by Ellie J Duck
When I’m done I join Tara and Brody in my room, glancing down at myself, self-consciously, when they both stare at me in surprise.
“What?” I ask, when they don’t say anything.
“You look so…. Normal,” Tara tells me quietly. “I’ve gotten so used to seeing you look badass that it’s unnerving to see you look like any old teenager.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” I ask, feeling even more uncomfortable now.
“You look awesome,” Brody tells me with a grin. “I never look that normal when I go out in civilian gear.”
“That’s because you’re huge and everyone is afraid that you’re going to eat their nachos,” Tara tells him unkindly, socking him in the arm as she bounds out of my room excitedly.
∞ ∞ ∞
When I exit the bedroom and make my way into the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Mitch and Tobias also standing around in civilian clothes.
“Now you’re coming too?” I ask the pair of them, kind of annoyed that I must go if they’re willing to go.
“It won’t be so bad with you there to buffer for Tara. When we go places with her without any other females, she ends up snarling at us and hissing at us because all the boys she tries to flirt with flee in terror at the sight of us,” Mitch tells me with an incredibly feline grin at that particular idea.
“And when that happens, she guilt-trips us into shopping with her,” Brody explains, giving a shudder of horror.
“So, instead, you’re going to force her onto me while you guys run off and do your thing?” I demand, crossing my arms over my chest. “How is that fair?”
“It won’t take her long to pick up with you there instead of us,” Mitch assures me, eyeing me like I’m a piece of meat and making me nervous with the way he licks his chops appreciatively.
“It creeps me out when you leer at me like that,” I tell him seriously. “I’m still armed you know? Just because I’m wearing this stupid thing doesn’t mean I won’t cut your paws off if you try anything.”
Mitch groans with an expression almost of delight as he turns to Tobias and says, “Don’t you love it when hot chicks threaten you? I know I do.”
“Aww, and I didn’t even mention making your jewels into a dash ornament,” I smirk at him, realizing he’s only playing but that he’ll push harder if I lose my cool. Typical cat.
He winces at that idea and I grin evilly.
“You’ll need this,” Tara tells me, plopping a small black handbag into my lap.
“You expect me to carry this thing?” I ask seriously, holding it up in disgust.
“Where else are you going to put your wallet and your gun?” she asks, and I pat my legs before recalling these jeans don’t have pockets.
“Goddamn jeans with their stupid lack of goddamn pockets,” I mutter in annoyance. “What kind of stupid design comes without pockets? It’s a scam. A scam to get women to buy handbags to put their crap in because they have to buy pants without pockets.”
Brody starts to laugh at my muttered rant when I go in search of my wallet and my gun, cursing foully when I can’t fit both of my guns inside the stupid little handbag. I resort to stuffing one into the bag along with my wallet before concealing my other gun in the waist band of my jeans, earning a wolf-whistle from Mitch when I reveal my abdomen to stick the gun there safely.
I pause in my movements when I notice Hilton eyeing me strangely, his gaze fixed on the exposed strip of skin I’m showing.
“Can we go now?” I grumble, glancing at Tara who is practically skipping with excitement.
“Yay!” she shouts, clapping her hands as she bounds out of the room toward the carpark.
I follow her and the boys as they head for one of the collected Hummers. Hilton has the keys and I wonder if the others also know how to drive or if he is just a control freak.
I raise my eyebrows in surprise when Mitch, Brody and Tara take their usual seats in the back, leaving the front seat vacant. With Greg not joining us I find myself blushing as I slip into the seat that he usually occupies rather than the little one right next to Hilton’s driver seat. It feels odd to be sitting in the car alongside him without being pressed up against his side and I find my hands shifting restlessly in my lap once I’ve fastened my safety belt.
“Plug this into the radio, would you please, Anna?” Brody asks politely, handing me an MP3 player and a connector cable. I do as he asks, my fingers tapping in time to the rock music that comes through the speakers when I hit ‘play’. Not willing to talk much I crank the music up loud enough to drown out anyone should they choose to talk, for the time being, not caring all that much if it hurts their sensitive hearing. I scroll through Brody’s playlist until I find something I recognize, and I feel a little smile crawl across my face when the Bruin beings to sing along.
He’s got a decent voice and I can’t help but grin when the others chime in on the singing too. Tara takes the high soprano of the female singer, though she really can’t hit those notes well, and the boys all sing along to the male singer’s bits – even Hilton. It’s clear they all know the song and that they share a taste in music and I can’t help but enjoy the trip as I choose songs and they sing. When I stumble across a favorite of mine, I set aside my unease of singing in front of people in favor of closing my eyes and enjoying the release of belting out the words.
I choose to ignore the fact that the others slowly stop singing along in favor of listening to me, too caught up in the feel of freedom I experience as I sing loud and unrestrained. When the song ends, I don’t look at any of them, though I can feel their eyes on me, happy instead to simply pick another song. The team don’t say anything for the whole drive, though they do go back to singing along to the music with me.
There is a companionable sort of feeling to the silence and I find myself smiling softly as I peer out the window simply enjoying being with the team. I marvel over the notion of having friends with whom I can be a complete fool. It’s a new experience for me and one I revel in. I glance across the car at Hilton when we reach the straight road beyond the forest as he floors it. He looks relaxed and calm in a way I’ve not seem him look before and I find myself wondering how often they all get out like this.
After all, our job is not an easy one. Living on the base and constantly being on call frays at my nerves and I’ve only been doing it for almost two months. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have spent years doing it. Do they enjoy getting away from the base or does being around humans make them nervous? When they crave a night out do they go to some of the human-run clubs in the city or do they visit paranormal clubs and such things I’ve not even considered yet?
I can’t help but admire the way Hilton looks when he’s relaxed and not driving like a complete madman when we catch a case. Like the rest of us, he is dressed in civilian clothing, pairing dark jeans with a faded old army jacket and I can’t help but grin at the sight. Even when he wants to look casual and human, he can’t entirely leave his dedication to the job behind. As he takes a corner, I catch sight of the bulge of concealed weaponry beneath his arm, making me think he’s got his guns strapped on underneath the jacket.
I wonder if the others are also carrying weapons. I am, of course, but that’s because I refuse to go anywhere without something that I can use to defend myself. The rest of the team have access to claws and fangs should they be in desperate need of them, but I don’t have that kind of ability. Hilton shoots me a sideways look when he feels me staring at him and I hold his coppery gaze for a moment. He doesn’t change his expression or speak, he just stares back for a long moment in silence.
I don’t doubt that if the rest of the team wasn’t in the back seat, he’d be drilling me with questions about what happened when Novikov compelled us to sleep together. On some level I feel the need to tell him. Were our situations reversed and he remembered when I didn’t, I would be drilling him for answers too. I’d not really mind having slept with him, though, and I would objec
t to not remembering.
He, on the other hand, will flip his lid and probably hurt me if he finds out that the whole thing happened because I have perverted fantasies about him and was compelled to act upon them. Given his distaste for humans - and for me, in particular - I don’t think it would be the safest bet to admit that I know what it feels like to lie naked against him or that I know how he mutters a string of worshipful expletives when he topples into bliss.
“What?” he asks when I continue to stare at him without looking away and without saying anything.
“You have toothpaste on you lip,” I lie, just to watch him try to lick the imagined substance away.
“Did I get it?” he asks, turning toward me a little more and I can’t help the little smirk that curls across my face. I nod as I look away again, unable to stop the barrage of memories that flit through my mind, a slideshow of moments spent tasting his lips.
Tara’s laughter from the back makes me glance over my shoulder at her and I blush just a bit when she shoots me a knowing look, wiggling her eyebrows at me suggestively.
“Do you have a type?” I ask her, turning down the volume enough that I can hear her.
“No, I’m not that picky. I bore easily, so anyone who can entertain me is in with a chance,” she admits.
“Not that you’re easy or anything,” I poke fun at her, laughing and dodging out of her reach when she swipes at me like a playful kitten.
“I will have you know that I’m not easy. I don’t care so much what they look like when I can focus on how well they are likely to meet my needs,” she replies primly, and I catch the eye-roll Brody shoots my way at her statement.
“Do you have a judging criterion for that? The sooner we find you a toy, the safer I’ll feel,” I grin at her.
“Now you’re pimping me out?” she asks, though, she too is grinning.
“I prefer to think of myself as a Madam,” I smirk.
“I’m not giving you forty percent of my profits,” she tells me with a laugh.
“Forty percent, what would that be? An arm? Maybe a leg, depending on his size?” I retort playfully.
“We’re not pieces of meat, you know?” Mitch points out looking mildly unnerved.
“Aw, Mitch,” I coo condescendingly, “I’m sure you’ve got feelings in their somewhere.”
“You’re patronizing me,” he accuses like the indignant king of the jungle he is.
“I wouldn’t dare,” I reply, sarcasm heavy in my tone.
“Liar!” he accuses, laughing just a bit despite his own theatrics.
“Don’t try and pretend to me you don’t like being treated like a piece of meat in some lady’s grip,” Tara tells him. “You don’t even learn the names of the women you sully.”
“Oh, it was one time,” Mitch rolls his eyes, “and how was I supposed to know if she was named Rebecca or Renee? She and her twin were identical!”
“Whore!” Tara accuses him, and Mitch clutches his chest as though he’s wounded.
“Am not!” he retorts. “Besides, I’m not the one flitting off to get laid today.”
“Are you calling me a whore?” Tara demands, and I laugh when a slap-fight ensues between the pair of hilarious felines.
“She goes for the burly ones,” Brody tells me, leaning forward out of their way as the squabbling pair begin taking up most of the backseat, “and pretty ones. Pretty and burly and she’ll be all over him. You probably won’t even have to do anything. She’ll walk off and ditch you to rub herself all over him.”
“I sense oncoming abandonment issues,” I state, pretending I’ll be damaged by her leaving me for some guy.
Brody laughs at me while Tara and Mitch begin to yowl at each other menacingly, their playful batting turning nasty in a split second the way only a pair of felines can get.
∞ ∞ ∞
When we reach the mall, Tara latches onto my arm and almost yanks it out of the socket, dragging me toward the many stores and shops. I groan in horror, glancing over my shoulder at the boys in the hopes one of them will save me. My mood deteriorates quickly when Tara drags me into several shops, throwing clothes and accessories at me and telling me what would apparently suit me whilst spending monumental amounts on things for herself. I can’t help but laugh when she flounces out of the department store with an entire trolley full of new belongings, demanding the keys from Hilton so she can store it all in the car and not be impeded when she goes man-hunting.
“See anything tasty?” she asks me an hour later after she’s dragged me around the entire store. For the most part, the boys follow us around, keeping a bit of distance, enough to be watchful but not so much that they won’t be able to jump in and save the day if the need arises. As though Tara and I aren’t badass in our own right, I roll my eyes to myself.
“Well…” I begin, my eyes skittering in Hilton’s direction where he is looking cranky as Mitch shoves bottle after bottle of conditioner for himself into Tobias’s arms.
“For me,” Tara clarifies when she catches my loss of control. “I don’t do the deed with anyone of the canine-paranormal variety. It’s much too degrading. And he’s so not my type.”
“Oh, now you have a type?” I laugh at her, blushing pink just the same.
“I might,” she says evasively. “You’re drooling over the eye-candy again.”
“I am not!” I protest, mortified. “That was one time and it was hardly my fault. I wasn’t expecting a full Monty show alongside my breakfast!”
“Are you ever going to tell the truth about what happened that night with the vampire?” she asks me suddenly, wandering further away from the boys and lowering her voice so they won’t hear us.
“What?” I ask, freezing midstride in shock.
“Oh, come on, Anna,” Tara rolls her eyes at me. “You live in a base with four Shifters. Did you really think we wouldn’t be able to smell that a whole lot more went on than you and Tobias claimed?”
“What are you talking about?” The color drains from my face in horror at the idea of them being able to tell something happened.
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” Tara accuses, a gleam in her eyes that makes me nervous. I open my mouth to deny the truth, but as I do, I catch a funny scent coming from her and I breathe it in. Though I’m new to being able to use my heightened sense, I can tell that she’s trying to deceive me in some way.
“Now he’s got you drilling me with questions as well?” I drawl, rather than answering, realizing she hoped to catch me in a lie by putting me on the spot and making me blush.
“That wasn’t a denial,” she points out, grinning deviously.
“It wasn’t a confirmation, either. Why is everyone so convinced that I’m lying about this thing?”
“Because his whole room reeked of you and of sex and you’ve smelled different since,” Tara informs me. “So, either you two got it on and you both don’t remember, or you do remember and you’re keeping it to yourself because you’re afraid of his reaction.”
“There’s also the option that everything happened the way I said it happened. I think I would know if I’d lost my virginity, don’t you? Especially if I did so with a werewolf under perverted compulsion,” I point out, desperately shoveling lies upon the truth.
“Then why have you been sleep-walking into his cage every night since?” Tara asks me knowingly and I get the feeling she can tell I’m lying, despite my talent for suppressing most of the usual signs of deception.
“How should I know?” I ask. “I’m new to the paranormal world. For all I know, I might be being lured there by the vampire that tagged me or maybe I’m just developing an affinity for the woods.”
Tara eyes me skeptically.
“But you’ve got it bad for Tobias, right?” Tara asks. “I mean, I can smell that you’re attracted to him and sometimes when you look at him, I just know you want to jump his bones, but emotions are another matter. Do you genuinely like him or is it just that he’s pretty and you wan
t to make out with him?”
“Must we discuss this?” I demand, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the boys aren’t paying attention.
“Would you prefer to do it in a crowded mall where they’re unlikely to hear us or in the base where they definitely will?” Tara asks, and I sigh in defeat.
“Does it matter whether I fancy him or just want to jump his bones?” I say eventually. “It’s not like anything will ever come of it, so why bother discussing it?”
“How can you not want to talk about it?” Tara looks mildly alarmed and confused by my answer. “The first time I had a crush on anyone, I couldn’t shut up about it. I gabbed Greg’s ear off for hours about how much I was in love with the guy and how we’d be mated and have beautiful true-born were-tiger cubs together.”
“What happened with him?” I ask curiously seeing the wistful expression dance across Tara’s face.
“I was fifteen when I met him. You probably don’t know this, but Greg practically raised the four of us. My mother was killed when I was five and her death drove my father mad. He went rogue in a bad way. He slaughtered more than two hundred beings before he was hunted down and stopped. He was always good to me, always fiercely protective, right up until the end. I had no one else after that and none of the clans would take me, fearful I would end up rogue like Dad. Greg took me in. He was on the team that hunted down my Dad. Even back then, I knew it was for the best that he be put down, and without Greg, I’d have ended up turning tricks for cash or dead before I was old enough to consider it,” Tara tells me and my heart squeezes painfully in my chest for her. “The cat I fell in love with was a boy I met when Greg would take me with him to functions and events. He was a recruit on a team like ours, just eighteen and the sexiest thing on two legs. Greg’s never forgiven the bastard for seducing me into bed with him that night, either.”
I catch the way a reminiscent smile curls across her face at the memory.
“What happened to him?” I ask, sensing the story doesn’t end well.