Missy frowned, confused.
“Well, you have fun with that, boss. Things look to be quiet at the club tonight, so I’ll do my best to keep the idiot stuff off your desk.”
“You couldn’t have thought of that fifteen minutes ago?”
Logan just laughed and offered his alpha a salute as he turned and faded back down the hall.
“I think I missed about seven-eighths of that conversation,” Missy murmured, her brow furrowed as she scowled up at the man beside her. “Was it supposed to be that way?”
Graham sighed. “Don’t worry, baby. Whatever you missed, I can fill you in on now.” Missy let him take her hand and tug her over to the sofa. She even sank down onto it without a hint of protest. “What parts didn’t you get?”
“Well, they started with Logan having some news for you and ended with something about cultural anthropology. . . .”
He laughed. “You didn’t get any of it?”
“No, I got some. At least, I got that your cousin Curtis is not only the one you think attacked me this morning, but he’s also committed a serious Lupine faux pas of some kind by arranging a big shindig that you’re supposed to be in charge of. Am I close?”
“Close enough. The problem, though, is less that Curtis arranged a couple of things without me and more what he arranged and why.”
“Okay, I’m assuming that the way has to do with what you told me the other day, about Curtis wanting to take over leading the pack from you.”
“Good assumption. I’m sure that’s why he arranged your attack today. He knew that if he could take you out of the picture, it would only boost his own chances to be alpha.”
“Why?”
“Because only mated Lupines are supposed to be alpha,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, you told me that, but you’ve been alpha for, like, ten years, and you never had a mate.”
“When I first took over, I was only twenty-five. It’s not so unheard of for a male that age to be unmated. Everyone assumed it would happen sooner or later. Unfortunately, I think they were all banking on the sooner.”
“But where do I fit into this picture?”
“Right by my side,” he told her promptly. “As my mate. Curtis just found out this weekend that I had found a mate. I didn’t tell him your name, but it’s impossible to keep secrets within the pack. Someone else must have let it slip, and he used it to track you down.”
“I still don’t understand what he gets out of kidnapping or killing me.”
Graham gave her an incredulous look. “He gets to throw me back to being mateless. He gets to take away my woman, cause me intense pain, spoil any chance I had at future happiness, and he gets to step up with one child already as my logical successor.”
Missy shook her head. “That makes no sense. Even if I am your mate, getting rid of me only hurts you temporarily. Once you find a new mate, you’re back to being alpha and his murderous rampage is all for nothing.”
“Have you listened to nothing I’ve told you about being a Lupine mate?” he demanded, half-laughing in obvious exasperation. “You are my mate. You’re a part of me, and not an interchangeable one. We were Fated to be together. You think Fate offers a ‘just in case’ option? It doesn’t work like that. You’re it for me. You are my mate until the day I die. End of story.”
“No,” she protested, attempting to scramble off the sofa and away from him. “I’m not that. I can’t be that. It’s too much pressure. I mean, I was having enough trouble with the idea of being important to you. I can’t handle being . . . vital.”
He grabbed her arms and hauled her back down onto the cushions. “Well, that’s too bad for you, because it’s already a done deal. And if I were you, I’d work really hard on getting used to it. Otherwise I can’t be responsible for what happens on Thursday night.”
She opened her mouth for another tirade, but his words stopped her. She eyed him suspiciously. “Why? What happens Thursday night?”
“Was that one of the parts of the conversation you didn’t quite get?”
She set her jaw at his sarcastic tone. “Let’s say it was so you can feel all nice and superior while you explain it to me again. Then, if I like what I hear, maybe I’ll decide to do you a favor and be your mate, in spite of the impossible job demands.”
Graham’s eyes narrowed, and she could almost see the struggle for control going on inside him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll admit that we’re mated and then you’ll try very hard to convince me that you mean it, because that’s going to be the only way you’re likely to make it out of Thursday night with your dignity and sanity intact. We’re going to a matehunt, sweetheart, and if you don’t let everyone know you’re already taken, you’re going to get a lot closer acquainted to a lot more werewolves than just me.”
His words made her eyes widen and her muscles stiffen. “What are you talking about? What’s a matehunt?”
“A matehunt is what Logan came to tell me about. It’s what Cousin Curtis is pulling next,” Graham explained, running a weary hand through his hair before leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.
For a minute, Missy’s compassion almost overwhelmed her uneasiness. He looked exhausted. Normally, he projected such an air of sex appeal and energy that it was easy to forget the kind of pressure he was under. Not only did he have a club to manage and a pack to run; he also had a power-hungry cousin looking to usurp his position, and now an almost-girlfriend who couldn’t quite decide if that was what she really wanted to be.
“A matehunt is a traditional way for my kind to form breeding pairs,” he explained. His voice was low and ominously rumbling. “It’s where all the unmated members of the pack gather in the nearest wooded area, Central Park in our case, and the females get a thirty-second head start.”
A head start? Oh, Lord, that did not sound good.
“F-for what?” she stammered, wondering if she really wanted to know the answer.
“For giving them a fighting chance,” he replied. “Because after thirty seconds the males shift into their wereforms. And once they’re turned loose, they go hunting.”
Her eyes opened even wider. Her jaw dropped to her chin, and her breath stopped dead in her throat.
SO not good.
“And do you know what happens when a male catches a female, Missy?” he demanded. His tone was harsh, but underneath she could hear a faint, vibrating purr. Not the way a kitten purrs when it gets its belly rubbed, but the way a lion purrs when it’s ripping through the tender belly of its prey.
She shook her head even though she was very much afraid she could guess.
“He takes her.”
Missy had been so wrapped up in his words, she hadn’t noticed the tension slowly building inside him. She had felt it building in herself, though. She hadn’t recognized that as he explained the hunt to her, he might be picturing how it would be if it weren’t an abstract concept featuring nameless “male” and “female.” How it would be if it were Graham and Melissa and the full moon lighting the forest while he hunted for the other half of himself.
She hadn’t realized he might be picturing that because she’d been too busy picturing it herself. Did it make her a big pervert, she wondered, that the idea of this man—and only this man—chasing her through a midnight forest with the sole intention of catching her and claiming her aroused her to an almost unbearable level?
Probably, she concluded.
Darting forward so quickly she couldn’t have stopped him if she tried, Graham nipped her earlobe hard enough to sting. Missy yelped and jumped and tried to squirm away, but Graham was too fast. Before the command even traveled from her brain to her legs, he was on her, pushing her back on the sofa and pinning her there, crouching over her like a wolf over its prey.
“We pick the one we want for a mate,” he told her, and now the glint in his green-gold eyes made it obvious exactly what he was picturing. Even if Missy hadn’t already been picturing the same thing. “W
e chase her down. And we take her. There’s no seduction, no asking what she wants. She knows what she’s in for when she decides to run, and once she does, she can’t back out. When the males give chase, they’re in rut. Their instincts are in control, and there’s no werewolf alive who can control his need to mate when he’s in rut. If a hunt didn’t end in sex, it would end in death. Which do you think is a better choice?”
Missy froze beneath him. The open savagery of what he was describing seemed so foreign, so incomprehensible, to her. It fascinated her even as it frightened her.
“But deaths are rare,” he continued, voice harsh, eyes glinting. “They only happen occasionally, when more than one of us want the same woman. Do you know what happens then, Melissa Jane?”
Missy whimpered. He loomed over her until he blocked out the rest of the room, not that she would have been able to focus on anything but him. He filled her senses like air filled her lungs, and she was starting to believe he might be just as vital.
“If she’s fast enough, she might run again until another male catches her. But if she’s too hurt or too tired to run anymore, or if one of the males who caught her is the one she wants, she just lays there and watches while they fight over her. It’s not usually to the death, but you can never tell. Some Lupines are just more . . . aggressive than others.”
She trembled, trying not to picture the dark forest, the smell of rich soil and fresh blood, the sound of fangs biting and claws ripping, or growls and screams and the eerie silence of victory.
“Then whoever wins gets to take her again, only by that point, the winner is usually more beast than man, and he’s not likely to care about his new mate’s pleas for mercy. All he wants is to mate. To claim his woman and show her exactly how male and female were meant to fit together.”
Missy swallowed hard, remembering exactly how she and Graham fit together. If that weren’t proof that they had been made for each other, nothing else in heaven or on earth would ever convince her.
“At that point, his beast is in control, not his man, and beasts aren’t known to be tender lovers. They’re rough and fast and frantic, and they claim her over and over until the sun comes up and dispels the hunt magic from the air. By that time she may or may not be able to walk, but it won’t matter, because the winner will have her declared his mate, and he’ll have as long as he wants to work off the residual hunt lust. I hear it only takes a week or two. On average.”
She closed her eyes and shuddered. A week or two? She’d never make it. Two days had nearly landed her in the hospital, and he was talking weeks?
“Hmm. Was that fear, I wonder? Or arousal?” He nuzzled the tender hollow of her neck and rasped the sensitive skin with his tongue. “I wouldn’t blame you for being afraid. Lupines, like wolves, are predators. They live for the hunt, and the only prey they won’t go after is the kind that’s already been picked clean. The only way to convince a Lupine that the prey isn’t worth the chase is if someone else has already taken everything she has to offer.”
His tongue licked a damp path across her throat to lave against the bite mark he’d left there. He scraped his teeth over it with exquisite delicacy before he lapped his way up to her ear. He tugged lightly at the plump lobe, swirled his tongue along the outer edge, and breathed quietly inside, “I have a feeling you’d be very sought after. If the hunters thought you were worth the chase.”
Missy felt a powerful shudder rip through her, but she kept her eyes on his and spoke softly. “But what happens when a woman already has a mate? Isn’t it his responsibility, his duty, to protect her? To make sure that no one else touches her, even if he has to chase her again like he did the first time?”
“Ah, does that mean you can see some advantages to being my mate?”
He smiled down at her and she found she didn’t even mind the hint of smugness.
“We really have no choice but to join the hunt on Thursday,” he explained, sounding almost as if he regretted it, regretted putting her through it. “Not only would sitting out give Curtis more ammunition for his challenge, but it would be an unforgiveable breach of tradition in the eyes of the pack. The alpha always participates in the hunt, but more important, he traditionally leads it.”
“Even if he already has a mate?”
Graham nodded. “Even then. If he has a mate, his Luna leads the females into the forest and then runs for as long as she’s in the mood for before she decides to let her alpha catch her again.”
“And the alpha only hunts for his own mate?”
“Of course. Wolves mate for life.”
Missy took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “So if we’re really mates, then we’re in this together. If you run, I run.”
Graham nodded. “But if you go as my mate, I can keep you safe.”
She pulled a face. “Somehow I think I’d be safest of all if I didn’t go in the first place.”
“Maybe, but that’s not an option,” he said. “Not for either one of us.”
“I’m not Lupine,” she reminded him. “I’m human. Will you be allowed to hunt a human?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why not? Lupines are predators. We’ll hunt anything that runs away.”
“And I really have to run from you? Even though I might not really mind so much getting caught?”
He smiled and eased himself down onto the sofa beside her until he no longer loomed menacingly over her. “Even then. Unfortunately, because we haven’t made any kind of public announcement yet, I’m not officially mated, which means I have to participate in the hunt. And since you’re my mate, you’re the one I really want to be hunting.”
She closed her eyes and groaned. “Lord! After what you just told me about these hunts, I would have to be completely out of my mind to go wandering out there alone in a park full of horny werewolves. You do understand that, don’t you?”
He grinned and kissed her. “Absolutely certifiable.”
Missy gazed up at him and sobered. “I need you to understand something for me, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Even if I am your mate, I’m still human, and the human part of me has a really hard time looking at this hunt thing as anything other than a glorified excuse for rape, so you’re going to have to cut me some slack if I never express much enthusiasm for the tradition.”
He grimaced. “It’s not my favorite, either, and you’re not going to hear a lot of regret in my voice when I tell you it’s one that’s been fading from use over the last few generations. Lupines might be traditional, but we don’t live in a vacuum. Our females value their independence as much as the next human woman. Very few of them are much more enamored of the idea of the hunt than you are.”
Missy gazed at him thoughtfully. “Does that mean it’s something that we—” She stopped and blushed. “I mean, that you could work on changing? Could you relegate it permanently to the past?”
“I’m sure if we put our minds to it, we could accomplish just about anything.”
Her lips curved as she lifted them to meet his. Their mouths fit together like puzzle pieces, clinging together as if shaped one for the other. After a few moments, though, Missy pulled away and snuggled closer against Graham’s comforting warming, her head burrowing into his chest.
“What is it, baby girl?” he murmured, stroking the hair tenderly back from her face.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to think less of me for it?”
Missy lifted her eyes to his and read only bafflement in the clear golden green depths.
“Why would I think less of you, you silly girl?”
“Because right now I’m so scared, I think I might hurl.”
Graham heard the wry tone of the words, but he also heard the genuine fear underneath them. All at once, Graham looked down at her and saw not the bright, stubborn, vivid woman he’d come to know over the last few days but the shy and vulnerable wallflower he’d picked up in Dmitri’s garden. He wrapped his arms around her and c
uddled her close.
“Aw, baby. I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I know you’re scared, and I wish I could tell you not to be. I didn’t mean to make you unhappy. I swear. Shh. . . . It’s okay. I promise, it’ll be okay. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
She lay rigid in his arms for all of two and a half seconds before she melted into him like sweet vanilla cream. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she held him close, burying her face in his shoulder and trembling.
“I’m scared,” Missy repeated, her voice whisper-soft now and choked with emotion, but at least half of that sounded like anger to him. “But the worst part is that I’m not even sure the matehunt ranks in the top three of my list of fears. In three days, you’ve managed to turn my entire world upside down.”
She raised her head until he could see her expression, and the frustration and anxiety there made him want to kick his own ass for upsetting her. “Friday afternoon I taught a roomful of five-year-olds how to tie their shoes, and today you’re telling me I’m going to have to run for my virtue through Central Park tonight, pursued by a pack of werewolves, one of whom thinks I’m his mate. I feel like I just got sucked into an alternate reality, and can’t decide if it’s based on dreams or nightmares.”
Graham reached up and tucked a soft strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I should have realized how hard I was pushing. It’s not fair to you. I know.”
She looked up at him with those big brown eyes, her lush, completely kissable lips trembling, and he cursed himself again, because as much as he regretted frightening her, there wasn’t much he could do to make the fear go away. He had as little choice in the hunt as she did, and he’d be damned if he’d give her up in addition to his place in the pack. Those were two things he had no intention of living without. He brushed a kiss across her forehead and cradled her head in his hand, massaging her scalp with his fingertips.
“That’s not the worst part, though,” she told him solemnly. “The mate thing, the werewolf thing, the hunt thing . . . not one of those is as bone-chillingly terrifying as the idea that you might actually be the man I’m meant to spend my life with.”
Big Bad Wolf Page 17
