Blood Moon (33 page)

I shivered again as David’s fingers moved
down my spine, and with a soft, exhausted chuckle, he took this as
his cue to usher me back into bed and beneath the thick blanket.
The second my head hit my pillow, the exhaustion that avoided me
all night hit me like a bus. I yawned as David pulled me closer,
and I rested my head in the crook of his neck, letting sleep
finally take over.

Coffee was the first thing I smelled, and it
pulled me from sleep. Inhaling deeply, I rubbed my eyes and sat up.
That’s when I smelled the bacon…and the eggs. I already knew what I
would find when I looked to my left, but I did it out of habit; the
bed was empty, save for me. I reached over to find David’s side of
the bed chilly, and I smiled fondly as I reminisced about the night
we shared.

I could practically feel his hands on every
inch of my skin, and it warmed me entirely, the heat moving down my
body as my toes curled again. There was nothing about last night
that wasn’t amazing. In fact, the intensity still hung in the air,
stimulating my longing for him all over again. Seemed last night
made me more than a little insatiable.

The combined smells of my breakfast pulled
me further from my slightly dazed and sleepy state, and I placed my
feet on the chilly floor, reaching my arms up over my head and
stretching. There was a satisfying pop in my spine, and my skin
tingled from the release of tension.

Before exiting the room, I grabbed the yoga
pants I’d stuffed in my top drawer the night before and pulled them
on, padding down the hall barefoot. In the kitchen, David stood at
the stove, dressed in nothing more than his plaid sleep pants, as
he cooked breakfast like a pro. There weren’t many people who would
risk cooking a food like bacon in next to nothing, and I crossed my
arms, leaning against the entryway wall and watched raptly.

Turning his head, he caught me watching him
and grinned. “You’re awake,” he said. “I didn’t hear you come down
the hall.”

Laughing lightly, I stepped toward him and
wrapped my arms around his waist and watched him cook. “I’m pretty
stealthy.” As he flipped the bacon over in the frying pan, I
glanced up at the clock on the stove and gasped. “It’s almost ten
in the morning.”

“Yup.”

I was stunned. It’d been over two weeks
since I’d slept this late. Lately, I’d been waking up before dawn
with an insane burst of energy. The energy was still very much
there, so I was willing to bet that this change was simply due to
the fact that I went to bed later than usual, altering my internal
clock slightly.

Or maybe you just expelled all that extra
energy into the amazing sex last night,
I told myself.

Whatever the cause, it was a bit
surprising.

While David finished up with breakfast, I
set the table. By the time everything was in place, David brought
the food over, and we sat down to dish up. Everything smelled
amazing, and looked even better. Having gotten used to my increased
appetite, David prepared more than double what the two of us would
normally eat—which meant I ate almost three times what I used to.
It concerned me in the first few days, but because I’d never felt
better, I didn’t worry for long.

After David had a chance to dish up, I
loaded my own plate with bacon, eggs, and even a huge heap of
hashbrowns since I was no longer repulsed by anything that wasn’t
meat. David seemed pleased by this turn in my appetite as he
brought his fork to his mouth. I was just about to do the same when
my attention shifted from the food on my fork in front of me to the
dark rings around his wrist.

My stomach turned violently, and I gasped,
dropping my own food-filled fork as I reached for his hand. Eggs
splattered across the table and onto the floor, but I didn’t care.
“What the hell?” I asked, inspecting the faint bruises circling his
wrist. I glanced over at the other one—the one I’d watched flip the
bacon in the pan—and noticed that it, too, had some bruising, but
it wasn’t nearly as noticeable.

David chuckled, flipping his hand over to
show me the rest of the injury. It was then I realized they were a
perfect outline for my fingers. “You were pretty aggressive last
night. All of your early morning workouts must be paying off.” I
ghosted the angry-looking marks with my fingertips, being careful
not to press too hard. “It’s okay, they don’t hurt.”

Bile churned in my stomach.

“
He’s human. You’re not. It’s dangerous
for you to be with him.”

I hated to let Nick invade my thoughts
again, but given the evidence in front of me, it was a little
difficult to not take stock in his previous warnings:
It’s
dangerous for me to be with him…
I’m
dangerous
.

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, still unable to
believe I was—
am
—capable of something like this.

“I’m not. Shit happens, Brooke. Besides, I
didn’t complain last night, and you’re sure as hell not going to
hear me start now.” He laughed again, withdrawing his hand from my
grip. “If you’re worried that you hurt me, you didn’t.”

I had trouble believing him, thinking that
maybe he was just trying to placate me, because the proof was right
there around his wrists in a deepening purple hue. Regardless of
how many times he told me not to worry about it, guilt consumed me,
and I replayed what happened in the bedroom over and over again.
Unlike earlier when I fondly reminisced about it, now I analyzed
it, trying to figure out when I lost my self-restraint.

And it all pointed to one conclusion:
Nick.

It was Nick telling me that David and I
couldn’t work due to what happened to me. His stupid warning got to
me on a much deeper level, and in the heat of the moment, I felt
the best way to eliminate his taunting from my mind was to push
past it forcefully. What I hadn’t expected was that I would be as
physically forceful toward David while mentally willing Nick from
my thoughts. I’d done what I wanted to prove I would never do: I
hurt him because I lost control.

I hurt him. I’m dangerous.

I tried to shake the thoughts from my head,
but it wasn’t easy. The more I tried, the more I wondered if Nick
was right, and I hated myself for that.

I thought about everything I’d learned over
the past few days in regard to what had been happening to me—my
strange surges of strength and energy, my heightened senses, my
cravings. Yes, I hadn’t been acting like myself in the beginning,
and while I initially questioned it, I admit that I grew accustomed
to everything—liked it even—and as time went on, it was as if
something deep inside told me that this was how it was supposed to
be. That it was okay for me to be experiencing all of this, and
that it was natural.

Then Nick came barreling back into my life
with information that would change my life as I knew it, and now
all I could think about was how I hurt someone I loved.

My guilt continued to mount, tightening like
a knot in my churning stomach, and my appetite disappeared. David
noticed this, and repeated again and again that I shouldn’t dwell
on it, but how could I not? How could I know for certain that this
wouldn’t happen again next time?

Next time?
I surprised myself when I
inwardly voiced the question, and I immediately resolved that there
wouldn’t
be
a next time. There couldn’t be. At least, not
until I knew how to control my strength completely—which, according
to Nick, could take quite some time.

When I looked up again, I could see in
David’s eyes that he was worried about my reaction to all of this,
and I realized that I might not have the luxury of time. If I
pulled away again—even to fix this—I risked losing him.

I
t wasn’t easy,
pretending everything was fine, and I knew David saw through each
and every reassurance. And he was right to be skeptical. Any idiot
could see that, never mind my police detective boyfriend. I wasn’t
intentionally pushing him away, but I was terrified of hurting him
again.

The reality of harming him still weighed
heavily on my mind. It was no longer just a possibility, and I
realized I was lucky to have only harmed him minutely. But it was
only a matter of time before I lost control completely. The full
moon was coming in just over three weeks, and until I learned to
shift of my own volition, it would be forced upon me again and
again and again.

Nick promised to help me with this, but I
was afraid to contact him. This, of course, didn’t mean
he
hadn’t contacted me. He had. Several times a day. It was a real
chore keeping it from David.

Why hadn’t I pick up or call him back?
Because I was a coward. I feared he might see what I’d done, the
shame I felt, and tell me that he told me so. I wouldn’t be able to
handle that. I didn’t need him to add to my guilt.

That didn’t mean I
wouldn’t
contact
him. I just needed another day or two. I needed…time. Not that it
helped me in any way.

But I had to. With every day that passed, I
knew I did. If not for me, then for David. He was the best thing to
ever happen to me—I knew that now—and I wouldn’t leave him. I knew
what that felt like, and I refused to run away. No, I would learn
to control this so we could be together.

And what about those reemerging feelings for
Nick? I hadn’t forgotten about them. How could I? I was reminded of
what we used to share every time we were in the same room together.
I could feel the heat of his gaze, feel the pull he had over the
desires I thought long gone, but I kept telling myself that what I
felt was just residual emotions from the past. That it was all just
familiar, and that they’d be forgotten the second he left town.

But deep down, I knew better. I knew it was
more. I could feel it.

And it terrified me.

“You okay?” David’s voice startled me from
my thoughts, and I looked across the car at him. Letting his eyes
wander from the road for a second, he grinned at me. “You seem
scared.”

See. He was rather astute as of late.

“You have no reason to be nervous,” he told
me with a genuine snicker. “It’s not like I haven’t already met
your parents.”

I
wished
it was just my mother’s
dinner invitation that had me so preoccupied.

Probably in hopes of drawing me from my
tumultuous thoughts, David laid a hand over mine as they sat
clenched in my lap. Glancing down, I watched the sleeve of his
leather jacket creep up, exposing his wrist. The bruises had faded,
but they were still there; a faint yellow-tinted reminder of what I
did to him. I still couldn’t bear the sight, and with a shaky
breath, I gently pulled my hands from his grasp and pretended to
fix my hair. I hoped he wouldn’t see the gesture for what it was,
but he did.

He exhaled heavily, placing both hands back
on the wheel and tightening his grip around it. He didn’t bring up
the issue; he knew what it was, and it frustrated him to no end
that he had no idea how to fix it.

Truthfully, neither did I. But I was working
on it, and I hoped to figure it out before it was too late.

Even though he already knew the source of my
unease, I offered him a gentle smile. “Yes. I realize you’ve
already met them both,” I said. “But this is entirely different.
We’re together now.
Openly
together and living under the
same roof. I don’t think you fully understand what this means to my
mother.”

The tension in the car lifted slightly, and
I was thankful for it.

My mother’s invitation to dinner wasn’t too
big a shock. It was bound to happen eventually, and the only thing
that surprised me was that it had taken her this long to organize
something. Mind you, David and I had been pretty tied up with work
lately, and with my father being in charge of our department, I
suppose she was privy to our availability through him. Add to that
my recent wolf attack and hospitalization, and we were almost
impossible to plan around.

While we still had yet to break ground on
our case, my dad suggested we needed a break from everything. He
felt like we were running around in circles, chasing our tails—an
analogy that wasn’t nearly as humorous as it was now, given my
circumstances when the full moon came around every month.

When we arrived at my parents’ house, David
rushed around and opened my door for me before I got the chance. It
was sweet, and I smiled appreciatively as he reached into the
backseat and grabbed the bouquet of flowers and bottle of wine he’d
picked up earlier. As we made our way up the walk, I grew
increasingly more nervous because I didn’t know what to expect.

My mom opened the door only moments after we
knocked, and she pulled me into her arms. “Brooke, honey,” she
said. “I’m so glad you two could make it.” After releasing me, she
looked over at David, wearing the biggest smile I’d ever seen, and
then she hugged him too.