by Paige Tyler
Even more than the sexual cravings, there was something about being with Remy that made her happy. Whether they were walking quietly hand in hand down the street or chatting about the storm in the Gulf and where it might end up, Triana found herself feeling the way she imagined people felt when they were in love.
Loud laughter pulled her attention back to the conversation, and as she gave herself a mental shake, she swore from the knowing look Remy gave her that he somehow knew what she’d been thinking. It wouldn’t have surprised her. She already thought he was some kind of superhero with powers and abilities far beyond that of mortal man. How else could he be so amazing?
“Cooper wanted to do something special for his new bride to show her how much he loves her, but he also wanted it to be something she would never see coming in a million years,” Max was saying, and it took Triana a moment to figure out they were talking about one of the other guys on the Dallas SWAT team who’d recently gotten married. “So he got the whole team together and we came up with a choreographed line dance to the song ‘Howlin’ for You’ by the Black Keys.”
“Let’s just say there’s a reason most of us are cops and not dancers,” Brooks said with a pointed look at Zane. “The whole thing was supposed to be sexy, but it ended up being hilarious. Everly, Cooper’s wife, practically passed out she laughed so hard.”
Triana’s mother smiled. “And you all danced?”
“Only because we didn’t want to let Cooper down,” Zane said. “But since I have absolutely no rhythm, I mostly stood there looking cool and snapping my fingers to the beat.”
Triana wasn’t so sure of that. She’d seen Zane and Kim dance together last night, and he seemed to have plenty of moves as far as she could tell. She opened her mouth to say as much, but Max already had Zane on his feet and was attempting to show him how to do the dance they’d done at the wedding. Despite what she’d seen last night on the dance floor, it turned out that Zane honestly didn’t have any rhythm. Then again, he didn’t have any music to work with so that could have been part of the problem.
“You gotta loosen up those hips, dude,” Brooks said in between laughing. “You dance like you have a stick shoved up your butt.”
Zane tried, he really did, but it was hopeless. Triana laughed so much she almost fell out of her chair. If she stayed and watched the British SWAT cop try to dance any longer, tears were going to start running down her face and that would just make a mess of her makeup.
“I’m going to get the dessert,” she said to Remy. When he made as if to join her, she shook her head. “Stay. I’m just going to slice the cake and bring it out. Hang out here and make Mom laugh some more.”
In the kitchen, Triana took the big chocolate cake out of the fridge, then grabbed plates from the cabinet. When her mother had frosted the layer cake earlier, Triana had been sure most of it would go to waste, considering how much jambalaya she’d made. But after seeing those guys in there eat, she figured there wouldn’t be a crumb left.
As she sliced the cake, Triana wondered when she should bring up the idea to Remy of continuing their relationship long distance. She was so distracted, she hadn’t even realized she’d cut herself with the knife until she felt a sting along one side of her left index finger.
Crap.
She jerked her hand away from the cake, afraid she was going to get blood on it. She’d barely gotten her hand under the faucet so she could wash it off and see how bad it was when she felt someone beside her. She turned to see Remy standing there, a look of concern on his face.
Damn, he was quiet for someone of his size. She hadn’t even heard him come in.
“Let me see how bad it is,” he said, taking her hand and pushing it under the faucet, then gently washing away the blood.
Triana opened her mouth to tell him it was nothing and that she could take care of it, but the words got stuck in her throat at the worry on his face. She glanced at her finger, thinking maybe the cut was worse than she’d thought. But it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was a little nick less than half an inch long and not as bad as some paper cuts she’d had. You wouldn’t have known that from the care Remy took tending to the cut. He washed it out with soap and water, then put pressure on it to stop the bleeding, while drying the rest of her hand with a towel.
“Where does your mother keep her Band-Aids?” he asked.
She was going to tell him that she could get it, but one look at his face changed her mind. “On the lower shelf of the linen closet in the hallway.”
Triana expected him to go get it, but instead, he stood there holding her finger tightly, his expression thoughtful. While she certainly enjoyed him holding her hand, she was a little confused at the same time. They certainly couldn’t stay like this for the rest of the night.
She opened her mouth to point out that everyone was probably waiting for dessert when Zane walked in with the box of Band-Aids. The British SWAT officer didn’t say a word but simply set the box on the counter, then walked out.
Triana stared after him.
“How did he…?” she began, but the words trailed off as Remy opened the paper wrapping of the Band-Aid and applied it to her cut.
“Thanks,” she said. “I never thought of first aid as romantic, but now I see I was wrong.”
He arched a brow. “Romantic, huh? I’ve never thought of it that way, but maybe I have a different definition of the word than you do.”
Triana raised up on tiptoe and kissed him, wrapping her arms around him to pull him close. “Does that fit your definition of romantic better?”
Remy nodded, giving her another kiss, this one long and lingering. Her body quivered in response, and she glided one hand down to caress the bulge in his jeans.
“Think anyone would noticed if we slipped into my room for a quickie?” she asked teasingly. “I promise not to make too much noise.”
He chuckled softly. “As tempting as that is, I think someone might come looking for us.”
She let out a dramatic sigh. “You’re probably right. Promise to make it up to me later?”
He kissed her again, making her weak in the knees. “Count on it.”
* * *
“So, now that the locals are gone, are you going to tell me what the hell has been occupying that so-called mind of yours?” Max asked.
Remy frowned across the table at the younger werewolf. He and Max had joined some of the NOPD SWAT team for lunch after Drew and Brooks had put an early halt to the morning’s training so they could make that afternoon’s work more difficult. Since there’d been fifteen of them, the waitress had shown them to a back room reserved for parties, but now that the other cops had left, he and Max had the place to themselves.
“Nothing,” he lied.
Max snorted. “Bullshit. You were so preoccupied during training this morning that you tossed a 180-pound body dummy over your shoulder and hopped an eight-foot-high chain-link fence like it wasn’t even there. Gage told us not to do crap like that.”
Remy opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped himself. Maybe he had done something that stupid. He wasn’t sure. The morning had been kind of a blur. In fact, he barely remembered any of the combined physical fitness and tactical movement training Drew had put together for them. It wasn’t his fault. The training, which consisted of humping heavy gear and rescue dummies, climbing buildings, and shooting pop-up targets, hadn’t been very challenging. Unfortunately, that had left him with lots of time to think about other stuff—like Triana.
“Did anyone see me do it?” he asked.
Max waited until the waitress dropped off their second orders of burgers and fries and left the room before answering.
“No. No one saw you do it but Brooks and me.” Max reached for the bottle of ketchup. “So what the hell is bothering you?”
Remy glanced out the window at the light drizzle coming down. That mornin
g, the weather experts had announced that Ophelia had changed direction and was now moving along a more northerly track. While New Orleans wouldn’t get hit with the worst of the storm, it would still get wet. The outermost rain bands of Ophelia had started coming ashore an hour ago, dropping rain all the way from Mobile in the east to Lafayette in the west.
“I’m just worried about this thing with Aaron Lee,” Remy said, turning back to Max. “It’s been two days and we haven’t heard anything from the informant in his organization. For all we know, the guy—if it is a guy—could be dead by now.”
“I hear ya.” Max dumped half a bottle of ketchup on his plate, completely drowning his waffle fries, then took a big bite out of his cheeseburger. “How’s everything going with Triana?”
Remy cringed. He should have known Max wouldn’t buy his crap about the informant. While he was worried about the informant risking his, or her, life to put Aaron Lee behind bars, that wasn’t what had his head spinning in circles. That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it though.
“Good,” Remy said noncommittally as he focused on his food. He stayed away from the ketchup, preferring to taste the food he was paying for, not the free bottle of crushed tomatoes on the table. “We have a lot of fun together.”
“You have a lot of fun together,” Max mimicked, imitating Remy’s casual tone. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what the hell is wrong with you?”
Remy ground his teeth. Did Max even have a filter on that damn mouth of his? “What do you mean?”
“It means you’re full of shit,” Max said. “I haven’t been a werewolf long enough to know if you’re sending out those signals that some of the others can pick up on telling them if you’re lying, but I don’t need to be a werewolf to figure it out. Don’t tell me you haven’t realized just how special Triana is, because the rest of us sure as hell have.”
“I’ve already said we have a lot of fun together,” Remy pointed out.
Max shoved a waffle fry in his mouth. “Yeah, I heard you the first time. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re scared.”
Remy gave him a sharp look. “Scared of what?”
“Scared that Triana is so special.”
Remy shook his head. “It’s not like that. Just drop it, okay?”
But Max didn’t drop it. Instead, he reached across the table and poked Remy hard in the chest, making his chair slide back a few feet.
“It’s not like that?” Max snarled, his eyes rimmed in gold. “Then maybe you can tell me how it is, because I’m not seeing it.”
Remy stared at him. Like any newer werewolf, Max sometimes had control issues, but Remy had no idea why the guy was so pissed at him.
“Things with her are happening too fast, that’s all,” Remy said, pulling his chair in.
Max frowned. “What do you mean, it’s happening too fast?”
Remy sighed, wishing he didn’t have to talk about this but knowing Max would never let it go.
“I was thrilled when we ran into Triana in that club Sunday night,” he said. “She’s a beautiful, intelligent woman I enjoy spending time with, but I never wanted it to go beyond that.” Max opened his mouth to say something, but Remy cut him off. “Unfortunately, it’s too late for that, and now things are getting…strange.”
Max downed another waffle fry. “Define strange.”
“Remember when Triana nicked her finger with the knife last night?”
Max nodded. “Yeah. I smelled the blood the same time you did.”
Remy sighed. “I knew she cut her finger before I smelled the blood.”
Max frowned. “What? How?”
“That’s where the strange part comes in. I knew it the moment it happened. I didn’t smell it. I didn’t hear it. I frigging felt it.”
“What do mean, you felt it?”
Remy shook his head. “I know it’s crazy. I was sitting there watching you trying to teach Zane to dance, then I felt a twinge of pain in my left index finger. I didn’t even know what it meant, but I was up and heading for the kitchen anyway.”
Max’s eyes widened. “Okay, that’s freaky.”
“No kidding. And it’s something that’s been building since I saw her on Sunday night. Triana is getting under my skin like you wouldn’t believe.” Remy stared down at his half-eaten cheeseburger. “After I bandaged her finger, she asked if I wanted to go to her room for a quickie.”
“I heard,” Max said. “So Triana is wild. Nothing wrong with that.”
“The problem is I’m finding it nearly impossible to say no to her,” Remy said. “It’s like I’m addicted to her.”
Max grinned. “As addictions go, I think I could deal with it. Yeah, feeling things she feels is a little weird, but I’m still not understanding your major malfunction with this situation.”
Remy cursed silently. Why did this have to be so frigging complicated? “When we got back to my room last night, we ended up making love for hours, and it was amazing.”
“Is the malfunction showing up at some point?” Max interrupted. “Or are you just rubbing it in?”
“I’m getting to it,” Remy snapped. “As Triana lay there on my chest afterward, she whispered something I can’t stop thinking about.”
“What?” Max quipped. “‘Worst sex ever’?”
Remy bit back a snarl. “No, you stupid dumb-ass. She whispered that this—us…her and me together—is something she could really get used to.”
Max stared at him as if he was a pig wearing a Rolex.
“Damn, you’re slow,” Remy growled. “Max, we’ve been together for four frigging days and Triana is already thinking long-term. While I didn’t exactly freak out, I definitely tensed when she said it, and I think she picked up on it.”
“Shit,” Max muttered. “You sure?”
Remy shrugged. “She didn’t say anything else to me the rest of the night and didn’t give me more than a quick kiss when I left the hotel room this morning. I didn’t do it to upset her, but when she said those words, they set off alarms.”
Not to mention made him want to run for the frigging hills. Even that might not be far enough to forget about Triana and the things she was making him feel.
Max didn’t say anything. Instead, he seemed to be considering that as he ate the rest of his fries and wolfed down what was left of his cheeseburger. When he finally finished chewing, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and shook his head.
“Okay, I thought about it and I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t get it. You have a beautiful woman who’s crazy attracted to you. She also happens to be an old friend, so she has that going for her too. Then there’s the whole sexual-chemistry thing, and apparently she’s already excited about the idea of a future with you. So, what the hell is the problem again?”
Remy cursed. “It’s not that simple.”
“It seems pretty simple to me,” Max said. “You’ve found The One for you, so what’s all the drama about? You’re like the sixth member of the Pack who’s found theirs in the past year. Seven, if you count Khaki. I’m not really sure if that counts as one or two since she fell for Xander, and I already took him into account. Now that I think about it, I’d count her in the total number, since she’s part of the Pack now.”
Remy ignored the rest of Max’s rambling babble. The One. Remy had avoided even thinking about that term over the past few days, telling himself there was nothing more going on between him and Triana than an old friendship and some epic sexual chemistry. There was a part of him that had known he was lying to himself, of course. But he did that a lot, and was completely okay with it.
Now, he couldn’t avoid the obvious anymore. The thought that Max was right and Triana was almost certainly the one-in-a-billion soul mate he was destined to be with for the rest of his life started a panic attack like nothing Remy had ever
experienced. One second he was hyperventilating, and the next he was starting to shift.
They might have been in the backroom of the restaurant, but there were probably forty people twenty feet away, and there he was completely wolfing out. His fangs and claws extended, his facial bones reformed, his nose began to push out, and every muscle in his body started to twist and spasm as it attempted to assume a shape that sure as hell wasn’t appropriate for his current environment.
If he hadn’t been freaking out at that moment, Remy would have taken the time to wonder how it was possible for him to shift so fast. Unfortunately, he was freaking out, and all he could do was attempt to get a grip on himself, slow down his breathing, and shove the beast back inside its cage. But no matter how hard he fought, it wasn’t working. He was going to completely lose it. Right there. Right then.
Remy was about to get up and launch himself out the window, praying he could make it into the wooded area behind the restaurant without anyone seeing him, when he felt a stabbing pain in his hand.
He looked down at his hands stretched out on the table in front of him, inch-long claws extending from the tips of each finger. The ring finger on his left hand had been dislocated at the second knuckle and now lay twisted to the side at a weird angle. As he tried to make sense of that, Max grabbed the pinky finger beside it and twisted that one too.
Shit, that hurt.
When the pain of the ligaments starting to give way finally broke through the panic racing through his body, Remy’s control snapped back into place. His facial features returned to normal, then his fangs and claws retracted, and finally the long muscles of his legs and back calmed down and stopped spasming.
He popped his two fingers back into place as Max swiped a waffle fry off his plate. Remy resisted the urge to stab him with a fork.
“What the hell is up with you?” Max asked after all Remy’s parts were back in place. “I’ve never seen you lose control. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the Pack lose it as bad as you just did. Well, maybe Carter, but he’s always had issues.”