Alaskan Fire (53 page)

The wereverine led her to the
south-facing front porch and had her stretch out in one of the Adirondack
chairs arrayed there.  And, sure enough, the sun helped.  Blaze felt herself
pep back up in only fifteen minutes, when she was pretty sure she would have
slept the rest of the day away, left to her own devices.  “How did you
know
that?” Blaze asked, stunned, having rolled up her pant legs and shirtsleeves at
the wereverine’s suggestion.

Oddly, the wereverine, who had
been casually leaning against the porch railing, watching her, blushed purple
and began to fidget.  “I, uh…”  He cleared his throat loudly and grimaced. 
“Lucky guess.”  He gestured at the shop.  “So you done screwing around over
there?  I still got work to do.”

They spent the rest of the day
working on the shop roof, trying to repair the damage that the werewolves had
left behind.  Blaze was standing up on a ladder poked through a hole they’d cut
in the drywall, holding a board in place for Jack, when a thought occurred to
her.  She could
fly
?  She remembered the excitement of being like
plastered to the window of that Cessna 206, watching the ground pass underneath
her, and she got another thrill, like that was what she was
meant
to
do.  To
fly…

“You know,” she said, “If I ever
work up the balls to stab myself in the heart, there’s really nothing keeping
me tied to one spot, right?”

She saw Jack flinch before he
quickly hid his reaction by pounding in a nail.

“I mean, seems like that would be
a better way of not getting found…” Blaze continued.  “Fly all over the place,
don’t spend too much time in one spot.  I mean, hell, you can see the green
from that
feather
from the air.  If a whole
river
started to grow
like that…  Kind of paints a flashing neon target on my back, wouldn’t you
say?”

Jack held the hammer over the
nail head for a long moment, staring at it, before he turned to her slowly.  “I
think,” he said softly, “Part of what’s wrong with the world nowadays is that
critters like you feel compelled to do what you just described to me.  They take
off and stay on the run, never staying too long in one spot, taking their magic
with them.  Where’s that leave us?  In a damn, desolate, hungry time.  That’s
where.”  He met her eyes evenly.  “I swear to you.  If you stay here, I will do
everything I can to protect you.  I’ll put my life down, in a heartbeat, to protect
you.” 

“Why?” Blaze whispered, trying
not to let her heart flutter at the fierce way he was giving her that look. 
“You don’t even know me.”

His eyes flickered across her
face.  After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I think it’s time we started
reversing the process, you know what I mean?”

“Reversing it…how?”

Jack turned back to the nail. 
“Lay our claim.  Make a stand.”  He shook his head and lowered his voice until
it was almost a whisper.  “Somethin.”  He pounded the nail the rest of the way
in and moved to the end she was holding.

Blaze watched him work for
several minutes in silence, contemplating that.  “I’ll stay,” she said
finally.  Then she gave a nervous laugh.  “I mean, hell, aside from you, I
don’t really
know
anybody.  I don’t have any family.  People avoided me
in college, so I just kept to myself.  And boyfriends…”  She made a pathetic
sound.  “Right.  Boyfriends.”  Nervously biting her lip as she watched him, she
said, “So yeah.  Uh.  Seeing how we’re both single and all…  What do you think
about that?”

Jack hesitated.  When he looked
up, she saw a spark of dumbstruck awe in his eyes, but it was quickly hidden
when the wereverine returned his attention to the truss he was working on.  A
gruff, “Sounds good,” rumbled from where he was peering much too closely at the
nail he wasn’t hammering.  “I mean, you ain’t got a problem with it, I ain’t
got a problem with it.”  He hesitated a moment and she saw him swallow, hard,
then looked up at her, nervousness in his eyes.  Then, almost timidly, he said,
“Just to be clear…  Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

Blaze felt a flush under his
stare and started picking old paint spatters off of her ladder.  “Well, yeah, I
think so.”

Jack went pale and got that
constipated look again.  “I, uh…”  He cleared his throat, opened his mouth like
he wanted to say something, but when he tried, only a rough airy sound came
out.  Swallowing, his brow knotting, Jack glanced down at the hammer in his
hand.  “I gotta find a file and sharpen the claws on my hammer.”  He started to
climb down his ladder.

Blaze leaned over to peer at his
hammer.  “Those need
sharpening?
”

The wereverine’s face went
crimson and he swallowed again, without looking at his hammer.  “Uh, yeah. 
Standard procedure, tootz.  Can’t talk now.  Might forget.”  He jumped the rest
of the way off the ladder and
ran
from the shop, pulling the door shut
behind him so haphazardly that it cracked open again, revealing a band of
brightness outside.  Still clinging to her ladder, Blaze could see several
files sitting out on a workbench, where he had recently used them on an axe.

“I’ve gotta sharpen the claws
on my
hammer
?”
  Of all the retarded things he could’ve said… 
Groaning, Jack paced back and forth out behind the back woodpile, once again
cursing his own thick tongue.  He’d
wanted
to warn her, to tell her that
he’d been taught how to life-bond with a dragon and how, once he’d tasted
that
ambrosia, he could never go back, and how he’d done it with every serious girl
since.  He wanted to tell her how, either by an act of the gods or some crazy
phoenix thing, she was as receptive to it as anyone he’d ever met, hell,
more
than receptive to it, like
pulling
him to do it,
demanding
it,
like a lightning rod jutting up into the swirling mass of a thunderstorm, and
how he’d almost already
accidently
done it, with Blaze, while she
slept
,
because he had gotten too
close
to her. 

He’d almost claimed her for his
mate.  While she was unconscious.

And she wanted him as a
‘boyfriend.’  Which meant, in city-slicker terms, she wanted him in her
bed
. 
As a fun little disposable wereverine sex-toy.  She didn’t
understand
. 
He couldn’t
do
that.  It just wasn’t
in
him to do that.  Hell,
just
kissing
her had almost settled the bond, both times.  He’d been
fighting every impulse to drag her into another kiss ever since he almost lost
control the last time.

Somehow, he didn’t see it going
over too well if she woke up one morning, feeling his body beside her—and
feeling with a deep and inner knowing exactly how uncomfortable his boner had
gotten over the night of listening to her breathe beside him.  Or the fact that
Jack was really having trouble with the whole asshole thing, and some of those
tactless, dumbass things he’d managed to keep himself from saying were going to
roll down that connection and pop into her head anyway and she was gonna
realize just how incredibly crass and cluster-fucked he really was.  Or, gee,
the fact that all Jack could think about lately was
her
, and she
probably didn’t want to catch little snippets of him fantasizing about her in
the shower.

By Puck’s Tongue, he was so
screwed
. 
Hell, just the
smell
of her had slowly begun to drive him insane.  Like
sunfire and desert stones, making him unable to think about anything except
exactly
where her body was placed, in relation to his own.  Just up there in the
trusses with her, pounding nails, smelling that hot, heat-baked sunlight, it
had been everything he could do not to turn around, grab her, put his forehead
to her own, and cement the mating bond right then, covered in sweat and
insulation.

Odin’s Eye, boy, you’ve got it
bad…
  Swallowing hard, Jack continued pacing behind the woodpile, the
hammer clenched in a fist.

He couldn’t just
take
her,
regardless of how startlingly
easy
it would be.  So easy, in fact, that
Jack was starting to worry that even
working
with her was going to set
it off, much less her nightly massage.  Somehow, he had to
explain
to
her that she needed to pull her fucking lightning-rod out of the clouds before
she got zapped.  But
how
?  He didn’t understand magic, not really. 
Oethynna had tried to teach him, but only the stuff about the bond had really
stuck.  And
Blaze
didn’t have a freakin’ clue.  A phoenix wasn’t a
magus.  They were like a magnifying glass pointed at the sun.  They didn’t work
magic
.  He started talking about bonds and lightning rods and she was
gonna look at him like a hairy little ape babbling fairytale bullshit.

“Damn,” Jack muttered, pacing
again.    

This was not going to go well. 
It was gonna be a stain.  No matter which way he went, whether he told her she
needed to back off for her own safety, or whether he just went the fuck ahead
and sealed that permanent bond—either way, she was about to become a very
pissed little bird.

Thus, when Blaze came around back
and leaned against the woodpile to watch him, Jack froze.  Even at that
distance, he could feel the tugging at his core, her little lightning-rod aimed
at his thunderstorm. 
Fuck, fuck!
he thought, shying away.  As soon as
he did, her face took on a dark look.

“Looking for this?” Blaze
growled, holding up a file.

Jack blinked at the file, still
thinking of heat-baked sunlight and thunderstorms.  “Why the fuck would I want
a file?”

Blaze stared at him for a long
moment, then tossed the thing down at his feet and turned on heel.  Over her
shoulder, she snapped, “I’m taking a shower.  The insulation is making me
itch.”

Jack stared at the file,
confused.  Why the Hell had she given him a—

Then he realized he was still
gripping the hammer in his other fist, and he flinched. 

Yep, Wonderboy Jack Thornton had
done it again.  Groaning, he reached down and plucked the file from the grass. 
He looked down at it, then at his hammer, and considered slinking off to spend
a half an hour sharpening the claws to razor-points, just so she didn’t think
he was out back here pacing because of
her
.

Then he heard her enter the
basement of the Sleeping Lady and his mind went into sudden neutral, thinking
about the fact that she was about to expose that pale, smooth skin, and that
he
had just missed his chance to
be
there for it.

Pissed-off bird be damned.  He
could deal with pissed off.  He couldn’t deal with not being able to touch her
anymore.  Not when she gave him such delicious goosebumps every time he started
her nightly massage…

Hearing her start the shower,
Jack broke into a jog.  He dropped the hammer and file off on the edge of the
woodpile and hit the basement at a run.  Praying she took a good
long
shower, he started moving his stuff into her room.  There.  Let her argue with
that
. 
He was dropping off the last duffel bag of clothes when she came out of the
bathroom, towel wrapped around her slender body, steaming like a volcanic
goddess, and saw him leaving her room.

Instantly, her face darkened, and
she lowered her brush from her fiery hair in irritation.  “What are you doing?”

Immediately, Jack tried to think
of something eloquent to say, some twist of words that a djinni would spin to
make everything better.

In combining our living-space,
we engage on an exciting new journey—

“I’m putting my stuff in your
room.”  Even as he said it, Jack winced at how defensive it had sounded.  He
tried to smooth that over with, “The whole you need a boyfriend thing.”

Blaze stared at him so long that
Jack swallowed and started to fidget.  She started to swipe at her hair again,
eyes still leveled on him, absolutely no indication of her thoughts on her
face.  Then again, judging by the way she’d narrowed her eyes, Jack was pretty
sure that there was
some
indication of her thoughts, but it wasn’t an
indication that he wanted. 

He cleared his throat
uncomfortably.  “So, uh, that
is
what you were talking about, right? 
Needing a boyfriend?”

Blaze continued to yank the brush
through her hair, and Jack was pretty sure he heard snarls snapping. 

“Uh,” Jack said, at her silence,
“you want me to work that rat’s-nest out for you?  Before, you know, you make
yourself go bald?”

“You’re in my way.”

Seeing that his wide shoulders were
taking up most of the entryway, Jack stepped back, letting her enter the room
with him.

As soon as she stepped past him,
she turned, facing towards him and the open door as she kept ripping her brush
through her hair.  “You’re in my room.”

Jack scowled, at that.  “Hey,
babe.  I just told you.  It’s
our
room, now, tootz.  You said you need
the company.”

She continued to brush her hair
as she glared down at him.  “You need a shower.”

Jack jerked.  He did?  He sniffed
under his underarms, then winced.  “Oh.  All right.  Well, uh, maybe next time
we can shower together.  Being how you need a man and—”

“
Get out while I dress
!”
Blaze snapped.

Thinking he saw gold flash behind
her eyes, Jack did.

* * *

That night, Blaze went and got
more pages from her journal and waited outside the blanketed-off ‘bathroom’ as
Jack took a shower.  She accosted him as soon as he flipped the blanket back,
making him give the papers in her hand a wary look. 

“Come on,” Blaze said.  “Your
room or mine?”

“It’s the same room,” Jack said,
hackles lifting.  He had, quite stubbornly, insisted that he move in with her, ‘because
she needed a man.’  Blaze, on the other hand,
refused
to let him lead
her on any more than he already had, and, while she could deal with a lack of
sex, she certainly couldn’t deal with a lack of sex
and
having his hunky
body stretched out on the floor a few feet away from her, where he’d piled a
neat little sleeping-roll and a few layers of blankets, ‘in case she peed the
bed again’.  No, she was pretty sure she would try to molest him in his sleep,
and she wasn’t interested in finding out what a startled wereverine did when he
was shocked out of a dead sleep by a full-blown sexual assault.

“Your room, then,” Blaze said. 
She had spent the time he’d been showering re-locating all of his carefully
re-located belongings, moving them from the piles he’d placed around her chosen
room and into a fairly un-damaged room across the hall.

Still wrapped in a towel, Jack
stepped past her, towards
her
room, steam rolling off of his bronze,
muscular torso.  Seeing the current placement of his stuff, Jack paused in the
doorway and growled, “You an’ I need to have a chat about who’s in charge,
here, tootz.”

His words came as such a surprise
that Blaze actually laughed.  “Who’s in
charge
here?” she demanded. 
“Maybe I’m missing something, but this is
my
lodge.”

“Yeah, well, your lodge on
my
land.”

“Oh?” Blaze demanded.  “Well, I
have a deed to
your
land in
my
safe-deposit box.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Jack
said, showing teeth.

Blaze narrowed her eyes.  “We
have a business arrangement.  You made that
perfectly
clear earlier
today, when you told me the reason you are keeping me around.  In the spirit of
keeping things professional,
these
are now your quarters, while
I
will be sleeping across the hall.”

Jack frowned at her.  “What do
you mean, ‘the reason I’m keeping you around’?”

“The Garden of Eden thing,” Blaze
said, waving a dismissive hand in the general direction of the greenhouse.  “I
get it now.  It’s all business.  Phoenix magic means more game means happier
wereverine.  I finally cued in on that.”

Jack’s green eyes looked slightly
confused.  “Girl, as far as I remember, you were thoroughly enjoying your kiss
this morning.”

Blaze flushed.  “And then you
ended it with, ‘Yep, Blaze, you peed the bed.  Toodles!’”  She waved a frustrated
hand in the direction of the bed they had vacated.  “Like I wasn’t
panting
…hell,
I woulda gotten naked right there on the
floor
if you’d—”

Throughout her tirade, Jack’s
grin widened, until he simply reached up and cut off the rest of her monologue
with another heart-pounding, toe-curling, loin-searing kiss that she couldn’t
have pulled away from if she’d tried.  When he released her to stumble away
from his shower-warmed body, Blaze was dizzy.  “But…” she stammered, patting
her hair down, “Why…?”

Jack shrugged.  “You gave me a
date.  I intend to stick to it.”

It took Blaze several moments to
make the connection in her mind, and when she did, her mouth fell open.  “Two weeks,”
she said.  “You’re waiting two weeks.”

“Uh-huh.”  He gestured at the
papers in her hand.  “Kitchen, right?  What are you doing with those?”

“Bullshit!” Blaze threw the
papers aside and grabbed him, and dragged him over to the bed.  She was
actually rather lucky he decided to cooperate, because she was pretty sure she
could have had better luck tugging her bulldozer across the front yard as
moving the wereverine if he hadn’t wanted to be moved.

“What’s all this, now?” the
wereverine asked, as she flopped him to the bed, the towel sliding up one shower-flushed,
muscular leg.

“You,” Blaze said, breathlessly
jabbing a finger at him as she stood over him, “are
not
waiting two
weeks.”

“It’s only ten days, now,” Jack
said, giving her a mischievous grin.  He leaned casually back on the bed,
looking up at her with a thoughtful expression.  “Besides.  Thought you wanted
me to do the taking, not the other way around, missy.”

Blaze’s mouth fell open to
retort, then she realized she was standing there,
telling
him to seduce
her, acting every part the Amazon that she absolutely was not.

Jack’s grin only widened.  “Way I
see things, I got you all alone out here with me in the woods during Breakup, when
nobody can get out here without use of a helicopter, and I’m gonna have my way
with you for a day, when you’re least expecting it.  Might be in ten days,
might be longer.  Who knows?”  He took his spare towel and started rubbing the
water out of his black curls.  From under the cloth, he said, “But
I’m
gonna be the one doing the taking.  You made that pretty clear that’s what you
wanted.”

“I was
delirious
!” Blaze
cried.  “I’d been packing your crippled ass through the
woods
and I
wasn’t
thinking straight.
”

Jack shrugged.  “Deal’s a deal.” 
He gestured at the papers she had deposited on the floor.  “Speaking of deals. 
I already made some calls, got the ball rolling to get this place fixed up. 
You wanna tell me what the paper’s all about?”

Blaze felt herself caught between
wanting to scream and wanting to molest him anyway.  She could see the latter
ending unpleasantly, however, especially when he did something like, oh, embed
her in the ceiling.

Numbly, Blaze went and collected
the paper, willing the tiny fiery explosions in her chest to subside enough to
concentrate.  “I, uh, am gonna teach you to write your name.”

Jack’s smile was so bright and
genuine that it caught her off-guard.  Nodding, he said, “You said it starts
with A.”

Blaze’s mouth fell open again as
she tried to think of something to say to that.  Now
what do you tell him,
tootz? 
“Uh.  No I didn’t.”

Jack’s smile faded.  “Yes you
did.”

“I said J-aaaay,” Blaze said. 
“Totally different.”

Jack continued to scowl at her. 
“You said A.  That one that looks like a triangle.  I memorized it.”

“Jay,” Blaze said.  “
Then
‘A’.”

Jack sniffed the air between
them, then gave her a suspicious look.  “You’re hiding something.”

“No I’m not.”

“Woman,” Jack growled, “I got a
memory like a steel trap.  You said A.”

“Well, maybe I did, back
then
,”
Blaze said.  “But today I’m feeling generous.”

His suspicion increased
severalfold.  “How generous do you have to be to teach me my name?”

Blaze shrugged.  “I dunno. 
Generous.  Hell, someone without any morals, well, shit, they could teach you
to spell your name as ‘asshole’ and you’d never know the difference.  So just
bear with me, okay?”

He gave her a somewhat
crestfallen look.  “So it doesn’t start with A?”  Then he frowned, raising an
eyebrow.  “Or are you trying to get back at me for not sexing you thoroughly
just now?”

“Fine!” Blaze said, “Fine.  You
know what?  Never mind.  Learn your own goddamn self.  I’ll just go take my
feather and start up a home-remedies business in the Everglades.”

Jack reached out and snagged her
arm as she was turning, and the grip that held her might as well have been
wrought iron.  In a low growl, he said, “What I want to know, missy, is why you
tell me ‘A’ one day, then ‘J’ the next.  That’s what I don’t quite understand.” 
He got slowly to his feet, the towel falling from his waist as he held her in
place, that deadly glow to his green eyes.

Blaze looked down at her wrist,
which was now thoroughly locked in the wereverine’s grasp, and had the sudden,
vivid image of her arm sailing across the room, sans body.

“Uh…” Blaze said, her face
heating.

Jack was looking up at her much
too acutely.  “What
does
‘asshole’ start with, anyway, Blaze?”

“Uh…” Blaze squeaked.

“Best not to lie to a
moon-kissed, honey,” Jack said, as he grew fangs and slitty eyes.  “Things can
go…wrong.”

“‘A’,” Blaze whimpered, squeezing
her eyes shut.  “Please don’t sputch me.”

Absolute silence reigned for the
next minute and a half, until Blaze finally worked up the courage to once more
look down at the monster holding her arm.

Jack was looking up at her, the
look in his eyes utterly dangerous.  “You know what?” he growled, as his
perfect, muscular body remained exposed fearlessly before her, “I think I might
make that earlier, rather than later.”

“My…sputching?” Blaze babbled,
trying to back away, but failing due to wereverine attachment.  “Uh, I’m
really, really sorry.  I was just being a twit.  I apologize.  Really.  I
wasn’t gonna let you think you were an asshole forever.”  Then she winced. 
“Well, I mean, you are an asshole, but I wasn’t gonna let you—”  At the fur
that sprouted suddenly from Jack’s naked body and the demonic growl that began
to rattle in his chest, she cried, “I wasn’t gonna do it, I swear!”

“Oh really,” the wereverine
snarled, saliva dripping from three-inch ivory fangs as he leaned up towards
her throat.  “You were just gonna, what, let me sign it on my checks a few
times?”

“No,” Blaze babbled, her heart
sending blasts of molten fire through her veins.  She tried to back away from
him, but he easily tugged her back.  “No, I was just—”

“Just what?” Jack growled.  He
was moving around her, cornering her in the room.  “Just going to let me
humiliate
myself a few times?  After I
trusted
you to help me?”

“Oh God,” Blaze panted.  “Uh.  I
am
so
sorry.  I’ll never do it again, I swear.”

“You got
that
right,” Jack
snarled.  It sounded way too…final.

Thus, when he reached up for her
throat, Blaze screamed and tried ineffectually to jerk her hand free.  “I’m
sorry
! 
Really
sorry
!  Oh God,
don’t eat me
!”   

There was a sudden ripping sound
and Blaze jerked her head down to her suddenly-exposed chest.  The wereverine
tossed her shirt and bra aside, which he’d torn away by a downward swipe from
the collar.

Ridiculously, she thought,
He’s
plucking me like a turkey, exposing all that pretty breast meat…

When the wereverine threw her onto
the bed, however, she screamed. 
Really
screamed, this time, because he
crawled on top of her, all tooth and fur, and pinned her there so thoroughly
with his heavy body that she was utterly immobilized.  After a few futile
struggles—because really, how did a girl, even a gigantic ape of a girl, fight
a four hundred and fifty pound beast besides clawing at his slitty eyes and
getting a hand gnawed off—Blaze closed her eyes, her heart hammering a thousand
crazy beats a minute in her chest, and waited for him to rip out her throat.

A low, throaty chuckle near her
jugular made her flinch.  “Do you surrender, little bird?” the wereverine
rumbled, his warm breath grazing her ear.

Surrender?
  Her panicked
brain did a double-take and Blaze’s eyes snapped open.

The wereverine was sprawled out
lazily on top of her, not a sign of fur or fang anywhere, grinning demonically,
his green eyes twinkling.  Naked.

Her mouth fell open in
indignation.  “You
scared
me, you prick!” she cried, throwing him off
and standing up.

…or not.

What actually happened was that
she grunted and strained as she pushed on his meaty shoulder, which remained
thoroughly in place, pinning her quite effectively to the bed.

“So,” Jack said, propping himself
up on his elbows on either side of her head, leaving his naked abdomen holding
her immobile, “Should I take you now or later?”  The considering way he said
it, and the thoughtful expression he had on his face as he did so, made it very
clear to Blaze that he thought he had full right to do just that.  Then, his
demonic grin widening, he said, “Or maybe both?”

Mouth falling open, Blaze stammered,
“Get off of me!”  She tried to wiggle out from underneath him, but she might as
well have been pinned by the hull of an aircraft carrier.

“Hmm,” Jack said, lowering a hand
to trace it across her face.  “You’ve been a real pain in the ass, Miss Blaze. 
Mixed signals and all that.”  He stroked a callused finger down her throat,
then between her breasts, leaving tingly traces of ecstasy in its path. 

Blaze grabbed his wrist before
his finger could find something important.  “Mixed
signals
?” she
growled.  “You are the
king
of mixed—”

Jack grabbed one of the wrists
she was using to keep him at bay, pulled it effortlessly over her head, and
held it there while he retrieved the other.

Blaze felt her heart give a
startled thump as she twisted her head to look up at her pinned wrists.  “Uh, what
are you…”

The wereverine casually left her
arms tightly imprisoned with one hand and resumed tracing his other hand down
her naked body.

Shuddering, arms pinned above
her, Blaze sank into the bed underneath him, melting under the touch, unable to
escape it, her breath coming in tiny pants.  “Uh,” she managed, suddenly
realizing how utterly helpless she was, “what are you doing?”  

“Workin’ on makin’ some better
signals,” Jack said distractedly.  He shifted slightly over her, and she felt
his attention move to an areola.