Personal Demon (21 page)

His shirt started to follow, but I caught his hands and whispered, “Let me. Please.” I took hold of the hem, met his gaze and said, “Right after you tell me why you left.”

He let out an oath on a blast of chaos so sharp I arched my head back and shuddered.

“Like that, do you?” he said.

I grinned. “You know I do.”

“Damn you.”

“Mmm.” I nibbled the side of his neck. “Tell me more…like what you meant that morning.”

A growl and another string of obscenities.

I writhed under him. “Not bad. But it needs a little more venom. Say it like you mean it.”

“I wish I could. You have no idea, sometimes, how much I wish I could.”

He grabbed me in a kiss so hard, so rich with frustration, that had he reached for my jeans again, I wouldn’t have stopped him. Instead, he broke it off and sighed.

“You’re right,” he said.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Damn you.”

A moment’s silence. Then he rolled off me and propped his head up on his arm. I twisted onto my side to face him.

“This is going to take a while.”

“I’ve got all night.”

A noise, half sigh, half growl. “All right then. When I went to Europe, I planned to take you with me. I’d make it sound like a whim. A lark. Light and casual. Then morning came, and I realized you’d
know
it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, and if I was telling
myself
it was light or casual…”

He shook his head. “I wanted to forget about it, but I couldn’t. So I told myself I’d mention the job, see your reaction when I said I was leaving.”

“See how crushed I was?”

A muscle in his cheek twitched at the coolness in my voice, but after a moment he nodded.

“And when I wasn’t upset enough, you had to keep pushing. See what did upset me. Not just flying off to Europe for a few days, but indefinitely…and maybe I should date other guys while you were gone. See if anything dug in enough to hurt.”

“Yes.”

I scrambled up. “You bastard.”

“Hope—”

“No.” I backed away. “You want brownie points for being honest? You hurt me just to see if you could, just to prove that I have feelings for you?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t want to see if I could get a reaction. I
wanted
a reaction. I wanted you to think exactly what you did—that you’d been seduced, that I was just as cold and self-serving as you’ve always suspected.

I wanted to walk away and close the door.
Slam
it, so I could never come back.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either.”

He pushed to his feet and looked around, then settled onto the couch. I stayed on the floor, arms around my knees.

“I’ve never understood it,” he continued. “What happened that night at the museum. Why I helped you get away from Tristan and why, after I had helped, it was so hard to walk away. Why, even when I did, I couldn’t
stay
away.”

He shifted to see me better around the coffee table. “Not that I couldn’t understand the attraction. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You’re fun to be around. But I’ve been with beautiful women, smart women, fun women, and there wasn’t one I didn’t walk away from in the morning. I only ever felt a twinge of regret if I had to leave a piece of jewelry behind. At first, I told myself it was because you were a challenge. You weren’t interested in me and I wanted to change your mind. But even when I knew I
could
change your mind, I didn’t. Because, if I seduced you, then I’d have no excuse for coming back, and…” A pause. “I wanted the excuse.”

I hugged my knees, wondering if I should say something, but feeling like I wasn’t supposed to.

“I’ve been having dreams. For a few months now…” Another pause, his jaw working, as if trying to figure out how to word something. “I don’t dream very often. It’s usually…wolf. If I postpone my Change, I dream of Changing. If I haven’t hunted, I dream of hunting. I’m reminded, prodded. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of you. Of us.

Of…”

He fell silent, jaw tensing again.

“Cabins,” he spat finally, as if making some terrible confession. “I dream of forests and cabins and us, and no one else. I dream of taking you someplace, holing up, making love and making—” He clipped off the last word.

“Making what?”

He met my gaze and his lips twitched. “From that look on your face, you know what I was about to say. Let me remind you, emphatically, that it’s a dream. When I wake, I’m as horrified as you.”

“Thank God.”

He arched a brow. “Can you honestly see me living in a cabin? It’s a symbol, obviously. An impulse. Not to carry you off into the woods and raise a pack of squalling brats. Just to…be with you.”

“The instinct to mate.”

He gave a low growl, and I braced for an argument, but he only turned his gaze toward the window, as if he’d already figured out what the impulse was, and just hated hearing it put into words.

“It’s understandable, isn’t it?” I said. “You’re fifty years old with no children. The animal instinct to reproduce is sure to kick in—”

“So I start having caveman fantasies about the first woman in prime childbearing years to cross my path? In some ways, I wish to hell that’s all it was. A biological imperative that randomly fixed on an appropriate target.”

He stood and walked to the window, his back to me.

“I used to hear other werewolves talk about it,” he said. “The problems of living solitary lives. Fighting the urge to find a mate and settle. I’d commiserate, if it was to my advantage, but even as I was listening I was calling them fools. Weak. Convincing themselves it was an instinct because they didn’t have the balls to admit the truth—

that they wanted a wife and kids and a picket-fence life. I’d never felt the urge to stay with a woman until morning, let alone for life, so I was living proof there was no mating instinct. The truth was, it seems, that I just hadn’t met…”

He let the sentence fade, and stared out into the night. The silence dragged out past seconds into minutes.

“Damned inconvenient, isn’t it?” I said finally. “That’s the problem.”

He glanced my way. I got up and perched on the edge of the coffee table.

“You’ve been on your own since you were sixteen,” I said. “Since your father died. There hasn’t been anyone. No lovers. No friends. No one you couldn’t cut ties with in a heartbeat…and wouldn’t kill if they got in your way. Then you joined the Pack, but you’re still ambivalent about that and tell yourself it’s a business arrangement and keep social contact to a minimum. Now you have me. Someone who might expect some kind of commitment from you in return, a commitment you might—horrors—want to give. Damnably inconvenient.”

He gave a hoarse laugh. “You can’t resist, can you? Even this you can turn into ‘Karl thinking about himself again.’”

“Am I wrong?”

He met my gaze, then turned back to the window. “Damn you.”

I crept to him, stood on tiptoes and kissed the back of his neck—or that was my goal, though I barely reached his collar. He glanced over his shoulder in surprise. I put my hands on his sides and leaned in, laying my cheek against the middle of his back.

“Remember when we met? Before you left, you said you were going to make a fool of yourself over me.

That’s still what you’re worried about. That you’ll find yourself doing things you never dreamed of doing, things you laughed at in others, and you’ll make a fool of yourself.”

A sigh rippled through him. “You never cut me any slack, do you? You can’t find some unselfish motive, like that I don’t want to hurt you. Or even a romantic one, perhaps that I’m worried about having my heart broken.”

“A broken heart is just a fancy way of saying you’ve been made a fool of—that you opened up, let someone in, and they took advantage. As for hurting me, I’m sure that’s in there somewhere, but it’s not the driving factor.”

“Dare I ask what is, in your opinion?”

“That a relationship with me would not only be inconvenient, but potentially humiliating. After all these years of being happy on your own, why risk that for a relationship that might not work out?”

“Sounds like you’re trying to dissuade me.”

I kissed the back of his shirt. “If you can be dissuaded, I think you should be.”

“No. I don’t think I can.”

He turned, pulled me to him and kissed me. Then he waited. After a moment of silence, he sighed. “My grand confession, my soul laid bare, and you aren’t even going to throw me a scrap, are you?”

“If you’re waiting for me to say that the idea of being a werewolf’s chosen mate is incredibly romantic, maybe swoon at your feet…”

“Perish the thought.”

“Granted, my mother would be thrilled to see me hook up with someone, but a fifty-year-old werewolf thief might not be her idea of the ideal partner.”

“We won’t tell her about the thief part. Or the werewolf part.” A pause. “Or the fifty-year-old part.”

“If you ask
me
whether a fifty-year-old werewolf thief is
my
ideal partner, in my idealized life…”

“I suppose not.”

“Sorry.” I looked up at him. “But if you ask me whether it’s what I
want,
my answer might be different. No guarantees. But there’s a strong possibility.”

“I can live with that.”

He scooped me up and carried me into the bedroom.

LUCAS: 3

I WAS IN BED,
waiting for the alarm to ring. Paige lay on her side, facing me, the blankets pushed down to her waist. She’d been naked when we’d gone to bed last night, but must have risen at some point, putting on a short nightgown to go downstairs. Now the nightgown was twisted, and one breast peeked from the curtain of long curls, straining to be free, thwarted only by that last half-inch over her nipple. It needed only a tweak of the silk folds to finish its escape. Most mornings I would have completed the rescue, then turned off the alarm and found a less jarring way to wake her. But last night we’d worked on a new spell, and while that might not seem the obvious excuse for my hesitation, Paige’s methods of spell practice are far from obvious.

Paige is as voracious a student of the art of spellcasting as I am. But that doesn’t stop her from livening it up with an extra twist. Last night’s added attraction had been a personal favorite of mine: strip spellcasting. Fail to cast the spell, lose an item of clothing. Given that it was a new and difficult spell, that first stage hadn’t lasted long, leading us—naked—to the second, in which at any sign of a successful cast, the “winner” receives a service from the “loser.” By the time we felt confident in our ability to cast the spell, we were exhausted, barely able to find our way to bed, and six hours later, I still wouldn’t consider myself fully recovered. That did not, however, keep me from enjoying the sight of Paige and even feel the first twinges to suggest I wasn’t as tired as I’d imagined.

She rolled onto her back, covers twisting until she was nearly free of them. The hem of her gown rode up one thigh, granting me a peek at the red lace panties beneath. The bodice had pulled even tighter, her breast now straining all the more to be free, her nipple poking against the fabric and making me decide that, indeed, I was quite recovered.

A gentle tug and the trapped breast was free, full and firm, the nipple still erect, begging for attention. First, though, I tugged the other side of the skirt up, until it was around her belly, the bright red panties on full display. I took a minute to enjoy the view.

My wife has a body worthy of the attention. Full, soft and generously rounded everywhere a woman should be rounded. I’m not usually aware of such things, but even on our first meeting, I’d noticed. At the time, if a fortune-teller had told me that one day I’d waken to this sight every morning, I’d have demanded my money back. So I can be forgiven if I do, now and then, like to wallow in my good luck.

I saw the clock preparing to flip to six and tapped off the alarm. Then I leaned down, tongue tickling over that waiting nipple. Her response was instantaneous, a low moan of pleasure. I took her nipple between my teeth, my tongue—

My cell phone blared so loud we both jerked up…fortunately without injury.

“Ignore it,” I said, pulling her back.

“No.” She reached over me, breast brushing my lips, then handed me my phone. “You answer. I’ll keep things going.”

With a grin, she kissed my chest, then moved lower. An order was an order, so I answered.

“Lucas? It’s Karl. We have a problem.”

Paige heard and stopped, scant inches from her destination. She glanced up at me, a question in her eyes that I really didn’t want to answer. I considered accidentally hitting the disconnect button. She read my mind and gave a soft laugh, kissed my stomach, then rolled from bed with a mouthed “later.”

I cursed Karl Marsten, sat up and gave him my almost complete attention.

I WAS STILL
on the phone when a cup of steaming coffee appeared by my hand, slid discreetly across the desk. I’d moved into the tiny office adjoining our bedroom and was jotting down notes as Karl talked. I motioned for Paige to stay, but she gestured something I couldn’t decipher, and slipped from the room.

“Jasper Davidyan?” I said. “That’s D-a-v-i-d-y-a-n?”

“Yes, but Hope suspects the surname is phony, and I’d agree. It comes from the license in his wallet, which is definitely a forgery.”

“You said he goes by Jaz. Is that one z? Two? Or an s?”

A snort, clearly contemptuous of the moniker in general and not about to speculate on the specifics.

I continued. “So Hope found no sign of chaos at the apartment, and you discovered no extraneous trails or blood—”

“No, I said I told
her
that.”

“Ah.” I sipped my coffee and waited. It took a few moments, but he finally went on.

“There was blood under an armchair that, judging by the marks in the carpet, had been moved to cover it.

And there was a bloody rag in the bushes below the balcony.”

“But you kept this from Hope?”

His tone frosted. “It was spatter under the chair. Just enough to make a mess and there wasn’t much more on the rag, meaning no one’s dead or seriously injured. If Hope knew, she’d worry and she’s already worrying enough.”