by Nina Croft
Now she was. A few months back, she’d married Julia’s older brother, Daniel, so now they were really sisters.
Lissa always told her everything, except when she’d kept back the tiny fact that Daniel was a werewolf. Of course, she hadn’t been able to hide it for long. And then…
Julia shook off the memory of that night when her world had changed. This was her “normal” time, and she wouldn’t think of her “not normal” time until she absolutely had to.
No, better to think of Mr. Hottie.
“He asked me out,” she said.
Lissa gave her a thumbs-up. “Wow. Fast work. So where are you going?”
“We’re not going anywhere.”
“You’re not.”
“No. I told him I was a lesbian.”
“What?” Lissa had been getting wineglasses out of the cabinet, and now she turned to stare.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I said I had a girlfriend.”
“And do you?”
Julia grinned. “Only you. So if we see him…give me a kiss or something.”
“Ugh. I don’t think so.”
“Hey, we’ve done it before.”
“Yeah, we were both twelve and wanted to practice. But I’ve got to tell you, I never want to repeat the experience.” She poured a glass of Julia’s favorite Spanish wine, brought it over to the sofa, and handed it to her. “So what was wrong with him?”
Julia closed her eyes and pictured him, all long, lean, and dark. That beautiful face, the hint of bad boy that usually didn’t turn her on.
“Nothing,” she said.
Except something had been wrong. Yeah, he’d been sexy, though she’d met hot guys before and never had to fight the urge to drag them into her bedroom and shag their brains out thirty seconds after meeting them. But standing there, staring at the man on her doorstep, a mental image had flashed up in her mind. She was on all fours and he was behind her, fucking her doggy-style.
And she’d liked the image.
Then he’d touched her. Her mind flashed back to that first contact of his hand against hers and the shiver that had run through her. Not a good shiver. It had been as though Thing had awoken and scraped her claws down Julia’s spine. From the inside. Ugh.
The sensation had the same effect as a bucket of cold water on a couple of mating dogs, and the whole lesbian thing had just popped out of her mouth in a deluge of panic.
“So if nothing is wrong with him, and he’s hot…then why?” Lissa asked.
“I can’t go out with him. I’ve been doing this great job of pretending everything is normal and I’m normal. I can keep that up with myself, and even with you because you know, but not with a stranger.”
“Maybe it would take your mind off everything.”
Perhaps she needed some information. She hated to talk about it because it made everything more real. But she had to know how much of a threat Sebastian was to her balance. Because Thing had never woken outside of the full moon before. It was the only way Julia had been able to cope, been able to pretend that she was “normal.”
“Could you ask Daniel something for me?”
Lissa raised an eyebrow. This was a first. “Of course, though you might be better asking Joe. Daniel is still learning.” Although Daniel had been changed years ago, up until recently, he’d kept himself aloof from the pack. Then Ethan Stone, the old Alpha, had kidnapped her and Lissa, things had come to a head, and Daniel had killed Ethan in combat. That made him the new pack leader, and he was getting a crash course in pack culture. Joe had been Ethan’s second and was now Daniel’s.
“No, I don’t want to ask Joe.” The man scared her, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Lissa.
“Okay, I’ll ask. What is it you need to know?”
“Thing woke up.”
“Thing?”
“You know…it.” She curled her lip in a snarl, and Lissa’s expression cleared. “She’s never done that before,” Julia continued. “Except at full moon. But she did while Sebastian was here.”
“Sebastian?”
“Mr. Hottie.”
“Oh.” Lissa took a sip of her wine. “Maybe coincidence?”
“I hope so.” Except she didn’t believe in coincidences.
“So you panicked and told him you were a lesbian.”
“Yeah.” She gulped her wine in one go, poured another, and held up the bottle to Lissa. She shook her head. Julia swallowed the second glass and heaved a huge sigh. “But he’s moved in next door, so I’m not going to be able to avoid him totally.”
“He’s your next-door neighbor?”
“Didn’t I mention that? He came to borrow some milk. And he’s gorgeous. He even wore a pink shirt.”
“Gay?”
A shiver ran through her. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me. I nearly spontaneously combusted.”
“Wow. I’ll ask Daniel and soon. And you’d better start thinking of a story for how you’ve split up with your girlfriend.” Lissa winked at her. Brat. “One thing Daniel did tell me was that when he was first changed, the only thing that kept his…thing under control was sex.”
“He didn’t tell you that.”
“He did.”
It almost sounded too convenient, the perfect excuse to have sex with the hottie. Sort of came under the heading of medicinal purposes. She liked the sound of that.
She’d wait and see what Daniel said, but if it was just coincidence, an echo from the night before, then she would go see Sebastian. “I could buy him a moving-in present. Go around and cry on his shoulder, tell him how my bitch of a girlfriend threw me over for another woman.”
Lissa grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”
Worry nagged at her mind through the day. What if Daniel came back with the wrong answer? What if something really weird was happening and she’d be unable to pretend even between bouts of FMS or full moon syndrome as she liked to refer to her little problem? She wasn’t sure she would cope with that.
Daniel called her later that evening.
“Have you found my cure yet?” she asked.
“Not one that won’t kill you along with your wolf.”
She winced at the word. While she felt just a little guilty referring to Thing as Thing—after all it wasn’t her fault—she wasn’t quite ready for the “w” word. But perhaps it was time to come up with a new name as it didn’t look as though they’d be parting company any time soon. “You’ll keep trying, right?”
“I’ll keep trying. But Julia, you’d be much better off accepting what you are.”
“No, thank you.” She shuddered as she remembered the pain from her transformation the night before. “I’m not into masochism.”
“If you’d accept the change, there would be no pain.”
“I’ll take your word for that.”
“Christ, you’re stubborn.”
She ignored the compliment. “So did Lissa ask you about my little…issue?”
“Yes, and I don’t think it’s a problem. I talked to Joe, and he reckons it’s quite common around the full moon. Your wolf is restless, but the further you get away, the calmer she’ll become.”
“Good. Because this is me time.”
“Lissa said you have a new neighbor.”
“I do,” she said cautiously.
“And is he what’s making your wolf want to come out and play? Should I come over and check him out?”
“Now, why would I want you to do that?”
“Make sure he’s okay.”
“In what sense of the word? And you’ve never bothered before.”
“You’re a member of my pack now. We take care of each other.”
“Ugh. Look, thanks for calling with the info, but keep the pack stuff to yourself, okay?”
She still woke up sweating at least once a week from nightmares about the night she’d been kidnapped and forcibly changed by Ethan Stone. The idea of being among so many of them terrified the life out of her, though she woul
dn’t admit that to Daniel. Not even to Lissa.
Daniel had stayed with her the first month she had changed. And since then, each month, he assigned one of the pack to keep an eye on her, but that was all she was willing to put up with.
She put the phone down without waiting for him to say anything else. Anyway, he couldn’t talk—he’d spent the last six years pretty much denying what he was. Ethan had changed Daniel, too. Her brother was a scientist, a geneticist—the best in his field and they had wanted him to work on a cure for the silver poisoning, which was the one thing that could destroy a werewolf. They’d kept him in line by threatening his family and had gone so far as to kill Babs, their oldest sister, to prove the threats weren’t idle. Daniel had kept all that to himself, worked on the cure, but also on a few experiments of his own.
He’d killed Ethan, who had apparently been eaten by the pack, though luckily, Julia had missed that part of the evening’s entertainment.
She still found the whole craziness impossible to believe. She hated the sight of blood. How the hell could she be a werewolf?
She shook her head; she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this now. That was her plan: deal with it when she had no choice. Pretend it didn’t exist the rest of the time. Since that one moment with Sebastian, Thing had been quiet. Julia could do this.
Especially now she had her hot neighbor to take her mind off things. She’d pick up a bottle of wine on her way home from work tomorrow night. Go over there and welcome him to the neighborhood. Cry on his shoulder about how her dastardly girlfriend had run off with another woman and put her off women for the foreseeable future. And maybe they could spend a little time together, maybe even have a shag to remind her of what she’d been missing. Get her back in the swing of dating.
Great. She had a plan.
…
Sebastian straightened his dark red tie and tightened his fingers around the laptop case he carried in his right hand. More of his nice-ordinary-guy disguise.
He avoided peering sideways as he passed Julia’s house, but he knew she was in because her car was parked on the road outside and a light was on in the living room. He planned to pop over there again in a little while, though he really needed to think of a better excuse this time than borrowing fucking milk.
He let himself into the house next door and dropped the case on the floor in the hallway. He’d spent the day back at his penthouse, working on a job. He had various contacts in the supernatural world, many of them thanks to Dante, and he was often approached to use his particular talents—mainly finding things or people. He was good at it, and his time did not come cheap. The magic had exhausted him, but a cold shower had brought him around, and now he was ready to try again with Julia.
Just friends. That was the way he should approach it. Go around there and apologize for yesterday. Maybe he could be recovering from a relationship and trying to mend his broken heart. He wasn’t ready for dating, just wanted to be friends, and he was worried he’d come on too strong. Could he say she wasn’t his type? Would that work in his favor or against him?
He was really out of practice.
At least Dante had been quiet for the last twenty-four hours and a quick peek inside showed he wasn’t awake.
He could go weeks without the demon showing his face, though those times were getting shorter. Another sign the demon was gaining strength. Sebastian had done some research into possession and the possessed was almost invariably devoured by the demon in the end, their mind breaking and the demon moving on to someone new. Sebastian couldn’t allow that to happen.
He checked his appearance in the mirror. His shoulder-length hair had been cut shorter prior to his first meet with Julia, though it was still long enough to flop over his forehead. He wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses—a new addition but one he thought added to the “nice guy” image. He tried a smile. It looked a little forced but would do. He sure as fuck hoped it got easier with practice.
How long was this going to take?
Love at first sight would have been good, but obviously, that hadn’t happened. Part of him rose to the challenge. Unfortunately, that particular part had no right rising at this point in the proceedings.
The women he’d been mixing with lately had been many things but never a challenge, and a strange sense of anticipation awoke inside him as he considered the contest ahead. It made him feel almost guilty; he was doing this because he had to. He wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it.
He headed back to the door, getting his story straight in his head, as the bell rang. He only knew one person around here and that was Julia. Why would she be at his door, when she’d made it clear yesterday that she didn’t want to see him?
Time to find out.
She wore skintight jeans tucked into knee-length boots with four-inch heels, but she was still nearly a foot shorter than him. Her legs were slender and her waist tiny. On top, she wore a pink fluffy sweater, tight over the curves of her breasts, and she had a bottle of red wine clutched in her hand. Her bright blond hair was a riot of curls around her face, and her big blue eyes were staring up at him.
“I wanted to apologize for not welcoming you better yesterday.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling myself. I’d had an argument with my…friend and a rough night. And you caught me looking less than my best and that always makes me cranky.” She held out the hand with the bottle. Her nails had been short yesterday; today they were long and perfect and pink to match her sweater. “So I brought a bottle to say welcome to the neighborhood.”
Christ, she looked sexy. With any other woman, he would have dragged her inside and shown her exactly what sort of welcome he was hankering after, but with Julia…
Should he push his luck? Was he thinking with his dick again? He raked a hand through his hair, took the wine from her, and gestured to the hall behind him. “Why don’t you come in and share it with me. And we can start over.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.” She blinked up at him, and he couldn’t stop one corner of his mouth from tilting up in response.
“Excellent news.” He turned to walk down the hall, and she followed.
Sebastian led her into the living room. He’d rented the place fully furnished and had no clue where anything was yet, so he put the bottle down and opened cabinets and drawers until he found one containing glasses and a corkscrew. He pulled them out and opened the wine.
“Did you rent the place from Mrs. Penbury?” she asked.
Had he? He couldn’t remember. He’d offered the woman an exorbitant amount of money to move out for a while, added a hint of a compulsion spell, and she’d obliged. “I’m not sure actually. The company I work for organized the accommodation.”
“So you don’t come from London?”
“I come from up north,” he said, handing her a glass of wine. “But I needed to get away fast and the offer of a transfer came up, so I jumped at it.”
“What do you do, Sebastian?”
“Call me Bastian.” He shoved his glasses more firmly on his nose. “I’m an accountant.”
She gave him a bright smile. “That sounds…”
“Boring?” he supplied. Had he taken the whole “nice” thing too far?
“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say normal. Normal is good. I like normal.”
She sounded too emphatic. She must have realized it because she gave a rueful smile and raised her glass. “Welcome to London. I hope you’ll soon feel at home here.”
He’d actually lived in London on or off for two hundred years. “Off” when it became obvious he wasn’t aging and people became suspicious. When that happened, he’d take himself away for a while, then come back with a new identity and start again. But he always came back. He loved the city.
“I’m sure I will. I was actually on my way over to see you when you appeared on the doorstep.”
“You were?” She gave another smile, and his gut twisted. She was so damn perfect.
“Umm, I wanted to a
pologize for giving the wrong impression yesterday,” he explained.
Her arched brows drew together. She really had the most expressive eyes. “You did?”
He took a sip of wine and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “I came on a little strong, but really, I’m not looking for anything like that at the moment.”
“You’re not?”
“I recently broke up from a long-term relationship—I wanted to settle down; she didn’t.” Was he oversharing? God, did he sound like a chick? Probably, but all he could see in her face was sympathy. She was really, genuinely, sweet. There was that stab of guilt again. He ignored it and pushed on. “She broke it off, and I came here. But I’m not in the market for another relationship right now.”
“You want her back?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what I want. But I’m not ready to start something new. You needn’t worry I’ll come between you and your girlfriend.”
She pulled a face and took a large gulp of wine. “You won’t. You can’t. We’re over. That’s what we were arguing about the other night. She phoned yesterday and said she was leaving me for someone else. This six-foot woman with a crew cut and more muscles than you have.”
Bastian somehow doubted that, but he couldn’t stop the thundering of his heart. She was available. And he wanted her. Bad. “So we can cheer each other up.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to being good friends.”
Something flashed across her face but was gone before he could identify it. She raised her own glass and clinked it against his. “Just good friends.”
So far, so good.
Okay, that was phase one out of the way.
On to phase two, where hopefully, Julia would quickly realize that she wanted far more than friendship between the two of them.
Chapter Four
Bastian placed his glass on the table and waved toward the god-awful cream-and-blue flowered sofa. “Why don’t you take a seat?” As she sat down, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it on the chair behind him. He loosened his tie and pulled it over his head, dangled it from his fingers for a moment. An image flashed in his mind of Julia Melville sprawled on the big brass bed upstairs, her wrists tied above her head with his tie, while he…