How to Tame a Werewolf: Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 3 (4 page)

“But the one thing we can’t do as shifters is turn to revenge. Our animals are too strong, too vicious. Plus, that woman told you she didn’t love you, yeah?”

After a few more moments of useless struggle, David grunted in the affirmative. Ian shook his head. “And you wanted her to lie?”

“No,” David growled, “I wanted her to love me.”

Ian spun again and shoved David to the opposite side of the kitchen from Rue. He couldn’t stand to look at the other shifter when it felt so much like looking at himself. David scooted backwards. Clutching his right arm, he dragged himself up to rest against the cabinets. His breathing came and went in shallow puffs of air.

Unable to stop, Ian railed at David. But his words were more an indictment of his own actions than a condemnation of anything David had said or done.

“You can love her. You can hate her,” Ian said. “Those are your choices. Sometimes you don’t know which one to do and that makes it worse, because every time you assure yourself you hate her, you know it’s only because you loved her so much.” Ian crouched in front of the man and let the wolf rise up inside him. The animal spoke in the snarl behind his next words. “But you can’t force her to love you back. You can’t force that out of anyone. They reciprocate your love or they toss it back in your face. That’s their choice.”

Ian glanced behind them at the unbroken bottle of Latour, which had landed on the floor and rolled to the center. “Are those two bottles yours?”

Rue quietly answered. “He gave me the Latour. The Somerfield is mine.”

“That true?” Ian asked David. The puma nodded. “Then why are you here trying to take them?” Ian growled. Pausing, he took a long inhalation to calm himself. “I get it. You want to hurt her. And you want the one gift that matters most to her back.”

“He can have it,” Rue said.

“I don’t want her to give it to me. I’m
taking
it back.” The puma had risen up in David’s eyes. The blue of his irises expanded and blended with gold around the edges.

Ian rolled his neck, growing tired of the situation and the emotion it dredged up inside him. “You can’t have the Somerfield. But if you want the Latour back that badly take it legally. Find a legal means. Understood?”

David nodded and started to rise. Ian stopped him with a gesture. “Don’t see her again. Not even by accident. If you do I will track you and I will treat you like prey.”

With a second nod and a longing look at Rue, David got on his feet and headed for the door. That last glance—so full of yearning—irritated the wolf. Something about the way David looked at Rue told Ian he would come back for her. The cat shifter loved Rue and that love had begun to rot.

Ian decided a different show of alpha dominance was needed. Especially since he might have to stick around for a few days to make sure the male cat didn’t harass Kitty again. He suddenly paused to glance down at his tiny yellow T-shirt and the
extremely
medium-sized shorts he wore. The clothes had been okay for a quick run into the city to get pecan cinnamon rolls but they wouldn’t work long term.

“Stop,” Ian said. David turned back, still clutching the arm Ian had pinched into momentary paralysis. “You’re about my size, my weight, my height?”

Confused, David nodded for a third time, but much slower.

“Those clothes are Public School NYC, yeah?” Ian asked.

A fourth, even slower, more confused nod, before David twitched like he wanted to make a run for it.

Ian flicked his fingers out and back. “Hand them over.” David looked incredulous. Ian didn’t budge. “Ah c’mon, Dave, we know you don’t have a problem with thievery.” Ian unleashed his claws. His voice filled with the growl of the beast. “Maybe it’s me you have the problem with.”

That’s when David made the biggest mistake of his life. He ran. Ian both loved and absolutely hated it when people ran from him.

Chapter Five

“I’ve never watched a man shake another man out of his clothes before,” Rue said to Spock when he returned from chasing David down. The whole scene reminded her of a mom chasing a mud-covered toddler, who needed a bath but didn’t want one. Except a lot less
America’s Funniest Home Videos
and a lot more
American Horror Story
. “It was fascinating,” she concluded.

Spock nodded. “It’s all about finding the right angle.” He paused, sniffed and made a face. “I stink of puma and over-priced cologne.”

He pulled on the front of the tailored shirt that now hugged every muscle on his phenomenal body. He could’ve been a male model—if a male model got stranded on a mountaintop for a couple of years and became a sexy-ass lumberjack.

“Why are you wearing those clothes in the first place?”

“I needed to make sure they fit.” He looked down at himself, lifted one leg and then the other, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “A little tight in some places but better than the GAP Kids stuff I was wearing.”

“Really?” She gave him a face full of incredulity. She hoped he picked up on it. But if he did, he didn’t show it.

“Can you wash these for me?” he asked, as though it were reasonable to follow a woman home, fix her ex-boyfriend problem, shake the guy out of his clothes, put those clothes on,
then
ask the woman to play housekeeper.

Rue blinked a few times. “Wash them with what? There’s a blackout. I’m not a pioneer woman.”

He shrugged and sat in one of her boxy Wedgewood blue armchairs. She got them on Craigslist and they complemented the monochromatic pattern of small blue boxes she’d painted on one wall. The chairs also complemented the man who’d completely invaded her, well, um, universe in the last couple of hours.

Who the hell is he?

“Since you’ve become my own personal werewolf watchdog—thank you for the third time, by the way—maybe you should tell me your name?”

His bright amber eyes gazed into hers for an unyielding moment. He was doing one of those alpha male assessments. Rue held that gaze. It made her want to go volcanic and erupt in fiery heat and embarrassment, but she stood her ground. Until she ruined the whole alpha bitch thing she had going by hiccupping.
Hic! Hic!
Dammit she was still tipsy.
Hic!

A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of that incredibly sensual mouth. The lower lip was fuller than the top and Rue wanted to nip that lip. Well, her ocelot did. Spock made the cat curious and that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

“I like Spock,” he said. “Let’s go with Spock.” When she didn’t answer he followed up with, “Can I call you Uhura?”

Rather than answer him, Rue closed her eyes. Why, oh why did he have to be a sci-fi fan? She loved science fiction. And Star Trek, in all its forms, was crack.

“No,” she said, trying to sound firm because she really wanted him to call her Uhura, so bad, so, so bad. But rather than standing firm she hiccupped. Again.
Hic! Hic! Hic!

To keep his smile from widening any further, Spock bit his lower lip. “I’m not going to be around for long. Let’s keep things as uncomplicated as possible and avoid names.” He turned his head sideways, so very canine like, and said, “Plus, you like it when I call you Uhura.”

“Fine.”

She studied the guy who’d suddenly invaded her life. His behavior had her stunned. So much so, she kept blinking, because wow, just wow. Had Spock really saved her wine and roughed up her ex? Yep, he really had.

Apparently unaffected, the man who’d gone from Trash Man to Dumpster Diver to Spock smoothed his newly stolen gray and black shirt over the matching gray summer wool track pants. Smiling to himself, he leaned back in the armchair. Then, stretching his legs to their full length, he crossed them at the ankle, and chilled.

If Rue hadn’t known better she’d think Spock was a cat. Something about his slow liquid movements felt distinctly feline. But she’d seen how his wolf had hunkered down on David. No one did that better than canines. Cats took a couple of swipes at you and moved on.

David, her recently departed ex-boyfriend, also known as the man currently running down the street in his boxers, had fantastic taste in fashion. But he’d never looked as good in his clothes as Spock did. Even with that crazy ass beard swirling all over his face and those eyes ablaze with perpetual amber, he looked like a man who needed to be petted and stroked and licked and sexed. Adding to her sensory overload, the wine she’d had made her feel sexy and so very languorously catlike that she wanted to lift her tail for him.

Rue sat in a second boxy armchair facing Spock. In the few minutes it took him to shake David out of his clothes, she’d gone from drunk to tipsy and from mildly annoyed to over-excited. She’d also turned off the flashlights and turned on her home generator, which powered a couple of lamps set on low. The dark scared her; of course she had a blackout plan.

Now, sitting quietly in the low lighting—except for the occasional hiccup—Rue noted for the umpteenth time that Spock’s eyes were amber. She was beginning to think she’d imagined the blue. She knew for sure she’d been delusional about his resemblance to Ian Somers. The man sitting in her apartment was a feral werewolf who’d grown up in the backwoods. He was taller and more muscular than the prince of Somerfield Vineyards. But most strikingly, unlike the teen-dream Ian Somers, this man carried an edge of lethality in everything he did.

Butterflies fluttered in her belly. Thoughts of what this lethal werewolf could do to her flooded her with sudden heat. He wasn’t a vineyard heir like Ian Somers, that’s for damn sure. No perfect southern prince with hands that had never gotten dirty could make her feel all fluttery and hot and funny at the same time the way this guy did.

Rue wanted to melt onto the floor. She wanted to stretch for him, showing off the dappled pattern of black and gold on her ocelot’s creamy fur. And most of all, she wanted to run so he could chase her.

“Stop staring at me with those eyes,” she said, needing to distance herself from her attraction to him. That’s another reason she’d accepted calling him Spock and not learning his name. Too personal. She didn’t want to be up close with this man, mostly because she desperately needed to be up close with this man.

Both his brows furrowed in the center. “This is the only pair I have.”

The way he said it, with that amused glare blazing a path across her skin, she shivered. Then catching her breath, she managed to say, “At one point I thought they were blue.”

“No,” he said, “You’re mistaken.”

There was no mistaking his intensity. His sensuality became a living thing within the room. The long tail of her attraction to him teased her, flickering at her neck, tickling her belly. It hadn’t been long since she’d last had sex, maybe four months or so, back when she and David were together. And less time had passed since she’d gotten herself off. To be honest, getting herself off came much easier because that’s the only time she had an orgasm. She’d never had one with another person. Her pleasure most often came from her own hands.

But Spock’s presence did something to her. It made Rue want to test her orgasm theory. Or more accurately, his presence made her want to see if he was the exception to the rule; the one person, outside of herself, who could bring her to completion.

Rue stretched high, reaching for the ceiling, rather than stretching out to reach for Spock. She didn’t have time for desire. But he had overwhelmed her senses since the first time she locked gazes with him. So, she’d have to take her own best advice and fake being unaffected until the craving went away. First, she’d start with the thing she found least attractive and focus on that.

“Are you a real live man or a neck beard mannequin?”

The skin around his eyes crinkled with amusement. To add to the thrill he stroked his beard. Oh gawd, going on the offensive hadn’t worked at all. Worse than that, Spock had a sense of humor because he said, “I’m an international neck beard mannequin of mystery. But times are tough, so I started working for the Baby GAP, and well…” He gestured at his manly muscled body. She giggled. He smiled in return. She loved a man who knew how to laugh.

Stunned by his
varoom
, Rue slapped a hand over her eyes and winced. Did he really have to have that Olympus smile? Seriously? “Whoa, put those away,” she said flicking the back of her hand at him. “Who has teeth that brilliantly white after living on the streets? What color were they before you fell on hard times? Silver? Diamonds?”

Hic! Hic!

He laughed out loud and his eyes flickered from amber to blue and back again. She hadn’t been mistaken. The amber was the beast beneath the surface. She’d bet when the man took over the eyes would be blue. And she’d also bet he’d look a lot like Ian Somers. So close they could be fraternal twins.

That’s when an utterly ridiculously absolutely crazy plan popped into her head. Rue nearly rubbed her hands together at what fate had blown her way. But she needed to talk to the guy a while longer to see if he’d make a worthy accomplice. And she’d have to see what was hidden under that beard.

Spock pulled his legs in and leaned forward to place an elbow on each of his knees. He studied her from that position with an unwavering gaze. Sexy, sexy, sexy.

Finally he said, “What kind of fireworks just went off in your head?”

“None,” she countered. “How long do you plan on staying?”

“Where?”

“Here?”

He ran a crooked finger down the bridge of his nose. Rue’s eyelids fluttered. Damn. She hadn’t completely sobered up. With her inhibitions lowered she could easily give in to the temptation of the feral wolf sitting in her apartment.

“Until morning,” he answered. “Maybe a few hours longer. I don’t want to be a pain in your ass but I want to be here if your ex comes back.”

She nodded, grateful that for once in her life someone wanted to look out for her without asking for anything in return.

Further endearing himself, he said, “I’m also concerned about your father, your
baba
, as you call him. Does he actually want to hurt you or was today reactionary?”

“It only happens when he has to look at me.” Tears blurred her vision and she swept them aside before they fell.

When Spock spoke again, his voice soothed her despite still carrying a hoarse edge. “It has something to do with a vineyard but I couldn’t piece together why he hit you and by then I was too pissed off to puzzle through it.”

“Hold it. How do you know all of that? Were you eavesdropping on my talk with my father?”

Ian whistled the theme from the James Bond movies. “I’m a super spy.” He nodded and kept whistling, switching to the
Mission Impossible
theme song. Turning serious, he said, “Tell me what’s going on there.”

“I don’t talk about my father or my family.”

He waved off that part of the conversation by crisscrossing his hands with his arms still resting on his knees. “Tell me about the wine then. How’d you get into it?”

“
Vinum est vita
.”

“Damn,” Ian said, enthralled by her smoky voice and the way the words she’d chosen filled him up with pride. Most people said the more popular phrase
in vino veritas
(in wine truth) but Rue picked a Latin phrase closer to his heart. She’d said
the wine is life
. Which happened to be his family’s motto. They lived and died by the vine, just as his father had.

“When did you discover that?” he asked, well aware of the huskiness in his voice. He wondered if she could hear the racing beat of his pulse in the quiet of the blackout.

“You know Latin?” she asked.

“I read a lot,” he grumbled.

She dipped her head in a nod. “I discovered the wine is life when I was still a bucktoothed preteen,” she said. “My family took a trip down to a vineyard in North Carolina. My parents weren’t into wine back then but they liked to take us to different places. We went to Barcelona and Cyprus, Marrakech and Mauritius. Everywhere.” She relaxed into the memory. “There were summers in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the Amish Country, winters in Seattle and Vancouver. Ooh, Vancouver. I had the best time. Who ever invented having everything in one place knew what they were doing. The forests, the mountains, the beach—”

“But that vineyard is special?” He hadn’t wanted to break her daydream but he needed to know.

“Yeah, we all felt at home in the vineyard.” She lifted up to fold her long brown legs beneath her. Her calves were slender but her thighs were round, lush.

“The man who owned the vineyard showed us around personally,” she said. “His name was Peter and I had a massive crush on him.”

Ian’s deep intake of breath startled her.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“Peter persuaded my parents to let me and my brother taste the first pressing and the finished wines too. When I drank the wine it filled me up. Not like when you’re drunk. This felt different. I know you’re not into wine from the way you turned your nose up in the diner—”

He huffed deep in his chest.

“Okay, you really don’t like wine, so it’s difficult for me to tell you what happened when I drank the juice that would age into Somerfield Reserve for the first time. I can only explain it as dancing inside myself.” She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. “Peter patted me on the back and asked, ‘you feel that?’ When I nodded he said ‘
Vinum est vita
.’ Then Peter, and my brother, both my parents and I corked one bottle each of that 1993 Somerfield Reserve and he gave me one of the five as a gift.”

Rue quieted. She didn’t know what else to say. She’d never intended to tell him so much. But he’d seemed to understand her, as though he could see, hear and feel the things she spoke about despite his distaste for wine. It felt like they’d touched although neither of them had moved.

Just as she had done a few moments before, he stared down at his hands. Finally, he looked up at her through the fringe of his lashes. “Is it alright? I mean, that I stay?”