Forbidden Alliance: A Werewolf's Tale (Forbidden Alliance Trilogy) (14 page)

It was wrong, but wrong never felt so right.

Jay Dee is
a h
uman, a teenager at that, and I’m
a seventeenth century vampire
who is
finally looking at the
world through rose tinted glass… Bloody hell,
the annoying, deeply buried romantic
would have to rear his annoying head when at the most inopportune time.

“I never really thought about it,” I eventually admitted since telling her the truth, what I thought I wanted from her, would have scared her off
,
and, not to mention,
was felonious in the states.
“When I figure
it out I will let you know,” I
offered
, hopelessly,
when she pouted.

“And I’ll put a bow on it for you,” Jay Dee assured me with a level of finality in her voice to the likes of nothing
I had
ever heard before, and she
leaned back and resumed looking out the window.

Bugger!
She
did not
have to go and do that.
I
rather
was enjoying the heat emanating from her cheek on my shoulder.
I can still feel the warmth of her inadvertent touch…I wo
nder if all of her is that warm?
Ugh!
Bloody hell
.
I haven’t been laid in months and now it’s coming back to bite me in the arse.

Reel it in, Tanis.
You are a goddamn vampire, a three hundred year old vampire that has unprecedented control over the calling, so you should be able to control your bloody prick around a young
bird
!

“I really did have a nice time tonight,” Jay Dee said softly, pulling my attention from the internal argument I had slipped into with myself.
Possibly she knew that I was losing it, in a matter of speaking, and that I needed a distraction so she was offering me one without making it obvious.

It was a nice thought.

“Thank you for dinner.
It was exceptional,” she continued, her eyes moving over my face many times, “
and I’m sorry for being a pain in the ass about the monetary thing.
It isn’t easy for me to accept things from people, help or otherwise, y’know.
That wasn’t how I was raised.
So when a stranger comes along and spends over a grand on dinner with someone they just met, it tends to throw some flags up.”

Bloody hell, she knows how much dinner was?
Shite
.

I swallowed loudly.
“We all have our little hang-ups,” I said.
“I work very hard for me
brass
, so when I spend it I make sure that it is worth it, and you
, Miss Jay Dee,
are worth it.
Admit it, you would have fought me over a thousand-dollar dinner or a five-dollar value meal,” I pointed out and the corner
s
of her mouth twitched; I was right.
“I do not understand entirely why everyone is so rude to you and treats you like a pleb...I mean scrubber...shite, never mind.
I am not articulating meself very well.”

She nodded.
“No shit?”

Sarcasm noted.

“You are not worthless, regardless of what the others you go to school with may think or say.
I have met countless people in me lifetime and you are honestly one of the most interesting, fascinating, kind, caring and amazing people I have ever met.
Unless you went on some type of killing spree that you are not telling me about, I do not get it.
I am gobsmacked.”

Jay Dee sighed loudly.
“I
’m sorry.
I don’t know what to tell you, but I can confirm that I didn’t go on a killing spree.
Sometimes I wish I could though,” she said darkly before laughing.
“What do you do?”

I smirked.
“I do lots of things, what do you do?”

It was fun to poke the blonde little caged kitty
simply because I could
.

She cocked an eyebrow, not at all amused.
“To earn money,” she clarified.

“Oh, that,” I dramatically said and she smacked me in the chest.
“Ow.
Abusive bird,” I hollowly complained so she smacked me again
—it was, yet again, turning me on
.
“I yield.
You cannot laugh,” I warned and she nodded.
“I used to compose when I was younger.
When the age of radio came along, I got into jingle writing.
Me estate gets royalties from them still.
I use various names to write under because writing music is too mainstream, but no one knows who writes jingles so it is safer that way.”

Even though she said she wouldn’t, she laughed.
“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” she said and
eyed me
, a look of contemplation washing across her face.
“Yeah, I just don’t see it.
”

I made a face causing her to smirk. “What did you expect? Something more pretentious like Ambassador of the British Vampire Legion?”
I mumbled.

Her eyes widened.

Shite, I should
n
o
t have said that.

“
Jingle writing
is a very honorable profession,” I assured her.

Jay Dee nodded, thankfully letting my slip go by not pressing it. “
The radioman in the flesh!
Oh wait, the radio
jingle
man.
Plop plop, fizz, fizz,” she teased.

That was another spanking to be given at a later time.

“So you have heard of me work,” I mused and her mouth fell open with a popping sound.
“Believe it or not, jingle writing is good dosh.
I do not mean to brag, but I am well rich.”

Her shock was quickly replaced by something else, and she
glared at me.
“And what am I?
The
poor white wolf girl from the Res
?
Was this a sympathy dinner?”
she demanded.

“No!” I assured her.
“Why would...honestly, you need to look past the res and pack,” my top lip in-advertently snarled when I said the latter and she cocked an eyebrow, “to the beautiful package
which
is next to me.
You are amazing.
I
assure you
I
was not trying to boast.
I was
simply
...in a very failed way
, mind you
... trying to reassure you that spending the
brass...money
in which I did for dinner was nothing and not to fret over it.”

“Uh huh,” she said in a clipped tone but the fires burning in her eyes were extinguished.

“The estate we left in Paris was mine, and I have a few oth
ers from New York to Tokyo in me
real estate portfolio.
If you ever want to go on holiday
...
” my words trailed off.

Did I
honestly
just invite her to one of me estates for holiday?
This
is not
going to end well
.

“Amazing,” Jay Dee whispered with a smile but I wasn’t entirely sure what was so amazing about my very odd, extremely troubling
,
and
slightly
creepy, behavior.
“How do you...why did you move to this shithole, other than your sister and her little control issue?” she asked, chewing on her
little finger
again.

Bloody hell that is hot.

Control issue had to be the understatement of a lifetime.

“Our coven is nearly twenty strong.
In this last move, we separated because of the reason behind the quick relocation.
Toran picked this location for some unknown reason.
Typically we just go to a different estate.
Collectively we have nearly fifty, however this time he only relocated himself, wife, and the ones you met at school.
The others are in Wales.”

“Did he say why?”

No, Toran is the king of keeping secrets
.

I parked outside of her house and turned to look at her, I had to look at her.
“No.
I asked, however,
I was not in a clear state of mind when I did.
I was still
narked
over the hasty
relocation, thus
everything I asked came out
as
irate accusations.
Perhaps this week I will address it with him more maturely now that I am in a better place mentally.”

“So you’ve accepted small town life?” she teased.

“No, not at all,” I assured her.
“However, I found the company to be better than I could have
possibly
imagined.”
I didn’t mean to say that aloud, but
she blushed and looked away from me.

Unable to deny it anymore, I reached out and caressed the back
s
of my finger
s
along the ridge of her jaw, then coaxed her by the chin so I could look at her.
“Miss Jay Dee, why
must you hide
your
face from me
?” I whispered.

Jay Dee nervously chewed on her bottom lip and shrugged.
“I don’t know.
This is...I don’t know what in the hell it is but I know it’s new and I don’t know what in the hell do to.”

I smiled;
I liked the way that sounded much more than I should have.

“Khalil Gibran once told me that ‘Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.’
And never did I understand
those words
until tonight,” I whispered, caressing my thumb across her
full
bottom lip and my breathing shuddered in my chest.

She opened to mouth to say something, and I longed to hear the words more than anything, but nothing came out.

The moment w
as perfect so I leaned into her, and her lips eagerly parted
,
and
mine
answered her silent pleas to taste them
, to indulge myself in what I had been envisioning since the first moment I saw her,
but the very intrusive sound of three distinct growls coming from the
porch
stopped me in mid-snog.

I leaned back and forced a smile.
“
Miss Jay Dee,
I think you better go inside before your parents and brother rip me head off,” I said through a fabricated smile while trying to keep from growling myself.

Bloody wankers!
You
will not
always be around to stop me.
She is mine!

I shook my head to clear it and Jay Dee did likewise
,
but for very different reasons
, I suppose
.
Never
have I had
such possessive thoughts and feelings
towards anyone
.
I had absolutely no right to stake such claim
to
Jay Dee.
We were different specifies, from different centuries, different society classes...and yet I couldn’t stop thinking of her as anything but mine.

This was going to end badly, I knew it.

Jay Dee leaned down and looked across me to the front door where her parents and brother were standing.
“They sure do know how to kill the mood, huh?” she groaned.
“Thanks again,
Mr. Ashton,” she teased with a smile
.
“
It was fun.”

She started to get out of the SUV but I
grabbed her hand, stopping
her.
“Did you need...would you like a ride to school tomorrow?” I asked, trying to keep the possessiveness from flaring in my words, to keep from snarling at her family and locking the car doors, to keep from
pulling her into my arms before
speeding away like Snidely Whiplash with a
new young maiden to keep hostage and all to myself...

I really needed to talk to someone about
those
outlandish
thoughts and
issues which were suddenly plaguing me and my commonsense.

“I’d like that very much,” she said with a
face-consuming
smile and it made me smile in return.
“Goodnight, Tanis,
”
she whispered breathlessly and I fought the urge to moan and follow her into the house.