Her Werewolf Hero

by Michele Hauf

  “A comb it is, then.”

  * * *

  At the Walmart, Kizzy bought some shockingly cheap jeans, a toothbrush and paste, and a comb, and some protein bars and bottled water. They drove through town on Main Street. A glance toward the windows on her third-story rental did not indicate anything suspicious. Still, much as she was so over the motel rooms, she felt it would be safer to give it another day before attempting a return. They had the afternoon to sit around and do some research on soul bringers and to try and locate Nightcat.

  Bron found a room at the edge of town. The receptionist recognized Kizzy and gave her the eye. They’d graduated the same year and had shared an interest in art. She sized up Bron from head to crotch and smirked knowingly. Kizzy didn’t say anything beyond a friendly hello, but she did grab Bron’s hand, kiss him on the cheek and walk out with the key in hand.

  “Sorry,” she offered as they strode toward the room. “I know what she was thinking, so I gave her something to think about. Couldn’t resist.”

  “What was she thinking?”

  “Oh, please, Bron. You may have been born in the nineteenth century, but you’ve been around. You saw that look she gave us.”

  “I did. I thought she was laughing inwardly at your Vampire Tilda hair.”

  “What?” Kizzy gaped. “You totally missed her eyeing you like a piece of meat? She thought we were lovers. Vampire Tilda hair?” She punched him on the bicep. “Teaser.” They entered the room, and she tossed her bag aside while Bron headed to the window to scope out the area. “Seriously? No TV or movies?”

  “I’ve had occasion to watch a movie or two since they started filming them in color,” he offered.

  In color? Mercy, the guy was an old man, and he didn’t even realize it.

  “A few months ago on a transatlantic flight,” he continued, “I sat next to a four-year-old. She thought she was so clever to allow me to watch Frozen with her.”

  “You watched a kids’ movie?”

  Bron cleared his throat and, pressing one hand to his chest, belted out rather modestly, “Let it go, let it go!”

  Kizzy’s jaw dropped, but then she clapped her hands together. “I love you! Ha! No, I mean, I love that you just did that. Not like real love. Oh—hell. Just shut up, Kizzy.” She sighed heavily at her faux pas, but then summoned a smile. “I bet it’s pretty rare that you show anyone your spontaneous fun side.”

  He tugged down the brim of his hat, assuming his usual stoic profile. “I don’t have a fun side.”

  “Dude, you just sang a line from a movie loved worldwide by four-year-old girls. I’d call that fun. And it really makes me want to do this.”

  She kissed him quickly. It was sweet and teasing. Long enough to taste him and feel him pull her closer, but short enough to spark the reminder that she needed to be cautious with him and his carefully guarded emotions.

  “What was that for?” he asked. “Letting it go?”

  “That. And you did say you liked kissing me. Are you going to pass up my kisses now?”

  “Never.”

  “Another?”

  “How about I run and get us something to eat?”

  “You’re hungry again?”

  “Breakfast was hours ago. And, yes, I have a healthy appetite. While I’m gone, you go through Twitter and report back to me all the things we need to know. And then we’ll work on a plan of attack.”

  “With kisses?”

  He leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. “With kisses. What are you in the mood for?”

  “Pizza. Lots of cheese.”

  “Lots of cheese, it is. I’ll be back.” As he exited he asked Siri for the nearest pizza place.

  Chapter 12

  The savory odor of tomato sauce and pepperoni crept under the bathroom door. Kizzy combed her hair and was going to brush her teeth, but she’d save that until after eating. Her daily clock had been screwed up, so—showering in the middle of the day? Seemed legit. Besides, she had washed some bits of grass out of her hair. Vampire Tilda hair, indeed.

  Bron had left before she’d gone into the shower and...she’d left her new clothes out on the bed. She tucked in the towel at her chest and studied her reflection. The towel was thin, but it was long and went to her thighs. It covered all the important parts while still leaving enough to be desired. She could call out and have Bron hand the clothes in to her.

  Or she could wander out and give him something to desire.

  “Plan B, coming right up,” she whispered with a wicked grin.

  She strode out and caught him with a slice of pizza in his mouth. He looked over the triangle of cheese and sauce, and his eyes grew wider.

  “Good?” she asked and sat on the end of the bed and picked up her own slice. “Extra cheese. Yes!”

  He mumbled something that sounded agreeable. He sat on the other side of the pizza box. His eyes strayed toward her thigh, exposed by the parted towel. If desire had a scent, it was cheese and pepperoni. She liked making him uncomfortable.

  And then she felt a wave of guilt. After everything he’d told her about his affair and Isabelle’s death? What was she doing?

  She set down the piece from which she’d taken a bite on the cardboard-box cover. “Be right back.”

  Kizzy grabbed the bag of clothes and returned to the bathroom to dress. So she’d played things wrong just now. Much as he’d given her the eye, it had felt off. She was out of practice. Who would have thought her first dive into dating after the accident would be with a werewolf? Wouldn’t that give the chick at the reception desk something to gossip about?

  She shook her head at her reflection in the mirror. Much as she’d spent years trying to convince others that the otherworldly existed, she wasn’t stupid. She’d protect Bron’s identity. He’d earned that trust from her.

  The jeans were cheap but comfy, and she’d found a T-shirt with a Game of Thrones logo on it. Would winter ever come? Good enough for now.

  She returned to the main room, picked up her slice and sat on the chair, propping her feet up on the bed. “So now we work out the game plan, right?”

  “Yes. This sitting about waiting thing is not my norm.” He finished off another slice. “I need to move. Be actively involved in whatever the mission demands of me.”

  “You are actively protecting me. That’s something.”

  “Sure.”

  So little enthusiasm in that reply. She brushed the pizza-crust crumbs from her fingers onto the sides of the chair, then tossed her wet hair over a shoulder. On the pillow sat her camera, so she picked that up and clicked through the most recent shots.

  “It’s a marvel, the cameras nowadays,” Bron said, picking up another slice.

  “Nowadays. OhmyGod, you really are an old man.” She couldn’t help a chuckle.

  “I prefer mature.”

  “I’ll give you that. You look like a thirty-year-old. So, were you around when cameras were invented?”

  “I think they were invented just before I was born. I didn’t have opportunity or the interest in one until around, hmm...1880? Give or take a few years. It was a camera obscura. About this big.” He held his hands to encompass a square shape the size of a hardcover book. “I didn’t know how to develop the photographs, nor had I the time, so I took them to a friend who owned a photography business close to Hyde Park in London. It was a lot of work, and as I’ve said, I never stayed in one place for long, and toting along one of those big things wasn’t practical. I didn’t get my next camera until probably the 1950s. A Kodak.”

  “Black and white?”

  “You bet. I favor the black-and-white images over color.”

  “Memories?”

  “No, just more impactful. The eye doesn’t get distracted by thousands of colorful details. Thou
gh I do like the cameras nowadays that transfer the pictures directly to the laptop. Technology.” He shook his head in wonder and leaned back on his hands. But one slice of pizza remained in the box.

  And now Kizzy noticed Bron didn’t look at her so much as scent her. Yes, she could tell when he was reading things around him. His nostrils flared, and his eyelids shuttered. He could probably read the world by scent. Cool werewolf stuff.

  “What’s that like?” she asked. “Your senses? I notice you smelling things a lot.”

  He closed the pizza box and got up to set it outside the door, leaving the door open to stand in the threshold. The summer afternoon offered the occasional whoosh of a passing car on the highway and a scatter of crickets nestled somewhere within the unmown grass edging the motel parking lot. The promise of rain thickened the air.

  “I navigate by smell,” he said. Brushing the thick hair from his eyes, he closed them and tilted back his head. “I start close and move out. Garlic and oregano in the pizza. Your mint toothpaste and the chemicals lingering in your hair from the motel shampoo. Your skin...smells warm.”

  “What does warm smell like?”

  He shrugged, eyes still closed. “You know it when you scent it. It’s good. Sweet. Sensual.” He let that word hang between them. Kizzy could feel it brush her skin as if he’d touched her. “And then there’s the tarmac stained with various oils from decades of parked cars. Stale beer in the garbage can down near the registration office. Animal droppings in the grass. Mold growing on the poplar trees across the highway. Gasoline. Building materials. Birds. Bees. Ozone. I can smell it all.”

  “That must be overwhelming.”

  He stepped back inside and squatted, this time sitting in the threshold, his long legs splaying out across the loud blue carpet before him. “I can turn it down. Zone out the nuisance smells and focus on only those most important. Like you.”

  His smile was easy, and it stayed on his mouth for a while as his eyes wandered everywhere but to her.

  “My coming out in a towel before bothered you,” she guessed. “I did it on purpose.”

  “I knew that.” His smile widened, but more so, his eyes glittered with an unspoken challenge. “And it didn’t bother me. I’d consider it a tease if I weren’t familiar with you. You weren’t teasing. Were you?”

  Now he looked at her with those piercing blue eyes, and Kizzy’s heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings.

  She shook her head. “Nope, not teasing. But then, I remembered what we’d talked about at the McDonald’s.”

  “Ah.” He bowed his head.

  “I don’t want to misstep with you, Bron. I told you already that I like you. I like what’s going on with us. I mean, the part where we’re not running from villains. Talk about a crazy first date. And I really do apologize about my reaction after kissing you when we were on the bed. Everything is happening quickly. And I like that. It feels natural. One day I was walking through the park with my camera, I turned around and there you were. Ohmygosh. There you were.”

  “I was tracking you.”

  “Right. But that’s what my mother once said to me.”

  “What?”

  “I’d turn around and he would be standing there.”

  “He?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m not following, Kizzy.”

  “You don’t have to.” Because he might think her crazy if she did explain that one. Mom had been right. Because there he had stood. A man she might like to have in her life. Yes, really. A werewolf. Was Bron the man her mother had predicted would be there for her someday? Still too soon to tell. But she wanted to keep him around long enough to find out.

  He bent up his knees and propped his elbows on them, hands hanging loosely before his legs. Sunshine glossed his hair. It looked rich and thick and so decadent. She could happily get lost in his hair.

  Kizzy wasn’t sure what he was thinking right now as his brows narrowed and he awaited her explanation. Should she recant her confession? Did it make him uncomfortable? She knew he had an aversion to human women. But to carry it for so long? Since the mid-nineteenth century? Seemed as if it was time for him to get back into the swing of all a human could offer him.

  Which probably wasn’t much. Werewolf-on-werewolf sex was most likely the ultimate for him. Pair him with some other kind of paranormal creature, and he’d probably be just as happy. But a boring old human?

  Why was she so concerned about his love life?

  Holy Hannah, she wanted sex. And she wanted to get it on with Bron. She never should have kissed him. That intimate connection had sparked a flame that she was now aware glimmered within her.

  It had been almost a month since she’d hooked up with a cute young plastics artist in Brussels. They’d had supper and drinks, but she’d decided against going home with him. Hadn’t liked his smoking. So she’d seriously gone without sex for eight months, and right now, she was horny. She needed some touching. She wasn’t looking for a relationship or a ring or even forever. Sometimes she just needed to get close to a man and lose herself in him. Didn’t everyone crave human touch?

  “Bron? What’s going on inside that brain of yours?”

  “Too much.”

  “I understand. Oh, man, do I understand.” She shifted on the chair. Her body hummed for his attention. And parts of her were relaxing and growing moist. She could imagine his beard gliding along her thigh, his mouth getting ever so close—

  “You might understand a little but not all,” he said.

  “Hey, it was just something I needed to put out there. We are adults. We both know sex can happen without happily-ever-after. I’m feeling needy and—okay, the truth?—horny. And—”

  “Kizzy.”

  His abrupt tone made her clutch the front of her shirt.

  He tilted his head in a “come here” gesture. “Don’t tell me what you want. Just show me.”

  She wasn’t going to argue that invitation. Sliding off the chair, she walked over and knelt before him. “Seriously? Right here, with the door open?”

  He pulled her to him with a hand to the back of her head, and the kiss chased away further protest. What had she been protesting? Who cared! His mouth on hers made everything else unimportant. And he went up on his knees and somehow managed to lift her as he stood and kicked the door closed at the same time. He laid her on the bed and crawled over her body, without breaking the kiss.

  But he had asked her to show him, so she pushed his shoulder down, turning him onto his back, and climbed over him. She unbuttoned his shirt and glided her fingers over his chest. The short black hairs were soft and thick but didn’t disguise the incredible hard muscles that pulsed with his movement.

  “I like all this,” she said and kissed his chest. “You’re like a big loveable bear.”

  “I prefer wolf.” He propped up on his elbows and kicked off his unlaced boots.

  “Do you howl when you come?” she asked, and then felt a little embarrassed by the question. “Sorry.”

  He pulled her up to kiss her. “I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?”

  His tongue dashed across her lips, and she followed the tease, pressing her mouth to his and dancing her tongue with his. He tasted only a little like pizza and more like the outdoors. Fresh air. He was a creature of nature. And this time, to think about creatures didn’t offend her. She wouldn’t allow it to.

  He kissed her again quickly, then asked, “Are you on the pill?”

  “Yes.”

  She almost asked him if it was okay that she was human, but then nixed that. Why bring it up if it might only make him think? Mindless was the best way to experience sex. No, not mindless, but unfocused and lost in the sensations was a good vibe to have.

  Mmm, like the gentle tickle of his fingers gliding up her arm and to
her shoulders, where he clutched her hair beside her jaw and held her against his deep and lingering kiss. The command of him deepened her desire and melted her muscles. She straddled his hips, and the summer breeze blowing in from the open window crept up under her shirt, whispering between her breasts, where her pulse beats thumped. And lower, between her legs, her body hummed in aching want.

  Shoving the shirt up over his shoulders, she wanted it off him as quickly as possible. Skin against skin, baby. He tossed it to the floor. Mercy, those pecs were hard and tight. She aimed her greedy touch for his pants, unbuttoning, unzipping and searching beneath the taut, hard landscape of his lower abdomen and a thick tuft of dark hair.

  He lifted her shirt, and she peeled it off to reveal her breasts. Bowing his head, he kissed the top of the surgical scar and then glanced up to her when she gasped.

  “No one has ever done that before,” she whispered.

  “It hurts me that you had to suffer because of another man’s anger.”

  “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “Do you want me to not touch you here?”

  “No, it’s okay. I trust you.”

  She pressed her hard nipples against his chest, and he moaned and glided his hands up the backs of her thighs to cup her derriere. Firmly, as if she were his and let no one think otherwise. She nuzzled her mons against his groin and felt the tickle of his pubic hair and his hard erection strain against his jeans.

  His hands slid down her jeans and quickly tugged them off. He tossed them aside and suddenly flipped her onto her back.

  “Whoa!” Kizzy cried. “I thought I was supposed to do the showing?”

  He shoved down his jeans. “I have a pretty good idea of what you want.”

  His erection sprang free, and she gasped. Because it was gasp worthy. She reached for his penis, thrusting up from a dark nest of curls, and clasped it firmly. It was hot and solid, and she briefly thought of the stakes he’d wielded to kill the vampires. Oh, man, please, let him slay her with this weapon.

  “You see,” he said, kicking aside the jeans. “I knew you’d be interested.”