Dead and Loving It

by MaryJanice Alongi

  “Not in my house,” he said firmly. “Now promise.”

  “Or what?” She wasn’t being sarcastic. She was curious.

  “Or I won’t put you down.”

  Now she did smooth out the frown line over his eyebrow. Weirdly—but nicely—he leaned down and nuzzled her nose. She felt her nipples tighten and fought the urge to squirm in his arms.

  “You’re just going to carry me around all day?” she teased.

  He smiled down at her. “It wouldn’t be much of a hardship.”

  “Okay, okay. I promise. No more jumping off stuff in your house.” But I can’t promise I won’t jump anywhere else…

  “All right, then.” He set her on her feet and gave her a warning smack on the ass that stung like hell—

  “Hey!”

  —and walked back to the kitchen.

  Chapter 7

  He heard her as she tiptoed past his room. Actually, he heard her when she opened her eyes and sat up in bed. He knew from her smell she hadn’t slept, and he made sure he didn’t, either.

  When she stole out of his house like a thief in reverse, he was right behind her.

  Bags were always in short supply at the shelter, so she just gathered a few changes of clothes to her chest and stole back outside. Unfortunately, she caught Maria’s eye on the way out. Well, it couldn’t be helped. The woman gobbled speed like it was Tic-Tacs, and she never slept.

  Crescent crept down the alley behind the shelter, thinking she still had time to catch the Red Line back to the bus stop near Drake’s house, when she heard running footsteps and turned to see the Asshole Brigade.

  “New crib?” Maria asked. She was one of those women who always smiled—who smiled when you knew they were screaming inside. “New man?”

  “Yes, and no, and mind your own business.”

  “Hold up, Cress.” That was Nick Moran, the leader of the incredibly lame group. “You got something for us?”

  “It’s Cres-ent, and no, I sure don’t. What’s wrong with you?” She shifted her weight and clutched her clothes a little tighter. She did not want to let these three put her in the middle of their nasty little circle. Her gut almost always led her right—why else was she staying with a stranger?—and maybe it did this time, too. Maybe when she fell in with these idiots, they didn’t really know how bad it could get. Her gut was good, but it couldn’t foresee the future. “Robbing a blind guy? Trying to, anyway. You couldn’t even pull that off.”

  “Shut up,” Nick said roughly. He was a tall, cadaverously thin man with the bare beginnings of a mustache and a scar that bisected his left cheek. “We had it under control.”

  “Sure you did. ’Bye.”

  Jimmy, the other schmuck, clawed at her elbow and managed to grab it. “Whyn’t you take us to his place?” he asked. His tone was reasonable, but she wasn’t fooled. “Cute piece of ass like you, bet you’ve already got a key.”

  As a matter of fact, she did. As a further matter of fact, she certainly wasn’t going to let them have it. “Forget it,” she said, trying to pull away. “Fuck off, you three, before I lose my temper. I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for you.”

  “Sorry for us?” Nick echoed, his expression darkening. “Be sorry for you. Because when we get done, you won’t be so pretty no more.”

  “It’s any more. For God’s sake, Nick, you went to private school before your folks kicked you out.”

  Nick blushed—he hated being reminded he hadn’t been born to the streets—but Maria’s smile widened, if that was possible. Crescent observed that the woman had a nodding acquaintance at best with toothpaste. “We can do this the easy way—” she began.

  “Oh, spare me your thug clichés.” Crescent was more annoyed than frightened, which she supposed was something. She’d been a moron to come back here by herself—and for what? So Drake wouldn’t see the shelter? Who cared what he thought? Big, overprotective dope. And she wasn’t going to be winning any college bowls, either, unless she starting relying a little more heavily on instinct and less on pride.

  Jimmy’s other hand—the one not squeezing her elbow—darted forward like a pale spider and grabbed her nipple. Then he started to pinch. Hard. Crescent could drop her clothes all over the filthy alley floor, or she could stand there.

  She stood there. Never in a thousand years would she show these three how much he was hurting her. “Cut the shit,” she said through gritted teeth. “You think acting like bullying ass-holes is going to change my mind about you?” She looked at Nick, waiting for him to call off his dog.

  Jimmy was giggling, Maria was grinning, and Crescent’s eyes were watering. She had just decided to drop her clothes and kick Jimmy in the ’nads when Jimmy was flying away from her—literally flying. He sailed through the air and crumpled to the street a good ten feet away.

  She had a glimpse of big hands cupping the curve of Maria’s skull, and Nick’s, and then there was a klonk as their heads banged together. It sounded awfully like the time she dropped a cantaloupe on the floor.

  And then Drake was towering over her, scowling, as usual.

  “Have I mentioned,” she said, gaping up at him, “that for a blind guy, you get around pretty good?”

  “Once or twice.” He pushed her crossed arms down, carefully raised her T-shirt, then eased her bra cup down so he could examine her nipple. This was startling, and quite nice. She reminded herself that he was a doctor, and hers was probably one of about six thousand nipples he saw in a year.

  “It’s pretty red,” he said after a long moment. He was leaning so close, she could feel his breath on the swollen peak, and she shifted her weight again. Suddenly her shorts felt too tight, in a pleasantly irritating way. “But I don’t think it’ll bruise.”

  “How—” Her mouth was suddenly very dry, and she coughed. “How do you know it’s red?”

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he smoothed her hair away from her eyes. “If you steal out of my house in the middle of the night again,” he said, quite pleasantly, “I’ll beat you.”

  “No you won’t.”

  He sighed. “No. I won’t.”

  “Drake, seriously. Why d’you care?”

  He sighed again. “I care.” Then he pulled her up on her tiptoes and kissed her with bruising strength.

  She dropped her clothes. Fuck it.

  Kissing Drake—well, being kissed by Drake—was an entirely novel experience. For one thing, the man didn’t have an ounce of flab anywhere. For another, she had the distinct impression he could snap her spine like kindling. But this thought was as exciting as it was slightly scary.

  He pulled away, and she stumbled forward. “Oh, no, don’t stop,” she gasped. “Kiss me some more—I’m not dizzy enough.”

  “I can’t,” he said, and she was delighted to see his breaths, too, were coming hard. “I don’t want to take you in the alley like a—come on.”

  He grabbed her hand, hauled her out of the alley until they were under the streetlights, and flagged a cab. He practically threw her inside, then slammed the door and tersely told the driver his address.

  “My clothes,” she said, staring out the back window. “And after all the stupid trouble I went to…”

  “I’ll buy you a Gap store,” he replied and didn’t let go of her hand until the cab pulled into his driveway.

  Drake fumbled for his wallet, then grabbed a bunch of cash and threw it at the driver, dragging her out in the same instant. She heard the driver’s gasp of surprise and appreciation and then he was pulling out of the driveway and, in typical Boston driver fashion, pulling into traffic without looking.

  She jumped into Drake’s arms. He held her easily, his hands cupping her bottom, and she nibbled his lower lip. “I think you tipped him ’bout a thousand percent,” she teased.

  “Ask me if I give a fuck,” he growled back, reaching up and tearing her shirt from the neck down.

  Chapter 8

  They didn’t make it to the bedroom. They didn’t even make
it to the front steps. Instead, he took her in the lilac bushes, and to the end of her days, she would associate that scent with Drake’s urgency.

  “This is insane,” she panted, helping him tear out of his coat, his shirt, his pants. “We don’t even know each other.”

  “I know you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.” Except she felt as if she knew him, too. Independent and proud and kind and gentle, but a hard man when he had to be. A velvet fist when circumstances demanded it.

  He tore off her panties and then gently parted her. She was slippery, and he groaned when his fingers slid through her, into her, and while his fingers were busy stroking and parting the slick folds between her legs, his thumb was on her clit, gently rubbing, and his lips were on her sore nipple, licking and kissing.

  “Later,” she groaned. Oh, Christ, had she ever wanted anyone this badly? Had anyone? “Later for that stuff. Fuck me, before I go out of my mind.”

  He left her nipple after one last kiss, caught her hand and brought it between them, and she curled her fingers around his enormous length. He throbbed beneath her touch, and she could feel his slippery tip. She ran her thumb over it, and he shuddered in her arms.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re so small, I don’t want to—”

  “Yes.” She wriggled beneath him and licked her lower lip. “I’m small and you’re big, and it’s going to hurt just right. Now stop talking and…fuck…me.”

  He obliged, parting her and surging forward, filling her up, forcing her to open for him. And still he came forward, pushing, thrusting, until she thought she would soon feel him in the back of her throat.

  He withdrew, and in the waning light of the moon, she could see the sweat on his brow, the way his eyes were shining, almost glinting. Then he surged forward, shoved forward, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and shrieked into the night air.

  They rocked together in the dirt, and when she put her hands on his hard, taut ass, she could feel the muscles flexing as he worked over her, as he thrust and withdrew and pushed and surged. She opened her mouth for another yell—it was too sweetly divine to keep quiet—when his hand clamped over her mouth. She writhed in silence beneath him and, several seconds later, heard the couple walk by on the sidewalk a bare ten yards away.

  “They’ll hear you,” he murmured in her ear, his voice so thick it was nearly unrecognizable. “They’ll come over here and see me fucking you in my side yard.”

  The thought was so blackly exciting she came at once, actually felt herself get wetter. He groaned in her ear and then bit her earlobe.

  It went on like that for some time—she would never be able to guess how long they went at each other in the lilac bushes. Every once in a while his phenomenal hearing would pick up something and he’d cover her mouth again, without missing a stroke. But when he finally came, his shout was a roar that made her ears ring.

  “Oh, Christ,” he gasped, collapsing over her.

  “If anybody heard that, you’ll have some explaining to do, Doctor.” She tried to sound saucy, but mostly, she just wheezed.

  “Umm.” He was kissing the side of her neck—wet, snuffly kisses that made her shiver and press closer to him. “Don’t leave in the middle of the night anymore.”

  “All right, then. Think we can make it inside without showing the neighbors our bare butts?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  Chapter 9

  I think I got something caught on your belly button ring,” he said later, simply because it was much too soon to ask her to be his mate and he had to say something.

  “What can I say? Life with me is a constant adventure.” She yawned and flopped over on her back. “And may I add, not bad for an old guy. Seriously. You must take, like, super Geritol, because…”

  “Thank you so much,” he said wryly. They were in his bed, watching the stars through the skylight. “I was just about to compliment you on being adequate in bed despite an obvious lack of experience.”

  She smacked him on the bicep. “Hey! And…ow…that was like slapping a rock. FYI, dude, I’ve got gobs of experience. There was that time in the movie theater…um…and once during a snowball fight a boy fell down on top of me…”

  “Stop it, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “Drake, what is it with you?” she asked abruptly. Her scent shift warned him—from playful soap bubbles to fresh green leaves—even if her tone hadn’t. “Seriously. I mean, you swoop down on me all Knight in Shining Armani—which is nice, if weird—and you don’t ask for anything at all, and you’re super nice, but you must want something. I mean, here we are, and you haven’t kicked me out, which frankly, most men—”

  “Spare me your knowledge of most men.”

  “Okay, okay. But seriously. What’s your deal?”

  “It’s a double deal,” he said after a long pause. “And either one will, as you might say, freak you out in the extreme.”

  “Oh, dude, I’d never say anything so lame…well, why don’t you try one, see how that goes.”

  “Uh…”

  “Come on, come on! Then I’ll tell you something about me. Something nobody else knows.”

  “You mean besides the fact that you have smelly feet?”

  “Draaaaaaaaaaaake!”

  “All right, don’t yowl. Okay. Well. Here it is, then.”

  She propped her chin up on her fist and waited.

  He coughed.

  She kept waiting.

  “Well. Ah. You see, it’s difficult to just—you know—blurt it out like this—”

  “Are you hoping I’ll die of old age so you won’t have to say it?”

  “Fine, fine,” he practically snapped. “I’m a werewolf.”

  Silence.

  “I know,” he continued, easing a hand over her thigh and, emboldened when she didn’t run screaming from the room, patting her tentatively. “It’s startling, but you don’t have to be afraid, because I’d never hurt you or eat you—ah, that is to say, outside the bedroom I would never eat you, and—”

  “Oh, Christ! That!” She batted his hand away. “I knew about that! You were supposed to tell me something I didn’t know.”

  He actually shook his head to check his hearing. No, there was her heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, and her breaths, and the hum of electricity, and the cool clink of the freezer making an ice cube. Everything was working fine. “What?”

  She lunged upward, hopped off the bed, and started pacing back and forth. Moonlight splashed her as she stomped—an enraged goddess etched in cream. “Well, what else would it be? You’re super-strong, super-fast, you’re blind but you get around better than I do…plus, you’re a doctor, for God’s sake. How could you be such a good doctor without, I dunno, super everything else? It was either that or I figured you were an alien. But after just now—the bushes, you know—I figured you probably weren’t an alien. Besides, this wolf stops me from throwing myself off the roof and then you just happen to show up a few hours later?”

  He blinked at her. “Oh. I must say, this is very anticlimactic.”

  “Serves you right for assuming I was a dumb-ass.”

  “I did not! No one’s ever guessed before. And I’ve had…ah…lady friends who have hung around quite a bit longer than you have.”

  “Oh, that.” She waved away “lady friends who have hung around.” “Well, that’s the thing about me—the secret thing—I was gonna tell you. I can tell things about people. That’s why I came home with you. I didn’t just think you wouldn’t hurt me; I knew you wouldn’t. It’s like I can get into a person’s head and tell exactly what they’re feeling.”

  “Empathic, hmm? That’s interesting. Well, Crescent, for heaven’s sake, why do you keep giving that gang of yours a second chance?”

  “I think they might be a little crazy,” she replied matter-off-actly. “When we meet up, they never feel like they’re going to hurt me. Then they get mad, and…anyw
ay, obviously my radar isn’t one hundred percent right all the time. Close enough for jazz, though.”

  “And this fixation with flying?”

  “Dude, I totally can! I know it! You just have to stop getting in the way when I jump off things.”

  Empathy…flight fixation…and her build, small and speedy…but surprisingly heavy for her height…could it be? He had assumed they were legend. Rather like werewolves. “Crescent,” he said abruptly, “have you ever had an X ray?”

  Startled by the abrupt subject change, she blinked at him like a blond doe. “Uh…not in the last few hours.”

  “And you never knew your family?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Have I mentioned you’re sexy when you go all ‘pondering physician-esque’?”

  “No,” he said, pouncing on her and bearing her back on the bed like a cat with a new toy. “You haven’t. Please elaborate.”

  She did.

  Chapter 10

  Drake. Seriously. How many T-shirts do you think I need?”

  “But they’re so versatile,” the Gap saleswoman piped up.

  “Not to mention fragile,” Drake whispered in her ear, and was gratified to see her blush.

  “You go away,” she ordered the woman, smiling. “You’re helping him spend way too much money as it is. And you—put that down. Khaki—yech.”

  “But this is the Gap,” the saleswoman said (“Ask me how to save 15%” was emblazoned in hysterical red ink on her lapel button), obediently retreating.

  “What, so I have to wear the uniform, too? Keep going.”

  “I’m offering you any woman’s dream,” he said, “and you’re still making mischief.”

  “A) Chauvinist much? Any woman’s dream? Shopping at Faneuil Hall? And B) put those down. I already picked out pants.”