Chapter 6
JAX
Watching Tippy dance is driving me fucking insane.
That dolt Larry is cantering around her and obscuring my view, but still, I’m catching snatches of her delectable little body, the flash of a thigh, the flick of her tail.
When she undoes two buttons of her shirt and I see the swell of her pale white breasts, I nearly snap my vape between my fingers.
“Tippy’s doing a very unusual dance,” Clem muses.
“It’s certainly getting Larry excited,” Otis adds. “I hope he doesn’t crush her in his enthusiasm. Gods, now he’s cantering. He’ll knock someone over.”
“I’ve never seen Tippy behave like this. Do you think she’s had too many drinks?” Clem says.
“Tippy doesn’t drink,” I growl, still staring. “Too fucking pure.”
“Well, the dance she’s doing sure isn’t pure,” Otis observes.
“Looks like fun,” Clem giggles. “Should I join her?”
No!” Otis bellows.
“No!” I chorus. “And she shouldn’t be out there either.”
“She’s not your possession, Jax,” Clem counters. “You can’t say what she should and shouldn’t do.”
I refrain from answering, my gaze riveted to the scene on the dance floor.
And then, horror of fucking horrors, I see Larry swoop forward, his meaty arms swinging Tippy into the air and depositing her on his back.
“Oh!” says Clem.
“Fuck!” says Otis.
My gaze lasers in, every sense on red alert.
She’s swaying on the centaur’s back, and suddenly looking nervous.
The smile has been wiped from her face as she plants her feet wide, trying to steady herself, but the dumb beast is so overexcited, he’s practically galloping around the dance floor, with Tippy precariously balanced on top.
Suddenly Tippy wobbles, makes a grab for his mane, her eyes wide with shock as she loses her footing and slides toward the floor.
If she falls under his hooves, the idiot will trample her.
In a flash, I’m out of my seat. Human Jax could never move this fast, but my wolf has instilled me with superhuman speed.
I duck under the raised back hoof of that centaur, whisk Tippy into my arms and before I can even take a breath myself, we’re sprawled at the side of the dance floor.
We land in an ungainly heap, Tippy beneath me, her legs pinned either side of my hips and my crotch pressed right against her pussy.
Shit. Things are happening below my belt. Like, fast.
Our faces are mere inches apart, both of us breathing erratically.
And all she says when I tell her she’s had a near miss is, “I didn’t need your help.”
My wolf rears up in indignation. After all, to give it credit, it was my wolf that made me act at the speed of light. I just manage to contain a litany of expletives and instead grit out, “You were about to be crushed under that dolt’s hooves.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you fucking were.”
I dig my gaze into hers, trying to draw out the secrets in their amber depths.
I feel her breath on my skin, sweet and ragged.
Our noses are almost touching now. Her little tongue tip flicks out over her lips and the urge to capture her mouth with mine is almost unbearable.
The throb in my loins is so strong my dick feels like it’s going to burst right through my black leather pants.
I want to kiss her so bad and… Gods hep me—worse, much worse—push up her skirt, rip off her panties in this dark corner and take her.
Swift and hard.
I want to make her mine.
It’s visceral and almost uncontrollable as my wolf pants right along with me, urging me to act on my desires…
I know she can feel my cock pressing into her and—holy fuck—she’s making no attempt to move away. If anything, her hips are lifting, bringing her sweet cunt even more in contact with me.
“Get off me,” she whispers finally, but her body is saying exactly the opposite. She starts to grind against my cock and her gaze goes hazy.
And of course, I should do as she asks, but instead my fucking wolf is responding to her intoxicating proximity, the scent of her arousal.
“Admit it, you love having me between your legs,” I hear myself growl.
The next thing I know, my head kicks sideways with an explosion of pain.
Tippy has just slapped me.
Well, that went bad mighty fucking fast.
My wolf backs right down with a sheepish whine and I bounce off her, so fast I almost levitate.
As I stride away, my cock subsiding with shame, I want to strangle my wolf.
“You really should apologize to Tippy,” Clem says as she passes me a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
It’s the end of the evening, and we’re sitting in the cozy living room of the Sherriff’s house while Otis drives Tippy home.
I give her the stink eye. “Why? I fucking saved her.”
“She wouldn’t have slapped you unless you did something wrong.”
I cringe internally as I recall the incident.
After Tippy slapped me, I shot off her faster than a bullet from a gun and she scrabbled up, pulling her skirt down over her knees.
As I rubbed my stinging cheek, Larry bounded over, shouting, “What the fuck did you do to her?”
“What did you do, more fucking like.” I glared at him. “You almost trampled her to death.”
We literally had a stand-off in the middle of the room, Larry’s nostrils flaring and our eyes blazing. My wolf was ready for a fight. Only my sister’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Enough. Both of you. Cut it out!” Clem commanded, then she helped Tippy to her feet and gave her a big hug.
Tippy flashed me a look of withering contempt. She was about to stalk off when Larry went down on his knees and groveled.
Tippy accepted his apology, told Larry it was okay, she knew he meant no harm, and ignored me completely.
Which hurt even more than her slap.
Then Otis drove her home.
And now I’m getting a good chewing-out from Clem.
All round, a complete fuck-up.
I glower into my mug. I desperately want to vape, but I know that would incur even more wrath from my sister. She hates me vaping just as much as Tippy does.
Gods, women! Who needs them?
I hear the front door open, then heavy footsteps in the passage. A moment later, in walks Otis. He looks tired; his red eyes have dark rings under them. I feel a stab of remorse.
As sheriff of the Labyrinth, Otis is in charge of getting this whole spying mission up and running.
He’s programmed the bugging devices I’ll be taking up to Sparkle City, and synched them with his weird computer systems. I stare at the metal boxes on his desk, the tangle of cords and the books on coding.
It’s taken months to get to this stage. The hardware and volumes of coding were originally found as the monsters were digging out the Labyrinth, along with hundreds of other artefacts from the days when humans ruled Earth. They sat in our museum, the Vault, for hundreds of years, useless.
But with his phenomenal mathematical brain, Otis has somehow managed to get them working again, combining his skills with the sparse magic we have at our disposal.
From here, it all rests on me placing those bugging devices correctly.
And right now, I’m just making things harder for everyone.
I should apologize to Otis as well as Tippy, I decide glumly. Except I really hate admitting fault, so I sit and scowl instead.
Otis slumps down with a sigh and ruffles his hair. To add salt to the wound, Clem goes and sits on his lap, strokes his hair and they cuddle and whisper sweet nothings.
“Cut it out, you two,” I mutter, unable to resist fumbling for my vape now.
Otis quirks a brow. “Jealous?”
“Nah, why would I be?”
Otis huffs. “This thing between you and Tippy. It’s getting out of hand. You need to sort it.”
“Yeah, well, chance would be a fine thing. She’s refusing to talk to me,” I mutter, crossing my ankle over my thigh and tugging on the boot buckles.
“Granted, you’ll have to grovel. She’s mighty pissed with you.”
“What did she say?”
“What didn’t she say.” Otis rolls his eyes. “Never heard so much vitriol out of one small vixen.”
“Shit,” I groan. “I don’t wanna know.” My head is aching, my cheek still stinging. The little claw mark on my hand throbs. My whole body bears the marks of Tippy’s outrage.
Otis shrugs. “I won’t tell you then.”
There’s a moment’s silence while I struggle internally. “Okay, I do want to know.” I mutter. “Lay it on me.”
“She’s furious you didn’t tell her you’d been turned.”
“Yeah, I’m aware of that. But I couldn’t, you know that. Otherwise word could have spread to the human realms. I didn’t even tell my own sister, for the gods’ sake.”
“True,” Clem agrees.
Unrelenting, Otis continues. “She said that even though you were a rude, surly, puny human before…”
“She said puny?” My leg starts to jiggle. I take a drag on my vape to calm down.
“I dunno. Maybe she said skinny. But since you’ve shifted, she reckons you’ve got tickets on yourself. That you make crass and inappropriate remarks. And that’s why vixen shifters despise wolves, because they’re so… erm, macho and uncouth.”
My wolf growls. I slap it back down. “Well, there you have it. It’s my wolf’s fault.”
Clem scoffs. “Typical male, blame it on your dick.”
“I said wolf, not dick.”
“Same thing.”
That silences me. If my wolf is taking charge of my dick, I’m in deep shit.
Otis sighs, his tone softening. “You’re clearly having problems since you shifted. You’re out of sorts, Jax.”
Traggar’s words at our last session ring in my ears. “I guess, yeah, things have been weird since then,” I admit glumly. “My wolf is hard to control. It used to be very much in the background, but now it’s like… It’s like…”
It’s like we’re vying for the same girl, I want to say. And disagreeing on how to woo her. But I can’t say that; it’s too hard to explain.
Shit, this is not what I need right now.
I’m on the brink of the most dangerous job of my life, and I’m falling apart. Soon I’ll be heading up to Sparkle City, wearing a portal cape that has serious glitches in its functionality, placing bugging devices all over the workplaces of Marsha Winters and the mayor of Sparkle, Ronald DeVine.
There’s no margin for error.
It’s our only hope of finding out what sinister plans the humans have in store for the Labyrinth.
“Maybe I’m not up to this.” I groan, burying my head in my hands at the sudden realization of my own inadequacy.
Otis relents. “Yes, you are. Remember how you rescued me and Clem? No hesitation. You just went for those human guards.”
“Yeah, but since then I’ve been all over the fucking place.”
“You’re working on that with Traggar, aren’t you?” Otis counters.
“He says I have to give this up.” I wave the vape in the air. “That it’s messing with my wolf.”
“I have noticed you’re vaping more since you shifted,” Clem says, then adds, “If you apologize to Tippy, maybe she’ll help you quit. After all, she helped you give up the cigarettes.
At the mention of Tippy, I arc up all over again.
“No fucking way,” I growl, throwing the vape down on the table. “I’ll do it myself.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes, I fucking can.”
“Why won’t you accept you need help?”
“Why won’t you stop being a nag?”
“Stubborn asshole.”
“Bossy cow.”
“Woah.” Otis holds up a big green hand to halt our bickering. “Look, we’re all tired. Let’s just get some shut-eye. You can bed down here, Jax.”
I look at the couch wistfully. It’s almost a proper bed.
These days, I place my hat wherever it finds a home.
I’m nomadic, have been since the chip was bitten out of my neck and the humans could no longer trace my whereabouts.
Otis invented a holographic Jax, which is what the authorities get to see on their cameras.
They believe I’m doing my job as a supervisor, sleeping in my apartment up in the Periphery at night.
The reality is, I keep my night gear in my bike bag.
I set up my rolled-up mattress in corners of alleys here in the Labyrinth, and shower at my demountable office next to the portal elevators each morning.
Some nights I’ll sleep as close as I dare to Tippy’s little cottage.
There’s a bend in the tunnel with a small natural cave from where I can just see the lights of her home.
I make up my mattress there, knowing she’s at the end of that street, cozy in her own little bed, and imagine that we’re there together.
That soothes me somehow, and sends me to sleep.
She doesn’t know, of course, and I would never tell her.
It would just be another thing she’d have against me. I’ve never spied on her. I just lie at the end of her street, in that little indent in the rock wall. I’m always gone before morning, my sleeping bag rolled up on the back of my bike.
And now with the wolf inside me, making deeply inappropriate remarks to the girl I lo— the girl I like. Well, I just don’t trust that it wouldn’t encourage me to prowl closer…
I huff a sigh “Yeah, okay. I’ll take the couch, thanks.”
“And if Mom offers you a full cooked breakfast in the morning, you’ll accept, you hear me?” Otis puts on a mock stern face. “You need all the sustenance you can get.”
I smirk. Otis’s mom, Sally has recently come back to live in the sheriff’s house after years in a care home, deeply depressed after her husband, Sheriff Bradley Cane, disappeared.
But a miracle happened recently, and she’s back to her old self, living in their family home again and cooking up a storm for any visitors.
My mouth waters at the thought. Sally is the best cook in the Labyrinth.
“Okay, okay, I’ll accept.”
“Well, I’m off to bed. Are you coming, babe?” Otis winks at Clem, who jumps up, a smile replacing her frown.
She comes over and gives me a hug.
“I agree with Tippy. You are a skinny bastard. But I love you anyway.”
“Love you too, bitch.” I grin and hug her close.
That’s the thing with Clem and I. Our fights are no match for our love for one another.
When I let her go, she practically skips out of the room after Otis.
As I hear Clem’s giggles and the deeper timbre of Otis’s laughter through the wall, I can’t help a stir of envy, my stinging cheek from Tippy’s slap reminding me just how far I am from having a love like theirs.