If there ever were a time where Bella would gladly meet a thirsty vampire,…it would be now.
She squinted over her shoulder when she thought she saw a glint of ebony eyes between the tangled trees behind her, but since the group of male werewolves that were frolicking in the salty ocean waves didn’t even pause, perhaps that was just wishful thinking.
So she took a deep breath and steeled herself for whatever kind of indignities that she would—and she knew she would—experience. Already she could feel the slow-climbing flush that made her cheeks itch, the shriveling twist in her stomach that only mind-numbing embarrassment could give.
She cringed at the high, girlish giggle and squeaks that rose alarmingly from the group of females on her left and the blast of patronizing amusement from the one on her right.
All her life, Bella had accepted there were things that she would never ever do or situations that she would never be in. Like her being an astronaut, or a ballerina, or the more recent expectation that had gone south, a vampire, but among all of those many impossible things, this, this exact moment, this exact second, should have been the most impossible of all. It was so impossible that the chance of it ever happening had never even crossed her mind. Hence, she didn’t have any defense or strategy to either escape or prevent it.
Bella tried to follow the events that had led to this…this…she didn’t even have a word for it, but her mind was a jumbled mess of scattered brain cells. She couldn’t quite catch where she went wrong or exactly how this horrifying event came to be.
Her frantic eyes searched wildly for some semblance of reason to hang on to, or a way to escape or a hole to hide herself in, but couldn’t, even in her desperation, find some small measure of comfort.
She had faced starving vampires for God’s sake, a vampire bitch that was hell bent on choking her with her own intestines, she’d even faced the Volturi and escaped with all her limbs still attached to her body and managed not to be—at least permanently—traumatized.
But now, as her eyes swept over the scene that played before her, she was sure, no, she was absolutely certain, that she would be scarred for life.
There was just no getting around it, or denying it.
She was doomed.
She winced when she heard the trails of Lulu’s bawdy laughter and pinched the bridge of her nose when Kim’s sympathetic eyes met hers.
She flinched when a hand smacked her back. “Bella, I totally get it now. Surely hanging out with these boys has ruined you for all other males.” Misha flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and—there was no other word for the expression on her face—gawked at Quil, Jacob, Seth, Colin, Brady, Paul and Jared.
“Boys? Some of them are older than you.”
Lulu, Misha and Tina ignored her as they had for the half hour they’d been here, right after ‘the boys’ showed up, whooping and hollering while they jumped off the cliff.
“Geez, look at those arms.” Tina commented in a dazed tone.
“Whose?” Misha asked, without taking her eyes off the—Bella had to admit—impressive display of manhood that the pack represent. As separate entities, they were already attractive, but as a group, the pack was a one-two punch combo that wreaked havoc on the female hormones.
“Pick and choose, ladies. Pick and choose.” Lulu let out a hum of appreciation when Seth drew Jared into a headlock and they wrestled each other into the water; muscles stretching, rippling and gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.
Tina and Misha cackled with glee.
Lulu lifted an eyebrow when Bella gave a tortured groan.
“What? I’m old, but I’m not blind.”
Bella couldn’t take it anymore; her face flaming, she jumped to her feet and walked around the bonfire to stand in front of them. “Look, can you tone down the comments? One of them is Kim’s boyfriend, and two others are their brothers.”
Lulu, Misha and Tina looked at their right, where Rachel, Leah and Kim sat. “You girls mind?”
Kim stifled a smile and shook her head, while Rachel and Leah merely stretched their legs and crossed them by the ankles.
“Jacob can handle himself.”
“Bout time Seth got some action.”
Lulu shrugged at the girl who stood glaring at them. “They don’t mind.” She craned her blindingly pink head and shoved Bella’s hip. “Move over.”
“Yeah, Bella. Move over.”
“Or,” Tina’s face settled on wicked grin. “Do you mind?”
The grin echoed in Lulu and Misha’s faces. “Yeah, do you mind, Bella? Is there any reason why you don’t want us watching?”
Bella had to restrain the urge to stomp her foot, sure that she would only embarrass herself further. “Of course not.”
She returned to her seat, crossed her arms and tried to—unsuccessfully—block out their words.
“Alright, I’ve seen cute and handsome and drop-dead gorgeous, but there’s just something about these guys…”
Lulu nodded in agreement with Tina. “Besides that they’re all big and deliciously well built.”
“Besides that.” Misha squinted her pale blue eyes.
“They’re just something, they’re just so…”
“Raw.”
“Hot.”
“Wildly sexy.”
Bella swept a hand across her eyes. “Guys, shut up.”
Misha aimed an irritated and bewildered look at Bella’s flushed face. “Geez, Bella. It’s not like they can hear us.”
Bella threw her hands up in exasperation and the three Quileute girls burst to laughter. From the edge of her eyes she saw the pack grin at each other. “Fine, whatever. Do your worst.”
“Thank you kindly.” Lulu sipped on the hot cocoa that she brought and sent a pitying yet patronizing look over the rim of her thermos cup. “You’ll understand when you’re older, Bella.”
Bella gnashed her teeth and ignored their shrill—well, it wasn’t really shrill at all, but it just sounded that way to her ears—giggles.
“Oh. Oh. Wow.”
“Oh, man.”
“God.”
Bella could’ve ignored those comments if not for the collective and almost awed silence that followed them. The Three, as she and her other staff called them, were rarely left speechless, so, curious, she lifted her eyes from the harmless doodles she was drawing on the sand and felt her heart leap inside her chest.
Jacob resurfaced from an enthusiastic dunking by Quil and Seth, laughing; water slid against his tight reddish skin, across the broadness of his shoulders, dripped from the bead necklace that she gave him, to flow on muscles and sinew and track a path down the angles and clefts of his naked chest to pool on the top of the beach shorts that hung low at his hips. Drops of water caught and reflected the burning shades of the dying sun across the horizon, highlighting and strengthening the beautiful color of his skin, casting him in a silhouette of bone and muscle.
Bella watched as Jacob raised his hands to slick his hair back, enhancing the sharpness of his cheekbones and the depth of his dark eyes. She watched the slow, liquid gesture that drew attention to the powerful lines of his body, the flow of muscles on his back, the tightness of his abs, his shoulders, his arms and finally, his undeniably pretty chest.
Bella’s mouth dried.
When Jacob’s wide even lips curved into a slow, wicked smile, she sucked in a breath at the sudden onslaught of sense memory of how those lips felt on her mouth, on her skin.
“Bella, you’ve known Jacob since, what, high school, right?”
As distracted as the voice that asked her, Bella only managed an, “Uh-huh.”
“Have you ever...?”
“What?” She asked, her mind a mile away, but the question niggled at her mind. “What?” She frowned when the implication finally bombed her distraction. “What?”
Her face heated up when she met The Three’s expectant gaze and paled when she met—God—Rachel’s inquisitive gaze. “I don’t...I’m not...What kind of a question is that, anyway?”
She couldn’t look at the pack, much less at Jacob.
Lulu pursed her lips. “It’s a perfectly logical question, considering how you two can’t take your eyes off of each other.”
Her face felt like she took a blowtorch to it, and she gritted her teeth.
“We do not—” She broke off at the look that The Three were giving her and ignored the other three girls that were giving her an equally bland stare. “There is nothing logical about that question at all.”
Bella whipped her eyes away from The Three, but only found that she had turned her eyes to the pack, who were trying to not look like they were listening, but were failing miserably. Mortified, she met the humoring stares of the other three girls, then settled for glaring at the sand.
“You’re right.” Misha agreed. “There’s nothing logical about sexual tension at all.”
She hissed and crossed her arms. “I am not going to discuss this here.”
“Will you discuss it when we’re back in the shop?”
She glared at Tina, who beamed innocently at her and ignored Rachel’s snort.
“I am not going to discuss this ever.”
The Three stared at her for a full minute. She stared back.
A white wash of waves licked the sand.
“Oh yeah.” Lulu nodded to her partners in crime. “She’s tapped that.”
“Oh my God.” Bella could only cover her face as Lulu, Misha and Tina exchanged high fives and bumped fists, clenching her eyes tightly when Rachel and Leah and Kim slid off their log and howled—ha ha—with laughter. A peek showed her that the pack was also laughing their asses off, although only a trickle of their laughter reached where they sat. She saw that Jacob was also laughing and could only wince when he covertly winked at her.
“We didn’t, okay. There was no...tapping or whatever.” Her desperate denial made the Quileute girls snicker, while The Three from Hell—she was going to call them that from now on—merely looked at her for a beat before returning their attention to the guys.
“Hmm...how much do you think Jacob bench presses?”
“I don’t know.” Misha made a show of thinking the question over before sending a sly sidelong glance at Bella.
“Bella, how much do you weigh?”
Snorts of laughter spread around the bonfire.
“I am not even going to dignify that with an answer.”
When they shrugged, Bella thought that the discussion was over and blew out a relieved breath.
She should’ve known better.
“If you haven’t, you should.”
“Oh my God.” She dropped her head in defeat at Misha’s voice.
“I’m serious. It’ll help.”
“With what?”
“With all the unresolved sexual tension.” Tina answered blithely, before narrowing her eyes to slits. “At least it’ll help us.”
“What do you have to do with it?” Bella snarked. Really, it was too much.
Misha rolled her eyes. “Oh, Bella. Sometimes, it’s hard to think that you’re actually older than me. Of course it’ll help us.”
She should stop this, she really should, but she couldn’t help it. Her temper was bubbling over and she couldn’t help but challenge. “How so?”
Misha passed the baton to Tina, who was only too glad to take it. “Bella, every time you guys are together, you practically sizzle, and it’s leaking to all of us. It’s like a freaking hot zone whenever you two are together in one place. Just looking at you guys looking at each other makes me hot.”
Bella blinked at the rising frustration on Tina’s face and at Leah’s muttered ‘hallelujah’.
“You know what happened yesterday?” Tina demanded, her tapered fingers slashing the air between them.
“Uh, no.”
“I made out with Brian. That’s what happened. And it’s all your fault.”
Surprised, tickled (Lulu and Misha were laughing their asses off) but also baffled, Bella stared at the girl.
“Why is it my fault?”
“Because!” She huffed out a breath. “It was after Jacob dropped in two days ago and we had a late dinner at your place and then you guys washed the dishes.”
Now Bella was just confused, especially when Lulu and Misha had a ‘oh yeah’ look on their faces. She waited for an explanation, but none came, so she asked the question that she would never have thought to ask to anybody.
“Watching us wash dishes make you hot?”
“I think you should get her far, far away from kitchen detail.” Rachel grinned and munched on a cream puff. Leah snorted. Kim giggled.
Tina spared them an exasperated glance before focusing back on Bella. “It wasn’t the washing the dishes part. It was how you were that night. You were all over each other.”
Righteous indignation speared through the embarrassment.
“We were not.”
“Not physically but…but…” Tina’s hand fluttered in front of her. “You guys kept bumping against each other; your shoulders, your hands, every time you moved, Jacob was there. Every time he needed something, you already reached for it. When you’re out of the room, he squirmed in his seat then left of to find you, and when you met in the middle of the room, you guys do the sidestepping thing. He watched you when you weren’t watching, you watched him when he wasn’t watching. And then… and then…” Tina paused to catch a breath and pointed an accusatory finger at Bella. “You guys washed the dishes.”
She blurted the last sentence with the kind of tone that some people would use to say ‘mind-numbing-sheets-burning-going-on-for-days-hot-and-sweaty-animal sex’, which of course, made Bella even more confused. She of all people would know if there was any kind of sex involved.
Bella also knew, without even looking, that Tina’s long, rambling speech had caught the full attention of anybody within hearing range, including the werewolves within the crowd. She could feel their eyes on her and it raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.
But as she remembered the night in question, she—sort of—began to understand what Tina meant, but there was no way she’d admit that. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”
Tina let out an aggravated sound and pulled at her hair.
“You guys stood there, over the sink, shoulder to shoulder, in your own private little world. You guys didn’t even talk to each other, instead, you guys just sort of...burn. In place.”
The snicker in Bella’s face trembled but held. “Burn in place?”
Tina glared at her. “You know what I’m talking about.”
If she was honest, she actually did.
She remembered that it was really hard to maintain a straight face as they stood in the room where Jacob did a number on her senses only a weekend ago. Not to mention with him being so close that she could feel the heat of his skin reaching out to hers, warming her from the outside, while the silent movement of his hands against the plates and the water made her remember how they had felt upon her skin, warming her from the inside.
She remembered the jump of her pulse every time his fingers grazed hers when she passed him something to rinse, her body on autopilot, her senses painfully in tune with the man standing beside her. She remembered how she could barely concentrate when he stretched and ducked to put everything in their place, the warmth that twisted her heart when she realized he actually did it exactly the way she liked it, that he remembered how.
And the sheer embarrassment and vicious vexation she felt when she saw that Jacob was as relaxed as she was frazzled.
“After watching you guys dance all over each other, I was just...Brian was there...and we looked at each other and just pounced. Oh God, it’s so embarrassing.”
Bella was glad that someone other than her felt some sort of embarrassment, so she latched on to the humor and grinned at Tina, who lifted her dark beady eyes and skewered her with a look which only made the others laugh even more.
She winced when Tina opened her mouth and cut her off.
“Why are you guys here anyway? Who’s guarding the store if you guys followed me here?”
Lulu rolled her eyes. “Oh, now she asks.” The older woman shrugged. “It’s about time the second shift spread their wings. You have to relinquish control some time, especially with the summer crowd coming in. Might as well be now.”
Bella frowned. “Then who’s manning the oven?”
“My most brilliant apprentice of course.”
“Misha’s here.”
Misha preened at the unintentional praise.
Lulu clucked her tongue. “No. No. Misha is my prettiest yet also brilliant apprentice.”
Tina smirked at Bella baffled expression. “You totally forgot Damien’s return date, huh?”
“Damien’s back?”
“Hm, what do you think?” Lulu slid a sly glance to Tina and Misha, who grinned unabashedly. “Will Dami be more upset that she forgot his return date or that he’s suddenly replaced in Bella’s affections?”
Bella stiffened in her seat and struggled not to wince, especially when, from the edge of her eye, she saw the wolves turn to look at her, except for one particular exception, which worried her even more. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
Misha pursed her lips. “How do you think Dami will react when he meets Jacob?”
Tina pressed a finger on her chin while Lulu smirk. “I don’t care as long as I have a front-row seat.”
“Dami is a friend.”
“So is Jacob.” Tina pointed out.
“It’s nothing like that.”
“With Jacob or with Dami?”
Bella gritted her teeth, than dug her butt on the ground.
“Whatever. You guys are going to believe what you want to believe anyway.”
“Although, you know, Dami could also be described as my prettiest and most brilliant apprentice.” Lulu absently commented, which made Tina and Misha laugh.
Rachel raised an eyebrow. “The guy’s pretty?”
“Oh my, child. Pretty as a flower. Thick dark curly locks, deep green eyes with gold flecks. Tall and long and lean and has the prettiest smile, complete with dimples. It melts the heart, it does.”
“And melts the panties off a girl just as easily.” Misha chimed in, making Rachel cackle.
“You do have the most interesting people around you, Swan.” Rachel commented.
“Including you?” Bella sulked.
“Naturally.”
“He does sound pretty.” Leah’s lips pursed. “Too pretty.”
“Oh no.” Lulu batted her eyelashes. “Believe me, Dami can be a complete devil if he wants to.”
Leah sniffed and struggled, but the urge to defend her Alpha and his territory was too strong. She was disgusted with herself, but couldn’t help herself when she proclaimed with a smirk, “Bet Jacob could take him.”
The Three grinned and Bella stared at her.
She raised a challenging eyebrow. “He could.”
“And with that, we’re off.” Lulu picked up her thermos and thrust the empty boxes and paper cups into a plastic bag.
All of them jolted in place when a deep voice greeted Lulu’s announcement. “You’re leaving?”
Bella stifled a grimace when Jacob stepped close and stood in front of her. She passed him a towel, which he used to dry his face and hair.
“Yeah, we have a shift change.” Tina grinned brightly at him when he nodded.
Bella ran her fingers in her hair when Jacob’s dark eyes swept her face. “I’m catching a ride with them.”
“It’s early.”
“I promised Charlie dinner.” She tried a casual shrug. “I only see him once a week now, might as well cook for him, too.”
Jacob picked up his T-shirt from the pile of multi-colored T-shirts that Leah, Kim and Rachel had brought from the cliffs and shrugged into it. “I’ll take you.”
Bella tried very hard to ignore the wiggle of eyebrows and the grins on her friends’ faces. “Jake—”
“They have to double back if they drive you. I’ll take you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.” He caught the keys that Rachel threw at him. “We’ll drive to my house first so I can change.”
“Did you hear that, Bella?” Tina nudged her and muttered under her breath. “He wants to.”
For the first time in her life, violence felt like a pretty good idea.
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