August: Mating Fever (Bears of Kodiak Book 2) (6 page)

August

S
tomach swirling with razor-tipped butterfly wings, August could barely check his excitement as he locked the door behind the last barfly of the night.

It was his favorite time of the day. Well past the witching hour, nothing else existed in the world except for the soft strains of dimmed juke box music playing in the background and a round of a hundred questions he and Jack played as they each nursed a bottle of beer.

It had been three months since the first night they did it. At this point, he felt as though he practically knew her inside, outside, forward, and backward.

A few last things remained that he desperately wanted to know. Their time was gone. Tonight would be their final night together like this. After that, August would be going into hibernation to prepare his body for the ritual to come.

Tonight was special.

Subconsciously, they’d both decided to bring each other farewell gifts. He had packed up a small box with some of her favorite things and stored it under the desk in his office. He thought he’d been slick until she had walked in for her shift later in the evening, holding a big-ass box and telling him she’d done the exact same thing.

He was going to miss her like hell. Just the thought of being forced to forget about her made his chest ache in unbearable ways. He’d been a bear to his brothers the past few nights but didn’t know how to stop.

August was pretty that his brothers were both relieved he would be slipping into a deep coma for the next three weeks.

Turning, he was going to go grab her from the backroom when suddenly, the empty bar filled with the strains of siren song and guitar strings.

Jackson, dressed in her customary work clothes, sat on a stool by herself on stage. Haloed by the blue lights above her and holding onto a guitar, her eyes were closed as she sang a song only to him.

His skin prickled at the sound of her otherworldly singing. She spoke in the hidden language of her kind. Her magick flowed through her, filling the room with its power.

She didn’t compel him though. Her magick was benign. All she was doing was holding him spellbound as she poured her soul out to him through song.

Compelled or not, he would not have been able to move even if the bar was on fire. Jack looked like an angel with the way the lights radiated across her ethereally glowing skin. He didn’t so much as move a muscle until the last note faded away.

“That was beautiful,” he whispered with a voice that had grown rough and gravelly.

Full lips turned into a beatific smile that stole the breath from his lungs. “I wrote that for you last night.”

He was a damned liar for ever thinking they could just be friends. It didn’t seem possible that even a mating ritual could carve this woman out of his heart. Jackson was everything to him.

Holding out his hand to her, he waited for her to walk off stage and slip her tiny palm into his. The feel of her skin on his was magick, the purest kind of magick. It made him whole, made him terrified.

For the past month, a crazy thought had begun to consume him. What if it was possible? What if he just decided not to go through the ritual?

“I want to get your gift,” she said softly. Then, releasing him, she jogged toward the employee backroom. August plopped into the nearest seat, staring at the neon-lit walls in front of him without really seeing any of it.

In no time, she’d returned to him, carrying not only her box, but two beers.

August was pretty sure Jackson wasn’t much of a beer drinker. It took her half the night to nurse the thing, and even then, she barely managed to finish half of it.

But it had become their thing, their way to unwind after a long night. Truthfully, he liked nothing in the world more than being with her and having her attention solely focused on him.

Why had he ever fought this attraction? Because some damned mating ritual had told him to? Screw that. August was tired of living a lie. Reaching over to the table, he snatched up the box he’d set aside for her an hour ago.

Her eyes lit up, and she laughed when she saw his badly wrapped package. He’d tried, but she was lucky he’d bothered at all. August had always been a simple guy.

“Wow,” she said with a trace of laughter. “I know you must have really tried hard with this.” Picking at the shoddy wrap job with her pinky nail, she snickered again as a badly taped-down edge popped free.

Snorting, he forked his fingers through his hair, mussing it. He’d started growing it longer two months prior to prepare himself for the ritual. It was now almost shoulder-length and felt unnaturally long on him. He would be happy when he could get a cut. “I did try. Hard.”

She puckered her lips. “Should I kiss you for the effort?”

His breath hitched, and he had to fist the neck of his bottle tightly just to keep from reaching out and dragging her across the table and onto his lap.

Jackson seemed completely oblivious to his inner turmoil and began tearing the wrapping off the gift. Then, flicking the box lid off, she laughed, and her ice blue eyes danced.

“Oh jeez, Auggie.” She reached inside and pulled out a CD of classical music with a rock twist.

He shrugged. He’d never really been one for gifts. There had been a couple of women in his life that had piqued his interest, but never enough for him to go down the road of emasculating himself.

August just wasn’t that kind of guy. He’d always been honest with his flings. If they wanted something safe and steady, then he was their guy. But if they wanted to be wooed and seduced, then they stood a better chance with anyone else but him.

And yet there he was, handing her a box that had taken him almost two months to complete for her. He’d looked high and low for her favorite things. Sometimes, he’d been forced to order shit online because in this remote spot in Alaska, finding a CD of classical music had proved impossible.

Reaching in again, Jackson pulled out a box of Alaska fresh-smoked salmon. He’d actually caught the salmon himself and smoked it.

But Chance had stated in no uncertain terms that handing a woman fish wrapped in a brown paper sack was the very opposite of romance. So he’d been forced to shell out a couple of bucks and a promise to help his neighbor clear out dead tree stumps from his property the next month in exchange for a cedar-carved box with an image of a sockeye burned into it.

Judging by her reaction, he’d scored major brownie points so far.

“Fancy,” she teased him, toeing his booted foot with her own.

His heart ached. What they were doing tonight should terrify him out of his mind. He was playing with fire. But he didn’t care anymore. He was tired of caring, of pretending that Jack didn’t affect him the way she did.

Setting the box down, she lifted the lid and gently took out one sliver of the fish. She slipped it into her mouth and beamed as she chewed.

“Oh gods, mouthgasm.” She rolled her eyes, acting as though she really was in the midst of a mind-blowing orgasm, which caused his cock to grow heavy and his stomach to bottom out.

Taking a deep swig of his beer just to ease his nerves, he chuckled. “If I’d known that giving you fish was all it took to—”

“Shut your face, you ugly bear.” She sassed him back with a wink then snatched up one more piece of fish before moaning and shaking her head. “Gotta put this away right now, or I’ll never stop.”

Tail or not, she was a typical siren, and there was nothing she liked to eat more than salmon. He’d known it, which was why he’d made it. Her smile had been worth all the effort of finding sockeye when it was out of season. She was worth getting up at the ass crack of dawn to go hang out in an empty, frigid stream in the faintest hope of finding a straggler swimming through. It had taken two weeks before he’d finally caught a pair of them with enough meat to make the effort worth it.

Licking her lips, she pushed the box away and reached in for her final gift. That last one had taken him the longest to make. He’d been roaming the woods of his property one morning when he’d stumbled across the four-leaf clover, and an idea had popped into his head almost immediately.

Her mouth formed a tiny O when she pulled out the chain with her fingers. She stared at the clover, trapped in a clear coat of resin. “August.” She looked at him, and he couldn’t mistake the tears shimmering in her eyes for anything other than shocked joy. “I love it.”

His siren wasn’t much for jewelry. She wore a pair of freshwater pearls in her ears, but that was about it. He’d never seen her with anything really flashy. It was why he’d decided to combine her favorite color, emerald green, with something soft and understated but also unique. Just like her.

Crushing the necklace to her breast, she gave him a tremulous smile. “I love it. I mean, I really love it.” Unhooking the latch, she slipped it around her neck then tossed her arms out wide. “How does it look?”

The pendant rested just above her heart, and his own ached with tenderness.

Words were trapped on his tongue, words that once spoken, couldn’t be unspoken. August didn’t know what he should do at that moment.

As if sensing his confusion, she gave him a swift smile and nodded. “Okay, my turn. Open yours now.” She pushed her box toward him and effectively shut the door on that moment.

Cursing himself for being a coward and not seizing the chance when he had it, he pulled her box toward him. Unlike him, she had not wrapped it, which oddly pleased him. Jackson knew him just like he knew her. She’d known he wouldn’t have wanted anything too fussy.

Flipping open the lid, he stared at the bags of deer jerky crammed inside the box. He said nothing at first until finally, he tossed his head back and laughed to the rafters. If his brothers could only see him, they would be baffled.

August didn’t laugh. Not really. He was a steadfast kind of guy, content with his lot in life. Get up, go to work, eat food, go to bed, start it all over again the next day. That was life.

He’d never realized just how gray and dull his world was until Jack had breezed into it and splashed everything with a kaleidoscope of colors. She’d woken him up from a lifelong stupor to the possibility of more.

“I know how much my bear loves his deer. Do you like it?” she asked softly.

He nodded. “I love it.” It was a simple gift for a simple man. And that’s what made it so perfect.

She smiled happily.

They settled into a comfortable silence. But inside of him, the tension grew because he knew that at some point during the night, if she just stayed long enough, he would finally be able to say it.

Opening his mouth, he tried, but when she looked up at him, he froze. Instead, he said the first thing that popped into his head. “Why Jackson Rose?”

The question made no sense, but she seemed to get it. Shrugging, she sipped tentatively on her beer. “My mother let my father pick my first name. I think she tried to soften it by putting Rose in there, but yeah... not really.”

He chuckled. “I like it.”

Tipping her beer bottle at him, she nodded. “I don’t hate it. Plus it’s fun to screw with people’s heads. Am I guy, a woman? Who knows, right?”

“I’m pretty sure no one could mistake you for a guy, Jack.”

“Well, not once they see me. But I can always hear the shock in their voice when they call expecting it to be a man, and it’s not.”

“Well, now.” He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and ready for another round of a hundred questions. “We all have our funny stories. What’s yours?”

Snorting, her eyes took on a faraway look. Slowly but surely, the smile slipped off her face.

He regretted asking the question for a second until she started talking.

“Braden.” Icy blue eyes flicked up toward him, holding him fast in her gaze. “He and I got set up on a blind date. He thought I was a man.”

Something about that name tugged at his memory. There’d been a Braden mentioned at some point in time. But he couldn’t quite remember... Then, like an image in a mirror, the memory suddenly crystalized for him. Braden of Angoon, the mystery man that had caused her to leave the fishing village.

He frowned. “So Braden was gay?” Not exactly the question he’d meant to ask, but he’d tripped over the plethora of words on his tongue.

She chuckled. “Sirens aren’t gay or straight. We’re fluid. It’s just people, so if we like you, we like you.”

“Have you ever been with a woman?” He really hadn’t meant to ask that, but...

Again she chuckled. “Auggie, are you going to let me finish my answer or keep distracting me?”

He held up his hands. “Yep. Sorry. You’re right.” Damn, he was curious now.

She rolled her eyes. “To answer your question, of course I’ve been with women. Like I said, we’re gender fluid. Anyway...” She flicked her wrist.

Hmm... he would have to ask her more about that later. The thought of his Jack with another woman had him squirming in his seat. But she was right, now wasn’t the time. Later for sure, though.

“Anyway, when he met me, he almost had a spaz attack.” She giggled as though recalling a favorite memory, and he frowned.

“Oh, stop. You don’t have to be jealous.”

“Not jealous,” he grumbled.

“Yeah. Whatever, you ugly grizzly.”

He winked. “Sure, Jack. You just keep telling yourself that. If it helps you sleep better at night.” It shocked him how different he was with her, but she brought out a different side of him, one he’d never known existed before—a carefree flirt who lived only to see her smile.

Once again, her foot found his. This time, though, she left it on top of his, and he let her.

They’d had sex only once and kissed only a few times. In the past three months, they hadn’t allowed themselves to get touchy-feely at all, as if both of them understood that opening Pandora’s box would lead them right back to where they’d been before.

Yes, he went home every night with a raging hard-on and had to relieve himself by hand just to get sleep, but that was better than the alternative of her ignoring him and him pushing her away.

They were too explosive together. This was their safe place, together but also apart.