Chapter 12
a shower after getting home from his motorcycle ride. He didn’t want to smell like the outdoors when he went to Jacque’s house. He found it amusing that he was so suddenly conscious of himself now that he’d met his mate. He so wanted her approval, as did his wolf.
He actually made an attempt to comb his hair out of his face, but it just fell right back in front of his left eye.
He had chosen a deep red, polo style shirt. It contrasted nicely with the markings on his neck, which at the moment he thought looked pretty cool. He grabbed his phone and wallet and put them in his back pockets and headed downstairs.
Sara and Brian were waiting in the living room. Sara had the brownie pan in her hands and Brian was carrying some games, one of which Fane recognized as Dominoes. This he was familiar with because his family liked to play.
He went over to Sara and took the brownie pan from her, simply saying, “I will take these for you.”
Sara smiled at him in appreciation.
“Ready?” Brian asked them.
Both Sara and Fane nodded yes.
Sara knocked on Lilly and Jacquelyn’s door, and he felt his neck markings sting just a little as he turned and saw a car driving slowly by. Fane let his wolf out just enough to see who was driving abnormally slow past his mate’s house. Fane was on edge. He now knew there were other Greys in the area and his father had informed him that Jacquelyn was in danger. He'd also received an anonymous phone call from a wolf claiming to be Alpha of the Coldspring pack, stating that Jacque had already been claimed by another wolf and that Fane was to leave immediately.
Jacque was the one who answered the door and Fane couldn’t help the smile that came across his face. She was, after all, his fiery miracle. He could have had to wait centuries before he found her and all it had taken was a mere seventeen years. How he was blessed.
“Come in, ya’ll,” she said politely.
Obediently, they all filed into the entry way. She pointed them in the direction of the kitchen and Fane could smell the aroma of the already delivered pizza.
“Hi, you guys,” Lilly greeted them. “I’m so glad you could come over!” Lilly and Sara hugged. Jen and Sally were already filling their plates when Lilly looked at them, “What, ya’ll couldn’t wait on the guests?”
“Hey, we were doing you guys a favor,” Jen said.
“Oh, really,” Lilly said. “And just exactly what favor is that?”
“Ya know, testing out the product, making sure it’s safe. Would hate to unknowingly poison our Romanian guest, although it would make for a great headline,” Jen answered.
“Jen, do you always have to say what you are thinking? Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘Hey self, maybe I should keep my trap shut. Yeah, good idea self’?” Jacquelyn glared at her best friend.
“You’re just cranky because you’ve been thinking about Trent,” Jen stated, snotty-like.
Fane couldn’t help the low rumble in his chest that escaped at the name of Jacquelyn’s all too recent old flame.
Lilly’s head snapped around to look at him. Fane cocked his head to the side as his wolf perked up at her perceptive gaze. Interesting, Fane thought to himself, she knows something.
Jacquelyn caught that last thought.“She knows something about what?”
Fane looked away from Lilly and turned to look at his Luna’s confused face. He was going to have to tell her. If not tonight, then soon, and he was going to have to talk to Lilly. Something told him that she was not unaware of who and what he was.
“Fane, what are you thinking about?” Jacque asked again.
“We will need to talk later, Jacquelyn, and your mom needs to be present as well,” Fane told her.
“There are paper plates there on the counter,” Lilly pointed out. “And cups with ice in them. The drink choices are lined up for you. Dig in!”
Everyone formed a line and began to fill their plates. No one talked for a few minutes as they gathered their food and drinks. Finally they were all seated at the dining room table.
Fane noticed that Jen and Sally had managed to maneuver it so that Jacquelyn and he had to sit next to each other. He found this amusing.
“So, are you kids looking forward to starting your senior year? Do you know what classes you will take?” Brian asked.
Mouths full of pizza they all nodded simultaneously. Jen was the first to be able to talk and naturally had something interesting to add. She didn’t disappoint. “Naturally, I’m taking Anatomy and Physiology.”
“Really, is that because you like…” Brian started to ask.
But Sally and Jacque managed to interrupt quickly. “Don’t go there,” they both spit out.
“Because I like science?” Jen finished for him. “Nope, ‘cause I like boys, silly.”
Lilly rolled her eyes and Fane coughed on his pizza. He was surprised by her candidness. Jacque looked over at Fane and he noticed her face was red as the fire he named her.
He winked at her, and that only caused her face to redden more.
“Just what is your favorite subject, savuroase mea fata (my spicy girl)?” he asked her.
She was just taking a drink when he asked her this and she nearly spewed it out of her mouth.
“Are you okay, Jacquelyn?” Fane asked her innocently.
She glared at him as she answered, “Fine, thank you.”
“I will have you know that I prefer contact sports to classes. I find that a little physical violence is good for the soul,” Jacque thought with a smirk.
“Like I said you’re savuroase mea fata,” Fane told her.
She looked at him questioningly but said no more.
“So Lilly, how is the bookstore doing?” Sara asked her.
“Great! Since I’ve hired more staff I've been able to catch up on my inventory and start putting together some other ideas that I have been brain-storming, like maybe putting in a coffee shop and a gift section. You know, just more things to help bring in a variety of customers,” Lilly told her.
“Mom, I didn’t realize you were planning all this,” Jacque said.
“Well, you’ve kind of been preoccupied this summer and I’ve been at the store a lot. I was going to tell you about it, but time just seems to get away from me.”
Fane caught the implication that when Lilly said she had been preoccupied, she was referring to the whole break-up thing. So apparently this whole Trent thing was been a bigger deal than Jacque let on, he thought to himself.
“Does it really matter to you that much?” Jacque asked him.
Man, he really needed to work on blocking his thoughts, or he was going to get himself into trouble.
“Be patient with me, Jacquelyn. I will explain things soon and then you might be able to understand why I react the way I do to some things pertaining to you,” Fane told her.
After everyone finished eating they cleared the table and picked out a game Fane had never heard of called, What’s yours like?
Jen pulled out the directions and began to read them,
“In this game, all players except the one in the hot seat look at a guess word and then creatively describe what theirs is like. They might be telling about their swimsuit, neighbor, closet, hair, or any of the other 300-plus words in the game. The player in the hot seat then tries to link all the clues together to figure out what is being described. The best part about this game is that the hilarious clues come from the people who play the game. The player who guesses his or her word with the fewest number of clues wins.
What do you think players are describing with these clues?
Mine keeps getting bigger.
I compare mine with others.
My wife likes mine.
I never see mine.
I receive mine once a month.
You wouldn't believe what I do for mine.
Mine disappears too fast.
The answer is: Pay check.”
Fane realized right away this was going to be a game that Jen enjoyed. It obviously pleased her to cause Jacquelyn as much embarrassment as possible. He was actually looking forward to seeing her squirm.
“Okay, who’s going to be in the hot seat first?” Brian asked.
“I’ll be in the hot seat first,” Lilly answered.
“Jacque, you pull out the answer and say your first clue, then pass your card to the next person,” Brian told her.
Jacquelyn pulled out the card and, sure enough, her face turned red. Oh yes, Fane thought, this was going to be fun.
“Mine is,” Jacquelyn paused, “curly.” She still couldn’t keep from turning red.
Fane saw the answer in her head and winked at her.
Sally was next. “Mine is long.”
Sally handed the card to Sara, who said hers was like chocolate – smooth and dark and Brian said his was the color of sand.
Finally it was Jen’s turn, and Fane could tell everyone was a little nervous about what she would come up with.
“Mine is silky to the touch,” Jen said with a wink at Fane.
Fane felt Jacquelyn’s wave of jealousy like a tidal wave. He cocked his head to the side and studied her. Interesting, he thought, she doesn’t like Jen flirting with me. Her head snapped around to glare at him and he realized she had heard what he was thinking.
“Relax, my Luna. I assure you I am all yours,” Fane told her.
“Oh, this coming from the Romanian who is jealous of a boy I’m no longer dating. Not to mention you and I are not together, so it’s really of no consequence,” Jacquelyn told him in a huff. “It’s your turn by the way,” she added.
Fane looked over at Jen and realized she was holding the card out to him. She looked at him knowingly. Apparently she had picked up on the fact that Jacquelyn and he were conversing.
Fane looked at the answer on the card and debated what to say that wouldn’t embarrass him too badly, but the choices were not good. He could go with straight, short, or black. All those options pretty much could be taken, as Jen would no doubt do, to have very un-innocent connotations.
“Mine is,” Well, Fane thought, if you gotta go down, do it with a bang, “short.” And with that, everyone, including Jacquelyn, lost their composure. It was obvious that Jen knew all his choices were pretty poor and had been waiting for him to choose to run with it.
“Nice,” Jen said, putting her hand up for a fist bump with Sally.
In all the commotion, Fane just couldn’t help himself and looked up at Jacquelyn, who was giggling wildly. He raised on eyebrow at her, “Did I amuse you, savuroase mea fata (my spicy girl)?” Fane asked her.
All Jacquelyn did was wink at him and it about did him in. She was a joy to his heart and she was all his. Now he just had to convince her of that…and quite possibly her mom as well. Fane had thought about whether to talk to Lilly and Jacquelyn tonight, but as the evening carried on he decided to talk to his father again and perhaps he'd found more out that would help him make the safest decision for his mate.
The evening turned out to be a lot of fun and laughs. Sometimes the girls laughed so hard they had tears streaming down their faces. At one point Sally had fallen out of her chair, laughing so hard because the answer to the question had been “tires on your car,” and naturally, Jen had not disappointed when she said hers were round. When it was Fane’s turn, he realized a little too late that his vehicle only had two wheels, so his response was, “Mine has two.” Which resulted in Jen laying her head on the table and laughing so hard her whole body shook, and Sally laughed so hard she fell out of her chair, which brought the laughing to an all time high. It's wonderful, Fane thought. Even if we're enjoying making our answers sound like they're about certain parts of our anatomy. What can you expect from teenagers with a game called “Mine is like”? The whole evening made Fane feel at home because his family was close like this. They often got together and ate and played games, or just gathered around the fire to talk.
As the evening came to a close, they began to say their goodbyes. All the girls hugged. Fane walked past Jacquelyn to the front door. Then he turned to her and asked, “Could I talk with you a moment? I won’t keep you from your friends long.”
Jacquelyn turned to her mom and girlfriends and said, “I’ll be outside for just a minute, okay?”
“Okay,” Lilly said.
“Don’t hurry on our account. You hate to rush these kinds of things the first time around,” Jen commented.
Sally hit her on the arm and told her to keep her trap shut.
Fane put his hand on Jacquelyn’s lower back to gently guide her to the porch. He felt a shudder go through her as he touched her. “Mine,” his wolf told him.
Once outside Jacquelyn turned to him, looking up into his face with curiosity and asked, “So what do you need to talk to me about?”
It feels so good to be this close to her, Fane thought. She completes me and fills this void I didn't even realize was there. All he really wanted to do in that moment was wrap her in his arms and hold her, take in her scent, mark her as his.
Fane shook off the thoughts so he could answer her question.
“There is much I need to talk with you about, but I don’t think tonight is a good time. I’m not trying to be cryptic, but I need to talk to my father about some things. I would, however, like to take you out if you would do me the honor.”
Jacquelyn looked at him blankly and blinked a few times.
“So what I’m hearing you say is that you have information that I need to know, but you’re not going to tell me just yet. And with all this bizarre stuff…well bizarre to me, you want to go out on a date, like everything is just rosy?” she asked him, sounding astonished.
“Pretty much,” Fane responded.
“Well, I can’t very well hold a gun to your head and make you tell me Although, Jen would think that a perfectly acceptable response. Then again, Jen also thinks going to football practice and lying out in her bikini is amusing so, ya know, gotta keep it all in perspective,” Jacquelyn explained.
“Okay, I’ll go out with you. When is our little adventure and how should I dress?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, wear something comfortable to ride on the motorcycle and don’t worry, I bought you a helmet.”
“You did what?” she asked in disbelief. “You were that sure I would say yes?”
Fane stepped closer to her, lowering his face towards hers. He whispered, “I felt my chances were pretty good. I can be very persuasive when I need to be.”
Fane stayed there a minute longer, but decided it best that he back away from her a little because he was very tempted to kiss her. She shook her head as if to clear it when he stepped back, and looked at him with what he thought might be longing in her eyes.
Time to go, Fane told himself. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, never breaking eye contact with her.
“Thank you for a wonderful evening. I truly enjoyed your company, my Luna,” Fane said quietly.
Jacquelyn was having trouble getting her brain to tell her mouth what to say but she finally spit out, “Me too.”
Fane didn’t want to leave her. It was against his instincts and his wolf growled at the thought. She was supposed to be with him, where he could take care of her and keep her safe. But it wasn’t time yet, so he would have to take advantage of the time they did spend together and soak up her presence. He leaned in quickly and took a deep breath. Then he blew gently next to her ear. She shivered. What Jacquelyn didn’t know was that he wasn’t trying to be sensual by blowing next to her ear – he was putting his scent on her so other Greys would know she was his.
The scent wouldn’t last long, only a day or so. The only permanent way to put his scent on her was to complete the bond. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite there yet.
With that, Fane turned away from his mate and walked back to the Henrys'. At the door, he turned one last time and found her still standing there, watching him. He lifted his hand to his mouth and blew her a kiss, sending her a thought. “Sweet dreams, meu inimă. Dream of me. I will be dreaming of you.”