Forbidden Alliance: A Werewolf's Tale (Forbidden Alliance Trilogy) (61 page)

“My brother’s plane crashed,” I choked
between
debilitating sobs.
“He should have been kille
d!”

I
was
sure
that
he ha
d
no idea
of
what in the hell
I was
talking about
, but he didn’t ask.

“Jarvis is
well
,” h
e tried to
assure me, caressing my head.
“
Duckie, he took me family’s jet
. H
e landed some time ago
without complication
.
Jarvis is
alive
.”

“I know,” I
snapped at him on accident and
pulled away from hi
m.

The realization that he trul
y did care for me and my family
seemingly lifted a veil from my eyes and it was like
looking
for the first time.
His
face
wasn’t
perfect, according to
Yahto
and Jarvis, but it was perfect to me, and it
rendered
me
breathless when I once again gazed upon it. Tanis’
intense
silver-streaked blue
eyes
felt as if they were searing into my soul
, sear
ching for all of the secrets
, and his presence rendered me
speechless
.

“I am so sorry,” I
struggled to say.

“No,”
Tanis scolded and pulled me into his arms,
and held
me tight to his chest.
“I
am the one who is so, so very
sorry.
I
apologize for the
an unprecedented arse I had been
.
And
I should have told your family that I put Jarvis on a
jet
…I did it for
you, surely you must know that, there is nothing that I would not do for you.”

I
didn’t
know how long we stood
in his foyer, his body press
ing
against mine creating a pleasant heat to warm me from the inside out
, but eventually I stopped crying.

In
Tanis’
arms I felt whole.

The man who hurt me and broke my heart, inadvertently saved my brother’s life with his generosity
and kindness…
with his love for me.

“I hope this
wasn’t
expensive,” I whispered
before wiping
my eyes and nose off on his shirt.

Tanis laughed
.
“It
does not
matter, Duckie.
Can I get you something
, anything at all
?”

There
wasn’t
anything
I wanted or needed
other than him, and
I was
already in his arms.

“Whe
re’s your family?” I
whispered, looking up at him
.

“They
went to
Seattle for
holiday. M
um got
restless...
I
did you warn you that
it would
only be
a matter of time,” he
amusingly reminded me
.

“So w
e’re alone
?
” I asked
but
didn’t wait for him to answer.

I
smashed
my
mouth into his
and kissed him passionatel
y, ripping
his shirt off
in the process
.
The unmistakable underlying burning passion, emotion, pain, happiness, regret, but most importantly, love
in his kiss
, flooded my senses and
raced
through my body like a wave of sexually charged desire.

Tanis ripped my shirt off so I bit his bottom lip since it was one of my favorites and he growled, which was answered by a growl of my own. I tackled him to the floor and started unfastening his belt while our battling lips and tongues continued the struggle for control.

It wasn’t like the first time we had sex,
not even close
.

It was
a million times
better
!

Instead of
the
delicate glass he treated me
as
before, he treated me as an equal.
It was passionate, tender
on occasion
,
aggressive and sometimes rough, but it was perfect.

After making passionate love in the foyer,
on the stairs, library, parlor,
den,
and stairs again,
we eventually made
it
up
the stairs and to his
room.
All night and into the
late
afternoon
, our lips expressed
all of the
emotions that words could not.

Our
souls
seemingly blended into one, and each caress, bite, lick, kiss, and rock of
his
hips, brought me to levels of ecstasy that I never knew existed.

The reasons
why I was
pissed, why I never wanted to see him again, why I didn’t want him in my life, were lost to me.
I couldn’t remember what happened, or why it happened, or why I was even mad.
I was born simply to love him, that I knew with every fiber of my being
, so the past and the mistakes were not of concern
.

In those hours
of being in his arms, Tanis became my
only concern
.
I never want
ed
that moment
to end, and
now that we are together, are whole,
there
was
nothing
anything
that
c
ould
keep us from
being together
...
forever
.

“
Fine, I will
attest
that you were correct,” I reluctantly admitted and she chuckled but didn’t do the I-told-you-so dance she loved doing at Romeo’s expense. “
Duckie, since you are a country bumpkin, wearer of shite kickers, and I
a
m sure you have a god-awful cowboy hat somewhere, I
believe
you will appreciate this one.”

I pressed play.

Jay Dee rolled her eyes
; she was laying on the bed and had h
er feet kicking in the air behind her a
s she flipped through
a copy of
Car and Driver magazine.

Patsy Cline started singing
.
‘I’m Back in Baby’s Arms.’

Jay
Dee laughed
and shook
her hea
d in resignation but quietly
sang along under her breath
with Patsy.

I stretched
out on the bed next to her
on my back
and rested my head
on her magazine so I had her attention.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked.

I smiled so she smacked me. “Would you do me the honors
of permitting me to escort you
to the mall for a bit of video games and shopping?
”
I mumbled the shopping part.

She
glared at me
. “Did you just meet me?” she countered and I pouted my bottom lip out and batted my lashes. “Yes, it was a rhetorical question. Did you want to go to the fair
instead
?”

Sadly, that was the best I was going to get.

“
But of cou
rse. May I invite the others?”
I asked and absently twirled a lock of her hair around my fingers.

“
Yup
. Meat Head still owes me a rematch in basketball, but I’ll compromise with the basketball toss at the
fair
.
I was thinking of asking Yahto if he wanted to come, s
ince he’s still mad at you
.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“It’ll give
him
a chance to
see that you aren’t the
douche bag, animated corpse
he
says
you are
,” she offered.

I rolled my eyes
so
she crawled up on top of me
.

“Must I? Before I met you I was quite complacent with everyone thinking I was an arsehole,” I pointed out.

“
Yes, I am well aware of that,” she said. “But I don’t think your family will think to
o
highly of me if we continue to segregate ourselves from them and the rest of the world by locking ourselves in your room
,” she whispered seductively and pulled the collar of my shirt down and admired the faint white scar which matched up to her teeth and would forever be
on
me.

“
Let them think what they will,
”
I
said and cupped
her firm, round arse
, pulling her tighter against me
.

“
You are a very naughty, naughty man, Mr. Ashton
,”
Jay Dee
purred before she
caressed my lips with the tip of her
tongue
, effectively ending, and winning, the
single-
sided argument
.

The county fair wasn’t as bad as Romeo complained that it was going to be.
Steffen and Abigail disappeared to the Tunnel of Love with fifty
-
dollars’ worth
of tickets
after Jay Dee kicked
Steffen’s
arse in basketball
.

To my pleasant surprise,
she
didn’t let g
o of my hand when we got there
and was very affectionate in public, even though we kept running into people from school, pack, and tribe.
Typically I w
ould have lost my temper and addressed their venomous words and innuendo, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, ruin the evening for the country bumpkin angel walking next to me with her hand shoved in my back pocket—she kept squeezing my arse every other step. Her feloniously skimpy
cutoff jean shorts accentuated round arse
and made her long, toned legs look even longer. The
vintage,
inhumanly
ti
ght, Lynyrd Skynyrd concert tee
made her breasts look mouthwateringly delicious
and more than once I
got my hand slapped when I could no longer fight the urge to caress them
.
And o
f course
,
she wore
those
god-awful
cowboy boots I hate
d
.