by Selena Scott
No more barefoot dancing. No more berry pancakes. No more chanting to the full moon. No more magic in Diana’s life.
CHAPTER ONE
Orion Wolf wasn’t a complicated man. He wasn’t a complicated wolf, either. He enjoyed being outside significantly more than being inside. He liked ice cold water to drink and, about once a week, an ice cold beer. He liked working hard enough that he sweat. Even after a year of spending most of his time in his human form, sweating was still a novelty to him. Wolves didn’t sweat. But humans did. And he was a part of the human world now.
Let’s see, what else did he like? Ah. He liked sex, though he hadn’t had any in almost two years. And he’d never had it with someone he loved, or even knew very well. And according to his brother, Phoenix, who’d just fallen in love not six months ago, sex with a woman you loved was a very different experience than with a stranger. Orion was interested in giving that a whirl.
And that brought him right down to the thing on his list that he like more than all the other things: Diana Paul.
She of the tight ponytails.
She of the freakishly piercing eyes somewhere between ice blue and spring green.
She of the pursed lips and authoritative tone of voice.
She of the tight skirts and pointy heels.
She of the endless paperwork.
He did not like paperwork, for the record. But he liked her enough to make up for it. He liked her eye for detail. Nothing got past her. Nothing caught her unawares. He liked how she made all the people who worked for her feel good about the work they’d done well. And he also liked how she made all the people who worked for her want to do better on the work they hadn’t done well.
He knew very little about male/female dynamics in the human world, but as Diana was one of the first people he’d really gotten to know when he and his siblings had joined the human world last year, he’d been shocked to find out that generally men had more social power than women had. Because Diana Paul, in Orion’s eyes, seemed like the most powerful being on earth.
He’d watched as a single raised eyebrow on her part sent men and women alike scrambling to rectify any perceived wrong. He watched as she ran her center with ruthless efficiency, a firm handle on each department’s inner workings. He’d once watched as an angry, irrational, mountain lion shifter had shifted right there in front of her, yowling and snapping. She’d merely pulled the pepper spray from a keychain in her pocket and showed it to the giant cat.
“We can do this the hard way, Mr. Wallace, or the easy way.” She’d pointed calmly to her office.
Mr. Wallace, seconds later, had shifted back into his human form, picked up the shredded pieces of his clothing, and meekly taken the easy way.
Yeah, not much got past Diana Paul.
In fact, the only thing he’d ever seen ruffle her feathers was, well, himself.
To use yet another human expression that he’d learned over the last year of living in Portland, he didn’t want to blow his own horn -which he’d always thought was anatomically impossible, by the way- but there was something about him that threw Diana off her typically immaculate game.
He liked that. He liked that a lot, in fact. Orion wasn’t a man in need of validation. He didn’t need anyone explaining to him just how special he was. But all the same, he liked knowing that in some regard, Diana Paul found him special. If she didn’t find him special, she would have treated him just the same as she treated everyone else.
Okay, okay. Maybe the way she treated Orion was with an ever-simmering temper that she just barely hid under her icy demeanor. And maybe she didn’t exactly indicate that she liked Orion. But he knew for sure that the way she treated him was distinctly different than the way she treated others, and for now, that was enough.
Which led him directly to cigarettes.
He’d never bought any before, so when the man behind the counter asked him which kind he’d like to buy, Orion was stymied.
“Hmm. The kind with the smallest amount in the pack?”
The man blinked at him. “Never heard that one before.”
Orion got that a lot. He just blinked back at the man.
“Well,” the cashier said eventually, leaning forward on his elbows and squinting at Orion. “They all got at least 20.”
Twenty. That was an awful lot. And an awful lot of waste. “I only need one.”
“Ah. Well, gimme a dollar.” The cashier reached into his own back pocket and pulled out a semi-crushed pack of cigarettes, slipping one out.
“Perfect.” The exchange was made, but then Orion was left to stare blankly at the white and tan cylinder in his hand. What was it that he was supposed to do next? Ah. Right. “Will you light it for me?”
He handed the cigarette back to the cashier.
Again, more blinking.
Orion was used to humans blinking at him like this. So were his siblings, Phoenix and Dawn. It didn’t bother Orion or Phoenix because he didn’t care whether or not humans thought he was smart. It bothered Dawn, however. Who had started to say that those blank looks always made her feel one egg short of a dozen. One of Orion’s favorite human phrases.
The man took the cigarette from Orion. “You want me to light it for you and then give it back to you?”
“Yes.”
“Son,” the man cocked his head to the side again. “You know that means I have to put my mouth on it, right?”
“Oh. I didn’t realize that. I’ve never smoked a cigarette before.”
“Yeah. I’m getting that.”
“But I don’t care how you light it. I’m not going to smoke this one either.”
“You just paid a dollar for a cigarette you’re not going to smoke?”
Orion glanced across the street at Diana’s center. This conversation was taking longer than he’d thought it would and he didn’t want to miss his chance of catching her in her office.
“That’s right. Diana told me not to smoke cigarettes, and I trust her on that, but I also know that she really hates the smell of cigarette smoke, so I figured I’d have a lit cigarette but not smoke it.”
“Hold on, son. Diana? That tall one with the fancy clothes who works across the way?” The man nodded his head toward Diana’s center.
“Yeah.”
The man smiled a smile that didn’t show his teeth, just a touch of pink in his cheeks. “‘Round here we refer to her as Legs.”
Something about the man’s tone indicated to Orion that were Diana here, she might not particularly like the nickname. But he had to admit that she had really, really great legs. He chose not to comment on that.
“So, you’ll light it for me?”
“I suppose if you’re shootin’ your shot with Legs, far be it for me to be the one who stops you. I was already to old for her twenty years ago. Rex! Taking a smoke break!”
The man stepped from around the counter and led Orion outside.
“You’re a big fella,” the man said, popping the cigarette in his mouth but not lighting it as he eyed Orion for a nice long time.
“Yeah.” He was definitely larger than average. He’d only met one or two men who were taller or wider than he was. He’d met plenty who weighed more, though they tended to be a little soft around the middle.
The man eyed him up some more. “You a nice man?”
This was one of those human questions that Orion wasn’t sure how to answer. It seemed simple on the outside, but sometimes humans inherently understood all the hidden layers to a question that Orion could never hope to. In this case, he chose to answer simply, hoping the question had been simple. “Yeah.”
“See, the way I see it,” the man said, the cigarette bobbing between his lips. “If you’re not a nice man, and I sic you on Legs, and Legs gets hurt, part of that is on me.”
Ah, he understood now. And actually, he kind of liked this man. He liked thinking of Diana having people who looked out for her. Even if they nicknamed her for her body parts. “I won’t hurt Legs— e
r, I mean Diana.”
The man pursed his lips, apparently not satisfied with Orion’s answer, though it was as sincere as an answer could possibly be. “Your parents still together?” the man asked, and Orion sensed a test of some kind.
“Dead.” The usual split second of grief raced through him when he unexpectedly thought of his folks. It was natural, he supposed, to still feel this level of pain at their unexpected and untimely deaths all those years ago. But still, the cold, wet wave of grief made Orion feel like a kid again. A kid who’d had to figure out how to keep his wolf pack together once he was the oldest.
The man’s face quirked, obviously remorseful that he’d poked that wound. “Both of ‘em?”
“Yeah.”
“Shee-it, son. That’s the short end of the stick.”
Orion had no understanding of why, but apparently having dead parents was the way out of this conversation. The man apparently dubbed Orion nice enough to pursue Legs. Without another word, he lit the cigarette with a pursed-lip inhale and handed it over to Orion.
“She’s right about not smoking them,” he said to Orion. “They’ll kill you.”
“Why do you smoke them, then?” Orion asked, mindful not to let the cinders on the end of the cigarette burn him.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Worse things than dyin’.”
That sentiment wouldn’t have made sense to Orion in the least just a little over a year ago. To him, dying was the worst fate the universe could dole out on a soul. But then he’d seen his brother caught in a wildfire and burned half to death. He’d carried Phoenix down out of the wilderness and straight into a hospital in Portland. He’d endured Phoenix’s screams of pain. His begging for death. Like the pain he was enduring wasn’t worth the life he was fighting for.
“Thanks for the help,” Orion said, not quite sure how he’d ended up in this particular conversation with this particular man.
“Yap. Come on back sometime and tell me how it went with Legs.”
Orion smiled. “You got it. Name’s Orion, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Ryan. Name’s Pete. Good luck with your girl.”
Orion didn’t bother correcting Pete on his name, he’d found that people didn’t really ‘get it’ just like they didn’t really ‘get’ Phoenix’s name either. Dawn’s they did all right with. He watched Pete light another cigarette, this one for himself, and then he turned and jogged across the street toward Diana’s center.
Worst came to worse this morning and at least he’d made a friend.
***
Did she smell smoke?
Diana allowed herself one huff of irritation before she took a long, cleansing breath and tried not to let the rage out of the cage.
Because someone was smoking a cigarette directly under her open office window and she knew exactly who it was.
He was not going to win this one. She didn’t care if he smoked a damn cigarette. She didn’t care if a carton of cigarettes fell from the sky and knocked him unconscious. She was completely capable of ignoring his childish efforts to get her attention. She was absolutely, one hundred percent, not going down there to tell him off.
Of course, not two seconds later, she was striding across her office and tossing the door open, scaring the life out of two of her employees who happened to be passing by.
“Everything all right, Diana?” Rose asked, her eyes wide at whatever expression Diana’s face was making.
“Peachy,” Diana said with a smile she was certain made her look like a woman on the edge.
Her expensive high heels clicked assertively as she swung her way through the main floor of the center and out the front door, rounding the corner toward the parking lot. She loved her sleek, fancy professional wear -always feeling a bit like catwoman when she got dressed in the mornings- but for once, she wished she were wearing sneakers and track pants instead of her tight pencil skirt and buttoned-up blouse. It would be a hell of a lot easier to kick Orion Wolf’s ass if she were in athletic wear.
She stepped around the last corner and sure enough, there he was, leaning against the wall just under her office window, lazy smile on his face as if he’d been expecting her. The cigarette, incidentally, he was holding up above his head with his considerable wingspan, letting the breeze buffet the curling smoke directly into her office.
He wasn’t even pretending to smoke it, the jackass.
“Mr. Wolf,” Diana said, coming to stand five feet away from him, her hands on her hips. “There is a no smoking policy on this property.”
He just continued to smile lazily at her. The way he always did. Like no matter how much she growled and glared and barked at him, he was always happy to see her. “Hi, Diana.”
She ruthlessly ignored that bass note in his voice that -ok,ok- twanged something inside her chest like a violin string. She also ignored the fact that his shoulders were pretty much as wide as the double-paned window above him.
So, he happened to be big and blunt and beautiful. It was annoying, she reminded herself, not alluring. She wasn’t attracted to him, she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t!
“Is there a reason you’re pretending to smoke a cigarette under my window?” Of course there was a reason. She knew the reason.
He was fixated on her for some reason. She’d endured an entire year of him doing almost anything he could to get her attention.
“You didn’t respond to my text this morning,” he said in that deep voice.
She fought the urge to look around and see if there were any errant coworkers about who might have heard him say that. In a moment of weakness about six months ago, she’d given him one of the extra cellphones that the center allowed their mentors to use. She hadn’t wanted Orion to be out and about in the world with no connection to people who would be able to help him if he needed it. He was so clueless about life amongst humans that she hadn’t thought for a moment that he might use that phone to call her and text her. He’d done so almost immediately.
And thus began the six month cold war. With him calling and texting just to say hi to her and her refusing to let herself be warmed by his attention.
“Mr. Wolf—”
“Orion,” he corrected her. Neither he nor his siblings took kindly to the last name that the state had provided them with last year.
She took a deep breath. It always gave her an embarrassing shiver down her back to say his name aloud but she figured that was as unprofessional as the texting. Thus, it would have to be left behind. “Orion,” she said sternly. “I gave you that phone for emergencies. I didn’t respond because it’s unprofessional for you to text me at all hours.” At this point she’d lost track of how many times she’d informed him of this particular fact. It didn’t appear that he cared all that much about what was professional and what wasn’t.
Not that texting was even really what they were doing. Orion, not having been a member of society until last year, was still in the beginning stages of learning how to read and write. Therefore he used the voice memo feature on the phone to send her messages. Which, speaking of shivers down her back, always just kind of killed her.
She’d woken up this morning to an unopened message from him. Opening it, she’d heard his deep, coffee-whiskey voice wishing her a good morning. She’d pressed her eyes closed for a second, pretended he was there in bed with her, saying it to her face, not through her phone.
And that’s how she knew this whole thing with him had gone too far.
“‘Professional’ sure has a lot of rules,” he sighed. He was still learning how to be a member of society and Diana knew that was daunting for a lot of people in his position, but she also knew that he wasn’t trying to learn the rules so much as push them to the edge, at least as far as she was concerned.
“That may be, Orion. But regardless, I’m the director of this center. You’re a client. It’s very important—”
“How can I be considered a client of the center when I don’t even have a mentor?”
<
br /> Diana’s eyebrows snapped down and her scalp began to ache where her tightly drawn ponytail pulled at her skin. “What do you mean you don’t have a mentor? What happened with Carl?”
“What do you think happened with Carl?” Orion asked with that infuriating smile still on his face.
Diana pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut for a second. This might be a real headache brewing, not just a ponytail-induced one. “That you scared him off just like you did the last fifteen mentors I’ve assigned you?”
“Sixteen,” he corrected, with a proud sort of glee in his tone.
She strode forward, slapped the still-smoking cigarette out of his hand and stomped it out with her shoe. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you enjoyed making my life difficult.”
He frowned at her. “I don’t enjoy that. I want to make your life easier. Better. I want your life to be wonderful.”
And there he went again. Just when she thought that she could actually write him off as selfish and self-serving, he went and said something so honest, so pure, so sincere that all her anger at him just sort of whistled away. She refused to sag.
“If you want to make my life easier, then just work with a mentor already! Any mentor. Pick one and don’t cause trouble and just let me do my job!”
He was quiet for a long minute. Long enough that she was forced to look up at him, his blunt face and trimmed beard and gray-blue eyes. “You know there’s only one person I want to be my mentor,” he said quietly.
She threw her hands up. “I’m not a mentor!” It was useless. They’d already had this argument a hundred times. They were going in circles, apparently completely evenly matched in terms of stubbornness. “You can’t have me! I’m the director of the center not a mentor!”
“Then,” he said, just as quietly as before, “maybe it’s time we talked about me quitting the center. If I can’t have you as a mentor then maybe I could have you in a different way.”
Her eyes snapped to his but she didn’t see anything lascivious or leering in his expression, no matter how his words had sounded. Again, he was doing that transparently honest thing. It was her fault if she was reading blatant sexuality into his statement. Well, not her fault exactly, considering he was pretty much the most sexual being on the planet -simply by existing. His wide shoulders and blunt mouth and all-seeing eyes and humongous body and earthy scent and deep voice, all of it added up to a pretty potent package.