Bade looked down at me with my teeth attached to his nipple. The grin that spread across his angelic features was nothing short of evil.
“Clever,” he purred appreciatively. “But it won’t do you any good, love.”
Without waiting to see what would happen next, I bit down on the silver stud as hard as I could and ripped it from his flesh. He roared as he flung me away from his chest. His claws that were dug into my shoulders got stuck in the leather cat-suit and ripped it completely from my upper body. I was left with only ragged leather sleeves clinging to my arms.
Bade stormed toward me menacingly, his face contorted with furry as he stood above me. I spat the stud at him, with a bit of his nipple still attached. He backhanded me across the cheek and I thought my head would explode. I rolled to my stomach and tried to get to my feet, but he grabbed me around the hips, digging his claws into me again. I leapt into the air as I did a rolling dive at the ground. I felt the last of my suit being ripped from me, but it got stuck around my boots. The force of my forward jump had snatched Bade to the ground. He began climbing up my body as I struggled to free myself from the cat-suit stuck around my ankles.
It sounded as if a battle was raging in the distance behind me, but I couldn’t turn to see. By that time, Bade had me pressed to the ground with my arms above my head. Having super human strength has its advantages when your opponent is an ordinary man. But when faced with a male werewolf I was forcefully reminded that I am still a woman, and often times less strong.
I bucked forcefully under his weight, causing his body to bounce.
“Hold still,” he growled as he fought to reach his pocket while trying to hold my wrists with one hand. Having no desire to find out what was in Bade’s pocket, I kept bucking as hard as I could. The only real disadvantage of that was with each bounce his heavily muscled body knocked the breath out of me.
“You’re heavy,” I panted.
He laughed. The sound surprised me. In the midst of what was now clearly a battle, I had not expected to hear laughter.
“I’d say that’s the least of your worries, love,” he grunted, still struggling to hold me down.
Gunshots echoed through the woods and werewolves howled with a mixture of anger and fear. Alfred had come for me. There was no other explanation. I wondered what had become of Elijah, and the thought made me more desperate to escape. I began to jerk as violently as possible with my hands and feet restrained.
Just then someone snatched Bade from atop me. I glimpsed a dark hairy figure that could only have been a very large werewolf, and judging from its anatomy, it was male. There was something oddly familiar about the color of its hair, but before I could put the pieces together, I was cracked in the back of the head again, and again I was lifted from the ground by the blow.
“Son of a bitch,” I moaned as I rolled over to face the same bastard who’d nailed me with the bat the day before.
His self-satisfied sneer was too much to endure. Extending my claws once more, I snatched him off his feet. I meant to kill him before I passed out. My feet were still bound by the half of my cat-suit around my ankles, so I began to pull myself up his body, using my claws to gain leverage.
He started to change, but I was already strangling him. When he was almost unconscious, I rolled off him, grabbed the bat, and began whacking him in the forehead. The world swam around me and my head bobbed forward of its own accord as I growled, “How-do-you-like-that-you-son-of-a-bitch.”
Last I remember, his forehead was clearly dented. I looked up, and had only a second to realize that a very large boot was coming straight at my already battered head.
*****
I awoke to find myself in unfamiliar surroundings. After blinking a few times, I realized I was lying on the sofa in Alfred’s lab. I tried to sit up. The pain in my head was instant and overwhelming, a cruel assault on what was left of my senses. I had a feeling of movement behind me and could only hope it was Alfred. After a few seconds of holding my breath, I began to sense his familiar presence. It was such a comfort that I nearly cried. For the first time in a few days, I was alone with someone whom I was not trying to kill, and they were not trying to kill me.
“Bade,” I rasped.
I found my voice barely audible and my throat dry. Alfred was instantly looking over me. He sat down beside me, placing a cool cloth over my forehead. I saw concern in his dark eyes. I also noticed for the first time the beginnings of crow’s feet, those delicate little bastards that start their walk across our faces somewhere between middle age and death. I thought about how often I made Alfred worry, and knew they were my fault.
“That bastard,” I tried again to speak.
“No kidding,” he said blandly.
“Will I live?”
“You’ve already begun to heal.” That was good news to me, but Alfred seemed angry. I didn’t understand. I’d been beaten worse before.
Chapter Seven
I slid my hand down the length of my thigh underneath the blanket that covered me and realized Alfred had found me naked in the woods with my pants around my ankles. Surely he didn’t think I would be this calm had I been raped? I thought I would ease his mind. I reached up to where his hand still rested lightly on my forehead.
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
He snatched his hand away and stood up.
“I’m sure you will,” he snapped.
That bastard! Okay, now I was pissed. I tried again to sit up and follow him. I stumbled over the edge of the sofa, my naked ass smacking the floor. The effect was somewhat less than the graceful ascent I had hoped for. I snatched the blanket around me and stalked toward Alfred’s rigidly set shoulders.
“What the crap is your problem?” I asked his back. “Hey, tall, dark, and asshole, I’m talking to you!”
No one else unraveled me like Alfred did. How dare he ignore me? “Prick,” I breathed as I turned away. Oh, that got a reaction.
“I’m a prick?” he yelled, making it a question.
“Yeah,” I answered, deliberately misunderstanding him.
He stomped furiously toward me. You could see small veins popping out on the side of his neck.
“I save your ass, your naked ass, and I’m the prick.” This time he stated it as if it were a fact that he wasn’t at all happy about.
I saw an angry fire dancing behind his eyes, and something else that I couldn’t name. If I could touch him again, maybe ... No. I had never tried to read Alfred, and now was not the time to start. I didn’t know what was up his ass, but I refused to invade his private thoughts. That was one of the reasons that I rarely touched him. I looked at Alfred then, his full mouth, and tousled hair. I gazed into his soulful brown eyes, eyes which blazed with the intensity of emotions that went beyond anger, and realized that I regretted not touching him.
“I saw your sketches while you were gone,” he blurted out.
“You went through my things?” I was shocked. I’d never expected this behavior from Alfred.
“I knocked it off of your table. But, once it was open, yes, I looked.”
I knew what he was mad about. There were at least a dozen sketches of Marco in that book, many of them nude. I suppose that finding nude drawings of the bad guy in your partner’s room would be enough to get anyone worked up. In my defense, I did not have carnal knowledge of Marco. They were purely from my imagination, and it was quite active.
He must have guessed by my reaction that I now understood the problem.
“You hunt the bad guys, Lilith. You don’t fuck them.”
My hand reacted to the accusation before I could think of what to say. The sound of slapping his face was shockingly loud. He didn’t even flinch. He just stared at me with the accusation now clear on his face. A small red right hand began to appear across the smooth olive skin of his left cheek. That had to sting, but Alfred didn’t let on.
I stood there, stunned, not knowing what to say. All the years I had known him, and I had only then reali
zed how badly I wanted to touch this man. Even the smack of my hand across his face was exciting. I felt a flush creeping up my neck and abruptly turned my back on him. To my surprise, I realized that not only did I want to touch him, but I felt feverish at the thought. If he had seen me blush, I hoped he mistook it for embarrassment.
Alfred knew that I was rarely, if ever embarrassed, but we had never been in this situation before. Maybe he wouldn’t think about it too hard. For that matter, maybe I could stop thinking about it hard, if you know what I mean. I had been cracked in the head with a bat twice in as many days. I should not have been thinking about sex.
I started walking toward the stairs. I had to get out of there before I made a worse fool of myself. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I realized that I’d never really thought of Alfred that way, even after we’d spent the night together.
I’d flirted with him in a joking way, it’s just my personality. But before that night, I’d never really thought of Alfred as a woman thinks of a man. I cared for him, and I’d certainly felt affection, but there was another word to describe what I’d felt only moments before, lust.
The fact that I now wanted to do things to Alfred that I couldn’t even articulate left me speechless. That was quite a novelty for me. I never knew when to shut up.
“Where are you going?”
I was halfway up the stairs.
“To bed,” I answered, trying not to reveal my thoughts.
“You can’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“Elijah is in your room.”
I’d forgotten about Elijah. I must have been hit harder than I’d thought. How awful of me to have not asked about him.
“Is he all right?”
“He will be. He has a slight concussion, and he’s pretty banged up, but he’ll live.”
“Why my bed?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Because the man has a head injury and your bed is more comfortable.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a sneaky way of getting me to spend the night with him, or just a wicked reminder that he knew how comfortable my bed was. Slowly, I walked back down the stairs, not because I was reluctant to return, but if I moved too quickly, I still felt very dizzy.
“Where should I sleep?” I asked wearily.
Alfred smiled with an expression I’d never seen him wear before, but it suited him somehow. It was the look of a man who knew exactly what he wanted.
“You can stay in my room,” he said with a flirtatious grin.
I stared at him blankly, waiting for more of an explanation. Finally, he looked back at me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be staying down here.”
I think I was actually upset more at the thought of him avoiding me than if he had deliberately planned to get me alone.
“What’s really bothering you, Alfred?” I sighed. “We can’t live like this. Whether we feel anything for each other or not, we still have to work with one another.”
He turned around and leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms in a gesture of obvious frustration. As he tried to find the right words, he began to run his fingers through his hair, which told me more than anything how frustrated he really was. It was a nervous gesture that I’d seen Alfred use for years when he and my father occasionally butted heads.
“It’s just that—” He took a deep breath and started over. “Before Kathryn came by ... I thought we had something.” He ran his fingers through his hair again as he said, “I felt something. I thought the feeling was mutual.”
It was. But, that’s not what I said. There was something I needed to know first. “I came downstairs that night. You were asleep on the couch.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice as I answered, “I wouldn’t want to disturb your dreams.”
He looked confused. “My what?”
“Why were you on the couch anyway?” I pressed, ignoring his bewildered look.
“Wasn’t it obvious?!” He sounded irritated again. “I fell asleep waiting for you to come downstairs.”
It felt like someone had thrown cold water in my face. He had fallen asleep waiting for me. I felt like a fool. We had so obviously been on the same page that night. Why didn’t I wake him? That reminded me. “If you were waiting for me, then why were you calling Marcy’s name in your sleep?”
He looked thunderstruck. “I was having a nightmare!” Alfred looked as if something had just occurred to him. “What were you doing downstairs?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.” His next words were spoken more softly. “You came back for me, didn’t you? You came back for me, heard me say her name, and left.” He’d come to his own conclusion.
I just looked at him for a moment, my head beginning to pound again. “What would you have done?” I asked.
“I probably would have woke you up and had a fit, like I just did about the pictures, that you never explained, by the way.” His words were still accusatory, but the anger was gone from his voice.
“You know I’m not sleeping with him.”
“Yes, but you’re not sleeping with me either, and quite frankly, I’m jealous.”
“That I’m not sleeping with you?”
“That I’m not the one you think about when you’re alone at night.”
I must have looked as surprised as I felt.
“I’m not jealous that I’m not in your bed. I’m jealous because I’m not in your heart.”
Those softly spoken words melted me in ways the hot Florida sun never could.
“Marco isn’t in my heart,” I whispered as I moved closer to Alfred.
“Then where is he?” He added more softly, “Where am I?”
I decided to be honest. “I’m not sure where you are, but Marco’s not a part of the picture.”
“Not even in the background?”
He smiled as I ran my hands inside his coat, leaning into him.
“Not even the ugly brown paper on the back of the frame,” I said.
He cradled the back of my aching head in his hand and I went limp in his arms.
“Lilith,” he said. His voice sounded far away. “Lilith, you need to stay conscious. You’ve been hit too hard too many times.”
He pulled me more tightly against his chest, and I felt the blanket slide down my back. I had overexerted myself when I lost my temper. I was tough, but I wasn’t invincible. Maybe one day I’d get that through my gratefully thick skull. I felt my legs growing weaker and knew I couldn’t stand on my own. Unfortunately, when I get hit that hard in the head it seems to bring out the comedian in me. But, it wasn’t like Alfred hasn’t experienced my twisted humor before.
“What can I say?” I looked up into his eyes and smiled. “You make me weak in the knees.”
He laughed, but his eyes looked sad. “If you hadn’t been nearly bludgeoned to death, I might be able to take that seriously.”
“I haven’t been bludgeoned.”
He smiled kindly at my slurred words. “Yeah,” he said, “I think you have.”
“What should I do to stay awake?” This would have been the perfect opportunity to suggest something inappropriate, but because he is a gentleman, Alfred said, “You could start by letting me wash the blood out of your hair.”
“I’ve got blood in my hair?”
He nodded, still smiling at the confused look on my face.
“Is it mine?” I asked, horrified.
“Not all of it.”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought of spending the night with blood in my hair.
“But, I can’t stand up to take a shower.”
Yet again, this would have been the perfect opportunity to suggest something naughty. Alfred kissed my forehead as he said, “Let me help you.” Ah, perhaps there was hope for him yet. He leaned forward and pulled the blanket back around me. Alfred knew that I was far from modest, but I appreciated the gesture. He swept me gra
cefully into his arms and carried me toward the stairs.
“You’re in luck,” he teased. “My back just started feeling better.”
Alfred’s downstairs bedroom was the second largest in the house. It connected to another bathroom that, though not as big as mine, was quite nice. The bathroom also connected to a guest bedroom that was rarely, if ever used. I wondered why Alfred hadn’t put Elijah in the guest room, because I wasn’t buying that my bed was just more comfortable. Like the bathroom upstairs, this one also had a garden tub, but what it had that mine did not was Jacuzzi jets. Just the thought of all that warm water massaging against my aching body made me feel even weaker.
Alfred laid me across his bed, walked to the bathroom, and started running water in the tub. I liked Alfred’s room, though I rarely saw it. His room was decorated in shades of brown and cream, with the occasional dark chocolate or white appearing here and there. A large stone fireplace sat against one wall, it was connected by a central chimney to the smaller fireplace in my bedroom upstairs. The only thing that was missing was a bear skin rug. I tried to sit up, but found that the room spun in a way that was not at all pleasant.
I groaned.
“I know you’re not trying to get up,” Alfred’s voice scolded through the open door.
I lay back against the sheets, defeated.
“How come I could walk halfway up the stairs on my own, and now I can’t even lift my head?”
“Adrenaline,” he answered simply.
“Adrenaline?”
“Yes,” he said, walking back into the room to stand over me. “About how pissed off would you say that you were when you got up off the couch?”
I considered this for a moment and decided to accept his explanation.
“I was livid.”
“Come here,” he said soothingly as he swept me into his arms.
Alfred carried me into the bathroom, my long blanket dragging the floor like a cape. My head didn’t hurt as badly, but I seemed to be incapable of standing without support. He helped me to sit on the side of the tub before looking at me with a mischievous smile as he knelt before me.
Lilith Mercury, Werewolf Hunter Series (Boxed Set, Books 1-3) Page 11