Keeper of the Alphas - Complete (21 page)

A smile cut across Jenny’s face. “You’re so much more than a ball of fire, Cami. At the risk of going all Dr. Phil on you, you’re going to have to forgive your mom if you really want this.”

Cami’s mood dropped a couple degrees. She felt herself closing up again, like she was buttoning a sweater underneath her skin. “Thanks,” she said, “but I think I’ll keep my anger and my fireballs.”

“Look, I get it,” Jenny pressed. “You’re talking to the original anger-is-a-defense-mechanism-to-avoid-all-the-shit-going-on-underneath. I know you hate your mom for sending you away but let me tell you, staying in Oregon and growing up as a Keeper wasn’t exactly a cakewalk either. My friends were going to prom and falling in love with Leonardo DiCaprio and I had to spend every waking hour with my mom trying to keep rabbits from humping my legs.”

Cami felt her eyes drop. “Doesn’t sound all that bad to me.”

Jenny scoffed. “Have you
met
my mom?”

They both laughed at that, loudly, until Sadie came back in and chastised them for playing when they should be working.

Training got harder, after that. Every day, Jenny came over and tried to get Cami to delve deeper into her mind. Every time Cami saw her mother, she snapped back like a rubber band.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jenny asked one day as she started rolling the sage stick up to pack it away.

“Shoot,” Cami said.

“What’re you so angry about?”

Cami blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean
this
.” Jenny motioned to the fireplace, roaring too tall to be natural. “Doesn’t come from nowhere.”

Cami shrugged. “Casey Anthony?”

“Solid,” Jenny said, then added, “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Can’t we just…take a weekend off?” Cami groaned.

Jenny shot her a look. “No. You’re our only hope, Cami Skywalker.”

She left Cami alone. Marcus was out doing…whatever. He always cleared out when Jenny came over; Cami’s training turned his cock into a lightning rod for her will. Seemed he was gone a lot lately anyway, taking long trips into the woods to do recon. “Taking the pulse of the shifters” is what he called it. Which was just fine with Cami, the air between them had gone stale. Whenever he was around, she felt stuck between wanting to slap that dark look off his face and wanting to curl up in his lap and taste every inch of his hard, muscle-bound skin. And right now, emotionally drained, she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to keep her legs closed around him.

Cami rinsed off and threw on an old t-shirt and panties. She curled up in bed with her laptop, deciding to binge-watch Disney movies and pray for a nap to recharge her batteries. Just when her eyes started to droop, she heard a faint clicking on her window. She ignored it until she heard it again, and then a third time. Cami got up, bare feet shuffling across the floor, and looked out her window.

Jayce stood below, pinecones in hand. He grinned up at her—a dopey, boyish grin. “Camilla, Camilla, throw down your hair.”

Cami let out a laugh and opened up her window so she could lean her elbows on the sill. “Hey, dork.”

“Are you wearing pajamas, dork?” he called up.

“I’m tired,” she whined.

He looked at his watch. “It’s two p.m.”

“And I need exactly twenty hours of beauty sleep. So if you’ll excuse me…”

“You wanna go see a movie?”

Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “A movie?”

“Yeah. You know. Motion pictures?” He shrugged. “Or bowling. Or dancing. Something normal for a change.”

Cami’s heart fluttered in her chest.
Normal
. God, how nice that word sounded right now. She felt like a starved woman at an all-you-can-eat buffet. “Can we do all of it?” she asked.

He looked surprised for a second, and then there was that charming Jayce smile. “Go big or go home. Let’s do it.”

She tucked her head back inside, quickly reaching for a dress. “I’ll be right down.”

Jayce let Cami beat him at bowling by twelve points and was rewarded with her shrill screech when the final numbers came up. He bought her victory popcorn at the movie theater, which almost spoiled his appetite for dinner but not quite. Pizza wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was filling and We Aim to Cheese was one of the few places in Tyburn that hadn’t changed since they were kids.

He drove her a few miles out of town and wound up the Siskiyou Mountain. When he finally cut off the engine, the Camaro was parked on an overlook.

Roxy Music purred over the radio and Jayce left it on and rolled down the windows. “C’mon,” he said and got out of the car. Cami followed him and they lounged side by side over the sleek hood of the Camaro. Tyburn spread out below them, a small little bowl of a town surrounded by white-peaked mountains. The trees had nearly all lost their color, but there was a smattering of evergreens here and there among the dark, empty branches. The sky was flushed with streaks of vermilion, rosy pinks, bold oranges.

“Beautiful,” Cami said, taking it in.

“Yeah.” Jayce dangled two beers between his fingers and popped the tops, passing one to Cami.

“You know, they say nice sunsets are a sign of pollution,” Cami said as she took the beer.

“You must’ve had some sunsets in New York, huh?”

She looked back out over the mountain. “Not like this.”

“I’d litter nonstop to get you a nice sunset,” Jayce said.

Cami snorted a laugh. “And they say romance is dead.”

“You’ve gotta stop talking to
they
.”

They clinked bottles. Cami was already buzzed from dinner so she paced herself, sipping, and they lapsed into silence.

“Hey, we didn’t do everything,” Jayce said.

“We didn’t?”

Jayce shook his head, then set his bottle down and stood up. “We didn’t go dancing.”

She let out a breath of a laugh, shook her head. “No, no, no…”

But Jayce was already leaning through the car window and turning the music up. Then he stepped over to Cami, took her hand, and pulled her up to her feet. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Jayce wound his arm around the small of her back and interlaced his fingers with hers. Cami stopped protesting and rested flush against him. He felt her small laugh against his collarbone and he led the both of them in small circles, rocking back and forth on his heels.

Cami felt soft and warm against him. She smelled flowery, girly, a familiar old scent from his childhood, and he dropped his head against her hair, taking it in. The crickets were loud, but not overbearing, and he could see flashes of firefly through the trees. No ticking clocks, loud phones, or ugly animal instincts here. Just Cami.

He took her in his arm, spun her, and then dipped her. Cami squeaked and laughed, gripping his shoulders. “Don’t you dare drop me.”

“I won’t, .” He grinned, then pulled her back up. She fell back against him, laughing. Their breath fogged white under the sunset-streaked sky.

“I love you,” he said.

“Mm,” she said.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just…last time you said that to me, you were pretending to like me so you could get to Marcus. Oh, and then you stabbed me in the back and tried to kill him. So.”

Jayce blanched at that. “Cami, I—”

“No.” She smiled then, a smile Jayce recognized because he’d used it so often himself—forced, practiced charm. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about it. Forget I said anything. Seriously.” She leaned into him and toyed with the top button of his shirt. They lapsed into a small silence and she sighed; he felt her hot breath against his neck. “Tonight was…nice. Normal. I needed it.”

“Yeah,” Jayce said, though there was some disquiet in his tone. “Me too.”

Cami tilted up and closed her mouth over his. Hard. He matched her kiss and felt her fingers dig into his shirt when he tasted her tongue. She was forceful, direct, and when she pulled back, her kiss left him reeling.

“Wanna come back home with me, dork?” she asked.

“What about Marcus?” he asked.

“Are you going to try to kill him?”

He shook his head.

She shrugged. “Then we don’t have a problem.”

They parked the Camaro outside and killed the engine. Cami’s fingers linked with Jayce’s and, like children, they ran up to the old house on Argonne, giggling. Marcus was out, no doubt, making his rounds through the woods as per usual lately. She felt like a rebellious teenager breaking her boyfriend in while her parents were at work. Cami was still fishing for her keys in her black hole of a purse when she felt Jayce’s hand slide down over her ass, his lips tickling the back of her neck.

“Stop,” she laughed, but meant anything but.

They tumbled inside, his hands on her sides, her fingers in his air, pulling him in for a kiss, sloppy with passion and urgency. She tugged his lower lip between her teeth and felt him hard against her thigh.

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Cami squeaked, all but dropping Jayce as they stumbled apart.

Jenny sat on the couch, legs folded patiently underneath her, bowls and candles already set up on the table. “Your door was unlocked when I got here. You should really invest in some better security, what with the interspecies war and all.” Jenny’s tone was bored and cutting, her eyes fixed on a rumpled Jayce.

“Shit, Jenny…I’m so sorry,” Cami said. “I completely forgot about tonight. Can we just…do it later?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s just the end of Tyburn as we know it and you’re nowhere near prepared. No big.”

“If you need me to go…” Jayce started.

“No,” Cami said, “we’ve been training all week. It’s fine. Tomorrow.”

Jenny’s expression read stone cold disappointment. “Fine,” she said, then added, “Hey, do you still have that scarf I lent you?”

“Yeah, gimme a second to find it,” Cami said and left to go upstairs, closing her bedroom door behind her.

Jenny turned her attention to Jayce. Standing there awkwardly, like he was in a museum filled with
look but don’t touch
items. “So,” Jenny said. “Hear you’re an animal now.”

“You heard right,” Jayce said.

“Having fun with it yet?”

Jayce let out a breath of a laugh. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Mmhm.” Jenny wasn’t paying attention, not really. Instead, she was thinking about Cami. It was like pulling teeth to get her where she needed to be. Maybe dangling the carrot wasn’t working. Maybe Jenny needed to give her a smack with the stick. A little incentive. And Cami cared about two things: hair bows and Jayce.

It was time to take off Cami’s training wheels. Time to give her a taste of what a Keeper was
really
capable of.

Jenny closed her eyes. She felt a warmth hum under her skin, an electric energy. She twisted her hair out of her face and then exhaled, letting the energy roll off of her in waves. She learned back on the couch and parted her legs. Her eyes opened on Jayce, who was suddenly all attention. The surprise of walking in on Jenny had killed his boner, but it was back and evident against the crease of his jeans.

“Come on, pup,” Jenny sighed, parting her legs further. “Let’s get this over with.”

He looked torn. “Cami is—”

“
Heel
,” Jenny said.

That was all it took. A look of surprise flashed over Jayce’s face as his knees went suddenly weak, buckling. He gripped the back of the chair to steady himself, but then he was on his hands and knees, crawling to her. She knew her smell was potent, strong—
sharp, cinnamon sex
, a vulgar were-fox had once called it, back when she was less in control of her powers. She didn’t hold back, releasing enough to make his head spin, lost in the haze of lust. On the floor, he took her soft thighs in his hands and spread them. Her dress rode up her hips, revealing her black panties underneath.

She dragged her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, until she felt his nose pressed against the soft cotton. It was almost unfair, really. She knew his brain would turn to lust-addled jelly once he caught her scent. Sure enough, she felt any moral compass he had smash into pieces as he nuzzled against her panties, heat radiated from them.

She walked her heel down his back and hooked him in. She could see his painfully hard cock straining against his too-tight pants. Never mind that, before, she’d been nothing but a mildly irritating sharp-tongued younger girl who had playfully tormented him all through high school. Now that she had him under her spell, he was all but worshipping her. He let out a soft groan and it sent shivers down her spine.

“Is this what you want?” Jenny said, coyly covering her panties with her hand.

He whined and strained against her tight grip in his hair. He looked pathetic, enslaved by lust, but light-years beyond caring. She could tell that his animal was running hot and furious through his blood when it took him a good second to find his human voice. When he did, it was hoarse. “Please.”

Jenny peeled her panties down her legs, keeping her thighs tight together. Then she put them over his big puppy dog eyes, and wrapped the leg holes around his ears to hold them in place.
There
. No way she was letting him see all of her. He looked so stupid with lust, breath short and mouth dry, that she couldn’t help but grin, buttoning her lip under her teeth. Wasn’t often she got to use her powers like this and,
hell
, she was having a little fun. She took his face in her hands and gave him a small, chaste kiss. Blind, the sudden touch made him flinch, but he leaned into it eagerly, like something starved, even after she’d pulled back.

Jenny cupped the back of his head and eased him down between her legs. It quickly became evident that this, he could do—literally—blindfolded. He dove in, and the hot flat of his tongue pressed against her, warming her. His tongue boldly explored her slippery lips, tasting the nectar at her center. She felt him lick his way up until he found her hard little nub and he focused on it, circling, sucking. Jenny gasped sharply, surprised by how skilled he was, and she lifted her hips harder against his mouth.

This was supposed to be a strict lesson for Cami, like a nun rapping her student on the knuckles with a ruler. Jenny hadn’t expected to actually
enjoy
it so much.

“Good boy,” she moaned as his fingers clutched her shuddering thighs tightly.

“
Jayce.
” There was his name, but it definitely didn’t come from her mouth. Jenny sat up quickly, startled, even though she
knew this was coming
—she’d stupidly allowed herself to get caught up in it. Her hold over Jayce snapped like a rubber band and he jolted upward, ripping Jenny’s panties from his eyes.

Cami stood at the bottom of the steps with Jenny’s scarf in her hand and betrayal stamped all over her face.

His expression went slack with guilt. “Cami” was all he could get out, breathlessly. “I…”

“He
nothing
,” Jenny interrupted. She slid her legs back together and straightened up to look over at Cami. “It was me. Our powers, remember? If you spent more time training and less time playing, you would be ten times the Keeper I am, and I wouldn’t be able to snare him with some elementary sex spell.”

“How could you?” Cami spat, her voice trembling with rage.

Jenny’s expression softened. “Trust me, I didn’t want it to come to this either. But I had to show you—”

Cami wasn’t listening anymore. She couldn’t. She walked past them at a quick clip, shoving out the door.

Cami felt like an open flame that needed to be smothered. Anger was roaring loudly in her ears. She thought the cold night air would cool her off, but she barely felt it. All she could do was pant, her heart thumping in her chest. The image of Jayce poured lewdly between Jenny’s legs was seared into her mind. She couldn’t catch her breath. Was this a panic attack? A heart attack? Or just an attack, an attack on all her senses, a war on her heart, a veritable slaughter of her sanity?

“Cami,” she heard Jayce’s voice, broken. “I’m so sorry—”

“Save your breath,” Cami said.
She was done forgiving.

Her eyes locked on the Camaro. Jayce caught her line of vision and he swallowed. Hard. “Cami…”

Too late. Cami was tired of holding back. Sick of caging herself. Maybe Jenny was right. It was time to release
her
beast. Her anger felt hot, like something physical, burning inside of her, consuming her. It itched under her skin, throbbed in her skull. She lifted her hand and twisted it in the air.

The Camaro burst into flame. And that was before it caught the fuel tank. A small explosion hit the back of the car. Flames licked the dark night sky and cast long shadows over the three on the porch.

Silence from the two behind her. What more could they say? Jayce looked like he might be sick. Jenny wound her hands over her arms, hugging herself.

“Is that Keeper enough for you?” Cami asked before she went back inside the house. The door closed with a slam of finality behind her.