“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 am 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 her feet kicking in the air behind her as 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 head 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 course. 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, since 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 too 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 go 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 would 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 tight, 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 of course, she wore those god-awful cowboy boots I hated.
Jay Dee was sinfully beautiful.
“So old man,” she sang and squeezed my arse, “are you going to win me something or what?” She motioned towards the game booths with her chin.
“If you want a big stuffed animal, I shall buy you one,” I said then cringed, looking at the dirty carnies in the booths. “Um…ew.”
“You are such a damn woman,” Jay Dee groaned and pulled me towards one of the booths, handing me her cotton candy. “How do I win a big one?” she asked.
The man looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her breasts.
Say something, I dare you. I will rip your bloody throat out before you even realize what hit you. I swear to God, if you touch her I will be bathing in your blood.
“Two dollars for eight shots,” he said. “Hit a target in each of the eight zones. Or for twenty bucks and a lap dance, I’ll give you one,” he suggested, eying her breasts again.
I growled.
Jay Dee squeezed my arse, trying to calm me down. “No thanks,” she said and fished some ones out of her back pocket and threw them at him. “I’ll take that jumbo giraffe in the corner,” she said with a smile and picked up the heater.
The man rolled his eyes and stood there bored as Jay Dee watched each group of mechanical targets make their circuit.
“Any day now,” he complained.
If you open your mouth again, I swear to God I will hunt you down after I drop her off and kill you.
“Play nice,” Jay Dee warned and quickly took aim.
The sound of eight bb’s hitting metal targets made the man’s eyes widen in disbelief.
“What in…” he choked.
“Giraffe,” Jay Dee said again.
“How did you do that?” he demanded.
Instantly, I put myself between Jay Dee and the snarked man. I snarled at him and I could feel my eyes darkening.
Open your mouth again and watch what I do.
Jay Dee rolled her eyes and smacked me in the back of the head. “Target two, six and eight are delayed between the white rabbits and ducks, target four shudders, and target group one only has one target that doesn’t have a straight stick behind it. Give me my damn prize.”
The man handed over the giant stuffed animal with shaking hands.
Jay Dee took her cotton candy from me and made me carry the five-foot stuffed animal. “You really need to learn to control your temper, old man,” she scolded before licking the sticky blue sugar off of her fingers.
“Stay out of me bloody head,” I scolded in return before pulling her hand away from her lips and captured her mouth with mine.
After another hour, I couldn’t take the sexual torture she was putting me through any longer, and needed a much overdue time out. Everything Jay Dee did captured my attention in the most perverse ways, and each person—man, woman or child, it didn’t matter—caused me to snarl and growl possessively, and I found myself taking a protective stance in front of her with each.
“Bugger off!” I snapped at the lads trying to ride the damn stuffed animal next to me while we waited in line for candy apples. “Can I please get rid of this bloody thing?” I complained, choking the giraffe when she wasn’t looking. “I will buy you a million of them which do not pose the risk of being infested with lice.” I shivered.
“No, I won it for you...lice and all,” she said, making a face. “Put it in the SUV and meet me at face painting.”
Face painting?
Before I could ask, Jay Dee walked away from me with a candy apple in hand, and my head tilted to the side as I watched the overly sultry sway of her hips with each step she took. She ran her free hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face as she took a bite of the polished, red candied apple.
It was one of the sexiest things I had ever seen.
“Bloody hell,” I mumbled and adjusted myself. “Get your bloody prick under control,” I scolded myself and hurried to the parking lot.
“Are we having fun yet?” d’Artagnan complained, suddenly appearing stretched out on the roof while I shoved the stuffed animal in the back of the Range Rover.
“I am. Why are you here?” I asked and slammed the trunk and looked up at him; his lips were tinted red and his cheeks were slightly flushed. “Bollocks! I hope you did not leave a goddamn body somewhere. I will tell Mum on you,” I warned.
He shook his head. “You are a goddamn tattle tell,” he informed me. “Brother...Little Brother...Tanis, why does it matter if I leave a body or not? We aren’t on their land so I can feed wherever I please. Thankfully I’m not plagued by a goddamn conscience like you, in fact, I’m getting to the point in my very long existence where these walking blood banks appear as nothing more than cattle waiting to be slaughtered…or harvested if I had the patience.”
I sniffed. “Bloody hell, you are bladdered!”
d’Artagnan smiled wide and pulled a nearly empty bottle of vodka from behind him, then chugged its remaining contents. When the bottle was empty, he threw it across the parking lot and it slammed into the side of a parked car, causing the alarm to go off, three hundred yards away.
“Little brother, why are you still with that dog?” he asked, sounding strangely endearing and curious.
I growled at him.
“I will admit, in a very strange way she is slightly attractive…minus that whole dog thing, but I don’t understand how someone like you, a cynical a*shole of a vampire who has been stuck in his ways for more than three-hundred years, suddenly changes everything he’s ever known, simply to screw an eighteen year old werewolf who is blonde and…something is off about her,” he admitted and looked at me curiously. “Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what? Me Duckie?” I scoffed; he was being strangely brotherly which was never a good sign.
“Well, yes. She’s a damn animal, literally, and strangely endearing and innocent...you should be terrified of catching fleas.”
He was such a child.
“Will you just do whatever it is that you are going to do and leave?” I complained and headed back towards the fair. “Honestly, d’Artagnan, I am tired of walking on eggshells waiting for you to put into motion your master plan of drama.”
d’Artagnan huffed and walked beside me. “I have to admit, little brother, this isn’t going how I had envisioned it. You and your puppy have given me many amusing moments, cost me ten-grand even, but I’ve grown tired of it already.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said but couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m not going anywhere so don’t get your hopes up,” he snapped at me, then smirked when I rolled my eyes. “I never thought small town life would grow on you,” he said conversationally.
“It has not, however, I am enjoying the locals, one especially. Miss Jay Dee will graduate in June. I know that she would like to see Europe, and I would like to go home.”
“You can’t be serious, you want to…what in the hell do you want?” he asked, appallingly.
No, we are not having this conversation. Not now, and not ever.
“Why do you care? No, better question, d’Artagnan, why in the hell are you suddenly trying to play the role of big brother? You have not been a brother to me in centuries, even before you embraced the dark gift. Whatever Jasmine did to you during your very short, and questionable, marriage, changed you and effectively destroyed whatever family dedication you might have once had. Truth be told, I am starting to realize that I do not think we ever were brothers. What little bits I remember of me human life, you were never really there for us, and everything was always about you. You acted as if you married Jasmine in order to secure our future, our livelihood, but that is not it at all. You married her knowing what she is, you wanted to be turned.”
I had always suspected as much, but I had never pointblank asked or accused before.
“You know nothing,” he hissed in my face then disappeared in the crowd.
I found Jay Dee at the face painting area with Romeo.
“We never got that dance,” Jay Dee said when she saw me. “I know you aren’t a fan of modern country music, but there’s a band starting in ten minutes over at the pavilion.”
“If I recall correctly, a certain bonny blonde informed me that she did not dance,” I smugly reminded her.
“You said it wouldn’t be a problem,” she reminded me just as smug.
Yahto and his temperamental girlfriend were already dancing. Steffen and Abigail were dancing as well, dry humping each other as they swayed with the music. Jay Dee wrapped her arms around my neck and I picked her up off of her feet. She hovered an inch above the floor as I swayed us with the music.
The night was seemingly perfect; there were no fights, we had novelty pictures taken, ate questionable food and tons of sweets, and rode rides. And now I was dancing with the woman of my dreams, holding her in my arms while she pressed her soft lips to mine. It was perfect.
Or it was.
“You killed our brother, you bitch,” a familiar man snarled under his breath from behind us.
We spun around, and I positioned myself in front of Jay Dee.
The three Spottedhorses were quietly snarling at us as they fought to keep from phasing in public.
“Your brother stabbed me,” Jay Dee reminded them, not at all concerned, motioning with her hand down my her hip to the others.
“And yet you’re perfectly fine,” another sneered. “Your brother didn’t need to kill him!”
“If my brother wouldn’t have done it, my dad would have. And if Elder Lightfoot would have shown a bit of self-restraint for once in his very long life, my mom would not have been so understanding and kind...she would have ripped his throat out and not thought twice about it,” she informed them.
“And if Elderess Lightfoot would not have, I would have gladly bathed in his blood,” I snarled, my eyes darkened, and my lips pulled upward, revealing my fangs.
“And who the hell are you, suckhead?” the apparent youngest of the bunch demanded.
I pulled the collar of my shirt down. “I am hers,” I informed them.
They snarled in unison, eying the soft white scars on the nap of my neck; that admission was beyond scandalous to say the least.
They tightened their circle around us, and the Spottedhorse in front of us lifted his shirt up to show that he was armed. “Let’s take a walk,” he growled.