Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  Missy opened her mouth, and he could almost see her thinking twice about arguing her mate status with him again. It may very well have saved her life.

  “How did you know I’d been attacked?” she asked instead.

  “Your friend Corinne called and left a message for Regina,” he bit out, his gaze scraping over her and lingering on the dark purple bruises emerging from the swollen flesh outside her throat. “Dmitri was screening the calls and thought I would want to know.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  “For the moon’s sake, Melissa, he’s my best friend and his wife is your best friend. And in addition to that, the Other community is a metaphorically small one. I doubt there’s a were-pigeon in Inwood who hasn’t heard that you and I left that party together Friday night and didn’t emerge from my house until this morning. He put two and two together.”

  She blushed and looked away. Any other time, Graham might have found the gesture charming, but at the moment he was too furious to notice. Not furious with Missy, but furious that anyone had dared to lay a hand on her, to harm what was his.

  “You didn’t need to come all the way over here,” she said, her voice going quiet.

  Graham knelt down beside her and brushed his fingertips as gently as a whisper over her bruised skin. When even that contact made her wince, he considered several primitive, gruesome, and exceedingly bloody forms of revenge on the man who had done this to her. All he had to do was find the bastard.

  “Yes, I did,” he soothed her, grasping one of her pale hands between his and feeling the slight trembling she couldn’t control. “Wherever my mate is, that is where I need to be. Especially when she’s hurt. Then I can’t possibly be anywhere else.”

  She blinked at him, her dark eyes hazy with shock, and he felt a sharp stab of guilt to know he hadn’t been with her when she had needed him the most. He hadn’t been there to chase away all threats against her, and he should have been. He should have kept her with him, should have insisted that she stay at his house, where she would have him and at least forty members of his club staff no more than a shout away. She was the most precious thing in his world and he needed to take much better care of her.

  With a decisive motion, he scooped her up in his arms and turned to leave the kitchen.

  “Now wait just a minute there, Mac,” the enormous cook said, stepping in Graham’s path, the chef’s knife once more grasped in his beefy hand. “Just where the hell do you think you’re taking my sugar girl?”

  Graham felt his eyes narrow. He glared up at the giant of a man—half giant, maybe?—and let loose a menacing growl. “Melissa is not your anything, Mac. And I’m taking her somewhere safe. So get the hell out of my way, or so help me, I will go through you.”

  “Graham,” Missy murmured, and stirred restlessly in his arms. “Don’t say things like that. Lincoln is just trying to look out for me. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “The hell he doesn’t.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “Lincoln, please,” she scolded. “Don’t antagonize him.” She turned back to Graham. “And you can put me down now. I’m perfectly capable of walking back to my own apartment. It’s just down the hall.”

  Graham opened his mouth to tell her he would be the one to decide what she was capable of. Then the lessons of the weekend came flooding back to him, and he decided to use his brain for a change, instead of his instincts.

  “Hush, baby,” he soothed. “It makes me feel better to carry you, so just humor me for a while here, okay?”

  “Oh. Um, o-okay, then. I guess it’s okay.”

  “Good. Now I have a suggestion.”

  That was a new word for him, but Graham hoped it would have a more positive effect than the orders he was used to giving.

  “What kind of suggestion?”

  “I could take you back to your apartment,” he acknowledged, “but then you’d be alone again and I’d spend my whole afternoon worrying about you. Not because I don’t think you can take care of yourself,” he assured her when she would have interrupted, “but because I care about you and you’ve been hurt.”

  “It’s just new bruises.”

  “Besides, it’s only a few hours before I’d have to come back here to pick you up for dinner, anyway. That seems like a couple of wasted trips to me.”

  She turned wide, startled brown eyes on him, reminding him of nothing so much as a young doe caught by surprise at the edge of a stream. “You still want to have dinner with me?”

  Tearing his mind from the memory of how much he enjoyed venison, Graham shook his mate very, very gently. “Of course I do, you little idiot.” His words might have been harsh, but his tone was tender. “If I had my way, I’d have all my meals with you, and all my sleep, and all my spare time, too.”

  She frowned, but this time Graham thought she looked more thoughtful than dismissive. Thoughtful and increasingly sleepy. The adrenaline rush must be wearing off. In a few more minutes, she’d be ready for a nap.

  He continued his suggestion. “Option number two is that instead of taking you back to your apartment, I take you back to my house. You can have peace and quiet there just as easily as here, but I wouldn’t have to worry so much because I’d be able to be there in seconds if you needed me. Plus, help or company or whatever else you might need is only an intercom call away. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers. “Please, Melissa,” he murmured. “It would make me feel a lot better.”

  She sighed and nodded and let her head drop to his shoulder. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” she said, sighing. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter now. We can go back to your place.”

  Graham started to ask what she’d meant by that, but it was already too late. Missy had fallen asleep in his arms, her sweet lips parted on a sigh of exhaustion. Brow creased, he started toward the apartment door again. A flash of movement on his left stopped him.

  The man called Lincoln set his knife carefully aside on a wooden cutting board and fixed his eyes on Graham’s.

  “I got to tell you one thing before you leave, Mr. ‘Graham, Please,’ ” the half giant rumbled. “You somehow managed to find yourself the sweetest little girl this side of a fairy story, so you’d damned sure better take good care of her. Because if you don’t . . .” Lincoln shook his head and rubbed his meaty hands together. “If you don’t, I don’t care how much she loves you. I will pound you into the dirt until even the rain won’t cry to see you. Understand?”

  Graham raised an eyebrow and looked the black man over with new respect. If their positions had been reversed, he might have given Lincoln the same advice.

  “I understand,” Graham agreed quietly. Then he gathered Missy closer against his chest and turned to take her back to his home. Where she belonged.

  When Missy woke, the clock on the nightstand read: 8:00, but it failed to specify A.M or P.M. She had to glance toward the window to supply the missing information. P.M. The only light peeking through the blinds had the dim wattage and the golden cast of street lamps.

  Though she had no trouble recognizing where she was—she had become more than passingly familiar with Graham’s bed over the course of the weekend—it took Missy a minute to remember exactly how she had gotten there. She seemed to recall leaving that morning, making a concerted effort to separate herself from Graham and the crazy intimate spell he had woven over her with the clever use of sex and knock-knock jokes. Every time she’d been on the verge of running away, he had slipped in another ridiculously bad joke and made her laugh and groan simultaneously. The tactic had served to ease her tension and make him seem even more perfect all at the same time.

  The man was devious.

  Turning her head away from the window brought a whole host of memories from earlier in the day flooding back. There had been the trip home, the flowers, the attack . . .

  Drinking tea in Lincoln’s ki
tchen and feeling safe and drowsy in Graham’s arms.

  And that, she supposed, explained how she’d ended up back here. But it didn’t explain what had happened to her host-cum-knight-errant.

  Missy strained her ears to listen through the silence, but all she heard was the white noise of the quiet neighborhood outside and the faint rustle of her own breathing. If Graham was in the house, as opposed to in the club, he wasn’t in the bedroom or even probably on the second floor. If she wanted to see him, she would have to go and find him.

  So did she want to?

  She remembered the last words they had said to each other before they fell asleep. Graham had been surprisingly restrained and reasonable and had asked her, rather than commanded her, to return to his house instead of to her apartment. And just like that, Missy had come to realize that it didn’t matter how diligently she had been protecting her heart; it was already lost. It had been Graham’s from the beginning. He had owned her heart when he’d still been an ill-defined fantasy trapped in the recesses of her most secret wishes. Getting to know him had only deepened her certainty that she would always love him.

  If she had needed proof, her subconscious had provided it in the aftermath of her attack. The first thing she had thought of when the panic of the moment had faded was that she wished Graham had been with her. If he’d been with her before the attack, he would have protected her; and if he had appeared immediately afterward, he would have wrapped her up in his arms and made her feel safe and secure and cherished in a way no one else had ever made her feel. And in that moment after the crisis was past, all Missy had wanted was to feel Graham’s arms around her.

  If that wasn’t love, she didn’t know what was.

  The problem with this sudden rush of self-awareness, Missy acknowledged, was that it did nothing to clarify the truth of Graham’s feelings. He said he loved her, but was that his heart talking or a more southerly portion of his anatomy? And what would hurt more? Cutting her losses and running before she fell any deeper in love with him, or waiting to see whether or not he fell out of love with her as quickly as he had fallen in?

  Missy sat up with a groan. She could spend all night dwelling on that question, but she had a feeling that in the end all she would have to show for it would be a headache and a bad temper. For a few hours maybe she would be better off just dealing with each moment as it happened.

  Wow, I sound so Zen.

  Snorting, Missy pushed away the blanket someone—likely Graham—had tucked around her, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. To her surprise, she wore a pair of her own shortie pajamas in a soft pink, not the borrowed clothes she remembered going home in. Graham must have thought to pack her a bag this time.

  Ten minutes in the bathroom left her with an empty bladder, clean teeth, and the kind of alertness that only came from many liberal splashes of cold water to a sleep-fogged face. So armed, she grabbed one of Graham’s shirts from the closet to use as a robe and wrapped it around her before she padded down the stair and headed toward his study.

  She ran into Logan in the downstairs hall and felt her face go so hot, she considered offering him an omelet.

  Just crack a couple of eggs onto my cheeks and we’re good to go.

  The man didn’t say anything about their last meeting, though. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He also didn’t look directly at her. He nodded politely, gestured for her to precede him into the study, and fixed his gaze on the doorjamb while she entered the room.

  Once again she found Graham poring over a pile of paperwork, and again he looked up the moment she crossed the threshold.

  “Hey,” he greeted her, his expression softening into a warm smile. “How are you feeling?”

  Missy reached to take the hand he held out to her and shrugged. “Not bad. My voice seems to have held up pretty well, so that’s a benefit. The bruises look like heck, but they’ll fade in a few days. All in all, I’d say it could have been worse.”

  Graham scowled and stepped out from behind his desk to draw her into his arms. “Don’t say things like that. This was plenty bad enough.”

  Her heart fluttered inside her chest.

  “Right,” she murmured, unable to resist the temptation to lay her head on his shoulder and rub her cheek against the smooth cotton of his shirt. She could have leaned on him for the rest of the night. For the rest of her life. “Gotcha. No morbid speculation. I think I can handle that.”

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his breath ruffling the fine strands of her hair. “That’s my girl.”

  The expression had Missy pulling back and staring intently up at him. She didn’t know what she was looking for. It wasn’t as if she could read his intent behind every word on his face. But that didn’t stop her from trying.

  From the direction of the hallway came the sound of someone very politely clearing his throat.

  Missy blushed. She had forgotten all about Logan.

  Graham turned her until they both faced the door, and tucked her securely against his side.

  “Logan,” he greeted the other man. “I thought I told you I’d be taking the rest of the night off.”

  The pack beta nodded brusquely, his gaze fixed on Graham’s right shoulder. The one farther away from Missy. “You did, but I’ve just gotten some news that I think you really need to hear.”

  Missy felt Graham stiffen beside her and glanced curiously from his face to Logan’s and back again. Neither of them looked happy.

  “What is it?” she heard Graham demand. “Is it the club?”

  Somehow, Missy could tell by his tone of voice that he knew the answer to his question would be “no” even before he bothered to ask it.

  Logan shook his head. “No. It’s Curtis.”

  Graham swore with a creativity Missy might have admired under other circumstances, but the tension that filled him proved highly distracting. Then tension and a curious sense of foreboding filled her the instant Graham spoke the name of the cousin he’d explained earlier was attempting to take over the pack.

  “Curtis again? Well, let him know that I’m not interested in anything he has to say. Unless he’s come to admit his involvement in the attack on my mate that happened this morning.”

  Neither of the men so much as blinked, but Missy flinched as if she’d been struck. It had never occurred to her that Graham’s troublesome cousin might be behind her attack. When it had happened, she hadn’t had time to think at all, and since Lincoln’s rescue she’d been either too shaken up or too asleep to speculate.

  It didn’t make any sense. Why would Curtis want to hurt Missy? She had no influence over Graham’s position as Silverback Alpha. Harming her wouldn’t undermine his position. In fact, based on what she had gathered about the general consensus among Lupines when it came to humans, getting rid of Missy might actually improve Graham’s standing with the pack.

  “You knew that wasn’t going to happen,” Logan said. “I’m sure he’ll crow from the rooftops if his plan to seize control from you succeeds, but right now he knows that admitting his culpability would be a very bad move. So he’s pulled something else entirely out of his bag of tricks.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’m not sure if it qualifies as overconfidence, hubris, or pure stupidity,” Logan said, “but I’ll admit that it’s got balls. Curtis apparently wants to go into that Howl he called with new contenders for your place all lined up. Maybe he thinks that will make his own bid look more appropriate. Either way, he’s already spread the word to the pack that Thursday night there will be a matehunt.”

  Missy heard Graham swear again, something soft and sibilant and extremely vile.

  “He can’t do that,” Graham growled in a tone that would have sent most Navy SEALs running to their mothers. She could practically feel the anger vibrating through him, but she didn’t fear it. Some part of her knew that no matter how angry he became, his fury would never be directed at her. “He’s already called a Howl against ev
ery one of our customs. Now he thinks he can call the matehunt, as well? That little shit needs to be taught a lesson.”

  “You’ll have to teach it at the hunt,” Logan said. “The females are already arriving, and from what they tell me, the males who have been out of town are on their way back. There’s not much we can do to keep it from happening now.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  There was a momentary silence during which Missy could feel Graham struggling for control. She knew he wanted to chew glass, but she also knew that he realized it wouldn’t help. She hated to see him like this. Instinctively she raised the arm she had looped around his back and began to massage his shoulders with slow, soothing motions.

  “Okay, so did you come in here just to ruin my day,” he finally continued, “or do you have a suggestion for how we should deal with this?”

  “I don’t think we have much choice but to go along with it. If you call it off, it will look like you couldn’t control Curtis well enough to keep him from issuing orders without your consent. And if you let it go but don’t participate, you get the same problem, plus the pack will wonder if Curtis has a point and Breeder’s Rights should be invoked.”

  “Translation: I’m fucked coming or going.”

  “Basically.”

  “Fine,” Graham bit out even as he instinctively leaned back into Missy’s stroking fingers. “We’ll go ahead with the hunt. I don’t see that at this point we really have much choice. I’ll just have to make sure I catch the right prize. That should take care of most of Curtis’s plans, right?”

  “With luck,” Logan said. “Anything that’s still a concern can be answered at the Howl, I would think.”

  “Right. Is there anything else you need me for?”

  “Why? You have plans?” The beta’s question rang with a hint of amusement.

  “You could say that, although the damn things have just changed, thanks to persons whose names I won’t mention.” Graham spoke wryly, his mouth twisting into the semblance of a smile. “Now it looks like I’ll be giving lessons in cultural anthropology.”