Page 33 of It’s You
The Binding
H e could feel her eyes on the back of his head. Again. His heart pounded in his chest, thumping uncomfortably against his ribs, and it took every shred of his self-control not to turn his head to look at her green eyes and pinkish-blonde hair.
Every shred. And for a seventeen-year-old skinwalking Roug, that’s saying something.
Jacques Beauloup took a deep breath, slunk further into the theater seat, and kept his nose in his book, reading.
Or rather, pretending to read. He read the words, but he was too distracted to actually process them or relate to them.
She shifted in her seat, releasing pheromones, and her scent made him shudder and harden.
He ground his jaw and closed his eyes, trying to calm down.
Auditioning for this play had been a mistake, but when he overheard her tell a friend that she was spending her summer attending the high school musical theater camp, he couldn’t get the idea out of his head.
He had no real interest in musical theater, but two months of rehearsing for a play meant two months of seeing Darcy Turner every day.
While he knew he couldn’t have her—and heck, he barely knew her—he wanted to be around her as much as possible before things changed. Before he changed.
Speaking of mistakes, coming back to New Hampshire had been a mistake, a huge mistake, and Jacques couldn’t help resenting his parents for their decision to try to reclaim the Southern Bloodlands.
Others had tried to return and resettle in Carlisle, but it had never gone well.
Jacques agreed with the pack elders. The land was irrevocably cursed, and they should tear up the deed or sell the land back to the nefarious Proctors and be done with it.
But Jacques’s father, Dubois, was looking for a fresh start with Jacques’s mother, Tallis, and had convinced her that they could find it in the woodland cabin still owned by the pack and located in the Bois Loup Garou.
The move really hadn’t helped things at all.
Aside from isolating their family from the support of the pack, Tallis Beauloup wasn’t ready to forgive her cheating husband and could barely stand to glance at his infant daughter, Lela, whose care was mostly left to Jacques’s less-than-enthusiastic twin sisters, Jemma and Jeanette.
Jacques’s five-year-old brother, Julien, escaped to the woods more and more often to evade the near-constant, and often explosive and bloody, battles between their parents.
On one topic, all four siblings were in perfect agreement. Their father shouldn’t have broken the binding. His reasons for straying with Lela’s mother didn’t matter. His actions were indefensible.
Darcy cleared her throat behind him, and his thoughts scattered like feathers in a tornado, his insides whirling with want for the pale-skinned, freckled, green-eyed girl behind him.
He hadn’t had a woman yet. What was the point?
He knew that he wouldn’t be able to reach any sort of climax with some random girl, so why get involved?
Better to wait for the binding, which would happen by the equinox on September 21, after returning to the Northern Bloodlands tomorrow.
And yet, imminent binding or not, he still couldn’t get Darcy Turner out of his head. Not since the first moment he laid eyes on her.
He had initially noticed her in the library during the school year.
Arriving a few minutes early on the first day of study hall, he found a seat at a table far from the circulation desk, away and alone.
A few minutes later, the door had opened again as more students filed in, taking seats in small groups, joining friends, ignoring the dark-haired newcomer sitting on his own.
Jacques, in turn, ignored them back, finding little in common with the white kids in this typical New England town, longing for the comfort and familiarity of his pack at home.
The door opened again, and Jacques looked up in time to see the sun shift sideways in its course so that the angle from which it shined through the library skylight created a spotlight on the entryway and drew his eyes specifically to her.
Blinded by the light, he couldn’t make out her form at first, until a cloud passed slowly over the sun.
She stood in the doorway in the fading glow, ethereal, like an angel, and Jacques watched her, breathless.
Literally breathless. The air in his lungs was slowly expelled from his body until his diaphragm ached with emptiness.
He felt his face go slack and his eyes water.
He felt dizzy and weak until his body rebelled, sucking in a boatload of air, and sitting up straighter.
But he couldn’t look away. She stared straight at him, locking her eyes with his, and he watched her pink lips turn up just slightly, her eyes soften as though in recognition.
The mechanics of his heart were deafening in his ears, roaring with the rush of blood coursing recklessly through his veins, pumping at full speed as his eyes held hers.
“Darcy!” Her attention was claimed by a friend at a nearby table, and he watched as she pushed her hair over one shoulder and sat down beside her friend.
He stared at her body as she moved. Her larger-than-average breasts, small waist, and long legs made her look less like a girl and more like a woman to him.
He watched as she folded her hands in front of her on the table after she’d hung her backpack on her chair, and the graceful way her neck rotated to look at him one more time.
He had looked down quickly so that she wouldn’t see his eyes.
He felt the heat of them, and for the first time in Jacques’s life, he wondered if they were burning as he’d seen the eyes of the bound men glow.
As a louveteau , a cub, his eyes only glowed at night or while feeding, so until now, he had never felt the blinding heat in his eyes during the day.
He risked a glance at the girl’s light orange hair, then looked down quickly as a wave of hunger knocked the wind out of his lungs again.
He’d never felt this sort of merciless pounding in his heart, never felt this sort of heightened rigidity in his body, especially in his lap where his erection strained against his jeans, threatening to burst as he felt her turn to look at him.
Between concentrating on not shifting and not ejaculating right there in the middle of the library, he didn’t get even a second of studying done.
He stared at the table with a fierce determination, waiting until she had left the room before he trusted himself to collect his things and stop off in the bathroom before heading to next period.
He found out later that she was two grades below him, the older child of two in a family only outlasted in Carlisle by the Proctors.
Jacques couldn’t care less who her people were.
His body burned for her in a way that was confusing and dangerous, but absolutely essential in its power and demand.
Darcy Turner, the freckled white girl from the town adjacent to the Southern Bloodlands, was Jacques’s first introduction to spellbinding, devastating lust.
His fingers twitched with the longing to touch her fair hair.
His mouth ached to press up against her rosy lips, and her breasts tortured him at night as he lay in bed, trying to figure out why a human girl should have such an effect on him.
After avoiding her eyes and fighting the attraction for weeks, he finally allowed himself to indulge his longing for her, as long as it remained distant and detached, fantasies housed in the privacy of his own mind.
He promised himself not to speak with her and definitely not to become involved with her.
He could admire her from a distance. He could want her in silence. Anything else wasn’t an option.
And so Jacques watched her. He watched her in the library and in the school hallways. He memorized her schedule so he could watch her move from class to class. He auditioned for this ridiculous play so that he could see her over the summer.
Only once had he broken his promise to himself and spoken to her, but he considered it an exception to his pledge.
Following her one afternoon, he watched in horror as she walked distractedly across the parking lot reading a book, and Jacques had grabbed her arm as a speeding car came around a curve.
As his hand had touched her skin for the first time, it was like he was made of iron, and she was a magnet, so terrible and forceful was the attraction between them.
Every cell in his body stood at the ready to touch every cell in hers, and he’d had to push her arm away forcibly, or he might never have let go.
The shock of it had confused him and angered him, causing him to speak sharply to her and stalk away, hoping she didn’t see the painful longing for her written all over his face.
Tonight was the final performance, and tomorrow he would head north.
For several weeks, he would meet the eligible girls of his pack and the neighboring packs until he figured out the one to whom he should be bound.
They would kiss, and if the binding was preordained, they’d know it instantly.
She would belong to him, and he would belong to her.
They would start their lives together, go to college, or look for jobs together.
Some even started families right away. They would inevitably hunt together.
Eat, sleep, and drink together. Live free and die together.