by Vaughn, V.
He didn’t believe her. Of course he didn’t believe her. No one ever did.
She pressed her lips tight and took in a deep breath through her nose. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to go hide in some dusty corner like an Appalachian Cinderella and let her hurt feelings escape through her teardrops. She was tired of being pathetic, and if he didn’t believe her, she’d make him.
She stuck out her chin and crossed her arms over her chest. The posture felt foolish, but it seemed like the right thing to do. “Check it, if you’d like.”
“Yeah?”
After a moment, he walked over and picked it up. He sat with it and the tools at the kitchen table, moving all of the piled-up junk out of the way. And she stood there watching him disassemble it, check all the parts—scrutinizing them with his good eye—and put it back together.
“Well?” She tapped her foot against the floor impatiently, awaiting the critique of her work.
“You did good.”
She stopped tapping and unclenched her fists. “Excuse me?”
“You did good, little wolf. You’ve just got to use the right size screwdriver so you don’t strip the screw heads.”
“Oh.” She wrung her hands, shifting her weight. “I’m so used to—to using whatever was handy.”
“Understandable.” He pushed back from the table and carried the gun to its empty case in the living room.
“I—I can fix other stuff, too.” Try a little harder to not sound like an idiot, why don’t you?
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Cars, a little. Household stuff, too. I didn’t have much of a choice growing up. I was the smallest, and I used to have to crawl into or under things and figure out why they weren’t working.”
He stood and turned to her, pushing his hair back from his eye. He didn’t say anything, just stared. That whole, man of few words thing. She certainly understood it. She’d never known a male wolf who’d been much for talking.
She swallowed and started for the fridge, knowing there wasn’t much in it. “Um—we need to go to the store. Can’t survive on frozen steaks.” She hadn’t had enough money to do any real shopping earlier. She would have spent every dollar to her name if she had any idea of what he liked, though. He’d claimed he wasn’t picky, so she was going to test that statement.
“It’s all I know how to cook. I just put them under the broiler.”
“I’ll go.”
Another long stare, followed by more silence. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He just held it out to her without opening it.
“Okay.”
Clutching his wallet, she walked to the front door and stepped into her shoes.
“I could get one of the guys to drive you.”
“Don’t bother. I won’t be carrying more than two bags, probably. It’ll be nice to have a store in walking distance. Won’t waste half a day going and coming.”
“Other kinds of stores are there, too, if you need anything.”
“I’m fine.” She pressed her lips together, knowing it was a lie, and knowing that he knew it was a lie. She just didn’t want him to think that she couldn’t make do. Or that she was weak.
Beyond working his jaw side to side for a few beats, he didn’t respond.
“I’ll be right back, then.”
He just watched her leave. Knowing her luck, he’d change the locks while she was gone. Too bad for him, if he did. She knew how to pick them.
Chapter 5
Adam had put his foot down, adamant that Christina wouldn’t be sent away, and he’d given Anton two choices: deal with it, or get the fuck out.
A male wolf without a pack was a dead wolf. He could always try to integrate into some other group that was short on muscle, but he appreciated the balance of his current one. They were his family, and—like them or not—on most days, they watched his fucking back. They may have teased and taunted after he’d gotten mauled, but when they were all in the thick, they fought, even killed, for Anton. He didn’t want to give up his pack for a woman, but he also didn’t want to take the woman, either.
All he could do was hope that she’d get tired of him soon and leave on her own. He’d said as much before leaving Adam’s house, and Auntie had laughed and laughed.
He harrumphed and yanked up the overflowing bag from the trashcan.
Christina pushed in the screen door at that moment and carried two canvas grocery totes into the house. “I love that place. They’ve got everything!” she said, eyes bright and wearing a beaming smile that could have lit up the night sky. “I’ve never seen anyplace like it, with all of the gourmet stuff and whatnot. Kind of expensive, though.” She set the bags on the counter.
“Community owned and operated,” he said. “Gotta pay a premium to get commodities way out here. Everyone who lives in Norseton is in on the secret, so they’ve got to have their own stuff. Most folks are okay with paying a little extra instead of driving an hour to someplace else to shop.”
“Well, I did my best not to spend you into the poorhouse.”
“Don’t worry about that.” He wasn’t exactly swimming in cash, but he could certainly afford groceries. Mostly, he ate on the run on the way back from jobs or before his security shifts over in Norseton. Sometimes, if he and Auntie were working at the same time, she’d walk some food out to him.
“Okay. Well—oh!” She reached into one of the bags and drew out his wallet. “There you go. Don’t worry, I didn’t memorize your Social Security number or anything.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Why not? Testing me?”
“No. Honestly, it just didn’t cross my mind. Am I wrong to assume you’re trustworthy?”
“No. I’m just—used to being called a liar.”
He tucked the wallet into his pants, and she went to work putting things away. Ingredient-type things he wouldn’t even know what to do with. Flour and shortening—what was that even for?—various seasonings, oatmeal, eggs, and so on. He did okay with steaks, but beyond that, his expertise in the kitchen ended at pouring boiling water into instant noodle cups. Best he could tell, there were no noodle cups in those bags.
He left her be and headed into the living room, grabbing another dirty gun off the shelf as he went.
“Gonna make something fast tonight. Full moon. I figured you’d want to get out and run.”
He sat on the couch and pulled his cleaning tools closer. “It’s not necessary. We don’t always feel the drive to shift for the moon.”
“You don’t?”
He could just barely see her furrowed brow from his position. She was so damned short that when he was sitting, the kitchen counter covered up three quarters of her.
“What kind of wolves are y’all?” she asked.
“Eurasian. We shift as necessary.”
“Pure?”
“More or less.”
“They didn’t ask for that—in the mate call, I mean.”
“No, Adam wouldn’t have asked for that. It doesn’t matter to us. A wolf is a wolf.”
“If you start mixing, things get unpredictable. For the kids, I mean.”
“That bothers you?”
She opened a cabinet, rustled something within it, and closed it. “No. Figured it would bother you.”
“Whether or not my pups will be compelled to shift for the full moon is amongst the least of my worries.”
“But, you do want kids?”
“I honestly haven’t given it a whole hell of a lot of thought, Christina. My kind, we don’t even think about taking mates until we’ve got a home base—a den, I guess. We weren’t in that position until recently. I imagine you want some?”
“The idea of them scares me, but yes.”
“Scares you? Why?”
“The little boys where I’m from, well, they’re…” Christina let the words trail off. Water gushed in the sink, and then a pot hit the stove burner.
He set down the gun. “They�
��re what, little wolf?”
“They’re just awful, and you can’t tell them any better because that’s how their daddies want them. I always hoped that if I had to stay there, I’d only have girls. Of course, you can’t control that sort of thing.”
The stove burner clicked repeatedly before the pilot light caught the gas.
He stood and walked over to the island, leaning his forearms against the counter. Her back was turned, and she stared down into the pot.
“There are other packs,” he said. “City packs. Rural packs. Everything in between. They all run a little differently. You could have held out for any one of them. You can usually tell who’s putting out the call if it’s coming from a big group. I don’t know why you jumped at the opportunity for this one. I can’t imagine you’ll be happy here.” With me.
“You must think I’m ambitious.”
“I think you can recognize opportunity.”
Her nod came slowly. “I guess I can.” She turned, but didn’t meet his gaze. “I took a chance, knowing I wasn’t going to anyplace worse than I already was. So, if that makes me an opportunist, so be it.”
“You deserve better than not worse.”
Now she did look up.
“Much more than that, and I’m sorry you didn’t get it. Adam says I can’t send you away, but that doesn’t mean I have to bite you.”
“You just want me living here, like a roommate?”
“It’s the best I can offer you.”
“No, it’s not. There’s nothing wrong with your teeth, is there?”
“My teeth are just fine, in both of my forms.”
“So you’re opposed to marriage, then.”
“I’m not opposed to marriage. I would have just preferred to be saddled with some bitch that deserved defective goods. Then I wouldn’t feel so fucking guilty.”
If she was trying to look stern and severe with those narrowed eyes and that adorable pout, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He couldn’t help it. He laughed. “If intimidating me is your goal, you might try standing on a chair.”
She flicked the dishtowel at him and walked to the canvas bags, grumbling about stubborn wolves.
Surely, she counted herself in that plural.
“I’m making spaghetti. If you insist on standing there teasing me for being inadequate, at least be useful while you’re doing it.”
“You’re not inadequate, and what do you want me to do, little wolf?” This time, he suppressed the laugh, but barely.
She stabbed her index finger toward the cutting board. “Chop that onion for the sauce. Since you’re so tall and whatnot, maybe it won’t even make you cry.”
“I bet you’d like to make me cry.”
“You’d think I would,” she said softly, and peeled back the tape on the butcher paper-wrapped tube of meat she held. “But I don’t.”
Chapter 6
Christina pulled her pillow over her head and let out a long sigh. So much howling. Maybe the Norseton wolves didn’t need to shift for the full moon, but it seemed that their ladies did. She could hear them out in the desert, baying at the moon. They’d gotten their bites—their own marks—so they shifted now. For the first time. Christina, on the other hand, remained fur-free and two-legged. An undesired mate.
Anton was out there with them now. He hadn’t wanted to go, and he told that to whoever it was who’d come to the door. He’d said he had too many things to do, but whoever it was had convinced him that he was needed out there. An extra pair of eyes on the wolves’ mates, who might be disoriented in their new beast forms. They may run off and forget there were women inside them.
Tonight, they howled and howled and howled. She’d never hated the sound so much, never hated being a wolf so much before that moment.
The pack must have moved farther away now, because the howls became softer and were spaced farther apart.
Finally, sleep overtook her troubled mind.
* * *
Christina dreamed of her reluctant mate. Of those full lips on her skin. Of his hands on her feminine swells. Legs entwined, sharing a bed and—ultimately, their bodies. She’d never been the forward type before—had never initiated affection, knowing she wasn’t likely to get any—but how else was she going to get any in return from him? Maybe if she touched him, he’d understand. She had to get him to touch her, like the wolf in her dreams. The one who held her so gently but so firmly while he pressed into her, sating his desire and filling her up. At the moment, she might even be content with just holding hands. At least that would be something.
She lay awake in the dark. Something had pulled her out of her sleep, so she listened.
Grumbling. Then swearing, coming from the front room. She pushed up onto her forearms and canted her head.
“Fucking rain,” came Anton’s mutter.
Yes. Rain. She heard the patters against the window now. Winter rain in the desert. Is that an unusual thing? It wouldn’t have been back at home. Might even have been snowing. Had felt like it was going to when she’d left.
She scooted to the side of the bed and turned herself out of it. She squinted through the window and saw the rain bouncing off the stones in the empty flowerbed next to the walkway. Probably wouldn’t rain for long, but it was a nice sound to sleep to. Rain had always made her yearn for the bed. Sleep could wait a moment, though.
She headed toward the sliver of light beneath the bedroom door and pulled the knob. From the adjacent bathroom, she could hear Anton’s grumbles. She padded closer, enough to catch his reflection in the mirror he stood in front of. His injured eye was closest to the door, so he couldn’t see her yet.
He was covered in mud. It was packed into his hair, stuck to every crevice and bulging muscle. He closed his eyelids and rubbed a washcloth across them. The lid of the left eye, though badly scarred, along with his forehead and cheek on that side, did actually move, though not as much. When his eyes were open, his left eye’s lid was always at half-mast, as if mourning its own loss. It was a loss. If both of his eyes were the same deep, dark brown of the right one, she probably wouldn’t be able to look him in the face. He’d be too intense. So handsome—beautiful, even—but hard to look at for long.
Letting the cloth fall away, he blinked several times, and his head turned in her direction. “I wouldn’t have seen you if you’d backed away,” he said. “But you sighed. I heard you.”
“I did?”
He grunted and turned his face away from the mirror. “Can’t see worth a shit, but I can still hear.”
“If I sighed, it probably wasn’t for the reason you think.”
“Humor me and tell me why, then.”
“I—” Christina stepped closer and nudged the door open a bit more. What was she hiding in the dark for now? “If I sighed, it was because you’re naked.”
“Happens a lot with shifters.”
“Maybe, but I’m only concerned with one particular shifter, and he’s naked and muddy and maybe it’s not such a bad sight.” If his nose was as good as his ears, he already knew what she thought of his body.
He turned, slowly, and leaned against the counter. Somehow, she managed to keep her gaze above his waist, which was a feat indeed, considering he was making no effort to conceal himself, other than the scarred half of his face.
“How’d you get so muddy?”
“Had to yank my cousin’s mate away from a flashflood. She wasn’t doing a very good job of looking around. She was flailing a lot when I forced her back. That’s most of the mud. I guess the rest is from the run back to the house. The rest of them are still out there. Frolicking, I guess.” He rolled his eyes—rather, one of them. The blind one didn’t make it all the way around.
“What’s so bad about frolicking?”
“Nothing, when you don’t have to get up early to go to work. We’re spread thin as it is at Norseton, with there being only the five of us. We’re in charge of fleshing out the security staff, but given our constraints, we don’t
have a hell of a lot of options. Hard to be picky when so few people are qualified for the job.”
“So you’ll be gone all day tomorrow?”
“Most of it. My shift’s between ten and ten, monitoring traffic at the gate and keeping an eye on all the video feeds.”
“Sounds busy.”
“It can be. It’s why I’m always so behind on chores. I was going to hire someone. Never got around to it for the same reason why we have trouble finding qualified guards.”
“Gotta find people who can keep secrets.”
“Yep.” He pushed away from the sink, walked to the tub, and turned the water on. He stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed without another word, but she wasn’t done. Was she just supposed to go back to sleep, right when she’d finally gotten him to talk a little?
She swallowed down her nerves and moved farther into the little room. “Um. You said there were jobs to be had in Norseton.”
“Yeah. Typical domestic stuff is easy to come by. There’s always a lot of that to go around. Just look at the bulletin board in the square. Folks are looking for nannies and housekeepers. A few of the stores are hiring clerks, too.”
“I don’t think I want to be a nanny. I’d like a break from that. Housekeeping would be okay, but it would be like having my own little business. I don’t think I’d like that.”
“Don’t want to have to chase down folks to get your paycheck, huh?”
“I sure don’t. I’ll consider it, though.”
“What about a clerk job?”
“Maybe. I guess it depends on what they’re selling and whether I know anything about it.”
“I think you’ll pick it up, whatever it is, quickly. Shouldn’t be a problem for a woman who knows how to put machines together.”
“That’s hardly the same thing.”
“Did you have any schooling at all?”
“I finished twelfth grade, but that’s it.”
“Well, I think that’s enough for most folks. All the guys in the pack have GEDs. I wonder what you could have gotten into if you’d gone to college, though. Had some formal education in engineering.”