by Holley Trent
“Couldn’t sleep?” Calvin asked.
How could she, when every time she closed her eyes, her thoughts flooded with Calvin?
Opting to hold her tongue, she nodded.
Grunting, he eased around to the back of the desk and leaned his rear end against the edge. “Haven’t been sleeping so great, myself.”
She knew. She sometimes heard the tossing and turning across the hall.
And all the pacing.
The floorboards creaked when he walked.
He did that unseeing stare in the general direction of Julia’s face again, but in a flash, sobered up and snapped his fingers. “Oh shit. Almost forgot. Package came for you. It’s on the table with the rest of today’s mail.”
Claude had said he was going to get her some protective charms to carry with her so she could adventure outside. Maybe that was it.
She pushed back from the desk and stood. She’d taken barely one step toward the door when suddenly Calvin reached his arms around her waist and pulled her in close.
“What are you—”
A sudden inability to breathe put a stopper in her complaint and her old friend fear landed on her chest. Her human instinct was to shove him away because she wasn’t at the compound anymore. Her body was hers and she had the right to say no.
She pressed her hands to his chest and opened her mouth again to tell him exactly that, but that part of her that wasn’t human whispered for her to wait and watch.
Something…was off about Calvin Wolff, and it wasn’t just the unusual yellow cast his irises had taken on all of a sudden, although that was strange enough. She wasn’t losing her mind. Calvin Wolff was supposed to have hazel eyes, but they’d stopped being that.
And he’d gone dead still again, not moving a muscle except to flex that arm around her. His stare was empty and his breathing ragged.
“Calvin?”
His eyes were going yellower by the second—paling to a disconcerting hue far outside of the natural range of eye colors.
People didn’t come with eyes that color.
Wait and watch, her instincts urged, even as she gently pushed at him.
Claude had red eyes sometimes, depending on the flavor of his magic.
Julia didn’t yet understand all the contingencies that affected his appearance, but she was becoming more aware of when magic was in play. She was practicing using a sense that until recently she hadn’t even known she had and there was no way of knowing if she was getting it right.
Her spine prickled and skin tingled with goosebumps she wanted to rub down, but she held still.
It was like there was a strong, breath-sapping hot energy in the air, and it was building in a central spot—right where Calvin stood.
That wasn’t normal.
And it wasn’t normal that she felt that energy no matter where he stood.
A dark, impatient growl rattled in his chest, seeming totally disconnected from the body it was inside.
Like the sun slowly rising in the morning, it dawned on her that the man who lived in the middle of the woods in a house invisible to paranormal threats…might not be human at all.
Her relief at such a prospect was immediately doused by guardedness when he dropped his arm and slowly arced around her.
As tempting as it was to turn with him, to watch him, she stayed still, honoring her instincts’ call for guarded patience.
She was trying to make sense of why he felt so hot and why rooms always seemed so small when he was in them. That wasn’t a normal thing. That was sort of what Claude and Charles felt like when they were near her, but somehow different.
She didn’t know how yet.
“Why do you wear your hair like that?”
His deep voice, ragged from disuse, was like a clarion, releasing her body from the thrall it was in.
Her hand went to her braided bun and patted it. “My…hair?”
“Style is out of place in the current century.”
He was speaking in sentences. She had to assume that was a good thing.
“You don’t like it?” she asked. “It’s practical. I like practical things.”
Julia had never heard a grunt so sardonic before.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
She set her teeth together and resisted the urge to turn around. That hot tickle of his energy on her neck was agitating her. It was practically shouting Look at me. But she wouldn’t. “Then what would you suggest?” she asked through her clenched teeth.
“Easier to show you.”
“On the computer?”
“On you. Right here.”
Unable to squelch her curiosity, she did start to turn then, but seeing his tentative reach for her hair in her periphery made her stop.
She put her back to him again and waited, wanting to see what he’d do.
Needing to see if he’d walk away again and let the conversation drop like so many others.
Needing to see if he’d touch her in a way that wasn’t strictly practical.
Suddenly, she wanted him to.
She wanted the brush of that dominating energy so she could play with it on her own terms and make it make sense.
Slowly, he worked his fingers into her bun and stilled there as though waiting to see if there’d be some punishment.
Oh.
It was evident he was waiting, in his own crude way, for consent.
Breathing out a frazzled titter, she nodded. “If it offends you so much, do your best.”
He made that sound again—that deep, rumbling sound in his chest.
Pin after pin clinked to the floor as he sought out every last fastener.
Finally, one heavy braid fell onto her back.
He pawed at it in such a clumsy way that Julia couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else going on with him. His dexterousness seemed to come and go in waves, and he announced his frustration with growls and grunts.
She remained still with her fingers twined against her belly.
He started unpinning the second braid.
“Why do you do it?” he snapped. Then he took a breath and let it out with a murmured “Sorry.” He cleared his throat and begin to untwine her braids. “Hasn’t been in style since the Victorian era. Actually, I don’t know if it was considered all that fashionable then, either.”
“As I said, it’s practical.” Thinking, she furrowed her brow. Snarly as he was, she didn’t feel uncomfortable with taking her time to think the way she might have been back at the compound. While she would never have proclaimed Calvin to be the most patient man around, he never seemed to be annoyed by her not having immediate answers. He was plenty annoyed by other things—just not that. “Where I come from, when girls turn a certain age, we had to put our hair up so we didn’t scandalize the old men.”
He gathered up the stolen bobby pins and dropped them onto the desk. Leaning against the edge, he fixed her in his golden stare.
She swallowed her gasp.
There was nothing at all human about those eyes, and nothing human about that heat he was putting off.
But if he’s other…wouldn’t he know I’m telling the truth?
He’d brushed off her confession as though she’d been spewing fantasies.
But maybe he doesn’t know.
After all, she was still learning. Maybe he was, too.
“See any old men here, honey?” he asked.
“No. No old men here.”
That sound came from his throat—that growl.
Things that growled weren’t supposed to look at people with such tenderness.
Things that growled generally wanted to eat the creatures caught in their gazes.
He dragged his thumb pads lightly along her jaw and tipped her chin up. “You gotta work a lot harder to scandalize me.”
“Okay. I’ll work har—”
His finger against her lips stunned her into silence.
And she found herself pushing up onto her toes as he closed th
e distance between them. She didn’t know what she was doing. Trying to move into that heated aura of him, maybe, where it felt so safe.
Or maybe trying to get closer to the lips that suddenly were within her reach.
His arm curved around her back, drawing her slowly toward him in such microscopic movements that she couldn’t help but wonder if he was living on a different time continuum than her.
She didn’t want to wait to find out. She erased the tiny gap between them and offered up her mouth, not caring one bit if it was brazen and unladylike to do so.
She wanted to be kissed by that wild man with the yellow eyes, and to taste his heat.
If that was what being a succubus meant, she didn’t care. She’d accept that as long as she got to touch him.
A rumble vibrated in his chest as his mouth crushed hers and his arm locked her against him.
If not for that arm propping her up, her legs might have given out beneath her.
She was overwhelmed with a feeling she could only describe as rightness, but that didn’t quite come close to what it was. She wanted to be there, needed to be there where she was, and it didn’t seem like her safety was the largest concern anymore. There was something else, but for the moment, that information was closed off to her.
For the moment, she just tried to hang on tight and enjoy him.
His tongue tasted of black coffee. His clothes and skin smelled of the woods he kept escaping into, and she was coming to love that smell because it was his.
He held one hand at the back of her head and the other on her ass, holding her just where he wanted her, so close to him she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d scandalized him after all.
No old men, here.
She gasped when his sharp teeth nipped at her bottom lip, not from pain, but surprise and pleasure. In a million years, she wouldn’t have imagined that she’d like that.
And that she’d want more of it.
“No. No.” Shaking his head hard, he took a step back, and then another, putting his hands up in a gesture of penitence.
“Calvin—”
“No. Shit. I’m sorry. It’s the—” He made some self-deprecating sound that must have been a scoff and took another step back. “No. That won’t happen again. I promise. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
His eyes were their usual bright, soulful hazel again.
She canted her head and tried to gather her thoughts. “Because I work for you?”
That was easily corrected.
And she wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t happen or that she didn’t want to do it again.
She’d felt sensual and wanted and…safe. But also that her presence there was meaningful in a much bigger way than she ever would have thought.
She needed to be there, and she was going to find out why beyond the fact that Charles had foreseen it.
Had she been the wagering type, she would have bet money that the wild man needed something from her, too. “Calvin,” she said soothingly, reaching for his hands.
He pulled them away before she could touch him. “I’m sorry, Julia. So fucking sorry.”
He strode from the room and didn’t turn back.
The front door slammed, and she made her way to the window just in time to see a coatless Calvin running into the woods as if he had Satan at his back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Julia fondled the odd amulet dangling between her breasts and stared at her sneakers. “Calvin, you can’t survive on delivery meals, and neither can I. I’d like a fresh vegetable every now and then.”
Calvin, slumped in the armchair in his office and staring impassively through the window, grunted.
She hadn’t looked at him straight-on since he’d stolen that kiss. He wished he could say his wolf made him do it, but the man part of him had wanted it just as much.
When she’d edged into his space and put her face up to his in that daring way, he’d known he was done for. Wolves weren’t exactly renowned for their self-restraint, but Calvin had been behaving beautifully up to that point, given the circumstances.
And apparently, the circumstances were that the wild energy that caused him to change forms and obey nature’s cruder calls had chosen her. It wouldn’t be changing its mind, and he couldn’t really expect it to. Calvin had assumed there wasn’t a person on the planet who deserved to put up with his shit.
But maybe he’d been seeing things the wrong way, and it wasn’t so much about finding who could deserve him but finding who was equipped to handle him.
But can she handle me?
She hovered around, working in a quiet efficiency. Feeding him, cleaning up his messes, answering his fan mail in that cheerfully naïve way she did. She actually thought the “F.” in “Calvin F. Wolff” was his real initial.
Everyone knew the “F.” stood for “Fucking.”
She didn’t seem to know anything about him, really, and he’d kept poking. Kept asking. She hadn’t even thought to Google his sorry ass. She was so stinkin’ cute. Sometimes he went out into the woods to pitch baseballs through the trees just to see how far they’d go before he struck one. He had no shortage of baseballs, but every morning, he’d find a basket of the retrieved balls on the porch. She’d go out and gather them like Easter eggs when he wasn’t looking.
“If you want to go out, Julia, you have my blessing. I’ll call you a cab.”
“Why can’t you take me?”
Hell, I’d love to.
He swallowed a growl.
He’d take her just to make sure some other Wolf didn’t like what he sniffed too much. The only thing he went out for lately was beer, and that was just because the lady who owned the nearby booze shack was his cousin Deenie. He could growl all he wanted at Deenie, and the worst that would happen would be she’d whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper like she did all the cranky unmated Wolves.
“I just can’t.” He looked down at the open laptop on his thighs and the e-mail from his hound dog of an agent.
Either his willpower was getting even weaker than he’d thought, or the offer was just that good.
There were a lot of fucking digits in that signing offer. The team wanted him so bad that Calvin wouldn’t even have to try out. He didn’t have a lot of time to make a decision. They wanted him now. The season was about to start.
He was surprised that it was a decision at all and not a flat-out, “Sorry, can’t do it,” like it would have been months ago.
He had to admit to himself that he missed having a normal life.
Or what passed as normal for a wolf shifter, anyway.
“Wish I could,” he murmured almost as an afterthought.
I so wish I could.
“Explain to me why you can’t. Are you afraid you’ll run into a fan?”
“Fans are the least of my problems.”
“Then what?”
Gods, that voice of hers.
She was nagging. She was definitely nagging, but the way she controlled her rate of speech and her volume, he felt at times more like he was being hypnotized than scolded.
Maybe that’s a trick she learned at that supposed cult she came from.
He snorted and pushed the laptop lid down. “Why are you so insistent? If you’re worried about getting lost, I’ll make sure the driver gets you there and back okay. You’re going to have to learn your way around eventually.”
Assuming she was still there.
Assuming they were still doing…whatever they were doing, and he could keep pretending that he didn’t want her for something more than a live-in secretary.
He’d left his fucking bedroom door open overnight hoping she’d “oops” her way to the doorway, take some pity on him, and talk him to sleep.
Hold him to sleep.
Anything, really.
He craved being touched in a way that was physically and punishingly painful, but he wouldn’t let just anyone touch her.
It had to be her. The wolf in him had decided that.
Calvin was becoming powerless to disobey that part of his brain.
“I want you to teach me,” Julia said. “Go with me. Show me what you like so I can cook it.”
“I’d eat anything.”
Anything she cooked him.
Wolves were gracious that way. If their mate cooked, they ate that shit. Period.
Back the fuck up, wool-brain.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and closed his eyes.
Everything in his head was cranking along so slowly, and he doubted the fleeting thought the wolf had floated would come around again.
But there was an idea in there that hadn’t settled right.
“Calvin…” Julia wheedled in that spellbinding voice again.
“Surprise me,” he snapped. “I’m not as picky as you’d think.”
Mate.
Calvin gritted his teeth and opened his eyes.
That was what the wolf half had asserted—that she was Calvin’s mates.
Wolves didn’t tend to change their minds about that.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
He sat up straighter, wondering how he could best extricate her from the situation, but the part of his brain that he needed for long-term planning was closed off to him. His wolfy half had thrown up a barrier—a sort of hormonal fuck-you, dude.
“No…no.” Calvin gave his head a frantic shake.
His wolfy half obviously didn’t understand what manner of shapeshifter disorder he was condemning that woman to live amongst.
And inside of.
“I…” She toyed with the end of her long braid, still staring at the floor. “I’m scared to go out without you.”
He felt his gut drop to his feet.
He wished he could be soft and give her the moon, but that wasn’t possible.
“Well, that’s a problem, because if I go out, it may be me being the one scaring people.”
Anger flashed in her bright eyes as she finally looked up at him. “If you don’t want to be seen with me, you don’t have to make up ridiculous excuses.”
Seen with her?
Frustrated, Calvin threw up his hands. “It’s not an excuse, Julia. You need to understand that—”
“That what? Go on. Lie to me. Let me hear your best.”