Deadly Crush (Deadly Trilogy, Book 1) (9 page)

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dominic
said.

My blood ran cold.
 
He couldn’t know that she was making me
crazy, none of them could.
 
If they knew
… “What’s that?” I asked, glad that my voice sounded uncaring, and I glanced
his way.

He laughed.
 
“That she’s adorable when she’s mad.”

“That she is,” I agreed, watching as Jade
disappeared around the corner and Erika scowled after her.
 
My heart started to beat again, and the knot
in my stomach loosened.
 
He didn’t have a
clue.
 
Who was that girl?
The question echoed through my mind again,
relentlessly.
 
I just didn’t get it.
 
I could take down an alpha, command an entire
pack of twenty-nine werewolves to submit and grovel at my feet, but this … this
… human girl could make me cringe with just one glance.

Erika turned to us with a big grin on her
face and started over.
 
I snapped my gaze
to meet hers and said, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
 
It came out harsher than I had intended, but
it worked, and without a word, she backed up a step and then took off down the
hall.

“Stay away from her,” Dominic said,
casually, as if he was talking about the weather, and not really trying to tell
me what to do.
 
I had heard the line more
than I could count in the last forty-eight hours, and each time I heard it, it
only made her all the more interesting.

“That’s her call to make, not yours,” I
retorted, keeping my tone just as light.
 
He still refused to enlighten me about his obsession with Jade, and
spending the weekend following her around hadn’t helped me figure it out
either.
 
The most I had gotten from that
was confirmation that she missed him.

Dominic pushed off from the locker, and
stretched his arms lazily over his head.
 
He smiled a little.
 
“She wouldn’t
even look at you if she knew who you were.”

The second bell rang, signaling that we
were late for homeroom, and we started down the hallway, neither of us in any
rush to get to class.
 
“Why are you so
concerned about her?” I asked.

“I’m not,” he said, cutting me a murderous
sideways look.

I chuckled.
 
“Not sure if I believe that this is
your
I
could care less
face.”

Dominic stopped just outside our
homeroom.
 
The morning announcements
began, and the distorted buzz of our principal’s voice droned through the old
speakers.
 
“She’s lost enough to this
pack,” he said in a low whisper, just barely audible over the
announcements.
 
“She doesn’t need to lose
more than she already has.”
 
His voice,
his body language, his scent, everything about him said he was guilty.
 
I just wished I knew why.

I pulled the classroom door open and gestured
for him to go in.
 
“You’re really going
to go through with this class stuff, aren’t you?” he asked with a huff.
 
“You know I don’t need a babysitter.”

I grinned.
 
“Think of it as bonding time.”

~ JADE ~

Erika watched
me.
 
I felt her eyes burning a trail
along my back in homeroom, and then in English, and still in Math.
 
Every move I made, she was there,
watching.
 
And it was starting to drive
me batty.
 
But she wasn’t the only one
that watched me.
 
So did Dominic.

And I watched Aidan, if only to piss them
off.
 
Well that and I couldn’t bring
myself to directly look at Dominic.

What was it about this guy that had them on
edge?
 
I really wanted to know.
 
When Dominic wasn’t staring at me, he was
watching Aidan, and Erika … Well, Erika looked as if at any moment she was
going to cock her leg and pee on him to mark her territory.
 
Did female dogs do that?
 
Well, if they did, I was sure she would do it
soon.
 
The whole thing was starting to
make me feel a little sick.

Erika wasn’t the only
she wolf
acting like that, though.
 
Linda, Becca, and Tiffany were all following Aidan around, giving dirty
looks to any girl that looked his way.
 
And they were snapping at each other just as much.
 
They stared each other down, and shoved each
other around.
 
It was the strangest thing
I had ever seen.
 
Weren’t girls usually
more tactful than this?
 
What happened to
the snide comments and mean girl manipulation?

Aidan took it all in stride.
 
It was as if he didn’t even notice.
 
He talked to everyone.
 
He was friendly.
 
He smiled.
 
Everyone seemed to like him, especially the pack, and darn it, but I
did, too.
 
And it made my stomach sink.
 
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come
up with anything that would get the pack away from him.
 
It was clear that they were recruiting him,
and the more I thought about it, the more the sinking feeling in my stomach
grew.

But the weirdest thing was that no one was
talking about Ray.
 
The police still
hadn’t said anything.
 
His death hadn’t
been in the paper, and as far as I knew, the pack hadn’t had any kind of a
service.
 
The only thing that I managed
to find out was that Ray’s wife had vanished.
 
Their house was empty.
 
It was
almost as if neither of them had ever existed.

I still hadn’t talked to Dominic, but then,
he hadn’t made an effort to talk to me either, and I was beginning to think it
was better that way.
 
All I was getting
from him was a bunch of what I thought were supposed to be meaningful glances,
except I didn’t know what the meanings were.
 
I figured he was trying to make a point, but the joke was on him,
because whatever the point was, I wasn’t getting it.
 
I was pretty much ready to chalk up the
weekend to a weak moment.
 
It was
probably better to just forget it.
 
And
if he had stopped watching me, I would have done just that.

I sat in class, watching the clock slowly
tick the minutes away.
 
Lunch couldn’t
come soon enough.
 
I needed a break, not
that I had been doing much in class.
 
I
couldn’t focus on anything other than the burn of Dominic’s eyes and the sneer
on Erika’s face.

When the bell finally rang, I forced myself
to stay in my seat until they left.
 
For
about half a second, Dominic looked as if he was going to approach me, but
before he could, Aidan slung a loose arm over his shoulder and led him out the
door.

The cafeteria was already packed by the
time I got there.
 
I glanced at the
overly long line of students waiting to be served and spotted Marcy at the
front.
 
She waved what I thought was a
boxed salad at me, and then she pointed to a table and mouthed, ‘
I got it.’

Ben and Ann were chowing down on French
fries and gravy when I plopped down at my usual table.
 
The fraternal twins were dressed the same, as
always, in blue jeans and black hoodies.
 
I’ve always thought that they secretly wished they were identical.
 
They sure tried hard enough to look the
same.
 
Ben had even dyed his blond hair
brown to match Ann’s, and Ann always wore blue contacts, the same shade as Ben’s
natural eye color.

“Hey, Jade,” Ann said, and smiled.
 
“I’m surprised you’re sitting with us.”
 
She didn’t mean it to be unkind; I could see
that from the soft smile she was giving me, but the statement got my back up
anyway.

“What?
 
Why?” I asked.
 
My voice sounded
harsher than I had intended.

Ben cut Ann a narrowed eye glare, and said,
“We heard that you and Dom made up.”
 
He
smirked at me, and then dropped another fry in his mouth.

I snorted.
 
“Hardly.”
 
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table and my chin in my
hands.
 
Rumors.
 
How did kicking Dom out of my house translate
into us making up?
 
It took everything in
me not to turn around and look at him.
 
I
could hear his laughter, and it made my heart twitch.
 
It wasn’t quite a squeeze or a twist, but it
was enough of a twitch that I noticed it.

Thankfully, Marcy slid into the chair
beside me and pushed a salad (or what was considered a salad by high school
cafeteria standards: a bowl of lettuce and a single cherry tomato) in front of
me.
 
I was about to ask her when she was
leaving for the police station, desperately wanting to change the subject, when
she said, “And another one gets taken.”

“Another what?”
Ben asked, looking at Marcy with an utterly blank face, and Ann let
out a loud groan.

Marcy rolled her eyes, and then nodded in
Aidan’s direction.
 
“The new guy seems pretty
close with Dominic.”

There goes trying to change the
subject.
 
“He doesn’t look like he was
taken,” I said dryly.
 
“He looks
willing.”
 
And that made my head spin.
 
I could have sworn they hated each other, or
at least that Dominic really didn’t like Aidan.
 
Why else would he tell me to stay away?

Ben sighed, and he dropped the fry he had
been about to shove in his mouth back into the container.
 
“I didn’t think it was possible, but Dominic
is getting hotter.”

“I know, right?” Ann said with a grin, and
elbowed her brother playfully.
 
She
didn’t even try to hide the long and very appraising look she gave Dominic, and
as she stared, the grin melted away.
 
“Jade,” she said, still watching him closely, critically, “have you
noticed the way the pack is hovering around Dom?”
 
Frown lines began to litter her forehead and
she scrunched her nose.
 
“It’s like he’s
… more important somehow.”

My breath caught in my throat and my heart
stopped.
 
I swiveled in my chair, not
bothering to try and hide it.
 
Dominic
sat at the head of the lunchroom table, which was ridiculous, because really,
it was just a plastic fold up table, but he made it look … regal.
 
Aidan sat on his right, Erika on his left,
and along the edges, six other pack members watched him, engrossed in whatever
he was saying.

Dominic was smiling.
 
His eyes were bright.
 
He looked … happy … content … proud.
 
My heart started to pound again and my
stomach rolled.
 
Dominic never looked
happy.
 
Not anymore.
 
He always had the same mask.
 
Hard and cold and cruel.
 
Not happy.
 
Never.
 
And the way the others were watching him, listening to him …

I locked eyes with Marcy and whispered,
“No.”
 
I didn’t mean it as a whisper, but
the rock hard lump that had suddenly formed in my throat wouldn’t let my voice
rise any louder.

Her eyes were wide and the color rushed
from her face.
 
“He …” she started, but
she must not have believed what she was about to say, because she promptly
snapped her mouth shut.

I pushed my chair out, the legs scrapping
across the linoleum floor with a screech, and I stared at Dominic for a long
minute.
 
Clippings of the last few days
flitted through my mind as if I was looking at newspaper articles.
 
The
pack is stressed.
 
He’s no good for
you.
 
I’m trying to help you.
 
All his subtle little hints and warnings
rang out through my head and heat burned in my cheeks.
 
Suddenly, I felt sick and utterly
stupid.
 
I wasn’t part of the pack.
 
He wouldn’t have been able to warn me of
anything without seeking permission unless … The thoughts were swarming so
loudly in my brain that I couldn’t understand any of them.

And then I was standing over him, and I
heard my voice, cold as ice, say, “Dominic, we need to talk.”

Dominic didn’t even look up.
 
“Kind of busy,” he said dismissively.

I gritted my teeth, and I really don’t know
what came over me, but I grabbed hold of his ear and pulled.
 
“We need to talk now.”

That got his attention, as well as the
attention of all the werewolves at the table.
 
They all glared at me, even Aidan was giving me a death stare.
 
Dominic jumped up from his chair and smacked
my hand away from his ear.
 
He took hold
of my bicep firmly, and said, “I’ll be right back, guys,” before he dragged me
from the cafeteria.

As soon as we were through the doors, he
dropped his hold and asked, “What do you want?”
 
His tone was sharp, and his shoulders, rigid.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked.
 
I guessed the look on my face wasn’t sweet
because he backed up a step and the pink flush in his cheeks turned white.
 
I poked him in the chest and he flinched back
another step.
 
“You took out Ray.”

Dominic trembled slightly under my stare,
and he sucked in a noisy breath.
 
His
shoulders sagged a little, as if he was trying to shrink further away from
me.
 
He dropped his eyes to the floor,
and then he gave his head a forceful shake, pulled in another loud, sucking
breath, and hesitantly met my gaze.
 
“You
threw me out of your house.
 
Blew me off,
and now you think you can just … just …” He grunted and threw his hands up in
the air, completely frustrated.

“Stop it,” I snapped, and he flinched
again.
 
“Just cut the crap, Dom.
 
You followed me around all weekend; you can
damn well answer my question!”

Dominic cocked his head slightly, and
searched my face.
 
His brow furrowed in
confusion and any hostility that had marred his body softened.
 
“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Come on, Dom, I know that the black wolf
that trailed me all weekend was you,” I shouted.
 
I didn’t mean to shout.
 
It just sort of happened, and a burning blush
rushed up my neck.
 
I took a deep breath
and smiled awkwardly.
 
“Look, it doesn’t
matter.
 
You’ve made your point,
okay.
 
I’ll stay away from Aidan, but
don’t be like Ray.
 
Don’t start the
recruiting.
 
You’re better than that.”

“Jade, I’m a brown wolf and I’m
not,
” he punched out the word, letting
it hang in the air for a moment, as if he wanted to make sure I grasped it
before he continued, “the new alpha.
 
And
it would be really smart for you to forget that you know anything about Ray.”

~ AIDAN ~

Crap!
 
It seemed like that was the only word my brain was able to formulate as
I listened to Jade and Dominic.
 
It was
also the first time in my life that I hated having enhanced hearing.
 
It would have been nice to pretend that they
were just having a friendly conversation.

Erika leaned into me.
 
“You were following her?” she snarled in my
ear and then leaned back.
 
Her lips
curled into a sneer and she laughed darkly.
 
“Did you hear that, ladies?
 
It
looks like we have another contestant.”