Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  He saw her shake her head and strode back to her side, grasping her by the arms and forcing her to meet his gaze. He needed to impress her with the truth, and he hoped she’d be able to read it in his face.

  “I didn’t invite another woman to move in with me. I’ve never invited a woman to do that. Just you.”

  “But that’s what I don’t get,” she whispered, her eyes wide and confused as she gazed up at him. “Tonight is the first time you’ve ever spoken more than five words to me, and all of a sudden you’re crazy about me? More than a few hours and a few rolls across the mattress crazy? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  For the first time in his life, Graham regretted being a werewolf. If he were a vampire like Dmitri, he could just read her thoughts and figure out exactly how to reassure her, but instead he floundered for a way to make her trust him without also making her see him as an even weirder creature than she already did.

  Unable to resist, he reached up to stroke her silky hair, remembering the way it looked spread out on his silk sheet. He wanted to see it there again, now, but he wanted more than that. If he was going to convince this woman to be his mate, he’d have to move more slowly than he ever had in his life. Slower than he knew it was possible to move. And if that wasn’t a matter of teaching an old dog new tricks, he didn’t know what was.

  “Why don’t you stop thinking about it so hard and give me a chance?” he suggested. “You’ve already agreed to stay here this weekend, so let me use it to convince you that I’m serious.”

  “Sex is not going to—”

  “He chuckled and gave in to the urge to hug her until she squawked a protest. “I promise sex will only be part of it,” he teased, loosening his grip only slightly. “We’ll do other things, too. Things people do when they want to get to know each other. Like talk . . . and watch movies . . . and play games . . . and order Chinese food. What do you say?”

  She met his gaze in silence, and he could see her searching for some clue. He hoped what she found would reassure her. He knew how serious he was; he just had to convince her. Finally she drew a deep breath and nodded once.

  “All right,” she agreed. “Since I’m stuck here anyway, there’s not much I can do to avoid you, I suppose.”

  “Perfect!” He laughed triumphantly and hugged her again, planting a great big kiss on her surprised mouth before pulling away and heading for the bedroom door. “Hang on a second and I’ll dig up something for you to wear. Then I’ll take you out for breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  He couldn’t quite contain the spring in his step as he left her staring after him. As soon as she got dressed, he’d take her out to his favorite diner and feed her. With the things he had planned for their weekend together, she’d need to keep up her energy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Missy pulled on the black slacks Graham had provided and silently thanked whatever employee at his club had provided them. The idea of putting on her super-short dress from last night made her shudder, especially considering she lacked any sort of underwear to put on beneath it. The scraps left after Graham had torn her lingerie off last night now graced the trash can in the bathroom, and she struggled not to wriggle at the unfamiliar feel of going pantyless.

  She didn’t worry so much about the bra. Being a long way from a D-cup, she could get away without one, especially since the shirt she wore was one of Graham’s and could have fit three of her. She had to roll the sleeves up almost to the shoulders and tie the bulk of the material at her waist to keep from being overwhelmed by the thing, but it was comfortable, and the roomy fit hid the fact that her breasts were bare beneath it. All she really needed now was a layer of cloth to hide her feelings.

  Having the man of her dreams devoted to fulfilling all of her wildest fantasies could definitely go to a girl’s head, and Missy could only pray it wouldn’t go to her heart as well. Graham had just offered her the opportunity to spend an entire weekend living out her dreams, and she’d seized it with both hands. As much as she wanted to protect her feelings, she’d never be able to forgive herself if she didn’t do everything she could to have this one interlude with the man she’d been mooning over for the past six weeks. She knew perfectly well it couldn’t last forever.

  No matter what level of lust and curiosity Graham felt for her now, she knew it was only temporary. She just hoped she could be satisfied with her memories of this weekend when it ended. She couldn’t bear it if she spent the rest of her life in love with a man who had gotten bored with her.

  Graham stuck his head through the open bedroom door just as she was contemplating her bare feet. Somehow her stiletto pumps from the night before just didn’t go with the outfit.

  “You almost ready?”

  “As ready as I can be,” she answered, dragging her attention back to the outside world and wiggling her toes, “but I think I fall in the ‘no shoes, no service’ category.”

  He pushed the door open and held out a pair of white tennis shoes. “I looked at your heels. No one on my staff wears a five and a half, but I got a pair of sevens and two pairs of thick socks.”

  “Thanks.” She took the shoes and sat on the edge of the mattress to pull them on. “I feel like I’ve taken rotten advantage of your waitresses, stealing all their clothes.”

  “You didn’t have to steal; they were donated. Besides, the shoes came from my secretary. She had the smallest feet.”

  He tapped his own booted foot against the floor while she laced the sneakers tightly and tested the fit. A little loose, but the socks would keep her from feeling like she wore clown shoes.

  “Okay,” she announced, sliding to the floor. “I’m ready.”

  Graham grinned. “Great. I just need to let the staff know where we’re going and we can leave. Come on.”

  He took her hand and tugged her toward the door. Missy followed, trying to pretend she had a choice.

  She hadn’t gotten a chance to see much of anything the night before, what with making the trip to his house and up to his bedroom face down over his shoulder in the pitch-dark, but now she got a chance to look around.

  The old town house had the elegant sort of grace that nineteenth-century architecture naturally seemed to impart. The dark woodwork gleamed with the richness of age, and the soothing, earth-toned décor had a masculine and comfortable feel to it. It wasn’t the type of place she would have pictured Graham living in, but maybe he had facets to his personality that she hadn’t seen yet.

  The only facets he’d been interested in showing her so far were protuberant and demanding.

  Expecting to be led out the front and around to the entrance of Vircolac next door, she was surprised when he made a left turn into a large study and walked up to a well-stocked section of built-in bookshelves. He reached out and pressed a button, then took hold of the shelving and pulled it toward them to reveal a well-lit and entirely un-dusty hallway.

  “It’s not quite like I always imagined a secret passageway,” she said.

  Graham smiled. “I could add some cobwebs and dirt, if you want.” He put his hand on the small of her back and ushered her in ahead of him. “It’s not really secret, though. My staff and I use it when we need to go back and forth between the buildings. Saves time. And it keeps us dry when the weather’s bad.”

  The short corridor was papered and lit like a regular interior hallway and ended at a handsome six-panel door. They stepped through into another hallway and turned right, emerging from behind a grand staircase into the front hall of the club.

  It looked like Missy’s image of the foyer of a grand London town house for some rich aristocrat. It had that look of age and wealth and power seemingly oozing from its wainscoted walls. The décor seemed more like someone’s home, rather than a club, but she imagined there weren’t a lot of people’s homes that experienced this much activity before 6:00 A.M.

  She could hear the sound of voices and the tapping of footsteps beyond the open doors that lined the hall,
and staff members passed back and forth fetching and carrying in their crisp black and white uniforms. Several of them greeted Graham and gave her some curious stares as their boss led her toward the front of the building and one of the few closed doors in the hall. Missy tried to ignore the glances and busied herself taking in the club she’d been wanting to get a look at.

  “I just need to talk to my assistant for a sec,” Graham explained when Graham paused outside the door with his hand on the polished brass knob. “Plus, she made my introducing you to her a condition of lending you her shoes.”

  Missy raised her eyebrows at that but allowed Graham to usher her into the room in front of him. They stepped into an office, which Missy identified from the filing cabinets, note boards, and desk inside. A second door in the right-hand wall behind the desk opened into an inner office.

  The generous workstation sported a neat and organized surface, a casually dressed woman sitting behind it, her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. The woman looked up and smiled when they entered. She looked to Graham first, but when her blue eyes fastened on Missy, they did so with evident curiosity.

  “Good morning!” She practically bounced up from her chair and hurriedly crossed in front of the desk to stand before the couple. “I’m so happy to meet you! I was so excited when Graham told me about you.”

  Missy offered the other woman a friendly smile. At least, she tried to, but the brunette seemed determined to stare at someplace near Missy’s right elbow. Her smile turned into a puzzled look, and Graham stepped forward to make the introduction.

  “Missy, this is my assistant, Samantha Cartwright.”

  Trying again with a smile, Missy extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Samantha took her hand and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the mouth. Surprise made Missy jump back a little, and Samantha’s eyes opened wide, meeting hers for the first time.

  “What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong? Luna, I apologize—”

  Graham cut her off. “It’s no problem, Sam. I think you just surprised Missy.”

  Which was true, for what it was worth, but Missy found Graham pretty surprising, too. She had figured out all on her own that the kiss had served as some kind of formal Lupine greeting, not a pass. But what was up with this “Luna” thing?

  “There’s nothing to apologize for,” she told Samantha with another smile. “Actually, I wanted to thank you for loaning me the shoes. That was really sweet of you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing!” Samantha rushed to assure her. “I’m just sorry they’re not really your size.”

  “Well it’s not like I expect your feet to shrink for my convenience,” she laughed. “With the socks, these are just fine.”

  Graham laid a hand on her arm and smiled down at her. “Let me just tell Samantha what’s going on with the club business and we can go, okay?”

  Missy gave him an odd look but nodded. “Sure. Take your time.”

  He smiled at her, and she turned away to keep from going all mushy at the sheer adorableness of the expression. The man’s appeal made things way not fair.

  While he talked to Samantha about suppliers, accounts, and correspondence, Missy wandered around the room and checked out the working environment of the man she’d just agreed to spend the weekend with. She fought the urge to peek into the inner sanctum, since Graham hadn’t bothered to point it out, but it was a struggle. She wanted to see where he worked, so she could picture what he might be doing once their time together was over.

  The outer office was comfortable and casual and a little bit cluttered to flesh out its Architectural Digest bones. Utilitarian file cabinets lined up against a beautifully paneled wall just beneath a stretch of individually paned windows. The desk looked like a combination of antique and contemporary sections, but it was covered with ultra-modern computer equipment and reams of paper. Samantha looked comfortable and at home in a pair of faded blue jeans and a battered NYU sweatshirt. Missy felt slightly less comfortable with the fact that the other woman couldn’t seem to stop staring at her.

  Finally, she gave up wandering around and pretending not to pay attention to them. She leaned up against a filing cabinet to wait. Samantha looked away as soon as Missy met her eyes, making Missy frown. Did she have a stain on her shirt? Was her hair sticking up at odd angles? Did she have a huge hickey on her neck? Missy was starting to feel like a sideshow freak or something, with all the sideways looks and tension.

  The possible explanation for the odd behavior struck Missy as Graham finished signing a sheaf of paperwork and said good-bye to Samantha before leading Missy out the door.

  As soon as the office door closed behind them, Missy brought up her suspicions as subtly as she could manage.

  “Do you have something going with your secretary?”

  Graham paused with his hand on the knob of another door and cast Missy an incredulous look. “With Sam? Of course not. What the hell made you think that?”

  Missy shrugged. His reaction seemed perfectly innocent, but she couldn’t think of any other way to explain the other woman’s odd behavior. “I don’t know. I just thought she seemed kind of . . . uncomfortable around me. Like she was expecting me to turn into some kind of Wicked Witch of the West, or something.”

  He opened the door and pulled two jackets out of the large hall closet, helping her slip one on.

  “You’re imagining things,” he said, tucking his own jacket under one arm while he rolled up the sleeves of the one she wore until her hands finally poked out of the bottom. Thankfully the old denim was soft and pliable, so she didn’t feel like a two-year-old in a snowsuit by the time he’d finished.

  “I wasn’t imagining the fact that she could barely stand to look me in the eye. I’m not totally clueless, you know.”

  “I never said you were.” He shrugged into his coat and pulled open the club’s main entrance door to let her outside. “That had nothing to do with you. Well, not directly, anyway. It’s just Samantha.”

  “But—”

  He cut her off with a sigh. “It’s a little more complicated than a one-word answer, so can we wait until I get some coffee in me? The diner’s only a couple of blocks from here.”

  Reluctantly, Missy nodded. “I guess so, but I do want to know.”

  “And I promise to answer all your questions, okay?” He smiled down at her and reached out to hold her hand in his. “For now, let’s just enjoy the fresh air and the company.”

  Missy found herself smiling. “Is that your suavely polite way of telling me to shut up?”

  He nodded, flashing his charming grin. “At least until after the coffee. Is it working?”

  She shrugged and smiled, letting him guide her north along the quiet street.

  It wasn’t even 6:00 A.M., but already the city was grumbling awake. She could hear the sound of traffic seeping in from the edges of the neighborhood, smell the faint tinge of exhaust in the crisp morning air. The cold made her cheeks and nose tingle, and she stuffed her right hand in her pocket, but her left, held firmly in Graham’s, stayed toasty warm.

  She kept her questions to herself and just enjoyed the morning walk until a magenta-haired waitress seated them in a window-side booth with thick ceramic coffee mugs and plastic-covered menus. Once they were alone again, Missy gave in to her curiosity.

  “All right. So what’s up with you and Samantha?”

  Graham tossed back half his coffee like a slug of whiskey, never mind the steam that curled up from the rim of the cup. He didn’t seem to register the heat, but Missy couldn’t help wincing. Even after adding four little creamer cups to her own mug, she still had to set it aside for a few minutes to let it cool.

  “I told you, there’s nothing ‘up’ with me and Samantha,” he said. “She’s an employee and a member of the pack. That’s it.”

  “She’s a werewolf, too, then?” Missy asked, but his nod just confused her further. “Then why did she look like she was afraid I’d jump her?
She could probably spin me on one finger like a basketball.”

  He got a couple minutes of reprieve while the waitress came back to take their order, and Missy could almost see him sorting through explanations in his head while he looked for the best one. He sighed when the waitress took their menus and headed back toward the kitchen. “She probably wasn’t exactly afraid of you. She was just being cautious.”

  Missy gave him a look over her coffee cup. “Cautious? Of what? Unless she has a mortal fear of ‘The Alphabet Song,’ I doubt she has much to fear from me.”

  “Like I said, it’s . . . complicated.”

  “ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”

  “It’s a Lupine thing,” he began, pausing when she rolled her eyes.

  “And I wouldn’t understand? I thought you wanted us to get to know each other better. How will we do that if we avoid anything complicated? I mean, I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I’m pretty sure complicated is a given when members of two different species start dating.”

  He tapped his fingers on the scratched Formica and frowned. “You don’t sound a lot like a kindergarten teacher at the moment.”

  “Somehow I don’t think you’ve associated with many since you were five,” she said. “And don’t change the subject. Just because I teach five-year-olds doesn’t mean I’m okay with being treated like one. What is this big werewolf secret I wouldn’t understand?”

  “It’s not a secret, just a point of culture.”

  She leaned back when the waitress set their orders down, but she didn’t look away. She wanted to know what was going on.

  “And?”

  He studied her, and she set her shoulders and lifted her chin, determined to make clear her refusal to back down.

  When he spoke, he sounded matter-of-fact and just a little bit cautious. “You’re her new alpha. She was being cautious around you as a sign of respect. That’s what the kiss was about, too.”

  “Alpha? I’m not even Lupine. You’re her alpha, not me.”

  “Alphas come in pairs, male and female. I’m alpha male of the pack, but Samantha acknowledged you as alpha female, and Lupines call alpha females Luna because they’re as influential as the moon.”