The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence (26 page)

Chapter
15

Jason was making Cadence positively twitchy.
Granted, she loved the hell out having sex in the office. She’d
never look at that chair the same that was for damn sure. But then
he had just grinned at her when he said they were having dinner at
home, and he drove them in his pickup to her house. No, their
house. Yes, that sounded better in her head. Their house. Their
life. Their pack.

To her surprise, he had completely planned
dinner. When he carried a tray of steaks out to the back deck, she
had no idea what he was doing until she smelled a grill being lit.
“That’s not mine.” she said, leaning out the kitchen door.

“I know. I brought it from my old place.
Didn’t I tell you to sit down and relax?”

She gave him a smirk and went back to sit
down. It warred with her to let someone else cook in her kitchen,
but she wouldn’t complain. He seemed to have something up his
sleeve. His blue eyes promised a good night ahead of them.

Already slightly familiar with the layout of
the kitchen, he set the table for them and pulled dishes from the
fridge that hadn’t been there this morning when she made them
breakfast. He ignored her watchful gaze, which made her a little
nuts, and went about putting out a nice spread.

When the steaks were done, he put them on a
platter on the table, poured a glass of wine for her and opened a
beer for himself, and lit two candles. Tipping his bottle to her,
he said, “Here’s to the best chapter of my life yet.”

She clinked his bottle and warmed at the
words. He was damn romantic when he wanted to be.

He could grill a steak, that’s one glaring
truth. And another was that he had an excellent poker face. No
matter how many times she phrased a question to him about what he
was hiding from her, he deflected like an artist and shifted topics
easily until she was telling him about the last few years of high
school after he had graduated and then college.

After telling him about how she’d had to go
stag to both the junior and senior proms, he looked guilty suddenly
and she said, “Did you have something to do with that?”

His lush mouth pursed for a moment and she
already knew the answer. He said, “Sweet, did you think I’d let
anyone have their hands on you for prom of all things? A night
synonymous with teen sex and alcohol fueled binges?”

“You went to both your junior and senior
proms – with dates,” She said indignantly.

“That was different.”

“How do you figure?”

He opened and closed his mouth and then said,
“Well, I knew I could trust
me
not to have sex on prom
night. I didn’t know if I could trust the men who had asked you to
keep their hands off, and you picked humans of all things, which
meant I couldn’t even claim rank on them and make them keep their
cocks in their pants.”

“So you threatened them?” She’d been asked to
her junior prom by two different guys who were both human. One
canceled a few weeks in advance citing family problems and the
other just didn’t show up. It had been just shy of devastating to
her self-esteem, especially once the female wolves found out she’d
been stood up. And then for senior prom, even though she’d been out
on a few dates, no one even looked at her twice once it was prom
season.

“That was a while ago.” He was hedging. She
hated that.

She snorted, “Doesn’t matter. I felt like
hell that night. And then no one asked me to senior prom and Callie
canceled her date so I’d go. You could have let Michael take me, or
Linus.” She pointed out. “They would have kept me company and kept
their hands off me.”

His eyes flashed at the insinuation, “Never.
I would never in a million years have sent another wolf in my
place. I felt bad that you were miserable, but I knew if I took you
that I would want to have sex with you. Hell Cades, you thought you
were confused before – if you and I had slept together when you
were in high school, you wouldn’t have known left from right when
it came to me and the pack.”

She had to admit he was right. Even the
little mixed signals he sent her the past few years were enough to
drive her to the edge of sanity. If she’d actually slept with him,
tasted his mouth, felt his skin under her hands, well, she’d have
been done for.
Standing in the clock tower at noon with a
shotgun done for.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said when they
finished eating. He stood and held out his hand to her.

She thought he would take her upstairs. She
was more than ready to tumble in the sheets, but he went to the
hall closet and took out their coats, helping her on with hers
first before pulling on his own. He said, “Trust me, love,” and
because she did, she took his hand and zipped her lips.

It was dark, but the still bright new moon
lit the area with a blue glow. He led her off the back deck and
walked towards his parent's home. She wanted to protest and say she
wasn’t much in the mood for visiting right now. The weekend had
been hard enough, with all the well-wishers and dealing with Jake
and Renee. She wanted just Jason right now. But he asked for her
trust, and if she started pestering him then that was saying she
didn’t trust him, so she dug her tongue into her tooth until she
was distracted enough with the numbness that followed to forget why
she was trying to keep her mouth shut in the first place.

They walked in silence and he shortened his
long legged pace to match her short legs. It seemed like an
instinctual thing on his part, and she wondered if he was even
aware that he was doing it. His parent's home was completely dark,
which furthered her confusion.

He walked her around the side of the house
and stopped just underneath the window. She looked at him and then
up at the window. It was where his father had watched him mark her
before he flew out of the house and made him go inside while he
acted too much like an alpha for her to ignore. She looked back at
Jason and he was down on one knee in front of her, and her heart
stopped for long enough that she wasn’t sure it would ever start
again.

“Cadence, I had to bring you back here to the
beginning. We’re already mates in truth. In the pack's eyes, you’re
my wife. But that’s not good enough for me. It’s not enough for us
to be halfway married; I want you in every way possible. Not only
with the pack, but for the part of us that lives in the human
world. So where we started as pack mates is where I want to move
forward to the next chapter of our life together, where I share my
last name with you and make you my legal wife. I love you with
every fiber of my heart and soul. The only body I want curled up
against mine at night is yours. The only mouth I want on mine is
yours. The only heart I cherish, love, it’s yours. Please marry me,
Cadence.”

She wanted to say something profound and
heartfelt but every word she’d ever learned in school went sliding
out of her brain. All she could say was an emotional, “Yes, Jas,”
before the tears struck and her mouth went salty and she dropped
down to the grass while he pushed the ring onto her finger and
kissed her.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he said into her
ear, hugging her against him with a contented sigh.

“I love you, too, Jason.”

They sat in the darkness on the cool grass
for a long time, nothing but the sounds of nature around them. When
they walked back to the house, he told her that he’d planned it so
his parents were gone for the evening so they weren’t accidentally
interrupted.

He held the screen door open for her. “You
did good, Jas. I wanted romantic and you really delivered.”

“You’re worth it, Cades.” He pulled her into
his arms and kissed his way down her jaw to her ear. “Sweetheart, I
never figured myself for a romantic guy, but I’ll do my best to
make you happy.”

“Don’t worry, my heart,” she patted his
cheek, “if you fuck up, I’ll let you know.”

He snorted and swung her up over his
shoulder, caveman style. With a firm slap to her ass he started for
the stairs, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, baby, and that’s the
damn truth.”

What woke her up in the morning was the sound
of abnormal sounds downstairs. She had lived alone long enough to
expect things quiet until she was ready to wake up. Jason wasn’t in
bed and so she rolled over, figuring the sounds for him. And then
she heard voices other than his, which was unexpected.

She debated getting up and seeing who was in
the kitchen and asking why Jason had thought it was a good idea to
have people in the house before 8 a.m. after they’d been up very,
very late the night before. When she heard his footsteps coming up
the stairs, she tried to pretend to be asleep.

She felt him stop in front of her next to the
bed and she thought she was doing a damn good job feigning sleep
when he sighed, “Cades, I know you’re up. Stop fooling around. My
family’s downstairs and my mom’s making breakfast for us.”

“Can’t hear you, I’m asleep.” She
muttered.

The alpha in him clearly felt like she was
defying him, because he leaned over her and braced his arms on
either side and said with a very low voice, “You’re going
downstairs either naked or dressed. If I have to get you out of bed
myself, you’ll be eating with no clothes on.”

Her eyes popped open. There was a split
second where she was afraid he meant it and she almost moved to get
herself up. And then she realized that parents or not, he would not
want her naked in front of any other males, period, so she decided
to call his bluff.

“You kept me up until at least 4 with all
that hot monkey sex. I don’t want to get up. So tell them I’ll be
down when I’m down and save me a plate for later.”

He clearly wasn't happy. With eyes narrowed,
nostrils flared, and lips pursed he had the calculating glare of a
man trying to figure out if she was serious or not.

His tone changed suddenly, “Hot monkey
sex?”

She couldn’t help herself and laughed at his
surprised grin. Giving a shove to his shoulders, she complained,
“You can’t treat me like a wolf all the time. I’m going to disagree
with you. I won’t disrespect you in public, but there has to be a
place where we can argue and you don’t go all primal on me.”

He straightened, looking miffed. “I wasn’t
treating you like a wolf.”

She sat up on her elbows, “Yes, you were.
Instead of treating me like an equal – in the bedroom of all places
– you tried to order me around and then threatened me!”

Looking chagrined, he sat down on the edge of
the bed. “Sorry, sweet. I’m not used to people defying me that are
part of the pack. It’s, well, it’s screwing with me a little bit.
We are equals, love. I just need some time to work out the kinks.
So please, will you get dressed and come downstairs to have
breakfast with my family? They want to congratulate us on our
engagement.”

She conceded and got up. The man who rarely
apologized had been sincere, so she could be gracious. He hovered
while she cleaned up like he thought she might go back to bed to
prove a point. Since he said she didn’t have time for a shower even
though she’d gone to bed sticky and woken up that exact same way,
she made due with a washcloth and soap. He said he liked falling
asleep after having sex with her because until he took a shower,
then he got to smell like the two of them together. That’s all well
and good for men, but for women, well, it’s just not pleasant when
everything that had been fun the night before starts to leak
out.

She looked at him surreptitiously, “You
wouldn’t have really taken me downstairs naked, would you?”

He smirked, “I feel like I need to tell you
that I would have, so that next time I ask you to do something that
you will right away. But you know I don’t want anyone to see you
naked except me.”

Ha! She knew it. She hid her triumphant smile
by turning into the closet and pulling a sweatshirt over her head
and then they went downstairs, hand in hand.

Michael, Jason’s parents, and his grandfather
Abraham, were sitting around her kitchen table with coffee. Abraham
had been alpha before Peter, and his wife was shot and killed by
hunters when Peter was a young man, before Jason had been born.
Jason said that his grandfather lost the will to lead the pack and
that Peter and the elders at the time had been worried that a rival
pack might come in and take him out. Along with solidifying the
alliance with the Garra Pack, Peter stepped up earlier than he
would have liked and let his father step down while he still had
his dignity. Jason seemed to think the story was one of a man not
being able to handle his responsibility in the face of personal
trials; that his grandfather should have put the pack first no
matter what was going on in his life. Cadence thought it was much
softer than that, though. That Abraham loved his wife so much that
he almost went to the grave himself in grief spoke volumes about
their life together and the depths of their love. She supposed you
couldn't tell an alpha that there were probably going to be times
of great loss in their lives at one point or another, and they’d be
unable or unwilling to put the pack first. No matter the mantra of
the pack, there had to be instances where the pack didn’t come
first, not over family.

Michael, Peter, and Abraham kissed her cheek
in congratulations and Tina hugged her and lifted her hand with
hers to examine the ring. It was truly lovely. He’d done a very
good job picking out a stunning but simple round cut solitaire.
Apparently his errands yesterday had involved him selling his
fix-up car and then buying the ring, along with planning their
special meal.

The wedding was discussed, and Jason’s idea
to get married in Pigeon Forge and spend a week alone was well
received. Tina frowned slightly in thought and then said, “Don’t
you think the pack would want to be part of the wedding? To watch
their alphas get married? You know this is unusual, most alpha
pairs are married for several years before they take over
leadership.” Implied but not said was the simple truth that if they
hadn’t dicked each other around for so long that she’d have already
figured out that they were mates and she was alpha and they’d have
been married earlier than this.