Werewolf Wedding(21)

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?”

Jake turned slowly, giving me a slightly sheepish smile when we came into view.

And then Dane sucker-punched him right in the back of the head.

Jake fell forward, eyes blankly staring and glazed over. His knees buckled, hit the ground hard, and he waivered a moment before toppling over, like a giant felled by... well, by another giant who sucker-punched him in the back of the goddamn head!

I was out the door before I knew what I was doing. My feet carried me forward without any conscious thought on the part of my brain. I vaguely heard the door slap against the jamb behind me as I strode forward, stepped over my felled boyfriend – gulp! I thought it right that second – and stuck my finger in the middle of Dane’s chest. It sank, slightly, into the muscles, which he then bounced. My finger kind of shot backward, though I kept it on him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

Dane was trying really hard not to laugh. “I told you to ignore him,” he said. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

He did that faster-than-light thing and grabbed both of my wrists at the same time. “I warned, you, didn’t I?” he repeated, with more emphasis that time. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “What a naughty little girl you are, hum? Can’t take warnings, and then you have the nerve to accuse me?”

I was burning in places I really didn’t want to be burning. My wrists for one, because as he talked, he was twisting his hands slowly, giving me the sensation of a rope burn slowly creeping up my arms. “Now is when you say ‘yes sir, you warned me.’”

I stared at the enormous, gorgeous, horrible giant in front of me with my mouth hanging open in an extremely undignified way. As much as I wanted to tell him that he could shove it up his ass, I heard myself repeating what he’d told me to say. I guess for once, my fight or flight response did the right thing. “Y... yes sir,” I said. “You did warn me.”

“Let her alone, Dane,” Jake growled from the ground. “Now.”

“Oh!” Dane said, releasing my hands so forcefully that I tripped over Jake and landed square on my ass. Thankfully all the padding kept me from hurting anything except my pride. That’s one thing I’ll say for my ass – it’s kept me safe from injury more than once. “Yes, yes sir, yes of course, alpha. I’ll do it right now!”

His tone was dripping with mocking and anger so apparent that it made me a little uncomfortable. Jake narrowed his eyes, climbed to his feet and then helped me up. “Say whatever you want, Dane, just get out of here before I do something I’ll regret.”

Laughing, the slightly bigger brother tossed his hair, again mockingly, and then glared hard daggers first at Jake and then at me. “I’ll leave now, but you listen to what I told you. Don’t try me, Delilah. Do you see that I’m dangerous? Have I convinced you that if you keep f*cking around with things you don’t understand that you’re making a mistake you’ll never manage to fix? You keep screwing around with all this, little girl, you’re gonna get a lot more than a hurt wrist and an embarrassed, idiot boyfriend. The only way you’re gonna save him – and yourself – is when you give in to me. You’re already mine,” he hissed, “you just have to realize he’ll never be what I am.”

And with that, he turned, mounted an enormous motorcycle that was covered in chrome and flame decals, and sped off. The bike made so much noise that my stomach was sort of thudding in my throat unpleasantly. A few seconds later, that sensation turned to a sour, bile-like taste in the back of my throat.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked, jarring me out of my sickened reverie. “Dane is... why didn’t you tell me he’d come after you?”

“I... I tried,” I said. “I just didn’t want...” I sighed, not able to find the right words. I let my shoulders slump over, and hunched my back in the way my grandma had always whacked me on the arm and complained at me for slouching. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “We were just having so much fun that I didn’t want to talk about him. I didn’t want to ruin it.”

Jake’s mouth drew into a hard line. “He’s dangerous, just like he said. He’s half crazy, and—uh, what’s wrong with your friend?”

I turned around to see Jeannie still standing there with a wide-open mouth and a pair of eyes that you could have landed a helicopter on. She seemed to be stammering something, but I couldn’t be sure.