Once Upon A Midnight

by Stephanie Rowe

  Irish opened his mouth to speak, but Claire was quicker. “And where the hell is Gannon?” She widened her eyes expectantly.

  “Is it the vampire’s turn to speak, Miss Montgomery?”

  Her lips thinned when she rolled her eyes at him and huffed, “Go.”

  Irish leaned back on his elbows, crossing his ankles. “First of all, where is your gratitude, young lady? I saved your sweet little behind back there and I don’t even get a kind word? Not one?”

  “Irish—”

  “Don’t you ‘Irish’ me. You don’t have to give me medals or even bring me flowers, but wow. I did keep you from being flayed alive. Would a kind word break you?”

  Sucking in her cheeks, she tamped down the urge to knock his teeth out and wipe that smug smile from his gorgeous face. “Thank you for saving me and quite possibly getting yourself killed.”

  “Not even an inch, huh? Damn, you’re hard to impress.”

  Claire’s heart fluttered like a petal falling to the ground, but she forced that from her mind, too. He had no business trying to impress her, because no impression would let her risk the town falling to ruin while their people engaged in an all-out war. “Stop trying to impress me and tell me what gives.”

  He grinned, batting his eyelashes at her, his playful side yet another surprise she was earnestly fighting not to like. “Honestly? It was impulse. When I was pulling up to Ahab’s, I used my special vampire ears and heard Courtland and his sideshow gearing up to light their torches on your behalf while they were all huddled in a brainless circle, drinking and wondering where Gannon was. I admit I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. I just reacted.”

  More heart fluttering. But she’d changed her mind. It was probably better she didn’t know why he was protecting her. Do not ask why, Claire. Don’t do it. “So you made all that up to protect me?” Oh, she’d gone and asked. Damn him and his magical smiles and heavenly lovemaking.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.” His expression grew serious, his eyes intense. “C’mon, Claire. You didn’t really think I was going to let them haul you off to werewolf jail, or wherever it is you go when you’re in pack trouble, did you? Gannon was a douchebag. I don’t know why you killed him, but my instinct tells me you had good reason. Now, I want to know what that reason was.”

  Claire shook her head, eyes piercing his. “Oh no. I’m asking the questions here. I told you last night, and I’ll tell you again now, I’m not divulging anything. If you don’t know, you can’t be forced to tell anyone.”

  Never. She would never tell a living soul until she had proof Gannon had deserved to die. It made her stomach pitch all over again, the thought of how she’d have to go about getting that proof, but she wasn’t giving anything up until she could bring irrefutable evidence to the council.

  Once she had it, not even her pack would deny Gannon’s death was inevitable. Until then, and for the safety of the people who lived in Rock Cove, no can do.

  Irish lifted an eyebrow. “I’m really uncomfortable not knowing your motives, Claire. Truth be told, it makes me wonder if this whole thing is much bigger than you, because you’re not exactly the girl most lycan to commit murder.” He grinned, likely patting himself on the back for his play on words.

  Claire kept her expression bland, but her heart raced. She couldn’t risk it, but she wanted to. For the moment, she’d eliminated the immediate danger, and that was all that mattered. “Aren’t you funny? But I take comfort in the fact that at least you don’t think I’m some cold-blooded killer. Now, where’s Gannon’s body? Please say you buried it somewhere no one will ever find it, because it has my scent all over it.”

  Fear sizzled up her spine again at the mere thought. If the Dogs found Gannon before she could do what needed to be done, she’d be screwed.

  Irish looked at her for a long moment, clearly trying to read her thoughts. But she knew a thing or two about vampires, and he couldn’t read her mind unless she invited him in—or so she’d heard.

  She busied herself forming a mental picture of a big red stop sign, just in case, while she stroked Mr. Darcy and waited for Irish to answer.

  He rolled his tongue in his cheek. “I took care of your scent. If I couldn’t smell you on him, no one can. And I promise I buried him somewhere no one will ever find him.”

  “So you led the Dogs on a wild goose chase, risked being staked at dawn, all for me?”

  Dear heart, please stay in my chest. Love, Refuses To Be Wooed By The Forbidden Alpha Vampire.

  “Yep.”

  “You jerk.”

  “Again with the name calling,” he teased, folding his hands over his deliciously flat belly. “I don’t like your brand of gratitude. Not one bit.”

  Cocking her head, Claire gazed at him in wonder. She’d never seen this half of Irish. Not even with Hadley, and she wasn’t just confounded by it, she was also a little thrilled.

  “Who are you, Irish McConnell? What’s with all the smiles and jokes these past couple of days? It’s like someone stole your will to spread your angst. You’ve always been moody and brooding. Suddenly you’re all cotton candy and swizzle sticks? Did you find your heart, Dark Overlord?”

  He chuckled, low and raspy, the sound rich and warm in her ears. “I call insensitive, Miss Werewolf. I have no heart, and you know it. As for the rest, I think it has to do with the fact that this has been the most fun I’ve had since we were all forced to leave our old lives behind—aside from the murder part, anyway. Courtland and his crew are idiots. I was just having some fun with them while I kept them off your cute tail. Diversion is the name of that game.”

  But then she remembered something Courtland said back at the library—something she’d completely forgotten, adding to her list of reasons why she should never be involved in a murder. “Courtland said they have a witness who claims to have seen me murder Gannon. What do I do about that?” Who could it be?

  Now Irish rolled his eyes. “I call bullshit. He’s grasping at straws. You’re the most likely suspect, because you sure made your dislike of your future mate with Gannon pretty damn clear. But he doesn’t even know Gannon’s really dead. He just suspects he is—which makes me wonder, what has Gannon Dodd done in this lifetime to warrant everyone close to him jumping to a conclusion that he’s not just missing, but murdered?”

  Claire stared at Mr. Darcy and scratched his ears rather than look directly at Irish. Good question. One she intended to investigate—on her own.

  She shrugged her shoulders with indifference. “Courtland did say Gannon missed an important meeting, one he’d never miss. Maybe death really is the only thing that would have kept him from it?”

  Irish gave her the eye, scanning her face while she fought to keep her expression passive. “Maybe.”

  “Any info on what they learned from this alleged witness?”

  “I didn’t hear anything on the witness front. But I still think it’s bull. The more Courtland talked about you at Ahab’s, the more he managed to convince his pea brain and the rest of the Dogs you must’ve had something to do with it. Fueled by alcohol and their half-assed reasoning, you’re the logical choice. That’s all that was. And even though you did have something to do with it, the way they reasoned it out is too ludicrous to repeat.

  “Right now, Courtland needs to blame someone. Tomorrow, it could be someone else. If you’d have just kept your mouth shut in the library and let me take the fall, I would have turned it into the mockery I’d planned to and it would have thrown him off your scent.”

  Claire shot him an indignant look. “So next time, send me a signal. I did try to send you one, and you chose to ignore it, much like everything I say.”

  Irish smiled, making the deep grooves on either side of his mouth stand out in the dim glow of her bedroom lamp. “Was that what all your eye rolling was about?”

  “No. Eye rolling is a totally different signal. It’s a much less important signal. And I didn’t roll my eyes, Irish. I looked deeply into yours. That me
ans ‘pay attention’.”

  “Is there a book with a list of these signals I can read so I can familiarize myself with the eye signal game?”

  Fear got the better of her. What Irish said was likely true, but…

  “What if someone really did see me, Irish?”

  He reached out and grabbed her hand, sending Mr. Darcy to the floor and pulling until she lay beside him. “Then we’ll deal with that if it’s true, Claire. For now, Courtland and the rest of his jackasses are scrambling to figure this out. They have no body. Without a body, there’s no proof. We’ve bought us some time, little lady.”

  Us? No, there was no “us” in this.

  She fought the wave of pure lust Irish evoked whenever he was near, the urge to wrap her arms around his neck, press her needy lips to his, mold herself to his body until every plane, every muscle left its imprint.

  She fought because she couldn’t have him. Someday, she’d have no choice but to mate with another werewolf, and as archaic and ridiculous as those rules were, they were the rules. To play with fire until that day arrived would only make the end to this much harder.

  Claire strained to pull away, willing her pulse to slow, willing her body to leave his, willing her heart to detach before it became too attached. “There is no us, Irish. There’s you and there’s me. We’re from two different races of people who would love nothing more than to wipe each other out given just a hint of a reason. I’m not going to be the catalyst for that, and neither are you. If we have to live like this forever, divided from the humans as though we’re criminals, live by rules like mate calls—you know, the old rules, before our councils became so slack—then the least we can do is inspire peace for future generations.”

  For almost as long as she could remember, there’d been little if any enforcement of the original rules set forth by council elders. In an effort to allow the paranormal to blend with humans, they’d laid off the rules on mating and such. But when the government intervened, the fear they’d end up extinct ran rampant.

  Thus, an edict had been handed down in the form of reams and reams of paper sent to all the races, reeducating them on the varying laws they were to adhere.

  Irish grabbed her hand and nipped at her finger, sending a wave of slow-building heat up her arm. “Can you even believe what’s changed in the past ten years since the government found out we existed?”

  She still had days where the disbelief lingered, but mostly she’d come to a place of acceptance. She’d hidden all her life from humans. Some days, it was just plain nice to live out in the open—even with the imposed limitations attached. And it was even nicer to know she wouldn’t have to pick up and move because she wasn’t aging like everyone else and people were beginning to take note.

  Then there were other days when she missed her previous life. Missed San Francisco, missed the freedom to dream of all the places she’d someday visit, now out of the realm of possibility with the travel limitations placed on paranormals.

  Missed her last batch of friends who’d come to fear her once they’d found out she was a werewolf…missed her old students at her last job as a librarian in a middle school.

  Missed. Missed it all so much it ate a hole in her gut.

  There were a million things she missed, but she was alive, and their circumstances weren’t as horrible as others. They had most of the things humans had, and while she wanted to hate the government for the invasion in their lives, some of the people she held dearest to her were humans.

  “I think I’ve found a place of acceptance—or maybe it’s just that I’m grateful I didn’t end up in some prison camp because I refused to cooperate with the new laws. I thought long and hard about joining the Opposition, but I’m book smart, not street smart. I think I’m much better off teaching children how to survive this kind of discrimination, finding ways to make the best of a bad situation and educating people that we’re not monsters. I’m definitely not better off armed with a gun and some face paint.”

  Irish stroked her palm. “Well, we already know murder probably won’t go on your resume as one of your strong suits.”

  Claire made a face at him while her body warred with the tingle of awareness he created. “Funny vampire. Though, I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t kick Martin Lawler’s ass if I ever ran into him. If not for him exposing us, humans would still be as clueless as they ever were about our existence.”

  Irish rolled to his side, leaning his head on his hand. “Ah, the man who started it all. I still can’t believe the idiot was stupid enough to confess he was a vampire to, of all people, the staff at a big city morgue.”

  Martin Lawler, once an unassuming, quiet shoe store owner, had somehow fallen into vampire sleep in an alleyway two blocks from his place of business. The local authorities discovered him behind a Dumpster, and with no identification, no pulse or heartbeat, pronounced him dead and took him directly to the county morgue, where he woke up.

  Still without a pulse or heartbeat. At first baffling, then scaring the entire morgue staff, whom he’d ended up unintentionally frightening by flashing his fangs and flying around the halls.

  After that, there’d been raids in the wee hours of the morning, summits with sires and council leaders, endless picketing at the White House, fear, helplessness.

  All because of one man.

  Claire nodded, still trying to ease away from him. “Did you see his Barbara Walters interview while he was in hiding? All that carrying on about how he had no idea it would come to this.”

  “I watched it as I packed my bags to leave my cushy life in New York.”

  “New York, huh? What did Irish McConnell do in New York? Was he always the Fangs of Anarchy biker president?”

  “Why does Claire Montgomery want to know?”

  She feigned indifference, ignoring how adorable he was this way. She liked this Irish almost as much as she’d lusted for the aloof, untouchable one. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I just know that many of you weren’t always bikers. For instance, your brother Liam said he was a pediatrician.” She paused for a moment before shrugging. “I was just making conversation.”

  “Were you always a librarian?”

  Claire grinned. Books made her happy. There was nothing she liked more than being buried up to her nose in a stack of books. “For almost fifty years now. I moved around a lot, of course. The aging slowly thing, you know.”

  “Which makes you how old?”

  She giggled, the laughter flying from her throat, sounding foreign and rusty. “Old enough.”

  “I was only a part-time bike enthusiast,” he said suddenly, his tone melancholy. “I rode on weekends, did the charity drives, stuff like that.”

  “Really? Seems like you’ve always done it.”

  “I was a corporate attorney in New York.”

  Ah. That explained his grip on the English language, his diction, his penchant for solving problems amongst the two races. “I can’t believe I’ve known you for five years and never knew that. But it explains why you’re so good at mediating between the clubs and somehow managing to keep some order here.”

  “I don’t know if ‘good’ is the word I’d use, but I’ve had my hand in a negotiation or two. It was my favorite part of the game back then.”

  She knew she was treading dangerous waters by finding out more about him, but Claire couldn’t squash who she was. Ever curious. “So why didn’t you join the Opposition?” Irish was the perfect candidate for plotting revenge on the humans, strategizing mayhem.

  Now his face went grim, his lips flat, his expression hard. “Hadley. My parents ended up in one of those prison camps you were talking about. Not a chance in hell I was going to let that happen to Hadley. As much as I’d like to be out there, fighting for equal rights for all, I refuse to risk Hadley ending up in one of those five-by-five cells. I promised my parents I’d take care of her, and I will.”

  His determination, not just in his words but in his eyes, made her all
the more resolute to keep Irish out of this. “I’d feel the same way. And that leads me to this,” she said, hopping up off the bed before he had the chance to convince her to stay. “Time for you to go. Hadley needs you. I don’t.”

  But she did. She wanted to talk with him more, discover all the things that made Irish McConnell who he was. She wanted to learn what he liked, what he didn’t, what made him tick.

  Irish sat up and grabbed her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Last night—”

  Tears immediately sprang to her eyes, hot and stinging. “Don’t. It happened. No one ever has to know, Irish.” Please, please don’t.

  He pulled himself up off the bed to stand in front of her, his body hard and lean, and all she wanted to do was bury her face in his chest. “No. I promise you, no one will ever know. The problem is, I know, Claire. Now I know,” he said before cupping her cheek and placing a kiss on her lips.

  Claire clung to her strong resolve to keep from begging him to stay long after the sound of her bedroom door closing.

  Chapter 9

  Irish lobbed the eight ball across the green of the pool table in the den, now a makeshift meeting room they used as a place for the club to gather, forcing his mind from Claire’s soft body and sharp wit.

  She’d been everything he’d imagined and more—naked, willing, beautiful, and he wanted her with a burn in his gut he couldn’t ever recall having with any other woman. Leaving her last night had been even harder than leaving her the night before.

  He wanted to explore all things Claire. He wanted to talk with her. He wanted her to see the side of him that had nothing to do with the Fangs. The glimpse he’d given her last night was who the old Irish had been, before all the shit with the government had gone down. It felt good to lighten up a little. It felt free, and by fuck, he missed freedom.

  Since the move here to Maine, he wasn’t much for socializing. He was too busy trying to stay on top of everything—too busy trying to keep his people fed, keep Hadley on track and give her a normal upbringing.