Chapter 11 #2
“No couch,” he announced, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around me. “And the TV is in the bedroom. Guess we’ll just have to curl up there.”
When he hoisted me over his shoulder, I screeched and laughed. But when he tossed me onto the bed, I was writhing in anticipation.
Yeah, I was settling in just fine. And the following day, when I realized I was staring around the living room, imagining where my couch and armchairs could be placed, I knew I was getting dangerously settled.
If you fall in love with Eastshore, with this apartment, with Brakkor, it’s going to hurt so much more when he rejects you.
By the second Tuesday—three days before the town council meeting—I was confident of my plan. I’d talked it over with Jess and Zoe and Brakkor, and they’d each offered suggestions. I had options to offer the council, and was feeling pretty good about the few remaining tasks I needed to research.
So when Kesha invited me and Brakkor over for a barbeque, I was excited to tell her my news. Sure, I’d visited her and Milo in the last ten days, but this felt significant. Like Brakkor and I were being invited…as a couple?
My bestie was ensconced in the kitchen working on the baked beans—the woman could do wonderful things with beans—and I joined her as Brakkor headed out back with the guys.
Kesha was just as enthusiastic about my plan as I was, and I realized she saw it as a way to keep me here on Eastshore.
I didn’t want to dim her excitement, but I tried to be honest.
“I’m done after Friday,” I reminded her as I chopped cucumbers for the veggie platter. “Mr. Frapp is only paying me till then, and I have to get back to find another job.”
“Leaving me and Milo is one thing, but you’re going to leave Brakkor?”
I dropped the knife. “What?” I blurted as I scrambled to pick it up, and I heard her snort behind me.
“You’re all goo-goo over him. I saw it at the wedding, and you talk about him nonstop.”
Did I? Frowning down at the veggies, I finally confessed, “He was the one I hooked up with. In that hotel room. It was…” I swallowed. “It was supposed to be a one-night thing.”
“Ah.”
That was all Kesha said. It was probably all she needed to say. Knowing her, she somehow guessed all my hangups without me having to say them out loud.
Sure enough, when she finished laying the cucumbers beside the carrots and the sliced radishes, she thrust the entire platter into my hands. “Take this out back, will you? The boys will eat more veggies if I serve them before the French fries.”
Bowing to her superior knowledge of preteen boys, I tried to take the platter, but she didn’t release it yet. Instead, she held my gaze.
“Brakkor isn’t Chad, Jocelyn. He’s a good guy.”
I wanted to ask how in the world she would know, considering she’d known him less time than I had. Instead, I forced a smile and pulled the vegetables from her. “He is,” I agreed as I made my escape.
Brakkor didn’t treat me like second-best, the way Chad did. He didn’t tease me in front of his friends, the way Chad had, or dismiss my accomplishments. He was blunt, yeah, but I liked that I could trust him to say exactly what he was thinking.
He was a good guy, and that meant our breakup would hurt even more.
This is just a hookup, remember.
But on the back porch, I found Korrad holding a beer watching his brother wrestling with the boys.
I deposited the veggie platter, then drifted closer.
It took a moment to realize that Brakkor’s roughhousing was a little too rough with Jay, but his orcish nephew was more than up for the challenge.
Was this how Brakkor had played with his uncle as a child? I wanted to ask him.
But all that went out of my head when he bent and scooped up Milo, to toss him over one shoulder. I gasped loudly, because Milo wasn’t only human, he was younger than Jay, and scrawnier.
Brakkor froze at the sound of my gasp and spun about, holding Jay under his arm, to raise his brow at me in question.
I forced my fingers to release the porch railing and smiled weakly. “Don’t drop Milo,” I cautioned.
Brakkor frowned in pretend confusion, wrapped his hand around the boy’s ankles, and swung him down until Milo dangled upside down, laughing uproariously. “Drop him?” Brakkor roared, “I’m not going to drop my nephew!”
And since Jay took that moment to punch him in the side, causing Brakkor to pretend to stumble back, I knew this was all part of the game. Still, I found my eyes filling with tears as I realized Brakkor had accepted Milo as his.
He was blunt and occasionally crude, but the boys loved him. Maybe children could see the benefits of saying things that needed to be said. Maybe it was healthier.
Suddenly, it hit me: I wasn’t falling in love with Brakkor, I was already in love with him. Despite my best efforts to keep myself aloof, to treat him as a fuck-buddy, to remember I was merely a catch for him…I’d fallen in love.
Hunt. Catch. Fuck. He’d told me that was his plan on that very first night. And then he’d changed his mind and decided he wanted more.
No sex.
Well yeah, but…what if I wanted sex? What if my no sex rule was what was holding this tenuous arrangement together? If we had sex again, would that be what Brakkor wanted, what he was hoping for?
Once we had sex again, Brakkor would be satisfied—like, sexually satisfied. Is that when he’d change his mind about me, just like Chad had? Is that when he’d get bored of me being more than a hookup?
I guess there was only one way to find out.
Brakkor
I ended the faux wrestling match the way I usually did, which meant depositing Jay in the crook of the old oak tree at the edge of the backyard. It was about seven feet off the ground, far enough that he couldn’t jump, but had to use skill to climb down.
To my surprise, when I turned around to gently place my new nephew on the ground, the kid latched onto my forearm. “No! Put me up there too!”
I hesitated. A seven-foot fall wasn’t going to hurt Jay—orcs had notoriously hard heads—but Milo was just a little string bean. Shifting my hold on him, I held him up under his arms and studied him.
“You sure, buddy? It’s pretty high up.”
“Please, Uncle Brak? Jay and I are going to build a fort up there this summer, so I’ve been up there before.”
I glanced at Jay to confirm—he was nodding—so, with a shrug, I carefully lifted Milo up there too. “If you fall and hurt yourself, your mom will never forgive me.” I’d probably never forgive myself either. “So think about that before you take any risks.”
Jay grabbed Milo’s arm. “We’ll be fine. Milo, move your left foot over. See? Now we can both fit.”
Still, I kept an eye on them as I backed toward the porch, where my brother waited with a beer. “They like you.”
I grinned and saluted him with it. “That’s what uncles are for. How’s life going with two of them?” With your new wife. I didn’t say it, but my twin winced.
“It’s been really nice having them both here, don’t get me wrong. Milo is like the piece that was missing from our lives.”
“I thought I was the piece missing from your lives.”
Korrad gave me a glare. “You’re not missing, you just don’t live with us anymore. I see you at work every damn day.”
Since he was right, and I’d been teasing, I merely sipped the beer. “And Kesha?”
This time, my brother didn’t answer right away. He stared down at his cold bottle, rolling it back and forth between his palms. Finally, he blew out a breath.
“I was lucky enough to find my Mate,” he said in a voice so low I couldn’t hear him. “I know that. Sharra and I might not have been completely compatible”—an understatement—“but she was mine.”
“You weren’t more than kids.” I’d always been uncomfortable when Korrad got to talking about his dead lover. “You would have figured out how to live together.”
“Yeah.” With a sigh, he lifted the beer to take a hefty swallow. “But these last two weeks, having Kesha around, seeing how well we do fit together…” His gaze was locked on the beer bottle again. “Makes me wish the gods had chosen her for me, instead.”
Damn.
Damn.
Unlike me, my twin brother did believe in Mates. He believed that Sharra had been his, the same way he believed that Garrak had found his Mate in Stevie, and Sylvik had found his Mate, Brooke.
I’d spent my life knowing that Mating was bullshit; just a convenient title assigned to perfectly natural biological urges.
Hunt. Catch. Fuck. Of course it was going to do something to our brains and Kteers when we found a female we wanted to be with.
I’d felt that urge—the urge to make a female mine—plenty of times.
Not like this.
The whispered words in the back of my mind seemed to come from my very blood.
Not like this.
They were the truth, I could admit.
This itchy irritation clawing at my chest? This intense need to be around Jocelyn, and the way all my senses were attuned to her, even after she’d dropped off the veggie platter and gone inside? This fucking obsession with bringing her pleasure, and the way she tasted when she came?
It was like I’d gone godsdamn feral over a female.
Not just any female.
Scowling, I scooped up a handful of baby carrots and shoved them in my mouth, not even caring they tasted like shit with the beer.
“Sooo….”
When I glanced up, Korrad was watching me with amusement in his gaze.
“What?” I accidentally spat carrot pieces everywhere.
His lips curled into a rueful grin. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you, Brak, and you’re not going to like it.”
I swallowed with an audible gulp and straightened, dread pooling in my stomach. “What?” I asked again, more cautiously this time.
My twin brother took a deep breath and held it, then shifted so he was looking at me head-on.
“This is the kind of thing that normally, I would just sort of hint at. Point out the obvious signs and let you figure shit out yourself. But in this case, I know you’re a stubborn bastard, and this isn’t going to be easy to convince you, so I’m just going—”
“Korrad, you’re scaring me.” My scowl hid how hard my heart was pounding. In fear? “Just tell me.”
“I’m trying.” He blew out that breath and winced. “Jocelyn…”
Every single sense went on high alert, checking to make sure she was safe and happy. “What about her?” I barked, plunking the beer down beside the carrots. “What’s wrong?”
Korrad was eyeing me, and finally shrugged.
“She’s your Mate. I know you don’t believe in that shit,” he hurried to add, “but you don’t have to believe it to make it true.
I know you, and I can see how messed up you’ve been these last few weeks—hells, even before then.
She’s the one, isn’t she? It’s like your world revolves around her, you can’t stop feeling her, even when she’s not there—”
“Shut up,” I managed to rasp, my palm going to the table to keep me upright, my gaze locked unseeing on the woods in the back behind the boys’ planned fort. “Just shut up.”
“Me shutting up won’t make it any less true, Brak.”
Mate.
Mate?
Fuck me, was my brother right? Would that explain these feelings, this fucking feral obsession?
But Mating was bullshit, it was just a way to explain biological urges.
Right?
Mate.
Up until now, all I needed from a female was a night in her bed—hunt, catch, fuck. But the longer I spent with Jocelyn, the more I knew—knew—that wouldn’t be enough. I needed more. I needed her.
Mate.
Fuck me, Korrad was right?
My brother made a noise which might’ve been a laugh. “I’m going to go get more beer, and check if I can start grilling. You keep an eye on the boys?”
I might have agreed. I might have brayed like a faarnak bird, I dunno. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing anymore. When I felt the pain of my claws digging into my chest, I realized I’d been trying to dig into my heart. Or possibly to silence my Kteer.
Because the damn thing was howling with glee at the thought of Jocelyn being my Mate.
That tiny insidious voice whispered Jocelyn is your Mate and with a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized it was right.
I’d spent my life certain this shit wasn’t real, and now I was faced with the truth: Jocelyn was my Mate.
Now what was I going to do about it?