CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The next few weeks flew by. Much to my surprise, I liked my new tutor. She was a middle aged divorced lady called Ms Summers, who dressed as if she still lived in the Seventies and had a sense of humour to rival all others. Her teaching style was far from boring and I found myself happy to work hard and complete the assignments she set me. She reported to Sam that if I carried on the way I was going, I would sail through my exams. In addition, I loved working for Sam and seemed to have a talent for working with wood, the same as he did. In no time I was completing jobs without any help from him and receiving enthusiastic feedback from customers.

I spent every evening with Jacob and he began staying over with me all weekend at Sam's. Sam didn't mind him being there and said only that he and Emily didn't wish to hear what we got up to. Consequently we played music or had the television on when we had sex, since neither of us could manage to stay completely silent and we refrained from doing it when Sam and Emily were trying to sleep.

Sundays was always the day for the pack to hang out at the house. Embry was happy with his new status now and had cut his hair short to make him less shaggy when in wolf form. The four of us usually phased for a while on the days we spent together and went hunting or simply ran in the woods. Meanwhile, Quil drifted away from us, left out as he as yet had shown no signs of shifting. He didn't get why Embry wanted to spend so much time at our place. Jacob he understood because he and I were practically joined at the hip. Embry fobbed Quil off by saying he was trying to get to know his brother properly, but in the end Quil fell to sulking and found some other friends at school to spend his time with.

Jacob's development didn't progress any further. He was virtually the same size as me in height and muscle, but his temperature didn't increase and he didn't lose his temper or even get irritated by anything. None of us knew why, although Sam guessed that it could be something to do with him being so happy. When the rest of us had phased, we had all been stressed, hurt, angry or whatever. Jacob started developing muscle around the time I first phased and then lost his temper that day because of the way I was behaving. He was hurt and worried, but since I told him about me and then Sam filled him in on the rest, he had absolutely nothing going on his life that bothered him. He knew I loved him, he had got used to the idea of what would eventually happen to him and was able to learn much more from Billy, who had since told him he could attend the next council meeting. I immediately confessed I had already been to one, hoping Jacob wouldn't be upset to hear I'd sat there with Billy and both of us had lied to him, but it didn't seem to concern him now that he knew why.

At Christmas, Billy and Jacob came over to spend the day with us and Jared and Embry joined us for a few hours in the afternoon. Emily cooked a turkey with all the trimmings and afterwards we exchanged presents. Sam and Emily gave me a package containing a dozen pairs of assorted jeans and pants, since although I was pretty calm lately I was still the least capable of controlling myself out of everyone and consequently ruined many of my clothes. The gift created much amusement and I pretended to be offended, throwing a pair of jeans at Sam's head.

I had bought Jacob a laptop. He had said a few times in the past that he wished he had one and what with the money I still had left in my savings box and the small amount I had added to it from what Sam paid me, I could easily afford one, especially since Sam got me a good deal from someone he had built some decking for who sold computers. Jacob was delighted with it and highly amused by the picture I had installed as a screensaver - a shot of me in my wolf form that I had persuaded Emily to take one day when Jacob wasn't around. He still hadn't seen me phase. The picture had me standing close to the picnic table, which gave some perspective as to our size.

"Shit, you're huge!" Jacob exclaimed.

Everyone immediately burst into raucous laughter, even Billy, embarrassingly enough.

"I don't think we need to know that," Embry snorted.

"Fuck off," muttered Jacob, his face flaming. "Sorry, Emily."

I was escorted outside to receive my present from Jacob. Everyone else crowded to the door and window as he led me over to Billy's truck and whipped off the tarp which covered the back of it. Inside was the motorcycle.

"It was meant to be for you from the start," he said. "Ever since you helped me work on it and said you wanted one."

"Are you serious?" I cried. "This is fantastic!" I grabbed the bike and lifted it out of the truck, propping it up on its side stand. Then I turned away from it for a moment and threw my arms around Jacob. "Thank you." I kissed him until loud jeers from the doorway made me back off reluctantly, then I started up the bike and rode a couple of laps of the meadow before I parked it up in the lean-to at the side of the house.

It was a couple of days after Christmas when Jacob and I were sprawling on my bed playing games on his new laptop that he asked to see me phase. The wolf picture fascinated him and he said he wanted to see me like that for real. Ridiculously I felt nervous, worrying that I might scare him off - completely stupid since he would join me eventually, but that's how I felt. We went for a walk into the woods in the late afternoon just before dusk and I took my clothes off first rather than ruin yet another set of pants. Jacob leaned against a tree and watched with interest.

"Don't look at me like that," I muttered, aware of his eyes exploring every inch of me. The way things were going I would end up a horny wolf.

"Sorry," Jacob said, not looking in the least apologetic.

"Just stay where you are and don't freak out," I said. "I'm going to have to think about something that pisses me off."

I backed away a good twenty feet and brought to mind Jacob lying on the ground outside the gas station after Bobbie had beaten him up. That always did it. Heat boiled up inside me instantly. A couple of seconds later I was on all fours, snarling and showing my teeth.

"Woah, shit!" Jacob exclaimed.

I shut my mouth quickly and relaxed a little. It seemed to be all or nothing with me. The others didn't seem to have a lot of trouble being fairly calm wolves, but the minute I relaxed enough to look as if I wasn't ready to rip someone's head off, I usually shifted back to human. I stood still and waited for Jacob to come to me, rather than advance on him.

"I guess you can only communicate with the others when they're phased, right?" he said.

I nodded my head slowly. He walked cautiously towards me and stretched his hand out to touch my fur. I dropped my head lower and he scratched the top of my head and then stroked one ear.

"Wow," he said under his breath.

My eyes half closed and I stood there languishing under his touch, unable to stop myself thinking about fucking him, until moments later I found myself crouching naked on the ground with Jacob's hand still resting on my head. In addition I was rock hard. Damnit. I stood up and slid my arms around him, my dick jabbing into his stomach.

"See what you do to me?" I groaned.

Jacob smiled and slid his hand between us to touch me. "Is this why you changed back so quick?"

"I can't keep my mind on anything else when you touch me." I shuddered as he gripped me more firmly and began to jack me off with long slow strokes.

It was over pretty quickly and I stepped away from him reluctantly and began to put my clothes back on. Rather than go back to Sam's, we went to Jacob's workshop. The brief moment of pleasure had only made me desperate to have him and much to my surprise, he confessed to being turned on by seeing me phase and then turn back so rapidly because of him touching me. Within twenty minutes I was pinning him to the workshop couch, ramming myself into him vigorously until we came together, clinging to each other and panting for breath. I returned to Sam's alone some time later, Jacob deciding to spend a little time with his Dad as they hadn't had much time together so far over the Christmas holidays.

It was only just over a week now until my sixteenth birthday on Saturday 7 January. With Jacob's being exactly a week later, Sam decided to throw us a joint party on Jacob's birthday and invited a houseful of people over. It was the first time we had seen Quil in weeks and he had apparently been in two minds about accepting the invitation, feeling that Jacob and Embry had mostly abandoned him.

When Bella Swan arrived with her Dad, Quil spent a good portion of his time with her rather than us. Jacob told me Quil had taken a real fancy to Bella when he first saw her some months before and it was pretty obvious to me when I watched them. She made it clear she wasn't interested and escaped eventually to hang around Jacob. I left him to it and went to sit with Sam instead. I wasn't keen on Bella, not least because she was dating one of the Cullen bloodsuckers. Sam had told all of us about them, how we couldn't touch them because of a treaty as long as they stayed off our land. It was other vampires we aimed to kill; those who killed humans. The Cullens lived on the blood of animals.

I listened into Jacob and Bella's conversation for a few minutes and must have heard her speak the name 'Edward' a dozen times before I tuned out again and concentrated on Sam and Emily. Bella was obsessed, it seemed. I grinned to myself. Probably not as much as I was with Jacob, though.

"...Paul..."

I pricked my ears up again as I heard my name.

"...a few months," Jacob was saying.

"Seriously? You never told me that," Bella said.

"I haven't seen much of you lately, have I?"

"So you're really dating him?"

"It's more than that."

I grinned and carried on listening.

"Does your Dad know?"

"Yeah, he's cool with it," Jacob said.

"What about Sam and Emily?"

"Them too. I stay over here quite a bit."

"Wow!" Bella exclaimed. "I never would have thought you'd go for someone like Paul. He's so...I don't know...aggressive and violent."

"Not with me," Jacob said. "He had some issues, that's all."

"Didn't he get expelled from school a few weeks back for fighting and stuff?"

"No, Sam took him out of school. He has a tutor."

"You should be careful," Bella said.

"What do you mean?"

"That he doesn't hurt you."

"That's not going to happen," Jacob told her a little sharply. "He's crazy about me. If you're just going to bitch about him, then change the subject."

"Gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Bella reddened slightly.

I got to my feet, smirking. I couldn't stop myself butting in. Jacob had his back to me and I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around him.

"Did I hear my name mentioned?" I eyed Bella over his shoulder and raised one eyebrow.

"How could you possibly hear what we were talking about? You were right across the room and with all this noise in here..." Bella said.

"I got good ears."

She flushed uncomfortably and lowered her eyes, fiddling with a button on her shirt. I kissed Jacob's cheek.

"Come with me."

"I was...mingling," Jacob said, turning his head a little to smile at me.

"Well, come and mingle with me. I miss you. You've been mingling for...about ten minutes," I grinned.

Jacob raised his hand and glanced at his new wristwatch - the one I had given him earlier in the day for his birthday gift. "Getting possessive?" he teased.

"Yeah."

"I'll leave you to it." Biting her lip, Bella excused herself and went over to her Dad.

"Sorry," I said. "I can't help it; I want you to myself."

Jacob turned around and pressed himself against me. "That's ok. I still didn't give you your present yet."

"I thought you were just going to give me yourself," I whispered, hugging him tighter.

"I'm dessert, when this crowd goes home," he said in my ear.

"Jesus, don't tease me." The last thing I wanted to do was start getting turned on with the house full of people.

Jacob laughed. "I put it in your room, come and see. Don't get too excited, it's not much."

"You want to go to my room and me not get excited?" I let go of him and he punched me playfully.

"Hell, guys, can't you cool it even for a couple of hours?" Embry said as he passed us.

"Wait until you Imprint," I said in a low voice. "Then you won't ask stupid questions."

Jacob's gift to me was something he had made himself. I knew he didn't have much money after he had bought Christmas gifts for everyone and in truth I didn't really expect anything. The fact that he had made me a gift delighted me. It was a hand-worked leather belt with a metal buckle forged in the shape of a wolf's head. It was put together in such a way that if I phased, the buckle would spring off and allow the belt to just fly free of my ruined pants, meaning that it could be rescued later.

"You really made this?" I said, examining the buckle. It was incredibly well done.

"Yeah. It's not much," he repeated, grinning.

"It's perfect. I love it." I slotted it through the belt loops of my jeans and fastened it at once. I kissed him for a long moment and then reluctantly pulled away to return to the party. I would rather have just partied with him all night, but we had a houseful of guests and it was only for a few hours. He would be staying with me after they all left.

Finally the last couple of people left around twelve-thirty and Emily insisted we all go to bed and do the clearing up in the morning. The house looked as if there had been some kind of explosion and I was only too pleased to ignore it for a few more hours. I took Jacob back to my room and for once, we had sex without music or anything, doing the best we could to stay quiet. However, much to our amusement a reasonably loud groan came from Sam and Emily's room moments later and we stopped worrying about it quite so much after that. It was a special occasion after all.

The following week Jacob went back to school with the others. It had remained closed for ten days longer than usual due to flood damage after persistent torrential rain. I hated suddenly being parted from him again after spending the best part of a month with him. Ms Summers had returned to continue tutoring me a week before, but Jacob had still hung around, working on his laptop or something rather than not be in my company. Now he was back at school, we got through an astronomical amount of cellphone credit.

Gradually the winter came to an end and with it, news of random killings around Forks and other nearby towns. Sam brought the pack together that Sunday as usual and told us vampires were responsible for the murders and it was our job to track them down and kill them.

I was immediately filled with excitement. The whole purpose of us being shape-shifters was finally being called upon. Jacob still hadn't phased and he listened to us talk in silence, knowing he wouldn't be part of it. However, later that day when Jared and Embry had gone home and Jacob and I were in my room, I reached out to touch him and realised he probably wasn't going to be left behind for very long. He was burning up. At least he felt the same temperature as me, rather than cool when I put my hands on him.

"How long have you been this hot?" I asked.

"Only since I got up this morning."

"You feel sick or anything?"

"No."

"Aches and pains?"

"No. You think I'm going to catch you up at last?"

"Maybe."

"Good, I'm tired of waiting." He had got used to the idea that he would eventually phase and although at the beginning he hadn't wanted it, now he just longed to be part of the pack.