Werewolf Wedding(19)

“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.





-8-


“I’m not sure I’m into this werewolf war thing. It’s exciting, sure, but... jeez it is confusing.”





Delilah


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.”