Temptation (Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (3 page)

In addition to being blessed with my werewolf induced physical attributes, I supposed I had an all right looking face. My mother was quite a beauty in her day and I had inherited a straight nose, straight teeth and a full mouth from her.

I also had a strong, square jaw line that balanced out my face nicely. So, instead of looking like a pretty boy or a “male model”, I was more rugged looking.

It didn’t hurt things any that I carried myself with an extremely capable air…with maybe a slight touch of an arrogant swagger thrown in there for good measure. I couldn’t help it, I was a Were and Weres were confident and powerful predatory beasts.

One thing was for sure; I was never lonely for female attention in my human state.

I brushed myself off and stood up. There was no sense in trying to get back to sleep. All this thinking about Aspen and Andie made me feel trapped and cagey. It’s funny how just thinking about someone can turn you inside out.

Standing up to my full height and stretching my back out, I figured I might as well get going and head back into town. I looked down at my watch again, it was three forty–five and I had to get ready for work in an hour anyway.

The walk would do me good because I really needed to get rid of this Aspen dream nonsense before I went to work for the day, otherwise I would be thinking of my mate, half dressed and whimpering with need, all day long.

I had a long day ahead of me as it was, because after work I was meeting some of my pack brothers at the local bar to talk pack business and blow off some steam from the long week before we finally met up with the rest of the pack for our full moon run.

“We could run home,” my wolf offered helpfully. “Yes, I suppose that would probably clear my head.”

My wolf picked up his ears at this, completely alert now.

“Yes, running is good. Let’s go now before we run out of time. Maybe, if we get back early enough, we could lay on our mate’s bed and watch her sleep before we go to work?” 

”You’re such a pervert, wolf,” I chuckled as I sprinted off into a running jump toward home and phased mid air.

                 ***

“
M
iss Greystone! Perhaps you might find it more to your benefit to actually listen in class rather than staring blankly out the window,” Mr. Johnson said irritably.

I blinked and reluctantly turned my head away from the most exciting part of Mr. Johnson’s class: the window.

Trying to feign interest in the Pythagorean theorem was not my strong suit but if I put in a solid five minutes of listening, I knew that meant I could soon go back to doing what I really wanted to do, which was to stare out the window and try to get a glimpse of my secret man crush across the street.

That was way more exciting than anything I could possibly learn in Math class anyways.

In no time at all, my eyes were soon back at the window, staring out of my 3rd period Math class for the hundredth time that morning.

Besides, Mr. Johnson should be happy. I’d always hated Math with a passion before I was fortunate enough to land in his class this year. Could it be his riveting lectures or the extra help that he so graciously offered during lunch hour that made me love Mr. Johnson’s Math class so much?

No, it was much more convoluted than that. It was because Mr. Johnson’s Math class was ideally situated to give me the perfect view of Sabre’s Auto Body shop across the street.

And that is where my secret man crush worked.

His name was Roan Sabre and I’ve been in love him for as long as I could remember. He was a friend of my Mom’s and was ten years older than me but that didn’t matter; there was just something about him that made that fact unimportant in my eyes.

Plus, it didn’t hurt that he was the hottest and sexiest man that I had ever laid eyes on either.

Roan was handsome. Oh, who was I kidding, he was beautiful and had the most attractive eyes I’d ever seen on a man, or a woman for that matter.

They were blue, like the color of the water in the Caribbean Sea. I could just sit there and stare at them forever but then he’d probably gruffly say “Aspen, what the hell are you staring at?”

He was kind of irritable like that with me sometimes, especially now that I was older, but I knew he still cared about me underneath his gruff exterior.

Physically, Roan was pretty darn near perfect. He was tall and extremely physically fit, kind of like a cross between a body builder and a swimmer. He was all lean muscle mass, which made for some pretty spectacular muscle definition in his six pack.

His smile was sexy and hinted at something dirty and playful under the surface. I think it was the way his eyes and lips and teeth worked in tandem whenever he smiled at you.

It just gave me the shivers.

His hair was dark and always styled in such a way that I longed to run my fingers through it.

I loved his hair; it was so silky and black. It used to be a lot longer when I was a little kid and he used to let me run my hands through it then but there was no way in hell that he would tolerate that kind of behavior now, he was strictly a “hands off” kind of guy nowadays.

When I was younger though, and Roan wasn’t so irritable, I used to love to cuddle up into his lap and watch tv, while holding my blankie and twirling my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

It was comforting and reassuring to me.

Roan was the pack Beta, which was kind of like the law around here. The Alpha was the leader of the Were pack, while the Beta was his right hand man. Roan’s job was to make sure that everyone behaved and followed the rules that the Alpha had set up for the protection of the entire pack.

What did all this mean?

It meant that Roan was a Were, which in of itself, was pretty freaking cool. My mother was part of the Were pack too.

Not me though, I was just a regular old teenaged girl, living in a werewolf world.

I thought it must have been so cool to be a Were. Then you would be super strong and could run really fast.

Plus, you’d never feel alone either due to having a wolf living and breathing inside of you every minute of the day, that’s for sure.

I’d known Roan since I was a kid. He used to come over and visit me all the time. I think he must have felt sorry for me when I was adopted into the pack because I was an orphan and had lost both my parents. Roan had lost his father when he was a kid too and then his mother left him.

So, I guess we sort of understood one another.

I’d always had a crush on Roan, since I was old enough to have crushes at least, but in the last year, things have changed. Dramatically.

For one thing, the crush I have on him is no longer of the “puppy love” variety. It has quickly developed into the “I want to strip my clothes off and rub my naked body against yours” type of infatuation.

For another thing, Roan moved in to live with my mom and I.

My mom said we needed a roommate to help pay the mortgage and so Roan was willing to help out and moved in with us.

I’m not sure why we needed a roommate though; we’d gotten along just fine, financially speaking, ever since I’d lived here, so I’m not sure why things have changed so drastically now.

Things probably cost a lot more than they used to, I bet.

Anyway, Roan lived with us now and sometimes I got these weird feelings whenever he was around, it was like my insides were on fire.

Or he could make my heart flutter whenever he looked at me or flashed me that megawatt smile of his.

But, Roan didn’t smile at me very much anymore. I seemed to make him angry and frustrated more than anything else since I started high school a year ago.

But I didn’t care; I knew the old Roan was still in there somewhere. I saw glimpses of him sometimes when he let his guard down.

Like this one time, last summer, Roan was helping me wash my mom’s car and we had a water fight with the hose. He’d even started it, when he told me that my shorts were way too short and to go into the house and change.

I said “No way!” and he cocked his head and looked at me, as if to say “Yeah, you might want to reconsider that”, then sprayed me with the hose until I was soaked and screeching, so I’d have to go in the house and get changed.

But I got him back; I picked up the bucket full of soapy water, threw it at him and ran away giggling madly.

I got him really good too and his shirt was drenched, so he took it off and laughingly threw it at me and I squealed as the wet, soapy fabric landed on my retreating back.

I turned to throw it back at him and I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest from seeing his perfectly ripped abs and hard pecs.

It was almost like he could hear my heart hammering inside my chest though, because he looked at me strangely, put down the hose, went in the house and got changed and then hopped into his truck and left for the rest of the day.

Since then, he’d started looking at me strangely like that more and more often.

I caught him all the time when he didn’t think I was paying attention to him. His face would get all serious and intense looking, especially now that my boobs were getting bigger. When I would turn and look at him, to try and catch his eyes, he always looked away from me, like he wasn’t staring in the first place.

But I knew the truth.

Roan could be a pain in the ass sometimes though. My mom said I had to listen to him and do whatever he told me to do because he was the pack Beta. But I didn’t like that very much because serious Roan’s rules were never very much fun for anyone and he always put on his Beta face when he interrogated me about school, going out with friends, or after school activities.

It was annoying and completely unnecessary because I was pretty well behaved as far as teenagers went. Roan thought that he was the boss of the universe because he was pack Beta, but I thought he especially relished being the boss of me.

There was one topic in particular that Roan gave me the hardest time about though.

Boys.

I don’t know what his deal was but Roan didn’t seem to like the idea of me having a boyfriend or going out on dates. At all.

He would say “No boyfriends until I you’re 20, little girl” and then he would laugh darkly.

I thought he was kidding but I wasn’t really sure. He teased me about a lot of things.

Sometimes it felt like Roan was really the parent and made all the decisions and my mom was just someone I lived with.

It was weird.

I figured it was because I had no father and my mom was trying to have a male influence in my life or something. Who knows?

Roan was a Were, which meant he was half human and half wolf. I loved Roan’s wolf, he was awesome. I called him Blackie, but Roan said that he didn’t really have a name, because his wolf was just him in another form. So, I guess his wolf’s name would be Roan too?

I didn’t care. I still called him Blackie and his wolf didn’t seem to mind either. Roan’s wolf loved me to death. He was like an enormous black dog that liked to chase me around the yard and lick my face whenever he knocked me over.

Blackie and I were kind of like best buddies. From the moment I was first introduced to him as a kid, it was love at first sight.

We were inseparable whenever we were together and he liked to follow me around the house and then lay quietly with his head on my lap while I watched tv and ran my fingers through his soft black fur. Sometimes I would stop petting him and he would nudge my hand with his snout, as if to say, “Hey, don’t stop, keep petting me!”

Blackie liked to fall asleep on my bed too, if my mom let him. She said that he’d get fur all over the sheets. It didn’t matter to me. I loved him and love was worth having a little fur on the sheets.

Besides, I sort of needed as many friends as I could get. I was kind of considered an outsider here in Spruce Hollow because I wasn’t born here, unlike most of my classmates. Luckily for me, I had been adopted by my mom when I was six years old because both of my biological parents were dead.

My father was killed overseas in the army when I was just a baby and thank god for photographs because I didn’t have one single memory of him to hold onto.

So, I had invented some a long time ago and I’d stuck with them my entire life: My father was a brave man who served his country well. He died while saving the life of a fellow soldier from enemy gunfire. He died a hero. He loved me so much, I was the apple of his eye and he used to call me “Daddy’s little princess”.

He also liked fried chicken and working on cars.

At least that was the story I’d created for him.

Sometimes having a fake story to tell people was better than having no story at all.

My biological mother died when I was five years old from a drug overdose. I didn’t remember her that well either. The stuff I did remember was mostly sad or depressing, so I tried not to think about it too much. I kept those memories tucked away in the little box in the back of my mental closet; you know the box you never open unless you feel like crying? Yeah, that one.

But unfortunately, the box was not airtight and the memories of my mother would sometimes escape and I would think about her and the things she had done.

I suspected that I would always remember. Who could forget a life like that? It seemed like my mother was either getting high or crying.

It was a scary time for me and I never felt safe when I was with her, but I could identify a crack pipe at fifty paces.

My biological mother used to tell me all the time that she was the way she was because my dad had died. She used to say to me, “If your father hadn’t left us….”, like he had a choice in the matter or something. She never got over his death and eventually, after five long years, the drugs killed her.

I tried not to think about it, but I remembered the day that I found her on the living room floor one morning with crystal acuity; she was slumped over next to the coffee table filled with needles, pills and a half eaten carton of fried rice.

I couldn’t wake her up, which wasn’t unusual after one of her benders, so I just turned on the tv and sat on the couch in my pink Minnie Mouse nightgown and ate the rest of the container of rice for breakfast.