CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

Kaya awoke an untold number of hours later. At first she thought that it was the dim light in the sky outside the windows that had woken her where she lay in front of the fire, but it soon became clear that it was actually the wolf writhing in pain next to her that had done the waking.

“Oh,” she whispered, a hand over her mouth as she watched the pure white wolf claw at the ground, his eyes wide and pained. He looked as if he were dying. “Oh, God.”

She sat up and the afghan fell away from her. He was shifting back, she knew, but this was truly terrible to watch. It looked like extreme pain and there was nothing at all she could do to soothe him.

“Jackson,” she whispered. “Oh, Jackson.”

A swell of sympathy rose up within her. Sure, he was a jackass, but could she really blame him when this was the kind of torture he’d had to endure for so much of his life? Perhaps he was entitled to be a little dick-ish and standoffish.

She watched in horrified fascination as the wolf writhed on the ground, his transformation taking place. His fur receded, his bones cracked into different shapes, his whines turned into very mannish grunts of pain. And then, there was Jackson, stretched on his stomach on the floor of the cabin, breathing like he’d just run a 100-yard dash, naked as the day he was born. His cheek was to the floor, facing away from her, and Kaya couldn’t help but let her eyes sweep down his long, lean body. She’d always thought of him as lanky, but that man had shoulders. And calves. And an ass.

“Holy cow,” she muttered, momentarily forgetting that he could now understand English again.

He whipped his head around so that his other cheek pressed into the floor and his dark eyes were on her. She was instantly reminded of the wolf, with the way he’d watched her unyieldingly, as if he were devouring her with his eyes.

What should she say? She should definitely say something, but what could she possibly say? What was there to say to your naked sort-of friend who’d been a wolf, like, eight seconds ago? She couldn’t think of a damn thing.

But apparently Jackson didn’t need her to say anything because he pushed up onto his hands, his eyes still alarmingly wild.

“Kaya,” he growled. And then, suddenly, he was demolishing the space between them.

She was frozen, her eyes flashing from his face to his nakedness as he was suddenly right next to her, crawling over top of her, in fact. She fell backward onto the pillow that she’d just slept the night on and he followed her down.

Holy cow was right. She’d gone from being dead asleep next to a wolf to having Jackson Durant butt-ass naked and wrapped around her like a vine.

He buried his face into her neck. He whispered something into the soft skin of her throat and she could have sworn it was, “I’m so sorry, baby.” But there was no way that was right. She was hearing things. He could barely stand to be around her. He certainly wasn’t coming up with endearments for her.

Those long arms of his were digging underneath her, wrapping around her body and pinning her against him. He gave her some of his weight, but tipped most of it to the side. His face, rough with stubble, scraped against her neck. Unthinkingly, Kaya’s legs parted and his thigh was between hers all of a sudden. The afghan pulled tight, trapping her down. She realized she was tugging against it with her body, as if she were trying to fight free of it, as if she wanted the freedom to hug him back.

So, that’s just what she did. Her legs were mostly pinned down, but her arms went around his back, her palms landing flat against him, holding him just as he was holding her. He was gripping her so intensely, breathing so hard, his heart beating so wildly that part of her wondered if he was stuck in some sort of half-place between man and wolf. He’d gotten his body back but his mind was just as wild as it had been in his wolf form.

“I’m so, so sorry.” That time she heard it clearly. At least she knew he was human enough to speak English.

“That was so freaking scary, Jackson,” she told him honestly, last night’s fear hitching her breath and making her voice catch.

He held her even tighter, his hip digging into her soft midsection and his face scratching her neck. “I know. I know. It must have been terrible for you.”

“Well… not terrible, just unexpected. What happened exactly?”

He squeezed her tightly, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go and his words were spoken directly into her collarbone. “I brought a blanket downstairs to keep me warm but it ended up being your gigantic scarf.”

He presented that information as if it were going to answer her question. Of course, it left her with way more questions than answers.

The strangeness of the situation threatened to overwhelm her. Jackson Durant was hugging her. While on top of her. Naked. He was holding her like she was the most important thing in the world to him.

Ohhhhhh. This was a dream! That was the only explanation. She was certain that in a few minutes she’d wake up upstairs in the attic and none of this would be real. Maybe she’d even wake up in her studio apartment and truly none of it would have been real. Her car would be parked in her marked spot, safe as could be.

She lifted a hand to pinch herself. But on the way up, she grazed the short hairs on Jackson’s head where the back of his neck met his skull. His hair was soft and bristly there and got longer and curlier on the top of his head. She hadn’t meant to feel it. But once she did, she found that her hand, almost of its own accord, took a second pass, feeling his slippery, soft hair again.

The corresponding grumble he made in his chest was so low that she felt it rather than heard it.

Oh God! She was kind of petting him and he was naked and lying on top of her and grumbling and pressing his face into the crook of her neck and suddenly, Kaya was almost positive that what she’d thought was his hipbone pressing into her soft stomach was actually a bone of a very different variety.

Even though she hadn’t had sex per se, that didn’t mean she was completely naive. In fact, Kaya was pretty certain that over the years she’d become the world’s foremost expert on fabric-covered boners. Because those were the only kind of boners she’d ever encountered and frankly, it seemed they were kind of drawn to her.

This, however, was a naked boner. Attached to a naked Jackson Durant whom Kaya was currently petting.

What the frick was going on here?!

Jackson seemed to ask himself the same question at the same moment, because suddenly, he stiffened and pulled up off of her. He took the afghan with him and wrapped it around his waist.

Kaya shivered and curled in on herself, suddenly chilly without her blanket and without his heat and weight. The fire had gone out during the night.

Jackson knelt next to her, naked from the waist up and breathing hard. His eyes were even darker than usual and he looked almost… betrayed. By her? By himself? She couldn’t tell.

“Is everything all right?” she asked gently, pulling herself up to a sitting position.

“Don’t ask me that,” he responded sharply.

And great. They were back to him being an asshole again. Kaya frowned. “I think that’s a reasonable question to ask right now. Considering what happened last night, and considering the fact that you look like you’re on the verge of a complete panic attack.”

“I mean that I should be asking you that, not the other way around.”

“Fine, then ask me.”

He stared at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I think so. It’s all a lot to process, but nothing bad happened last night, okay? I fell asleep next to an animal who seemed to wish me no harm. The end.”

“Right.” His eyes finally dropped and he dug his knuckles into his brow. “Right.”

“I’m gonna make breakfast.” She pushed to her feet and then was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was seeing her pajamas. They were the classic flannel kind. The kind that dads wore on the night before Christmas. Add in the two pairs of bunchy wool socks she wore and she wasn’t sure this situation could get more embarrassing.

He didn’t respond but when she looked back, he’d disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Kaya brushed her teeth and changed into some leggings and a warm wool dress she’d brought. When she stepped out into the main room, he was wearing jeans and a flannel, building a fire in the hearth.

They had just-add-water waffle/pancake mix and she decided that was probably the best they could expect to do for breakfast.

She was deeply relieved that the sun had fully risen and in true Colorado style, the snow was already melting away in great dripping rivers. She bet that all four feet of it would be gone by lunchtime. Which meant that—

“You won’t have to be stranded here with me much longer,” Jackson said, peering out the front window as if he’d just read her thoughts.

She frowned as she flipped pancakes. What a negative way of putting that. “You won’t have to be stranded with me much longer either,” she replied.

He turned back to her, his eyes sad, his mouth pulled down, but he didn’t say anything. They ate breakfast quietly, avoiding one another’s eyes. Kaya supposed that her mind should be spinning, but instead, it seemed to just be rotating around one fixed point. The feel of Jackson against her this morning. The intensity of his face against her. She’d barely ever touched him before this. She thought and thought about it, unable to move on.

When their meals were finished, Jackson rose, clearing their plates. “We should be able to get out of here after lunch.” He faced the sink, his hands braced and his head bowed. “Kaya, I’m not sure how I can ever adequately apologize.”

“Oh, save it, Jackson.”

He stiffened but didn’t turn around.

She rose up and finished what she had to say. “There’s only one condition under which I’ll accept this apology. If and only if it’s an actual apology and not a way for you to punish yourself even further. I don’t want your ‘I’m sorry’ if what you actually mean is ‘I hate myself’. Because I can feel you hating yourself over there and I’m so sick of it. You are so freaking suspended from reality! Will you please, for the love of God, save us all some heartache and join us here on earth? You know, the place where nobody thinks you’re the worst? You’re the only one who thinks that, Jackson. The only one. So, no. I don’t accept your bullshit apology. Not when accepting it means cosigning whatever fucked up thing you obviously believe about yourself.”

She didn’t wait for him to speak or turn. She simply marched over to the bookshelf, grabbed a book at random, and strode up the attic stairs. She stayed there for the rest of the morning. She cleared up her things in the attic and made the bed again. A few hours later, she was sitting on the floor next to the small fire she’d made when Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I dug the Jeep out. I think we’re good to go.”

And that was it. That was all he said.

Kaya wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from him, but it probably should have been that. He wasn’t exactly a stellar emoter.

She sighed and grabbed her bag, heading down the stairs. She slipped into her coat and hat and stopped still when she saw how carefully he’d folded her scarf, leaving it on the kitchen table. She immediately shook out the folds, twisting it around her neck. She felt as if it was some sort of secret language. That him folding it up so neatly had been a message he was trying to send her. Well, screw that. She didn’t want a secret message. She wanted clear words. But she knew Jackson at least well enough to know that that was most likely not going to happen.

She waited in the warming-up Jeep while he shut down the cabin, tucking it in until the Durant brothers needed it again next month.

He slammed into the Jeep and they made their way back down the mountain. It was slow going but just as Kaya had predicted, most of the snow was washing away in great icy rivers.

“Do you want to stop by and check on your car?” They were the first words that he’d spoken to her since he’d gotten in the car. How underwhelming.

“No. I got a text from my auto mechanic saying that AAA already dropped it off.”

“So,” he cleared his throat. “I’m just taking you to your apartment, then?”

“I guess.”

Natalie and Raph wouldn’t be back from the resort until tomorrow. Which meant that the rest of this day and all the way until tomorrow evening stretched out before her in a long, lonely wave. And now she couldn’t even look forward to Christmas Eve with the Durants because things with Jackson were so weird right now.

They were just pulling into town when she snapped. Couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t get it.”

He turned to her with an eyebrow raised but didn’t say anything more.

“What does my scarf have to do with you breaking your chains and charging upstairs?”

His face shut down and she knew at a glance that he was not answering this question. At least not in any way that would even remotely satisfy her curiosity.

“It’s… hard to explain.”

“How about you give it a shot?”

He just raised that eyebrow even further. “It’s probably better if we just leave it alone.”

She should have known that he wouldn’t answer her. He’d roll around naked with her but he wouldn’t tell her the truth about what had happened. And that just pissed her right off. Sometime in the last 24 hours that pesky crush she had on Jackson may have started rearing its head again. She kicked it right back into its hole. Because who needed a guy like him? Who needed someone who was withholding and bitter and secretive? Not her!

She’d prefer to be on her own than spending time with a guy like that.

When he pulled up to her apartment building, Kaya took a deep breath and did what Natalie would want her to do. She turned to him, clutching her bag on her lap. “Thank you for helping me yesterday and giving me a place to stay. I really appreciate it. I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.”

He said nothing, but his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

“I’d like to pay you for gas.”

“Absolutely not,” he bit out. He turned away from her. “Jesus.”

“Jackson, I—”

“Get out of the car, Kaya. You’re welcome. Now, please. Just get out of the car.”

Stung, pissed off, and through the roof with incensed anger, Kaya did just that. She slammed out of the car and into her apartment building, never looking back.