As soon as she let go and moved away, my body felt numb and cold, and the incredible sensation of tingles left my body.
All I want is for her to be back in my arms and her scent all around me.
“What do you want to do then?” She asks, blinking up at me shyly.
This girl will be the death of me... one minute, she’s all angry and annoyed. Then the next minute, she’s all blushing and shy. I stop suddenly before moving forward to grab her hand. I hadn’t realized she was only wearing the grey shirt.
‘Because she ran here stupid,’ Jace grumbles.
‘Nice of you to join,’ I grumble back.
‘Don’t give me attitude. You're lucky it wasn’t worse; I had to calm Kia down a lot, and half the time, I couldn’t get to her because she blocked me,’ Jace mumbles.
'She almost rejected me,' I reply, protesting.
'Yes, thank goodness you knew to kiss her, or we would be mateless, and our pack wouldn't have a Luna."
I block Jace as he continues his rant and takes in her figure while she's waiting for my answer.
The grey shirt just covers her thigh, her hair is messy and windblown from her run here.
I breathe in deeply. I know I can't do anything until she's ready but, fuck, she's making it hard not to take her right here, right now. At least before, I had a little bit more self-control. There’s a fine line that I'm willing to cross for some hot make-up sex.
"Come on, I'll show you around," I say, grabbing her hand and leading her back towards the house before I do anything I would regret later.
"Do we have to call the school to let them know I left?" she wonders.
I choke back a laugh at her confused frown.
"I guess you've never played hooky before?" I said, still trying to hold my laughter in.
She shakes her head 'no.'
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Danni will text or link me if anything is wrong; I'm sure Oliver will also try to link you if something happens."
She sighs and nods in response, "Yes, I suppose Ollie or Brent will try to link me if something was wrong."
I toss her a grin making her blush red again; it's starting to be one of my favourite colors on her.
I lead her towards the back door of the house. As we enter the kitchen, off to the left, and through a door leading into the dining room.
"This is the dining room I mentioned the other day," I tell her as she moves further into the room, letting go of my hand.
It’s a small room with an old chandelier hanging over the dark wooden table. The table is round with six chairs fitted nice and snug. The creamy flower wallpaper has slowly started to peel, showing the old original off-white colour that was the same as the lounge room and kitchen. With the dark navy curtains draped over the windows, you could see a few bits of dust that had settled over the years of neglectful cleaning. The fireplace was old and run down, and some of the steel in the bottom pit had rusted; I don't think we would be able to use it until it was cleaned up, at least.
"It's cute, I don't mind the wallpaper, but we will probably have to pull it all down if we were to try and get someone to rent this place when I move to your pack. I doubt we would need to come here much later on," Ashleigh states.
I look at her, stunned and a bit taken aback by the statement.
"What's wrong?" she asks, tilting her head back towards me and studying my expression.
"Nothing. I'm glad you are still keeping an open mind about us being together and in my pack." I shrug.
"I'm sorry I tried to reject you before, I was just hurt and didn't understand," Ashleigh mumbles, looking down at her feet as though they were the most important thing in the room.
"It's okay, I understand why you wanted to, but now we are in the right direction," I assured her, grabbing her hand again and leading her back towards the kitchen. Right now, I know she isn’t ready for me to hold her or do much else, so I'll take what I can get, and at the moment, she seems willing enough to let me hold her hand.
We make our way towards the old staircase leading up to the bedrooms and bathroom. She hesitated for a second; it was so quick that I wouldn't have noticed if I weren't holding her hand.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Yeah, it's nothing."
'She's nervous about the bedroom,' Jace mumbles.
‘Oh.’ I knew he had finished his rant because I was receiving death glares while he was curled up in the corner, so I let the block down again, only to be hit with his feelings of annoyance and frustration.
"I just wanted to show you the upstairs and bathroom if you ever needed it," I explain carefully, trying not to scare her.
"Yeah, that's okay."
I grip her hand tighter and tug her up the staircase. She carefully walks behind me. I could feel her uncertainty.
As we reached the top, she lets go and moves forward to the middle of the medium-sized open lounge room that had an old yellow one-seat couch with a bookshelf against the wall next to the window.
Next to the bookshelf are two bedrooms with a bathroom to the right of the stairs.
"This is nice, a little dusty, but still will work perfectly," she smiles, looking around.
I nodded, agreeing with her, " It may need a little work but not too much; a vacuum and fresh paint should be ok, I'm not sure what the plumbing will be like, but it seems ok for now."
Ashleigh moves forward to the main bedroom, drawn to the little sun seat underneath the windows that looked out to the forest.
The two bedrooms are simple, both with a double bed and a closet The only difference is the main bedroom Is a bit bigger than the spare. It even has a bigger window with a seat.
She sits on the window seat, bringing her knees to her chest and cuddling herself again.
"Are you cold?" I don’t want to disturb her. She looked so peaceful and content, but at the same time, it was a bit cooler up here where there wasn't much sunlight shining through.
"Hmm, no, I’m okay. I just find it comfortable. This reminds me of my bedroom back home. I like the windows and how big they are. I enjoy sitting in my chair and reading or doing my homework."
I nod and move back out of the room towards the bookshelf. It was filled with old novels, history books about my mother’s old pack, and photo albums.
One of the larger photo albums catches my attention. I reach for it as it says "Blackwood Family" in gold writing on the spine. Since this was my grandmother's place, I wondered if there would be any photos or homemade videos of the time she had here, or maybe some photos of my mother.
My hands are clammy, and my breathing hitched as the nerves kicked in. I want to know more about my mother. Maybe this is a good start, and with my mate here, we can go through this together.
Grabbing the book on the front, it also had "Blackwood Family" printed in gold writing with our family crest engraved on the bottom. Yep, this was one of ours.
"I found this," I mumble as I walk back into the room where she was still sits peacefully.
"What is it?" she asks, curiosity drawn to the dark book in my hands.
"An old family photo album, I think. Not sure this is the first time I have seen it,"
Ashleigh slides off the window seat, walking toward me, "Do you want to go through it together?"
She must feel my nerves. She puts her hand on my arm, gently looking up at me … concern and encouragement shining through her eyes.
"Sure," I mumble.
I walk back to sit on the window seat with my mind in a jumbled mess. I lean my back against the wall and bring my leg up, so I'm facing sideways. I look up at Ashleigh as she walks over slowly. I can see Kia trying to come through with the silver rims of her eyes flashing every so often.
Ah fuck, I've just taken her spot. I go to leave and give her space again, but Jace interrupts my movements.
'Give her a moment to decide, see what happens. She might be drawn to sit with us.'
She sits down, moves close to me, and leans her back against my chest. Her ass just misses my crotch as she snuggles against me, tilting her head underneath my chin.
I suck in a quick breath, not expecting this from her. Sparks fly through my body on the contact. I craved this feeling ever since I let her go an hour ago.
I put the photo album on her lap as we read it together. As expected, many of them were of my mother and me when I was younger; I flick through a few more pages just toward the end one of them caught Ashleigh's eye.
"Wait, can you go back one," she requests.
"Hmm," I grumble, not trusting myself with words right now. I'm barely holding on as it is. All I want to do right now is fuck and kiss her senseless.
"I think I just saw one of my mum."
Frowning, I flick back to the page she saw, "Why is my mum in one of these photos with yours?" she asks.
"Your guess is as good as mine, sweetheart."
I could feel Ashleigh starting to panic as she flicked through a few more pages. "Why are there photos of us when we were kids? It looks like it was all taken here in this house or the back garden. We look to be about 3 or 4 years old here."
"Hey, it's okay. We will figure this out." I try to calm her down as she flicks through the book. "Would it be such a bad thing if she knew?" I ask.
Her eyes snap to mine at the question. "Um, no, but I'm just nervous because I haven't said anything to anyone, and this morning she freaked out about something, and now it makes sense because she recognized the hairpiece."
Ashleigh reached out to the photo and pulled it out of the plastic sleeve. On the back, it had written 'Kyle and Ashleigh Steward, Mollie and Zander Blackwood. The year 2007.'
"We were four years old," she mumbles, "if this was taken in 2007, we were four, and that means mum knows I'm your mate because she knew the meaning of the hairpiece."