Chapter 11 Mates With Benefits
Josh
After we hook up, I’m not sure it will happen again. No matter what was said in the heat of passion, we could easily go our separate ways.
But it does happen again.
“Wow, you’ve got a little private love nest up here?” Bane wonders as we tumble through the door.
“No, the apartment is for the leader of the coven…”
Our hands roam everywhere, bodies pressed together, and our mouths crash into each other. Guess we’re done talking.
We both live on our respective pack lands where every shifter knows everybody else’s business, which can make sexual encounters awkward.
Fortunately, a little apartment above the potions store belongs to my mother.
Sometimes I crash here if I need some space, or a coven member uses the apartment if they stay late at the shop, but it’s usually empty since we moved onto Clover Pack land when Mom married my stepfather.
I pull my mouth away from Bane’s to direct him. “The bedroom is right through there—”
“Here’s good.” He presses me up against the wall, hands already working at my belt buckle. “Time to settle my debt.”
Before I can ask what he means, he’s already moving down my body and getting on his knees.
Oh.
If I’m a dick sucking pro, then he’s a cock sucking god.
~
Josh
I slowly blink my eyes open in the morning, feeling warm and happy. It takes a second to register my surroundings, but I instantly know the man behind me. Nestled in Bane’s arms, it feels right waking up in my mate’s embrace.
Even though we fell asleep on opposite sides of the bed, we gravitated toward each other during the night. His breath tickles the back of my neck, and I feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat against my skin. If only the moment could last forever.
But it ends too soon.
He wakes up and instantly starts untangling us, sitting up on his side of the bed.
“We could get breakfast,” I suggest hopefully.
The muscles in his bare back tense, then he shakes his head. “Busy.”
“Oh. You’re busy?”
“No, you are. Don’t you have work in half an hour?”
Twisting around, I reach for my cell phone and check the time. Shit. “Oh no, you’re right!”
Actually, I’m thirty minutes late. I throw off the covers and jump out of bed, rushing to get ready. My commute is a simple matter of going downstairs, but still, it sucks being behind and running around all off-kilter.
Bane’s quick exit doesn’t disturb me because I’m out the door not long after him, already inventing an excuse and ready to apologize to the witch working the morning shift with me.
~
Like the first time, I’m not sure if we’ll hook up again after the second time.
But it happens again. And again and again.
Our bodies fit together naturally, and I think our physical connection captivates him too. But Bane needs to learn about more than my body and all the ways to make me scream if he’s going to Recognize me. We aren’t making much progress getting to know each other.
Eventually, I pick up on a few things about him. Not all of them are good. For instance, Bane Blackwood is perpetually tardy and literally incapable of punctuality. Whenever we make plans, he constantly leaves me waiting.
He’s late. Again. I check my phone for the 200th time. 9:45.
He was supposed to come to the apartment at nine. There’s nothing to do in the apartment, so I’m killing time on my phone and waiting for him, getting more and more frustrated by the minute.
Finally, Bane knocks at 10:17. I consider letting him wait out there for a while, but he just pounds on the door again. “Dude, I hear you breathing in there. Just let me in.”
I don’t let him in, but I do open the door enough to glare at him. “You’re late. Again.”
He shrugs. “Not a big deal.”
“If you were going to be late, you should have texted. Or not been late.”
“Sorry. Didn’t know our booty call was such a big occasion,” he scoffs as he moves to enter the apartment.
My arm shoots out and blocks him. “Well, if you want this booty, I think I deserve a little basic respect.”
“God, just drop it.”
“Waiting on you is getting old. What’s your excuse? Do you even have an excuse?”
“Lost track of time.”
“Then it’s a good thing all cell phones have clocks.”
“Oh my god,” he huffs. “Are you done yet?”
“You aren’t doing this on purpose, are you? Like some twisted Iron Pack power move where you make people wait around for you?”
I’m only trying to annoy him as much as his constant tardiness annoys me, but Bane freezes, staring at me with a funny expression on his face. The tension seeps from his posture.
I stop guarding the door, though he makes no move to come inside again. What changed?
“No,” he says. “Not trying to pull anything. I was just late.”
“Okay?” That doesn’t really explain why he’s reacting like this.
“Dad does that all the time,” he admits quietly.
“He’s the Alpha, so everyone else should adjust to his schedule.
He makes people wait just because he can.
Me… I just lose track of time.” He rubs the back of his neck.
Self-conscious? “Elias used to tell me that I was free to make others wait for me once I became Alpha, but until then, I’d be punctual. ”
“What happened?” Obviously, that didn’t exactly work out.
He laughs darkly. “This is the one and only lesson he tried to impart that I was never able to learn, no matter what he did.”
Almost afraid to ask, I’m trying to decide which seems worse, what I’m imagining or the truth.
He only shrugs. “Think anything a drill sergeant would do but designed for werewolves, not army recruits.”
“Yikes.”
“Tough love is his favorite kind of love.” Not really surprising.
“No matter how much I tried, I never managed to curb my lateness. Eventually, Dad offered me a deal. He’d back off as long as I showed up in a timely manner for him and never told anyone that punctuality was the one battle Elias Blackwood couldn’t win. ”
“What did you do?”
“Come on, I’m not stupid. I accepted the deal.” His eyes widen and he grabs onto the door frame for support. “Shit. I’ve never told anyone that story, just like I promised.”
Yet he shared the secret with me. Am I special?
“Your secret’s safe with me.” I step back and allow him to come inside.
He takes a few steps inside but doesn’t get any further, and I see him debating something in his head.
“Dad may have given up on me, but I’m still working on time management. If you want me to show up on time, tell me to be there an hour early.”
“Oh. Okay.” Sounds easy enough.
“But don’t be too obvious about it or I might not show up at all.”
“So hang on, you want me to lie to you and then we both pretend this conversation never happened?”
“Right. Why are you looking at me like that’s weird?”
“No, it’s totally normal. I lie about what time it is all the time.”
He’s ridiculous. But I’m not upset anymore. Somehow my anger has turned into fondness. How did he do that? Maybe my mate is magic.
I place a hand to my heart and gasp. “Never thought I’d see the day. The incredible Bane Blackwood is bad at something?”
He laughs and gives me a light shove, pushing me toward the bedroom. “Shut up.”
Technically, I should be the one sharing childhood stories or character flaws. Anything to help him see the real me. But it’s a start.
The rest of the night goes more smoothly.
Maybe there’s even something I can do to help him. There are all kinds of magical charms that might work for punctuality.
~
Josh
I’m not sure when getting to know Bane better turns into actually liking him. Maybe my opinion started changing when he helped me with magic. Maybe being close to him influences me. He’s not an easy person to crack, and I savor it each time he reveals a part of himself.
I shiver as I step out of the bathroom one night, the cool night air raising goosebumps on my skin. Without thinking, I see his bomber jacket draped over a chair and shrug it on. It hangs loosely on my smaller frame, but it’s warm and smells like Bane.
Bane’s still awake when I return to bed and watches me intently, staring at the jacket wrapped around me.
“Is it okay that I’m wearing this?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious. “I got a little cold.”
His gaze lingers on me, expression unreadable.
For a moment, I worry that I’ve overstepped some invisible boundary.
Rumors claim the jacket is authentic, but I didn’t think they were true.
Werewolves fighting wars isn’t something that happens every day, not in this century. Especially not human wars.
“Whatever.” Bane shrugs. “It’s fine.”
Not the most enthusiastic response, but I’m getting the feeling he wouldn’t let me keep wearing it if he really objected.
“This might be a silly question, but...” I hesitate, tracing the worn leather of the jacket’s sleeve.
“Yeah, it’s real,” he answers. “My great grandpa fought in the war.”
“Did the rest of the pack support him?”
Bane lets out a low chuckle. “Hell no. They thought he was crazy. An Alpha risking discovery, risking being killed in a human war. Insisting on serving a country that didn’t even know his kind existed, but he enlisted and fought anyway.”
Huh. The rumors are true. Some of his friends still wear their varsity jackets from high school. Not Bane. He wears his great grandfather’s brown bomber jacket from World War II.
Bane always seems so carefree and shallow, but there’s a lot of depth under the surface, things I’m just starting to discover.
He’s not like I expected at all. One day that will stop surprising me, but it isn’t today.
“Well, thanks for letting me wear it,” I say.
It doesn’t feel right to just toss the jacket aside, so I get up and carefully drape it back over a chair.
“Whatever,” he says again.
But when I come back to bed, he wraps me in his arms, and I don’t have to worry about being cold anymore. Even his eyes seem brighter in the darkness like the temperature in them has thawed a few degrees.
~
Josh
“Need you. Now.”
If only the words came out commanding. Instead, I’m practically begging.