Chapter 6
THE SUN DIPPED into the bedroom, kissing Daphne’s bare skin. Chaz had his arm wrapped around her, his face nuzzled in her neck, and his knees tucked up behind hers, bending in perfect unison.
He’d brought her to heights of delightful decadence she’d never dreamed possible at least a half a dozen times. She had no idea a man could go three rounds in one night. By the time they had collapsed in each other’s arms, spent, sunrise was only hours away.
She squinted, straining to see the clock on the nightstand. She thought it read ten, but the red lines blurred, so she couldn’t be totally positive.
Blinking her eyes a few times, the reality of what she’d done rustled the butterflies in her stomach, sending them on a fluttering rampage.
Gerri Wilder had provided the kind of man Daphne had asked for…in bed. But she hadn’t asked for a wolf, much less one that would mate with her, making her feel all sorts of intense emotions.
Not to mention the crazy things she’d ended up doing, like having unprotected sex. She believed him when he’d said he’d always used protection in the past and that he was clean of any human diseases, though she was too afraid to ask about wolf ones, if they existed. And then there were all the questions that rattled through her ignorant mind about if she had become pregnant, what would she be giving birth to? And how many?
The truly scary part had been when he asked if she wanted him to wear one the second time and she’d said no.
With no hesitation.
The word spilled out of her mouth before he’d finished asking and before she could retract it, he’d shoved her against the wall, wrapping her legs around his waist and rammed himself inside her. He was a contradiction of tempestuous and affection. It truly was the perfect combination for her two weeks of recklessness, not a lifetime of love and a house full of babies. Wasn’t that what she was trying to avoid?
Taking in a controlled breath, she carefully lifted Chaz’s arm off her body.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a deep, throaty voice.
“Going to go make some coffee, but more importantly, I need to use the bathroom.” She slipped from the sheets wishing she felt some sort of after sex embarrassment about being naked in the morning.
“Coffee sounds wonderful. Maybe some eggs and bacon too?”
She laughed and then tried to contain a groan when she stood. The idea she might need an ice pack between her legs should be blush worthy, but all it did was make her tingle in anticipation of more. She padded across the room, his gaze followed her, so powerful as if he had caressed her with his hands. Rummaging through her belongings, she found a pair of shorts and a tank top. With her back turned, she got dressed. “How do you want them cooked?”
“However you want or whatever is fastest. I’m so hungry I’d eat bark if it were offered.”
“Scrambled it is.” She turned and faced him.
He’d propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her with those damned amazing eyes. “I was half afraid I’d wake up and you’d be gone.”
“I thought about taking off,” she said, though the thought had been fleeting because it made her physically nauseous. “But I want my two weeks of last night.”
He smiled. “It’s going to be more like a lifetime of last night.”
She swallowed, forcing the urge to hold her stomach to remain a thought and not become an action. “I don’t…” she paused, thinking about how she could say this without hurting his feelings or sounding like a cold-hearted slut. “I can’t just accept what you say as fact.”
“I know it’s not easy to reconcile in your mind, but you will.”
“I’m not so sure about that and I think from now on we need to use a condom.”
“If that is what you want.” His wide smile mesmerized her, keeping her from being able to move.
She nodded. “And when the two weeks are up, we go our separate ways.”
He growled deep and raspy. “That won’t be possible and if you do, it could kill us both.”
“Now you’re being dramatic.”
“No. I’m not. I’ve seen it before. It wouldn’t happen right away, but over time, we’d both become a shell of the people we are today. If we don’t feed our love then we—”
She held up her hand. “Can we just not talk about this?”
“We need to talk about it,” he said, scooting to the edge of the bed, thankfully keeping himself covered in the sheet because she wasn’t sure she could control herself. “I told you before I’ve tried to avoid this part of my life because of what it means, but it’s happened and it’s time I take my rightful place in my family, and in the world.”
“What the hell does that mean?” She leaned against the dresser, letting out a long puff of air. “What are you, some kind of prince?”
“One way of putting it.”
“Right.” She folded her arms across her chest. Maybe Gerri had set her up with a pathological liar. Wouldn’t that be great if she were pregnant? Not. “I wish you would stop telling these tall tales.”
He laughed. “I’m next in line to lead the largest pack of wolves on this planet. We have packs in almost every city in the United States, each with their own Alpha leader, but my father leads them all.” He paused and shook his head. “I didn’t choose my role in life. I wanted to live out my days, never finding my mate, never knowing what this felt like.” He tapped the tattoo on his chest, then the one on his shoulder. “I love my job with Twilight Crossing and being just one of the guys. However, by mating, and stepping into my father’s shoes, I’m not only a leader of millions of wolves, but I’m also the voice of the all wolves when it comes to Twilight.”
“You’re going to be the Grand Eminence?” Her body trembled as her mind raced back to when she’d been a little girl and she’d hear stories at Sunday school about the beast known as Grand Eminence. The beast that destroyed villages and wanted to rid the world of all humans. She’d thought that being was a symbol and never really existed.
“That’s the name your people gave our leader, my great-great-grandfather and co-founder of Twilight Crossing, which, by the way, was created by a human, a wolf, and a witch to help protect all kinds. My father’s title, and soon to mine is actually, simply Chief.”
She hugged herself tighter remembering the nights they’d go camping and every time she heard the howl of a wolf, she hid under her sleeping bag, wanting to feel terrified like the rest of her family, but in reality, it wasn’t fear, but a lack of understanding that left her to stay buried in ignorance. “According to my father, my great-grandfather was killed by the Grand Eminence and the main reason my family moved to Havern.”
“My family doesn’t kill people. The council will arrest them, hold a trial, and in some cases, humans, wolves, or any other creature who breaks the law in unspeakable ways might be sentenced to death, but we’re no murderers. Not like you’re implying.” Chaz stood, letting the sheets pool at his feet, showing off his wondrous naked body.
It was hard for her not to stare and remember every touch and kiss she’d experienced at the hands of the one man her father would probably strangle to death if given the chance.
Chaz slipped his feet into his jeans, hiking them up to his hips. “We keep records of every human killed by a paranormal and every paranormal killed by a human that we can document, so if you give me as much information as possible, I can dig through the records and find out what actually happened.”
“My family wouldn’t lie about this.” She narrowed her eyes, glaring.
“I’m not saying they are, but it was a long time ago and I doubt your dad had been around to witness what happened.” Chaz stood in the doorway, hands on his hips.
Anger sparked on her skin, but no matter how hard she tried to bring it to a higher level, the underlying connection she seemed to have developed for Chaz shut down her ability to become furious.
“A hundred years ago we didn’t coexist as well as we do now, so I acknowledge that a lot of bad shit happened to humans, but I’ve seen and heard so many stories that are mostly false and used to spread fear about my kind.” He reached his hand out. “Come on, let’s eat breakfast and I’ll make a phone call.”
If she could growl, she would. Instead she snarled.
“That’s cute.”
“I wasn’t trying to be cute.” She pushed herself from the dresser, arms still folded and breezed past him. No way could she take him to the family reunion now.
Gerri Wilder got this one all wrong.
***
Chaz flipped open his laptop while Daphne quietly went about making breakfast. The tension between them was so thick it prickled against his bones.
“What’s your great-grandfather’s name?”
“Albert Lee Jadenson.”
Chaz sucked in a deep breath, his heart squeezed at the cruel joke life had played on them. “Your family changed their name to Jade?”
“According to my father, his grandmother wanted to put it all in the past and start fresh, so she changed her name and all of her kids’ names.”
The sound of bacon sizzling in the frying pan echoed across the kitchen. The crisp meaty scent penetrated his nose, sending his stomach on a hunger roll, but it didn’t make the tight knot forming in his gut go away. He quickly sent an email to his father, asking for the files, because Chaz knew deep down he was going to have to prove to his mate what really happened. He also knew his father would respond quickly A Ferguson didn’t ask about a Jadenson without giving a reason and what he’d put in the email wouldn’t satisfy his father.
No more than a minute passed when his email dinged with a response from dear old dad. Instead of explaining everything, he gave his dad his location and then closed his laptop. His folks were only a couple of hours away, so he suspected they’d be rolling in around dinner time.
Fucking wonderful.
Daphne set a plate in front of him with perfectly cooked eggs and crispy bacon. His parents, along with friends and relatives who had mated told him how strange it had been at first to know so much without ever having to ask, but looking at the food in front of him, and smelling the dark, rich coffee that was stronger than most people liked, he understood the peculiarity because he knew without a doubt, that the second pot of coffee would be weaker for her and she preferred her eggs over cooked, which is why hers were still on the stove top.
“Thanks,” he said, feeling like a shit. Not only had he mated with her, possibly impregnated her, but he was about to destroy the very essence of who she thought she was and where she came from. He suspected that her family rewrote their narrative to protect themselves from the ugliness that was Albert Lee Jadenson, a quarter breed who had turned on his pack out of shame and denied the part of him that was wolf.
The story, as he remembered it, Albert beat his children anytime they turned into a wolf, until they, too, denied it, but the Jadensons’s disappeared after Albert had been put down. The Twilight Council, and the Chief, had decided to bury the past and move forward.
He dug into his food, trying to decide what he should tell her and what could wait. “Oh God,” he muttered as the eggs, laced with the perfect amount of pepper, cheese, and hot sauce teased his taste buds. “These are great.”
“Glad you like them.” She dropped her plate and plopped herself across the table. “You told me that in order to mate with me, I had to have wolf blood. I don’t understand how that works.”
“It’s very rare, but sometimes an offspring of a human and a wolf doesn’t become a wolf and there are some wolves who resent being a wolf in a human world, so they never turn and eventually the wolf becomes dormant in the parent and subsequent children.”
She pushed her food around on her plate. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s absurd. No one in my family would ever be with a wolf.”
“That you know of.”
She glared at him.
“I’m just being honest.”
“Not really,” she said, pushing her plate aside. “You’re keeping something from me. I can sense it and I don’t know what pisses me off more. The fact that I can feel the deception to the pit of my core, or that there is a very real part of me that buys this shit, hook, line, and sinker.”
In the short period of time he’d known her, she had been timid more than anything else. So, this in your face, to the point, persona, took him by surprise, but he had to admit, it totally turned him on. “I want to wait until I hear back from my dad and get all the files on your great-grandfather before saying anything that I don’t know for fact.”
“Bull-shit. You just don’t want to tell me right now.”
“That’s only half true, but I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t trust any of this,” she said, leaning back in her chair, folding her arms. “And I don’t think I can bring you to my family reunion, so maybe we should just say goodbye.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen.
“I’m not going anywhere and when I get the files from my dad, I’ll show you everything, I promise.”
“Because that will make me feel better about any of this.” Her sarcastic tone wasn’t lost on him.
His pulse kicked up, sensing that she is trying to sever their connection. Wouldn’t matter how hard she tried to deny it, she wouldn’t be able to, but the harder she fought, the more pain it caused him both physically in his heart and deep down in his soul.
“My dad is always quick to respond, so why don’t we go put our suits on and go to the waterfront and enjoy the day?”
“Fine. You can do the dishes. I’m going to take a shower.”
The kitchen chair screeched across the floor as she shoved it backward, pushing herself to a standing position. “We’ve not mated. It doesn’t exist.” With those words, she stormed out of the room, down the hall, and then slammed the bathroom door shut.
Chaz dropped his head to the table.
Life certainly handed him a cruel and unusual twist.