Obsession (3 page)

And then she’d returned home to her pack, because she owed Dennis for her student loan, and found out a degree didn’t change anyone’s attitude. Dennis still treated her like a fungus and her foster parents put more pressure on her to help around the house. Dennis insisted she work for him as a means of repaying her college loan and the only job he’d offered was as a lowly data entry clerk. If it weren’t for the freelance articles she wrote for an online tech magazine, she’d never have money.

She raised her head and stared out the window into the gray Michigan sky. Back at the University of Florida, sometimes she’d take a break from studying and lie back on the grass. She’d stare into the sky and make a wish on the wispy puffs of clouds scudding past.

Jessica went to the window and touched the glass, tracing the outline of a distant cloud. “I wish I had power and could find my real family.”

What silliness. Wishes never came true.

“JESSICA!!!”

Now what?

“JESS!” 17-year-old Ralph. He had a voice like a bullfrog in heat. No patience.

“Ralph! Quiet, you’ll wake the baby!” Arleen yelled.

A loud wail ensued, followed by Arleen’s sighs and attempts to soothe little Ronnie. Jessica went into the living room.

Ralph thrust a paper-wrapped package at her. “Here. This was on the front stoop. I’m not your delivery boy.”

With an arrogant swagger, he headed to the bedroom he didn’t have to share because he was the oldest boy—either to play video games or talk on the phone with his girlfriend or masturbate or do all three at once.

Ralph liked to multitask.

She brought the package into her room and sighed. Russ had climbed out of his crib (the little Lupine had the agility of a monkey) and was sitting on her narrow twin bed.

“Jess, whaz that?”

“Package, honey. What are you doing out of bed?” She sat down with the box in her lap.

“Package, package! Mine, mine!” Russ bounced up and down on the bed, chortling and pointing at the brown-paper-wrapped box.

“It’s not yours, Russ. It has my name on it. And don’t bounce. You just threw up.”

“Mine!”

Were Skins ever this much trouble in child form?

Rachel and Ryan, the fourteen-year-old twins, rushed into the bedroom. “Whatcha got? Lemme see!”

Jessica headed for the bathroom, the only place where a girl of 22 could have privacy. Finally alone, for a few minutes, until one of her siblings pounded on the door, demanding to know what she was doing.

She sat on the closed toilet lid. After unwrapping the package, she stared at the plain shoe box, then lifted the box lid.

Inside a nest of white tissue paper nestled a belt of violet suede, the color so rich and pure she wanted to stroke it. Her favorite color! Clear crystal stones studded the belt and the silver buckle.

Picking up the belt, she held it to the harsh overhead lights. The stones winked, as if sharing secrets.

Who could have sent her such a lovely gift?

Jessica rummaged through the tissue paper. No card. She replaced the belt in the shoebox and looked at the paper for a return address. None.

Odd that the post office had delivered it without a return address.

The belt felt warm in her right palm. Jessica examined it closer. She frowned and said aloud, “I wish I could keep you.”

The stones suddenly glinted deep purple.

Odd. Was it her imagination? The smell of rich…something filled the air. Something dark and powerful. Her nostrils flared. The scent was foreign. Like grapes and something very faint, but rotten. Sewer gas, like her ex-boyfriend’s methane emissions. She sniggered. Never date a Skin, Alexa had told her. They always fart after eating Mexican food. And Lupines NEVER fart.

Suddenly she missed Alexa so much it hurt. Jessica turned the belt over. Instinct urged her to show her foster parents, ask their advice.

She stroked the suede. She had so few pretty things. Most of her clothing consisted of hand-me-downs from the pack’s older children. Once she’d worn a pretty purple gingham dress during a pack meeting. The dress’s original owner had been there and laughed at her.

After that incident, Jessica made her own dresses. The fabric was cheap and the sewing clumsy, but at least it was original.

Like this beautiful belt.

I can’t show anyone, not even the young. Rachel will demand to wear it and Rod will pluck out the stones and use them to decorate his skateboard.
For once, she wanted something that was exclusively
hers.

Jessica rolled the belt and hid it in the wicker hamper. Since the laundry was her responsibility, no one would look there.

But everyone would ask what had been inside the box. She hunted through the cabinets and found the unopened bottle of lilac hand crème she’d purchased last week to disguise her scent when she wanted to hide. She’d tucked it far behind a box of her foster mother’s maxi pads, a place where Ralph wouldn’t dare look, should he want to use her lotion to grease his palm while having phone sex with his current girlfriend.

After plopping the tube of lotion into the shoebox, she emerged from the bathroom, nearly running into a sea of six eager faces.

“What was it?”

“Who’d send you something?”

“Lemme see!”

Jessica showed them the shoebox. “Lotion.”

“Who’s it from? Is it a boyfriend? What’s his name?” Rachel asked.

She felt a pinch of guilt at Rachel’s eager face. Rachel was just discovering boys and looked up to Jessica. She hated lying, but something urged keeping the belt a secret.

“It’s from Alexa, my best friend in Colorado. No boyfriend.”

She set down the box on her bed and turned to Rachel. “You can try the lotion if you wish.”

Rachel wrinkled her pert nose. “Skin lotion? I heard male Lupines hate it when a female disguises her scent.”

Jessica winked. “That’s why it’s good to have around, when you don’t want boys bugging you.”

Grinning, she ruffled Rachel’s silky brown hair and headed for the kitchen. Her foster mother was mixing biscuit flour. Flour dusted her face, her hands, the counter. A plate of freshly made oatmeal cookies sat on the table.

Food, especially sweets for the younger ones, was never in shortage at the household. Jessica gave a rueful glance at her wide hips. Yeah, female Lupines had curves. Baby got
plenty
of back.

Just that some days she wished her big butt was a little less
back
.

“Who delivered the package?” Jessica asked, sitting at the table and nibbling on a cookie. Another problem. She couldn’t resist her foster mother’s baking.

“I don’t know. It was sitting outside on the stoop. You should give it to your father to examine. It could have been magick delivery.”

He’s not my real father.
But today it didn’t matter because she was curious about the mysterious package. “I’ve never heard of magick delivery.”

Arleen glanced at her. “That’s because we’ve tried to shield you kids until you’re older. But you’re 22, so you might as well know. Magick delivery is a package someone sends through teleportation. Only an Other with extreme power can send it, which may mean dark magick. Ralph said the package hadn’t been there a minute ago when he was trimming the bushes. You should give it to Dennis.”

A chill raced down her spine. A magick package. No name. Someone wanted her to have this belt, and it smelled, no reeked of power.

Mine.

“It was just a tube of lotion from Alexa. She forgot to put her return address on it. And you know Alexa’s mate is a powerful Lupine billionaire. He probably hired some Fae or Other to deliver it.”

What a lie. But her foster mother looked relieved.

Arlene paused rolling out the dough. “Thanks for your help with Russ. Why don’t you take some cookies out on the back porch and read your book? The others are outside playing soccer.”

Arlene never understood the need to read in private, without screaming children interrupting every five seconds.

“Think I’ll go to my room.”

As she turned to leave, Arlene said, “Jessica, wait.”

She waited, hoping it wasn’t another lecture.

“I know this past year has been hard on you since you graduated. I’m always asking you to help with the little ones. I really appreciate it.” Arlene rubbed her hands on a clean dishtowel. “I wish you were a little…happier. Rick and I want to give you more space. More free time. We’re working on it. Dennis authorized the building of a cabin you can share with another female Lupine who just graduated college. We’re so proud of what you did in school. We just ask you to be patient with us. There’s so many young…”

Your fault you fucking breeding bitch for popping them out.

Jessica started. Where had that horrible thought come from? It almost felt like someone placed it inside her mind.

“Okay,” she managed.

“We’re your family and families have to stick together. So just be patient a while longer and you’ll get your own place.”

Jessica nodded. They weren’t her family. She really had no family, nothing that belonged to her. Not her clothes, not her shoes, not even the damn book because it was a library book. Nothing was hers. Everything was shared with the others.

Except the belt.

Jessica returned to the bedroom she shared with Rachel, the only other girl in the Tyrell family. She picked the shoebox off the bed, and ruefully noted the lotion now sat on Rachel’s side of the white dresser.

Rachel had even snagged the tissue paper. Depressed, she picked up the empty box and stared inside.

My gift, and already it’s claimed.

As she set it down, she noticed something inside. A folded piece of white paper. Jessica picked it up and unfolded it.

The note hadn’t been there when she’d opened the box earlier. Jessica read the bold, cursive script. “Passing this on to my only remaining sister. It belonged to our family. Take good care of it and never let it leave you. Your brother, Jules.”

“My brother,” she said aloud.

The note fluttered to the bed. Jessica stared at the wall, her heart pounding hard, her chest filled with emotion. For years she’d searched for her birth parents, had tried to pry out of Arlene and her mate, Richard, details of her birth family.

She was the only red-head in the pack, and red-headed Lupines, except for the red wolf shifters in Florida, were rarer than hippies at an NRA convention. After graduating from college, she’d put her degree in computer science to work, using her PC at the office to try tracking down her ancestry. Her family’s computer was broken and the laptop she’d been given for college had been handed down to Ralph.

All her diligent searches for her birth family had met with a dead end, until now.

“I have a brother,” she said a little louder.

Mine.

Maybe it was a mistake. Or someone playing a cruel trick on her. Someone who thought she wanted rescue from a life of duty and drudgery, and having a blood brother would provide the rescue.

It’s not a trick.
She knew it. She had a brother, and suddenly for the first time in years, Jessica felt a sense of security in her extremely uncertain and unstable world.

Born of old nightmares, a distant, faint memory flickered. She clutched a worn teddy bear and kept crying, lost in the dark, looking for her mother, her family. But it was so dark, so very, very dark and scary…

Jessica bit her lower lip and forced the thoughts away. She had not had that nightmare since going away to college and was determined to never have it again. Her only living brother had reached out to her, and he could fill in the blanks when he saw her.

She’d find him. But where? Where could she even start to search for him?

“Where?” she whispered.

Jessica went into the bathroom, fished out the purple belt. Stones on the belt glowed as if lit by an inner light.
Alexa, Alexa
…the belt seemed to whisper back.

Of course. Alexa. Her friend’s mate, J.J., had a state-of-the-art computer. Better yet, he was a pack alpha and had access to restricted records that listed all Lupines.

She would find her brother in blood.

Jessica stroked the stones, watching them glow purple. Something deep inside her winked with dark satisfaction.

Mine.

Chapter 2

She was coming back to the ranch. The red-headed Lupine who made his blood quicken, his heart beat faster and his dick go hard as stone. The feisty female who haunted his dreams, made him want to strip her naked and have his wicked way with her.

Not a good idea to walk about the ranch with a permanent hard-on, he thought ruefully.

Raphael Amador controlled his emotions as his alpha told him the news. Jessica Tyrell, the rebellious and headstrong Lupine whom he’d met two months ago at the ranch, would arrive this morning. Alexa’s best friend, the only female who’d ever left him speechless.