Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  Damn it! Why couldn’t he have found a stupid mate? It would have made his life a hell of a lot easier.

  “No, because none of them were. You are,” he said, as forcefully as he could without grabbing her and attempting to prove it to her graphically. “Lupines mate for life, which even wolves don’t always do. But like humans, we don’t always wait for our mates just to have sex.”

  “Which means you still have to explain how the way I smell makes me your mate.”

  He raked a frustrated hand through his hair and glared at her. “You’re asking me to explain instinct here. That’s like me asking you to explain why humans get all freaked out when they see us on full-moon nights.”

  “That might have something to do with the fur factor,” she said, her tone wry. “See, some people cling to the crazy notion that werewolves aren’t real. I hear it helps them sleep at night.”

  “What I mean is that the fear they feel is instinctual, not rational. You can’t really explain something like that.”

  “At least I tried.”

  “You just smell different!” He was frustrated now, and it showed in his voice. He considered it a lucky stroke that it didn’t show in him changing into something a little less human and tearing the stuffing out of his sofa. “Other women smell like sex. They smell . . . available. Like musk and perfume. You smell different. You’re . . . fascinating. All rich sweetness, like honey and vanilla.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Great. I smell like vanilla. The most boring of all flavors. And this is supposed to convince me I’m irresistible to you?”

  He shot forward so fast that he saw the surprise widen her eyes when she blinked to find him leaning so close to her that their noses almost kissed.

  “You are anything but boring, Melissa Jane,” he growled, meeting her brown eyes and holding their soft gaze with his own. “Remember, vanilla comes from orchids and was once paid as a high tribute to the Aztec emperors. If they could have smelled your scent the way I do, they would have demanded you, instead of a few orchid pods.”

  Her lips parted, drawing his eye like a beacon. Unable to resist, he leaned another fraction of an inch closer and traced the soft gap with the tip of his tongue. He felt the rush of air when she gasped, and closed his teeth delicately on her lower lip, nibbling and nipping and tugging at the sensitive flesh.

  “No one else smells like you, Missy,” he murmured, cupping his hand around the nape of her neck. “No one else ever has, and no one else ever could. You smell of honey and vanilla, and warm, sexy woman.”

  He saw the softness in her eyes, felt the tension sap out of her muscles until her arms uncrossed and her body melted closer to his. His hands closed on her, tight and possessive, and he drew a deep breath to drink in her scent.

  “You smell damp and delicious and like I could devour every drop of you and still not be satisfied.” He licked her lips, a slow, lapping taste that drew more of her scent into him and made hunger knot heavily in his stomach. “You smell like my mate.”

  He reached out to draw her closer, but the movement must have startled her, because she slipped away at the last minute and put the width of the coffee table between them.

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” she said, eying him warily. “Maybe the mate concept is a werewolf thing that I wouldn’t understand, but I still need for you to take thirty seconds to look at this from my point of view, okay?”

  Graham’s first instinct was to dismiss her request and seduce her until she forgot why she was objecting to being his mate and melted all over him like warm honey; but as he reached for her, he saw the confusion and fear in her eyes and an unseen fist tightened around his heart.

  Was this what it meant to be in love? Did it mean he would always feel like he’d be willing to ignore the laws of nature and physics and man and Lupine if only it would make her smile at him again?

  If so, he predicted a short and volatile life together.

  Instead of grabbing her by the arms and hauling her against his body, Graham closed his hands gently on the sides of her neck, cupping the slender column and rubbing his thumbs gently along the curving lines of her jaw.

  “I’m willing to give it a shot,” he told her, keeping his voice soft and even, “if you’re willing to explain it to me.”

  She looked into his eyes, her wariness apparent. God, he must have come off to her so far like a steamroller with a penis if she trusted him this little. And over something so simple.

  Impatience nudged him, but he pushed it aside and watched her. And waited.

  “I’m not sure you can understand,” she finally murmured.

  Graham felt his mouth curve into a wry grin. “Now, where have I heard that before?”

  Missy rolled her eyes and blew out a breath. “I mean, I don’t know if you can really put yourself in my position. We’re so different.”

  The tips of his thumbs flicked playfully, tenderly, against the softness of her bare earlobes. When their cub was born, he’d fasten diamonds there, he decided. “Being different is what makes us fit together so perfectly.”

  “I’m not just talking tab A and slot B. You’re so much stronger than me. Not just the way any guy would be stronger than me; I mean, you could bench-press me one-handed for a month and not break a sweat. You could break any one of my bones with your little finger. Heck, you could probably do it just by staring at it hard enough.”

  “Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

  She answered with a laugh that nearly broke his heart. “Terrified. But not that you’ll break one of my bones.”

  When she went silent, he waited for a dozen heartbeats before his fingers squeezed gently. “Melissa, tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  Her lips parted on a shaking breath, and her lids fell over her warm brown eyes, almost as if she couldn’t bear to look at him while she spoke.

  “I’m not like you,” she whispered miserably. “And I don’t mean that I’m not Lupine. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. I mean I’m not like any of the other women you’ve been with before, either. They’re all beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  Graham shook his head slowly. Maybe he couldn’t understand her. Not unless she started making sense.

  “I’m plain,” she ground out, a silver liquid tear leaking out from beneath the sweep of sable lashes and etching a salty track over her rosy skin. “I’m average and boring and shy and awkward and I don’t know anything about men or sex or—”

  He swallowed her idiotic words, wiping them away with broad strokes of his tongue and nipping her lips to punish them for voicing her nonsense. When he felt her soften and sway against him, he lifted his head and sipped the tears from her skin.

  “Melissa Jane Roper,” he said in a voice husky and dark, “I can’t decide whether to smack you upside your thick little skull or bend you over this sofa and prove to you exactly how beautiful and special and exciting and sexy you are.”

  Missy’s eyes flew open to stare at him in dazed incomprehension.

  Laughing and groaning, Graham shook her gently before pulling her against his chest and hugging her tight. Pillowing his cheek atop her hair, he felt her trembling with suppressed emotion.

  “I sure as hell hope that these ridiculous notions of yours aren’t why you think we might not be mates.”

  Small, determined hands pressed against his chest until he allowed enough space between them for her to frown up at him. “I don’t see what gives you the right to call any notions of mine ridiculous.”

  “How about logic?”

  “Wha—?”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t know what kind of tales Regina and Dmitri have been telling you about me, but if they made you think that I’m such a horny bastard I can’t tell the difference between ugly and beautiful or a good time and a lifetime, I need to give each of them a piece of my mind.”

  “They never said either of those things. Not exactly.”

  “Oh? Then what did they say?”

  Missy shru
gged and stared at his shirt collar. “Well, it’s hardly a secret that you’ve got a reputation for being the biggest playboy in the Other world.”

  “But that’s just it, baby.” He slid a finger under her chin and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “That was before I met you. Now I’m not playing anymore.”

  She pushed him back another inch. “Yes. That is just it. You just can’t seem to grasp the idea that I might question how a man who has spent his entire adult life chasing after and catching the most beautiful women in Manhattan could suddenly fall head over heels, irrevocably, fated-to-be-together in love with a woman like me!”

  It sounded like English, Graham thought, and the words themselves made sense to him, but something about the way she strung them together made him seriously question whether or not he and his mate were actually speaking the same language. “Why do you make it sound like that’s impossible?”

  “Because it is!”

  “Not for a Lupine.”

  “For anyone who has graduated past believing in fairy tales!”

  This was probably not the best time to talk to her about Faerie and the royal court of the Fae, he reflected.

  “You know what?” he asked instead. “I’m starting to think that this has very little to do with the fact that you’re human and I’m Lupine. I think this is more about the fact that you have a whole bunch of monsters in your head that keep you from believing me when I tell you how I feel about you.”

  She pulled completely away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly. “That’s not as hard as you make it sound. Especially since you’ve never told me how you feel about me.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I’ve told you. That’s how we ended up in this ridiculous fight.”

  “It’s not ridiculous. And it started because you told me I’m your mate, not because you told me how you feel about me.”

  Graham’s mouth opened, hung that way for a long moment, then snapped closed with a clatter of teeth.

  She was right.

  He hadn’t told Melissa how he felt about her. Not ever. He supposed he could have made a case for the fact that they’d only really known each other for a day and a half, or for the fact that he hadn’t realized how he felt until just a few minutes ago, but neither excuse would have held much water with him. Why should it do better with her? Why should she accept either as an excuse?

  Then again, would she even accept his love as the truth?

  Mother Moon, but humans could be confusing!

  Grimly Graham stuffed down his impatience and tried to think like a human. Afterward, he’d treat himself to a big glass of scotch.

  Humans, he reminded himself, were contrary beasts by nature. They wrote books and made films and told stories about the concept of love at first sight—what Lupines would call mating—and yet expressing a genuine belief in the concept often met with derision and scorn. Apparently, it was acceptable to fantasize about an instantaneous and lasting connection with a romantic partner but not to actually make one. If he told Missy how he felt about her, told her the full honest truth, would it reassure her or just make her run faster away from him?

  Could he afford to take the chance of her running?

  He struggled in silence for a minute, then ran an impatient hand through his hair and decided to walk a very fine line.

  “I feel a lot of things for you,” he said to her narrow, tense back. He watched her shoulders carefully, trying to read her mood in the lines of her body. “Some of them I haven’t quite sorted out yet, but some of them I have. I know that you fascinate me. I know that you make me smile and you make me laugh and you sure as hell make me hard enough to split wood.”

  One soft shoulder sank a fraction of an inch, then the other.

  Heartened, he continued. “I know that I’ve enjoyed every minute we’ve spent together and that I want to spend a lot more minutes with you. Whole hours. Days even. Maybe more. I know that I’ve spent most of last night and all day today trying to think up ways to convince you not to leave on Monday morning because I know I won’t be as happy once you’re gone as I have been while you’re here.”

  Every single word he spoke was true, sincere, from his heart. And if his heart held a few more words that he hadn’t managed to say yet, it wasn’t so hard to convince himself that he was saving those for a special occasion.

  Especially not when Missy hesitantly turned around to face him, her dark eyes shining with hope and warmth and too many doubts for his own good.

  Her mouth curved into a lopsided smile and her shoulder hitched up in a small shrug. His heart melted and his tongue ached from biting it to hold back the final words.

  “We’ve got thirty-five more hours,” she offered, holding out a hand toward him. “We can be happy for those. And if you’re really persuasive, maybe I can come back for dinner Monday night.”

  A wave of relief threatened to roll Graham into the undertow. He grabbed her hand like a lifeline and towed her gently toward him.

  “What if I’m really, really persuasive?” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers. “Would you come back with a suitcase?”

  She laughed and tangled her fingers in the hair at the back of his head.

  “Give it your best shot,” she breathed. “The worst I can do is say no.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She said it a lot. Over and over and over again, as a matter of fact, and she still almost didn’t make it out of Graham’s house with her clothing intact. Only an emergency page from the club next door had given her enough time to refasten her buttons—for the second time that morning—and scoot out the front door before the Lupine Lothario succeeded in distracting her from her purpose. Yet again.

  But after more than forty-eight hours of passionate togetherness, more than anything in the world Missy needed some time alone. Before she forgot everything she’d been working so hard to remember all weekend.

  Like, her interlude with Graham was just that—a temporary interlude. And it would be a colossal mistake to let herself fall hopelessly in love with a man who would be bored with her inside of a month, provided his interest even lasted that long. No matter how sweet the words he used to promise her otherwise.

  Men like Graham Winters didn’t keep promises to women like Missy Roper.

  Through the window of a cab, she contemplated the truth of that. She wasn’t quite sure where she’d learned the lesson, since it wasn’t as if she’d had her heart broken by some good-looking gigolo in the past. Her past featured no gigolos of any kind. And maybe that was the problem. Her past featured a grand total of two precious lovers, both nice enough boys around her own age and both refreshingly up-front about their feelings—or lack thereof—for little Melissa Jane.

  Missy had never been the type of woman to attract men. She didn’t repulse them, she didn’t think; they just never seemed to notice her. She stood in a room next to Ava or Danice or Corinne or Reggie, and male eyes skimmed right over her to linger on one of her much more . . . vivid friends.

  She didn’t begrudge any of the women their appeal; she’d just wished occasionally that she had been able to share it. She didn’t know if her career choice had left her with a tattoo on her forehead that read: “Kindergarten teacher: approach only if you require help learning the alphabet,” or if all her clothes had fingerpaint stains that she just hadn’t noticed. Either way, men tended to treat her as either another piece of furniture or their long-lost kid sister. Neither had given her a lot of experience in the love and romance department.

  Yet here was Graham Winters, perhaps the sexiest man ever to walk the streets of Manhattan, and he claimed to be absolutely enthralled with her, body and soul.

  Body especially.

  Missy shook her head as she paid the cabbie and headed for the elevator to her apartment. She had always heard that it was easy for men to separate sex from emotional involvement, but if she hadn’t known better, she might have sworn that Graham was using s
ex to try to convince her that he cared for her in addition to lusting after her. From what she had heard over the years, she’d assumed not even eighteen-year-olds could make do with as little recuperative time between intimate encounters as Graham had allowed himself over the past two days. He had reached for her so often that it had only been the liberal and repeated use of a miracle herbal salve that allowed her to walk this morning. Though even the salve had been unable to prevent her legs from feeling like rubber.

  Old, brittle rubber that had been stretched too thin and run too hot over a long, long, bumpy highway.

  Snorting at her own analogy, Missy pulled her keys out of her bag, shifted her bundle of ruined clothes beneath her other arm, and stepped out of the elevator.

  Suffice it to say that she had needed to come back home, to take a few hours away from Graham, both physically and emotionally. She had enjoyed his company too much for her own good. It was past time for a reality check.

  The first thing Missy saw when she unlocked the door to her apartment and pushed it open was a thin sheet of notepaper that looked as if it had been slid under the door and onto the parquet entry pad. The rest of the apartment—or at least the living room, which was all she could see—appeared deserted. Glancing down at the messy scrawl, she attempted to decipher the handwritten note. Judging by the script, Ava hadn’t lied about the man being a doctor.

  Dear Melissa,

  Sorry our evening didn’t work out. Ava told me about your family emergency. Please give your mother my best, and let her know she should stay off that broken leg for at least two weeks before she gives crutches a try. I hope you and I can reschedule for another time. After everything Ava has told me about you, I can’t wait to learn if you’re actually too good to be true.

  Stephen

  Pursing her lips, Missy set the note aside on a small table and set the locks on the door, simultaneously flipping on the overhead lights to combat the dull, gray day. Stephen sounded like a decent fellow; it was too bad he’d let Ava set him up on a wild date.