by Paige Tyler
Knox tried to keep from staring at all that exposed skin, but it was damn tough. He hadn’t seen skin that smooth and perfect in a long time. Well, ever, actually. He attempted to focus on the aroma of the hot, buttered popcorn instead, but then he picked up another scent even more mouthwatering—cinnamon with a hint of licorice jelly beans. He’d never smelled those two scents together before, but they completely worked. Probably because they were two of his favorite things. Maybe she had a candle or some of that potpourri stuff in her apartment.
Wonder why I didn’t smell it before.
He swigged his coffee. “So, it’s true then. I’m a werewolf?”
Rachel arched a brow as she leaned forward to grab a handful of popcorn. While Knox was focused on her face, he didn’t miss the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra under that Captain America tank top. He had superb vision and the low sides of the tank showed off a teasing amount of skin.
“Yeah, you’re a werewolf,” she said. “But you knew that already or you wouldn’t be here.”
Knox nodded. “I guess. I think I knew it when I survived that gunshot wound. I mean, I should have bled to death within a few hours. The fangs and claws were a dead giveaway, too. Not to mention the anger management issues I’ve been having lately.”
She frowned. “How many times have you lost control?”
“Enough,” he said noncommittally.
He supposed losing control was simply part of turning into a monster. He lost count of how many times he’d snarled at people for no reason in the past week. He’d even come close to putting a few guys at Theo’s security firm through a wall when an episode of roughhousing had gotten out of hand. Fortunately, Theo hadn’t gotten upset and fired his ass. In fact, he’d approved, saying he liked the way Knox had put them in their place. Apparently, the boss thought some of his employees had been getting soft lately.
As far as Knox was concerned, the random outbursts were one more in a long string of reasons he needed to get this problem fixed. But before he got into that, he needed to understand how the hell he’d ended up in this situation to begin with.
“How can I be a werewolf?” he asked. “I didn’t get bitten.”
He reached out with his free hand to snag some popcorn so she wouldn’t see how tense he was now that they’d come down to the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. It was buttery and perfectly salted.
“It doesn’t work like that.” She sipped her coffee. “Werewolves aren’t created from a bite. That’s myth and Hollywood make-believe. We’re born this way.”
He snorted. “Like hell. I wasn’t like this before I got shot at that wedding reception.”
She scooped up some more popcorn, then leveled her gaze at him. “Actually you were. Getting shot merely brought the werewolf out in you.”
Okay, now he was really confused. “Maybe you better start from the beginning.”
Rachel nibbled on a piece of popcorn, and he stared at her mouth, transfixed as she chewed. He was so distracted he almost missed what she was saying.
“The werewolf trait is in our DNA,” she explained. “It remains dormant until something traumatic—usually painful and, a lot of the time, violent—happens and triggers it.” She popped another piece of popcorn in her mouth with a shrug. “And poof, you’re a werewolf.”
And poof, you’re a werewolf.
Well, damn. Could it be anymore underwhelming? At least if another werewolf had attacked and bitten him, he’d have a cool story to tell. The most he could admit to was getting shot in the leg due to an overdeveloped sense of morality.
“So, getting shot was all it took?” he said.
“Apparently,” she replied. “If it was bad enough.”
He grabbed another handful of popcorn. “The bullet went straight through my leg, but I’m pretty sure it cracked my femur on the way out. Which is something I wouldn’t recommend, by the way, especially when you have to drive nonstop across the country.”
Her mouth curved. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“How about you?” he asked. “What happened to turn you into a werewolf?”
Rachel hesitated for a moment before answering. “I was a cop in Chattanooga, and I responded to a suspicious activity call in a graveyard. Long story short, I got attacked by a psychopathic clown with a big knife trying to kill a teenage girl. He stabbed me a couple times and I almost died.”
Knox stared at her, wondering for half a second if she was joking. But from the haunted look in her eyes, it was obvious she wasn’t. “Okay, you win.”
“Were we competing for something?”
“No.” He shrugged. “But if we were talking about most-badass origin story, you’d win, hands down.”
She snorted and ate more popcorn.
“You know,” he said. “When I thought about having this conversation with you, I had dozens of questions, but now, I find myself coming back to one question over and over.”
She regarded him, her light-brown eyes thoughtful. “What’s that?”
“Can you help me learn to control this thing inside me?”
Rachel paused, her mug of coffee halfway to her mouth, her expression hardening. “You and your hunter friends spent the past two years trying to eradicate my kind from existence. Why should I help you with anything?”
The disdain and hatred in the words stung way more than they should have. He was tempted to defend himself, but he wasn’t sure she’d even believe him. “Because I’m a werewolf like you now. Doesn’t that automatically get me into the club—or whatever you call it?”
“That would be the Pack, and no, it doesn’t automatically get you in. Not by a long shot.”
Knox cursed silently, resisting the urge to give in to his gut and say the hell with it and get up and walk out. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. He’d spent his whole life depending on those instincts. They’d sure as hell kept him alive on more deployments than he could count. But lately, he hadn’t made the best decisions, so instead of running, he stayed where he was.
“So being a werewolf doesn’t get me anything. How about saving your life?” he countered. “What does that earn me?”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? I don’t remember you saving my life.”
“How do you think I got shot?” He reached for more popcorn, tossing some in his mouth. Now that he’d gotten used to the idea of eating popcorn at 0300 hours, he had to admit it was pretty good. “I was running across that damn compound, doing everything I could to get the hell out of there without spilling any blood when I saw you. Unfortunately, another hunter saw you at the same time and decided to pop a cap in you. I got shot because I stepped in front of a bullet with your name on it.”
He waited for her to throw the bullshit flag, but instead, understanding dawned on her face, like she’d just remembered something.
“You shot the hunter who tried to kill me,” she breathed. “Why would you do something like that when you were one of them?”
Knox opened his mouth and closed it again. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a simple answer to the question. “It’s a long and complicated story.”
She shrugged. “So talk. It’s not like I plan on getting any more sleep tonight.”
“This might come as a shock, but while you can obviously go without your beauty rest and still look good, I can’t. I need to go home and crash for a few hours before I drag my sweet southern ass into work. If you’re willing to meet up again tomorrow night, I’ll tell you why I took that bullet for you. In exchange, you can teach me how to control the werewolf I’ve turned into.”
There was no sane reason for her to agree, which was why Knox was sure she was about to tell him to pound sand. He couldn’t let that happen.
“You could have killed me that night. You had me in your sights with your finger on the trigger, but you didn’t take me out,” he remind
ed her. “Something tells me you had your reasons, and now, I’m hoping they’re enough to make you agree to see me again.”
Her eyes pierced him. “How many werewolves did you kill when you were a hunter?”
“None,” he said without hesitation. “I won’t try telling you I didn’t see what those assholes did to your kind. To my kind, I guess. I never took part in any of it and I hate myself for standing by and letting it happen, but after I realized what I’d gotten myself into, I did everything I could to get out.”
She seemed to consider that, then slowly nodded. “Okay. Come by tomorrow night at eight. I’ll talk to you again and give you a chance to explain. But I’m not making any promises. If I don’t like what you have to say, I’ll tell the rest of my pack you’re here and let them decide what to do with you.”
He shuddered at that but refused to let his trepidation show. “Fair enough. Tomorrow night then.”
Downing the rest of his coffee, Knox scooped up one more handful of popcorn, then stood and headed for the door. Once there, he paused with his hand on the knob to glance over his shoulder at Rachel. She looked exhausted, and he wanted to tell her to get some sleep, but he was pretty sure the concern would be wasted on her.
Chapter 3
Rachel gaped as she and her pack mates entered the Lloyd mansion the next morning. She’d never been in a place this posh in her life. With its marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and breathtaking view of the Dallas skyline, the immense two-story house looked like it should be on one of those shows on HGTV featuring luxury homes of the rich and famous. It made Rachel wonder why Jennifer was working as an assistant DA. She and her family clearly weren’t hurting for cash. And while Rachel completely understood the idea of putting your life on the line for what you believed in because she did it every day, she had a hard time believing a woman who came from this kind of money would risk her life going after people like Alton Marshall.
“You have no idea how glad I am you’re here.”
Rachel turned to see Dominic Janikowski, the investigator from the DA’s office they’d met yesterday, closing the door behind her and the guys. Shorter than any of them, he was a stocky, blond-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses. “I know the private security Jennifer’s husband hired are supposed to be all that and a bag of donuts, but I can’t imagine any of them taking a bullet for her.”
The man kept his voice low, like he thought the aforementioned security people were going to overhear, which Rachel doubted. Unless they were werewolves, of course.
As Dominic led them from the foyer and through a long hallway to the back of the house, Rachel fell into step beside Diego while Zane and Trey moved ahead of them, listening to the guy vent about the fancy security guys being more interested in how much they were getting paid than keeping an eye on Jennifer.
“Did you find a sleeping pill that actually works on werewolves or something?” Diego asked softly. “You look more rested than you have in weeks.”
Rachel felt more rested, too. To her surprise, she’d fallen asleep on the couch after Knox had left and stayed that way until the alarm clock in her bedroom had gone off. She’d slept deeply and contentedly, free of the nightmares that normally invaded her slumber every time she closed her eyes. While she was grateful for it, she had absolutely no idea why.
“No sleeping pill,” she said. “I guess I finally got tired enough.”
“That’s good.”
She nodded in agreement, but at the same time, she found herself wondering if maybe confronting Knox—whom she was convinced was the personification of her inner demon—had somehow helped. After agreeing to help the hunter learn how to be a werewolf, she’d expected to be bouncing off the walls. Instead, she’d felt…calm.
Rachel was still thinking about that when the smell of leather and gun oil hit her. She had a moment to wonder why she’d pick up those scents in the Lloyd home of all places as she and the guys followed Dominic into a library that was bigger than her whole apartment. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined all four walls. And above, accessible only by a spiral staircase in one corner, was a catwalk of sorts around the perimeter of the room, so someone could get to the topmost shelves. The only window in the room was up there, too, but it was so big that it let in a tremendous amount of natural light.
The room was dominated by a huge fireplace. With a modern-looking stainless steel chimney that went all the way to the ceiling, it was completely enclosed in glass on the bottom, so you could see though it on all sides, from wherever you were in the library. A reading area made up of comfortable seating was on one side while a large oval table with a dozen chairs took up space on the other.
Jennifer and her husband sat at the table with three men in dark suits—one of whom was none other than former-hunter-turned-werewolf Knox Lawson.
Are you effing kidding me?
Rachel froze halfway into the room, praying he was some kind of delusion, another sign of her impending nervous breakdown. While losing her mind was scary as hell, it was better than Knox really being there. But he was there—and he was staring straight at her.
Or more precisely, at her and her three pack mates, who were staring right back at him. Like they knew he was a hunter.
When none of the guys lost it and went into full-on werewolf mode right then and there, Rachel forced herself to take a deep breath and relax. There was no way Diego and her other teammates could know Knox was a hunter. Corporal Jayden Brooks was the only member of her pack who’d actually seen him during the shootout at the SWAT compound, so as long as he never saw Knox face-to-face, everything should be fine.
But while her pack mates might not know Knox was a former hunter, they obviously knew he was a werewolf. The scent was a dead giveaway. Luckily, stumbling across a werewolf in Dallas they didn’t know wasn’t unusual. The city had become a haven for them since the hunters had become more prevalent.
Rachel followed the guys over to the table, holding out her hand to shake with each of the men on Knox’s team. When she got to him, she gave him the same smile she’d given the others, silently screaming at him with her eyes to play along and not say something stupid. Thankfully, he returned her smile and said it was nice to meet her.
Relief surged through her. Thank God the man wasn’t an idiot. If Knox started making noise about already knowing her, the questions from her pack mates would never have ended.
Rachel chose a seat on the far side of the table from Knox, going out of her way not to sit directly across from him. That would have been way too distracting and she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t give herself away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Diego glance her way and prayed he hadn’t noticed she was suddenly so discombobulated.
Sitting beside Jennifer at one end of the table, the tall, distinguished-looking Conrad Lloyd didn’t seem nearly as thrilled about having Rachel and her teammates there as Dominic. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it was obvious he thought his private security would do a much better job of protecting his family than four cops. It was equally clear that his wife preferred to put her faith in the police she worked with every day. As a result, the tension between the two was thick enough to cut with a chainsaw.
Rachel did her best to casually take in the men from Direct Action Personal Security, a task made more difficult by the habit her gaze had of constantly gravitating back to Knox. Dammit, it was like she couldn’t take her eyes off the man.
But if she kept staring at Knox, someone was going to notice. Dragging her gaze away from him, she studied each of his coworkers.
In his midforties, curly-haired Theo was the oldest of the three. He sat on the other side of Conrad, and when he wasn’t trying to blow sunshine up the rich man’s ass, he was making sure they all knew he owned the security company they’d be working with. The other man was a young guy in his midtwenties named Ethan Porter. Like Knox, he seemed to be new at the company an
d didn’t talk much after the introductions had been made. Then again, Theo did enough talking for all of them.
As important as the subject might be, Rachel had to admit she quickly lost interest as Theo and Zane started going into the details of how they planned to protect Jennifer and her family. She couldn’t focus on what they were saying, mostly because her head was still spinning over the realization that Knox was working for the security company that was protecting the same Dallas prosecutor as SWAT.
So, instead of worrying about her shift schedule or who she’d be working with, Rachel sat there glancing at Knox out of the corner of her eye and replaying the little she’d learned from him last night.
If Knox was telling the truth about that night at the wedding reception, then she owed him her life. Well, probably not her life, since a random gunshot from a hunter fifty feet away was unlikely to have been fatal. But she doubted Knox would have known that, so he honestly thought he’d saved her life. If nothing else, he’d saved her from a lot of pain. No one enjoyed getting shot, not even a werewolf.
So assuming he was telling the truth, the important question was why would a hunter put himself at risk for a werewolf?
Rachel gave him another covert glance, but other than noting for the second time in two days that Knox was sinfully good-looking, the answer to that question remained elusive. She bit back a growl. What the hell was wrong with her? Knox was a hunter. She should hate his guts. More than that, she should turn him over to Gage and the rest of her pack. But the simple truth was, while she might not entirely trust him, she didn’t hate him, either. And the idea of turning him over to the Pack had never entered her mind last night for even a second. Just thinking about it right then made her stomach twist uncomfortably, though she had no idea why.
