Wolf in Waiting

by Rebecca Flanders

  I had to pull my hands away to extract the papers I carried for him from my big purse. And I dropped my eyes because he knew too much already, and because if I continued to look at him, my calm would break down and I must not allow that, not now.

  He looked at the papers I had given him while I explained, still in a very composed businesslike tone, “As you can see, Stillman has been carrying on a very interesting correspondence with Castle St. Clare over the past month. It’s all there—every meeting you called, every word you said, my initial design graphics, our magazine mock-ups, the proposal for a television campaign I haven’t even showed you yet—everything that has ever taken place in this office regarding Moonsong. As you pointed out before, there’s nothing specifically wrong with that. After all, he’s a department head reporting in, and if you can’t trust headquarters about a top-secret product like Moonsong, then who can you trust? But on the next page, you’ll see Greg Stillman was definitely responsible for that press leak about Moonsong.”

  He turned the page as I added, “And his orders came from Castle St. Clare.”

  Noel lifted eyes to me that were sharp with disbelief, and then turned his gaze back to the paper. I actually thought I saw color drain from his face as he studied it, reading the words I had transcribed there not once but several times, as though to make certain there was no mistake.

  Finally he looked up at me. His face was grim. “So,” he said. “I was right. Someone is trying to sabotage me. Do we know who this correspondence has been with?”

  I shook my head. “Only that the security code is from someone high up at Castle St. Clare, too high for me to know. I thought you might have access to the codes.”

  “Yes,” he muttered, and dropped his eyes again to the paper in his hand. “I probably do. Damn. I never wanted to believe this. I never expected it, not really.”

  The distress that backed his words, and the way the truth seemed to age him in a matter of minutes, tugged at me, wrenching my heart. I refused to notice.

  I said, “I couldn’t find anything on Tango or Cobalt, or any of the other lost formulas. I might be able to if I had more time, or it may be too late. The trail may be cold.”

  With careful deliberate movements, he folded the evidence I had given him, and tucked it into his pocket. “This is enough for now. Thank you, Victoria.” He added quietly, “You did a good job.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” I responded, “because I quit.”

  His eyes jerked up to me. “What?”

  “My resignation is on your desk. There’s no place for me at Clare de Lune, I’ve finally come to understand that. I spoke with Jason and he assures me the job offer was the one thing about him that was sincere, but I don’t know that I’ll take it. If not the Gauge Group, then some other human firm.” When I started speaking, my tone was matter-of-fact, my expression composed. Now I started to feel a little shaky, and had to clench my hands tightly in my lap to finish. “If Michael St. Clare can do it, so can I.”

  Noel looked at me with eyes that were so stunned, so weary and bleak and disbelieving, that I had to shift my own gaze from his. In a moment he closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as though the action might clear his vision, and he muttered, “God. This is a nightmare.”

  Then he looked back at me, and he said flatly, “This is absurd. I don’t accept your resignation.” He pushed a button on the console and spoke to the driver. “Forget the office. Take me to Ms. St. Clare’s apartment. And get us out of this damn traffic.”

  My hands tightened another fraction, my grip so hard now that it hurt. I said, “You can accept it or not, Noel, but it’s the truth. I—if it’s any comfort, until I met you, I didn’t have enough self-respect to do this.” The catch in my voice was unexpected. It unnerved me. “Now—I’ve come too far and learned too much to go back to the way things were. I deserve better.”

  A line appeared between his eyebrows, and he leaned forward a little, closer to me. His gaze was intent and piercing with an almost physical impact. With the greatest of efforts, I restrained myself from shrinking back.

  “Victoria, what’s wrong with you?” he demanded in a low tone. “What has happened?”

  My nostrils flared with a long slow breath which I intended to be calming. Instead, it brought me his scent—

  his power, his compassion, his confusion, his strength. It made my chest hurt. But I had to do this.

  I said, “Tell me something.” I met his eyes. I made myself meet his eyes. “If I were a normal werewolf…if I were a real woman…” God, it was so hard. Why hadn’t I expected it to be this hard? “Would you want to mate with me?”

  Something leaped in his eyes—a flare of hope, of affirmation, of question. He made as though to reach for me, but this time I did shrink back. “Don’t touch me!” I gasped.

  He withdrew slowly. His carriage was careful and still, his eyes alert as they flickered over my face and body—alert and concerned. “You’re trembling,” he said. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

  Trembling? I was coming apart inside, fiber by fiber, thread by thread. My nails left tiny stinging depressions in my skin with the effort it took to hold myself together.

  “Please,” I said stiffly. “Answer the question.”

  He released a long warm breath. “You know the answer to that, Victoria,” he said. “God help us both, you know. You’re the only werewolf I could ever want for a mate.”

  How I hated him for that—and loved him, and hated myself for loving him, because it was not something I could just turn off no matter what he had done, no matter what he was.

  “And if there were a way…a way I could become normal, you would want it for me, wouldn’t you? You’d tell me about it?”

  “You’re as white as a sheet,” he said. “I’m stopping the car.”

  He started to reach for the intercom button but I said, “You’re a chemist, Noel. Tell me about kapolin.”

  He looked at me for a moment as though he was concerned about my sanity, but his hand left the intercom button. “It’s a pheromone specific to werewolves,” he said. “Some researchers think it may be one of the things that triggers the Change but—”

  And he broke off, understanding suddenly dawning on his face.

  “It’s also the prime ingredient in Moonsong, isn’t it, Noel?”

  “God, Victoria, how did you—”

  I was shaking now, uncontrollably, even my breath coming in ragged little spurts that I had to fight to control. I thrust my hand into my purse and pulled out another paper, the final one. “This is how.” My voice was low and cold and I was proud of it; so proud that I barely noticed his reaction as he snatched the paper from my hand.

  “It’s the product description for Moonsong,” I told him unnecessarily. There was a burning behind my eyes and in my chest and it hurt so badly it was all I could do to keep my voice steady, to pronounce the words intelligibly. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t cry, not for this, not for him, not now. “The classified version, the one you wrote—the one you wouldn’t tell me about.”

  His voice was a little hoarse, and he didn’t raise his eyes from the paper. “You got this off of Stillman’s computer? My God, then he knows—”

  “I know, Noel!” I cried, and the careful bonds of restraint began to fray and break away. “That’s what should concern you now—I know that you used a werewolf pheromone in a perfume you intend to market to humans! That’s illegal and immoral and beyond anything I ever expected of you! God, I believed you, I trusted you, I worshiped you…”

  Hot salty moisture started to leak from my eyes and I swiped at it with my hand but it wouldn’t go away. I was aching inside, broken and tormented, and it took more strength than I had ever known I possessed to continue to drag in breath, to continue to say the words that I knew he had to hear—no, that I had to say.

  “I know that should be enough to make me hate you,” I said thickly, pushing again at the tears that
wet my face. “But the worst part is—that’s not the worst part! You lied to me. I thought, God, don’t you know I wouldn’t have cared if all you wanted me for was pleasure? It would have been enough for me! But you made me think you cared for me, that you cared what happened to me, and all the time you had the pheromone that could make me normal—you told me, damn you, you told me you had it in its undistilled form and you told me what it could do but you wouldn’t tell me what it was, would you? I of all people could never know what the real ingredient in Moonsong was!”

  He said, watching me with an odd and careful look on his face, “It’s just a theory about kapolin. No one knows for sure—”

  “But you could have told me!” I cried. “You could have let me decide for myself, let me try it at least! But you were too concerned with protecting your own illegal research, with proving you were worthy of the job by turning the industry upside down with your revolutionary new product—”

  “Is that what you think?” he said hoarsely.

  “And all the time you were just using me, mocking me and laughing at me just like everyone else has done all my life—”

  “Victoria, stop it! Listen to me.” He leaned across the seat and caught my hands in his. I struggled to pull away, but he held firm. He lifted eyes to me that were dark with alarm. “Your skin is on fire,” he whispered. He pressed a hand to my wet, hot face, but I slapped it away.

  “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me, I don’t want your hands on me ever again!”

  Noel pressed the intercom button. He spoke quietly but his voice seemed suddenly so magnified to me, it hurt my ears. “Find a place to pull over,” he told the driver urgently. “Ms. St. Clare is ill. And release the windows back here. We need some air.”

  He turned back to me. Once again he tried to touch my face but once again I jerked away. Didn’t he know how hard this was for me, how desperately I wanted to believe in him, how badly I was hurting now? Hadn’t he done enough damage? Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

  The back window came down and a rush of icy air whipped my face. I turned toward it gratefully, starving for its healing touch on my scalded skin. I clamped my arms around my waist, holding myself tightly, trying to stop the pain and managing, with the very greatest of efforts, to almost control the hiccuping little sobs that stole my breath.

  I said, my voice shaking but otherwise coherent, “Do you know the worst part? Shall I tell you my final humiliation?” And I looked back at him, the tears now dried by the cold wind. “Even now…if you were to offer it to me, if you were to let me try—I’d forgive you everything. That’s how badly I want to be with you, even now.”

  And that was how low I had sunk, my dignity gone, my integrity sacrificed, all for the love of a man who had betrayed me once and would no doubt do so again. But I didn’t care. In spite of it all, I loved him still. That was the essence of my pain.

  His face grew dark with sorrow, his gaze gentle and intense. He put his hand behind my neck, holding it gently, and this time I let him. He said, “Victoria, I have to tell you something. Take a breath, try to listen.”

  I turned my face away, because the tenderness in his voice was destroying me. His fingers tightened on my neck, making me look back at him.

  “Victoria, listen to me,” he said slowly, distinctly. “There is no Moonsong. I made it up. Do you understand me? There is no Moonsong.”

  It seemed to take forever before the significance of his words sank in. I simply stared at him, mesmerized by the deep dark green of his eyes, the tight grim lines around his mouth, the sharp angle of his jaw…the firm pressure of his hand on my neck, the strength of his fingers, the brush of his breath and the slow hard beating of his heart. When finally I understood what he was saying, I thought, It’s over. He’s gone, he’ll never be mine, the one chance I had and it’s gone, it’s over…

  He was saying, “The whole thing, the product description, the campaign, the pheromone, everything—it was a hoax, a trap designed to catch our traitor, that’s all.”

  And I was thinking, Everything, from the beginning, a lie…

  Oh, I know I should have been glad, I should have been relieved, and if I had been functioning with even a fraction of my customary logic I would have reacted completely differently. But in the past twenty-four hours I had been assaulted with more extremes of passion than I had ever known in my life, the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair, hope and betrayal, love and loss. Every thought I’d ever had was tangled and blurred, labored and twisted. Shock left me feeling light-headed and strange, hurt and hopelessness burned in my belly like backed-up tears, too hot for the weeping.

  I whispered, “No.”

  “Victoria, I’m sorry. I never meant—”

  And I said, louder, “No!” I tore away from his grip, a wild, fearsome fury rising in me, a pain born of loneliness and need and hopes crushed and love denied. I couldn’t look at him without knowing what I’d lost, I couldn’t hear his voice without the pain of it stabbing through my heart. “No, you’re lying, just like you’ve always lied, and I don’t want to hear any more, I won’t listen, I won’t!”

  My breath was coming so quickly and so shallowly that it frightened me. My hand went to my throat and I felt the fast hard beating of the artery there, the pounding of blood in my head that felt as though it was going to explode. Noel’s face grew blurred before me, then sharply in focus, so close that I gasped and shrank back from him.

  “Victoria, you don’t really think I’d do that to you, do you? You can’t believe that!”

  I cried, “I don’t know what to believe!” I pressed my hands to my temples, hard, trying to blot out a sudden, throbbing pain. “I only know—I only know that I love you and I’m insane for loving you because there’s no chance for us. I always knew that but—but I never expected it to matter and it doesn’t, does it? Because there’s no chance for us, none at all, ever!”

  “Victoria…”

  I cried again, “No!” as though the sound of his voice hurt me, and it did; it pelted my skin like small burning stones, and I bent over double with the pain of it, trying not to sob out loud, holding my head.

  “Victoria, for God’s sake!”

  He reached for me but I couldn’t bear his touch, I couldn’t bear the ache that it created inside me when I was already in agony. With a cry, I flung myself at the door, struggling with the door handle.

  “Victoria, don’t!” he shouted.

  I flung out an arm to ward him off; he ducked my blow but parallel slashes appeared in the upholstery overhead. I stared at them in horror, gasping for breath, choking on terror. Fever burned my skin, blurred my vision, twisted in my stomach. I struggled with the door handle, sobbing.

  Noel hit the intercom button, shouting, “Stop the car!” He grabbed my shoulders but I screamed at him, twisting away, tearing at the door handle and gasping for air, dying for it.

  Suddenly the door fell open and I tumbled out. I hit the ground hard and a stabbing pain went through my hands and knees and sky and earth whirled in a sickening blur; I thought I was going to be sick.

  Noel knelt beside me, holding my shoulders. I could hear his breath roaring in my ears, the rhythm of his heart pulling at mine and it hurt. His voice was breathless but loud, something between a whisper and a roar in my ears. “It’s all right, love, I’m here. I can help you…”

  But a sudden panic ripped through me, an intense, burning need for something I could never have, a hunger like no hunger I had ever known before. I tore myself from his grip, I stumbled to my feet and I ran; I didn’t know why. I lost my shoes and the hard cold ground cut my feet, icy wind bit into my lungs.

  I was in some kind of field; the highway sounded like a distant ocean to my ears and the sound of my footsteps breaking through crusty snow, crushing brown grasses and small twigs, was like a series of smothered explosions, each one striking my eardrums with shattering force. The wind was arctic but my skin was on fire, I could hardly breathe for the pai
n of it. I was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a blazer over jeans; I tore off the blazer but it wasn’t enough; still I was burning up. Gasping for breath, I clawed at the neck of the sweater, just to loosen it, just so I could breathe, and the sweater came apart in my hands. Cold air on my skin. Terror rising to choke me. I couldn’t run anymore. I caught myself against a tree, then sank to the ground sobbing, afraid I would die with the pain that was gnawing at me inside, the need I didn’t know how to meet.

  I was aware of Noel standing beside the car, watching me with a kind of helplessness and despair. And then I was aware of Noel beside me, and it was like magic, he was so fast, he was so strong. He hauled me to my feet, me in my tattered sweater and tear-stained face, so gripped by pain that I could hardly stand straight. He held my shoulders with a bruising ferocity and he said urgently, “Don’t fight it, Victoria, don’t!”

  And I cried, struggling against him, “I can’t! It hurts!”

  “It hurts because you’re fighting it! Let go!”

  But his closeness only made it worse, his touch only intensified the pain, something about his scent drove shafts of agonized longing through me and I sobbed out loud with the intensity of it. “Oh, God, let me go! Please, I’m so scared!”

  “Don’t be scared, I’m here, I’ll protect you.” And now his mouth was on me, on my face and my neck and my breasts. He held me tightly and I couldn’t break free; he was so strong, so incredibly strong. “It’s all right, Victoria. Let it happen, I’m here. I won’t let it hurt, I’ll take care of you—”

  And I sobbed, struggling to break free, “No, oh, Noel, help me, please—”

  “I’m trying, love, I’m trying to help you—”

  “God, make it stop!”

  “No!”

  He caught my head hard between his hands and he covered my mouth with his, forcing his heat and his taste into me, focusing my senses on him and him alone. I felt it rising inside me, that fierce aching need in my womb, the fire in my belly, and it was a wondrous thing, a terrifying, singular and miraculous thing that had at its center one word, one entity, one raison d’être: Noel, just Noel.