Werewolf Wedding(26)

I took a drink of the wine that had magically appeared with my free hand and cocked my head. “Did you just say alpha? That’s... kind of a weird word to use for the head a family.”

Jake cocked one of those smiles – the same kind of smiles that he gave me about thirty seconds before he made me come without taking my underwear off. “It’s... kind of a weird family to be the head of. But there’s plenty of time for all that kind of stuff later.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I took another swallow of wine. It was good – really good. Although, I can’t explain why. I’m a six buck bottle girl, I don’t taste oak or peat when I drink Malbec, I just taste wine. For while. Then I taste spinning and glee and giggling. Or wait, those don’t have a taste.

“Just...” Jake squeezed my hand. I looked up, into those steely, burning eyes as his skin burned against my palm. “Listen, I—”

“Master Somerset?” Barney broke in, with a slightly worried waiver in his voice. In the past couple of hours, I hadn’t heard him speak any way other than completely collected and together, so the switch was slightly worrying. “There’s something I need to, er, can you come with me?”

“Does this have to happen right now?” Jake asked, his eyes still burning into me. I could tell his mind was decidedly not on whatever serious business Barney wanted to discuss. “There are other things going on right now.”

The older man leaned in close and whispered something into Jake’s ear that made him stiffen up and purse his lips. The eyes that had seconds before been serene and charming, turned to raw rage. “He knows,” Jake growled. “That son of a...”

His hand was still in mine, so I squeezed it. “It’s just us here, Jake,” I said in my most soothing, calmest voice. “Just the two of us, three,” I said with a smile to Barney. “There’s nothing to be angry about. If your brother tries anything we’re safe, you can deal with him later.”

Jake blinked hard and pinched the bridge of his nose with the hand that wasn’t grasping mine. He turned his head to the massive bay window to our left, and stared through his reflection, into the infinite blackness stretching out from the house. There were spotlights about the grounds, and then the ones in the trees, but otherwise, there was no way to see anything between the splotches of light.

“Dark out there,” I said just to have some noise fill the air that wasn’t the whistling from Barney’s nose. “Although I guess it is night time, so that makes sense. Dark, you know, when the sun is down.”

“It isn’t dark to us,” Jake said. “We can see in the...”

Barney cleared his throat. “If Miss Coltrane’s suggestion is going to be followed, I’ll be back to the kitchen. The tiramisu needs to, uh, be fluffed.”

As he exited with a decent amount of grace, Jake smiled. “Now maybe we can do this right.”

“You’re being really cryptic,” I said, dipping my spoon in the pumpkin and licking the seductive, savory liquid off the back. “Oh God that was some kind of Emily Post faux-pas wasn’t it?”

“Hell if I know. This wasn’t ever the life I imagined, if that isn’t abundantly clear already.”

“What is?” I asked, having another lick. “I’m sorry, but this is really good.”

A snicker. “You’re apologizing for complimenting my soup? That’s a little weird.”

“No, apologizing for interrupting whatever it is you want to tell me, or ask me, or whichever it is. I’m terrible at taking social cues.”

Jake loosened the collar of his shirt, revealing a thin cord around his neck that I’d never noticed before. The cords in his neck were taut, which is when I realized he was gritting his teeth. “You okay?” I asked. “Seem nervous about something.”

He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth. “Nah, nothing anybody else wouldn’t be nervous about. In fact, I’m pretty impressed with how I’m handling it. After all, I’m just going to ask you to marry me and be the vita of a werewolf pack.” He shrugged. “No big.”

“Oh,” I said.

Before I knew what I had said ‘oh’ to, my hands started shaking, which I tried to remedy by swallowing the rest of the glass of wine. And then a pumpkin full of soup, and then a roasted duck.

“B-b-but why?” I asked. “Wait did you say vita? And you are a werewolf. That’s not possible, those don’t exist outside of movies and romance novels.”

“And creepy Carpathian myths involving thousand year old vampires? Ever heard that old axiom that behind every fiction is a kernel of truth?”

“And you want me to marry you?”

My heart started beating reasonably faster. “I hardly... you barely... I mean we’ve been together once! That’s not logical!”

“But you haven’t said no,” he growled. “I’ll take care of you. Your studio? The bills? The constant need to go to birthday parties and carve dolphins? Gone.”

“I don’t... wait, how did you know about that? About any of it? And it was weddings that I did the dolphin statues at – and by the way I was really good at them. Wait!” I said, “wait, no, you’re trying to trick me. Somehow... you wooing me with fantastic wine and incredible food, and you spending all this energy and effort to make me feel special is some kind of trick. It has to be.”