Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
CALEB
Werewolves aren’t real.
Werewolves aren’t real.
Werewolves aren’t real.
The chant marched through my head as I trailed Jesse down a flight of stairs and into a wide hallway lined with tasteful charcoal prints. Muted sconces cast a pleasant glow over slate-colored walls.
For the thousandth time in the past half hour, I questioned my sanity.
For one thing, the skin around my wrists was totally healed.
Seconds after Jesse removed the cuffs, the abrasions had faded and the shooting pains that had streaked up my arms and numbed my fingers disappeared.
Now, my skin was whole, not a bruise or burn mark in sight.
But my miraculous recovery was a distant footnote on the list of weird shit that had happened tonight.
The top bullet item was the man leading me into a spacious living room decked out with the kind of high-end decor my mother drooled over.
Whoever this van der Meer guy was, he wasn’t hurting for cash.
“This your parents’ place?” I asked, my head on a swivel.
“No,” Jesse said without turning around.
“So it’s yours?”
Jesse said nothing, just continued past overstuffed furniture arranged around an enormous, colorful area rug.
Wide floorboards bore marks from being scraped by hand.
A low coffee table in front of the sofa held stacks of books bristling with sticky notes in various shapes and sizes.
In a couple places, a pencil or a paper napkin stuck out from the pages like someone had stopped reading and thrust the nearest object into a book to mark their place.
“You like to read?” I asked, trying to get a look at the titles as we passed.
Jesse smiled at me over his shoulder. “You could say that.”
My stomach did an odd flip at the sight of his straight, white teeth and the tiny, almost imperceptible laugh lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.
His irises were a warm chocolate brown now, but they’d lightened to gold when he warned me to stop cussing.
His dark hair was the kind of thick and wavy perfection I’d only seen on movie stars.
Actually, everything about him was movie star hot, from his chiseled cheekbones to the dark hairs peeking from the cuffs of his Under Armour shirt.
The gray fabric had molded to his chest when he folded his arms in the bedroom.
Now, it strained across his shoulders, which were so wide Coach Gannon would have taken one look and begged him to play middle linebacker.
I let my gaze wander to his ass. Like the rest of him, it was fine as hell—two taut, round globes cupped by a pair of joggers that hit a touch above the ankle.
No wonder, given his height. I’d spent my adolescence and young adulthood dodging tackles, and I could pinpoint a guy’s height and weight with decent accuracy.
Jesse van der Meer wasn’t bulky, but he was big.
He had about two inches and at least thirty pounds on me.
My dick tightened, proving once again that my sense of self-preservation needed serious work. I jerked my gaze off Jesse’s ass. It didn’t matter how hot the guy was. He’d knocked me out and handcuffed me to a bed.
He also made his hand shift into a wolf’s paw, a little voice reminded me.
I ignored it. Later, I could indulge in all kinds of theories to explain what had happened in Jesse’s bedroom. Right now, I needed to focus on getting the hell out of his house.
We reached the kitchen, where a big window overlooked a forest illuminated by some kind of patio light.
The kitchen itself was all gleaming natural wood and polished granite countertops.
But it wasn’t cold or minimalist. Open shelves held pristine white plates and gleaming copper cookware.
A Viking range with enough burners to cook for a wedding dominated the far wall.
Just who the fuck was this guy?
He was obviously rich, but he looked my age, and people in their early twenties didn’t live in houses like this. Maybe he was a trust fund baby. Hale Valley had a few of those.
Or he’s a werewolf who’s a lot older than he looks, the little voice whispered.
Shut up, I told it. Probably not a good sign that I was arguing with the voices in my head.
“Sit,” Jesse said, pointing to one of the barstools pulled up to a gray island under a row of pendant lights.
Something unpleasant tugged hard in my chest—and it wasn’t the first time.
The squirmy, unsettling sensation was quickly growing familiar.
I’d felt it in the bedroom every time Jesse’s voice dipped or his eyes lightened to that eerie gold.
The wriggling, phantom feelers had burrowed deep and then turned into a crushing pressure that stole my breath and made me desperate to banish the feeling.
The pressure had only lifted when I’d dropped my eyes.
Which was not normal. Nothing about this situation was normal.
For fuck’s sake, I’d attacked Dean Welch in the park.
And then Jesse—who was a total stranger—had punched me, chained me to his bed, and gone all Obi-Wan on my ass with his “the wolf is strong with you” announcement.
But I didn’t recall Obi-Wan hitting Luke with some kind of sex magic voodoo that made his dick chub up.
Blood rushed in my ears as I hesitated on the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. Jesus, I was stupid. I was wasting my time looking at Jesse’s home decor—and body—when I should have been looking for the door. The dude probably had the head of his latest victim in his fridge.
Jesse watched me, his shoulders relaxed and his expression patient.
For some reason, the latter lit a fuse of anger inside me.
Because I’d seen that look before, I realized.
On teachers’ faces. On counselors’ faces.
It was the dismissive, slightly bored “I’m Waiting You Out” look adults gave when they were dealing with a problem child.
And I didn’t need this shit. Not from some stranger who looked like a rich frat boy.
“Caleb,” he said quietly.
My heart sped up. The anger burned hotter, threatening to put a growl in my throat.
Jesse blinked, and his eyes glowed bright yellow. “Sit down, Caleb.”
His deep voice struck like a thunderclap. Suddenly, looking at him was like staring into the sun. I winced and tucked my chin, my breaths coming in gasps as pressure squeezed my lungs. My knees loosened, and something within me longed to sink to the ground and stay there.
No, that wasn’t quite right. I wanted to drop to all fours and crawl to the barstool.
Because I needed to sit. It was what Jesse wanted, and the pressure urged me to give him what he wanted.
Panting and starting to sweat, I stumbled to the stool, clumsily pulled it out, and plunked my ass on the seat.
Instantly, the pressure lifted. The anger dissipated like smoke in the wind. I curled my hands into fists on the cool granite as I sucked in lungfuls of air.
“Good boy,” Jesse murmured.
The two words went straight to my dick, which tightened all over again.
God, what was wrong with me? The werewolf thing couldn’t be true.
Except I’d attacked Welch. And I’d attacked Aiden Cross.
And bizarre crap had been happening to me since August. And that whole transforming arm trick Jesse pulled in the bedroom had looked awfully real.
The silver handcuffs he’d put on me had burned my wrists. How much evidence did I need?
On the other hand, maybe I was losing my mind.
In my intro to philosophy class, we’d learned about this principle called Occam’s razor.
The gist was that the simplest explanation for any given problem was preferable to something more complicated.
I pictured my philosophy professor with his short sleeve button down and gray nose hairs Occam’s razoring my current predicament.
Yeah, I didn’t have to go through the exercise to know what he’d say.
“Look at me,” Jesse said, and that fucking pressure in my chest formed into a hook that jerked my head up. The glow in Jesse’s eyes faded quickly, and his irises darkened to chocolate brown. “I know this is hard. But I’m going to help you get through it.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I croaked. I squeezed my thighs together under the counter, willing my erection to go away.
Jesse appeared unfazed. “I know a couple of things.” He moved around the kitchen and pulled supplies from the cabinets, gathering bread, peanut butter, and a glass jar of strawberry jelly.
He grabbed orange juice from the fridge.
Within minutes, he pushed a loaded plate and a tall glass of juice in front of me. “Eat. Hungry werewolves are dangerous.”
“So you’re afraid of me now?” I asked, trying to ignore how something within me wanted to please him. When the pressure returned, I swiped the sandwich from the plate and took a bite.
Once again, the pressure lifted. Just like stumbling to the barstool, picking up the sandwich and biting into it made me feel…
lighter. Content. PB&J wasn’t my favorite, but I’d gone so long without food that the soft bread, creamy peanut butter, and tart jam were ambrosia.
I devoured the sandwich, chewing and swallowing so fast that my jaw ached from working the peanut butter around my mouth.
Jesse didn’t answer, but the little smile teasing his lips was louder than words.
No, he wasn’t afraid of me.
“More?” he asked when I was on my last bite.
At my nod, he whipped up another sandwich, the muscles in his forearms flexing as he wielded the knife.
His fingers were long and elegant, with square nails and a light dusting of dark hair on his knuckles.
A perfect amount of stubble shadowed his jaw, and his dark eyebrows were sculpted or something. He obviously took care of himself.