Base Nature

by Sommer Marsden

  “I’m better off alone, Kelly. Give Chester my love. And take good care of yourself because I miss you,” he said and hung up the phone.

  He was glad he had hung up softly. His first instinct had been to drive the older wall phone into the cradle with enough force to push it into the wall. “But that wouldn’t have done anyone any good, would it?”

  He put his head down and tried to catch his breath. If he could simply get his pulse under control it would be fine. All he heard at first was the roaring of his own blood in his ears. Then the tick of the clock. Then the few hearty crickets who refused to give up their mating songs to autumn’s chill. And then he heard the soft sniffle and whimper carried on a burst of October wind. The dry leaves that clung to the tall trees in his yard almost buried the sound but he’d just heard it on the phone, so his already keen ears were tuned to its mournful nature.

  Liv was crying. He pulled the back door shut as he hurried out and down the rickety porch steps that desperately needed replacing. He’d have to do it fast so he couldn’t think about it. Thinking about it would introduce logic, logic would rule it out, he’d capitulate to good sense and not go. So better to hurry and outrace his own good sense.

  ———

  He thought about climbing up the way he had earlier but giving her a heart attack wasn’t his intent. So Garrett knocked like a normal, sane man, or the closest he could mimic. The first round of knocks brought her to the steps. He heard the fourth step down the flight squeak as she stood, trying to decide what to do. He called out to her, “Liv! It’s me, Garrett, from across the street. I thought I heard something, I thought I’d check on you.”

  He knocked some more, lighter now, so as not to startle. He could feel her in there weighing her options. Trying to decide whether or not to trust him. And judging by what he had seen of her, he couldn’t blame her much. Liv McCoy seemed nearly as damaged as he was. She was right on the other side of the door. Garrett put his palm to the white wood and said more softly, “It’s me, Liv, Garrett Gustafson. Can you at least tell me you’re okay?”

  He heard her breathe, her heart speed up, her eyes blink. It was as if Garrett could hear her being. If he held his breath and focused would he hear her blood flow? Her fingers move? Her hair whisper?

  Garrett shook his head to clear it and she said to the crack where door met jamb, “Hold on a second, I’ll undo the chain.”

  She was going to trust him. Garrett wasn’t sure why but his body felt a hundred pounds lighter, his mind bright yellow. He felt, in fact, happy. It had been a long, long time.

  ———

  Entry

  “What are you doing here?” Liv pressed her face to the small crack and studied his face. Concern. That was what she saw. Concern and a handsome lean face lit milk-white by moonlight. Something in his face looked mildly haunted. She recognized it because she had seen that particular look in the mirror many times.

  “I thought I heard something. I wanted to come check and see if you were okay. That you weren’t having…” He warred with himself here, Liv thought. Trying to be vigilant but not scare her. “I wanted to make sure the trash stayed out,” he said and grinned.

  That simple grin that broke his serious face into boyish lines made her stomach flutter with invisible butterfly wings. She couldn’t help but smile back. “How’s your arm?” She opened the door wider but still didn’t let him in.

  Garrett didn’t seem to take offense. “Arm?” A car whizzed past and he tensed slightly at the sound. Just enough for her to take note.

  “Where I stabbed you. You know? The blood, the cut, the pain. Most people would remember a flesh wound.” She cocked her head, studying the light that bounced off his sharp cheekbones, the comma of white light on his dark, dark hair. And the silver shimmer of his eyes when he turned just slightly to the left. She gasped before she could stifle it and took a small step back.

  Garrett stood at the opening but didn’t step in. He didn’t enter and he didn’t question her. He waited. If anything, he took a step back into the shadows. “It was not nearly as bad as you thought. It was just a scratch,” he said, his voice soft like she was some wild thing easily startled.

  Maybe she was.

  “Are you a vampire?” she blurted. Her face colored hotly and she actually giggled. It was a high, sort of insane sound. But the dam had broken and the night before and the whole entire shitty day came crashing down around her like a stack of glass dishes shattering around her. Liv started to laugh. Before she could collect herself, she was laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face.

  He chuckled darkly from the door. “Can I come in? Are you okay?”

  “You are! You are a vampire,” she managed. “You can’t come in without permission.” This too struck her as wildly funny and another wave of laughter washed over her. One might call it hysterical but Garrett Gustafson seemed to find it amusing.

  He pushed her door open with long tented fingers. She thought how they looked like a pianist’s fingers. Strong but somehow elegant. He put a foot on the tile threshold and stood inside the door. “I can. But I won’t. That would be wrong. It would be exactly what your…gentleman caller did earlier. And that was wrong.”

  In the warm yellow light of her living room lamp he was damn near beautiful. Liv stopped laughing long enough to stare at him. The fine, high cheekbones, the dark, too-long hair, the storm-gray color of his eyes and the washed-out rose color of his lips. He looked like a painting or a poet but better. “It was wrong,” she said, swallowing a lump in her throat.

  “I know. Now may I come in?” He stood there, on the dark red tile of her entryway and waited.

  She wasn’t sure what to do with a man who did not barge, demand and bully. “Yes, you may.” How formal they were. “How is your arm?”

  He pushed his sleeve up revealing a mild tan on his fair freckled skin. That skin was not meant to be tan. It was meant to be pale as cream so that the fragile skin under his eyes looked bruised almost. He really was beautiful. She shook her head, staring at the blush pink mark on his skin. “Fine. See. I told you.” He pushed the door shut and looked around. Almost seemed to raise his head as if to smell the air.

  “But I stuck it in you!” Liv heard her own words a heartbeat after she said them and tucked her head down, laughing. Her face hotter than hot but all the rest of her pleasantly warm. She felt no fear of him as big as he was. As odd as his eyes appeared. Despite how unusual his nighttime appearance seemed just as she had been giving in to the fear and the stress of the day and letting herself have a good wallowing cry. She inhaled deeply, cleared her throat. “What I mean is, you were bleeding.”

  “I’m a fast healer. I always have been. Mind if I look around? Secure the perimeter as it were?” He moved toward the living room but stilled until she gave him a short nod.

  Liv gathered her sweater tight around her middle and followed behind him, watching him test the locks and the basement door. He tugged the kitchen door and pushed back the curtains to make sure the windows were down.

  “But you were bleeding, Garrett.” His name felt heavy on her lips. Like she was saying more than just a word. More than just a name. It felt very much like it held power and she licked her lips to cover the nervous tingle in her mouth.

  “I was. But I cleaned it up and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed.” He turned and she was right on his heels. They were very close. Closer than she had realized and Liv could see how long his eyelashes were and how white and neat his teeth were. She saw the caramel spattering of freckles across the fine bridge of his nose and the small bits of grayish silver mixed into his dark coffee hair. Up close his breath smelled like nighttime and grass and cinnamon. “I…”

  He put his hands on her arms, softly. Nothing harsh about his touch. The contact reached out warm tendrils of sensation. Shooting down her arms into her fingertips. Spreading through her belly and lower still. Liv clenched her thighs together to still the warm beating pulse that had started bet
ween her legs. It didn’t quell the sensation, it only made it worse. She made a small lost sound in her throat and he smiled down at her. “Mind if I check my handiwork upstairs to make sure it’s okay?”

  Her voice was gone because his hands were still on her and for the first time, she stood very close to a man whose evident power seemed to be intentionally protecting her instead of bullying her. “Sure,” she said but it was more of a sigh.

  He gently moved her to the side and walked past her. But his voice had gone deeper and he seemed a bit preoccupied. “Good. Thank you, it will make me feel better and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “You’re not in my hair,” she said and then laughed. That had been brilliant. But she followed Garrett’s broad back, swathed in a clean but worn denim shirt, up her steps to the second floor. He took a right into the hallway and headed to her bedroom as if he’d been there a thousand times. That thought made the wet beat of her pulse in her pussy that much worse. Would it be inappropriate to jump him and throw him to the bed? She eyed him again. He was way too big. She’d never fell him. It would be like trying to fell a tree or a lamppost.

  She smiled and when he fingered the edges of the plywood she felt her body shudder sympathetically. Liv wouldn’t mind being that plywood right about now and the thought shocked and thrilled her. “Looks good,” Garrett said, turning fast. His eyes flickered silver and then gray again. She didn’t feel fear this time. She felt drawn.

  “What are you, really?”

  “A man. A fast healing, nosy, barging-in-to-check-your-windows man,” he said and smiled. The smile didn’t touch his eyes. He was lying.

  Liv stepped to him, a totally foreign move on her part for unfamiliar men. No matter how nice they might appear. “That’s not true.” She touched his shirt, right over the place she had driven her tweezers into the skin. “What are you? Who are you?”

  He took a step back despite the fact that the look in his eyes said he wanted to step forward. Maybe pull her to him. Whatever the look, he stepped back and grinned, shrugging to appear nonchalant. “Just a nosy neighbor. A Good Samaritan. A traveling window hanger. A—”

  Liv leaned in and kissed him. The tingle from where he had touched her was nothing compared to what happened with the kiss. Her lips, her tongue, her chin, all down her throat felt as if it sparkled with a thousand hot little lights. Like Christmas lights or fairy lights. Or you’ve finally lost your mind. But she ignored that nasty voice and leaned into him more. Soaking up the big safe feel of him. The protective vibe that seemed to come off him like a baking kind of heat. The heat of the sun or a summer day or a warm oven on a cold night. The heat was something that she was not used to but welcomed with a big open heart. “What are you? What? Come on, tell me, please.”

  “I’m your neighbor.”

  Liv felt the pull of want. Not normal want, like any woman feels but something more too. Something bigger. Something that nearly felt like it was independent of her. Her hands smoothed over the hard lines and planes of his chest. He made a sound, way down in his chest like he was trying to bury it. She nipped at his bottom lip and pushed her pelvis to the front of his dark brown cords. “I’m sorry,” she said and didn’t know why. “I’m sorry.” She kissed him harder, pushing the front of her to the hard ridge of his cock. A small part of her rejoiced at the small bit of evidence that he wanted her. At least on a physical level.

  “Why are you sorry?” That noise in his chest had turned from a rumble and a growl to a deep, choked masculine voice. For just a second she felt him kiss her back. She felt the small pull of his lips at hers as he kissed her. His big hands tangled in her long hair and he pulled her forward just a bit using her locks as a lead. She whimpered but not from fear, from need.

  He let her go. Took a step back. Broke the spell.

  “I’m sorry because I don’t know why I did that,” she said. Liv touched her lips like maybe they might tell her the secret as to what had propelled her. “That’s not like me. I’m normally…”

  He stroked the radiator and she could tell it was simply to give his hands something to do. That touched her for some reason. “Normally what?”

  “Afraid,” she breathed. It was easy to admit it to Garrett. “I’ve been afraid for a long time. And most men scare me.” She twisted her fingers in her sweater. “A lot.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you.”

  “You don’t.”

  He grimaced for a split second. “Maybe I should.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I should go.” He moved to go past her and she caught his hand up in hers as if she had known him forever and ever and trusted him implicitly. Because as crazy as it was, she did.

  “Garret, what are you?” She held her breath, hoping she would answer.

  “You don’t want to know,” he growled, his eyes flashing flat silver and hypnotic. And then he had softly, almost soundlessly moved past her and was gone.

  Liv heard the door snick shut downstairs. She sat down hard on her bed and touched her lips that still tingled with energy and heat. She wanted to go after him. Was drawn to be with him. Even if she hadn’t figured it out. So she’d sit here and count heartbeats while she waited to see what she would do. But she wasn’t crying and that was a start.

  Chapter Four

  Instinct

  Garrett stretched out on the bed, feeling more like a corpse than a man hunting sleep. He was wired and confused, no real urge to sleep filled him, but he lay there to try to signal to his stubborn body that it was time to settle down. To let the day go and surrender consciousness so that tomorrow could start a new day. It was only very recently that he did not greet the rising sun with the disappointment of waking to find yet another day to try to live through.

  He could hear her heart beating from here. Liv. “But that can’t be true,” he said to the ceiling. He knew he was really talking to Eileen. He had spent many nights talking to the ceiling. Talking to her and telling her how sorry he was. How sorry he was that he had failed. “It can’t be true even for me. I cannot hear her heartbeat.”

  Garrett sighed, ran a hand through his hair, stilled his hand by his face and inhaled deeply. No, he could not hear her heartbeat from here but he could smell her on his skin. That unique earthy smell of her chemistry and her warm blood and her perfume. Something that was more wood and spice than flowery. His cock stirred and he stolidly ignored it. How long since you’ve wanted a woman?

  “Not long enough.”

  It would be wrong to want someone so soon, he felt. It had been a little less than two years. Some days it felt like two lifetimes, some days like two minutes. His loss was still too fresh to want Liv.

  But he did.

  He felt the heaviness of warring with himself pull him under. Just enough that he couldn’t push thoughts away so readily but not enough that he slept. There was Eileen, her red, red hair and her sharp green eyes. He joked with her, you look more like a fox than a wolf when you change and then he would let her chase him, nip at his heels, draw a little blood before flipping her over, baring her belly, pinning her so that even in wolf form she laughed with a wide grin.

  Garrett heard himself sigh but the act was strictly overheard. He wasn’t physically aware of doing so.

  Eileen faded away, her bright vibrant memory withdrawing into darkness and he let himself relax. But just as readily, his tired mind thrust Liv at him. Long, long limbs and streaky blonde hair tangled around her face. The fear in her eyes when that big man loomed over her, the different fear she showed when he’d arrived. But then a flash of anger and strength and the survival instinct when she drove the shiny silver weapon into his skin.

  Lucky it was nickel not actual silver…

  She had wanted to survive. She was stronger than she thought. A wounded warrior. A damaged avenger. Inside her was a fighter that she had lost sight of. She called to his blood. But in more ways than one. Initially to protect her but secondly to shift and take her. Change h
er.

  Garrett had never changed anyone. Ever. He hadn’t needed to, his mate had already been wolf. And the pack frowned upon changing. Very few instances were allowed.

  You’re not pack anymore.

  He rolled over to his side, willing himself to sleep. If he slept he wouldn’t pick at the scab of the day. He wouldn’t turn over every breath Liv had taken or how long it had been since Eileen had drawn any breath at all. Sleep would give him a little bit of peace.

  The phone rang and he jolted. The clock showed it was barely past ten. No wonder he couldn’t fall asleep. It was still early enough for someone to phone him but he was done with this day. Ready to trade it in for a new one. He let the phone ring and finally it stopped. Garrett saw the wash of moonlight on his threadbare carpet. Yet another thing that needed to be replaced in this house. The moonlight drew his eye again. He could get up and change. He could run. Maybe kill some small critters, have a snack, get his pent-up angst out in the nearby field.

  It was the only thing that truly scared him about being alone now. If something were to happen to him, he had no one looking out for him. No one running with him or possibly stumbling over him later on their own moonlit run. He had no one.

  Garrett sat up, stuck his toe in the middle of moonlight. He fell into it, let his mind and his awareness tumble headfirst into the bright white light that dotted his dry-rotted carpet. He was not aware of the shortening or narrowing of limbs. He was not aware of the snout growth or jaw shifts. He was not aware of the hair that sprouted in cool gray tufts along his flanks. It wasn’t like the movies. It wasn’t a submission to pain. It was simply a letting go, like when you relax your eyes to find the hidden pictures in those paintings. It was a loosening of awareness until awareness shifted.

  He hit the floor on all fours and sniffed the moonlight. He tossed his head back but even Garrett’s wolf knew not to howl here. Best to wait until he hit the local park. He could roam the hiking trails and rustle up some rabbits and squirrels. Maybe he’d get lucky and hit a group of deer. News had not spread of his arrival yet. The local wildlife were still fat and lazy, unaware of his presence.