Authors: J.E. Clymer
Tamika’s face burned as Jared mumbled, “Well, I thought that was pretty clear.”
“What is pretty clear is that Ms. Brooks is not the least bit confused by the concept of an alpha, so what exactly have you been telling her?” David asked. They both knew the punishment for telling a human about the existence of shifters without the permission of the pack council.
“Father, I…” Jared started, but Tamika turned and shook her head no. He could not give up his life to protect her secret. Truthfully the cat was out of the bag the moment he found out. She took a step closer to him and leaned up on her toes and kissed him gently on the mouth. Taking a deep breath she turned around and held out her hand to David.
“Mr. Maurison, I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced since I moved back to the area. I’m Tamika Lisa Brokefang,” she said without pausing.
David’s eyes went wide for a moment before he shook his head. He started to reach out to touch her when Jared grabbed her around the waist from behind. Jared pulled her back out of his father’s reach.
“I saw her body,” he said quietly.
“There were a lot of bodies,” she said simply.
Tamika felt Jared’s hand squeeze lightly on her stomach as if trying to comfort her. David noticed the small gesture and took a step back. Jared just held her tighter as her fingers settled on top of his and laced through them.
“If we had any idea anyone might of have survived, we would have looked for you. On behalf of the council I sincerely apologize. Son, I don’t even know where to begin,” he said with a lost look lingering in his eyes.
“You can start by protecting her. Tamika took it upon herself to satisfy her family’s blood debt,” Jared said with a subtle reprimand in his voice.
“I was within my rights,” Tamika reminded him.
“If she wasn’t exposed, she is right. She was within her rights,” David said with a slight cringe. The idea of her taking on any hunter by herself bothered him.
“One of the hunters found me in her bar to negotiate a truce. He thinks it’s us killing his people,” Jared pushed.
“Hunters don’t ask for truces, Jared,” David said in disbelief.
“They do when over a hundred of their people have been picked off,” Jared countered.
David’s eyes landed on Tamika and she could see the fear in them. Jared may have treated her like a gift from the universe, but all his father saw was a killer in place of the little girl that would play with Jared at his feet. Tamika felt the need to get out of the room, but Jared held her in place. He wasn’t going to allow her to run, which scared the hell out of her because running had been the one thing in life she was truly good at.
Chapter 7
Tamika stepped into the bright summer son and stretched her sleek black body. In four years her wolf form had grown. She was less a black fluff ball and more a black lab. In another decade she would be larger than a mastiff, but for now she could pass as a normal black lab.
She wasn’t a little girl anymore and she knew the risks of staying shifted for as long as she had, but she felt she had no choice. A thirteen year old girl had no chance of taking revenge for her family. While not full grown her wolf form was still a formidable enemy.
Tamika moved quietly throughout the woodlands of what used to be her family’s territory. With the family dead most of the wolves that had lived under the protection of the Brokefang pack had dispersed into the surrounding packs. Pack protection is what kept their kind alive.
She ran at a lazy pace along the tree lines back to an old hunting cabin her father had maintained. It was off grid and power still ran to the freezers. Stepping inside the rickety structure she stopped dead in her tracks. It was always kind of her prey to find her.
Tamika waited until she heard the faint click of the trigger to move. She darted out of the way of the crossbow. She stalked the man who fumbled to place another arrow in the corner. The young wolf had a mean streak. Oh, she would allow him to fumble and just about the time the man believed that he had a chance, she would strike.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.
Just as the arrow fell into place in the bow she pounced. Tamika had learned a lot in the last four years. Her first target was the left arm of the man where it held the arrow. She clamped down hard around his wrist shattering bones.
When he screamed she released his arm and settled her front paws on his shoulders and panted directly in his face. After what her family had went through these hunters deserved some fear. Tears filled the man’s eyes as her pearly white teeth sunk closer to his face.
She had to give him credit. He didn’t beg. Most hunters begged for their lives at this stage in the game. Without warning and without mercy she swiftly turned her head and clamped down on his throat. The salty iron taste of blood filled her mouth. It reminded her that she had come to this cabin for food, but she wasn’t desperate enough to eat human meat.
A low growl of frustration emanated from her throat as she grabbed the man’s good arm and dragged him for the cabin. She pulled the heavy corpse almost a mile before she started digging. About a foot down a rotting arm slid from its own burial place into her hole. She was going to need a bigger clearing at this rate. When the hole was around five feet deep she jumped out and pulled the body the rest of the way in and refilled the hole.
She ran back to her cabin and looked around. Shifting into a very weak and very naked teenager she grabbed two bottles of bleach from under the cabinet. She doused the wooden floor and left it. Turning back to the freezers she pulled out a frozen rabbit and laid it on the counter. Shifting back to a wolf she stood on her back legs and pulled the frozen rabbit from the counter.
Running back into the woods she found a sunny meadow for her rabbit to thaw. She did not have to hunt today, another one of her family’s murders were in the ground, and the sun was shining. Overall, it was shaping up to be a good day.
###
After David left both Jared and Tamika had felt like they had run a marathon and they both looked it. Tamika wasn’t afraid of David, but Jared obviously felt conflicted. He would have challenged his father to protect her without a second thought, but it would have destroyed him.
Jared was fighting a serious case of guilt as he tried to shake off the way his father had looked at her. He was afraid. It was like he saw a monster where only moments before he saw a miracle. Jared told himself he should have just kept his mouth shut, but he knew Tamika’s revenge would come back to haunt them and he needed his father’s help if that happened.
“I’m sorry,” Jared said in defeat as they settled on the couch.
“Your father was only surprised. You reacted the same way,” she said with a shrug.
“No…I…it took me a minute to process, but none of this is your fault. The way you reacted to your family’s deaths is normal for an alpha. I think we all forget that since we’ve been so peaceful for so long,” he said, reaching out to her.
“Peaceful,” she muttered through a sarcastic laugh.
“I meant within the packs,” he added quietly.
“I know what you meant,” she said slowly.
He met her eyes and realized it went deeper than just what she’d done to the hunters she had come across. She did not trust the packs. Jared wasn’t even sure she trusted him.
“You can trust my father. He was a friend of your father’s. Our pack buried your family,” he said with caution.
“The fact that you and your father were the first wolves on the property after the hunters left does not make me feel trusting,” she said with a cold glare.
“Fine, don’t trust my father. Trust me, Tamika, I’ve waited decades for you. Trust me to protect you if nothing else,” he almost begged her.
Tamika looked at him with a blank look that betrayed no emotion for a few minutes before she pushed herself up off the couch and asked, “Where do I sleep?”
Jared sighed and pushed himself up from the couch. He led her upstairs to the master bedroom. Tamika looked the room over and shrugged. It was exquisite with fine black leather furniture tempered by a cool lily pattern on the bedspread.
She ran a hand along the bedspread and then looked back at Jared with questioning eyes.
He shrugged and said, “I told you. When I thought about who Tamika would have grown up to have been I thought of you. In case you have noticed you always smell of lilies, so I thought you must like them.”
“I do like them, but I hate this perfume,” she said with a shy smile.
“Baby girl, everybody hates that perfume,” he replied.
She couldn’t help but laugh. Jared relaxed at the sound of her laugh. Walking up behind her he rubbed her shoulders.
He nibbled on the tips of her earlobes and then whispered, “Tamika, you need to relax. Everything is going to be alright. I’ve got you now and I know we can figure out just about anything if we put our minds to it.”
The touch of his tongue sent shivers down her spine. She leaned back into his chest so she could lean her head back and look into his eyes. He saw the sadness and regret that lingered there, but there was also something more. It was in that moment that he realized she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
“Jared, I don’t know how to do this. I’ve been alone for so long. You would be better off breaking the spell and walking away,” she almost pleaded.
His arms wrapped around her shoulders as he said, “We’ll figure this out together, Tamika. I promise.”
Jared didn’t kiss her as much as he tasted her with his tongue. He licked and kissed a trail from her right shoulder to her lips. Tamika leaned into the kiss. There was an urgency in their touch that they both felt. Neither one had been capable of touching a member of the opposite sex since they were children.
Tamika tried to convince herself she was fine alone and simply spent her spare time drooling over her dancers, while Jared had just pushed everyone away. Now that they were actually touching each other they were both acutely aware of everything they had been missing.
She turned in his arms so she could thread her hands behind Jared’s back. The kiss deepened as they leaned into each other. Each touch felt like a completion their souls. Tamika didn’t know what had gotten into her when she literally climbed up Jared.
Lucky for her he was just as happy to grip her hips and hold her in place. The alpha in him liked having control. He walked over to the bed and sat down without the least bit grace. Never once did they stop kissing.
Silence was a loud echo throughout the room as they made out, but the moment Jared pulled her shirt off and actually looked at her skin silence was not even close to an option. He ran his fingers over a patchwork of scars.
Blushing she said softly, “Hunters don’t just die without a fight.”
His hand lingered over a set of scars on her chest and he glared at her as he said, “Any one of these could have killed you.”
“Then poor Jared would have never have gotten laid,” she said with a forced laugh, trying to break his anger with humor.
Jared moved quickly as he pushed her onto her back and unzipped her jeans. He pulled them off of her not with hunger, but with blatant anger. Tamika didn’t fight him as he looked at every inch of her skin. Mostly because she didn’t have to see how angry he was, it was visible in the slight shake of his body.
“Are you going to look at me or kiss me?” she asked quietly. She had intended to make it sound playful, but she had never seen Jared this angry. Tamika had thought they were on equal ground and when he was rational maybe they were, but not with him like this.
He actually growled as he leaned down and conquered her mouth. There was no gentleness in his taking. Tamika could hardly care. She tugged at his shirt and he leaned back long enough to pull the fabric over his head, but then he went right back to kissing her.
She jumped a little as his hand rubbed her, making sure she was slick. In the back of her mind she wondered what he could do with pants on, but Jared had already unzipped and freed himself while Tamika was distracted kissing him.
He pulled back from the kiss and met her eyes as he pushed, “If you ever want to go hunting again you will tell me before you do it.”
For the first time since she was a child Tamika could not resist the push. His anger made it so much stronger. She said the only thing she could, “Yes.”
“Good girl,” he told her as his body plunged into hers. She tightened around him like a vice and tears filled her eyes as her body’s unused muscles protested in pain.
Jared let out a dry laugh and murmured into her ear, “Well, at least we both know you can feel pain now,” rocking his hips a little harder he added, “Judging by the number of scars you have, it seems to me you like it.”
She wiggled uncomfortably at his pace and met his eyes. It was in that moment that she realized that he was claiming her body without mercy because he wanted her to feel the pain he felt. Reaching forward and cupping the side of his face with her hands she pulled him down for another kiss.
He was as merciless with her mouth as he was with the rest of her body. Her nerves protested in pain, but burned with pleasure. Let him use her, but she couldn’t let him go on being this emotional about her choices. She waited to speak until he finished with her mouth.
“Pain is the cost of satisfaction. A few arrows, gunshots wounds, and stabbings are nothing if the prize is the deaths of those responsible for killing my family,” she said with certainty.
Her words only made him move faster and harder. Jared took his pleasure from her without caring if she felt the same. She needed to know who was stronger in this relationship. In his mind it was the only way to make her understand that he was in charge. He wasn’t going to challenge his own mate, but he could damn well make sure that she was so sore she wouldn’t thinking of leaving a bed for a week.
If she was sore, she was not going to go looking for trouble. The only problem was that no matter how hard he pounded her she still moaned with as much pleasure as pain. He own hips rocked in concert with his own, only driving him deeper.
He felt it the moment, despite being used by him, that Tamika took her pleasure. Her tight body gripped him even tighter, he couldn’t help but lose any control he had. She could see him coming close to being finished despite crying out in her own pleasure.
“Jared, you need to stop. I’m not ready to be a mother, so stop,” she managed through deep breaths.
“If you’re pregnant you can’t get into trouble,” he ground out with each hard thrust.
The color drained from her face as she said, “Jared, I’m serious.”
Before either one of them could say another word he got his release and smiled up at her with and overly satisfied grin, “So was I.”
Leaning down he kissed her again and pulled her into his arms. Leaning back onto the other end of the couch he just held her against his chest. Jared was not letting her go and in that moment and no matter how annoyed she was at him, Tamika was not inclined to leave.
“How can you afford that Mercedes and this house on what I pay you?” she asked suddenly.