Prince of Wolves

Jacque thought about the moment that she'd realized the voice she was hearing was Fane. When he had spoken to her in Romanian she had no more doubt that it was indeed his beautiful voice in her mind.

“Well, after you guys left I laid down on my bed to just chill, ya know, catch my bearings. As I was laying there the voice in my head came back. He asked me if I was scared and told me that hadn’t been his intention,” Jacque explained.

“He?” Sally asked. “So it's Fane? The voice is Fane?”

Jacque nodded and added, “I finally confirmed it when he spoke to me in Romanian, and honestly, Sal, if you’re going to hear voices why on earth would you hear one that speaks in Romanian?”

“Well, duh, because you have a secret fantasy about running away with a gorgeous Romanian noble to his beautiful ice castle.” Sally said, a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“Oh, of course. I completely overlooked that very plausible answer,” Jacque said, rolling her eyes.

“So how long did you guys ‘talk’?” Sally asked and when she said “talk” she put her hands up, making the sign for quotations.

“After he spoke to me in Romanian I asked if it was Fane, ya know, just for clarification purposes.”

“Definitely good to be clear on these matters,” Sally interrupted.

“Well, when he confirmed it I just kind of shut down. I didn’t want to ‘talk’ to him. I needed to do something, so I got up and picked up my room and dusted the living room,” Jacque explained.

“So all your mom needs to do to get you to clean is find some Romanian foreign exchange student to go all mystic mind-reading on your butt. Huh, who knew?” Sally said in amusement.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Then I decided to get some sun. So I lay out in the backyard. I don’t know how long I was out there before I heard his voice again. This time he was not mad, but sort of frustrated or something.” Jacque said, remembering how his voice had sounded in her mind.

“He had the nerve to point out how skimpy my bikini was by asking me if I knew they only sold me one quarter of my bathing suit!” Jacque told Sally in disbelief.

“Oh, Jen is going to love this – a Romanian hottie with a sense of humor. Brilliant and hot to boot!” Sally said, grinning to herself. Then she paused a minute in thought.

“Wait, so he was looking out his window at you?” she asked.

“Yep, so you know what I did?” Jacque asked.

“Please tell me you didn’t flip him off or moon him, or some other terribly twisted suggestion that Jen would have offered,” Sally said worriedly.

“No. Although, those all sound like great ideas. I simply stood up gave him a good ol', southern curtsey and marched myself to the house. After I graciously explained that I would have preferred the bathing suit to not cover so much,” Jacque said, laughing.

Sally rolled her eyes at her. “Remind me never to be in a lion's den now that I know you like to taunt them.”

“Oh come now, my dear Watson. Are you to tell me you are afraid of lions and tigers and bears,” Jacque started.

“Oh my,” Sally finished, putting her hands on either side of her face, pretending to look fretful.

Both girls laughed at the silly antics that seemed to keep them sane. Jacque pulled her hair up into a ponytail, not thinking about the shirt she was wearing, and as she turned to grab a hair band she heard Sally gasp. She looked at her friend and realized her eyes were on her neck and back. Jacque had forgotten that she had purposefully worn a shirt with a low back so she could show Jen and Sally the markings.

“Oh, did I forget to mention those?” she said nonchalantly.

“What the hell, Jac! When did you get that?” Sally asked in disbelief.

“Well, let's see. If I remember correctly, after ya’ll left I downed a bottle of Crown, ran to the nearest tattoo parlor, and had some dude with piercings in every visible body part named Snake give me this awesome ink. I just totally forgot to mention it,” Jacque said sarcastically and then added, suddenly sounding tired, “I don’t know where it came from. When I came up to take a shower after lying out in the hot sun it was just there. I kind of had a mini melt down. I screamed at Fane, but he never answered me, which tells me he is the guilty party involved.”

“So now he’s not only doing his mind voodoo, but body voodoo too,” Sally said, and then giggled as she realized how it sounded.

“You know what Jen would say,” Jacque started just as her bedroom door flew open and Jen walked in.

“Depends on what is called for, my dear. But do tell, what exactly smart-ass comment am I supposed to be making?” Jen said dramatically.

“Fane has done body voodoo on Jacque,” Sally said in a tattle tale voice.

“Ooooh, was it good?” Jen asked huskily.

“Good freaking grief. She doesn’t mean like, physical voodoo, pervert.”

Jacque turned around to show her the markings on her back.

“I guess he decided to forgo the whole ‘hey, will you wear my class ring’ and straight into ‘let’s get body art together’,” Jen said, studying the markings.

“What, you think maybe he has some…” Jacque trailed off. Then she remembered when they were at the Henrys' she had noticed a tattoo that ran up the side of Fane’s neck. She had totally forgotten it because it just sort of went with the whole biker thing he had going on.

“Stink ya’ll. He did have a tattoo on his neck. I saw it when we were at the Henrys', but that doesn’t mean it matches this one,” Jacque told them, looking for reassurance.

“No, it most definitely does not mean they match,” Sally agreed, albeit not very convincingly.

Just then Jacque turned her head and cocked it to the side at Jen. “What are you doing here? I thought you said nine at the earliest.” Jacque asked her.

“Well, I just happened to mention that you were a little depressed about the whole Trent thing and really needed some girl support and yada yada yada. My mom totally swallowed it whole,” Jen confessed.

“That’s just great, Jen. Now your mom thinks I’m all torn up like a kicked pup about Trent and I’m not! I’m totally over him….aren’t I?” Jacque asked.

She started thinking back over the two years she and Trent had dated. Even though they had only been sophomores and juniors in high school, their relationship had been pretty intense. Then out of nowhere Trent had come over and told her they needed a “break.” Jacque politely told him not to treat her like an idiot and just call it what it was – it was over. It literally was out of nowhere. The day before they'd been hanging out on the couch and he had actually told her he thought he might be in love with her. When he left her house he told her he would call her that night and he never did. The next time she heard from him, he came over to call it off. Jacque hadn’t seen or heard from him since.