Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  She tugged surreptitiously at the hem, trying to make it fall more than four inches below her crotch. No dice. Every time she pulled, the hem sank, but so did the neckline. She could flash the world from either above or below, and neither held much appeal.

  How in God’s name did I let them talk me into this? she wondered for the gazillionth time. Not even threats and bribery should have induced her to put on this poor excuse for a dress and let her friends serve her to her latest fantasy fix on a silver platter. She’d barely escaped the last two rounds with her pride intact. She should have run screaming at the idea of round three. Unfortunately, it was way too late for that.

  Missy supposed it had been too late the very minute the five friends had experienced their brainstorm during a particularly enthusiastic—and alcoholic—episode of their biweekly girls’ night get-togethers. After much too much wine, one of them had made the fateful observation that despite their status as single women, they each had a decent-sized pool of male friends, family members, and co-workers who could be counted as potential dates. Just because one woman didn’t find her dream man among her own male acquaintances didn’t mean that one of her friends wouldn’t. So they had come up with the brilliant idea of setting one another up on a series of blind dates called fantasy fixes; more than just regular dates, the fixes were supposed to be opportunities for each woman to live out her sexual fantasies with a man her friends had prescreened for safety and discretion.

  It had sounded like a great idea at the time, filtered through about a bottle of sauvignon blanc, but as soon as she had sobered up, Missy had experienced some misgivings.

  Translation: she had panicked.

  Always the shyest and most conservative member of their clique, Missy wasn’t the type to live out sexual fantasies with men she’d barely met. She was the kind to plant daffodils along the bottom of a white picket fence while her enormous brood of children were in school and her banker or lawyer or accountant husband was at his office winning the family bread.

  Unfortunately, her friends had devious natures and insidious stubborn streaks, and with Missy’s own compulsion to please on their side, they took ruthless advantage. They knew Missy harbored an intense reluctance to go on her fantasy fix dates, but she’d done the first two rounds because they’d asked her to, and because she didn’t want them thinking she was an even bigger coward than they already believed.

  But a soft heart and a latent sense of determination only went so far. Two rounds had been the limit of Missy’s good nature, and they must have guessed that, because this time they had arranged for her to meet her fix at an event she couldn’t avoid—Reggie’s engagement party.

  Never mind that Reggie’s wedding had taken place two weeks ago. It had all been arranged with so little notice that it had left the officiant with a bad case of whiplash, hence the post-ceremony engagement party to include all those left out of the wedding itself—which turned out to be most of the combined acquaintances of the bride and groom.

  Missy had not been one of the people left out of the ceremony; she’d been the maid of honor. But that didn’t mean she’d had even the slightest chance of wriggling out of attending tonight’s function. Reggie and Missy had been best friends since high school, and Missy could never skip a party in her friend’s honor. So here she was, dressed like a French whore and trying desperately to come up with a way to make this third fix turn out just like the other two, because she had the hideous feeling that this time luck would not be on her side.

  She gave up tugging at the front of her dress and wormed her way into an alcove where she turned her back to the room and yanked the dress down over her ass. It pulled the neck down until her breasts threatened to fall out of the clingy material, but if she just kept her face to the wall, no one should be able to see that and what they could see would be almost decently covered.

  She didn’t think Ava, Danice, and Corinne had spotted her yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. They would be keeping an eye out for her, since she was so late and had refused to answer any of their calls to her cell phone thanks to the blessing of caller ID. Once they realized she had arrived, her reprieve would be over and she would have to face her latest fix, whoever he happened to be.

  The last two rounds, the gods themselves must have been looking out for her, because those fixes couldn’t have gone better if she’d planned them herself. Her kidnapping mountain man had turned out to be her older sister’s high school boyfriend, and the idea of being trapped with little Missy Roper in a secluded cabin for forty-eight hours with nothing to do but test out the huge old feather bed in the corner had turned him an interesting shade of green. He’d given her a pair of his sweats, encouraged her to change out of the flesh-baring clothes her friends had picked out for her, roasted her some marshmallows, and checked himself into a hotel room until it was time to deliver her back home. As he walked her to the door of her apartment building, he’d even made her promise not to tell Ava how their fix had really turned out. Like full disclosure had even been a possibility. She’d rather have told her parents she’d decided to become a leather-clad, bisexual dominatrix.

  She’d rather have become a leather-clad, bisexual dominatrix.

  Those same gods must have appreciated her prayers of thanks afterward, because they looked out for her on fix number two as well. In that one, the buff fireman who had rescued her from the deliberately stuck elevator at Ava’s office building had been willing to give her the ol’ college try—right up until he had pulled off her mitten-knit hat and seen the dull ash-blond color of her hair. That’s when she started to remind him of his four-year-old daughter, which in turn reminded him of his ex-wife, and that reminded him of how much he wished he were still married.

  Instead of a quickie in a stopped elevator, Missy had spent close to two hours listening to the tale of Bobby’s broken heart and cooing over pictures of his high school sweetheart and their little girl. Little Mandy had looked like a real sweetheart, and even if Missy couldn’t see the resemblance, she vowed to send the child a birthday card every year to show her gratitude for unknowingly rescuing Missy from her rescuer.

  She hadn’t even had to worry about Bobby spilling the beans on that one. The day after her rescue, he’d moved back to Boston to be near his daughter and try to persuade his ex-wife to take him back. All Missy needed to do was blush whenever anyone asked her what happened and she was home free. The way conversations with her friends usually went, blushing had been no problem at all.

  Missy occasionally wondered if “friends” was really the right word to describe their little clique. Reggie seemed more like her sister than her friend—someone who loved her unconditionally but also delighted in tormenting her, who sometimes drove her crazy, and who would defend her to the death or the homicide. Corinne and Danice were more like drinking buddies. They had a great time together, despite the fact that they had less than nothing in common, and no one could make Missy laugh harder.

  Then there was Ava.

  Ava simply defied description. She presided over the lot of them like a temperamental bitch-goddess, dispensing gifts or torment, depending on her mood. Ava wasn’t the sort of person you just “liked” or “got along with.” She made you work too hard for that, but she was loyal and fierce, and Missy could easily picture her ripping the heart out of anyone stupid enough to hurt one of her friends. Missy loved her for that, which probably explained why she put up with all the crap Ava managed to put her through.

  Like tonight.

  Missy had dressed in this ridiculous pseudodress, taken a cab to the Upper East Side, and walked through Reggie and Dmitri’s front door looking like a call girl on the clock, all because of Ava. If not for the other woman’s meddling, Missy would have shown up looking like she usually did, in slightly baggy khakis and an oversized sweater, or in an ankle-length skirt and a diaphanous tunic top. Basically looking like a kindergarten teacher.

  Since that’s what she was, Missy saw nothing to be as
hamed of. After all, where would the world be without kindergarten teachers? Lacking the basic skills of sharing and tying their shoelaces, that’s where. Her friends could make fun of her profession all they wanted. Missy loved kids, and she refused to feel embarrassed that the innocence of her career mirrored the current innocence of her sex life. Besides, if her friends and this sad excuse for a dress had their way, that innocence wouldn’t last the night.

  Peering warily over her shoulder, she tried to locate the rest of her clique. At least then she’d know what parts of the room to avoid. She saw Reggie standing next to Dmitri—surprise, surprise—while they chatted with a distinguished-looking older gentleman with a shock of gray hair. He was the senator Missy had always thought looked like her Grandpa Harry. Well, except for his fangs. Grandpa Harry had a temper, but even he had never sucked a person’s blood. Tonight, though, Missy didn’t particularly care what the senator chose to suck as long as he kept Reggie engaged in conversation and away from Missy. One down, three to go.

  She found the others all clustered together in a small conversational grouping near the fireplace. Ava lounged in an overstuffed armchair, making it look more like a throne, while Corinne and Danice sat on the sofa to her left. Each held a glass of champagne, and they all kept casting glances at their watches, the door, and one another, in that order. Ava appeared less than pleased.

  It served her right, Missy thought, quickly facing the wall before they spotted her. It would have served them all right if she hadn’t bothered to show up at all. No rational person could have blamed her. She had just walked into a room full of vampires and werewolves and God only knew what else, looking like chum at a shark convention, so she could be set up on a date she really didn’t want to go on with a man she’d never met and whom she had no interest in dating, let alone sleeping with. Maybe she ought to rethink this whole “friends” thing.

  Okay, now you’re just being unfair, she scolded herself. A deep breath necessitated an immediate follow-up consisting of a tug to her neckline. She couldn’t really blame her friends for not setting her up with the man she actually was interested in sleeping with, since his name remained a secret she intended to take to her grave. She knew her chances with him ranked somewhere below laughable and probably on par with her chances of bearing the next immaculate conception, because as the entire Other social world of New York knew, Graham Winters did not date humans.

  Missy stared morosely into the leaves of a potted ficus while she absorbed the sharp sting of that knowledge. It wasn’t news; she’d known it from their very first meeting, but even after six weeks, she still hadn’t quite managed to work her way out of crushing disappointment and into grudging resignation. She still floundered in the morass of wishful thinking, thanks to her unruly hormones. The darn things put her on full alert every time she set eyes on his drool-inspiring body or knee-weakening gold-green eyes. That reaction gave her yet another reason to keep her face to the wall. The last thing she needed was to let him distract her. Since he was Dmitri’s best friend and best man, she knew he was probably in the house somewhere, so she’d be wise to stick to the shadows and avert her eyes until she could make her escape.

  But, Lord, wouldn’t she just love to get her hands on him! She sighed wistfully and dismissed the mental image of running her fingertips over his broad, muscled chest, down his lean sides, over the rippled surface of his abdomen—

  Christ! If she didn’t cut this out, she’d leave herself open to attack. Her friends could spot her any minute, and when they did, she had no doubt they’d swoop down on her like a pack of attack dogs and drag her kicking and screaming to meet her fix. Now that she thought about it, such a scenario would explain the dress, too. They knew she couldn’t struggle in the darn thing without it snapping like an overstretched rubber band. If she so much as threw a punch, her breasts would probably fall right out of the bodice. The idea of the dress’s reaction to a swift kick made her shudder.

  Her friends were even more devious than she had imagined, and frankly, instead of intimidating her, the idea made her that much madder. After all, she could appreciate that they wanted her to have a good time, but really, she was beginning to feel more like a john or a hooker than a date. While the idea of being fixed up with a man to fulfill all her fantasies had sounded like a good one at the time, sobriety and two failed attempts had brought her to her senses. There was only one man Missy could imagine hopping into bed with after having exchanged less than twenty words, and since he wasn’t interested, she found that she wasn’t, either.

  When rebellion struck Missy, it struck with a vengeance. To hell with her friends and their fantasy fixes! Missy was a mature, independent woman capable of making her own decisions and getting her own dates. In fact, it would serve them all right if she thumbed her nose at their chosen match for her and picked up a sailor to take home! Hell, she should just pick some guy out of the assembled guests at random and take him home! If she couldn’t have the man she wanted, she could at least have a man of her own choosing. That would show them that Melissa Jane Roper was not a woman to be trifled with.

  Or at least, she was a woman who picked her own men to be the triflers.

  Feeling brash and defiant, Missy spun around to face the room. She would pick up a man, one who was about as far from the fantasy fix—and from the object of her secret fantasies—as she could find, and she’d take him home and end her six years of semi-voluntary celibacy without the “help” of her interfering friends.

  How about them apples?

  Her defiance lasted all of three and a half seconds. That’s when she saw Danice leap to her feet and heard her yell, “Melissa Jane Roper, where the hell have you been?”

  At that point, bravado abandoned her, self-preservation instincts kicked in, and Missy did the smartest thing she could think of.

  She turned tail and ran, just as fast as her three-inch heels would carry her.

  She made it all the way across the living room, beating a path straight for the French doors that let out onto the side patio. She teetered on the very edge of making good her escape when a warm, solid object stepped into her path and blocked her exit. Missy slammed into it hard enough to knock her slightly silly, but the thing that really stunned her was feeling the immovable object wrap powerful arms around her and press her against the entire length of a very muscular and decidedly masculine body.

  “Well, well, well,” the object rumbled in a voice so low, she could feel the vibrations through the soles of her shoes. “Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry, gorgeous? I was hoping you might decide to stay awhile. With me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Graham had seen the object of his unexpected lust spin around and race toward him as if the fires of hell licked at her heels. Clearly, he must have done something very good to earn this kind of reward. He couldn’t think what it might be, but he didn’t care. When Miss Sexy Ass flung herself headlong into his arms, he offered up a quick prayer of thanks and decided to worry about the particulars later.

  He initially wrapped his arms around her to keep her from falling, but he pressed her closer and held on for a slightly less noble cause. She smelled amazing—sweet and rich and edible—and she felt luscious pressed up against him, all soft and warm and deliciously rounded. The breasts flattened against his shirt were surprisingly delicate compared to the generous rear he’d already drooled over, but their nipples beaded on contact, nudging his chest, and he reminded himself that size didn’t really matter. Not when he compared it to the importance of her killer ass, her mouthwatering scent, and the soft curve of her belly, which was currently pressed tight against his very appreciative groin. For all that, he could forgo the pleasures of a huge pair of tits and still consider himself a very lucky man.

  He took a deep breath and felt the fit of his trousers tighten. God, no woman’s scent had ever gone to his head like this. He appreciated a female’s fragrance as much as the next Lupine, but normally, human women couldn’t grab h
is attention with a pair of pliers. They tended to smell like artificial chemicals and sterile soaps to his kind. Even when it wasn’t offensive, it wasn’t exactly compelling, either. But this woman had him panting with nothing more than her luscious scent and her equally luscious curves.

  “Well, well, well,” he murmured, and he could hear the lust vibrating in his tone. He hoped she wouldn’t be intimidated by it, because he doubted there was any way on earth he could have concealed it. “Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry, gorgeous? I was hoping you might decide to stay awhile. With me.”

  He watched her head jerk up at his words and found himself looking into a pair of meltingly brown eyes the size and shape of china saucers. A man would have to be very careful not to get sucked down by the undertow he saw in those things. He ignored the vague sense of recognition he felt when he looked at her, because he felt certain they’d never met before. Graham was not the sort of man who forgot a figure like this woman sported. He’d been bored, not blind, but if he had his way, this woman would be relieving that boredom. At least for the night.

  He smiled his most seductive smile, the one that made women melt and pant and compare him to a fallen angel, and loosened his grip enough to lean back. He looked down at her and patiently waited for her to respond to his pass. When she did respond, though, it wasn’t precisely what he’d expected.

  “Um, excuse me,” she muttered, tearing her chocolaty gaze from his, ducking beneath his unsuspecting arms, and darting behind him to let herself out the French doors.

  “What the hell?” He scowled. No woman had ever turned down that kind of invitation from him.

  Beside him, Logan laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day.” The other Lupine grinned. “The amazing Graham just struck out with a woman. And a human woman at that.”