But oh no! What if the reason he had disappeared was because he realized who he’d gone to bed with and he just wanted to get away from her? Maybe he’d woken up and had a coyote moment—the kind where a man would rather chew off his own arm than wake up the woman beside him—and he’d really left to give her the chance to be gone before he came back? What the heck was she supposed to do?
“Okay, first, calm down,” she told herself, closing her eyes and taking a couple of slow, deep breaths. “No need to panic. Everything’s okay. Just breathe.”
That worked for about fifteen seconds before the demons of embarrassment and low self-esteem made themselves known by raking icy fingers down her back and urging her to get while the getting was good. No matter how remote the possibility, there was no way she’d survive it if Graham came back and really was disappointed to see her. She’d rather cut and run now, before he left her heart and her ego in shreds on his bedroom floor.
She eased carefully to the side of the bed and slid to the floor. The boards chilled the bottoms of her feet, but she ignored the discomfort while she hurried around the dimly lit room in search of her belongings. If she could get dressed and sneak out before Graham returned, she might actually get to preserve her illusions and treasure this as the best night of her life instead of the stage for her most humiliating experience. But where the heck was her left shoe?
She found it tossed into the corner between a dresser and the wall, along with her purse. She grabbed both, then nearly jumped out of her skin when her purse chimed at her. Terrified Graham would hear the noise, she grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open before the first ring had ended.
“Hello?” She kept her voice low and cast a wary eye toward the bedroom door. It remained closed.
“What is the matter with my friends? Do none of them have the least little trace of manners in their stubborn bodies? What is it about them that compels them to run out on prearranged meetings with perfectly luscious men, who are then left wondering what the hell is going on, while I am forced to explain that it isn’t them? It’s my lamebrained, flaky, irresponsible, and uncivilized friends.”
“Don’t start with me, Av,” Missy hissed, gathering up her ruined panties and bra and the balled-up wad of black fabric she assumed was her dress. “I’ve had a really bad morning so far, and I don’t need you adding to it. I think you’ve done enough already.”
“It’s only four twenty-two. There hasn’t been a morning yet,” Ava dismissed. “Besides, you deserve everything you get for running out like that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain to a man why his blind date took one look at him and ran from the party? Do you?”
“That’s not why I ran. I didn’t even see the guy. And why the heck are you calling my cell phone at four thirty in the morning?”
“Why the hell are you answering?”
Missy froze. “Um . . . I asked first.”
“Oh, that’s very mature, darling,” Ava drawled. “If you must know, I’m calling your cell phone to try and find out where you are in the middle of the night, since you didn’t go back to your apartment.”
“How do you know I’m not at my apartment? Where else would I go?”
“If you’re at your apartment, why don’t you roll over and tell Stephen I said hello, since I gave him the spare key you left with me and told him to wait for you.”
The silky tone made Missy blanch almost as pale as did the idea of a strange man waiting in her apartment for sex, because if this Stephen guy was her fantasy fix, he wasn’t planning on discussing the finer points of macramé with her. “I can’t believe you sent a man to my apartment to wait for me to come home and have sex with him. Don’t you realize how creepy that is? Ava, I gave you that key so you could water my plants when I went away to visit my parents, not so you could let strangers into my apartment. How do you know he hasn’t emptied it out and pawned my stuff?”
“Really, Melissa, a successful vascular surgeon at Mount Sinai is hardly likely to hock your television, now is he?” Ava dismissed. “Besides, I’ve known Stephen for years, and he’s perfectly harmless. You’ll love him. If you’ll get your butt back to your apartment and let him introduce himself.”
Missy risked taking her eyes off the door and crossed to the other side of the bed. She knelt and stuck her head underneath, looking for her right shoe this time. Any second now she might have a complete outfit. Or as close to one as she could come with that ridiculous dress and a handful of tattered lingerie. She grabbed the high heel and struggled to hang on to the tact and diplomacy that usually came to her a lot more easily.
“Okay, I think we need to communicate a little better here,” she began, rocking back onto her knees behind Graham’s massive mattress. “I didn’t run away because I realized I had left my iron on. I’m just not interested in being fixed, Ava. I admit, I should have mentioned this before, but there it is. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re interested. I care that this is the best thing for you. I didn’t lay off of Regina, and I’m not about to lay off of you, darling. You will get fixed, like it or not.”
“Ava, we’re getting into the realm of creepy again. This is sex we’re talking about. ‘Like it or not’ seems a little harsh.”
She could practically hear the other woman setting her jaw.
“You know what I meant, Melissa. You will like the fix if you’ll just cooperate and give it a chance. Now go home.”
“While there’s some strange man probably sitting naked on my sofa? I’d really rather not.”
“Stephen will wait all weekend if he has to, Melissa. He’s very anxious to meet you. Besides, what else are you planning to do? The others all know I’ll kill them if they harbor you.”
“So now I’m the Fugitive?”
Ava swore in exasperation.
“For your information,” Missy informed her, “I was on my way home when you called, but there’s no way I’m going there now. As soon as I sneak out of here—”
A large, masculine hand reached down and plucked the cell phone from her hand, powering it down, and tossing it onto the bed in front of her. “I’m afraid you’re not leaving anytime soon. I’m not nearly finished with you yet.”
The sound of the rich, gravelly voice froze Missy right where she was, on her knees in the middle of a strange man’s bedroom floor. She hadn’t even heard him come in, let alone heard him cross the room. Why hadn’t the stairs creaked, or something? It was just plain unnatural for a set of stairs in a house as old as this one not to creak.
She risked a glance over her shoulder and found herself staring straight at the fly of his blue jeans—which was unfastened—and the intriguing shadows that filled it. She swallowed hard and tried to pretend her legs hadn’t gone all liquid. She clutched her clothes to her chest and yanked her gaze away from his groin, dragging it up over his well-muscled and beautifully furred chest. That did nothing for the liquid problem. In fact, it only compounded it. She could feel her body softening and growing damp, despite the raw, sore feeling it had protested about only a few minutes ago.
Darn thing doesn’t know what’s good for it.
When her eyes finally made it as high as his face, she saw the look of amusement there and stiffened. “That was rude. I was talking to someone.”
He folded his arms across his chest and gave her a stern look. “You were planning on leaving without saying good-bye. I consider that to be pretty rude.”
The challenge of maintaining her dignity while stark naked and kneeling at the feet of a gorgeous hunk of a werewolf made Missy fidgety.
It also made her lie.
“I never planned on not saying good-bye. I was just going to—”
“ ‘Sneak out of here.’ I heard.”
She was thoroughly sick of staring up at him, but until she figured out how to distribute her pathetic bundle of clothes to cover all vital areas, she thought she’d stay put. “ ‘Sneak’ is just an expression.”
“Which
means to move stealthily in an attempt to avoid detection.” He prowled a step closer to her, and she scooted a few inches farther away. In a minute she’d have rug burn to go along with her whisker burn. “That sounds rude to me, Missy.”
She halted in mid-scoot. “What did you call me?”
“Missy. Why? Did you change your name recently? You prefer ‘Melissa’ now?”
She ignored the sarcasm latched on to his words like a barnacle to the bottom of a boat. Stress, she liked to think, made her snap things she never normally would have said. “Oh, so now you remember my name? Last night you didn’t even remember meeting me before.”
He scowled. “I was . . . distracted.”
“I don’t care if you were struck temporarily brain-dead. You don’t forget someone you walked down a church aisle with!”
“It’s not like it was at our wedding. I was there for about fifteen minutes before I got the call that the club’s kitchen was on fire, so I’m sorry if I didn’t—” He cut himself off. “Wait a minute; what the hell am I doing? This is completely not the point. The point is that you are not going anywhere right now.”
Missy stopped inching toward the door and bit her lower lip. “Well, you can’t keep me here.”
“Wanna bet?”
Before she could manage a properly outraged response, he grabbed her by the upper arms and tossed her gently down onto the bed. She bounced twice, which made it difficult to scramble away before he coiled his muscles and leapt up after her. At that point, the fact that she had two hundred pounds of grinning werewolf lying on top of her made it impossible. Either way, he had her trapped.
She stared up at him with her mouth hanging open and her eyes practically popping out of her skull.
His grin widened. “You were saying?”
Something made rather irrelevant by her present position.
“Okay, poor choice of words, since you obviously can keep me wherever you want me. But it’s still illegal and immoral. And really mean.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a werewolf. Haven’t you heard? We’re monsters.”
“You are not,” she retorted, wriggling experimentally beneath him. “So if you’re done showing off and acting all big and bad, would you mind getting off me?”
Her wiggling brought her hips up against the pronounced swelling of his erection, concealed by his jeans, and he growled softly, his eyes going all glowy and aroused again.
“As a matter of fact, I would,” he said, lowering his head to flick his tongue against the turned-down corner of her pouting mouth. “I think I like it right here.”
Her traitorous body responded that it liked him right there, too. In fact, it would like him even more if he took off his jeans and shifted his hips just a tad to the right, but her mind had the good sense to be outraged and indignant. If only it weren’t also struck temporarily dumb by the heavy, masculine, hot, sexy, orgasm-inducing feel of him.
She swallowed hard.
He traced the motion in her throat with his tongue, which made her swallow again, which made him trace again, and she figured she had maybe five more seconds of this before he reduced her to a quivering mass of goo.
She cleared her throat and moaned when the sound made him stutter his tongue against the sensitive skin. Her hands pressed against his shoulders, and she mustered one last coherent protest. “Um, I really do need to be going. I have things I need to do.”
He reached up and locked both of her wrists in one of his big hands. Then he used his tongue to investigate the hollow at the base of her throat and the smooth curves of her collarbone.
“At four thirty in the morning? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe I’m an early riser.”
“I know I am. Wanna see?” He ground his erection against her and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.
It took some doing not to be charmed by his sense of humor and his blatant sexuality. “No!”
He grinned. “Liar.”
She felt the blush rising in her cheeks. “What I want is for you to let me go.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why do you want me to let you go?”
He looked down at her with his disconcerting green eyes, and Missy suddenly realized she really couldn’t remember why she felt so determined to leave when she still had fantasies he could be fulfilling. And he certainly wasn’t helping matters by rubbing his thumb gently against the wrists that he still held pinned above her head in an unbreakable grip.
She shrugged. “Why do you want to keep me?”
The smile spreading across his face reminded her of sunrise and fallen angels and wicked, wicked intentions.
“Silly question,” he rumbled, a sound half a step away from a purr, as he brushed her crumpled clothes aside and bared her body once more to his gaze. She saw the light of appreciation in them and fought not to show how much she liked that he enjoyed looking at her.
She tried to mold her expression into a scowl, but she knew it probably looked as forced as it felt. “Silly answer. I doubt very much that you can’t get sex any time and from anyone you want.”
He leaned down to lap at her nipple, wetting the tip and making it stand out from her breast. He pursed his lips and blew, watching as the crest tightened further. “But I don’t want it from anyone. I want it from you.”
Missy squirmed and fought to keep her breathing from turning into panting as he left one breast and moved to the other. She wanted to concentrate on what he was saying, especially since it seemed more likely to be a product of wishful thinking than hard-core reality. But she defied anyone to concentrate while Graham played with their tender bits. It couldn’t be done.
He scraped his teeth over her skin, then lifted his head to survey his handiwork. “In fact,” he purred, “I think I only want it from you from now on.”
“But why?” she moaned.
His mouth closed over her neglected nipple, drawing the aching peak inside and sucking rhythmically. He pressed it firmly against the roof of his mouth, and she could feel his tongue rubbing in tiny strokes against the underside. The sensation made her want to cry out, and when he pulled away, she nearly did.
“Because you taste so good,” he murmured, shifting until he could slide his tongue down the center of her chest and dip teasingly into her navel.
Her muscles clenched, from her abdomen to her ankles and everywhere in between. He breathed warm currents against her skin and ruffled her pubic hair with the tips of his fingers. Her hips arched reflexively into his hand, and she bit back a moan when his hand slid lower and eased her gently open. Her moan changed to a gasp when he buried his face in her curls and inhaled deeply.
“And you smell even better.” His murmur had become a growl, and when he slid his tongue along the path of his fingers, Missy echoed it with a breathless cry. His tongue circled in a wave of hot, moist sensation before dipping into her center and drinking her wetness. Her free hands slid into his hair and cradled him to her while his tongue drove her crazy. Her nerve endings seesawed between pleasure and pain for a brief second until his head came up.
“You’re hurt,” he said, the growl back in his voice. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“About what?” She barely recognized her voice, as breathless and soft and drugged as it sounded.
“About the fact that I hurt you,” he grumbled, pulling back from her and sliding off the bed. “From now on, I expect you to tell me.”
He scooped her up in his arms and stalked into the bathroom while she was still trying to reconnect the synapses he’d blown with his clever tongue. As soon as the darned things got back into working order, she was going to get mad. The man was snarling at her because of something he had done! Logic, anyone?
She glared up at him from the edge of the bathtub where he set her down. “As I recall, you weren’t real interested in anything I had to say at the time you were making me sore, Conan.”
Graham scowled at her and turned
on the faucet, testing the temperature before plugging up the drain and letting the tub fill with steaming water. “Next time, say it louder.”
She crossed her arms over her chest to still the hopeful flutter inside. “Is there going to be a next time?”
“Damn straight,” he retorted. “It’s just a matter of how soon before it happens.”
He turned his back and rummaged under the sink, coming back with a paper milk-carton-looking container labeled: “Epsom Salts.” He dumped a handful into the tub and stirred to dissolve the crystals.
Missy watched and brooded. “Are you always this dictatorial?” she finally ventured.
Graham twisted off the taps with a grunt. “I am now, so get used to it.”
Without waiting for an invitation, Missy eased herself down into the water. Naked underwater, even clear water, was better than naked in plain sight. She winced when the heat stung her raw skin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The werewolf looked down at her with a hard expression. “That you’ll be spending quite a lot of time with me, so you’d better get used to my foibles.”
Her eyes widened, but she couldn’t tell if they did it because of his abrupt declaration or because he punctuated his words by stripping off his jeans and sliding into the tub with her.
The oversized old claw-foot was plenty big enough for the both of them, as long as they didn’t mind touching. Graham obviously didn’t. He settled his large frame into the opposite end of the tub and stretched out his legs on either side of hers until his feet rested beside her hips. He draped his arms over the sides of the tub and pinned her with a probing stare. “How does this feel?”
Missy wrenched her gaze from his damp chest, complete with its rough-smooth mat of hair and the flat brown nipples that made her mouth water. “How does what feel?”
Big Bad Wolf Page 6
