by Sierra Dean
I would have loved to act out some slippery, soapy, shower-sex fantasy with him right then, but it wasn’t meant to be. He was a werewolf, and his sense of smell was second to none, even when he was in his human form. The moment he stooped to kiss me he recoiled, his nose wrinkled with disgust.
“What? You don’t like my new perfume?”
“Eau de Putrification? God, Secret, what is that?”
“Death.” I should have known he’d be able to smell it on me. It was bad enough that the wolves could smell vampires on me, but real human death had its own distinctive, lingering quality. I’d been right to shower.
Desmond put his hands on my waist, but it wasn’t a come-on. He pushed me past him so the full brunt of the showerhead was angled in my face. The water was so hot I thought it might burn off the top layer of my skin. I turned it hotter. To Desmond’s credit he didn’t bail out to get away from the smell. Instead he opted to empty half a bottle of green-apple-scented shampoo onto my head and made a desperate effort to scrub the stink out of my hair by sheer force of will.
In spite of the unpleasant reason for my being there, it felt fantastic to have him wash my hair. He applied just the right amount of pressure on my scalp and wrapped my hair into a thick tail to rinse the shampoo free. Then he handed me a loofah and ducked out of the shower.
I was impressed he’d lasted that long.
A good fifteen minutes later my skin was scrubbed pink, I’d washed my hair again, and we were out of pomegranate body gel. I still detected the lingering touch of old death when I took a deep breath, but I always smelled a little dead.
Desmond was dressed and waiting for me in the kitchen with a pre-warmed glass of AB negative.
“Well…” He handed me the glass. “Now you smell like a rotting fruit salad. I guess it’s an improvement.”
“Did they teach you how to woo a lady at charm school? You’re excellent at it.”
“You mean we don’t club women over the head and drag them back to our caves? Hmm.” He swallowed a mouthful of water. “We wolfmen must have missed that lesson.”
“Lucas sure did,” I added with an indignant huff.
Desmond wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and kissed me. I hadn’t been expecting it. His lips were warm and velvety soft in spite of the harsh dry air. I made a mental note to send the folks at ChapStick a thank-you letter. He didn’t push for more than a kiss, just let the gesture stand as its own entity. And what a kiss it was. My knees turned to gelatin, and I sagged into him, still clumsily holding my glass of blood in one hand while caressing his smooth cheek with the other.
He pulled back, playfully licking my swollen lower lip and sending tingles from my forehead to my toes.
“You still stink,” he said with a roguish smirk, kissing the tip of my nose.
“Yeah well…” There was no obvious comeback, so I went for an old classic. “Your face still stinks.”
“Real smooth.”
“Shut up.”
I finished the blood and went to the bedroom to get dressed. This time I didn’t bother with college-girl chic. I was going to talk to Mayhew as the real me, and if I needed to get rough to get answers, I wanted to be dressed for it. My outfit consisted of leather pants, one of Desmond’s Yankees shirts that was loose enough to hide the knife tucked into the waistband of my pants, and Dominick’s leather jacket to conceal the SIG and its holster.
Some people wore camouflage to go on a hunt. I wore leather and my boyfriend’s T-shirt.
Desmond gave me a once-over when I sat on the couch to pull my boots on.
“So that’s why all my shirts smell like you. I was starting to think I was going crazy.”
“You are going crazy. Every day you stay with me proves it.”
There was a brief pause as he sipped his water and digested the hard truth of my words. In the end he gave a half shrug and smiled at me. “Then I guess I’m crazy.”
I don’t think my heart had jumped as hard when he’d told me he loved me. Since the situation with Lucas had taken a southerly dive this week, I’d been holding my breath for the moment Desmond decided he was fed up with being one point in a ridiculously scalene love triangle and bailed for good. I’d been sure the time had come when he walked out, yet here he was in my apartment, looking like he was always going to be with me.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“I don’t deserve you,” I admitted, both to myself and to him.
He crossed the room and cupped the back of my head, tilting it back slightly so I was looking at him. “We all deserve exactly what we get. Good or bad. My dad used to tell me that.”
“You never talk about him.”
“I do when it matters.”
“What happened to him?”
Desmond dropped his hand and sat on the arm of the loveseat. “He died.” He was looking at his hands instead of at me. I didn’t push him further, hoping he’d offer the rest of the story on his own. When I thought he was about to change the subject, he said, “You already know he was Jeremiah’s second, right?”
“The Desmond to his Lucas, so to speak.”
“Yeah. They were a lot like us, and in some ways a lot different. Dad met Jeremiah later in life. He grew up in a Southern wolf pack, actually, on the edge of the western territories. He moved east in his late teens, and his family had to appeal to the king for their right to come into the territory. At the time, Lucas’s grandfather Gerald was the Eastern pack king. He was grooming his son for the crown, so Jeremiah was there for the appeal. There wasn’t a bond between them, not like with me and Lucas, but they liked each other instantly.
“In spite of my father being the son of Mexican immigrants, the Rain family never deterred the friendship. It was ultimately obvious their friendship had formed a fierce loyalty, and my father became the apparent choice to serve as Jeremiah’s second when he came into power.”
Desmond was so immersed in the story it was like he was telling it from within a trance. I feared anything I said might break the spell, and I’d never know what had become of the two men. I stared at him in rapt silence and waited for him to continue.
“In Jeremiah’s thirty-five years as king, the Eastern pack functioned like a well-oiled machine. There were no territorial disputes, almost no internal conflict. People were happy. Alphas were treated as their own leaders and given enough power to feel important, but enough leash to not overstep their bounds. If there was ever a Pax Lupo—a peaceful time for the wolves—that was it.”
No wonder Lucas was struggling so much to maintain his position as the king. Not only was he young, but the shadow of his father’s legacy stretched far into the Eastern pack empire. There were old Alphas who would reject change and would resent Lucas for not maintaining the status quo established by his father.
Supernatural politics could teach the White House a thing or two about being convoluted.
“With how relaxed everything was, no one was expecting the invasion. We guard ourselves against internal upset, but these guys were a rogue wolf pack out of Germany. They didn’t go for the outlying territories either, which is what any smart usurper would do.”
Notably not what Marcus Sullivan had done.
“They came to the city and rounded up as many wolves as they could. I don’t mean these wolves joined forces with them. I mean they kidnapped them and held them hostage. This was six years ago, and it was summer. Lucas and I were doing a semester abroad in France. We didn’t find out about any of it until the dust settled.
“Jeremiah invited the Alpha of the German pack for a summit. They met at one of the old Rain warehouses in New Jersey, and right from the start it all went wrong. I only know what I know from the one wolf who survived, the Alpha of Philadelphia. Apparently the Germans went in with one agenda—to kill everyone in power and set their own leaders up in place. It never would have worked. The individual packs would have revolted.” He shook his head over how one misguided plan had co
st him the head of his family.
“It was a bloodbath. The Germans were all killed, but so were all the hostage wolves, and most of the Alphas who had gone with Jeremiah. My father…” Desmond sucked in a breath, and I heard the tremor in his voice. “My father died protecting his king. But it didn’t matter. Jeremiah died the next day. His wounds were too extensive, and he was too old.”
“Des…” I touched his arm, and he flinched.
“So stupid.” He ran a thumb under each eye, though he hadn’t cried for the duration of the story. “Lucas and I got home, and suddenly he was a king at twenty-one, and I was his second. We had a whole damned pack to run and barely any idea of how to do it.”
“But you did it,” I told him.
“Did we? I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re holding it together, but we never let it heal properly. I worry all it will take is one hard tap and the whole thing is going to fall apart.”
If that was how my uncle saw the Eastern pack, it was no wonder he was making his move now. And by the sound of things he was doing it exactly the way Desmond believed was the smart route to a hostile takeover.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Squeezing his hand, I rested my head against his shoulder. Whatever it took, I would play my role in all of this. Lucas’s pack wouldn’t fall apart because I wasn’t willing to be a pawn. It was time to put my pride on the back burner and live up to my title as pack protector. If I didn’t, it might be Desmond and Lucas who paid the price, and I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.
Chapter Twenty-One
I wasn’t cut out for university life.
This was only my second trip to the Columbia campus, and I already detested the place. It wasn’t that the buildings didn’t have a certain academic charm to them, or that the feel of a miniature city within a city didn’t have an appeal. No, none of those things made me hate higher education.
The goddamn place was teeming with people who were begging to become victims.
Young women filed out of Mayhew’s lecture hall, and it was like watching an evolutionary progression diagram. Except instead of showing the development of early man into homo sapien, I was seeing a digression from good-girl student into sororitos sluttius. The shirts got lower and the skirts got higher as each new girl stepped out.
It was February, for God’s sake. I couldn’t feel the cold, and I still wouldn’t wear a micromini outside.
When the last girl had left, I ducked into the classroom and stood at the top of the stairs watching Professor Mayhew pack up his big leather books. When he didn’t notice me right away, I cleared my throat.
“Oh, Miss… I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name, love.”
“Yeah, must be hard to keep track of them all.”
“Beg pardon?”
The stairs were deep and narrow, but I managed to descend without taking my eyes off him. “I was wondering something. Does the quality of a girl’s bedroom performance impact the level of the grade she gets, or is it her willingness that does it? Like, if she’ll only blow you, is it a one-letter grade bump? What does she have to do for an A?”
Mayhew propped an elbow on his lectern and stared at me with his hooded gray eyes, unfazed by my words. After a moment of contemplation, he shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t put as much thought into it as you evidently have. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, Miss McQueen. What is it they say? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” He affected a perfect redneck accent for the last phrase, making me shudder.
“I see you have no problem remembering my name when the discussion is about blowjobs.”
“Maybe I hadn’t forgotten you at all.” He tilted his head to the side and smirked at me. “So are you here to offer, or did you want to see if I’d deny it?”
Good question. I wasn’t here to offer him anything other than the pointy end of my knuckles. But I had expected him to deny it. His cavalier confession was throwing me for a loop.
Taking advantage of my momentary uncertainty, Mayhew hopped off the raised platform so he was standing uncomfortably close to me. It was a peculiar gesture for a man with a permanent limp, a little too lithe and graceful to be natural.
Something was wrong here.
I stepped back, and Mayhew followed me, catching my wrist and pulling me back towards him. His strength was shocking. My synapses were firing on full blast, screaming at me to do any number of things. Instinct said I should punch him, kick, slap, claw and do anything it took to break free of his hold.
My body responded by doing nothing and letting him tug me against his chest. “I was wondering how long it would be before you found your way back to me,” he said, nuzzling his nose against my throat.
A thousand furious thoughts bounced around inside my skull, but none of them shook my limbs out of their leaden stupor.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My mouth still worked, apparently. As usual, though, it didn’t do me a fat lot of good.
“What does it look like, love? I’m grading you.” His voice was smooth and had an undertone of something dangerous. Not a threat, but the promise of violence lurking under his tweed-clad professor veneer. It pained me to acknowledge it, but my body responded to him.
“Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me,” I growled through gritted teeth.
Fingers skimmed my arms, ducking inside my jacket and traveling down to my waist. He looped his thumbs into the belt loops on my pants and jerked my hips so they were flush with his. His lips grazed my neck, and my brain kicked me. If my mouth worked, so did my fangs.
I bit him in the ear.
Mayhew tried to pull away, but this time I held fast. He let go of my waist and dug his fingers in my hair, his lips grazing my own ear. The whole time he hadn’t once cried out in pain, which was astonishing given the fact I had inch-long fangs buried in the soft tissue of his earlobe.
He nipped at my diamond earring stud, tugging it with his teeth, and whispered in my ear, “If you want to play that way, I can show you how much pain the human body can withstand without dying.”
My fangs retracted almost instantly. The words hadn’t been a threat, they’d been a promise. And judging by the hardness pressed against my thigh, that promise excited him.
“What do you want?”
Mayhew licked the shell of my ear, and I fought against the urge to gag. The words he was whispering weren’t English. I wasn’t a master of archaic languages, but if I had to make a guess, I would say he was speaking to me in Latin. It sounded old and stuffy enough.
Undeterred by my attack, he started exploring with his hands again.
“You’ve come to make me an offering,” he said, finally uttering words I could understand.
“I’d rather chew on my own eyeballs than make any kind of offering to you.”
He leaned back and met my gaze, looking puzzled. “You shouldn’t be fighting me.”
Oh, God, this kept getting worse. The last time someone had frozen me he had been the most powerful witch I’d ever met.
Oliver Mayhew didn’t smell like magic.
I sucked on my teeth. His blood was too thick, too bitter. I didn’t know what it was, but Mayhew wasn’t human.
The good professor didn’t quite know what to do with me. He seemed to be debating whether or not he should release me or carry on with his dirty business. I didn’t want him touching me, but he had to understand letting me go wouldn’t be in his best interests.
He kissed me.
Also not in his best interests.
I bit down on his lip hard, ignoring his earlier promise of sadistic experimentation. Again my mouth filled with his strange, noxious blood, but I didn’t release my bite. It felt like swallowing crude oil. The moment his blood hit the back of my throat, I gagged, choking on the burning sensation. As soon as I stopped biting him, he forced his tongue into my mouth.
My limbs began to tingle, as though I’d rested funny and every part of my body had fallen asleep and was only now w
aking up. Before I could react, something cold like a sharp inhale on a below-zero morning was pulled out of my lungs, leaving me gasping for air. Then everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There was a crick in my neck when I woke up.
An ancient-looking man with deep wrinkles and a permanent scowl was staring at me. He held a broom handle in one hand and presumably had just finished poking me with it, judging by its angle and the sore spot on my ribs.
“Guh.”
“This ain’t no goddamn Super 8, lady. We got ’em goddamn dorm rooms for a reason.” It looked like he wanted to give me another prod. I appeared to have fallen asleep in a classroom. Where was I?
“What time is it?” Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms only made everything blurrier.
“It’s one in the goddamn morning.”
“No, that can’t be right.” But then again, what time was I expecting it to be?
The obliging old man jammed his watch in my face. Unless his Timex was way off, he was telling me the truth. What the fuck? I tried to remember something, anything from earlier in the night, but I drew a blank.
“Where am I?”
“You gotta be joking.”
I shook my head, trying to keep the wave of panic from swelling up inside me. “No. I’m not.”
“You’re in the goddamn English building.”
“What English building?”
“At Columbia. Jesus, girlie. You hit your head or something?” He now looked a little guilty for prodding me with the broom.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, ignoring his question as I pushed past him and out of the classroom.
Outside, I called my number-two speed dial. It rang twice and a groggy male voice answered.
“Keaty, something weird is happ—”
“Huh? Secret, you called my cell, not Keats.”
I couldn’t place the voice, but he obviously knew me. Something in my chest tightened. Should I know this man? I must, but my brain wasn’t giving me a mental image to match with the words in my ear. A frustrated growl escaped my throat, and I hung up.
