Page 105 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

I reached back up to push my fingers into the smooth strands, a bit jealous. Any girl would kill to have hair like his. Thick and rich.

“Yours is starting to look different, too,” he mused, glancing up at the crown of my head. I’d done my best to tame it with a comb, but had wound up knotting it into a low bun at the nape of my neck. “It’s growing out.”

I knew he was right. I hadn’t dyed it in weeks.

No, maybe months? The last time was the night of the party at Thompson’s.

What was left there for dye had faded to a pale turquoise, more of a pastel color than the vibrant hue I usually wore.

And at my roots I had a solid two or three inches of new silvery blonde growth.

Truth be told, I couldn’t be bothered to keep up with it anymore.

Besides that, I couldn’t afford to buy more dye.

As it was, my bank account was dwindling by the week.

Bye-bye dreams renting the apartment above the shop.

Even if I could afford it, I doubted Jacqueline would rent it to me anymore, anyway. Who wanted a flakey tenant who rarely showed up for work.

I’d been right about her voicemail. Though it was much kinder than I thought it ought to be, Jacqueline had let me know, at least temporarily. I believe the exact words were:

I won’t pretend to know what’s going on, but I have to assume whatever it is, that it’s important. I know you wouldn’t skip out on work for just any reason. I’ve brought on a new trainee for the time being and think you should take some time off. We can reassess your position in the summer.

So, not exactly the worst thing ever, but any way you sliced it, my source of income was no more.

I called and left a message at the shop around three o’clock, knowing she would be swamped and wouldn’t answer the phone.

It was the least I could do to tell her I got her message and apologize.

I thanked her for understanding and told her I took full responsibility even though some things were out of my control.

“Allie?” Jared prompted, and I realized I’d missed something he said.

“Sorry. Zoned out. What did you say?”

“Your hair,” he repeated. “I like it—the natural color, I mean. Not that the green isn’t awesome, too, though.”

“Turquoise,” I corrected, giving him a little swat.

He caught my hand before I could get him, holding me by the wrist. His thumb brushed against the soft skin of my wrist and my body flushed with a warmth not from the low-burning fire in the hearth at my back.

“Sorry,” he said with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Turquoise. You’re right, I don’t know what I was thinking.

It’s clearly not even close to being green. ”

“Are you trying to charm me, Jared Stone?”

“Is it working?”

His other hand crept onto my thigh beneath the coffee table, and I shuddered, biting the inside of my cheek to hold in a whimper.

When I opened my eyes again, I knew they would be glowing lightly around the edges, my wolf awakening to the touch of her mate.

No…not hers.

Ours.

Mine.

I really had missed him all this time. I felt like we’d been robbed of so much of it ever since Ryland started sending Jared away to work at the quarry.

“Are you really back for good?” I asked in a rush, afraid of the answer but needing it all the same. I had to know if he was going to vanish on me again. I needed him just as much as I needed Clay.

Jared was like my sun. Warm and bright even when things were stormy.

Clay like my moon. Shrouded in dark clouds, but still managing to shine despite them.

I couldn’t have one without the other.

Jared’s cheekbones twitched as he clenched his jaw, but after a second, he gave a single nod. “At least for a while.”

It was the best he could do, I realized. None of us could say when Ryland would stick his big ugly head in our lives and rip them from under us. None of us had a say. Not a real one, anyway.

Without another word, I swiped one arm across the coffee table, knocking textbooks and binders and loose note papers to the floor. Jared’s eyes widened before narrowing hungrily on me.

“I always wanted to do that,” I said in a breath, climbing over the bare table to reach him.

He pulled me into his lap, settling me with my legs around his waist and his hands gripping tightly around mine.

Jared didn’t hesitate this time. He pressed himself against me, tipping his chin up to reach my lips before sliding his hands across my back, wrapping both arms securely around me, binding me to him.

With my hands tightly wound in his hair, I kissed him without restraint. Each kiss muting the guilt enough to spur me on. My heartbeat was a wave of dominos falling against bone. My breaths were a broken song, hanging on notes without finding any proper rhythm.

When his tongue slid between my lips, I came undone, my back arching and toes curling.

With me clamped around him, Jared moved, lifting me with him as he stood. His hands moved low, wrapping around my upper thighs to hold me up. Something throbbed low in my belly, twisting and aching. Burning.

I moaned against his mouth as we crested the top of the stairs and gasped when he kicked in the door to his bedroom. The jarring movement broke us apart for an instant, and in it, I saw the burning fire of his wolf in his eyes. The drunken desire making his eyelids heavy.

Jared carried me to his bed, and I let him lay me over the soft gray blanket there. He paused then, drawing back as his eyes traced a lazy trail down the line of my body. His jaw clenched.

“What?” I asked, still breathless and aching to taste him.

I needed him to touch me. I needed to feel him. To erase all the doubt and the pain and the worry with his lips.

“I think I need to reevaluate something,” he said, confusing me for a brief second before I caught on to where his mind had gone.

I groaned. “If you mean the no fucking rule you have with Clay, then yeah. I think you do.”

Jared’s lips parted in surprise. “Did he tell you?”

Oh fuck.

I did my best to keep my face blank as I responded. “Yeah.”

I could see what he wanted to ask next clear as if it was written on his face in permanent ink. How did that come up?

Before he could voice the question and completely ruin the moment, I sighed and sat back up. “You know, I would’ve liked to have been involved in that decision.”

Jared’s expression shifted; some of the fire in his eyes waned, dying out.

Way to kill the mood, Allie.

Jared didn’t say anything for almost a full minute, then he sat down, lifting me easily onto his lap again. “You’re right,” he said. “We should have all talked about it together. It’s just…”

“A super fucking weird situation?”

Jared winced.

“At least you’re good friends,” I hedged. “Imagine if I’d mated to one of you and some other random shifter who you didn’t know. Maybe a fifty-year-old alpha with a nasty temper?”

Jared grimaced.

“Too far?” I asked, mirroring his disgust.

“A bit,” he replied but wrapped his arms tighter around me.

“Why are you so smart, Allie Grace?” he asked.

I was going to ask him what exactly he meant, but then he continued.

“I didn’t imagine this situation to be possible, but again—you’re right.

I guess it’s sort of lucky that it was Clay.

He is my best friend. I trust him more than I trust anyone else.

If I have to share you, then he is the only other man I’d be able to share you with. ”

“So does that mean we can nix your rule?” I asked with a devilish smirk, purposefully rolling my hips a little on his lap to emphasize my point and then blushed crimson, hardly able to believe what I’d just said and done.

What were these guys doing to me?

He grunted, sucking a breath in through his teeth. When he replied, his voice was husky and low, making my thighs clench. “Maybe,” he teased. “Let’s have a proper conversation about it. The three of us. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said, stealing a kiss from his lips.

He lengthened the kiss, languidly stroking a warm path down the side of my body, caressing my collarbone and the curve of my breast until his fingers found a gap in between the fabric of my shirt and the waist of my jeans. He slid his hand upward, tentatively, as though asking permission.

I pressed my body into his fingertips, my body screaming. How could this feeling be real? I could barely breathe, afraid if I did, it would break the spell keeping us here in this moment. Away from the worry. Away from the pain.

Just…away.

Then I remembered.

“I forgot to ask you,” I said, digging around in my front left pocket for my cell and thumbing to the conversation with Vivian. With everything else going on, I’d pretty much completely forgotten about it. “Want to come to Viv’s lacrosse game with me? I meant to ask Clay too, but…”

I let the sentence trail off, not needing to elaborate on why I hadn’t asked him yet. He had enough on his mind right now. Hell, he’d been all day. If he didn’t get back soon, or at least answer one of my three text messages, I was going to have to find his ass and drag it home.

“Lacrosse?” Jared asked, not hiding his mild shock or the worried furrow in his brow.

My lips pressed into a thin line. “I know. I tried to tell her it wasn’t a good idea. I mean, competitive sports? I still don’t even think I’d be ready for that and I’m nowhere near as competitive as Viv is.”

Jared’s lack of immediate reply set my nerves on edge.

“Do you not think she can handle it?”

Jared shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t know. Both your friends have adapted better that almost any other shifters I’ve seen make the transformation.”

His gaze slid to me and then away, checking to see if he’d offended me.

I certainly hadn’t adapted as well as they had. It was no secret.

“But lacrosse?” he repeated. “Why couldn’t she be into horseback riding or chess or something?”

I barked a laugh. I couldn’t picture it: Viv staring over a chess board with her fingers steepled, analyzing moves and countermoves.

Layla maybe. But not Viv. She needed lacrosse like she needed to breathe.

It was her one outlet when life at home wore on her.

She was a fucking force of nature on the field.

…which was precisely why this was clearly a terrible idea.

“So, you’ll come then?”

Jared inhaled deeply. “Yeah. Of course, I will. And we’ll bring Clay, too. Might need him. He’s really good at making distractions in a pinch.”

I wondered exactly what kind of distractions Clay was so good at making, but Jared yanked me down with him as he lay back, tucking me into his side. His woodsy cedar and birch scent wrapped around me like a cloak of ease, and I sighed.

It barely took more than a few minutes before my mind wandered to darker territory, no longer occupied by math equations and Jared’s lips.

I shuddered involuntarily as I wondered how Ry and Sam’s first night together went, simultaneously grossed out and stressed out.

Wondering if she was all right. If that was the reason Clay still hadn’t come home… maybe because she wasn’t.

But he would’ve called me if that were the case, right?

“Hey, Allie,” Jared said after a few moments spent stroking my arm, lost in his own thoughts.

“Hmm?”

His pulse picked up. I could hear it quicken from a steady drum beat to a discordant patter.

He swallowed. “You know how the mate bond allows us to share our emotions with each other?”

My mouth went dry. “Yeah. Why?”

“I know there’s something you aren’t telling me. Or maybe there’s something going on you don’t want me to know about?” He edged the last bit in a question, but he didn’t wait for me to answer it.

“I’m not going to push you, but I just wanted you to know—you can talk to me. About anything.”

Biting my lip, I kept quiet, trying to work through what to say. I couldn’t deny it, but I also wasn’t ready to spill all the beans just yet. He would think I was nuts if I told him what Adam had told me. At least until I had something to back it up.

“I just wanted to make sure it isn’t something to do with me…or maybe…something I’ve done wrong or that’s offended you—”

I shook my head, my cheek brushing back and forth over his chest before I propped myself up on an elbow to look him in the eye.

“No. You’re perfect.”

“So, there is something then?” I dropped my gaze.

“You don’t have to tell me now. I’ll wait. Just promise me you’ll tell me when you’re ready?”

I groaned, dropping my head heavily to land on his chest with a thud. Why did he have to be so good? It made my heart hurt. It made even the prospect of telling him what we found out about his uncle unbearable. How could someone like Jared share the same blood as someone like Ryland?

Please don’t be true. Please don’t be true.

“Or not?” Jared asked, taking my reaction as a refusal.

I breathed into his shirt in a long exhale and propped myself back up. “There is something I haven’t told you,” I admitted. Unburdening myself even of that small admission felt like a massive weight lifting from my chest, allowing me a proper breath. “But I will tell you, when the time is right.”

He pursed his lips but looked otherwise content with my response. Trusting.

“All right. I can live with that.”