Chapter 18
BAILEY
I love a rainy day, and even more… a rainy night. I love leaving my window open so I can inhale unfiltered rainy air. I love the sound of the rain hitting the roof, and can contentedly watch droplet patterns trail down the windows for hours.
But Jase is ruining my rainy night by being here, being Jase, by being just inches away. In his flippin’ underwear!
I will not look at those hip bones. I will not drool over those abs. I absolutely will not stare at his package.
He walked in and pulled the trundle bed out, flexing and making his muscles bunch up (probably on purpose) as he stretched to pull the four corners of the sheet over mattress.
He flicked the blanket over it and plucked one of the pillows from the stack I’m resting on before he flopped back and stretched, making a growly yawning sound as he folded his arms back and laced his fingers together behind his head.
Showoff! And those black underwear are strained by what is most definitely an erection. In fact, I think he’s had one since I first woke up bound to the pole in that basement.
Thank goodness (and witchcraft) he can’t use it on me right now.
I’ve seen naked Jase a lot. And it’s an impressive sight, one that I’m pretty accustomed to and have never ever grown tired of seeing.
But for some reason, Jase here on my trundle bed in his underwear feels lewd.
It feels like it’s more naked than naked.
And this is probably because we’re in my room, ground zero for all those dirty Jase fantasies.
He’s lying just a few feet away from the window I stared at during too many hot summer nights to count, daydreaming the curtains would part, he’d climb in, and make me his. Heck, I stared at it during too many frosty winter nights to count, too.
Oh, what would the Bailey of a week ago feel like knowing this was hers for the taking?
I can’t let myself ponder it because I can’t risk thinking like the Bailey of a week ago.
Dinner tonight wasn’t fun. My mom is the kindest, most considerate mom there ever was.
But all that kindness and consideration pointed at this undeserving jackass?
Not fun to sit through. And even less fun listening to her offer him more of this, more of that, (while my father sat quietly shoveling food in his mouth without any interaction with Mom) was the fact that Jase’s eyes were on me almost the whole time.
And it just made me madder and madder until I shoved away from the table and threw three quarters of my food in the compost bin.
I heard him helping Mom with the dishes afterwards, which had her being over-the-top sweet to him, and now here we are.
He adjusts the waistband of his underwear. And I can’t do this.
I scoot to the bottom of the bed in order to exit it and stomp out of the room, straight down to the living room where Dad is sitting on the couch looking miserable. I point at him.
“If I have to sleep in the same room as him tonight, you should have to sleep with Mom.”
This is definitely a shade too far by Dad’s reaction. His face hardens and he whips the remote control. It pings off his seventy-something inch television, his pride and joy, leaving a spider web crack on the screen.
“Fuck!” Dad thunders.
Oh shit. To say I tiptoe out of there is putting it mildly.
I slide my feet into a pair of shoes and duck into the garage, open the garage fridge, and pull one of my stress cigarettes out of the old Eggo box in the back of the freezer before nabbing a lighter from the basket of odds and ends on top of the fridge.
I need to clear my head. Maybe I should walk to the library, dig into some research for Cicely.
Open a new thread in my book club group chat with my shifter gal pals to start a petition for mating-related rights for female shifters, asking if they’ll help disseminate it so I can plan an approach to the SCC to implement a law change.
In fact, I should get on that as soon as possible.
Because what if the spell is lifted in the three days and he comes at me?
I’m barely off the driveway before I hear, “Where are you going?”
I huff and pick up my pace. It’s still raining, but now it’s more of a drizzle.
“Bay?” Now Jase is beside me.
“Leave me alone,” I spit, blowing an exhale in his face.
Jase rears back, “Since when do you smoke?”
“I smoke when I’m stressed. You stress me out,” I point at him with my smoking hand and without touching me he plucks the cigarette from between my fingers and drops it in a puddle.
I growl. “I need to circle the block, take a walk alone. Go away.”
“Not a chance. I’m your shadow until I claim you and fuck you enough times that every male around knows by your scent that you’re mine.”
I shoot him a disgusted look, but I also stumble and nearly do a header into Mrs. Ashcroft’s (from three doors over) hedges. The jackass tries to catch me and gets zapped, shouting, “Fuck!”
I wince and resist asking him if he’s okay. Because I shouldn’t show sympathy for the devil, and also because now he’s smirking. He’s smirking because he figures his dirty mouth got me all frazzled, and it did, but I’m not about to admit that it feels like my underwear are ablaze.
I circle the block, walking past Grey’s house and then cut through the park to get back home.
And neither the walk nor the small nicotine rush help, probably because he’s my shadow, and also because I’m on overload.
The three-day timeframe looms, weighing heavily.
I’m currently focused on the fact that I have to move fast with the SCC, so that if the Young coven have no choice but to lift the spell, I can stop my choices from being taken from me.
I’m uncomfortably soggy now that we’re back in my room. I change my clothes in the bathroom and dry off before getting back into bed, trying to ignore him while he, too, dries off and undresses down to those underwear again. Looks like it’ll be an endless night.
***
I’m staring at my phone, scrolling through video reels, and not really even seeing what I’m looking at because he’s only inches away, in his underwear, with that terrifying erection.
He’s not looking at his phone. He hasn’t turned the television on despite the fact I tossed the remote from my nightstand to land beside him, hoping he’d turn it on and watch something.
But he’s just lying here awake, doing nothing. Psychopath.
Finally, I roll to the edge and as I reach, Jase’s eyes light up, but I’m not reaching for him, I’m grabbing the remote from beside his pillow.
I put on a reality TV show stream that I happen to know annoys him.
He says nothing about it, but after two episodes, I can’t stomach it any longer, so I change it to one of my comfort watches, Sixteen Candles.
“How often you watch this?” he asks.
“Why?”
“Could swear I’ve seen you watch it at least three times over the years.”
Try thirty.
***
“Fuck,” Jase gripes.
“Oops,” I mutter, climbing over him to get back into bed after my third trip to the bathroom. We’ve been here for hours, and I’ve had too much bottled water.
His leg moved and grazed my toe while I was climbing in, so he got a zap.
“If I were evil, I could probably zap you enough times that you’d go home,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter how many times you zap me, I’m goin’ nowhere without you.”
If he thinks sweet talk will work on me, he’s very wrong.
A minute later he asks, “If I let you zap me ten times, would that be punishment enough to warrant you giving me a chance, Bay?”
I don’t answer.
“Twenty?” he asks.
I roll my eyes.
“A hundred?”
I give him my back and tears prick my eyes as he says my name with sadness. As if I’m hurting his feelings.
Chin trembling, I manage to fight the tears back but wind up staring at the wall for ages before finally, his breathing evens out.
I turn over and look at him sleeping on his side, facing my direction, his hand on my pillow just a few inches away from me.
And it hurts. It hurts to look at him. It hurts that he seems to be reaching for me. It all just… hurts.
I turn over, choosing to stare at the wall some more.
The fact that I don’t stare at him and watch him sleep speaks volumes about how much things have changed.
If this were a month ago and Jase was sleeping on my trundle bed, I’d lay awake all night just to look at him and imagine him doing things to me.
***
I open my eyes to the room just beginning to lighten with the promise of the coming sunrise. Jase is watching me. He’s got his chin on the edge of my mattress and a look on his face that, for a split second, makes me question absolutely everything.
But because I don’t have amnesia, my current reality quickly slides firmly into place.
“Mornin’ baby,” he says softly.
His voice is gravelly and manages to spark something low in my belly.
He reaches forward and his fingertips hover just inches away from my face.
His teeth sink into his bottom lip, and his eyes have a look that makes me spring up, away, scooching so I can get out of the bed and away from that expression on his face and the butterflies in my undies. Thankfully reality douses the spark.
Ensuring I don’t touch him on my way out of the bed, I escape to the bathroom and turn the water on for the shower, then use the toilet before undressing and getting in.
A moment later, there’s noise.
I peer around the shower curtain and screech because he’s in my bathroom, taking a leak!
He’s peeing on top of where I peed! I had planned to flush after the shower so the flush wouldn’t disrupt my water temperature. This is a level of intimacy I never expected to have with this guy. Any guy!
“What the hell?” I shout. “Get out of here! But don’t flu-”
Too late. Quick as lightning I jump back, screeching, as the water goes scalding hot.
“Sorry!” he says, “Fuck. You okay?”
I’ve covered myself with the shower curtain, standing back away from the showerhead, but this also means the floor is getting soaked.
“Get out!”