Jasper
My leg was killing me and my face was a grimace of frustration, but I tried my damnedest to hide it when I saw Helena working hard on the walls.
She caught it anyway. “Jasper? You okay?” Her boots thumped down the ladder rungs.
“It’s nothing.” I shook my head. “I’m just pissed off. I was so useless in that fight. Jake’s worried about me, wanting to take it easy, and I don’t have the time or the interest in taking it easy.”
“He has a point,” she said. “You don’t want to hinder the healing process. Have you been sleeping with a poultice? Taking a bone tonic?”
“Yeah. It just takes time. That fucking guy snapped my leg in half, if you remember.”
“I definitely…remember.” She bit her lip. “I could never forget.”
“I don’t want you to feel bad about it,” I said, feeling I’d sent her down the wrong track. “You defended us. We don’t forget that sort of thing. And you saved me today, too. I’m just annoyed that I need any saving.”
“You helped me with my broken ankle before,” she said. “So…we’re even, that’s all.”
She was looking up at me with troubled eyes, like she had something on her mind. Her cheeks were flushed, her shirt sticking to her skin with the sweat of her labors. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, blonde strands flying everywhere and specks of dust and paint sticking to her arms and cheeks.
I’d never seen anyone so beautiful as this girl. She wasn’t as magazine perfect as many witches, and I knew why—she never used any illusion to make herself look more perfect. To me, that just made her more perfect. More real.
“Is this job starting to get to you?” I asked.
“Get to me? What? Why would it?”
“Well…” I put my hands in my pockets, although what I really wanted to do was slip my arms around her, feel her warmth, lick the sweat and grime right off her like the beast I was. “I don’t know what we’re doing, exactly, but to me and Jake, this is personal. Werewolves have been treated badly forever. If I have a chance to take back our power, it’s hard to resist, even if there’s danger involved. Like, my parents would still be proud of us if they found out we were killed trying to destroy the Ethereal council. I actually wrote them a letter and I gave it to a good friend back home, said to only send it to them if something happened to us.”
“Oh…really? He didn’t think that was a strange thing for you to do when you’re supposed to just be contractors?”
“Hel, we know there is always danger for wolves in this world. Wizards have a habit of blaming us for stuff we didn’t do and killing us for things we don’t deserve. And we’re buying their houses. They don’t always like that, so the job isn’t always safe.”
“Oh. I see…”
I could see this task was starting to eat at her. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but the rest of us understood the core of it better. A wealthy girl like Hel was just thinking about her own escape at first, her own problems. But the fact that she was still here showed that she wasn’t just working for her own pride, her own life. “I guess I knew that,” she said. “But somehow I never quite thought about it either.”
“It’s fine. I’m just glad you’re here now. How about we reward you when you’re done painting this wall?”
“Reward me?” She laughed. “Okay.”
“After all, the houses aren’t the prize to me,” I said, getting close enough to her that I could smell every distinct layer of scent on her body. “And neither is Pandora’s Box. There’s one reason Jake and I drove all the way to Louisiana.”
She looked at me, her weariness not enough to hide her desire. Her pheromones teased at my wolfish nose and made me want to take her right then and there.
At least that full lower lip was worth claiming. I kissed her.
“But I’m so dirty!” She tried to protest and was ignored.
I ran my tongue along that lip before slipping it into her mouth, tasting her deeply. Her breath hitched and then steadied. This was our second kiss and her surprise was short-lived. She knew my kisses were worth having.
“Jasper…”
“I’m up two over Jake now,” I said. “I’ll have to tell him. He’s going to want to catch up.”
She was wide-eyed for a moment, touching her lips. She was one of the most competent women I’d ever met but it was also just too easy to bring out her adorable naïveté. “Am I really this exciting?”
“Get used to it,” I said.