Temptation (Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (16 page)

Aspen was sleeping with me, in my bed, tonight.

It wasn’t sexually motivated at all but an idea born out of desperation. If Aspen threw up while she was passed out and choked to death on her own vomit, there was no way I would never be able to forgive myself. I would be unable to deal with the grief of waiting for her for so many years, only to lose her to something so stupid.

I knew if I did nothing and just left her here, the feelings of loss and guilt would haunt me forever if I could have prevented her death and did nothing about it...at least, that’s what I told myself to assuage my guilt over having her in my bed with me.

I bent down to pick up her unconscious form and slung her up and over my right shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Her body was completely slack as her arms flopped against my lower back as I carried her to my bedroom; she was out cold. There was something about carrying her in this manner that made me feel like a Neanderthal carrying his sexual conquest back to his cave.

Aspen’s breathing was even but her coloring was pale and wan as I placed her on my bed. I snickered to myself as I pushed her damp curls out of her face; she looked like an exhausted little girl who had bit off a lot more than she could chew tonight.

I lay down next to her, the mattress creaking with my added weight. Gathering her into my arms, I pulled her over and snuggled her into my chest like a much-loved prize. She was so short and tiny, compared to my large mass. It was amazing that this one little body could hold so much spirit and tenacity. Aspen sighed in her sleep as I pulled the covers up over us and tucked them up under her little heart shaped face. She looked good in my bed, like she belonged there. Please grow up, Aspen. I’ve waited so long for you.

I remained completely clothed under the covers, in jeans and black t-shirt, incase my wolf got any bright ideas and tried to influence me throughout the night. He was getting impatient waiting for Aspen. She looked and smelled ready to mate with me, at least in his eyes. And he was absolutely correct; she had all the right parts. And those parts were all physically prepared for mating. However, what my wolf didn’t understand was the concept of being “emotionally ready”. And Aspen was nowhere near emotionally ready to be my mate.

Her body was soft and pliable in her drunken state, her cold arms and legs tangling with mine as she molded herself to my chest. She would warm up soon, my body instinctively sensing that her core temperature was low and reacting by heating up in a bid to bring hers back into normal range.

I kissed her gently on the forehead, my lips brushing her soft skin. It was confusing caring for her so intimately and having her so vulnerable in bed with me, it made me want things that I shouldn’t and couldn’t have right now.

I sighed and pushed her away from me in the bed. She grumbled, seemingly irritated, rolled back over and melted into me again. Subconsciously, she knew she belonged at my side and looked peaceful and content to be there.

Which was a hell of a lot more than I could say for the way I felt at the moment.

                 ***

A
spen woke up three more times throughout the night to throw up.

She was crying softly, in the bathroom, the last time because she had nothing left in her stomach and her body was wracked with the dry heaves.

My wolf hearing could pick up her sniffling tears and I was filled with a perverse sense of satisfaction that she was suffering some sort of retribution for what she had done.

I knew in my head that how she had acted was pretty normal for a teenager. Hell, I’d done worse and more in my day.

But my heart was hurt and feeling emotionally hurt tended to make me feel angry towards the person who’d caused said hurt. I didn’t want Aspen going out with other guys and having them grope and kiss all over her.

She was my mate and I loved her.

However, I wasn’t a fool. I knew this situation was a doubled edged sword, as technically I was doing the exact same thing to Aspen that she had done to me.

By going out without permission to a party with an older boy, Aspen was essentially doing the same thing I was to her, by having a girlfriend. I was a hypocrite and I knew it.

But Weres were highly sexual and my drive to mate with Aspen repeatedly and get her pregnant was overwhelming and almost impossible to resist.

So, I slaked my lust off on other women. It was not an ideal situation by far, but it was better than the alternative. Right now, I didn’t think Aspen needed to be a sixteen-year-old mate with my baby in her belly. At least, not yet anyway.

“Aspen, you’re going to drive me completely insane,” I whispered softly to her as we lay in my bed, snuggled together.

Aspen was still sick and nauseated. In her more lucid moments, she continued to ask me if I could rub her back and I ignored her.

At first.

But she kept asking in that pitiful, little girl voice that called to my gut instincts as her mate. “I’m sick and I need you,” it said to me. There was really no way I could refuse that, it called too strongly to our mate bond, so, I finally agreed.

Lord, wasn’t it bad enough that she was sleeping in my bed? Touching her while she was in my bed was the icing on the pervert cake.

Reluctantly, I started to gently rub her back, my hand on top of her t-shirt. “No, not like that, Roan,” she said weakly, pulling up the back of her shirt. “I see,” I said, trying to conceal my amusement at her blatant ploy to try and get me to touch her bare skin. Little did she know, that she only had to push a little harder and I would have given her anything she asked for.

I stuck my hand up the back of her shirt and traced her spine softly with my finger, from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She exhaled gently and I could feel the tension leave her body as I laid my warm, open palm on her back and started rubbing her back. I alternated between rubbing and tracing circles and lines up and down her back.

She liked that, not only could I sense it, through our bond, I only had to look at the way the goose bumps broke out over her back and down her arms every time that I touched her.

I kept this up until she was a puddle of contentment and fell back asleep. But I didn’t want to stop, even though I knew she was far beyond feeling my hand glide over her.

Aspen’s skin was so soft; it was like running my hand up and down a piece of silk. I liked touching her more than I wanted to admit and enjoyed the sensation of closeness and intimacy with her. One thing I didn’t like though, was being able to feel her delicate spine and shoulder blades sticking out though her silky smooth skin.

She was much too thin for my liking, as women needed some meat on their bones to be healthy child bearers, not to mention the fact that I enjoyed the feel of lush curves under my hands while I made love to a woman.

I made a mental note to make sure Aspen started eating more once she was feeling better. She needed to put on some weight before I blood bonded with her, otherwise I would break her in half. A male Were needed a physically strong and healthy female human mate, not a tiny, skinny little waif like Aspen.

Morning came too soon, for my liking. I wanted to stay in bed, protecting and watching over my mate. It gave me a sense of direction and purpose that I’d not felt since Aspen started going through puberty and had pulled away from her emotionally and physically.

Pulling away from her had made me feel aimless, like a ship adrift at sea and I desperately desired that intense emotional and physical connection with her that came from a mating bond.

Soon, I would have to get up and leave her and fulfill my duty to bring the new male Were into the woods. For the first time ever in my position as Beta, I was conflicted about my duties to the pack. I did not want to bring the new Were to the pack camp in the woods…at all. I wanted to stay home and take care of Aspen, like a mate was supposed to.

“Our mate needs us,” my wolf said sharply. 

“Yes, I know she needs us but Aspen is sick because of her own damn stupidity,” I ground out tersely. 

“I am not saying that she needs us because she is physically ill, that will pass soon enough. I am referring to the fact that she was greatly emotionally distressed when we were gone away for five days. How will she feel when we are gone for over a month or possibly more?” 

“Yes, I know that. I am concerned about it also. Who knows what she’ll do this time to punish me for leaving her alone?”

It was time to make a hard decision. It was either Aspen or the needs and safety of the pack, and the knowledge ate away at me like acid on tender flesh. I needed to speak to the Alpha and tell him of my concerns before I made a rash decision.

Reluctantly, I untangled myself from Aspen’s arms and legs and got up from my bed. But, rather than leave the room, I just stood there like a lovesick imbecile and took in her sleep softened features and wild, curly hair that seemed to be everywhere.

God, she was beautiful. What had I done to deserve a mate as beautiful and tempting as she?

I tucked the blanket around Aspen. But she didn’t stir at all while I tucked her in; she was completely exhausted from her ordeal. She was “dead to the world”, as my father used to say.

I smiled and shook my head; my room was going to smell like her for a very long time but my bed would be the worst. I could smell Aspen’s scent everywhere, the sheets, and the pillow; even the mattress smelled like her. I could always wash the sheets but the mattress was another matter entirely. I would have to buy some fabric refresher and spray my entire room.

Hopefully, her scent dissipated quickly or I would be sleeping on the couch for a while. The last thing I needed was to have some kind of hot sexual dream about Aspen in the middle of the night, only to wake up with a hard on and my bed smelling like her.

I didn’t need any more temptation, I’d already had enough of it just by living in the same house and “it” was currently lying in my bed right now. Softly closing the door, I went into the kitchen to make some breakfast and call the Alpha.

                ***

I
woke up some time in the late afternoon, feeling like I imagined death would feel like.

My insides felt raw and exposed. But it was my stomach, oh my poor stomach, that bothered me the most. It felt like someone had washed out the inside of my stomach with Drano, swished it around and left it to sit for awhile before dumping it back out.

I was going to die, I was sure of it.

I had never felt so sick in my entire life, not even that time I’d had my tonsils out as a kid and had to spend a week in the hospital because the site got infected, was as bad as I felt today.

My head felt like someone had cleaved it wide open with an axe. And just to make sure, I reached my hands up and gingerly probed my entire scalp, I was positive my brain must be leaking out somewhere, I just had to find out where. Even the sensation of my pulse bounding in my temples was enough to start me throwing up again.

If this was how terrible drinking alcohol made you feel the morning after,then why did so many people do it? The after effects were horrendous!

Carefully opening my eyes, I looked around and saw that I wasn’t in my room. I was comfortably tucked in and sandwiched between a mountain of grey comforter and silky black sheets. It was Roan’s comforter, not my pink one with satin around the edges that surrounded me.

What the heck was I doing sleeping in Roan’s bed? I quickly searched my memories from last night but it was all a fuzzy, chopped up blur. I remembered coming home and the absolute terror that seized hold of me from seeing Roan’s truck parked in the driveway. 

There was no way I would ever forget that as long as I lived.

And then things were pretty confusing from there on in. Oh my god, I hope I didn’t climb into Roan’s bed in the middle of the night with the drunken intention of seducing him or something? My face burned scarlet at the very thought of me forcing myself on him.oh god, I would never be able to look him straight in the face again.

Where was Roan? Could he be in the room right now? Just standing there. Watching and waiting for me to wake up so he could give me hell again for last night.

I held my head up and barely peeked over the covers. Looking around the room made my head ache but Roan was nowhere in sight, so I thankfully dropped my head back down as my stomach started to churn again. Ugh, the world was spinning and I closed my eyes and promptly fell back asleep.

I woke up and looked at the alarm clock next to Roan’s bed. It was well into the afternoon. I had slept almost the entire day away!

While I felt much clearer, from a mental perspective. Physically speaking, I still felt like garbage.

My head continued to pound and my stomach was still raw, that hadn’t improved much at all in the past few hours and truthfully, I supposed I deserved every bit of it. How could I have broken Roan's trust like that? And to top it all off, I was an awful drunk that couldn’t handle her liquor. Ugh.

I looked around the room and saw that there was something on Roan’s pillow next to me. I reached out and made a grab for it without moving my head too much. It felt like a hard, rectangular shaped box. Bringing it in front of my face, I saw that it was an IPhone box with a piece of paper folded neatly underneath it and tied with pink ribbon and silky pink bow.

Holy crap! Was this for me? I turned the box upside-down to study the piece of paper and sure enough, written on the outside fold, in Roan’s bold script were the words “Little Girl”. Carefully unwrapping the ribbon, I unfolded the paper and began to read:

“Aspen, I’m sorry but I had to take the new male Were up to the training camp in the woods today. Until he is deemed safe to live amongst all of us, we cannot trust him. I do this for your safety as well as the safety of the entire pack. I know I told you that I would take you to the training camp when I got back and I still will, I promise. I have bought you a cell phone so you can call or text me at ANY TIME of the day or night. I will answer it, trust me.