I’m giving you a way out.
Theo growled low in his throat. Fuck you, Aidan.
So be it. Aidan moved in a split second ahead of Theo’s charge and lunged for the black wolf’s throat.
Emma’s scream registered but didn’t deter him. He knocked Theo to the ground while sinking his teeth into the soft skin beneath his jugular. A quarter inch more and he’d take the young wolf’s life. That was guaranteed to ruin everyone’s evening.
So he eased up, which allowed Theo to twist away and turn, closing his teeth over Aidan’s hind leg. Ignoring the pain, Aidan pulled his leg free. Being hamstrung by this young pup wasn’t his idea of a good time. And now he was bleeding all over the carpet. Housekeeping was going to hate that.
No more Mr. Nice Guy. He lunged for Theo’s throat again, and this time he held on and issued his ultimatum. Give up unless you want your carotid artery severed.
You won’t kill me. I’m a Henderson.
The kid had a point, damn it.
I’ll claim self-defense.
From the corner of his eye, Aidan saw Emma approaching. She had the hotel hair dryer raised as if she was about to bring it down on somebody’s head. Whether it was his or Theo’s, he couldn’t be sure.
He’d take his chances. Don’t look now, but Emma’s about to bean you with a hair dryer.
No way.
’Fraid so. So your option is to surrender to me or I’ll hold you down so she can knock you senseless. Which story would you rather have circulating?
Shit. I surrender to you.
Werewolf’s honor?
You got it, big guy.
Aidan relaxed his grip and let Theo wiggle out from under him. Emma must have still considered him a threat, because she smacked him a good one on the head with the hair dryer. He went down for the count.
The moment he was unconscious, he began shifting back to human form. Emma seemed transfixed by the sight. She stood there rigidly, her hand over her mouth.
Aidan padded into the master bath and nudged the door closed with his paw. By the time he came out wearing a towel, Emma had thrown her comforter over Theo while she continued to stare at him.
She glanced up when Aidan emerged from the bathroom. He met her gaze without flinching. In some ways he was relieved that she finally knew. But damage control was going to be a bitch.
She swallowed. “So it was you last night.”
“Yes.”
“Not a figment of my imagination. Not a nightmare.”
“No.”
“You asshole!” She hurled the hair dryer at him, and the cord snaked out behind it.
He ducked, and the dryer smacked against the wall before dropping with a thud to the carpet. The plug had caught him on the arm as it went by. He’d have a welt there soon.
“Coming into your bedroom as a wolf was a tactical error,” he said.
She opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it again. Finally she shook her head. “Forgive me. You’re talking about tactical errors and I’m still trying to—to get my head around ...”
“I know.” Instinctively he moved toward her.
She held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Keep your distance, Aidan. I don’t know who you are or what you are, and until I get my bearings, picture a large bubble of protection around me, okay?”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Just for the record, this is a whole new experience for me, too. I’ve never revealed myself to a human before.”
“So you’re not ... human.”
“I’m mostly human. But I can shift into wolf form, so that means that I—”
“I know a little something about werewolves, Aidan. I’ve been writing about them for six years. I just never expected to meet one.” She glanced down at Theo’s prone form. “Or two.”
“We should probably see if we can revive him.”
She glanced at his leg. “And stop your bleeding. You’re making an unholy mess. Is that real blood?”
“Yes, it’s real blood! I’m not an alien, for Christ’s sake. You write about this stuff. You should know.”
“I make it all up!”
“Well, you happen to be correct about most things. I’m a man in this form, and I bleed like a man, but I’ll heal faster because of the shift.” And he was making quite the mess. In the excitement of the moment, he’d forgotten that Theo had created a sizable gash in his calf when the kid had tried to cripple him. No doubt about it, Theo would have followed through if he’d hit Aidan’s Achilles tendon. Good thing that hadn’t happened.
“Get some washcloths from the bathroom,” Emma said. “You can hold one on your leg and I’ll sponge Theo’s face. That might wake him up. Oh, and bring the tie from my bathrobe. I left it hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”
“What’s the tie for?”
“Theo, of course. When he’s conscious, he could be a lot of trouble. We’d better tie him up before we revive him.”
“We don’t have to tie him.”
She frowned. “I’d rather be safe than sorry. I don’t want the two of you getting in another fight, either as men or beasts. Once is plenty for me.”
“There won’t be another fight.”
“How can you be so sure? He’s whacked, Aidan. Not that you aren’t, too, but you’re whacked and seminormal. He’s thoroughly whacked.”
He decided to ignore her whacked and seminormal comment for the time being. “Think about what you’ve written, Emma. Werewolves are pack animals. Once an alpha has subdued another pack member, he returns to his subservient position. You had that very situation in Shifty Business.”
“You mean I was right about that? Cool!”
“You were right about a lot of things.” He wondered how and when he should tell her that she’d been under investigation because of being so right. “On top of that, once Theo discovers he was knocked unconscious by a woman wielding a hair dryer, he won’t be any trouble at all. He’ll never want the rest of the pack to know about that. We have blackmail material that will last a long time.”
“We? What do you mean, we? Come tomorrow morning, I’m outta here.” Her voice was full of bravado, probably false bravado.
He wanted to avoid this discussion until they’d both calmed down. “We’ll talk about that later.”
“What do you mean by that?” Her voice rose in pitch.
“Let’s take care of Theo and figure out the best way to get him home. Then we’ll discuss the options.”
“There’s only one option. I’m leaving for Denver in the morning to continue my book tour.” Her chin lifted in defiance.
In truth, he wasn’t sure how to handle this. Security had been breached, and precautions must be taken. He couldn’t just let her fly off to Denver by herself. Not after she’d witnessed something like this.
“I’ll get the washcloths.” He went into the bathroom.
She followed him. “Look, Aidan, I don’t care how rich you are or how much real estate you own. I don’t care if every single Wallace is a werewolf.”
Thinking discretion was the better part of valor, he pulled white washcloths from the towel rack and stuck two under the faucet.
“I’m a free citizen of the United States of America,” she continued bravely, “and I’m going to Denver in the morning.”
He squeezed out the washcloths. “These should work for Theo.”
She took the washcloths and tossed them on the counter. “I mean it, Aidan. Don’t mess with my book tour. It’s important to my career.”
“I know.” He took a dry washcloth and pressed it against the wound in his leg.
She was standing close to him, close enough that her scent had begun working on him again. In the heat of battle, he blocked out any irrelevant sensory impressions, but afterward, there was always the urge to release tension in some way. A run through the woods worked. Sex worked.
“Here, let me do that.” She crouched down beside him. Apparently she no longer felt the need for the bubble of protec
tion she’d claimed earlier.
“I’ve got it. Go see about Theo.” He didn’t dare look at her. From this position he could see down the front of her little black dress.
“You’re a real bossy-pants, Aidan, do you know that?”
“Just go check on him, please.”
“All right.” With a sigh she rose, grabbed a washcloth from the counter, and walked into the bedroom.
He watched her go, his attention captured by the way her firm little backside moving seductively under the stretchy black material of her cocktail dress. His tailbone began to ache.
She called to him from the bedroom. “He’s gone!”
Tossing the washcloth in the sink, Aidan left the bathroom. Sure enough, Theo was no longer lying unconscious on the floor.
Aidan wasn’t all that surprised. If he’d been in Theo’s place, he would have cut out the minute he regained consciousness. But the kid couldn’t have made it down the elevator and through the lobby naked.
Then Aidan figured it out. “Looks like he took the top sheet from your bed and wrapped himself in that so he could ride the elevator to the lobby.”
Her eyes widened. “And then what? He couldn’t hail a cab wearing a sheet. No cabdriver is going to take a chance on picking up what looks like a loony.”
“I’m sure once he made it out to the sidewalk, he found a dark alley and shifted back to wolf form. He’s running now and praying nobody ever finds out how thoroughly he was humiliated tonight.”
Emma walked over to the bedroom window and pulled back the curtain. “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him after the way he’s behaved, but I still hate to think of him alone out there in the cold, especially when he’s hurt. I popped him good with that hair dryer, and he had some gashes on his throat, too.”
“He’s a wolf, Emma. This is how a wolf reacts to humiliation. That was my goal, to humiliate and intimidate him. I wanted his complete surrender, and I got it.”
She shivered. “That seems harsh.”
“He was prepared to reveal himself to a human and break pack law. He had to be dealt with.”
She gazed at him. “But he succeeded, didn’t he? He did reveal himself to me. And so did you.”
“Yes.”
She continued to stare at him, and judging from her expression, she was beginning to realize the magnitude of the problem. “Well.”
This would be the time to offer some comforting platitude, like It’ll all work out. But he was too honest to give her false hope. He wasn’t sure how it would work out.
Her attention moved to his leg. “You’re still bleeding. Let’s at least solve that issue. Go on back in the bathroom, and let me see if I can get it to stop.”
“All right.” Tending to his wound seemed like the sensible thing to do, so he followed her suggestion, or rather, her order. He understood why she, too, might be getting a little bossy.
Her previous worldview had been shattered, and in sorting through the wreckage, she was trying to regain some measure of control. He could allow her to dictate how his wound should be tended, but he couldn’t let her decide how the next few days would go, or maybe even the next few weeks or months.
He wondered whether she realized that her life had changed forever and it was never changing back.
Chapter 18
Emma was beginning to get the picture, and it was an unsettling one. Now that the initial shock had worn off and she could think, she’d started piecing things together. Apparently, she’d stumbled upon a group of beings who didn’t want their presence known.
Or more precisely, they’d stumbled upon her. All she’d intended to do was promote her book. She hadn’t invited real werewolves to show up. But they had, and now she possessed knowledge that the werewolves didn’t want other humans to find out.
If not for Aidan, she’d fear for her life. The simple way to plug the hole would be to eliminate her. Problem solved. But Aidan wielded power among werewolves. She’d seen that demonstrated with Theo. Aidan wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was counting on that.
So the first order of business was taking care of her protector’s leg. She also wanted information, lots of information. The more she knew about this strange new world, the less she’d have to fear from it. At least that was the theory.
Back in the bathroom, she dampened a washcloth and knelt down so she could dab his wound. “I want to clean it up a little before I apply pressure. Do you suppose you need a tetanus shot?”
“No.”
“Rabies?”
“Werewolves are incredibly resistant to any kind of disease.”
She made a mental note of that. “Why?”
“We’re a very old species. We’ve built up immunity to most of the diseases known to either man or beast.”
“Makes sense.” She pressed the damp washcloth against the jagged tear in his skin, skin that looked and felt like that of a man but could transform into the hide of a wolf. Despite being in a very precarious spot, she was fascinated at the prospect of interacting with a creature she’d thought lived only in her imagination.
“I’ll bet modern science would love to tap into that immune system.” She said it without thinking, but the heavy silence that greeted her comment conveyed volumes. “But of course that’s impossible,” she said quickly, “because then they’d know you existed.” Be smart, Emma. Even Aidan might not be able to protect you if you keep making remarks like that.
“In the old days, werewolves were hunted almost to extinction,” Aidan said. “We’re not eager to go back to those times.”
“I’m sure not. Aidan, you can trust me. I’m not going to put you or the others at risk.”
“That’s easy to say, Emma. Harder to do.”
Her sense of uneasiness grew, but she was reluctant to ask the hard questions for fear she’d get some hard answers. She liked her life the way it was. She didn’t want it to change.
“The bleeding’s slowing down some.” She held a dry washcloth against his leg and braced her other hand on the far side of his calf to apply some pressure to the wound. “I’m beginning to understand what the arranged marriage is about. You’re like the prince of the Wallace family, and Nadia is the princess of the Henderson family.”
“We generally use the word pack instead of family.”
“Even when you’re in human form?” She found herself becoming more aware of his human form. He’d fastened a towel around his waist, but other than that, he was naked.
“Obviously not around other humans. But pack loyalty is important, even when we’re in human form. Although we spend the majority of our lives as humans, our wolf instincts remain strong.”
The thrill of facing the unknown coursed through her. She might as well admit that she’d chosen to write about werewolves because she found them erotic. And now, here was an actual werewolf, right here in the bathroom with her. An almost naked werewolf.
Her body responded with a rush of moisture. But he was wounded. He needed rest and relaxation, not a roll in her king-sized bed.
If she couldn’t satisfy her craving for him, she could at least satisfy her curiosity. “When you shift from a human to a werewolf, what does that feel like?”
“It depends on how long I have to go through the process. Ideally, I can anticipate having to shift and allow plenty of time. Tonight that wasn’t the case, so tomorrow I’m going to be a little sore.”
“And you can shift at will, no matter what the moon phase is?” Could he shift now, while she was holding on to his leg? But she wouldn’t ask that of him. This wasn’t a parlor trick.
“The moon’s no longer a factor for us. It was centuries ago, but we’ve learned quite a bit about how the physiology works, and we’re no longer dependent on the moon.”
So he was capable of shifting at any time. That was both exciting and intimidating. “When I created my werewolves, I wanted them to shift whenever they chose to. The story wouldn’t move very fast if they only shifted every twenty-eig
ht days.”
“I remember how impressed I was when I read your first book and saw that you’d set it up that way.”
She couldn’t believe they were calmly discussing the reality of shape-shifting. Last night she’d had sex with a werewolf. Doggy-style. That took on new meaning, now. Erotic meaning. “What mind-body control you must have.” She realized that she’d begun stroking his leg and stopped immediately.
“Most of the time, I have control.” His breath hissed out between his teeth, and he pulled his leg from her grasp. “That’s enough. I’m fine.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” He edged toward the bathroom door. I’m just—you don’t have to—maybe I should get dressed.”
“Aidan, you look as if you’re in pain. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ll go to my room and grab some clothes.”
She scrambled to her feet and followed him. “Use the hotel robe instead. You need to bandage your leg. I’ll call room service and have some first aid supplies sent up.”
He whirled. “Don’t follow me, Emma!”
“Aidan?” She looked closer. His chest hair was thicker now than it had been a minute ago. Her pulse jumped. “Are you ... shifting?”
“Yes, damn it, I am. This doesn’t happen to all werewolves. Just me. It’s a genetic defect. If I become aroused and frustrated, I start to shift.”
She glanced at the towel around his waist and noted the tenting effect. Knowing what lay beneath that terry cloth created a corresponding ache in her womb. “But if you have sex?”
“Satisfaction reverses the process. But considering the evening’s events, sex isn’t what either of us needs right now.”
She swallowed. God, but he excited her. “Speak for yourself. Considering the evening’s events, a little sexual release sounds like a wonderful idea to me.”
“It will only complicate things more.”
“Or simplify them. Your choice, of course, but if you’d rather reverse the process with my help, I’ll be in my bedroom. Naked.”
She turned and walked back through the doorway, stepping over the shattered remains of what was once a door. Then she paused and glanced back at him. “This time you won’t have to break down a door to get to me.”
A Werewolf in Manhattan Page 18
