“I am a beast.” She held up her hands. The nails that had refused to shift earlier were blackening, lengthening as she watched. Her teeth felt longer, sharper. He had to know what she was, but showing him the change seemed horrible in reality. He would be repulsed at the shift, the way her bones cracked and moved, the way the fur sprouted from her skin and she became other. It could only be an ugly thing, unnatural. Unclean.
Already her hands were changing, and the ache was becoming severe in her legs and arms. She dashed past him to the door, pushing him aside. He grunted in surprise and she made it to the door before he could see it all.
“Helen, wait!”
But she was gone, running as pain flashed through her body and the change took place, slower than normal, but unstoppable. What choice did she have but to run from him? Even if the wolves waited for her in the woods, it was better than being here with a man who only wanted to help—a man she would surely hurt.
Chapter 8
What. The hell. Was. That?” David breathed. What had just happened? How could he possibly have seen what he had just seen? Helen Mathews, beautiful Helen, was in the process of becoming a werewolf.
“No. No way.” David sat back down on the couch with a thump and stared at the open doorway.
Long minutes ticked by while he tried to wrap his mind around everything he knew about Helen. She’d had an altercation and something weird had happened between her and a strange woman at her promotion dinner. She’d gone missing every few weeks since it happened. She could bend a fork as easily as crashing a wad of paper. And her eyes were a color he’d only ever seen in one other place—in the wolf print on his bedroom wall.
Something else he knew—someone had been chasing her. She was afraid; none of the fear coming from her tonight had been a lie. Now she was back out there, running in the woods because either she couldn’t handle him seeing her shift forms, or because she thought once she did, she might hurt him. Either way she had run to the same woods they’d escaped from only a couple of hours earlier. The people chasing them, wolves or not, could still be out there. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes past midnight. Jesus. He’d been sitting, visiting la-la land for more than an hour, while she’d been out there alone.
He got up and after a moment’s hesitation grabbed the shotgun. He pocketed as many shells as he could and walked to the door. She still needed him. Maybe. She had been coated in blood earlier. While she’d said it was hers, what if it had been someone else’s? What if it had been from a victim, another person? But then what if it had been from a fight, self defense? They hadn’t gotten far enough to ask. He’d just assumed she was suffering from a mental breakdown, just as Sharon had on the one weekend he’d ignored her calls.
Guilt. It would never leave him. And he wasn’t about to add the weight of more guilt now. He’d either stop Helen from hurting anyone, or stop anyone from hurting her. He strode out the door, shutting the screen behind him. Somehow, though he’d only known her for a short while, he believed she was the one in trouble.
Unlike before, clouds now obscured some of the light from the moon. A cool breeze wafted through the trees and scattered dried leaves, making soft skittering noises. The hair on the back of his neck lifted. “This is likely the stupidest thing you’ve ever done trying to help someone, Sherman. And there’s been some doozies,” he muttered under his breath.
He took a few steps into the trees and called her name. “Helen!”
Nothing.
Then, a long howl lifted into the night sky, a sound that rose and fell with a primordial eeriness that sent his heart thundering. No other voices joined the chorus, but one was quite enough.
“Holy fuck…” he breathed. He stepped backward, out of the trees, carefully walking back into the tall grass clearing next to the cabin.
When he backed up far enough to feel the edge of the wooden steps to the cabin behind him he stopped, loaded the gun. At the edge of the woods a form appeared. The clouds parted, and he stopped breathing.
A wolf. A real wolf when such a thing hadn’t been seen on this mountain in his lifetime or his father’s. But was it a real wolf? The creature was huge and bright, its fur nearly white when he thought most wolves were gray.
He swallowed hard. The wolf took a few steps into the clearing. It stared at him, ears perked forward. He stared back. Then, very carefully, without turning his back, he walked up the stairs to the cabin, went in and shut the door. Locked it. Leaned against it and tried to breathe.
After a moment he went to the window. The wolf still watched, but now it was pacing forward. It reached the cabin, leaped to the top of the stairs and then sat facing the woods. The woods, not him. It was even bigger than he’d thought. She was even bigger. He leaned his gun against the wall. He’d never even pointed it toward her. He knew who he faced.
Who she was.
And now she was standing guard on the cabin. He ran a hand through the back of his hair, felt the cold sweat there. Well, she could stand guard outside. He might know who she was, but she could stay on the other side of the door, thanks. Hard to say if she knew for sure who he was, when she was like this.
He looked out the window again. She looked over her shoulder at him with those golden eyes. He’d been right. She was no beast. She was magnificent, a powerful creature of the night. Beautiful. Deadly?
The moon sank and the woods grew dark, but nothing stirred. The local wildlife kept themselves far from the cottage and the predator lounging on the porch. And the other wolves didn’t return as she’d feared they might. And from inside the cottage? Nothing moved once David tended the fire for the night and settled himself on the couch. When the sun finally crept up on the horizon, Helen shifted again, her wolf withdrawing and her humanity returned.
She shivered, naked on the porch. Her wolf side hadn’t wanted to leave, and she had to admit she felt distinctly vulnerable without the protection of claw and fang. At last she didn’t have to bang on the cabin door and beg David for her clothes. She’d left her SUV unlocked and thankfully, she kept a blanket folded on the back seat, along with a small pillow. She walked over, climbed inside, and locked the doors. Moments after she tucked the blanket around her, she sank into sleep.
A sharp rapping on the window at her feet brought Helen awake. David stood outside the car, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes and still carrying the shotgun. Was a shotgun even any good against werewolves? Weren’t they only killed by silver bullets? She closed her eyes to think about that, and maybe sleep some more but he rapped on the window again.
“Helen, come out. There’s breakfast.”
His voice was gruff and he had the gun, but he wasn’t freaking out and he was asking her in. She gripped the blanket and sat up. His eyes widened, probably realizing she was naked under it, and he stepped away from the SUV and walked back to the cabin.
Helen climbed out of her vehicle and stood and stretched while making a rough toga with the car blanket. Last night’s events played through her mind. The way she’d accepted her change and let it happen, then the attack and the forced shift back to human. For a little while she’d not been able to change back and thinking about it, she had to admit to herself that she’d been half afraid what they had done to her had been permanent. But the wolves hadn’t come back, hadn’t attacked her. Had David seen them?
Only one way to know. Plus, he knew her secret now. Was he going to tell anyone? Would anyone even believe him? The last thing she needed was to be locked up somewhere while someone tried to figure out what she was.
She followed David to the cabin. For a moment she stood in the doorway and watched him as he plated up some beans, eggs and strange looking, round toast. Where had he gotten the food? Had she been so exhausted she missed him leaving? No, his Jeep was likely out of commission for the foreseeable future.
He spotted her hesitating at the screen door. “Come in, I won’t bite.” He lifted his eyebrows. “And I expect you to behave and not bite, either.”
<
br /> A joke. The man managed to produce a full meal out of nothing and a joke after last night? She’d been right about him, he was strong.
“I leave some dried supplies here, canned bread and powdered eggs and stuff, in the hunting packs in the bedroom closet in case we stay out overnight on a hunt. I haven’t taken anyone hunting in a while, but the stuff lasts for years. It’s not bad,” he added when she didn’t move, and he took a big bite.
Her stomach grumbled and her mouth watered over the big pile of eggs on her plate. She walked in and took a seat at one of the stools beside the kitchen counter. He stayed on the other side, eating his breakfast while standing. He might be offering a meal, but he wasn’t totally comfortable with her yet. Who could blame him?
She dug in, though she could feel his eyes on her, evaluating. It was awkward, eating with one hand while she kept a tight grip on the blanket with the other, but waiting for the food while she took the time to get dressed wasn’t happening. They ate silently, until she was dipping the last of her toast into cooling tea.
David cleared his throat. “Tell me again how this happened. Make me believe I’m not crazy.”
“You aren’t going to call the police? Or the Navy? Local witchdoctor?” She tried to joke, but it was a bit past her acting abilities.
He shook his head. “No.” He didn’t have an ounce of humor in his tone.
She bit her lip. She owed him for coming up here after her, and trying to help. For possibly putting him in danger. So, she told him about the land deal, this time in detail, about how the Rom used it for their annual migration but owned none of it; how they claimed they’d had a centuries old deal with the government; how a woman who first appeared as a crisp professional lawyer showed up and threw magic blood on her.
David poured her another cup of tea and a cup of coffee for himself when she faltered in the telling of her first change. The pain of it, the strangeness, the disbelief, and the damage she’d done to her apartment and to herself. Her neighbors had complained about the noise and about her having an animal. She’d left the next day to an old and empty campground she’d visited as a child, but the damage was done.
She sipped the tea. He’d remembered she didn’t like coffee.
She told him of the exponential increase in her strength, speed, senses. Her pain at the touch of silver. For a moment she wondered why she’d revealed that fact, but really couldn’t imagine the man hurting her. Somehow, she’d wanted to trust him from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, and that wasn’t like her at all. She told him that, too.
“Why do you think that is?” he asked. He hadn’t asked much, just watched her and listened.
Might as well go all in. She looked down at the empty plate until he took it away. Then she looked at her tea—anywhere but at him. This was not going to sound right. “It’s how you smell, I think.”
He leaned a little closer and she smelled him, that same strong woodsy scent of his cologne and the subtler scent that was his skin. Delicious. Warm. Honest. Her senses analyzed him and sent the results straight to her heart and her libido. She could trust him. She still wanted him. And maybe, he still wanted her.
“How do I smell?” His voice was deeper. The interest was still there. But he’d have to be crazy to act on it. Still, for just a minute she imagined being with him and how good it would be to be held, to be taken, to have nothing to think about but physical enjoyment for even a little while, rather than the craziness her life had become.
She clenched her jaw. She wouldn’t feel sorry for herself. Never once had her father let her get away with that, not even when her mother died when she was little. And maybe that was a good thing. Sure, she’d perhaps gone too far with work, making it the center of her life, but right now, she needed the stiff spine he’d forced her to build. Otherwise how would she survive?
David came around the counter. “Helen, how do I smell to you?”
She looked up at him. The urge to growl was there, a pressure inside that had to be coming from the wolf. “You smell good. Like someone I can trust.”
“Is that all?”
She licked her lips. Admit it or not? What the hell, he was all grown up and he could decide for himself if being with her was a risk he was willing to take. “Your scent…it makes me want you.”
He reached out and stroked her hair. It must look a mess, but his fingers tangling in the long strands made her shiver and reminded her she wore only the car blanket toga.
He remembered it too. He touched the skin on her shoulders. “No blood this time, when you shifted.”
“There isn’t usually any. That was from whatever the other wolves did, pulling me back into human form somehow.” He didn’t stop touching and she leaned into his hand.
“Does it hurt? To shift?” He put his other hand on her as well, holding the sides of her face so he could look deep into her eyes.
“Yes. No,” she murmured. Was he hypnotizing her? Pulling all the truth from her? “Not really. There’s pain, but I found out if I don’t fight it, it’s…not bad. And once I am changed, there’s strength and power…”
He moved a little closer. “But they hurt you.”
“Yes—”
He kissed her, long, delicious movements against her lips until she stood and pressed against him, opening her mouth to let him in. He took it deeper and she let him lead. Let everything go and just followed where he wanted to take her. The relief of it appealed nearly as much as the strength of his arms as he pulled her in close, held her.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted comfort, yes, but she’d wanted him from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. She’d been so tired that day, and he’d been so goddamned pushy, but still he’d brought on a level of desire she couldn’t remember ever repeating. With a quick tug she dropped the blanket to the floor.
He pulled back, his face registering surprise in the lift of his eyebrows and the tiny gasp that left his lips. “Are you sure? You’ve been through a lot. Maybe we shouldn’t push things too fast.”
“I just want you, David. Isn’t that enough? I know what I want and I want sex, now, with you. I’m not hurt, I’m not confused, and I’m not crazy.”
He dropped his lips to hers again and delved deep, his tongue dipping inside to taste her in a way that made her long for more. Then he swept her from her feet and into his arms. Need washed over her and she leaned in to nuzzle his neck. He stumbled slightly over the dropped blanket and her teeth grazed his skin harder than she meant.
“No biting.”
Likely a good idea, so she murmured a quick “sorry,” and tugged his head down for a kiss. They made it to the bedroom but not before he knocked over an old vase of dried flowers on a side table beside the door. Finally he dropped her onto the bedspread.
“Helen…God, you’re beautiful.” He leaned down and stroked her hair, his fingers tangling in the strands. His body spoke silently of the tension it held within—his jaw clenched and the cords of muscle in his forearms stretched taut.
Full-blown lust. That was the only way to describe the sensation flooding his body. She looked like his favorite dreams transformed into life. She sat still on the mattress, one hand in his. Her hair was a cascade around her. Her face was flushed, both from her earlier frustration and her reaction to the words he had uttered. And her skin, so pure it glowed, made him want to leave bite marks. Hardly fair, since he’d just told her she couldn’t bite him.
Was he an idiot for acting this way? Probably, but if she didn’t say something soon, he was going to lose all control.
To hell with it—she was too beautiful not to at least kiss some more. He lowered himself to the bed, never taking his eyes away from hers. He held her gaze and leaned slowly forward, tilting his head to slant his lips against hers. He couldn’t bring himself to shutter those light golden eyes from his view, and he watched as they glowed with a need to match his own.
He ran his hands over her, exploring. Still her eyes stayed open, and he deepened the
ir kiss, running his tongue over her lips and separating them. Finally, he delved inside her mouth, tasting her sweetness. As he did she made a soft sound deep in her throat, and her eyes drifted closed. Was it surrender? It was so much more, he realized as she moved her own hands to run up his sides, stroking his back and coming to clutch at his shoulders.
For the briefest moment, he remembered the possible danger they were in. There could literally be wolves at the door. He should stop. Then, as she pulled closer to him, pressing upward against his body and striving to pull his waist closer, everything was forgotten except her.
She was perfect. Her skin was pale cream, smooth, flawless. Her breasts were small but the nipples were taut, jutting up at him like twin offerings. Impossible to resist. He lowered his mouth to her and dragged his lips over her skin.
Blood thundered through his veins as he struggled to take the moment slowly. When he sucked one nipple into his mouth he heard her moan, a low, powerful sound that God must have given women to drive men crazy. Between that, the scent of her, and the feeling of her supple skin under his hands and mouth, he might lose his mind.
When her hands stroked lower to rub at his thighs and the bulge in his jeans, he knew he was lost. A deep groan resonated in his throat. He raised his face to hers once more, and kissed her. As he held her he lowered her to the bed, and twisted to slide his legs onto the mattress. He levered on top of her, and rested part of his weight on her. He was never going to last if he didn’t take this slowly, and by God did he want it to last.
“David,” she half-sighed, half-moaned his name, “Touch me.”
“Shh.” He kissed her, possessing her mouth more roughly now, unable to resist nipping her lips with his teeth. “I want to take my time with you.”
Her moans were reckless now, and she squirmed under his body. He raised himself up on one knee and she gripped at his T-shirt, pulling it from the waist of his jeans. He took a moment to strip it off, and was rewarded as her fingers stroked his chest and stomach, then moved to attempt to open his pants’ button. He grinned and chased her away. He wanted to open her and taste her. If he stripped off totally now, there’s be no time for that. His jeans were the last barrier, and he was keeping them on until the last moment.
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