Bella MacLeod's Twilight Fanfiction

Intensity

By Mama4Dukes

Chapter 12:

Jacob’s POV

Guilt. Lust. Guilt. Anger. Guilt. Envy. Guilt. Love. Guilt. These were the emotions I was feeling as I sat in my sister’s house thinking about everything that went on this weekend. I felt guilty for still feeling lust towards Bella. I felt guilty for being angry with Bella for loving Paul. I felt guilty for being envious of Paul for all that he’s achieved. I felt guilty for still being in love with Bella after all these years. And I felt guilty for feeling all of these emotions when I was the only one at fault.

Bella deserved happiness. She truly did, and she got her happiness with Paul. I just wished I was in his place. It’s not that I didn’t love Angela because I do; she’s the mother of my children, after all. But Bella has always held a place in my heart and always would. Sadly, she was never meant for me. She was always meant for Paul, and Angela was destined for me.

Angela. My imprint-the one that Taha Aki blessed me with. She put up with so much crap from me in our fourteen years together. I know that the beginning was particularly tough for her because I found it difficult to break off my relationship with Bella. I couldn’t see just Angela like the others in the pack saw their imprints. I was like Sam was with Emily. The wolf and the man were warring with each other. The wolf wanted Angela, the man wanted Bella. So the wolf mated with Angela while the man dated Bella. The worst part about it is, the wolf won when Angela became pregnant. And I knew then that I had to let Bella go. I was planning on breaking up with her after the prom, but my worst nightmare happened when Bella caught Angela and me having sex in my room.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. “How could you?” Bella asked. “Both of you? I thought you were my friend, Angela? And Jake… how… why?”

“ Jake imprinted on me,” Angela told her.

“ Then why didn’t you tell me? Why? I would have understood.” Bella was hysterical.

And because my life decided to go to hell in a hand-basket that day, my father wheeled into the room at that moment. When I tried to go to Bella, he grabbed her and pulled her sobbing form onto his lap. “Get the hell out of here! Both of you!” he yelled while he attempted to calm down a crying Bella.

Angela and I got dressed quickly and ran out of the house. I drove her home and that’s when she asked if I’d take her to the prom. Since I had already rented a tux, and Bella was obviously not going, I agreed. Because I was a coward and didn’t want to face my father, I snuck into Angela’s room that night and stayed there.

The next day, we went to the rental shop to pick up my tux, and we showed up at the prom together. What neither of us were expecting was for Bella to show up with her head held up high. Every single kid at the senior prom shunned us. They chose to make sure Bella had a good time. Even Lauren Mallory-the whore of Forks, shook her head disapprovingly at us and was kind to Bella at the prom. Angela was visibly upset. She just wanted to have a good time and show me off to her friends, but her friends had all turned their backs on her.

After the prom, I stayed overnight at her place, but in the morning, it was time for me to patrol. I met the pack at the rendezvous point in human form so we could have our meeting. I was met with a fist to my jaw from Paul Lahote.

“ I don’t like the leech lover, but she didn’t deserve the shit you and your bitch imprint just pulled!” he yelled. “You’re worse than the leech that abandoned her!”

“ You should have told her!” Jared yelled. “Why didn’t you tell her? We told you to tell her about the imprint immediately. Why string her along?”

That’s when I saw that I was completely surrounded by the pack. Brady and Collin weren’t there because they were ordered to stay at home, but everyone else was there and they were there for a reason. They were there to kick the shit out of me and they did. I took the worst beating from Paul and Sam.

Paul had a conscience. He hated Bella back then, but said he would never hurt a girl the way that I did no matter who she was. And Sam? He genuinely liked Bella and so did Emily. He made sure that I felt pain, lots of it because I made Bella and Emily both cry, and he didn’t like it one bit when they cried. But that wasn’t even the worst of it; Embry and Quil turned their backs on me that day. They told me they couldn’t be friends with a selfish brat like me. It was absolutely horrific. Those two really liked Bella and they couldn’t find it in their hearts to forgive Angela or me.

It was a few days after the prom when Paul, of all people, finally caught up with the redheaded leech who was after Bella. For some reason, he had been hell-bent and obsessed with destroying her. His wish came true when she came onto our lands one day while he was heading back from patrol. He was downwind and she didn’t detect his presence. Paul shredded her apart into tiny bits and pieces. He took out every bit of aggression that he had on her, then he turned her into ash. It pissed me off. I wanted to be the one to take out Victoria for Bella’s sake. Maybe then she’d talk to me.

Angela’s high school graduation day was the absolute worst for me. I was surprised that my father, Sam, Emily, Embry, Quil, and my sister Rachel-his new imprint, had shown up with flowers and gifts. We thought that they were there to make amends so Angela approached them happily. It turned out they were there for Bella. Even if she avoided the pack like the plague, they were there to send a message to her that she was still their friend. Charlie Swan took everyone out to a nice dinner that afternoon. Bella left the area for good that evening. She was gone forever and the man, Jacob Black, had his heart shattered forever and her best friend, Emily, cried. She cried for a week straight and Sam made it a point to show me the reason for his imprint’s sorrow and how much he blamed me for her state.

Charlie Swan started dating Sue Clearwater. He inadvertently found out about the pack when Collin got into an argument with Seth and they both phased while Charlie was washing Sue’s car in the back. He demanded an explanation and as soon as he found out what really went down between Bella, Angela, and me; he became enraged and stopped talking to both Angela and me. He finally understood why Bella had written off La Push and the pack. Her heart was too broken to see or speak with any of us. So, he made it a point to visit her in Jacksonville twice a year. He invited her to his wedding to Sue, but she declined the invitation and didn’t bother with meeting Sue. She was too close to the situation in La Push. Out of respect for Bella, he didn’t discuss her, even to my father who cared about her more than for Angela.

Years went by. I took over the position of alpha at Angela’s insistence, even if we had stopped phasing. I had one loyal friend, my cousin, Collin Littlesea. I made him my beta. He and I opened up our own shop and started making decent money. We were proud of ourselves. I was so concerned about Angela, our kids, and myself that I didn’t even think to look into the lives of my fellow pack members. Paul had left the reservation for college. He was supposed to return to the reservation after he graduated, but never did. I didn’t know where he was living or what he had been up to. I wasn’t too concerned though. If worse came to worse, I’d be able to give him an alpha order to return.

Years went by, and then in January, we ran into a happy Paul and Bella at Disneyland. My mind started racing with possibilities as to how they could have hooked up. I knew that only one thing would force those two together-imprinting. My suspicions were confirmed when Paul stood in front of her protectively after I growled at Bella for insulting Angela.

I became angry. Paul had taken the girl who Jacob Black, the man, wanted. It simply wasn’t fair. When we returned to the motel, Angela called Tony Fuller immediately. She suspected Paul had imprinted on Bella and didn’t think it was right that the tribe wasn’t informed. She also thought it unjust that Bella hadn’t been subjected to any sort of formal imprinting ceremony like everyone else. And everything went downhill from there to lead us to where we are today.

I couldn’t blame the pack for hightailing it out of La Push. After Bella spelled it out for me, I understood where they were coming from. I felt bad for the kids, especially. They shouldn’t have had to go through life impoverished, and I realized that I had failed miserably as alpha. Now, I know why I was never meant to be alpha.

Angela returned to La Push angry that I was no longer alpha. She accepted Paul’s new position as alpha because she had no choice but to do so. She wanted to sue Bella for punching her, but I reminded her that if she hadn’t hit Kim, Bella wouldn’t have stepped in. After that, she wanted to sue Paul for the injuries that I received. I had to remind her that his friends and he were only operating under pack rules of keeping imprints safe and that no one attacked her. I told her Brady was correct when he said, by all rights, I should be dead and buried underground.

Then the two of us talked and she let her true feelings be known to me. She asked me why I couldn’t shake Bella out of my system. I told her that Bella was out of my system, but I just felt incredibly guilty for the way I treated her. I told her that I was selfish in high school and that I should have ended my relationship with Bella before jumping into the sack with Angela. I just couldn’t tell her how incredibly jealous I was of Paul. I accepted it, of course, because I had no choice. I decided to make it a point to at least be Bella’s friend while I was staying at their house, but Paul didn’t want me anywhere near Bella. I was sent to my sister’s house on the pretense that it would be more convenient for Dr. Kayani to keep an eye on me. I couldn’t blame him, though; if the roles were reversed, I would have done the exact same thing.

Angela and I talked through the night about the feelings that she admitted to me during her rant. I told her that if she wanted to go to college, I would support her. That seemed to make her happy. I showered her with affection until she had to leave and reminded her that she wasn’t to mention any of this to Tony Fuller or Old Quil. She agreed that it was an alpha order and that she would abide by Paul’s warning. The one good thing about Angela was that she trusted in the sanctity of the pack. In the afternoon, Angela left happily after she found out that I would be staying at Rachel’s house. She was even happier that Bella stayed away. Paul told us that Bella was at a friend’s house until we both left because she didn’t want Angela to feel uncomfortable. Angela actually asked Paul to thank Bella for being graceful to which Paul replied with a shrug of his shoulders. I could tell he wanted to throttle my imprint. My sister drove Angela, Leah, and Seth to the airport while Paul drove me to Rachel’s and this is where I was today.

It was Tuesday morning and I was bored stiff. Quil and Rachel both worked and their kids went to school. Yesterday, I tried calling Bella, but she told me she’d get fired from her job if I kept calling her. I decided to text message her instead, but she replied by saying that she was really busy and that she wouldn’t be able to reply back to me. I told her that it was okay. I just wanted someone to talk to. I watched TV and kept her abreast of all of the shows. I figured it was a non-threatening way to restart our friendship.

Paul’s POV

I returned home from work and Bella had a frustrated expression on her face.

“Did Jake text you all day again?”

“Yes! Oh my God, Paul. Read these! I didn’t even know that half of these shows were on TV. What the hell is his problem?”

I ran through the text messages and he had sent her a play by play of some TV shows that he had been watching. What the hell is Glee?

“I imagine he’s bored and wants to restart his friendship with you.”

“Shouldn’t he be texting Angela?”

“Well, would you text message her?”

“You have a point there.”

“Bella?” I noticed her left hand was wrapped in a bandage. “What the hell happened to your hand?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you over dinner after we figure out where we’re eating. And when the hell am I going to have a living room and kitchen again?”

“Embry is coming to the appliance store with us tonight. Supposedly there’s some sort of indoor grill that he wants us to install.”

“Paul, this is my kitchen with the exception of your coffee bar.”

“I told him that. He swears you’ll fall in love with it.”

“Fine, let’s go and take a look. I stopped by at the flooring store and picked up some samples. I left them on our lone, surviving end table. Tell me which one you like?” I looked through the samples and held up the Brazilian koa wood flooring. “That’s the one I like. I thought that the Hawaiian koa wood was too dark. It’s pricey, though.”

“Don’t worry, I can get an industry discount. I think it would look seamless if we redid the flooring from the living room through the kitchen.”

“I was going to talk to you about that. Um, what if we did the whole house in Brazilian koa wood? I mean, upstairs and downstairs? I’m not a huge fan of carpeting. And… I might have damaged the carpeting in our room.”

“How?”

“It’s possible I was trying to unjam the closet door and sliced the carpet with a kitchen knife.”

“I don’t even want to know what the hell you were doing trying to repair the closet door with a kitchen knife. Scratch that, tell me.” My wife had absolutely no common sense when it came to repairs. Wait a second! There was nothing wrong with our closet door this morning!

I walked upstairs with Bella and she proceeded to tell me how she was sorting through our clothes and one of my belt buckles got caught inside a hanger and somehow managed to get jammed between the closet door and the carpet joiner. She tried to get it loose, but it was jammed in there so she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and tried to extract it out and wound up slicing through the belt, the carpet, and her hand.

“Geez, Bella, couldn’t you just wait for me to get home?”

“Probably.”

“Well, is your hand okay?”

“It is now. I went to Randy’s office and he stitched it up for me.”

She showed me her hand and the damage to the carpet. Not only was it sliced, it was covered in drops of blood too. I assessed the situation.

“Bella! All you had to do was unhook the hanger from the door handle of the closet.”

“I knew I should have just waited for you to come home.”

“Yeah, you should have,” I laughed. She could be a complete and utter ditz sometimes. “Well, come on, klutzy. Let’s go and meet Embry at the appliance store. Oh, and I’m paying Brady, Jared, Sam, and Manny to do the renovation. They could use the extra income and we know they’re trustworthy.”

“Good idea. How long do you think the renovations will take?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“I swear, I’m going to beat the crap out of Jacob Black for phasing in my house.”

“That’s exactly how I feel. Anyway, I have a couple of design plans with me from my architect friend so we’ll go through them together. We might as well change up the design a bit, there are a couple of bits I didn’t like.”

“Sounds good. I need more storage space in the kitchen, and what do you think of a more open floor plan?” Bella grimaced in pain, “Ooh, my hand hurts.”

“Next time wait for me.” I picked up her bandaged hand and kissed it. “What the heck were you doing with the clothes anyway?”

“Oh, I was going to go through everything to see what we need to keep and what we need to donate. I’ll do it tomorrow. Randy told me to take the day off because he swears the pain will be worse then. He had to give me twelve stitches. I tried to do it myself, but I couldn’t quite keep the needle straight so I drove to his office and had him do it. Do you know he had the nerve to keep laughing while he stitched me up?”

“I don’t blame him.” I chuckled. “How ridiculous can you be, Bells? You sliced your hand with a kitchen knife along with the carpet and my belt, and then you tried to stitch yourself up with one hand? You should have called me so I could have driven you to Randy’s office instead of doing everything yourself.”

“Well, excuse me. I thought you’d be busy.”

“I’m never too busy for you, baby.” I kissed her on the lips and the two of us descended the stairs to go and meet Embry.

Two hours later, we were sitting at our favorite Italian restaurant with Embry and Jess. Jess was still in a foul mood about Angela and Jacob.

“You know what irks me is that she thinks you’re to blame for everything, Bella. I still remember when Angela and Jake showed up to our senior prom. Do you realize that she went around announcing that Jacob was the love of her life and the father of her child to everyone? I think she was hoping we’d all congratulate her and fawn all over her or something, but the thing is, we all knew Jake had been picking you up from school everyday until two days before the prom, and we realized what a prick he was and a slut she was. We all felt sorry for you that night, Bella. And we were so proud of you for holding your head up high and showing up to the prom solo.”

“Aww, thanks, Jess, but that was a long time ago. You didn’t even like me back then. Actually, come to think of it, Paul detested me. Embry has always liked me though.”

“That’s right, I did. And for your information, I think Paul was actually terrified of you back then because you put his ass in his place when you slapped him across the face.”

“I was never afraid of you. I was in awe of you. Oh, and by the way, I got the first punch in after Jacob showed his face in La Push again,” I informed my wife.

“Aw, that’s sweet, honey. You were defending my honor.”

“Oh, yeah. We all did.”

“I feel honored,” Bella chuckled.

“You know, Paul, I’m worried about Angela being in La Push for a week by herself,” Jess mentioned.

“Yeah, so am I,” Bella agreed. “It’s not normal to hold a grudge for so long.”

“She won’t go against Jake,” I assured. “She’s desperate to hold onto him. On top of that, Seth and Leah will be watching her like hawks and so will their imprints. Leah will be hanging out at mom and dad’s during the day, and then Seth will take over afterwards. She won’t have a moment when she isn’t being watched.”

“Hey, Bella, maybe you should call her up and give her an alpha’s imprint’s order,” Embry joked.

“Yeah, maybe I should.” Bella wagged her eyebrows at us before donning her most intimidating expression, which didn’t look intimidating at all.

We went home after dinner to discuss the kitchens we perused at the appliance store. Bella hated all of them. Okay, that was quick so we were back to square one again. We decided to pick up a couple of inexpensive sofas so that we could at least kick back in the living room and relax. Miraculously, our TV had survived. We figured we could give the sofas to Kim and Jared who were using a beat up set that they brought from La Push. Fortunately, our dining table survived the attack so we had a place to eat. Our refrigerator and stove were both decimated and our kitchen island was practically non-existent, but we had the fridge in the garage and the one outside we could use.

The next day, Bella’s hand was throbbing like Randy had predicted so she did, indeed, have to take the day off from work. I found myself in Scottsdale around lunchtime and stopped in at my favorite Mexican restaurant for a bite to eat when I ran into Randy and Jeff.

“Paul, come and join us,” Randy invited me kindly.

“Thanks, guys,” I said as I seated myself at their table.

“We must all be thinking on the same wavelength. I just ran into Jeff, here, a minute before you walked in.”

“They have some really good grub here.”

After the three of us placed our orders, Randy asked, “How’s Bella’s hand?”

“She was groaning in pain this morning.”

“What happened to her hand?” a confused Jeff asked so I explained to him what she did.

“And the sad part is all she had to do was unhook the hanger from the door handle, and the belt would have just slid out,” I concluded.

“Do you realize she showed up at my office, still in her scrubs with a surgical needle and suture thread sticking out of her hand? She casually walked up to me while I was talking to one of my nurses and asked, ‘Randy, can you fix this?’ She tries to take too much upon herself.”

“Yeah, I know. And she can’t fix anything so she shouldn’t bother trying.”

“Sounds like you, Randy,” Jeff chuckled then turned to me. “He was attempting a minor roof repair last year and the whole thing caved in, taking him with it. Thank God he’s a shifter or he could have died.”

“What the hell were you trying to do to your roof?” I asked.

“I was trying to repair a couple of loose shingles and figured I should just adjust the rest.”

“Yeah, well, his little attempt to adjust the shingles ended up costing him over eighty grand because he ended up having to re-do Mina’s entire kitchen.”

“Why the hell didn’t you call, Manny? A couple of shingles wouldn’t have been a problem for him.”

“Erm… yeah, that’s what Mina said, too.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not the worst at home repairs. Jared told me that my father-in-law had the gutters on his house on the res held up with duct tape. He painted over it, too.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad.”

“Speaking of houses in La Push, Paul. I was looking through some of the files. Maintenance requests number over five thousand in the span of ten years and barely any have been taken care of,” Jeff informed me.

“What the hell?”

“There’s something fishy about the infrastructure. And here’s the thing, Fuller has his nose in almost every department. He’s the comptroller. I’m suspecting some serious foul play here-possibly embezzlement. I need to get into the snake’s personal finances, but in order to do so legally I have to produce massive amounts of evidence from the tribal government. I’ve got two people in my office dedicated to preparing it now, but we have paperwork spanning over ten years so it’s going to take time. I’m toying with the idea of shutting the government down again because I can’t just pull Fuller from his job, but that would put some innocent people out of work and I don’t want to do that if I can avoid it.”

“Geez, Jeff, every time I talk to you, you give me more bad news about the tribe.”

“Hey, I’m just telling you as I unearth the info. And now that we’re one pack, this crap has become personal for me.”

I was about to respond when my cell phone buzzed. It was Leah.

“What’s up, sweetheart?”

“ Who’s with you?”

“Um, Randy and Jeff. Why?”

“ Any chance you three can phase sometime within the next hour?”

I looked up at the two of them, and they nodded that they could. “Give us about a half an hour. We just got our food. Do you need anyone else to phase?”

“ No, just the three of you should be fine. You can relay the message to the rest of the pack. I’m going to have mom watch Izzy for me. See you in thirty.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think she found something?” Jeff asked, hopefully.

“Yeah, I do. Leah wouldn’t call us unless it was important. Let’s hurry up and eat so we can go and phase.”

The three of us scarfed down our food in five minutes flat. This was the plus side of being shapeshifters. We could eat at an inhuman speed if we needed to. And we absolutely needed to. We decided to head to Randy’s house since it was the closest and his backyard was completely walled off.

I sent a text message to Leah who said she was ready when we were. A minute later, all four of us were in each other’s minds.

“ What’s up, Leah?” I asked.

“ I got the book written by the shaman from Taha Aki’s time. They’re actually scrolls, but it looks like someone from the previous pack had them bound into a book. I actually stole it from the archives. I had to hide it underneath my shirt and I was engorged so I spilled some breast milk on it.”

Leah showed us the image of her sneaking the book out.

“ Leah, we know more about breastfeeding than any guy should know. Bear in mind that the three of us don’t have kids yet.”

“ Your wives will appreciate it when you eventually have children. Can I just say something? This is the first time that I’ve been phasing while nursing and I seem to produce three times the amount of breast milk than with my previous three kids. I mean, Izzy is ten months old and my milk is gushing out and it won’t stop either.”

“ I’ll look into the situation for you, Leah,” Randy said. “Your anatomy changes when you shift. It becomes closer to your animal form. It also might have something to do with your diet. Call me tomorrow night and we can discuss it, okay?”

“ Great, thank you. It sure is nice to have a doctor who is a shape shifter in our pack.”

“ Can we get back to business now? I have to go back to the office,” Jeff said.

“ Oh, right, sorry. I overheard Collin and Linda arguing.”

“ Who are Collin and Linda again?” Randy asked.

“ Collin was Jacob’s beta and Linda is his wife. Don’t worry, she doesn’t act all high and mighty like Angela does,” Leah explained. “Anyway, they were arguing last night in front of their house and she was complaining about Fuller and how he always orders Jake and Collin around. I was at mom’s house so I could hear them loud and clear.” She showed us the memory of the two of them arguing.

“ He leads the two of you around on a leash and you two pretty much nod your heads with your tongues hanging out and do his bidding. You might as well lick his asshole already! He’s creepy, Collin, and he’s using Jake and you both to do his dirty work, and you just can’t see it. You’re a wolf! You’re stronger than he is. The creep hasn’t done a thing for anyone in the pack or for us. You need to start thinking for yourself instead of kowtowing to this guy. Sure he’s an elder, but so are Sue, Josh, Old Quil, and Billy. And another thing! Why do we always have to go on vacations with Jake and Angela? Why can’t we ever do something on our own with just our family? I’m sick of Angela trying to order me around. Ugh!” Linda screamed in frustration.

“ Linda, Angela is our alpha’s imprint. You have to respect her.”

“ I don’t see why I have to when no one else respects the bitch. She thinks she’s the First Lady or something. I mean, come on, she went out and purchased a freaking Volvo, and Jake is going crazy trying to keep up with the payments while saving for college for the kids. Why the hell does she need a Volvo in La Push?”

“ I won’t hear you lambasting the alpha’s imprint. Taha Aki will probably rain hell down on us for even having this discussion.”

“ Um, Collin, I know you’re all into the archives and legends and stuff, but there’s nothing in there that states that the alpha’s imprint has to drive a Volvo! She’s supposed to be thinking about pack welfare. Emily used to cook and take care of the pack. When the hell has Angela ever done that? I don’t even think she’s ever cooked a thing in her life!”

“ Linda, you have to admit that the other imprints didn’t make it easier for her because of the situation with the leech lover.”

“ Isabella Swan Lahote is now a married imprint, and you need to respect her just like pack law states. Besides, by all accounts Jake and Angela were the ones who screwed her over! She went out of her way to help Leah deliver her baby when she didn’t have to. It seems to me that she’s a nice lady. And do you know what? I want to meet her!”

“ Well, you will once Jacob brings the pack back to La Push, but don’t get too close to her. It’ll hurt our alpha and his imprint’s feelings.”

“ Get the hell over it, Collin! I’m through bowing down to them. Oh, and go and stay at your parents’ house tonight because there’s no way I’m letting you into our house until you man up and get your head out of Jake’s ass!”

Leah’s replay of the memory ended there. “So, that was it, there’s trouble in paradise with the Littleseas and it appears that Linda is the only one with her head screwed on tight. I’m going to work on Linda a bit and get her on my good side.”

“ How do you plan on doing that?”

“ I’m going to invite her to the Pampered Chef party at my house on Thursday night.”

“ You’re going to have a Pampered Chef party?” Jeff and Randy asked in shock, amazement, and utter bewilderment. I had no idea what the heck that was.

“ Yes, and your wives already know about it. They’re placing orders using my hostess number online for me.”

“ You never cease to amaze me, Leah,” Jeff said.

“ Yeah, I know, I’m a woman of many talents. I can claw apart a vampire, come home and nurse my baby, then put on a pretty dress and host a party for the housewives of Forks and La Push. By the way, Paul, your in-laws want you to come home for a visit over Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

“ I’ll see what I can do. Keep us informed about the whole situation with Linda, okay?”

“ I will and I’ve already expressed the book out to you today. You should receive it sometime tomorrow.”

“ Thanks, Leah.”

“ No problem. Randy, make sure you look into the whole breastfeeding thing for me. I feel like a milk fountain. It’s getting to be really uncomfortable.”

“ I’ll do it right away.”

“ Thank you.”

With that, we all phased back to our human forms and rushed back to our jobs. We agreed to discuss the situation later in the week after I received the book written by the shaman.

I returned to my office and a bored Bella was inside waiting for me. “What are you doing here? You should be at home resting.”

“I know that, but I got bored. I thought I’d start planning out this year’s holiday party.”

“Good idea. We’re using Mina and Penny’s catering company, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m glad you’re here. You can make yourself useful.”

“I can?”

“Yes,” I smirked, locking the door and pulling her into my arms for a kiss. She responded immediately. The sweet perfume of her arousal permeating the air made my cock as hard as diamonds. Speaking of diamonds, I should buy her some for Christmas. She’d look really pretty naked, with diamonds around her neck.

I flipped her skirt up, pulled her panties off, bent her over my desk and plunged my cock straight into her. My cock was so happy to be back in it’s familiar home. I’ve been itching to make love to her ever since the whole Jacob and Angela fiasco happened, but we’ve been either too busy or too tired to do so.

“Oh, Paul,” she moaned.

“Shh… baby… we’re in my office. You need to stay silent,” I whispered into her ear as I pounded into her pussy relentlessly with my hand clasped over her mouth. I moved one hand down to her clit and started stroking it. She was squirming beneath me while I quickened my movements. I know that she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. My secretary was sitting right outside my office.

Her walls were slick as my cock grazed against them. I continued to play with her clitoris, knowing that it drove her wild. She started meeting each of my thrusts by grinding herself onto my cock. Each time I hit her core, it sent me into a frenzy. I was absolutely insane with passion and lust for my wife. Sweat was pouring down our bodies. My shirt was drenched. I should have taken my tie off or at least loosened my collar before starting this. I didn’t care. Nothing beats a bit of afternoon nookie with the love of my life.

I pounded into my mate relentlessly. She bit down on my hand to avoid screaming out. She was close, oh so close, I knew her body so well. Two more thrusts and she was there; exploding all over me. I sunk my teeth into her neck and marked her to avoid screaming her name out load. She hissed at the pain and moaned in pleasure as my scent started infusing with hers. She collapsed onto the desk completely spent. I picked her up and carried her to the sofa in my office, holding her, kissing her, stroking her hair, and telling her how much I love her.

After a few minutes, I had to get back to work. I took my shirt off and handed it to Bella to take to the dry cleaners along with a couple of other work shirts that needed to go, and changed into a fresh one from my closet.

“Honey, I think the tie has to go too. You have enchilada sauce on it. Did you have Mexican for lunch?”

“Yeah, I did. I ran into Randy and Jeff there. We received a call from Leah midway through lunch and had to phase. I’ll tell you more about it later.”

“Okay. Well, what’s my budget for the employee Christmas party?”

“I don’t know. Talk to Lorna. Whatever it was last year is fine. Oh, and I want to include fifty dollar gift cards to Safeway with everyone’s paychecks the week before Thanksgiving again. It went over well last year. And don’t forget to help Lorna pick out the company Christmas card. I guess we have to be politically correct and put Happy Holidays on the damn thing.”

“I know, it totally stinks. How late are you working tonight?”

“I don’t know, it depends on how much work I can get done on my proposal to the senate finance committee. Go ahead and have dinner without me. Speaking of which, can you pick up a couple of new suits for me for the trip?”

“Yes, absolutely. Anything else?”

“Just a kiss from you and I should be able to get through the rest of the day.” She gave me a long, wet, searing kiss.

“Okay, I’m going to work with Lorna for a bit on the holiday stuff, and then I’m heading to Mina and Penny’s catering shop to talk to them. After that, I’ll grab your suits.”

“How’s your hand, baby?”

“It hurts, but, oh well, it was my fault. I’ll live.”

I kissed her on the lips again before she left to talk to Lorna. I hated to admit it, but I preferred having Bella at home helping me with all of the extra stuff, which came with running my own company. She’s been a trooper though. She’s come through each and every time I’ve asked her for help and she does a great job too. Lorna, my secretary, adored her. She hated Tina, but then again, Tina, treated Lorna as if she were dirt because of her job. And Tina was never concerned with the bottom line like Bella always is.

An hour after Bella left, I received a call from Tom Uley stating one of the cranes had broken down in the middle of a job. I grabbed my hard hat and headed to the site.

“We’ve been having a ton of trouble with this one, Paul. I don’t know why. The rest of them are fine. Sam is driving a new one in from his site, but I think we need to scrap this one or we’re going to be in trouble when the highway project starts. At least this is a simple skyscraper going up. I started here in July and it’s broken down three times already.”

“I agree with you. How is the construction coming? Do you need more guys?”

“I’ve got Jared working on inspecting the beams again. If you have time, it would be great if you could give me your okay so we could get started on the next step.”

“I can do that for you. Let’s get the broken down crane out of here then.”

“We can’t until the new one arrives, it’s still carrying a beam.”

I looked up and realized he was correct.

“Good point. I’ll go and inspect the beams. Radio me when Sam gets here with the other crane.”

I went to do a quick inspection of the beams, which were already up.

“You smell like Bella,” Jared was quick to point out.

“Keep your mind on the job, Cameron!”

“Yeah, you do the same. Did she visit you in the office?”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, she was bored since she’s being forced to stay at home because of her hand.”

“What happened to her hand?”

So, I told Jared about the belt and the hanger. “You’re kidding me? No, wait, this is Bella we’re talking about, there’s no way you’re joking. Okay, I think these beams are good. Tell me what you think?”

“Alright, do a quick walk around with me.”

Just as I finished with the walk around, Tom radioed me to inform me that Sam had arrived along with Brady with the crane from their site. Manny had driven in a cherry picker from his site. We would need to use both pieces of equipment in order to manually release the hold the broken crane had on the steel beam. I went out to meet them along with Jared.

“Hey, boss, nice new cologne. Smells like Eau de Bella.” Manny wagged his eyebrows at me.

“Man, I can’t wait until we phase next,” Brady commented. “I want to know what happened to get you reeking like her on a Wednesday afternoon.”

“Guys, we have an issue with the crane here,” I chastised. “Let’s keep our minds on the job.”

“It’s not an easy thing to do when you smell like pure Bella sex. You know she smells mouthwatering enough as it is. It’s very distracting. It makes me want to go home and make love to Emily. It smells like she’s right here.”

“Alright, I admit it. I got my freak on with Bella in my office.” I figured they were going to see it in my mind once we phased.

My cell phone rang just then so I reached into my pants pocket to grab my cell. Something fell out onto the ground with it. As I took the call, I was mortified. Bella’s black lace thong had fallen on the ground. Brady picked it up, wagged his eyebrows at me, and waved it in front of my eyes. I snatched it from him and shoved it back into my pocket. Aw… man! I just thought of something: my wife is running around Phoenix with no panties on under her skirt. Meh, easier access for me later. I ended the call quickly and turned to the guys who were all smirking at me. Thank God this happened in front of the pack.

“Well, hell. Now we know why it smelled like she was right here,” Sam commented.

“Fine, whatever… take care of the issue with the beam. Sam, call acquisitions and tell them I want the manufacturer to take this crane back and issue us a new one at no cost to us. This crane has given us more headaches than any we’ve ever owned. The goddamned thing is defective. Oh, and we’re having a pack meeting one night this week in wolf form. I just got a call from Leah.”

“Yes, Alpha!” All four of them saluted me as I got into my truck to leave.

I headed back to work and ran into Quil after I parked my truck. “I’m going to take Jacob’s neck and twist until his head snaps off. The little shit doesn’t understand that I have commitments after work. For God’s sake, Number Six has football practice tonight, Chris has Cub Scouts, and Crystal has Brownies. Meanwhile, Jake wants to kick back and have some beers, and I simply don’t have time.”

“So, drop him off with Chris at the Cub Scouts. It’ll teach him some humility.”

“Good idea! Rachel’s taking Crystal to the Brownies and I think Number Six would like it if I watched him at football practice for once. They’re building birdhouses at the Cub Scouts anyway. It’s right up Jake’s alley.”

“Birdhouses?”

“Yeah, he belongs in one,” Quil mumbled. “Listen, I dropped off the plans for the I-40 in New Mexico. Have a look at them when you have time. Oh, and Embry cancelled the contract with the company supplying the wire because they were trying to jack up the price of the copper wiring. We know that the price of copper is skyrocketing, but this company was trying to jack it up by three hundred percent stating that Baklund was paying them that amount. We’re looking into two companies, one out of Tokyo that has a spotless record. They’re willing to fly a representative in with some samples next week. Would you be free to meet with them?”

“I’ll make time. I want reps from both companies in by next Wednesday with samples so we can make a decision by Friday. We need firm figures before I fly in to meet with the Senate Finance Committee in two and a half weeks. The company needs to sign a contract stating that they cannot renegotiate the price during the duration of the project. Also, if their wiring fails, it’s on them, not on us, and this all needs to be in writing. Have either Grant or Crispy write up a contract after you make the decision. I want one of them at the meeting.”

“We’ll get it done.”

“Good call on canceling the contract with the other company. Speaking of which, I need a list of all of Baklund’s suppliers. His tunnels have been collapsing left and right and it could have something to do with his suppliers. Where’s Embry?”

“He’s in Tucson doing a final walk through on the new headquarters for that insurance company.”

“Oh, that’s right. Um, meeting sometime this week with the pack. We got a call from Leah today.”

“Do I tell Jake?”

“That’s a big no.”

Quil nodded his head in understanding, and then sniffed the air. “Did you have a nice afternoon with Bella?”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Hey, I’m jealous. Rachel refuses to get it on while her little brother is in the house. God, I can’t wait for him to leave.”

“I feel for you, man.” I patted him on the shoulder and walked back into my office where I found Crispy typing away on his laptop at my desk. “What the heck are you doing here?”

“I’m done with work for the day. I’ve got good news for you. The DOE was able to hire a guy from within so after this week, I’m all yours. I had five vacation days left so they’re letting me take those next week.”

“Thank God! I think that’s the best news I’ve had all week.”

“Are you sure, Paul? Because I can tell for a fact that you had an exciting afternoon.”

You see, this is the negative side of working with shape-shifters. You can’t get away with anything because of their heightened senses.

“I mean in business news.”

“Oh, well, it’s good to see that Bella’s keeping you happy,” Crispy said. “Anyway, I’ve got a question for you. Grant is taking his secretary with him when he goes to Tempe. Can I bring mine along? She knows how I like things done.”

“Yep, go ahead. I don’t mind. I need her resume, references, and drug testing done by the end of the week though.”

“No problem there, my secretary is Jeff’s mother. She’s practically family. Plus there’s the added benefit of her being the mate and a mother of coyotes herself so she’ll be able to cover for us.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot that it’s different with you guys. The firstborn son of each generation phases. Do your fathers still phase?”

“They do, but they’re their own pack so we could never talk to them. Our dads and granddads are freaking out about the combining of the packs. My dad suggested we all phase together to see if we could all share a mind. He’s bringing the tribal shaman to the meeting.

“Good idea. Leah is expressing the archival records to me. I should have them in my hands tomorrow.”

“That’s good because I’m at a complete loss.”

“Well, the connection is still holding. I phased earlier this afternoon with Randy and Jeff. Leah called wanting to communicate with us.”

“About what?”

“Just some stuff between Collin and Linda. It seems Linda has gone rogue on her mate. She’s noticing something fishy about Fuller, and she just threw him out of their house until he chooses to grow some balls.”

“Oh, wow. She can be a good source of information for us.”

“Exactly. Leah is going to work on her this week. She invited her to her Pampered Chef party.”

“Somehow I can’t picture Leah hosting one of those.”

“I don’t even know what they are.”

“They sell cookware and gourmet foods.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly. Babs hosted one of those three years ago. I stayed upstairs the whole time. It’s definitely women’s stuff.”

“Sounds like it.”

Crispy and I left the office around nine pm along with Grant. We ordered dinner in, worked straight through, and made considerable progress with our presentation to the Senate Finance Committee. I returned home to find Bella looking at some plans for the kitchen. We picked one together, and then trotted off to bed completely spent. Well, almost spent… Having had her scent around me the entire day, I had to make love to her before hitting the sack. All in all, I had to admit, it was a great day for Paul Lahote.