Wicked Cravings (32 page)

“Of course you don’t. But that’s because you’re stupid. You think that since you have a dick, you’re more dominant and should make all the decisions and everything will work out as you want it to. If you want a female who’ll let you deal with all her problems, go find yourself a nice submissive wolf. It’s not in a dominant wolf’s nature to hide behind other people. You know this. You’re expecting Jaime to be something she’s not.”

“I’m expecting her to care about her own safety.”

She released an exasperated sigh. “How do you think it feels for Jaime to have someone claiming the person she cares about? You know how hard that would be for you, and for your wolf.

Making it even harder is that this same someone threatened her once before and made her wolf strive to surface.
Now
she’s trying to have her killed. What else do you expect Jaime to do? By doing what she did, Glory effectively challenged her. No, the bitch didn’t expect her to survive it, but Jaime did, and now she’s in a position where she has to deal with it.”

“I can protect her.”

“Sure you can. But this isn’t about your level of macho-ness. It’s not about you, so stop trying to make it about you.”

Not about him? “She’s
my
female, she’s—”

“A person with her own mind who you’ll never be able to control no matter how hard you try,” finished Taryn in a surprisingly patient voice. “You care about her. I get it. You want her to be safe. I get it. She gets it. But you can’t fight Glory. Her brothers, sure. But you can’t fight a female, and you never would.”

Fair point, but that didn’t make any difference to how he felt. “I can’t be okay with her putting herself in any kind of danger.”

“No one’s asking you to be happy about it.” With a slight struggle, she managed to get to her feet. “But you need to support Jaime in this. So do it, or lose her. One or the other.” Why did she have to be right? All he wanted was for Jaime to be safe. It wasn’t like he was asking her for a kidney or for her to eat her own foot or something. Damn dominant females and their independent streak. As much as it infuriated him, he had to admit that it wouldn’t be fair to ask Jaime to ignore this and be something that she wasn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to be okay with it, but he could support her the way she’d supported him. His wolf settled a little at that.

Sighing, Dante finally left the living area and sought out the female who had a way of turning him inside fucking out. Eventually he found her in the game room with Shaya, Gabe, Hope, and the enforcers. To his surprise, each one of them scowled at him when he walked in, even the usually passive Hope.

Apparently uninterested in him, Jaime didn’t react at all to his presence. She limped around the pool table to take her shot, reminding him of just what had happened the night before, reminding him that she shouldn’t even be standing here right now, reminding him of just how scared he was of losing her. Dante wasn’t good at handling fear, and he wasn’t good at handling helplessness. Here he was in a situation where he had to deal with both.

When he gestured to the others with a tip of his head for them to leave him alone with Jaime, they completely ignored him. Great. His own female was being protected from him.

“Out.”

The command got their attention and, grumbling and scowling, each member of the pack slowly left the room. A few of them shot him warning looks that said, “Don’t upset her again.”

“Finished sulking, have you,” Jaime said flatly before sinking each of the balls that remained on the pool table. How was it that she could want to gut him and kiss him at the same time? Oh she was royally pissed, just like her wolf. But damn it, he was wearing that soft, vulnerable expression again. As much as she deeply suspected he did it on purpose, it got to her every time.

His voice was soft and beseeching. “You have to see why I don’t want you challenging anyone.”

“Well, you needn’t worry about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I called Nick, I told him I wanted to issue a challenge on Glory, and he informed me that she’s missing.”
Spineless bitch
. Her wolf was in full agreement with that assessment.

“You called Nick? You did that without discussing it with me?”

“I did discuss it with you. You made your stance clear.”

As he sensed the depth of her anger, he shook his head disbelievingly. “You have no idea just how much it scared me when I realized you should be dead right now, do you? You just don’t get what that would have done to me. Nothing would have gotten me through it. Nothing, Jaime. I’d have been exactly like my mother was at the end: going through the motions, existing, but not living. Is it really that awful that I don’t want anything to happen to you?” If he thought that talented mouth was getting him out of this one, he was so wrong. “You, you, you—that’s all I hear. Let’s revisit the facts, big guy.
I
was the one this happened to.
I
was the one who should have died yesterday. And
I’m
the one who’s been getting called Limp-A-Lot all damn morning. But wait, no, you’re the victim here, aren’t you? So sad. Well, I hope that pity plane you’re on malfunctions and hits the ground like a goddamn dart!”

He caught her just as she was about to leave the room and curled both arms around her, keeping her back to his chest. “You’re right.”

“I know that.”

He sighed and kissed her hair. “Believe it or not, I came in here to tell you that I’d support you if that’s what you need. But then I saw you pale and limping…I’m used to being the protector. I
want
to protect you, and I don’t want you to have to protect yourself even though I know you can.” She gave him a sideways glance as, surprised, she said, “So you’re not disputing that I can?”

“No. Definitely not. I know how capable you are.” He turned her around and cupped her neck with his hands, using his thumbs to lift her face to his. “I know I made this about me. I’m just not used to having someone else who I have to think about. I’ve been on my own for so long that I sometimes don’t even realize how self-centered I’m being.”

“I can totally help you with that with some well-aimed bitch slaps if you want. You’d soon learn.”

He couldn’t help grinning. “I did tell you I’d need the room to mess up a little. Overprotective and controlling is a real bad combination, huh?”

She nodded, feeling her mood calm at his self-recriminating tone. He was a perfectionist who was forced to face that there was something he was far from perfect at, and it was getting to him. She wanted to smack the shit out of his ex for making him cower from relationships for so long. Not that she liked the idea of him with other females, but she liked the idea of him all confused and self-doubting even less. “But so is bitchy and stubborn. When you think about it, we shouldn’t match at all, should we?”

“Yes, we should.” He kissed her lightly and let his hands slide down her body until they were locked at the small of her back. “As much as I like control, it’s not healthy for me to have it all the time. Your rebellious streak takes care of that. If you weren’t so bitchy, you’d probably let me steamroll you and wrap you in cotton wool.”

“I guess.”

“My overprotectiveness makes up for your appalling lack of a flight response, and my controlling ways give you a way to exercise your bitchy streak. I mean, you have to admit that yours runs so deep it’s more like a muscle. I give you a way to flex and stretch it when you need to.” She fought a smile, but it was hopeless. “Jerk.”

Moving his hands down to cup her ass, he said, “Wanna go to bed and play doctors?” Chuckling, she punched his arm. “No, I don’t.”

“Sorry, that was immature. How about playing gynecologists?” Again, she chuckled. “I would, but lunch is calling my name loud and clear.”

“Baby, I’ll call your name as loud and clear as you want.”

She kissed him lightly. “Save it for later, big guy.”

“Dick-tease.”

Less than twenty-four hours later, Dante was arguing with her again, and losing at it again. He had wanted to give Jaime another morning free of training to give her extra time to recover, but the stubborn female refused to rest. Eventually he had to concede that she was right on two scores. One, her leg was, in fact, totally healed. Two, he would never have given anyone else extra time. Jaime didn’t want special treatment. His wolf loved her strength.

As usual, they started with their warm-up and did several laps of pack territory. It was no longer necessary to do any exercises on stealth—that had become clear on the morning before last when he had introduced pressure drills. During the drills, he had asked her to close her eyes and rely only on her other senses as she avoided Dominic, Marcus, and Trick, who were skulking around the woods. Not only had she been able to remain undetected, but she was more difficult to sneak up on than a sleeping cat. The guys had soon learned as they attempted to track her through the woods that unless Jaime wanted you to see her, you wouldn’t.

In fact, now, Jaime was physically the perfect enforcer. Not only had she perfected every combat move and mastered stealth, but she was as fit as Dante and as resilient as they came. “You’ve done amazingly well with your training over the past few months, Jaime,” he told her as they finished their laps of pack territory and stopped for a drink at the patio table. Whereas at one time she would have collapsed into one of the chairs, now she stood upright, ready and alert. “But I’m pretty sure you know that.” Her self-satisfied grin proved him right.

“Can I just ask why the guys are hiding in the woods?”

He grinned. No matter how good they were, she always sensed when anyone was around.

“That’ll become clear in a minute. As I said, you’ve done well. And everything I’ve taught you will help you when you challenge Glory. But there’s more to it than combat moves. So now it’s time to address the number one challenge you’ll face when confronted with a threat—which you soon will be. Yourself.”

Jaime’s forehead crinkled. “Myself?”

“You can be your own worst enemy in a dangerous situation if your head isn’t in the right place. Let’s not forget that the challenge will only end when one of you has been subdued or killed.

More often than not, it’s the latter. You might think killing someone will be easy. It’s you or them, so therefore it won’t be a problem, right? You’d be wrong to think that.” In truth, Jaime knew it would be a problem for her. There was no denying that she could be vengeful, but in the past that had always taken the form of practical jokes or maybe knocking someone out cold. But killing someone? This would be a new one. As much as it didn’t sit comfortably with her, and as much as she hoped that Glory would yield during the fight, Jaime strongly doubted that anyone who wanted her dead that badly would surrender.

“There’s another thing that you need to be prepared for, Jaime. As much as you’re confident that you can control your wolf, we both know you’ll have doubts lurking. These doubts will distract you. And if you feel your wolf strongly fighting to surface, you’ll become a little spooked. You can’t afford to do that.”

She didn’t bother denying any of that. “Okay, so tell me how to get over my fear.” Dante looked at her incredulously. “Why would I do that? Fear is a basic survival mechanism.

It helps you stay alive. It’s an automatic response that dumps adrenaline into the bloodstream, which helps us.”

Jaime’s face scrunched up. “Sweating like crazy, having your heart race, and shaking like a shitting dog helps us?”

Dante chuckled. “No, but adrenaline will help with increasing your speed and strength and increasing your tolerance for pain. The time it becomes a problem is when you let that fear become something else—panic. Once you begin to panic, your ability to think rationally often goes out of the window.”

“Right. So how do I do that?”

“Acknowledge what fear actually is—it’s just your brain communicating to your body that it senses danger. Accept fear for what it is, and work with it. That’s when its power disappears.”

“Accept it as a chemical reaction that’s there to help me.”

“Yes, because if you don’t, if you let it control you, then you’re, to put it bluntly, fucked. You can be killed. And that’s not acceptable to me. Yes, you’ve kept your wolf under control during training, but sparring with me is very different from what you’ll be facing in reality.”

“I know, I know,” said Jaime flatly. “I won’t be in a safe environment fighting one of my pack, I get it.”

“No, I’m not sure that you do. Glory won’t want a fight, Jaime. Her objective will be to kill you as quickly as possible, particularly since you’ve overpowered her once before. I very much doubt that she’ll shift, because she knows how dominant your wolf is. She’ll come at you so swiftly you might not see it coming. She won’t want to give you a chance to use any of your moves on her.

Even if you manage to land a lot of good blows, that won’t be all it takes. She will have moves of her own. She’s been in countless fights before. She’ll be used to being hurt and ignoring the pain to carry on.”

“I don’t think she’ll stop until one of us is dead,” she said quietly.

He repeatedly clenched his fists. “Neither do I. This is why it’s imperative that you’re able to switch quickly from one mind-set to another—namely, that you can be prepared to kill. That kind of thing isn’t easy. Throughout your entire life, you’ve had morals instilled in you. You have a conscience that interferes in every choice you make. It’s similar to brainwashing, in a sense. None of that can matter, Jaime. Even in the context of self-defense, you still can’t fully justify killing a person to your conscience. It is what it is. You need to be able to accept that rather than make excuses for it.”

“Like you?”

“Like all the enforcers, but yes, like me. I have a very fierce sense of right and wrong, but when it comes to defending or protecting this pack, I’ll cross over any lines I wouldn’t otherwise cross. You need to be able to do the same. It doesn’t mean you have to stop being a good person and that you have to harden. But like it or not, it will change you in some ways. You can still be the person you are now, but with an ability to cross right over any ethical lines when you need to. When you’re involved in a fight with Glory, you
will
need to. So, can you do that?”