by Bianca D’Arc
“Close the door, Diana.”
She started a bit, surprised he was still there, though she couldn’t see him. She felt a tingle of magic brush lightly against her senses, and then, she thought she saw the faint reflection of canine eyes just beyond the porch steps. He’d shifted, she realized, and was watching until she followed his instructions.
She stepped out onto the porch, feeling a bit defiant as she reached for the towel, but he stayed hidden. She clearly wasn’t going to see his wolf form up close and personal that night, though she was very intrigued by the entire concept.
Diana retrieved the towel and went back inside. “Goodnight, Adam,” she whispered, just before she closed and locked the door.
It felt strange to call him by the first name he claimed nobody used. Strange and special. Like it was a secret just between them. Intimate.
The first of many intimacies, she hoped, then realized she was almost totally committed in her own mind to making love with the sexy shifter. Never before had she fallen so hard, so fast. Was it part of his magic that he could seduce her so easily? Or was it just kismet. Meant to be.
That’s what it felt like. As if she’d been waiting for him all her life.
But that was ridiculous. One didn’t just meet their soul mate by accident. Or, rather, by her car breaking down in exactly the right spot. Did they?
Chapter Seven
Diana breezed through her evening chores, locked up the condo and set the dishwasher to run, then went to bed. Her grandmother stayed in her room, which surprised Diana a bit, but maybe Oma just wanted to give her some space. It was odd how her senses were reeling from just a kiss, but there was something incredibly special about Adam Stone and the way he touched her. Something magical.
She’d have to ask Oma about the whole concept of two magical beings interacting. Could being with Stone have some sort of effect on Diana’s own latent magical heritage? Could his influence be bad for her, somehow? She didn’t think so. In fact, just being near him felt really, really good. But was there some kind of influence his magic might exert over her?
There was definitely a spark between them. She’d never ignited so quickly in a man’s arms. And she’d never come to the conclusion that she would jump a man’s bones at her earliest opportunity. Of course, she’d never been with a man as compelling as the Alpha werewolf before. In comparison to Stone, all of her ex-boyfriends had been total wimps.
They hadn’t been. Not really. But Stone was just too male. Every other man paled in comparison. Maybe it wasn’t fair to her exes to ask mere humans to measure up to an Alpha wolf in his prime. Yeah, that was probably it. Adam was just something else altogether. More male. More attractive. More intense. An absolute seduction to everything that was female in her.
Mmmm. She couldn’t wait to get him naked and alone.
That was the thought that sent her into dreamland, where she imagined romping through a field of flowers with a furry companion before lying down in a meadow with Adam over her, making love to her. She woke at dawn, her body on fire as never before. On fire with desire for Adam, but also enflamed with the yearning that had no name for the desert and…the sun.
It seemed to be worse now than it had ever been. Had kissing Adam last night somehow triggered it?
She got out of bed and stood by her window, watching the sun rise. She wanted to smash through the glass and jump into the sun, crazy as that sounded. Where were these thoughts and impulses coming from? Things were getting weirder every day, and she seldom slept past sunrise lately. It was as if the waking of the sun called to her. Compelled her.
It was getting harder to resist leaving the house and going out into the desert to just…commune…or something…with the light and heat of it. Was she going bonkers? She just wasn’t sure.
But today, she had something to distract her from the compulsion. She was going to lunch with a sexy werewolf. Adam.
She still thought of him as Stone from time to time, but she liked the intimacy of calling him Adam—even in her own mind—more and more. Adam. The first man. Actually, the first man in her life to ever evoke such a spectacular response.
She remembered the dreams she’d had most of the night about being with him in his wolf form and making love to him in his human form. He had the most amazing body. That towel hadn’t covered up much, and it had left plenty for her to feast her eyes on—and fuel her imagination. She’d dreamed of licking her way down his washboard abs…and more.
Just remembering her brazen dream behavior made her move away from the window and the heat of the oncoming sun. She took a cold shower—as she had many mornings of late when she woke up feeling something like the sun burning just beneath her skin—but this morning, it had the added effect of cooling her overheated libido. A bit.
She got dressed and then went down to the kitchen to make breakfast for Oma and herself. Routine. Normal. When lunch promised to be anything but normal. Yay!
Her inner hussy was already planning what she’d wear in hopes of seducing the big werewolf into naughty behavior. She hoped he had more than just a quick meal in a public restaurant in mind. She was hoping he had someplace private they could go where she could follow the driving impulse to take a walk on the wild side…with him.
Diana tried hard not to let anything of her scandalous inner thoughts show when she and Oma shared breakfast. Her grandmother teased her a bit about the werewolf before settling in to discuss what she knew of shifters. Oma seemed to want to prepare Diana for whatever might happen by telling her everything she could remember of what her mother had taught her about the various magical races.
So, the morning turned into a time of learning where Diana solidified some of the things she remembered hearing before and learned some enticing new facets of shifter lore. It was fascinating, and the time passed all too fast.
Before she knew it, it was time for her to search through her closet for something sexy, as instructed. She had a LBD somewhere. It was a rule she and her schoolmates had come up with that she’d always abided by—a girl had to have at least one Little Black Dress in her closet at all times, in case the opportunity came up to do something special.
Well, lunch with a sexy Alpha werewolf was certainly special. If that didn’t call for application of the LBD, nothing did! She even had heels that went perfectly with her dress. Now, if she could just find them. She wasn’t the neatest of people, and she hadn’t worn the LBD in…darn it…more than a year, probably.
There! There it was! Diana took hold of the hangar and inspected the dress. It looked okay. Hopefully, it still fit the way it should. And there were the matching heels. Great! She took both into the bathroom where she took another shower and then groomed herself a bit more than she had in a while—just in case.
By eleven forty-five, she was ready. Ready and trying hard not to pace. Oma was getting ready herself. She had arranged to spend the afternoon with her friend, Mrs. Peabody. She said they were going to be trying out a new embroidery technique and she would be there all afternoon, including the customary four o’clock tea time, so Diana was not to worry about her.
With those marching orders—given with a wink—Diana was able to look forward to her afternoon guilt-free. Oma had a definite spring in her step as she bustled over to the condo next door at exactly ten minutes to twelve. Diana suspected Oma and Mrs. Peabody would be watching every move Stone and she made through the lace curtains next door, probably giving each other a running commentary on his manners, his appearance, the way they looked together and the way they looked at each other. Microscopes had nothing on her grandmother’s level of scrutiny and well-developed spying techniques.
Just before twelve, Diana saw her old SUV round the corner onto her street. Not that she’d been watching out the window—through their own set of lace curtains. Rushing out of sight of the window, she smoothed her skirt a bit and checked her hair one last time in the mirror by the door. Her purse was on the little console table, all ready to go. Now,
all she had to do was keep herself together until he walked up to the door and try not to make a fool of herself when she saw him.
The doorbell rang, and she mentally counted to five before opening the door. There he was. As delicious looking as the day before, but this time, the smile on his face was knowing. He knew, after all, how she kissed, how she responded to his touch. Diana fought a blush as he looked her up and down then let out a low wolf whistle.
“You’re gorgeous, Red,” he said, his voice rumbling with the appreciative growl of a wolf.
“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself,” she replied, noting the effort he’d taken with his own appearance. Dress slacks had replaced the jeans he’d worn the day before, paired with a white dress shirt. He looked downright yummy in a business-y sort of way.
When he handed her the keys to her SUV, she was a little surprised, but then, she remembered what he’d said yesterday. “Test drive, right?”
“Exactly. It’s your vehicle. You know it best. I want to be sure you’re totally happy with the way it runs, which means I want you to put her through her paces.” He ushered her down the front walk after she closed and locked the front door, the perfect gentleman.
Diana could see the curtains fluttering next door as he opened the driver’s side door for her and waited for her to get in. He was both solicitous and polite, which she knew was scoring him big points with the older generation. Come to think of it, his classy manners were scoring him big points with her, as well.
He was a man of hidden depths. Yesterday, she would have scoffed to think of the denim-clad mechanic dressed like a yuppie businessman. Today, she was having a hard time controlling her drool reflex whenever she looked at him. He was just that hot. H. O. T.
She got behind the wheel of her old car, and he closed the door for her. He scooted around the other side and climbed into the passenger seat, and suddenly, the spacious cabin seemed a whole lot smaller. And hotter. She reached over to crank up the A/C another notch, but she wasn’t all that confident it would help.
Diana started the car, surprised when the usually cranky engine turned right over and began to purr. “What the heck?” she mused as she put the car in gear. It didn’t stick! In fact, the obstreperous transmission didn’t balk at all as she eased into drive and began rolling down the road. “What did you do to this car?”
“Just gave her a little TLC. She’s basically sound and sturdy. She just hasn’t been treated very nicely over the past few years. Whichever garage you were using wasn’t really doing all they should have been,” Stone told her.
“Seriously? I sure paid them enough and waited endlessly for parts and then for the work to be done,” she muttered, feeling a little anger at her old mechanic.
“Well, don’t worry about that now. You have any problems in the future, you know where to go.” He sounded just the tiniest bit smug—and sure of himself. Hmm.
“This was a one-off,” she told him ruefully. “I can’t afford to use your garage on a regular basis. It’s pretty obvious you guys cater to the luxury and high-end sports car crowd.”
“Sure, those cars are fun to work on—especially the supercars—but when it comes down to it, an engine is an engine, and they all need care from time to time. You don’t have to go to the garage if you don’t want. Consider me your personal mechanic from here on out.”
She stopped at a red light and turned to look at him. “Why?” She couldn’t help but ask. “Why would you do that for me?”
Stone shrugged, as if his answer didn’t matter. “Let’s just say for now, that I like your granny and want to be sure you have adequate transport to help her. Think of it as my good deed.” One side of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Besides, if you don’t call me when you need your next oil change, you know I’ll just sneak into your garage in the middle of the night and do it anyway.”
His words sparked a laugh from her. She could just see him skulking around like a ninja, fixing her car.
“I can only imagine what Mrs. Peabody would think.” Diana shook her head and chuckled.
Chapter Eight
“Who? The little old lady next door. Biggest damn teapot collection on her kitchen shelves I’ve ever seen?” Stone asked.
“How’d you see her teapot collection?” Diana glanced at him in surprise.
He pointed to his eyes. “My, granny. What big eyes you have.”
She puzzled his words out for a moment and realized he was referring to himself as the wolf in the old fairy tale. She wondered idly if the fairy tale actually had something to do with shifters, but shook her head. He was implying something even more interesting.
“Do you mean to say that werewolves have keener eyesight than regular people?” Again, she glanced at him, even as she drove, following his instructions on where to turn.
“All the senses, really. We’re closer to our animal nature than others.” He shrugged off his words as if they weren’t that important, but to Diana, they were bringing back memories of the stories her grandmother had told her.
“I’ve heard a little about that,” she said quietly. “Oma told me things her mother had taught her about shifters, but I’ve never met any before.”
“None that you knew about,” he corrected her gently.
“I thought you guys were really rare,” she countered.
“Not as rare as one might think. I bet you’ve crossed paths with shifters before and just didn’t realize it.”
“The world is a funny place,” she mused aloud. “When I was little, I imagined every other person I met was a shapeshifter, but as I grew up and never had any confirmation, I just sort of put all that behind me as fanciful childhood imagination.”
“Maybe not as fanciful as you thought, eh?” He sent her a wolfish grin as she glanced at him again.
She followed his instructions to turn again, though he still refused to tell her exactly where they were going. After the next quick turn, she started recognizing the area and was able to guess.
“Alfredo’s? We’re going to Alfredo’s?” She’d always wanted to try the upscale eatery, but her budget didn’t really stretch that far.
“The very same,” he agreed affably. “Ever been there before?”
“In my dreams,” she told him. “They’ll probably want me to drive around to the service entrance rather than pull up to the valet stand in this jalopy.”
“Hey, don’t call her names. Your car and I made friends last night as I was fixing her up for you. She’s got a good heart under the years of neglect by your former mechanic.”
She had to chuckle at his weird sense of humor—and the fact that he was so sure of himself that he didn’t even question that she would never go back to her old mechanic. She wouldn’t. But that was more to do with the revelation that he hadn’t been doing right by her SUV. She wasn’t going to pay for shoddy service anymore. Whether or not she’d take the car to Stone remained to be seen.
“You worked on my car last night?” she asked, rather than delve into her other lines of thought. She didn’t want to argue with him about where her car would be fixed just yet because that question was still an open one in her own mind.
“Yeah, after I left you, I went back to the shop and put in a few hours.” He said it like it was no big deal, but she was a little appalled that he’d lost sleep over her old car.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she told him.
“Yeah, actually, I did. Old Bessie here needed a lot of TLC.” He paused for a moment as the restaurant came in sight. “And I couldn’t sleep anyway. Too much to think about. Working on the car helped settle my mind. Work is my way of de-stressing.”
She didn’t have time to ask him more about that as they came to the entrance of the upscale restaurant. He directed her to pull into the valet lane, and the sandy-haired youngster who manned the valet stand didn’t even blink an eye when she drove in. His young face split into a wide grin when he saw Stone, though.
“Alph—uh—Mr. Stone,” t
he boy greeted him, looking sharply at Diana before altering his words.
Hot damn. The kid had to be a shifter. Or, at least, he knew about shifters enough to know that Stone was an Alpha. Wow.
“Hey Peter, how’s school going?” Stone reached out and shook the teenager’s hand, giving him a reassuring smile. Diana watched as the kid relaxed.
“I settled on Berkley for college since it’s not too far and has a great program. Mom and Dad are just happy I didn’t decide on one of the East Coast schools that accepted me,” he admitted with a grin. “But I wouldn’t want to be that far from home anyway.”
“That’s great, Pete.” Stone touched the boy’s shoulder, almost like a pat on the back. “Is Maximo in the kitchen today?”
“Where else would he be? It’s his favorite place in the whole universe.” Peter rolled his eyes, but his smile was contagious.
“Peter, this is Diana, and this is her car that I was up all night fixing.” The message was pretty clear as Diana handed over her keys to the teen.
“I’ll take extra special care, Alph—uh—Mr. Stone.”
Diana shook her head as the kid made a quick getaway after that last fumble, just about vaulting into the driver’s seat and speeding away.
“Is he one of yours?” Diana asked Stone quietly.
“No,” Stone admitted. “But I do have a good relationship with his Clan.” Stone opened the door for her, and she preceded him into the darker interior of the restaurant’s lobby.
She remembered then, that her grandmother had told her shifters had Tribes, Packs and Clans, and the word they used depended on their species and the size of the group. Werewolves travelled in Packs, so if Stone was referring to Peter’s group as a Clan, then he probably wasn’t a werewolf. Diana tried to imagine what sort of shifter Peter might be for a moment, but her inner conjecture was interrupted when the maitre d’ saw Stone.
