Must Love Lycans

by Michele Bardsley

  Argh!

  I plopped back onto the bed, thinking about Jarred, which wasn’t exactly a safer area. Maybe my discomfort with this place had to do with the niggling suspicion that Jarred had picked me for me—a far more terrifying consideration than the idea my patheticness had driven him to an act of unimaginable kindness. Despite my lapses in judgment over the years, I had never told a soul about my empathic abilities. I can’t exactly remember what it was like for me as a child, but I’m sure any weirdness I displayed was shrugged off as my imagination gone wild. I was nine years old when I figured out two things: First, being able to “feel” the emotions of others was not something everyone could do. Second, people didn’t appreciate it when you dug around their emotional landscape and talked about their unsightly weeds.

  So, yeah, very early on, I learned to keep myself to myself.

  A low, mournful howl lurched into my thoughts.

  I blinked and sat up. For a crazy second, I had a dream-within-a-dream moment, like maybe I hadn’t actually woken up from the weird forest and the talking wolf, but instead had fallen into this space that looked like my bedroom, but wasn’t.

  The howl echoed again.

  What the hell?

  I stood up and looked around trying to get my bearings. I wasn’t in Wonderland. I was awake. Probably. I pinched my arm and yelped. Oh, yeah. Definitely awake.

  My apartment was at the end of the facility’s east wing. In fact, my living quarters were the only thing at this end of the second floor. The place was huge and luxurious, filled with marble counters, hardwood floors, silk fabrics, oversized furniture, and an impossible array of polished knickknacks. I mostly stayed tucked into my bedroom, which had its own fireplace, big-screen television, and mini-fridge. The rest of the place felt too much like a museum (or like my mother’s own haughty abode) for me to feel comfortable within it.

  Another howl reverberated, much louder this time. Whatever creature was making that racket was in this part of the facility. Did Oklahoma have wolves? I didn’t think so, but getting the skinny on the state’s known wildlife had never been a goal of mine. Of course, I dismissed the idea of a patient causing the ruckus because none had ever displayed animalistic tendencies.

  Except . . . well, Damian.

  I hurried into the living room, bumping into the various tables and chairs positioned just so around the ornate fireplace. Above it was an abstract painting of red slashes and purple spatters, which lifted to reveal the flat-screen TV hidden behind. I had only flipped on a couple of the numerous lights available in the cavernous space, so I was maneuvering (ineptly, of course) through the shadowy recesses.

  Despite bruised shins and one stubbed toe, I made it to the door. I grasped the knob and hesitated. I was not gonna be the too-stupid-to-live girl (er . . . again), so I pressed my ear against the thick wood and strained to listen.

  I heard rhythmic thumping, a series of noises that sounded like . . . okay, like light sabers clashing, and then . . . hoooooooowl!

  “Shit! He’s going for the doc,” yelled a woman’s voice. “How the fuck did he find her?”

  “Goddamned werewolves.” Sven! He sounded pissed off. I mean, more so than usual. And werewolves? Really? I’d never be able to help Damian if people catered to his delusions. “Dante will strip our hides if this ass-hole gets close enough to touch her.”

  I had a terrible moment where I almost yanked the door open and demanded an explanation. I managed not to turn the knob, though my fingers were trembling with the urge to follow through.

  I heard shouts, pain-filled cries, bangs, and thuds.

  And then there was nothing but an awful silence.

  Something large smacked into my locked front door. I bounced off and stumbled back, heart thudding as I heard ominous splintering sounds. I stared at the cracking, buckling door in horrified awe. I had automatically put up my mental shields, so I had no empathic sense of who was trying to get in . . . but I knew anyway.

  I wouldn’t open myself up to him—keeping myself as closed as the door. I knew too well the mistake I’d made last time and what it had cost so many.

  I wished I could say that I did something sensible, like run away, or lock myself in the foyer closet, or grab something with which to defend myself. But since it was me, and not someone with common sense, I stood there like my feet had been glued to the floor.

  The door snapped in the middle and the man on the other side grabbed the pieces and yanked them out, tossing them into the hallway beyond.

  Damian crouched down, naked and bruised and furious. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed, and even through my psychic shields, I felt the sudden, brutal shift of his anger into fierce, ugly need.

  “Mine,” he growled.

  Then he leapt through the door, howling in triumph.

  My fight-or-flight impulse finally kicked in. With my heart trying to claw its way outta my throat, I spun around and darted back through the living room.

  Damian followed. Sorta. I heard the whumps of his feet hitting the couch cushions and the crash of items he knocked off tables as he cut across the area I’d avoided. Just as I got to my open bedroom door, he landed in front of me, crouched on all fours, his head cocked as he studied me.

  Why the hell was he naked again? And what could’ve possibly triggered his need to go into werewolf mode? I noted a small circular burn on his shoulder. What weapon in Sven’s arsenal made that sort of wound?

  Oh, God. What had Damian done to Sven and the security team? Had he killed them? Nausea roiled and I pressed a trembling hand to my stomach. What on earth had made me believe that I could help this man? That I could help anyone? I’d demanded Damian be assigned a room because I wanted to believe he wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’d made a terrible mistake. Again.

  I had no idea what to do now. I wasn’t anywhere near a panic button, and there were several located within the apartment. Just how many homicidal maniacs did a girl have to face in one lifetime? Granted, this situation was different from the one with Robert, except that I still didn’t have a clue how to handle myself. I had no weapons, no clever ideas—just a terrible, numb sensation that felt too much like surrender.

  Damian’s nostrils were flaring, and his eyes were strange. The pupils were large and round. They looked so different. I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around this observation. Could a person so lost in their delusion physically create characteristics that confirmed their beliefs? Damian believed he was a wolf, and so he was trying to become one. And rather succeeding.

  His nostrils continued to flare as he stared at me. Then he growled low in his throat, baring his teeth at me. The growl sounded very much like it had issued from a wolf rather than a man pretending to be one. Fear chilled me.

  I stepped back, and the growl got louder, meaner.

  Catering to the delusion was not the correct therapeutic approach, but right now, I was more worried about survival. It seemed to me that responding to him as though he were, indeed, a wolf, might serve me best. Unfortunately, I knew zipola about wolf behavior. Why oh why didn’t I watch more National Geographic? All that knowledge gleaned from the Style Network certainly wasn’t helping me now.

  Screw it.

  “Damian,” I said in a sharp, firm voice. “You’re being rude.”

  He stopped growling, and once again cocked his head, his gaze on mine. He looked startled. He sat back on his haunches, blinking. Panicked as I was, I couldn’t help but note that he had a fully erect penis, which did not reassure me about his intentions.

  “Rude.” His eyes somehow changed again, reverting to a more human gaze. “I do not wish to be rude.” Slowly, he rose to his feet. My fear receded just a little. While I no longer saw evidence of the injuries I’d noted when observing him in the induction room (which was weird because those kinds of wounds shouldn’t heal in mere hours), I saw fresh bruises and cuts—no doubt from Sven’s attempt to recapture him.

  And he still had that impressive erection, too.


  Damian crossed to me in two long strides and grasped my arms. He had a firm grip on me, though not a painful one. His gaze was intense as he studied my face.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said carefully.

  “You smell so good. But not human. You’re wolf. You smell like wolf.” He inhaled, his eyes closing, his lips pulling back in a feral grin. Then his eyes popped open. He lowered his face to mine. “I want you.”

  Dry-mouthed, I licked my lips, which drew his attention in a way that made my heart skip a beat. I couldn’t allow him to kiss me, even though a tiny dark part of me hoped he’d take what he wanted. Then I could have that kiss guilt-free. (Being a therapist made me an ace at creating justifiable behavior.) He was so close that his hard-on brushed my stomach, which was bare, thanks to the way the camisole’s filmy cloth parted in the middle.

  “Permit me,” he said.

  “I . . . uh, what?”

  “I cannot take what belongs to you.”

  What an odd way to express . . . um, whatever he was trying to express. Oh. He said the next time he’d remember to ask permission. And I’d assured him there would be no next time. Silly me. I quaked as emotions tumbled through me. My shields were feeling too thin, and no doubt I was honing in on Damian’s passion, which was mixing in with my own fear and consternation. Still, I had an opportunity to regain control, and I took it.

  “Let me go, Damian,” I said softly.

  “No,” he croaked. My shields dissolved under the weight of his desperation. His emotions flowed over me in tangled waves. He was afraid that if he let me go, he would be lost again. I ascertained he had not regained his memories, but obviously, his delusion of being a wolf was wholly intact. His emotions rioted through me—anger, terror, confusion, and, most of all, a passionate, urgent need to claim the female in his arms. His lust was more frightening than even the fury that had driven him to my door.

  “Permit me,” he begged.

  I swallowed the knot in my throat. If I thought for a moment that letting him kiss me would secure my release, I might’ve considered it. But I knew it was merely the gateway to a larger problem. Damian was obviously infatuated with me and even the smallest concession would lead to other expectations that I could never, ever fulfill.

  No matter how much I wanted to.

  He stiffened, his gaze sliding toward the living room. The front door wasn’t visible from where we stood, and I hadn’t heard anything to indicate someone had arrived. But given Damian’s reaction, I knew someone had either awakened from the hallway scuffle (which meant they weren’t dead . . . yay!) or a secondary team had arrived. Relief tumbled through me for a nanosecond.

  Damian yanked me fully into his embrace. He was all taut flesh and hard muscle (and did I mention his enormous penis, which was now pressed between the vee of my thighs?). My body and my brain argued over the appropriate response. My knees wobbled, and I felt all liquidy and faint. Then Damian leaned down and sank his sharp teeth deeply into the flesh between my neck and shoulder.

  “Ow!” I cried. I smacked Damian on top of the head as if he were a pesky schoolboy taking liberties rather than a delusional schizophrenic. He straightened. And he was grinning with blood-flecked lips.

  “I didn’t give you permission to do that!”

  “I can mark you if I so choose,” he said imperiously. “I am the royal alpha.”

  I gaped at him. The spot where he’d bitten me stung like crazy. I should’ve been asking him questions that helped me understand his delusion, but I was too pissed off. “You need permission to kiss me, but you can bite me?”

  “No!” The angry shout came from Jarred. “Damn it! Sven!”

  “Got him,” came Sven’s icy voice.

  I heard a low, soft whine; then a circular silver object thudded into Damian’s shoulder. Oh. That explained the other wound. But why had they tried to tranq him earlier? What had triggered his delusion?

  “You are protected now,” he said. His hands slipped off my arms as his eyes rolled back into his head. He crumpled to the floor.

  “Christ Almighty,” muttered Jarred as he grasped my wrist and pulled me away from Damian’s prone form. I watched in a daze as Sven and his female partner shouldered past us and crouched down to check the unconscious man.

  “It’s nice that you’re not dead,” I said to Sven.

  He glanced up at me, his gaze widening as he noted what I was wearing. Then one corner of his mouth tugged up. “Back ’atcha.”

  Sven didn’t completely hate me. Well, that was progress in one abysmal corner of my messed-up life. While Sven and his team dealt with Damian, Jarred led me into the kitchen. The whole area was open plan. The kitchen overlooked the living room and to the right was the formal dining room—complete with chandelier. Just ten feet away, I heard Sven on his walkie-talkie making arrangements to put Damian back into the induction room.

  I wheeled around and leaned over the marble counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “No! Don’t cage him!”

  Sven’s gaze traveled past me, and I followed it to Jarred, who stood less than a foot behind me. He was as emotionally shuttered as usual, his expression stony. “He’s too dangerous to be allowed a suite.”

  I had to agree with him, even though I didn’t want Damian tossed into the padded cell again. “Isn’t there a more secure location that’s not so . . . well, prisonlike?”

  “No.” He nodded toward Sven. The big man picked up Damian and tossed him over his shoulder like an unwieldy sack of potatoes.

  I turned away, unable to stomach the sight of yet another of my failures being carted away. At least Damian was alive. Robert had been dead, and deservedly so.

  Jarred stepped closer, chopping in half the small distance between us. He looked as an ancient and stoic as an oak tree. His tense demeanor set me on edge. I couldn’t sense his emotions, but I got the impression something significant had changed—something that very much displeased him. His gaze slid over me, lingering on the gap created by the way the camisole’s fabric split. He had a decent view of my navel and the lacy edge of my panties. He might be able to block my empathic abilities, but I knew desire when I saw it—even in the tiny flicker Jarred allowed into those cold gray eyes.

  “I’ll go put on a robe.”

  “I would prefer that you didn’t,” he said.

  I heard the command in his tone, and I didn’t like it. I had the childish urge to yell, “You’re not the boss of me!” Except that, you know, he actually was.

  “I’m not particularly comfortable conversing with my employer while in my underwear.”

  “You may as well know,” he said in thoughtful tone, “that I had fully expected to bed you by evening’s end.”

  I swallowed the knot in my throat. I hadn’t been incorrect about his intentions at all. “I don’t care how desperate I am, Mr. Dante. I will not sleep with you to keep my job.”

  He blinked down at me, the slight widening of his eyes the only indication of his surprise. “Our sexual relationship has nothing to do with your employment.” He frowned. “I find it disturbing that you believe I need to blackmail anyone into my bed.”

  “I find it disturbing you think we’re going to have a sexual relationship.”

  His lips thinned. “I hadn’t counted on the competition.”

  Competition? I looked at him blankly, and he sighed. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, ever the casual man (only so not . . . everything about Jarred Dante was calculated).

  His gaze meandered over me again, which I tolerated with some annoyance. Being wealthy and good-looking and autocratic had made Jarred somewhat a spoiled bully. I crossed my arms and glared at him, but he didn’t relent in his inventory of my assets. His mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.

  “I’m surprised you championed Damian at all,” said Jarred. “He could’ve killed you.”

  “If he wanted to kill me then I would be dea
d.”

  The blame for Damian’s escape was mine. I hadn’t judged the situation appropriately. Worse, I allowed my attraction to him to cloud my judgment. I was entirely out of my league. I could no longer pretend that I was capable of running the facility when it was so obvious I couldn’t even run my own life. It appeared that I would never regain my confidence (or was that my own arrogance?). I would always second-guess myself—forget about regaining full trust in my own decision-making skills. Why are you even a therapist, Kelsey? The question was a blend of my mother’s voice and my own conscience. Pure stubbornness had propelled me forward. Despite losing civil lawsuits, and being convicted in the court of public opinion, I had received no reprimands from the state nor had the federal government sought charges against me. And I’d spent quite a few days in the company of FBI agents. So, with license (and the proverbial hat) in hand, I’d sought a therapy job. And I’d eventually gotten one—a very crappy, unrewarding one. Then Jarred found me and offered me redemption through his largesse.

  But still I was plagued by the idea that I hadn’t found my place in the world. I always felt like I was going in the wrong direction.

  I reached up and felt the wound on my neck. Even the light pressure sent a jolt of pain down my shoulder. Ouch. “The question is why Damian tried to find me at all. And how did he manage it?”

  “He caught your scent.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Unless my theory that his delusion was so powerful, his body was actually accommodating it. “I can’t believe how embedded he is in the fiction he’s created. It’s amazing that it survived the amnesia, but not any of his other memories. He told me that he could mark me because he was the royal alpha.”

  “Did he?” Jarred’s gaze flicked to my neck. “Let me see.”

  He lifted my hair. He was such a large man that I couldn’t help but feel intimidated by his nearness. He was dressed in a gray suit with a striped tie, no doubt for our dinner date, and I had to admit, his spicy cologne was rather nice. He uttered, “Goddamnit.” Then he stepped back. “I’ll call Dr. Ruthers.”