up at the ceiling. Look up.” She lifted a finger and pointed. The wolf’s eyes followed where she was pointing. “Hmm. Okay. How about… sit? Sit, Jackson.”
She couldn’t help the fact that she was talking to him like he was a puppy dog, but to her astonishment, the wolf pushed up into a sit.
“Wow. Okay. If you can understand me, nod your head.”
Nothing.
“Back up. The chains are too tight. I know they’re hurting you. Go back. Back.”
She said the last word quite forcefully, pointing her finger, and the wolf, with another low whine, obeyed her. He rose up, took a few steps back, erasing the tension from the chain. He lay back down, eyeing her.
Kaya took a deep breath. “I’m gonna come over there. Whine if that’s a bad idea.”
The wolf was silent but she didn’t know if that was because he didn’t understand or if he really was on board with her approaching him. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to do this, but she knew that this was her chance. She was unsettled by Jackson’s wolf, but she felt now that it had much more to do with him being so new, so foreign to her.
She rose up and took a step forward. The wolf watched. She took a step into the radius of his chain. And another. A moment later she was sitting cross-legged next to the wolf, her hands shaking and her breath rattling in her chest.
“Hi,” she whispered.
The wolf nuzzled roughly at her knee, harder than she would have expected, and Kaya couldn’t help but jump. She yelped with surprise and a little fear, her hand coming over her mouth. The wolf whined along with her, retreating a few inches.
“That scared me,” she admitted.
The wolf whined again. They stared at one another for a while, maybe even a long while. Kaya willed herself to become comfortable and familiar with the wolf. She didn’t want to lie when Jackson asked her later if he’d scared her. She wanted to be able to say, ‘a little, but then I got used to you’.
“How do I get used to you?” she asked the wolf, tipping her chin onto one fist. “You look so… wild.”
The wolf nuzzled at her knee again, marginally softer this time. Slowly, Kaya lifted her hand and let the wolf sniff at her. She gasped in surprised shock when he suddenly nosed under her hand, tossing it in the air and making it land on top of his furry head.
When her heart rate started to return to normal, she started to take in the physical sensations. “Wow. Your fur… it isn’t soft. It’s more like spun glass. Smooth.”
She gave into temptation and stroked over his head. To her amusement, his eyes immediately went half-lidded and dozy. The wolf laid his head on her knee as if a few simple pets were enough to put him right to sleep.
“Okay,” Kaya said after a minute. “You said it might be hard for you to shift back if I’m around, so I’m gonna go upstairs and wait for you to shift back.”
The wolf lifted his head and looked for all the world like he understood what she was saying. It was the most humanlike he’d seemed yet. And even that was a tiny bit unnerving. Kaya didn’t think the wolf would hurt her, but there was something so untamed in his expression that she couldn’t help the shiver that ran down her spine.
She rose slowly to her feet and started toward the stairs. Behind her, she heard the wolf’s chains drag on the ground. She heard him whimper when he got to the end of the chain. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard other noises. Cracking, rustling, pained grunts. She went slower but didn’t turn. She heard the sound of chains falling to the ground. She was four steps from the top step when two very human hands came around her waist and a very naked body pressed against her back.
Jackson opened his mouth against her neck.
“Oh my God,” he gasped. “I’ve never felt anything like that in my life.”
She laughed and struggled forward; he was giving her quite a lot of weight. After a second, she inwardly shrugged and let him lay her down on the stairs, his front pressed to her back.
“How did it feel?” she asked, gasping a little under his weight. He was just like he’d been after he’d shifted at the end of the last full moon. Naked, giving her all his weight, clinging to her, as if he couldn’t stand to be separated from her.
“It was… I could understand you. Not everything you said, but most of it. I felt like me, Kaya. It was me inside that brain. I can’t even tell you how that makes me feel.” He moved her hair aside to kiss and kiss the back of her neck. “It was the first time I didn’t feel like a monster.”
Her eyes filled with instant tears and she gasped his name.
“I’m crushing you,” he realized, taking his weight away and lifting her up all at once.
She was dizzy with it, and suddenly flipped over in his arms, her eyes focused all the way down the stairs, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders in sudden fear of falling. But he was already striding up, back to the first floor and to his bedroom.
“It was because of you,” he told her, walking straight in and laying her on the bed. “Fuck.
This whole time I’ve been avoiding you, thinking I couldn’t inflict this monster on you, but you were the one who could make me better. You put my brain back in my brain. That doesn’t even make sense. I know I’m not making sense.”
She was laid out on his bed, her arms flung over her head, her feet on either side of his legs. He was naked and wild-eyed, thoughts and feelings obviously churning within him. She wasn’t sure if she should soothe him or spur him on. She fought for breath, a rising excitement threatening to choke her.
He answered her quandary by taking matters into his own hands. He ripped off her socks and went straight to her leggings. He shoved up her oversized sweater so he could stare down at her skimpy underwear.
“I didn’t scare you, did I? My wolf?”
“At first, yeah. But not by the end.” She answered honestly because she didn’t see an advantage to lying to him. He was being so honest and trustworthy with her, it was the least she could do to return the favor.
He stilled for a second, absorbing that information, but she didn’t want him to give it too much thought. She sat up and stripped off her sweater, tossing it away. She was about to take her bra off, too, but he pushed her down onto her back and pulled the cups down, making her spill out.
He sucked one of her nipples into his mouth much harder than he ever had before. He raked his teeth across her sensitive skin and she nearly levitated.
“Jackson!”
“Let me make it up to you, baby. Let me make you feel good.”
“Yes,” she gasped, thinking there was no other word in the English language. “Yes.”
He tossed her legs around his waist and leaned down over her. Kaya glanced down and got one beautiful shot of his cock, so hard it was almost purplish, pressed against her underwear, the closest it had ever been to between her legs. She almost convulsed with desire for him. He took both hands and molded her breasts, pressing them together and burying his stubbled face in her soft flesh. He bit and sucked and left her tender and buzzing as he moved next to her stomach, her ribs.