by Faye Avalon
As she always did when she was feeling off center, or ill at ease, she made for the nearest pool.
Tor’s pool was nothing like the municipal baths she usually frequented. This was something else entirely. A huge, glass-domed ceiling covered the pool, allowing the sun to permeate the space and reflect ripples of light on the clear surface of the water. Checkered marble covered the floor and extended up the back wall, while yet more glass allowed a view of the lake beyond. That lemony scent permeated her nostrils, and, as she’d done before, she closed her eyes.
“Why don’t you take a swim?”
She swung around and saw Tor sitting on a lounger at the far end of the pool. He had taken off his jacket, his shirt unfastened at the collar. Connie swallowed. Hard. The man was impossibly attractive, even more so as the day wore on and stubble began appearing on his formidable chin. She had often joked that she liked his designer stubble, and the fact that he had to shave twice a day. She’d considered it deliciously masculine and macho.
Aware he was eyeing her up and down, Connie crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly exposed in the relatively thin t-shirt. He rose from the lounger, and she stepped back, almost stumbling into the pool as he stalked toward her.
“I can sense you’re still on edge,” he said as he continued to move toward her. “The temperature in the pool will help you relax. Why don’t you give it a go?”
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit.” She could have bitten her tongue when he smiled. “And if you’re going to say I don’t need one, don’t waste your breath.”
“There are several in the changing room over there. I’m sure you’ll find something suitable. But I would also say that you don’t need one.” His eyes glittered as they took a leisurely journey over her face and down her neck before coming back to meet hers again. “Nobody else will use the pool while you’re here. Consider it your personal sanctuary.”
The feral quality of his smile made her think of him in wolf form. Strange, but it didn’t give her the jolt to her system in the same way it had before. “My sanctuary? If only. I’m assuming that list of people who are denied use of the pool while I’m here doesn’t include you?”
“Of course it includes me.”
“You were here when I came in just now.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that because you knew I’d come down here to check it out the first chance I got?”
Devilment shone in the gray depths of his eyes. “Perhaps.”
“And how can I be sure you won’t be here again?”
“Because I’ll give you my word.” He reached out and skimmed a finger down her throat. Connie’s system went on full alert, her blood heating to ridiculous levels when he trailed that finger over her collarbone. “There is no need for you to be quite so skittish about the possibility I might glimpse you naked, my sweet. It’s not as if I haven’t seen everything before. As if I haven’t tasted everything before.”
Her nerve endings almost exploded. “Things were different then.”
“I am still the same person,” he said softly, his voice low and echo-y in the space. “Had you not walked out that night, had you not seen me, things would still be the same between us.”
“But I did walk out. I did see you.”
Her pulse raced and skipped as she looked into all that deep gray. She wanted to touch him, to feel the heat of his flesh, the beat of his heart. She wanted, she realized, his comfort and support. Had things been different, he was the one, the only one, she could have talked to about what was troubling her. But since he was the subject of her angst, that wasn’t possible. She missed it, missed their closeness.
She stepped back a little.
He dropped his hand away. “You can ask me whatever you like,” he said, his eyes suddenly troubled and full of concern. “I understand that this has been traumatic for you, but I don’t want you recoiling from me every time I come near you.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Please,” he said when she took another step away from him. “Don’t do that.” Reaching for her, he took hold of her hands and brought her arms to her sides. She hadn’t realized she had crossed her arms over her chest again. It was something she seemed to be doing a good deal of since he’d come back into her life.
“I can’t help it,” she repeated. She fisted her hands, her whole body tense, her insides trembling. “You scare me, Tor. You really scare me.”
For a moment she thought he would touch her again, but he stayed where he was. “I know that, and I hate that I do. Just give me a chance, Connie. Talk to me, let me explain.”
She wanted to drop into his arms and let him hold her. But how could she, when she couldn’t seem to stop thinking of what he was? Which wasn’t only that he had the ability to change into a wolf, but that he was capable of forcing her to stay with him against her will. He was vindictive and cruel, and she didn’t think she could forgive him for that.
“You’re not who I thought you were. Oh, I knew you were tough, uncompromising, ruthless even, but only in matters of business. Never on a personal level. And as to your ability to change shape? It’s too incredible. Too terrifying. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come to terms with that.”
Connie felt saddened by her words as much as Tor seemed to be, but it was how she felt, and the ache in her own heart meant she couldn’t keep her feelings bottled up.
“You always did enjoy plain speaking,” he said pursing his lips. “It is something I have always admired about you.”
The flippant manner in which he said it belied the flat look in his eyes.
He stepped back, nodded slowly, then spun on his heel and headed to the door.
Connie drew in a breath. “Tor?”
He stopped but didn’t turn.
The apology hung on her lips, but she couldn’t quite voice it. Instead she just shook her head. “Nothing.”
An unnatural tension moved into his shoulders, and his whole body straightened. Without a word, he walked out.
Chapter Three
Dinner had been a quiet affair. They barely spoke, and only the soft music playing stopped the room from plunging into abject silence. Tor took his coffee into his study. He needed to think, to regroup.
She’d called him ruthless. Told him he terrified her.
With those words, Connie had sliced him in two.
Ignoring his coffee, he went over to the small bar he kept in his study and poured himself a whiskey. Double.
Rather than boot up his laptop, he took his whiskey to the large leather chair by the fireplace and sat. The chair had belonged to his grandfather, and as Tor sank into the familiar and comforting soft leather, he let the memories come.
Of his grandfather desperately trying to pull him away. His grandfather’s screams. His own. Interspersed with the old memories came newer ones, but no less harrowing.
Connie’s expression, the look in her eyes. The incredulity. The fear. The terror. He would never forget her reaction, just as he would never forget the night his life changed forever.
The light tap on his door brought him fast from his reverie. Thinking it was Grigor checking to see if there was anything else his boss needed for the night, Tor called, “Come.”
Connie stood in the doorway, her hands clasped at her waist. “I just wanted to say something.”
He was about to rise from his chair but stopped himself. She hovered in the doorway as if crossing the threshold was tantamount to entering a predator’s lair.
Which he supposed was how she saw it. How she saw him.
“I wanted to apologize. For what I said earlier. It was cruel and thoughtless of me, and I’m incredibly sorry for it.”
He shook his head, as if her calling him ruthless and terrifying hardly mattered. “No need. As I said, I welcome your ability to speak plainly.”
He rose and headed to the drinks cabinet. “Can I get you a drink?”
Without waiting for her response, he poured another whiskey and topped up his own.
Turning
back, he found her still hesitating at the threshold. “Contrary to what you think of me, I don’t bite.”
Considering that he was hoping to quell her anxieties about him, it wasn’t perhaps the most intelligent thing to say.
He walked to where she stood and, careful not to crowd her, handed over her drink.
She accepted it, but her eyes remained steady on his, as if she wasn’t sure of his next move. She took a healthy swig of the whiskey and grimaced. He wanted to smile, but he was still too concerned about her wariness. While, in the past, he’d often enjoyed keeping her on her back foot, he didn’t relish this outright fear of him. He hated it and cursed the fates that had decreed he become what he was. Right then, he would have given everything to be a normal human male. He wasn’t prone to musing on his fate, had long ago accepted every part of himself. But now?
Deciding to play it easy and relaxed, he strolled back to his chair and sipped his drink. Several moments passed until she ventured slowly into the room and selected a chair opposite his. She hovered on the edge of the seat, nursing her glass and staring down into its contents, but he knew she was aware of his every nuance, his every move.
He could smell her nerves, sensing the tension in her body.
“You were quiet at dinner,” he said, crossing his feet at the ankles. “That’s not like you.”
She huffed, sipped her drink. “Nothing is like me at the moment. I feel uneasy all the time, on edge.” She met his eyes. “It feels as if I’ve slipped into this strange universe where everything I believe, everything I think is true, isn’t.”
“Would it help if I told you a little more about who I am?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Although I can’t think it will help me get my head around all this. Even if I wanted to.”
He grabbed hold of that one ray of light in his current predicament. “And do you? Want to?”
Briefly, she closed her eyes. “All I want is for all this to go away. I want it to be how it was before.”
“It can be that way.” He resisted the urge to lean forward, to touch her and convince her of his words, but he needed to do this right. It was best he kept his hands to himself while he explained his past.
“You’re wrong.” She looked directly at him and her blue eyes glistened. “It can’t ever be the same. Everything has changed. You’ve changed. And not just because…”
His grip tightened on the glass, and he curled the fingers of his free hand into his palm.
“Every time I look at you I see…” She shook her head, as if shaking away the image of him in wolf form. “Every time I’m near you I remember that night.”
“My parents were killed when I was seven,” he said quickly, wanting to begin his story before she up and ran from the room. He could see that was a strong possibility, could sense it. She was withdrawing from him more and more, and he wasn’t about to lose her completely, not without a damn good fight. “My grandfather, as my only surviving relative, took me in.”
Her eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know that. You never mentioned your family, not even when I asked.”
“It’s hard to talk about them, even now, twenty-five years later.” He waited a beat. “You don’t mention your family much either.”
She shrugged, and her eyes went thoughtful. “It’s only been two years for me, but I imagine two or twenty-five, it doesn’t make much difference. The pain doesn’t go away, does it? Maybe it just lessens a little.”
“Skiing accident, wasn’t it?” While they rarely discussed personal matters, he had made it his mission to discover what he could about her by other means. He’d discovered they were a close family. Her upbringing had been modest, but she was a much-loved child.
“I’d decided not to join them that day as I had the beginnings of a cold. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve wondered that if I’d been there I could have done something.”
“You’ll drive yourself crazy wondering that.”
She nodded, took a sip of her drink before placing the glass down on the side table. “How did your parents die?”
He sucked in a breath, realizing that he had tried to steer the focus off of him and onto her. But there was no escaping what he needed to tell her. “I’ll get to that, but there are things you need to know first.” He took a swig of whiskey, letting the warmth of the alcohol settle in his chest. “My grandfather owned a cabin in the Siberian woods. He taught me to track, to hunt. My parents would take me there every summer. I always loved those vacations, enjoying the wild and being together as a family.” His throat went dry, and he wasn’t sure if it were due to the memories or if it was because he was telling Connie what he’d never told another living soul. He wasn’t sure what he expected her reaction to be, but he hoped to God she wouldn’t freak out even more when she knew the truth.
“This particular summer, my parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary. They decided to go hunting together and bring home whatever they caught for dinner.”
He knocked back another fortifying shot of whiskey, then placed the glass on the nearby table next to hers, deliberately relaxing his fingers. “Night came, and they weren’t back. My grandfather told me to stay put and he went in search. It felt like hours passed, but he didn’t come back either, so I went out myself. It wasn’t long before I found tracks, and I followed them deep into the woods.” He had to stop, to inhale a long, steadying breath. “It came out of nowhere. One minute I was shouting for my folks, and the next I was on my back, pinned down.”
“Oh, my God.”
Connie’s startled gasp hurtled him back from the darkness. Before he could think he leaned forward, wanting to reach for her hand as it flew to her throat. The need to touch her was overwhelming now. Whether he wanted to comfort her or himself, he wasn’t sure. But shit, she felt like a salve to his soul.
“What happened?” She leaned forward, too, her hands clutching in her lap. “How did you get free?”
“I didn’t.” He swallowed. “I screamed for my parents, for my grandfather, and I beat that animal off with everything I had in me. All I remember before I blacked out was my grandfather shouting, pulling at the beast and trying to get it away from me. Then the gunshot.”
Her hand went to her throat, her face deathly pale. “How badly were you hurt?”
To spare her the gory details, he thought about minimizing his injuries, but he didn’t want any more secrets between them. He had a feeling she’d sense if he held back. “Severe lacerations to my shoulders, arms, side, and legs. I’d lost a lot of blood, and one cut had narrowly missed a femoral artery.”
“Thank God your grandfather got you to the hospital in time.”
Once more he considered whether he should omit the details, but again thought better of it. “He didn’t take me to the hospital.”
“It was too far away?”
“He knew there was no point.” Firmly, he held her gaze. “My grandfather saw the bite mark on my shoulder.”
Her gaze dropped to the place where the scar had formed and never fully healed. The one she had so often traced with her finger, her tongue, after they’d made love.
He didn’t continue until she looked up at him again. In her eyes, he saw that she had joined the dots. “He knew the truth of what had happened to me. That I’d heal fast. That I wouldn’t need a doctor. He knew what had bitten me. Knew the implications.”
Her face paled a little more, her blue eyes shining with unshed tears. It moved him beyond anything he’d ever experienced before.
“How … how did your grandfather know that?” Those glistening eyes went wide. “Was he…”
“No,” he said quickly. “He wasn’t. He just knew the signs. The bite mark on my shoulder, and the fact my wounds were healing in front of his eyes. Later, he told me there had always been rumors about rabid wolves in many parts of Siberia, and that these wolves had the ability to shift into human form.”
She didn’t say anything, just sat there pale as paper, with her han
ds tight around the glass she’d snatched up again.
“I soon discovered I had the ability to shift into wolf form. I can control it,” he felt compelled to point out. “I’m not at the mercy of the full moon. In my case, that’s a myth.”
“Then why? If you’re not at the mercy of the moon’s cycles, why do you need to shift at all?”
“There’s a build up of tension which I can only disperse by shifting and running it off. It’s like a primal energy that consumes me.”
“What happens if you can’t shift? If you can’t run it off?”
“That’s never been a problem.” He held her gaze. “Until recently.”
“Is that what happened? That night? You had to shift and run?”
“Yes.”
She nodded, then looked thoughtfully down into her glass. Tor found himself wishing that the gifts of his primal state included mind reading because he’d love to know what was going through her head right then. Did she still despise him? Fear him? Or had his story given her some insight into what he was and with that insight had come the beginnings of understanding? Of acceptance?
Shit. But what he wouldn’t give to have her accept him. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted that. How much he wanted her.
“What … what happened to your parents?”
He had to take a moment to bring his attention back from where it had been consumed with thoughts of her and her possible response to his story.
“They were killed by the wolf.” Ripped them to shreds, he thought, almost beyond recognition. But no point telling her that. It was enough that he still had nightmares. He wouldn’t wish them on anyone else, least of all Connie.
