Chapter 4
Darcy heard a light knock at her door the next morning and roused herself from sleep to answer. The hallway was empty, but on the floor she found the cell phone charger in a neat coil with a note that read simply, Coffee’s ready.
She looked down the hallway again, but hearing nothing, she picked up the charger and returned to her room.
Unzipping her duffel, she took out a pair of soft, worn jeans, frayed to white around the waist and cuffs from years of wear.
She clutched them to her chest as she looked out the window, watching the rivulets of rain snake down the glass of her bedroom window.
It would be a chilly day, not that it mattered since she’d undoubtedly be spending it trapped inside, under Jack’s watchful eyes.
She chose a soft pink, scoop neck, long-sleeved shirt to wear on top, then twisted her hair up into a loose chignon, tendrils falling around her face, and no pins to keep them up.
Oh well. She touched the necklace she’d been wearing since she found it, the eternity symbol that Willow had given her so long ago that Jack had stolen for fifteen years.
She considered taking it off, then recalled his disinterested politeness last night and couldn’t resist leaving it on.
Go ahead and act like you don’t see it. In fact…
She pulled the barrette out of her chignon and let her hair tumble in silky waves around her shoulders.
She lifted her breasts in her bra and tugged her shirt down to maximize her ample cleavage.
Fishing around in her purse, she found her lip gloss.
She ran the spongy wand over her lips, pursed them, and smiled.
There we go. Now, try to treat me like your Great-Aunt Harriett. I dare you.
Her triumphant smile slowly faded as her head played devil’s advocate.
You called him a monster. You told him to go away. You told him that he’s destroying your life, and you’d never forgive him. He’s respecting your wishes, and you’re teasing him. It’s not fair.
She took a deep breath and released it through her shiny lips.
Regardless of what she’d said to him in anger, she wasn’t ready to let him go yet, and starting this morning, she was going to make it as difficult as possible for him to treat her like his dowager aunt.
She wanted a reaction. She needed to know he still wanted her and, even more importantly, that he still loved her and wasn’t just protecting her out of a sense of duty.
Determined, she pulled the bedroom door shut behind her and headed downstairs.
As she approached the kitchen, she could hear Jack’s voice, and its deep, animated sound made her stop, lurking at the bottom of the stairs, around the corner from the kitchen where they couldn’t see her.
“Couldn’t believe it. I’ll give you this: That took some balls.”
“When she said your name, I just about fell over. She’s always had a thing for you,” said Julien.
Darcy felt like she’d been slapped. Or doused with a bucket of freezing water. What? Who? Who’s always had a thing for Jack, and what did she do that took balls?
“Oh, come on. She just looks up at me.”
“There’s no just about it. Made me crazy my whole life. Jacques this. Jacques that.”
“Pére was always MIA, and I was the oldest. That’s all it was.
” He paused, and Darcy could barely get her head around the ramifications of this statement before he continued, “Who knows? Maybe you’re right.
I’ll be honest, though. I’m pissed at her, Julien, pulling that stunt, making me kiss her at the Gathering. ”
Making. Me. Kiss. Her.
Darcy’s eyes widened. Her nostrils flared, and her lip curled. If she’d been Roug, her eyes would have been on fire, because even as a human, she felt her blood heat up to boiling. Her face felt blistering hot, and the shell of her ear was on fire.
Someone had kissed his lips.
Someone had kissed what belonged to her.
She felt dizzy from the rush of adrenaline that made her want to find this her and slam her fist into the unknown bitch’s mouth again and again until it split and bled. Until the memory of Jack’s lips was replaced by the memory of Darcy’s fist.
She turned the corner and walked into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway, crossing her arms under her breasts, which lifted her heaving chest up and outward. She found Jack and Julien at the kitchen table and made eye contact with Jack over Julien’s head.
Who did you kiss?
Jack’s eyes dropped to her breasts, and he sat up straighter, his mouth parting lightly. Finally, he shook his head and looked down quickly. When he looked back up at her, he was smiling politely, doing the Great-Aunt Harriett’s dutiful nephew routine again.
“Morning, Darcy. Did you sleep well?”
Julien turned from his seat at the table, his chipper smile fading as he came face-to-face with the generous swell of her chest, rising and falling with the force of her breathing. He quickly raised his glance, taking in the redness of her face, neck, and chest. He gestured loosely to her face.
“You look a little…flushed.”
Darcy flicked a narrow-eyed, terse glance at him, then returned her eyes to Jack.
WHO, GODDAMMIT? WHO DID YOU KISS?
He blinked at the tone and volume of her voice in his head, but it was her only indication that he had heard her.
“Coffee?” he asked congenially, gesturing to the coffeemaker on the counter.
Her eyes burned from holding them open, and she blinked twice, feeling tears gather. He had kissed someone during the short time he was away from her, and now he was trying to act like it didn’t happen.
“No,” she murmured.
Julien looked back and forth between his brother and Darcy, then stood up, awkwardly waving toward his chair. “You want to sit? I was heading out for a run, anyway.”
She sat down without dropping Jack’s eyes, and Julien quietly made his way out the back door.
More buzzing. More white noise. She gritted her teeth in frustration that he was ignoring her. She switched gears. For now, she needed to know…
“Who did you kiss?” she finally whispered aloud.
He winced. It was so slight and so momentary an expression that if she hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed it. But she was watching closely. She couldn’t possibly look away.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, his voice bland and even.
“It does to me.”
His nostrils flared in his apathetic face, and that second brief show of real emotion was a relief to her, even as his face quickly resumed a facade of dry boredom.
“And why exactly is that?” he asked.
She folded her hands on the table before her, not surprised to see the backs flushed deep pink. Her whole body was on fire. Jack belonged to her. To her alone and no one else, and certainly not to whomever he was kissing.
“Who?” she asked again, her voice gravelly and low in her dry mouth, the cogs of an engine grinding to a full and complete stop.
He shook his head back and forth and spoke softly. “Why do you want to know? No, a better question is…why do you care? You asked me to leave. You said you didn’t want to be with me. You let me—”
“Who?” Barely a breath now.
He raised his mug to his lips and sipped before replacing it on the table. “One of the girls in my pac—at home. She forced a sparking with me.”
“Forced a sparking?”
He sighed. “She wanted to bind herself to me.”
Darcy’s eyes flew open in fury, and she balled her hands into side-by-side fists on the table in front of her. “You’re already bound to someone.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said sharply, clenching her jaw.
“Well, that’s funny, because you pretty much left me for dead on Friday night.”
She stared at him for a moment, saw the depths of pain in his eyes, and couldn’t bear it that she had hurt him so terribly, before looking away. She knew the new flush of color in her face had more to do with shame than anger.
His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Nothing happened when I pressed my lips against hers. Nothing.”
As Darcy processed his words, she felt her shoulders lower incrementally and her fists relax, her nails easing back from the soft pillows of her palms. She took a deep breath through her nose, looking up to find his eyes, the words forming before she could check them.
You belong to me, Jack.
The familiar copper flecks leaped around his dilated pupils.
She knew he couldn’t stop them from hissing and sparking as he heard her thoughts loud and clear.
But he didn’t reward her by completing the declaration.
He cleared his throat and stood up, crossing to the counter to pour himself some more coffee with his back to her.
She knew that leaving the black wolf to drown had been wrong, but she couldn’t help the confusion, fear, and desperate anger that she’d felt at the time.
After two days of reading grotesque reports and terrifying stories, she wasn’t ready to see him or be with him.
When she found herself in the little boat, all she could think was that if she could row faster and faster, she could get away from him, from the nightmare of his nature, from the darkness, the heat, the unsolvable problem of their binding.
By the time she’d realized she was making a mistake, she was sitting back on her window seat.
When he’d returned to her later in the evening, pulling her back inside with such quiet tenderness, she was so relieved that he wasn’t dead or hurt, she had shivered, waking up just enough to let him know she wanted him to stay.
And she had fallen back to sleep with the heat of his body warming her feet.
Part of her wanted to apologize to him, to tell him that before hearing Willow’s story about Boston and Phillip, her mind had been in turmoil. She was sorry that she rowed away. If she could go back in time, she’d never, ever make that same decision again.
“Are you sure you won’t have some coffee?” he asked from the counter, that dreadful polite tone back in place.