The Pretend Marriage: A Werewolf Romance (6 page)

9

Breakfast the next morning is an equally raucous affair. Martha has made buttermilk pancakes
and fried bratwursts for everyone. There are orange juice and fresh milk and cornflakes and oat bran. Jake has never felt so at home for a long, long time.

“Had a restful night?”
Jeff asks with a sneer.

“Pretty peaceful,” Jake replies. He turns to Cassie,
who is rubbing her tummy in the manner of an afterthought. “You OK, Cassie?”

She smiles at him. “I’m OK.”

“Did you see the ghost?” Mika says. She wears earphones which are connected to her IPhone, and some sort of disembodied music is floating out of them.

“There was kind of a
vibe in the room,” Jake says, deadpan, “but we managed to keep the lid on the chest. It was sort of rumbling and quaking all night, like something was trying to come out of it.”

Jeff seems
nonplussed at the mention of ‘rumbling’ and ‘quaking’, but Cassie hides a smile. Mika gives Jake a funny, lopsided grin.

“You’re all right for an old guy,” she says. “I might decide to have a crush on you.”

“Sorry, I’m taken.” Jake flashes the faux ring on his finger. He catches Terry’s eyes, and she narrows them, half-smiling. He remembers the really wet dream he had last night and how prominently Terry featured in it. Even looking at Terry now, he can feel his cock stirring at the dream sight of her naked heaving breasts and the little triangle between her legs.

Okayyyy, don’t go there
.

After breakfast, Peter stands up and claps his hands for everyone’s attention.

“And now we will adjourn to the forest. We have a lineup of
fun and games for everyone. More often than not in today’s world, we lose sight of our shifter roots – where our forefathers came from, how they used to live. We are all in a rat race of our own making. In fact, we have become almost more civilized than the humans we once warred with.”

Laughter all round. Jake can’t honestly say Peter is wrong.

“I want to remind us all of our shifter heritage. My great-grandfather, Lucius, lived in the wilds of Scandinavia. He was the alpha of his pack, and he took my great-grandmother as mate. They interacted with humans only sparingly as those were the days where the humans still hunted us as wolves. But they were damned tough, not soft and pretty like the wolves today.”

Peter pauses and casts a significant glance at
Jake, Jeff and Mariko.

“Let’s see what stuff we are made of, shall we?”

Uh oh, Jake thinks.

When was the last time he shifted?
When was the last time he even ran in a forest in his wolf form, sleek and free and true?

God
, I’m so domesticated!

Jeff grins.
He flexes his muscles, and Jake can just tell this is a wolf used to his primal state. Great. Just great.

Jeff
says, “Bring them on, Peter. I’m ready.”

*

They are all gathered at the edge of the forest. The air is crisp and fresh here so close to the ocean. The salt tang from the sea merges with the leafy smells of the foliage. Birds chirp unseen on branches, and Jake feels invigorated despite his trepidation.

So this is Peter’s game. To pit the three of them against one another in a
physical contest involving shifter dynamics and goodness knows what else.

“Did we dress right?” Terry asks anxiously.

“You don’t need to dress right. We’re shifters,” Mika says.

Terry gasps as she steals a look at Jake. “You mean, we have to go n- ”

“Well, yeah. What did you think?”

As the master of ceremonies for the day,
Peter says to the gathered throng, “These are the rules of the game. Somewhere in that forest is a hare inside a gilded cage. You may choose to shift into your animal forms or remain in your human ones. But since this is a contest of speed, agility, tracking ability and strength, you would need to choose your forms wisely.”

Speed, agility, tracking ability and strength. Those
were the modalities Jake could apply in his teenage years when he was a marathon runner. But now? When he hadn’t run in years?

“A hair?” Mika asks her grandfather, wrinkling her nose.

“Hare, Mika. As in large rabbit. And if you took those plugs out of your ears, you might be able to hear better.”

Mika scowls, but does not pull her earphones out.

Peter continues. “You come in pairs, mostly. In this contest, only one of you in a pair may participate. But this means the other one who has chosen to sit out on this contest will have to participate in the next one, yet undisclosed, which may or may not prove to be a more difficult task.”

Jake and Terry exchange wary glances.

“What do we have to do, Mr. Skaarsgard?” asks Mariko. “Eat the hare?”

Jake feels his stomach going queasy already at the anticipated blood lust. OK, it has been a
long
time since he had eaten anything raw. It has been a long time since he had done anything remotely wolf-like. Peter is right. They are becoming too civilized – too divorced from their birthrights.

Peter says, “
It is equally essential for shifters to maintain self-control. So we don’t want you to devour the hare, but to merely bring the animal to us – freed from its cage. Alive.”

Jake’s eyes bug out at that. A wolf
and a live hare? No way the latter can be kept alive. You will have to have incredible self-control.

“Th
e first contestant to return here with the live hare wins the first round.” Peter beams. But it is obvious to Jake that he fully expects the three of them to participate, and the winner of this entire contest will be the one to get the coveted Skaarsgard job as Head of Advertising.

He has to win at all costs.

“Who am I going to pair up with, Grandpa?” Mika demands.

“You can pair up with your aunt Ethel.”

Mika scrunches her nose. “Ewww, what if she makes a pass at me?”

Her mother cuffs her gently on the side of the head. “Don’t be rude,
Mika. Apologize to your aunt Ethel,”

“It’s OK,” Ethel says airily, “
I’m used to being stomped upon by everybody anyway.”

Jake meets her eyes and gives her a
rueful smile. She smiles back.
Yeah, I get a lot of flak for being a lezzie.

The couples start to strategize
in their own little spaces.

“You have to do it,” Terry says
to Jake, out of everyone else’s earshot.

“I know. But what if you get something more difficult later on?”

“We’ll come to that later. How are you at scenting prey?” she says. “This is Peter’s ploy, right? That’s why he brought all of you here . . . to test you.”

“
I was expecting a Myers-Brigg personality profile.”

“Maybe that will
be the second test.”

“Some hope,” he laughs wryly. Still, he is glad that she seems
invested in his fate, whether or not she realizes she is giving out the vibes.

At the end of five minutes, every couple has chosen a champion.
The contestants are Karl, Thom, Halder, Ethel, Jeff, Jake and Mariko.

“We’ll
be starting soon on the count of ten,” Peter announces. “When the first one of you finds the hare and brings it back here, Martha will shoot her gun into the air and sound everyone to come back.”

Martha waves her shotgun. She looks funny toting it with
her cheery apple cheeks and momsy demeanor.

Everyone begins to shed their clothes.
Obviously, everyone is of like mind in deciding that their shifter forms will be more competitive in this race. Jake sees Terry blushing as he peels off his T-shirt and slips off his jeans. When he takes off his underwear, she averts her eyes.

“Terry,” he hisses, “we’re supposed to be married, remember?
You’re supposed to have seen it all – several times a night!”

“Oh, right.”
Terry turns her gaze back to his genitals. Her face is crimson.

“Try not to blush.”

“OK.”

“You’re still blushing.”

“I can’t help it, OK? It’s an automatic reflex.”

Now that she is staring at his penis, her eyes seem glued to it.
Jake observes Jeff watching them with a knowing smirk. And oh shit, but his cock is stirring again at the thought and sight of Terry inspecting it.

“Can’t keep it down, Savage?” Jeff calls.

Jake looks down, and is stymied to see his cock rising. It did always have a mind of its own, and nothing he can psychologically do to keep it down. Now he’s going to be just as embarrassed as Terry. She is going to think he’s some sort of perv.
It has nothing to do with you, OK?
he wants to tell her.
If any beautiful woman is going to stare long and hard at my cock, it’s going to react in the same way.

“Kiss me,” he says to her urgently.

“Huh?”

“Kiss me,” he whispers. “Jeff is getting suspicious.”

Terry turns to glance at Jeff, but Jake quickly grabs her face and plants a passionate kiss on her surprised lips. A deep shudder immediately flows through his body, terminating uncomfortably in his groin. Unfortunately, his cock reacts violently. Violently hard, that is. Terry’s lips are soft and warm and he can taste her pink lipstick.

This is
not how I wanted our first kiss to be
–
with me naked and in full view of everyone, including my potential new employer, and with a hard-on to rival a convict who has been jailed for twenty years.

Her arms creep around his neck, and she is kissing him back. To his amazement, she is very into the moment as well. Her lips part and she lets his tongue into her mouth. She tastes wet and sweet and oh-so-hot, and his cock is so hard now that it feels like it would burst out of its skin. Her breasts are firm against his bare chest and the warmth of her body renders him hyperaware of her presence and beauty and vigor.

God, but how he wants and needs her! It’s just not about him needing any woman. He wants
Terry
. He is sure of it. He wants to explore her mind and every crevice and curve of her body. He wants to see where this would lead, and he is super-excited about the possibilities.

He has read his shifter lore, but thought that it would no longer be applicable in today’s shifter world, and especially not to
him
. But it is happening right here, right now! He can’t be sure of all its signs, just as any man can’t be sure if he is really falling in love – but there’s
something
there, definitely.

In the olden days,
a shifter would experience The Calling.
You would know the signs telling you that she is your Mate, the one you are meant to be with.
It applies more to alphas, but every shifter male experiences it in variable ways. Humans call it ‘falling in love with
The One’
. Was that how he reacted when he first saw Terry in the hallway the very first day she moved into his apartment building? Had he already known but possibly misread all the signs?

His epiphany is brought to an abrupt halt by Peter’s voice:

“Hey, you two, you can make out later. Starting the countdown here.”

Jake breaks off the kiss. Terry’s beautiful face is extremely flushed and flustered.
She licks her lower lip in a profoundly shaken way.

“We’ll continue this afterwards,” he whispers to her.

She nods. Her pupils are very dilated and her lips are slightly parted in that way he finds so desirable.

Now how is he going to shift with a
full-on chubby like this?

“Ten – ”

The chosen contestants all take their positions. They are all naked now. Jake observes Jeff’s muscular body. Not an ounce of spare fat on him, for certain. Mariko has small pert breasts and very graceful legs.

“Good luck!” Terry calls to Jake.

He smiles at her, and when she smiles back, her eyes are lighted up.

“Nine.”

Some of them start to shift. Jake enacts his subconscious will, and his body responds. He can feel his bones compacting and lengthening, his muscles becoming taut and tight, his nose and mouth elongating into a snout. Even his skin texture feels rougher as the hair starts to sprout everywhere. His teeth sharpen and lengthen, and his vision becomes tinged with red. His sense of smell broadens, and all his other senses become hyper-acute.

“Eight.”

He feels more alive and invigorated than ever. The blood pulses in his veins and his heart beats within his chest like a primal drum. The power courses through the fibers on his legs.

“Seven.”

Yesss. It feels so good. Why doesn’t he do this more often? He remembers the stories of the truly feral shifters wishing to remain in their shifter forms and becoming animal. And every time he is in this form, he understands why.