Werewolf Wedding (8 page)

Jake spun on his heel, eyes and nostrils flaring. After the day he’d had, it would be
really
good to belt his smug-ass brother right in the mouth. But somehow, he resisted the urge. Partially because he didn’t want to descend to his brother’s sophomoric bullshit, but also because he didn’t want to set an example like his brother so happily enjoyed.

“Why are you here, Dane?” Jake snarled, using every ounce of his self-control to keep from wolfing out and tearing into his brother. His brother with the golden hair and the sea-blue eyes. His brother who had stolen three of his five attempted mates; Jake’s own personality, er, quirks, had done the rest. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

Jake hadn’t realized it, but everyone – including the feuding drunks – had stopped whatever they were doing, and were paying rapt attention to the proceedings between the alpha and the pretender. Which one of them was the rightful alpha, and which one the pretender, depended completely on the individual being asked.

“Because I don’t have to,” Dane said. “I went away for five years and came back because I heard you were going soft. I heard you were turning our pack – our pack of
werewolves
– into a bunch of whiny peaceniks. I can’t have that. And so,” he raised his arms to the sides and swept them back and forth. “I’m back to make my people feel like wolves again.”

Elbert clapped for a moment, and then stopped when he realized he was the only one. Jake turned briefly back to the house to see his mother watching from the window. As soon as he caught her eye, he saw her purse her lips and then turn back to the ovens.

“You have no idea what you’re going to do, Dane,” Jake snarled. “You’re going to ruin everything. You’re going to take thousands of years of carefully crafted safety and secrecy and turn it all into a big, flaming wreck.”

Dane quickly closed the distance to his brother and stared straight in his eyes, tilting his head downward slightly to emphasize their minute height difference. “I’ll do what we’ve been doing for centuries. Wolves aren’t meant to hide in the shadows like scared children. We’re meant to be
predators
, little brother. I’m going to win this stupid mating contest to satisfy all the old wolves’ need for tradition, and then I’m bringing us to the fate we should have always had. If you think that means I’m going to make the world burn?”

“Not the world, Dane, just us. If you think you’ll get away with this...”

Dane scoffed a laugh. “It’ll only burn if I lose,” he said. “And when’s the last time I lost?”

Jake seethed, anger pulsing in his temples. Dane laughed again as he turned and simply walked away.

I
was still waiting to hear from Jake, he hadn’t showed Wednesday, or Thursday, so I was a little worried, which is totally not like me.

Seemed like I was developing a lot of non-Delilah traits, but really I kind of liked this new form of me. Felt a tad bit more human than usual, which is a funny thing to say, but there it is.

I figured he was just busy, after all he
is
a high powered CEO of... something or other. And past that, there was something about him that I just trusted. He didn’t seem like the sort to bother with lying, which was honestly pretty great.

“So what was it like?” Jeannie asked me through the open door between the office and my studio. “I mean, having a billionaire all up on your gear?”

I choked just enough to make me drop my electric sander. Luckily I had already taken it away from the block of granite I was going at, so I didn’t do any more irreparable damage to a statue that was going to pay my bills for the next unknown period of time.

“Up on my gear?” I wiped my sweaty hair out of my face and pulled my safety goggles off. “Could you define that?”

Jeannie snickered. “Oh come on, I‘ve seen you after you get some. You get all glowy and you smile a lot. You never smile for no reason except after someone got up on your gear. And, since you said you had an air-quote date with the guy, I put two and two together. So, what was it like?”

I drifted into a little thoughtful respite, not entirely voluntarily. My mind just kind of went to the same place it had back at home with Jake on the couch. I started thinking back to the way he’d kind of semi-avoided my question, and although I understood why, it was still weighing on my mind a bit.

What you should be asking is why the hell does he have anything to do to me? God knows I’m still asking that question.

Why the hell would this guy’s brother give quite so much of a shit about whether or not he got a silly statue of himself? And that’s... really as far as my mind had taken that line of questioning. Jeannie told me Jake was a billionaire, or at least she figured he had to be. And of course that comes with its own little set of fantasies. For me though, I wasn’t into all that.

“Earth to Dilly,” Jeannie said. Then she sighed, because I was still ignoring her, lost in my own head.

I never understood which knife goes where beside a plate, or which fork I’m supposed to use, or why the soup spoons in nice restaurants were so small and the prices so high. And honestly? Knowing that stuff kind of terrifies me. It’d be like I was betraying my
people
, you know? Like I was being too big for my britches, or whatever you want to call that feeling.

I guess it sounds funny for an artist, who makes her living by selling luxury goods that no one
needs
to talk about high end restaurants or jewelry or fashion or whatever in such a way, but...

Yeah, there it is. One of the many bizarre crises of my improbable life.

I was thumbing through a magazine that morning, which I clearly remember was a Wednesday. Second Wednesday in December, and that it was very cold, which isn’t all that common down here. I flipped past a section about how to give your man earth-shattering orgasms. I caught enough of it to see that the primary advice this sage had to give on the subject was to “listen to what he likes, and when he starts moaning louder, do that more!” which even I, with my limited experience in earth-shattering orgasms, especially in the receiving department, could have told you if given enough time.

“Hey!” Jeannie called from the front. Her sudden shout startled me so much that I almost pitched over in my chair, but somehow I caught myself on the desk and only bit my tongue a little. “Hey! Dilly! You gotta see this!”

She got all high pitched and squeaky, which meant either the warehouse across the little dirt lot from us was on fire, or there was a wizard in the parking lot doing battle with a dragon. I stood up, slowly, and let my blood pressure regulate.

“Get up off your ass and come look. Your two boyfriends are about to kill each other.”

I sighed. “I don’t have
any
boyfriends. It was just that once with Jake, I—”

Jeannie wasn’t paying the first lick of attention, so I just kept on. “Listen, we had one date.
One
date – and what the hell are you talking about them trying to—”

“Kill each other? Look outside, jackass,” she said.

“Huh?” I turned away from the desk, then flopped my giant leather gloves on Jeannie’s desk and looked out the slightly dingy window –
I really do need to clean that sometime
– to the sight of Jake and his brother in a collar and elbow tie-up, just like pro wrestlers, outside of my studio.

“Holy
shit
,” I said.

“I already said that,” Jeannie said. “What the hell should we do?”

I shook my head, absolutely dumbfounded. It’s not rare for me to be speechless, or to kind of stammer or babble, but being completely dumbfounded isn’t a normal state for me. “Go out there and break them up,” I said with a raise of an eyebrow. “If nothing else, you’ll get in between them before they rip one of your arms off.”

She started nodding and made her way to the door.

“I was kidding, you moron! Don’t go out there! Look at those two, they’re—”

“I’m not much of a risk taker, you know that,” Jeannie said. “But to get between those two?” She shrugged as Jake’s brother – Dane he’d called him – got some leverage on Jake and hip-tossed him to the ground. He followed his brother down, crouched on top of him and landed one single punch before Jake rolled out from under him and got to his feet. “I’d risk an arm. Hell, maybe a leg. Depends on how long I’d be between ‘em.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I said with a laugh.

“You are too,” she replied, still staring out the window at the battling giants. “I hope they’re fighting over you. How, like, primal and satisfying would that be? Two enormous Neanderthals beating the shit out of each other to claim their princess; it’s the story of half the fairytales on earth. Except, you know, it’s happening right here, and as far as I know, you’re no princess.”

“Says you.” I stared in a mixture of shock and awe as Jake dodged a punch and promptly crunched a fist straight into his brother’s nose. “Also, we have to do something. Or one of them actually is going to kill the other one.”

Finally, one of the two participants started speaking loudly enough for us to hear. It was Jake, and he wasn’t not happy. “I will
never
let you take over the pack! I don’t care what kind of challenges you give me, or what you pretend to want to do, I’m
not
letting you get everyone killed!”

He punctuated this with a punch that made Dane’s teeth turn red with the blood from a busted lip, even though the black-haired brother was still grinning like a psychopath. The crimson stain just enhanced the wild look in his eyes, which I’m gonna admit this, even if I’m not entirely comfortable with it – the whole feral, wild, savage thing?
Kinda
hot. From the way she was gnawing on her lip, I figured Jeannie agreed.

“Did he just say pack?” Jeannie asked. “That’s weird.”

I shook my head, immediately thinking back to the whole werewolf joke he told. “Must be a family joke,” I said. “What the hell runs in a pack? Werewolves?” I scoffed to indicate that I wasn’t serious.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve read enough books about them. Shit, you know what? They kinda
look
like werewolves are supposed to look. And I’m getting kinda... you don’t have any need for some lesbian experimentation do you?” She was laughing nervously. “Don’t answer that.”

“What the hell do you know about it, brother?” Dane snarled outside, loudly enough for me to clearly hear him. It was... pretty terrifying, to be honest. With the blood dripping everywhere and the pissed off yelling, I was starting to see the werewolf thing – er, I mean, it made sense. You don’t have to believe everything that makes sense. “You’re fighting
right now
! How can you possibly go on and on about violence being bad and all this, while you are fighting me? How is that reasonable at all?”

“You won’t listen to anything else,” Jake said. He was doing that thing where you talk really low, but it’s still loud and kind of whispery and raspy. That was awesomely hot too, but at that point I was more interested in no one being murdered than the tingling ladyparts. “So I’m doing whatever I can to convince you of how stupid you’re being.”

Dane threw his head back and started laughing, apparently forgetting entirely that he was bleeding all over the place. “I’m the stupid one.
I
am the one trying to screw everything up, is that right? And yet I’m the only one acting like a predator.”

At that, Jeannie and I exchanged glances. “Predator?” she asked. I shook my head, a little perplexed about the whole predator and prey business.

“If you’re leading the pack, we’re
prey
,” Dane said and then spat a gross wad on the ground. “We’re
wolves
brother, we shouldn’t be hiding in the shadows, scared to be who we really are!”

“Holy
fuck
,” Jeannie said. “I knew it. I totally knew it. I read this one book, and there were—”

“Shhh!” I hissed at her, a finger on my lips. “I have no idea why they decided to do this here, but I’ve got a fairly good idea that we probably don’t want to get between them.”

“Jeez,” Jeannie whined with a wistful look on her face. “That’s what you think. I’m still thinking that I’d accept the lack of at least one arm for... twenty minutes between them. A finger for five.”

I had to laugh. “What do you think being between them would do?”

Jeannie was just shaking her head, repeating the same words over and over –
I don’t care what they’d do
.

The thing was, she didn’t know what it was actually like to be between those two warring brothers. It was a little irritating, honestly, especially since I didn’t even know what I was in the middle
of
, much less why the hell I was in the middle of it. One thing she was yammering about did ring true though – there was something about Jake and what he did to me that I couldn’t deny. And even with his yelling at his – admittedly cocky, slightly taller, and pretty good looking – brother and all their going back and forth about the weird predator shit? I was glad he was outside my studio.

I coulda done without the punching and the yelling, but... yeah, there it is, the bald truth.

Through all of these bizarre proceedings, Jake had his broad, muscular back to us. His back, which probably still had remnants of my desperate, clawing scratches, which was clothed in a tightly tailored dress shirt, and which tapered down to his trim waist which I knew had a beautifully muscular ass beneath it... anyway, it was turned to us. Dane, who had either not noticed, or more likely had known all along that we were watching and kept right on mugging for the camera anyway, raised an eyebrow as he looked at us. Jeannie quailed.

“Is that the good one or the bad one?” she asked.

“Can’t you tell?”

She shook her head.

“Look, brother!” Dane said with dramatic gusto, “you’ve been putting on a show. All of your blabbering about keeping secrets and here you are shouting them from the roof.” He shook his head, clucking with laughter. “You can’t do anything right, can you, Jacob?”