Chapter 2 - Jasper
I haven’t been with a woman for a while, at least not like this, and all we’re doing is kissing. Correction, all I’m doing is kissing.
But I swear I hear her groaning.
Those groans are driving me insane. I blame them for my lack of control, so sweet and tantalizing, like dollops of honey dripping down my throat.
And then there’s the way her body feels beneath my hands, pressed up against me—I swear I don’t know how we got here. All I intended to do was give her one performative kiss, but now my tongue nestles deep in her throat, now my hands are steadying her yielding body in place as she sighs gently.
I’m in a trance.
I massage her lips, overcome by a force that’s lain dormant for God knows how long.
It’s the taste of her that has me spellbound, too. My wolf is ravenous, desperate, forcing me to devour her. I don’t have a choice.
But I know who this is. My body and my wolf recognize her so intimately with such urgency.
Now my mind does too.
This is Tara. Not just a beautiful woman with pillowy lips and a flavor like peaches. She’s Tara.
I wean myself off her, slowing down my kisses, and release her from my hold.
Never has a human ever… Goddamnit. A fire rises up the back of my neck.
Disconnecting from her is like splitting my body in half, as though I’m ridding myself of my own essence.
She’s the most tantalizing drug I’ve ever... I push it down. I have to stop.
My lips pull away from hers, and I keep my eyes shut. I feel a flash of fury in my chest and clench my jaw as though I can contain it somehow.
But this is out of control.
I cannot believe I’ve gotten myself into this reckless fucking situation. I’m an Alpha; my whole existence is built on self-control, and here I am, thinking with my wolf.
I open my eyes slowly, my whole body tense with anger. I feel so much frustration, so much rage.
Then I see those familiar hazel eyes, and they disarm me completely. Yes, I’m angry, but for a second, I’m lost again.
The sunlight streams down on her face, and she looks at me as though she’s in a daze. Half asleep with sultry, soft eyes.
In a moment, everything is about to blow up. It’s the calm before the storm.
So how the hell did we get here?
This morning started as all my mornings usually do. I woke up, did five sets of pull-ups, five sets of press-ups, had a protein shake—the berries tasted a little off today, but all in all I felt good.
Then my meeting with one of my guys got rescheduled, which felt like a blessing in disguise. I probably shouldn’t think that, but honestly, things aren’t great. And there’s no amount of press-ups or protein shakes that are gonna change that, unfortunately.
The situation is this: we had some respite from the old witch’s curse for a little while. First, Lacey and Sawyer came together to destroy Willow, the witch in question, whose spirit is honestly the gift that just keeps on giving.
Then, Danielle and Ellis teamed up and destroyed a fragment of her heart, hoping to finally get rid of her presence in the forest once and for all.
After that, things got a little better again, the decay in the forest cleared up, and we hadn’t heard anything from the shadow monsters, who seem to come out whenever things get bad.
All things were good, all things were as calm as they could be for a valley full of shifters and witches. For a second, I actually thought that maybe we were finally done with all this crap.
But then the forest started to get bad again. Decay, destruction—we’ve seen it all before.
The hardest thing for an Alpha is to see problems like these coming from a mile away and have no concrete solution.
So today, I was supposed to be discussing potential solutions with one of my guys. I was supposed to talk about a lot of things, actually (the decaying forest being only one of my many problems.)
My other big problem, surprise, surprise, is also witch-related.
The coven that my fellow Alphas are so hell-bent on allying with has been pestering me to set up a marriage between one of my pack mates and one of their witches.
I can’t say I fully understand why, given how resistant we’ve been to all the inter-species changes going on around here, but they won’t quit.
The thing is, the witches were helpful, and I understand why Sawyer and Ellis are allied with them, but why should that mean that my pack has to get involved, too?
I can accept things (just about) from the distance that I’m at, but their coven leader seems determined to set something up. Penelope. She’s honestly insane.
She even got Ellis and Sawyer to bring it up in an allied council meeting; it was done so subtly, as if I wouldn’t notice what was going on. I told them exactly what I thought of them colluding like that with a witch.
I know I can be a little harsh, but the thing is, I just couldn’t force any one of my pack mates to go through with an arranged marriage.
I know how uncomfortable it would make them, I know how uncomfortable it would make me, so who am I to force anyone?
Especially when I don't believe in the premise of it at all.
Ellis and Danielle work, sure, but he’s different. His pack is different. I respect the way he runs things, and I expect him to respect how I run my shifters, too.
So, with all the issues and changes going on in the valley, it felt good to finally have a morning to myself.
After five minutes of sitting alone in my big, empty house, I decided that I had to move. I’m not made to be sitting around.
I decided, for some reason, to go to the witches’ market. Looking back on it now, it was a stupid idea, ludicrous actually. But at the time, I reasoned that if I was going to have a morning off, I might as well do something productive.
Okay, I asked myself, what would productive look like?
I could have worked out some more, I could have joined my shifters on a surveillance run, I could have gone hunting, but all those things didn’t feel truly productive as they were still avoiding the problem.
The problem is that we have a decaying forest.
Now the witches use spells, potions, herbs all the time, and that’s what they’ve used to help us save the forest, right? So why can’t I use some too?
I told myself that I was heading to the witches’ market to get some witchy supplies to prove that my pack doesn’t need an alliance, that we can do this all on our own.
I told myself that, but realistically, I think I was just bored.
I don’t usually have time to get out, and why I chose a witches’ market of all places, I don’t know. It was idiocy.
Only a few seconds into the market, I got what was coming for me. Penelope was there, her face animating with intrigue as soon as she saw me.
I knew how it looked.
After months and months of her pestering me to meet up with some witches, to survey, to see for myself—me coming to a witches’ market looked like I was finally doing just that.
So, I panicked.
Lucky for me, being so tall, I didn’t exactly make eye contact with her, but that didn’t stop her from chasing after me. As mentioned, she’s pretty insane and persistent as hell.
I scanned the premises desperately, eyeing an escape, considering shifting (although I doubt that would have gone down well), when suddenly I saw a familiar figure. A figure that’s been etched into my brain like a tattoo.
A figure that I know nearly as well as my own.
Tara.
I panicked, made a spur-of-the-moment decision, and kissed her, and now here we are.
God, is she beautiful. She’s human, full-blown normal human, and yet there’s something so otherworldly about the way she looks. Something so intriguing, I can’t stop staring at her even as her eyes harden, and her upper lip turns stiff.
“Jasper,” she begins.
But now Penelope is beside us, her face plastered with shock as she stands with one hand on her hip. She clearly doesn’t care that she’s just interrupted what obviously appears to be a private moment.
Penelope doesn’t seem to be in the business of holding back.
“What a surprise to see you here,” she says, “and with Tara... it is a surprise indeed.”
Tara shoots me a look, one that is laced with shock, concern, and as much confusion as there is awkwardness in the air.
I go to say something to Tara, by way of explanation, but stop myself. I know there’s a better way.
I turn around to face Penelope and showcase the most charming smile I can muster. As much as it pains me at times, I really can turn on my charm when I need to.
Right now, the situation is dire.
“How are you, Penelope?” I ask her. “I had a morning off, and decided to spend it at the witches’ market with my girlfriend. She loves coming here.”
“Gir-” Tara begins, but I wrap my arm around her, bringing her close to me, and somehow it stops her mid-word.
I ignore the way it feels to touch her again.
This is serious. I could be onto something here.
“Girlfriend?” Penelope raises her eyebrow and sweeps her gaze from me to Tara, and then back to me.
She’s not convinced. Not yet, anyway.
“Yep,” I say. “You love coming here, don’t you, Tara? It’s exciting for her to be a human and all.”
There’s a silence, and I look down at Tara, pleading with my eyes, although she’s not looking at me at all. Man, I forgot how much smaller she is. It’s satisfying to my wolf in a way that I don’t care to face. Not right now.
“Yes,” Tara finally says through gritted teeth. “It is amazing.”
Penelope nods. “I need to give you a proper tour sometime, Tara. I’m so glad to see that you’re settling in, and that people are making you feel welcome.”
She looks at me now, her eyes brimming with sharp suspicion. Penelope knows how I feel about other species living among us, that I believe I have made very vocal.
“Of course,” I say. “This side of Roseville is a very welcoming place.”
“What I don’t understand,” Penelope states, “is why no one has been made aware of your relationship. Because, according to Lacey, Sawyer, and Ellis, both of you are single?”
Tara remains quiet. I don’t even want to see what her face looks like right now. I’ve seen her angry, and I bet she’s furious.
To avoid Penelope’s intense gaze, I look off into the distance, letting my eyes trace a couple of market stalls and a mother and her child walking by.
“Well,” I sigh. “The reason that they think that is because you’re right, we haven’t made anyone aware of our relationship. This has been going on in private, because as a human and a shifter, this is a big deal, and we’ve been wanting to take things slow.”
Penelope nods. “Really?”
“Yes,” I say, still conscious of my arm around Tara’s waist. She’s frozen.
I don’t think she’s moved once. Is she even still breathing?
Well, yes. I'm pretty sure I can hear her heartbeat. “And knowing what you know about me, Penelope, I hope you can understand why this has been so difficult. We’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone from the pack just yet. ”
Penelope’s expression is still suspicious, cold, and withdrawn. I can tell that she’s contemplating, though, weighing what I’ve just said, which honestly was genius.
Of course, knowing what she knows about me, it would make complete sense why I would want to keep a human relationship secret. It also makes sense why I wouldn’t personally be interested in marrying a witch, something she seems adamant is the best solution to my pack’s ‘intolerance’
“Hmm,” she muses. “I suppose your attitude does make a little more sense now, Jasper. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
Penelope looks around the market. Luckily, no shifters are here.
“Thank you, Penelope.”
“You two enjoy the market,” she says. “The Moon fruits are especially ripe today.”
Tara stays silent.
We both watch Penelope walk off and find herself caught up in another conversation with her fellow witches. Now she’s out of earshot, deeper in the market with her back turned, I suddenly fill with expectant dread.
Maybe Tara will understand?
I remove my arm from her back.
This is the girl I haven’t spoken to, haven’t even seen in God knows how long, but who I’ve somehow managed to touch and kiss in the space of just a few seconds.
I know she’s not my biggest fan. But maybe she’ll get that sometimes situations can be tricky, and sometimes things call for unconventional actions like these.
She turns and glares, her eyes hurtling not daggers but axes at my chest. (She’s not exactly tall enough to reach my face.)
“How dare you.”
Okay, yup, she definitely doesn’t understand. But I can explain.
“Listen, Tara, I can explain all of this if you just give me a chance to.”
I almost laugh at myself. Why am I talking to this tiny little female human as though I’m afraid? It’s her beauty. She’s like this rare flower, like a beautiful water lily that I just can’t stop staring at.
“You can shove your explanation back into that disgusting mouth of yours. I can’t even stand one more second of looking at your face.”
I blink, my mouth opens a little, but I’m in shock.
Before I know it, she’s walking off, and I’m watching the sway of those hips I still know so well.