by Michelle Fox
Deeply disconcerted, Tabitha was happy for the moment to herself when Mick left her with the motorcycle in a cool, dim, quiet underground parking garage in a nicer commercial district. No gangsta’s or tweakers there. Manicured trophy wives toting bundles of boutique bags and stockbrokers with slender designer briefcases meandered casually back and forth between the elevators and European sedans.
Even as Tabitha’s thoughts wandered back dismally over all the fantasies she’d had as a girl about marrying Finn and living in a big Tuscan-style villa someplace with bars on the gates instead of the windows, she was alert enough to pick up on the place going silent. The three large men in black suits who came out of the elevator car all together weren’t like the other people she’d seen. Where had everyone else gone?
Knowing from experience that the only faster way to trigger a predator’s instinct to pounce than open challenge was quick retreat, Tabitha slipped nonchalantly off Lebeau’s Harley. She headed toward a garbage bin that also happened to be in the direction of the ramp up toward the street. In her hand, she held Mick’s extra helmet loosely by the chinstrap, ready to swing it, if necessary. Tabitha didn’t run until she had several large SUV’s and a thick concrete column to block the view between the hulking men and herself. The flurry of pounding steps behind her confirmed her instinct to flee.
The girl had her head down, ears perked for the sharp footfalls echoing behind her. The men had spread out, making her veer one direction, then another. Adrenaline revved Tabitha’s heartbeat and made it throb in her head, distorting her senses when she needed to stay cool.
At least that was Tabitha’s excuse for scurrying toward the ramp only to smack into a white-haired man in yachtsman-style upscale dress—designer deck shoes that matched his All-American polo while his slacks matched his sports coat. That style often passed in California as the middle ground between full suit and business casual. It just had to be expensive enough, and his was. At the foot of a set of steps she hadn’t seen landing perpendicular to the ramp, the two huffed out the impact of their shoulder-to-shoulder collision.
“Oh, my dear, please excuse me.” He steadied Tabitha with his cool hands gently gripping her upper arms as he apologized for her distraction.
Between the abrupt silence that fell behind her in the garage and his calming manner, a cross between Old Hollywood leading man and Harrison Ford, Tabitha found herself almost jarringly subdued just that quickly.
“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t looking.”
Tabitha’s own regrets tumbled out of her with a chill of unexpected déjà vu. That moment might have been the first time, since she’d lost her parents to a violent accident almost before she’d had the chance to form any memories of her family, that she could recall her mother and the woman teaching her to call people sir and ma’am. In fact, the memory was so early that Tabitha could not picture her mother’s face. The feeling of a maternal presence had survived in her recollections only as a voice, a flash of a gold summer dress, a sense of warmth.
And how strange that the sense of warmth would automatically connect itself to the white-haired stranger—because he’d chanced upon her in a moment of distress, had steadied her, had smiled when he could just have easily barked at her over her carelessness in running into him.
“Please, I ask all the pretty young ladies to call me Thomas so I don’t feel so old. Mr. Poulsen, if you must be formal. Let me get a look at you now, dear,” he insisted. The senior made a peculiarly thorough survey of Tabitha, though without actually touching her and, thankfully, without even the least lascivious creeper vibe. “All in one piece? Nothing dropped? No scuffs or scrapes?”
Tabitha felt like a child getting the once-over from her grandparent after a trip and fall. The sensation was made doubly odd by the fact that she’d never known her grandparents so far as she could recall. Disarmed in both a comforting but fatiguing way, Tabitha just shook her head no to insist she was okay. It seemed like speaking or even taking a deep breath would have chanced too much, would have tempted a well of emotions too deep and too murky just then.
“All right, young lady. Off with you, then, but keep an eye on yourself down here. A person can’t be too careful these days even in nice places.”
Nodding, Tabitha summoned up the effort to reply, “Yes, sir. Thomas.”
Then she had to hurry up the steps to the street above and the courtyard amid high-end shops and offices, to make it look like she’d been rushing toward an appointment instead of fleeing strange men. No sign of them now. Warded away by the possibility of witnesses, she supposed. On another day, Tabitha might have felt intimidated by the area, knowing she couldn’t afford the price of a coffee—correction, a latte—in a place like that. On that day, for a minute, it was just good to stand quiet and mostly ignored among trimmed trees and clean paving stones, with no trash skipping along the gutter in a flurry that stank of the kinds of things people did in dirty alleys. She watched for the three strangely aggressive figures, but they never emerged from the parking structure.
When the sensation finally dissipated, Tabitha shook her head and wondered what the hell she was thinking wandering around window-shopping when Mick had told her to stay with the bike. In fact, Lebeau was stalking through the underground lot obviously searching when she hurried back down the steps.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disappear, but there were these—.”
Mick cut Tabitha’s explanation short with the back of his hand across her cheek so suddenly and so hard that she crumbled to the cold concrete floor on her butt in a daze.
CHAPTER SIX
Walking into a silent, empty house was the perfect illustration of why Finn didn’t want Tabitha Vallins in tow in his life anymore. The dull dread of not wanting to see her, not wanting to deal with the burning down low in his gut all night as he fought his attraction to her lush curves, turned to the dread of finding her gone. Then he caught the familiar growl of a Harley out front, and he knew.
Finn flung open his front door to find Tabitha shuffling up the front walk in the fading afternoon light. The purple cast over one cheek wasn’t shadow. Behind her, out at the curb, Mick smiled over one shoulder as he revved the motorcycle’s engine and watched Finn’s reaction. The scout feigned annoyance and jerked the girl inside by her arm with a grip much rougher than necessary.
With the door slammed shut behind him and the thunder of Lebeau’s bike receding down the street, Finn took hold of Tabitha’s face with both hands and made her turn her head to show him the bruise.
“What the fuck were you doing with Lebeau?”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea of a joyride,” she assured him caustically as she tried unsuccessfully to pull away from Finn.
It wasn’t lost on the shifter that Tabitha’s resistance sent a surge of possessiveness through him no matter how much he didn’t want her there. With his hands on her cheeks, thumbs curled under her defiantly raised chin, he drew her slowly but steadily closer. Finn growled low at her.
“Behave, Tabitha,” he said, his face angled over hers, an inch away. The heat of shared breath thickened into the languor of desire. The girl’s effect on him had always been intoxicating, even more so now that actual alcohol did so little for him.
Once Tabitha had stopped struggling, and when it was almost too much effort resisting the temptation to take her hot, sweet mouth with his, Finn let go of her face. He dragged her by the hand through the bedroom to the bathroom and made her lean back against the sink so he could get better light on her cheek. Above the bruise, by her left eye, a scrape had left dried blood and raw skin. Finn shook his head and cursed under his breath as he turned Tabitha’s head this way and that again to examine the injury. The shifter’s abs and arms ached with the tension of his anger, all while his groin burned at Tabitha’s nearness, her smell. She exuded the earthy sensuality of an unclaimed but ready lupa. The sensation was even worse—even better—than it had been four years ago.
Finn’s glance caressed the ang
les of Tabitha’s full face and pale, tender throat until his attention snagged on the reddish brown droplets of dried blood along the neckline of her t-shirt. In a huff, he tugged on the top. “Take this thing off,” he told the girl and peeled the shirt over her head before she could think to protest. He’d had practice undressing her, of course. And it was still Tabitha’s first instinct to lift her arms to help him.
Wadding the shirt into a ball and hurling it into a corner, Finn snarled. “That was Mick, wasn’t it? He’s not acting right about you. Something is going on with him. Why’d he hit you?”
“Why do they ever?” she responded with such a lack of concern. “I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, or I didn’t do it right, or I wasn’t happy about it.”
Unexpected heat, even greater than his anger, flashed over Finn’s own face. Years had passed with he and Tabitha bouncing around the foster care system, and years had passed since they’d aged out. Yet he still recalled every bruise and scrape and gash she’d ever suffered—from the other kids in the group homes, from this or that jealous girl who wanted Tabitha’s jacket, from the boys who wanted something else, from drunken foster mothers or kids at school who didn’t think anyone would care if they beat up an orphan. After hitting the system at six and all the fights Finn had been in, his whole life was just a blur of blood and dirt. There was nothing memorable about a street kid living moment to moment, fight to fight.
A life that made no sound and left no mark. Tabitha had said that once, to describe the lives they were leading as foster kids. The idea had made Finn sick then. It made him sick now, looking down at Tabitha’s bruised cheek. This whole sorry mess she’d gotten herself into was the only way she saw to break out of that life and make herself a new one. Could he really blame her?
Finn took swabs and alcohol from the medicine cabinet and made cleaning up Tabitha’s face as painful and unpleasant as possible. Yes, he could blame her for this mess; they were both neck-deep in it now. He was going to have to blame her and keep blaming her if he was going to keep himself from doing something fatally stupid to rescue her.
Tabitha tried to lean away from Finn and slapped his hand as he kept dabbing at her cheek with the alcohol. “Stop it. Ow, that hurts. You’re not taking care of me anymore, remember?”
“Hold still so I can clean you up. I don’t want blood in my bed.”
The girl snorted. “Like it’d be the first time.”
A Son was a Son. Finn wasn’t going to apologize for fighting or fucking like the Fenris Wolf he was. They weren’t the perfect pack, not like the damn Odin Wolves, but at least… at least it wasn’t a life that made no sound and left no mark. And he didn’t owe Tabitha any sort of fidelity. They weren’t a teenaged couple in love anymore.
“Why?” she whispered abruptly. “Why did you take care of me all those years? It’s obvious you don’t want to now.”
Tabitha didn’t look him in the face as she said this. She stared off at nothing, so melancholy. It was as though his mood and thoughts had bled and blended into hers. The possibility that such a thing could happen between them was disturbing for reasons he wasn’t going to discuss with her, ever.
“You were never looking for an angle or a handout.” Tabitha blinked at Finn’s response, her breath pausing as she seemed to turn the statement over in her head. He didn’t owe her any explanations, but she still deserved… something. She still deserved to know that over all those years someone had seen her.
“You know what I mean,” he told her. “Most of the others in the homes and in the system got to playing games. Playing on sympathies. You were never one of those girls who went in for being the damsel in distress to keep from pulling her weight. And you never tried to flirt or fuck your way into getting something more or something better than what everyone else had.”
Tabitha squinted at Finn as she followed his reasoning back over all those memories to a conclusion. “You took care of me because….”
“Because you were just going it alone, so strong no matter how small and weak you were.” Finn knew that was a contradiction, and he knew Tabitha would understand it anyway.
He wasn’t prepared for her nod solemnly and then fucking turn that all back on him as she said, “Going it alone. We all have to sometime. That’s why I’m doing this. That’s why you have to bite me.”
Gritting his teeth, the shifter flung the alcohol swab into the trash and stalked out of the bathroom, leaving Tabitha behind. “I’m not biting you,” he called back in a snarl from the bedroom. She followed him, so he marched out into the living room. “Why do you think I’ve been out on the road these last few days?”
Other than to keep himself from softening to Tabitha’s demands. To keep himself from that soft body and making her his as savagely and completely as a Fenris Wolf would. Last time he’d nearly killed her. Again she followed him, her arms folded and lip puffed out. Was she fucking doing that on purpose, looking that adorably impertinent? ‘Cause she was good enough at it that he couldn’t tell if he was being manipulated or she was just that fucking endearing. And delectable. Finn’s groin tightened, cock hardening and balls swelling heavy, straining at his jeans.
“I have been across our territory and up and down this whole fucking state looking for another way. Yet again, I’m trying to get you out of trouble, so you could at least cooperate and stop demanding I—.” Tabitha interrupted Finn’s pacing by planting herself in his path, arms still folded under her breasts. And she still hadn’t put on a shirt. “What?”
“So how’d that work for you?” she asked. “You find a way out of biting me?”
“No.” Man, that bristled, having to admit he’d found absolutely nothing. No one knew of a way to trigger a Fenris Wolf change without a bite, and Finn would not—could not—be the one to bite Tabitha on the full moon. Even worse, it was clear that Mick had formed some kind of odd, possessive fixation on her. Getting her out of town without Lebeau hearing about it and tracking her was looking doubtful, especially after whatever happened today. Mick taking Tabitha out on a ride? The MC president Finn knew would never have done that.
“Then you’re going to have to bite me and get it over with.”
“Over with?” Snarling, Finn grabbed Tabitha by her soft, bare arms and shook just enough to make her eyes flare. He tried to ignore the surge of lust he felt when her hands flew to his chest and her nails dug into his tensed pecs through his t-shirt. “Biting you and making you a Fenris wolf doesn’t make this over, Tabitha. Nothing is over once you’re one of them.” One of us, he corrected himself mentally. “The only thing that would be over is your life if the bite doesn’t trigger your change.”
She should have recoiled at the thought or regarded him with horror for the monsters they and he were. Or she should have torn herself away from him and run to hide and pout in the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Instead, Tabitha stepped up flush with Finn, lace and tits to his chest, warm inner thighs fitted perfectly to the ridge of the hard-on in his jeans. She brought her face and hot breath right up to his, making his skin burn and tingle. “I’m one of you, and you know it.”
That was it. That was enough from her.
Finn shifted his hold on Tabitha to grip her by the hair at her nape again. The other hand squeezed one lush breast roughly. The feel of her flesh, the weight and fullness and suppleness all at once, roused not just Finn’s cock but his beast. His hold on Tabitha grew rougher as Finn’s hold on his wolf slipped.
“Do you understand at all, little girl?” he demanded through clenched teeth, his lips brushing the full apple of her cheek. “Do you understand even a little what you’re doing?”
And he didn’t just mean trying to get in with the SoF long enough for them to turn her. He was so close to taking her the way a Son, a Fenris Wolf, took a woman. Pulling hard on her hair, Finn made Tabitha cry out and crook her head back as far as she could. The position opened her beautiful, full lips in a distressed moan. It bared the column
of her throat.
“Is this what you want? To be an animal? To live like a beast? To be mated and taken by wolves every night?”
Because if she kept tempting Finn, it wasn’t going to be like it had when they were teenagers. He wasn’t going to be as sweet or gentle. His wolf had devoured that part of him, as Finn had discovered to his own shock that last night he’d been with Tabitha, the night the Sons had turned him in a brutal gang attack that would have horrified and broken this girl.
Finn’s hold on Tabitha tightened. He had to be hurting her. And it felt too goddamn good to him. “Is it, Tabitha? Is this the way you want it?”
She groaned, eyes glassy, and didn’t respond for a moment. Then she rasped, from deep in her chest as she breathed harder and harder. “Yes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The unfamiliar hunger was like a prickling itch creeping over Tabitha’s skin. The only thing that stopped it was the burning ache of need now throbbing between her legs and at the points of her painfully rigid nipples as Finn pinched and abused her flushed breasts. And she fucking liked it. How could she?
But that was a stupid question, she realized. This wasn’t some rough frat boy threatening date rape, and she wasn’t a virgin in distress. She was a wolf shifter as much as Finn was, or near as much as she could be until she could finally convince him to bite her.
He almost killed you once, a small voice reminded the girl from far back in her head. That night four years ago, when he had bared his fangs in the final throes of orgasm and only stopped himself from tearing into her throat by wrapping his fingers around her neck. But then he couldn’t stop himself from squeezing, strangling, from wanting to kill what he could not possess.