Keeper of the Alphas - Complete (9 page)

Aunt Sadie sniffled through her crumb cake.

She was dressed in all black, down to the cast on her arm (newly bandaged, wrapped in black), but couldn’t contain the wild burst of pink amaryllis at her lapel. Cami felt a little awkward, sitting around a table at Peaches and Cream with Aunt Sadie and Jenny, all three dressed in black like the three blind mice or something. Luckily, most of the patrons seemed to have an idea of what was going on. One even stopped by the table on his way out and squeezed Aunt Sadie’s shoulder with a murmured
I’m so sorry for your loss
. “We should all say something, dears,” Sadie said between tears. “Something nice about Lynn. Today is a day to remember her for the wonderful woman she was.”

Great
. Cami had blacked out most memories of her mother—it was important to know when to let go of a toxic relationship, her therapist had said. She didn’t know if she had any good memories of her mother to conjure up.

“I’ll start,” Jenny said, saving Cami’s ass for the second time that day. “After I broke up with Jeremy, Aunt Lynn sat me down and told me boys weren’t worth the heartache. Pretty sure her exact words were something like,
Your heart belongs to you, it keeps you alive, don’t give it away
.”

“Don’t give it away
to just anyone
, dear,” Aunt Sadie said, finding time to edit Jenny’s memory to her liking while dabbing the corner of her eye with a napkin.

“Anyway,” Jenny said, brushing her mother off, “She probably saved me from a rap sheet a mile long. I was going to torch his car that night.”

Cami snorted a laugh, but quickly lifted her napkin to her face and hid it as a cough.

“She was very, very wise,” Sadie offered.

“Your go, Mom,” Jenny said, licking the concave surface of her spoon.

“Gosh, there are so many treasured memories,” Sadie quibbled. “It’s so hard to choose just one.” She sighed, and then said, “Your mother was strength, honey. Even…when we were kids, teenagers, really, coming into our own, she was my rock. She was…”

Sadie dissolved into a puddle of sobs. She tried to finish her story, but just whimpered and squeaked through it. Finally, she blubbered an
Excuse me
and slipped away to the ladies’ room.

“Check it out,” Jenny said after a moment’s silence, nodding her head forward. “Looks like you’ve got a not-so-secret admirer.”

Cami’s blood froze, expecting to see the man with the jagged face scar behind her, but instead when she whipped around she saw Jayce sitting at the juice bar. He caught her eyes with his and sent one of his charming smiles her way, the kind that went straight between her thighs. She felt a heat creep up under her scarf and offered a half smile of her own before too abruptly turning back to Jenny. “Yeah, we uh…reconnected at the bar the other night.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Jenny said with a knowing smirk.

“How well do you know him?” Cami asked, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Jenny shrugged. “Small town, remember? Everybody knows everybody. He was a couple years ahead of me in high school, but we hung out, thanks to you.”

High school. What would it have been like to go to high school here? There was only one school in the whole town. Cami found some comfort in the idea of growing up with all the same people. Would she and Jenny have been friends? Would she have gone to the prom with Jayce, been crowned the homecoming queen? Instead, she’d ridden out her education in a mental ward. No tiaras there, not where kids weren’t given knives and forks just in case they tried to hurt themselves.

“But he sort of became a dick around the time you left. Got hot, skipped classes, started dating this chick…Ann? Pam? Since then, it’s like everyone knows Jayce,” Jenny said.

“What do you mean?” Cami said, still having a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that the lanky, awkward boy she’d known had grown up to be hot and popular even as the bad boy. Some kind of twisted Ugly Duckling or Swan Prince.

Jenny rolled her eyes and leaned in secretively. “Come on, a face like his? Doesn’t go to waste in this incestuous gene pool. The ladies climb him like Santa. You know, the boy you don’t want to take home to Mama but you want one hot fuck with?” She twirled her spoon between her fingers. “That’s Jayce.”

“Huh,” Cami said. The new knowledge left a burnt taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with the crisp toast on her plate. Had she been just another conquest? Granted, she’d been the one using him to take her mind off her ever-present troubles. Maybe she was just as bad as all the other girls. That thought tasted worse going down and she wished she’d been bold enough to order a mimosa in front of her grieving aunt.

“Hey. Mind if I break in?” Oh God. Speak of the devil. Jayce (and his frustratingly charming smile) hung over her shoulder.

“Yeah, sure,” Cami fumbled, hoping he hadn’t been witness to any of that conversation.

His expression softened when he pulled up a chair beside Cami. “How are you guys holding up?”

“Save the tears,” Jenny said bluntly. “My mom has enough for all four of us.”

“Be nice to your mom, squirt,” Jayce said, and flashed one of his two practiced smiles. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to see there was some bad blood between the two of them.

Jenny rolled her eyes, going petulant.

Jayce turned his attention to Cami, who wished he hadn’t; those soulful eyes made her throb. It was hard to hold a grudge against him when his tongue wet his bottom lip and all she could think about was how it felt playing on her clit.

“You look nice,” he said.

Cami shrugged. “The scarf is Jenny’s. What’s with the suit?”

His turn to shrug. The suit was nice and way out of the price range of a boy who lived in a trailer. His turn to grin secretively. “Someone owed me a favor.”

A wildly jealous thought ran through her, of Jayce under the dress of some tailor, rolling his tongue around her nub in just that right way until she caved and gave him an Armani.

I saw him first
, she found herself thinking even though she knew her thoughts were completely unfounded.
Before he was cool.

“Oh!” Aunt Sadie burst into the scene and Jayce stood respectfully, just in time for her to pull him into a bone-crushing hug. “Jayce, it’s so good to see you, honey.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Coltrane,” Jayce said once she pulled back enough to give him some space to breathe.

“Sweet boy,” she said and sniffed again. She grabbed his hands in hers and said, “Now is a time for everyone to come together. Regardless of differences. Don’t you think, darling?”

The look that passed between the two was meaningful, though Cami couldn’t figure out exactly what it meant. Aunt Sadie’s words seemed to hold an extra weight as she waited on his response.

“Couldn’t agree more, ma’am,” Jayce said, smoothing all the cracks in the pavement over effortlessly, like a politician.

Her makeup had been completely reapplied and she waved him off suddenly as though to ward off tears so she wouldn’t have to fix her mascara lines for the second time. “Sit down, please. Have some food.” Sadie sat down and Jayce followed suit, reclaiming his spot beside Cami. “We were all just saying nice things about Lynn. Do you have anything to add, dear?”

Again, that pointed question. Cami decided to figure out later what the tension was here. For now, Jayce simply nodded and then turned to Cami with a private smile. “God…there’s a lot, isn’t there? Poor Lynn…she unintentionally adopted me after my mother passed and Cami and I got close. Don’t know how she put up with us, honestly. She must’ve had a heart attack the first time Cami and I came home covered in mud…”

Cami chuckled under her breath at the memory and the fondness in Jayce’s voice.

“Hell,” Jayce continued, boyish smile intact, “I remember stepping into her house and just falling in love with it. I mean, walls, what a luxury, right?” Polite smiles all around. His self-deprecating humor was charming, Cami had to give him that. “And Lynn, sweet as anything, just, you know, very gently encouraged me to take off my shoes that were leaving these awful mud tracks, took our coats, made us wash our faces. But always real sweet about it, like cleaning up was our idea.”

“Remember that time we bought home a raccoon?” Cami interjected, leaning into the story with a broad smile.

“Yeah,” Jayce laughed.

“Like a pet?” Jenny asked.

“Worse, it was dead. Total decay. Lynn took one look and threw it like a football.”

“But Cami here wanted a raccoon-tooth bracelet.”

“Oh God, I totally forgot about that,” Cami laughed. “Why did I want that?”

“Because you thought it would make you look like Pocahontas.”

They both burst into a clatter of cackles. Cami’s hand made it to Jayce’s shoulder to steady herself.

Sadie’s expression twisted like a broken Picasso at laughter at a mourning breakfast. Cami and Jayce quickly shut up like chastised children.

“Anyway,” Jayce said. “Bless her soul.”

“Cami,” Aunt Sadie ventured, sappy-eyed and starving for something sentimental, “don’t you have anything to add, honey?”

“Yeah,” Cami said, pulling out her phone to check the time. “Ceremony starts soon. We should get going. Mom hates tardiness.”

“Oh, dear, you’re right.” Sadie rustled up and fumbled to pull herself together. “Jenny, get my wallet out of my purse, will you?”

“I’ve got it,” Jayce said, lifting a palm.

“Oh, not at all,” Sadie fussed.

“Please,” he said and, genuinely, added, “I owe Lynn so much. Buying breakfast is the least I can do.”

Sadie looked skeptical, but finally gave in with a nod. “Thank you, dear.”

“I’ll see you there?” Cami said under her breath, a little more hopefully than she wanted to sound. She needed something friendly there that could put her at ease, and Jayce had just made himself her comfort blanket of choice.

His eyes hooked on hers. “Yeah. See you there.”

Cami let her aunt usher her out and tried not to feel the absence of Jayce’s warmth.

Jayce waited until the tiny bell on the door chimed in Cami’s wake before he picked up the bill and carried it over to the bar. Maggie—the Portland-bound raven-haired girl behind the bar with vibrant tattoos twisting up her sleeveless arms—glanced over at Jayce and smiled. “Didn’t realize Sadie was your type,” she teased as she wiped the bar down.

“What can I say? Older women have more experience.”

“Who was the blonde with them?”

“Cami. Lynn’s daughter.”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “
That
was Cami? Didn’t she go…completely off her rocker or something?”

“Something.”

“Poor girl.” Maggie shook her head. “Must be hard on her. Hope she doesn’t relapse into cuckoo land; tragedy is weird. Messes with your energy. It’ll turn her chakras sideways.”

He handed the check over to her. “Put that on my tab.”

Maggie lifted her eyebrows. “No tab.”

“Aw, c’mon, Mag…” he leaned his elbows onto the bar. “I’m good for it. Promise.”

“Wrap your pretty promises around this.” She slapped a bill in front of him—to the tune of three digits. “That’s for the month. Harken’s been up my ass about it. I can’t keep cutting corners around you, baby doll.”

Jayce grimaced.
Hunting shapeshifters
wasn’t exactly a lucrative career. The odd average-joe job tossed him some cash here and there, but it mostly just covered gas money, car repairs (the Camaro was the one thing he doted on), and the occasional six-pack.

“Soon as I finish training,” he promised. “I’ll make it worth the wait.”

She mirrored his posture, propping her elbows on the bar opposite him. Gave him a good view of her cleavage popping out of her too-tight
Ramones
shirt. “Can you promise that?”

He smiled.

“Oh God…oh God,
oh God
…”

For a self-proclaimed agnostic/spiritualist, Maggie sure had a lot to say about God as she grew closer and closer to her climax. Jayce’s head was buried between her thighs and he licked her voraciously, drinking in her sweetness. He was familiar with a small piercing on the hood of her clit and he’d learned to flick it with his tongue when she got like this, letting the hard jewel hit her sensitive nub again and again. He went there now and Maggie gasped, her thighs vibrating.

“Oh God…just like that…” Maggie threatened to squirm straight off the edge of the sink, but Jayce kept her propped up, his hands on her hips, holding her back. The bathroom in Peaches & Cream was small, but they didn’t need a lot of room. If anything, they took up less space than one person, with her heels digging into his back painfully, her fingers yanking his hair. He couldn’t breathe, not with her thighs so tight around his head, and he didn’t care. He didn’t want to breathe, didn’t want to think, and her thighs seemed like a good place to hide from the rest of the world.

People grieve in strange ways
, Jayce thought when Maggie moaned loudly and flooded his mouth, bucking her hips against his lips.