Dylan (Bowen Boys) (10 page)

“I have put another wolf into service. He
will help you, but will not bother you overly much. When he reports to you, you’ll
bring me the information and the girl when he finds her. I want her brought to
me as soon as possible.” The human nodded. “You’ll bring her, then you’ll end
your life, for you’ve nothing to offer this world, and so long as you’re in it,
your family will know shame and heartache. Do you understand me, human?”

“Yes, sir. I will bring the girl to you and
end my life.”

Lucius left him sitting there and took
to the skies. He had plenty of work to do and very little time to do it in. He
had to have Small in the White House. He was going to be the key to so much,
and he didn’t even know it. As Lucius landed just outside the small, barred
window that imprisoned this human, he smiled. This was going to be his greatest
success.

~~~

Dylan spent most of the rest of the day
on his knees in the dining room. They nearly had the floors put down, with only
the little flooring that was left and the two corner cabinets yet to install to
call the room complete. He glanced up at the antiques that he’d refinished
during spring break. They were going to be beautiful in this room. He looked up
when he smelled Jack. She looked at him strangely.

“Do you have to do that?” she said.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Look like raw sex all the time. I mean,
is there some sort of meter you can turn down?”

Reed laughed but didn’t stop pounding
nails in the floor. Dylan sat up on his knees and smiled at her. She leaned
against the doorjamb into the kitchen. She was looking better every time he saw
her.

“I don’t think that’s possible, but if
you wanted to keep me a little less stressed, I can think of a couple of ways
for you to do that.” She looked at Reed when his head came up. “Reed, go and
find something else to do away from the house.”

He moved like he’d been shot from a
cannon, laughing the entire time. He kissed Jack on the cheek before he left,
and she grinned at him. She was going to pay for that. Dylan took off his shirt,
tossed it behind him, and stood up.

“Come here, love. I want to taste you,” he
said. She shook her head. “I want you right here on the floor. We can break it
in like we did the counters at lunch.”

“We’re going to break each other if you
don’t stop that. And how are you going to get this place finished if you’re
forever sending your help away?” She backed up, then stood up. “I mean it,
Dylan. It’s daylight.”

That stopped him. He looked out the
windows. He’d decided before she came into his life that they didn’t need
curtains. Now he could see the necessity of them. He looked back at her.

“It is daylight for sure, but what does
that have to do with me wanting you?” She looked around, suddenly shy. It
seemed so out of character for her.

“You’d see me.” He cocked a brow. “Okay,
I know you’ve seen me naked before, but now it’s different. I’m ready for you.”

He took a deep breath, and she flushed
and stammered on. “I mean, I know that you want me. Before, when you and I had
sex on the counter, you snuck up behind me and…and you seduced me. This time I
know that you want me and I’m prepared. I think we should wait until dark.”

“Why?” She looked away and he wanted to
leap into her mind and find out, but he’d promised her that he wouldn’t do that…not
unless he had to. He was nearly there when she spoke softly.

“Because I know what I look like without
my clothes on.” She looked up when Khan came in the room. “I have to go.”

She took off out of the house and into
the yard. Dylan looked at his brother and decided that he needed advice. Maybe
not from him, but his wife for sure. He asked where she was.

“She’s mad at me again,” Khan said.

Dylan didn’t ask what he’d done, because
neither of them was in a great mood, and that might be all it took for them to
get into a brawl in his new dining room. “She is mad because I said she was a
tad cranky and maybe she needed to lay down. I was only trying to make her feel
better, but she stomped off saying something about men and their brains. I
didn’t mean anything but that she looked tired.”

“You didn’t tell her that, did you?”
Dylan knew that he had when his brother turned away from him. “Christ, how am I
supposed to figure out how to be the best mate in the world when the one man
I’m supposed to be able to look up to is a moron?”

“Hey. That isn’t right. All I said was
she needed to go and have a fucking nap. How the hell was I supposed to know it
was going to cause an all-out war?” Just as he lunged for him, their father
stepped between them. “Dad, this is between Dylan and me. I think you should
stay out of the way.”

“Women problems, right?” Dylan nodded. “Thought
so. Well, boys, I’m going to give you the best advice a father can pass to his
sons. It’s sound and has worked for me for nearly twenty-five years.”

“Dad, you’ve been married for forty.” Khan
looked at his dad and then at his mom when she stepped in the room as well.

“Right you are, but it took me nearly fifteen
to learn what I’m about to tell you.” His dad sat down, and Dylan was ready to
take notes. His parents had been happy together since he was a kid. He’d never
seen them fight, never seen them to be anything but a loving, wonderfully happy
couple. Dylan leaned forward when his dad did.

“Shut up.” Dylan started to tell him
that they’d not spoken when his dad continued. “Just shut up. I don’t care if
she wants your honest opinion of something or if she’s asking you if you like
her new recipe. Shut up. It’ll settle things in a heartbeat.”

“You old fool.” His mom came all the way
into the room. “What is wrong with you telling them that? You’ll have their
mates coming to me asking me why I raised such an idiot. Shut up indeed. I
should have taken out your tongue with advice like that.” She looked at the two
of them. “You have to listen. We women know you guys are trying, but there are
times when we don’t even know what it is we want. So you just have to listen. Try
listening to us with your hearts, not your empty heads.”

Dylan watched his parents argue and
looked at Khan when they stepped out of the room. When Khan got back to work on
the floor, so did Dylan. They had about a half dozen more pieces to lay when
Khan suddenly sat back.

“Who do we listen to? The man who says
that’s what he does, or the woman who tells us to listen to our hearts?” Khan
looked at the floor. “Why are we doing this when both our mates are pissed at us?”

“Mine isn’t pissed. She’s embarrassed
for me to see her naked.” Khan smiled. “What? You think you can help me?”

“Yeah. Monica is mad because I said she
needed a nap and I wouldn’t go lay down with her. She seems to think that I
don’t think she’s sexy while she’s pregnant. Honestly, I’m terrified of hurting
her. I mean, look at me compared to her. I’m like an ox and her this
little…little flower of a thing. What if I rolled over on her or the baby?”

Khan sounded so horrified that Dylan
laughed. “You should tell her that. I mean just like that. You sound that
afraid of her and she’ll melt.”

“You think?” Dylan nodded. “Okay, your
problem. You know how Monica was hurt by that prick? Well, she was embarrassed
about the scar he’d left her. I took her to bed and kissed every place she had
on her until we were…. It worked. She felt better about them because I didn’t
care.”

Dylan looked at the room. They were so
close. He grinned at his brother and picked up another slat. He pounded the
piece in and Khan hit it with two nails while they each were in thought.

“You know that if we finish this today,
we can take our mates somewhere for the entire day? We can go to DC and bug the
shit out of Walker and spoil the baby, too.” Khan stopped working and grinned.

“And we can take Mom and Dad with us. You
know how much they love seeing Baby George.” It was evil. Pure and simple, but
he loved it and told Khan that.

In less than an hour, they had the floor
finished, then another two to clean up the dust and put the things away. Khan
even helped him move the two corner cabinets into place and anchor them. By
six-thirty, they were both off to find their other halves, and Dylan had a
plan.

He was going to show Jack how much he
loved her body.

Chapter Eight

Jack walked along the trees and tried
not to think about how stupid she felt about her conversation with Dylan. She
leaned down to pick up a stick and toss it when something sounded behind her. She
turned, thinking it was Dylan. Behind her stood a tiger…a big, fucking white
Bengal tiger.

“Nice kitty.” The tiger sat and looked
at her. “Are you real or are you a were? I guess that would be weretiger. Are
you one of those?”

He didn’t move. She started back toward
the house, but when she took just one step, he stood up as well. When she took
a step back, so did he. Jack was afraid to run, because she remembered what
Corrine had told her about cats liking to chase, and Jack didn’t doubt that
this one would run her down and have her for dinner. When he looked to his left,
she looked in that direction as well.

“He wants to know where your mate is.” Jack
looked from Monica to the tiger. “He said that they were supposed to make sure
that he had a few hours on his own, and that you’re too tasty-looking to let go
now. I think he’s kidding.”

“You
think
he is?” Monica
laughed. She stopped by a tree and held onto it for several seconds before she
moved toward her.

“I’m lost and a little disorientated. I
think he’s been chasing me.” Jack looked at the tiger. “Not him. There was this
wolf here earlier, and I think he was chasing me.”

“Monica, what’s wrong?” When she sat
down hard and looked to be in pain, a great deal of it, she knew. “Are you in
labor? Holy shit, woman, what the fuck are you doing out in the middle of the
fucking woods in labor?”

The tiger came toward them. She looked
at Monica and knew that it wasn’t just labor, but the hard stuff. When she put
her hand on her belly, she felt the tightening about the same time that she
started pushing. Mother fuck. Jack looked at the tiger.

“Can you understand me?” He nodded. “Go
to the fucking house and get Khan. He’s at my house, Dylan’s house. Go there
and make them…can they understand you like she does?” He took off.

“Jack. I think they’re coming. I think—”
She screamed and held onto Jack’s hand. “Help me. You have to help me.”

“Yeah. I can do this. I had to take a
class.” She helped her lay down on the ground and took off her pants. There was
blood, but not a great deal of it. Jack looked up at Monica and smiled.

“How hard can this be, right?” The next
scream had Jack wondering if she was religious enough. The third had her
doubting the class, her ability as a woman to handle this, and her sanity at
even trying it. Ten minutes later, she was holding the new baby in her hands.

The first panther came over the small
hill a few minutes later, the tiger and the rest of them seconds after that. Monica
bore down hard, and when Khan shifted in front of her, Jack handed him his son.

“Here, make yourself useful.” She knew
the baby was all right and that the kid had nothing on his mother when it came
to screaming. The next baby, a beautiful little girl, came about the time the
rest of them shifted and were pulling on clothes.

She looked at Dylan as she helped
Corrine clean up Monica. She couldn’t tell if he was mad or not, and right now
she was feeling too good to care. Then she noticed that Khan was naked.

“Damn it, Khan, would you please put
something over that thing? Somebody might get hurt.” She heard him chuckle, then
a shuffle of clothes, and knew he was getting dressed. Jack decided she was
going to neuter him sometime soon. “See if I help you out again when your wife
is running around the woods in labor.”

He pulled her up off the ground and into
his arms. He hugged her so tightly she was sure that bones would need mending. But
it felt good, too. When she wrapped her arms around him, too, he looked down at
her.

“You saved them. My family, you saved them
for me.” He kissed her forehead and stepped back when someone growled. “I owe
you more than I’ll ever be able to repay. Thank you very much, Jack Bowen.”

“I gotta know.” She pulled away from
Khan and brushed at the tears, and looked at Marc as he continued. “I have to
know where the name Jack came from. You are so not a Jack.”

“You dork, I haven’t always looked like
this.” He flushed, and she felt bad so she told him. “I was born on the
streets. My mother had been a druggie and had died while in labor with me. Two
bums, Jack Morton and Duke Crosby, found her body and realized I was still alive…as
drugged as my mother, but alive. While Jack had been sober, he’d been a doctor.
Duke was just a man who I guess liked to get drunk with his box buddy. When
they realized that I was going to be more trouble than I was worth, they took
me to the hospital. When the nurse asked them if I had a name, neither man
wanted to have anything to do with ‘the man’…what they called the government…and
what he might bring down on them. So they named me for both of them. Jack
Crosby. Years later, I came across Jack, and he told me the story. Duke had
been killed when someone had wanted his box and he wasn’t willing to give it
up.”