She wondered suddenly what her friend would think of her latest adventure.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she replied. “Though I’ll admit that I didn’t sleep all that well, which is why I apparently managed to walk by you like an absolute idiot. Sorry about that.”
“No worries. I didn’t sleep well either.” Meg grabbed a cup of coffee of her desk and took a sip. “It didn’t help that sometime around two a.m., while I was staring at my mobile during a bout of insomnia, the news announced that there’d been some sort of attack in my neighbourhood. It’s that psycho killer with a thirst for gore, apparently; the one who’s been tearing people apart. I have to admit that I jumped out of bed and crammed more than one chair under a door handle.”
“Really? Another attack?” Emma bit the inside of her cheek. She knew perfectly well what was padding through London’s streets at night, terrorizing humans. But there was no way she was about to divulge the secret. “Do they actually know who it was, or is it just speculation at this point?”
Meg shrugged her shoulders. “They don’t seem to know anything. The reports have been a little odd, to say the least.” She let out a laugh. “In the daylight it all seems mad, really. It’s just one person with a knife, I’d wager. Some madman. Nothing to freak out about, really. I’m more likely to get killed by a fast-moving bus than that nutter.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Emma. “But tell me, have you heard anything specific?”
Meg cocked her head. “Why, have you?” she asked. “I get the feeling you know something.”
Emma shook her head a little too insistently. “Oh, no. Though I…I did hear that someone had gotten into an altercation in Hyde Park. I suppose I shouldn’t wander through the grounds after closing anymore.”
“No, silly, you absolutely shouldn’t. There are some crazies about these days.” Meg set her coffee on her desk and sat back in her chair. “Well, I guess we ought to get to work. I’ve got a deadline coming up. I’ll catch up with you a little later, yeah?”
“Yes, right,” replied Emma, “later.” She proceeded over to her desk on the other side of the lab and pulled up a chair, throwing her coat and scarf over its back. She would get to work herself, of course, but first, a little personal research was in order.
Angling her laptop away from the threat of prying eyes, she typed two words into the search engine:
Shape shifters.
The number of entries was nothing short of astounding. Millions of articles popped up on werewolf lore, stories of cursed creatures stealing babies from their homes; even tales of vampires invading homes in the dark of night.
But there was nothing about sexy, rugged broad-shouldered sex gods from Cornwall who got women all hot and bothered in pubs before altering into giant, wild animals, protectors who guided their female adorers through magical, hidden tunnels deep under London.
“Quite a fairy tale that would be,” she muttered under her breath.
“What’s that?” called Meg.
“Oh, nothing,” Emma replied. “Just talking to myself, as always.”
Quickly she shut down the window and moved on to the work that she was actually supposed to be doing, which involved isolating a gene that caused a particular inherited deformity of the human nasal canal. A mutation, it was, as was everything that led humans to evolve and change.
A mutation.
Emma put her chin in her hands, pondering the word. Of course. It was so simple. Shifters were the beneficiaries of what was no doubt an ancient genetic mutation; an enhancement that made them more powerful than their human counterparts. They were superhuman in the truest sense. Greater than human. Beings who’d evolved beyond regular, constricting bodies such as hers, they were walking miracles.
Not to mention another, even more unbelievable miracle: that two of their kind wanted her.
Worse still, she wanted them. Desperately. She couldn’t bloody wait to see them again, and kicked herself for not having set up a time and a place to meet. There was no way she could wait days or weeks in hopes of running into them. She craved their lips on her body again, their breath on her skin. Those voices, like melted chocolate, those fingers, those lips.
Damn it, woman. Get to work. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can get out of here and go Dire Wolf hunting.
She spent most of the day toiling on her research, her mind constantly veering back to the two men, pondering how she could find them again. She didn’t even know their last names, or where they lived. Didn’t have a mobile number for them. Her mouth was watering for a treat that she wasn’t sure she’d ever taste again, and the agony of it was almost too much to bear. We’ll find you, Roth had told her. She could only hope he’d meant it.
It was 4:00 p.m. when her friend’s voice pulled her nose up from her screen. “Listen, Em, I was thinking—do you want to go for a drink after work?”
“Shite,” she muttered. “Bloody hell.”
“It’s okay if you don’t…”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that as a reply to your question,” Emma replied, laughing awkwardly. “I just didn’t realize how late it was getting. Actually, yes, a drink sounds really good.” For a moment she contemplated the invitation before standing up to look across the room at her colleague. “I’ll go on one condition,” she said, tapping her upper lip with her index finger.
Meg was smiling now. “Oh? What’s that?”
“That you let me pick the pub.”
* * *
When five o’clock had rolled around, Emma led Meg the few blocks from the campus to the Suffolk Arms, the pub where she’d met the men the previous night. Her heart beat hard in anticipation, though her brain kept insisting that the likelihood of seeing her shifters was close to zero.
You’re an idiot for doing this, she told herself. It’s not exactly likely that the two hot beasts will be here.
She wondered again if they might simply have been playing with her. Perhaps it had all been a fun game. Testing a poor, helpless human woman to see how much they could frighten her. How much they could arouse her. How much they could tease her before they walked away.
Or maybe, just maybe, they were sincere.
Maybe they really did want her body as much as she wanted theirs.
Okay, so she was a twit. A sad, hopeful twit. But the strange, desperate truth was that she didn’t know what else to do. She wanted—no, needed—to see them; a need which had only increased over the course of the last several hours. She was hooked, and if she didn’t at least get to look at the two men soon, she felt like something inside her would snap like a thread that had been drawn too thin and too tight.
Anyhow, there had to be at least a small chance that they’d show up. If they did, one glance in their direction might just be enough to satisfy her strange craving. Just a taste. A quick look into those deep, mysterious eyes of theirs. She just wanted some sort of proof that they really existed, so that she could convince herself that the world was really capable of generating two such perfect specimens.
After ordering two glasses of red wine, the women sat down at the same table that Emma had occupied the previous night. Part of her wished she’d come to the pub alone. She was fidgety and nervous, and Meg was no idiot. She’d figure out sooner or later that something was off.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Meg. “You look a thousand miles away. Come to think of it, you’ve looked like that all day.”
“Oh,” Emma chuckled, picking her glass up. Maybe a sip of wine would calm her down. “I suppose I’m just tired.” She took a swig then set the glass down again, slipping her fingers over her neck as thoughts of Roth and Laird infiltrated her brain again. She didn’t realize how suggestively she was touching herself until her eyes met those of a man sitting up at the bar, watching her with an amused look on his face.
He looked like he probably smelled of fish and onions, his skin ashy, his stubble uneven. Something about him reminded Emma of an overly eager frog about to leap off its l
ily pad into her unwelcoming lap.
Emma pulled her hands down and shifted her gaze away, but too late. The man was already walking towards the table, no doubt taking her body language as an invitation. That was twice in two evenings that a man had approached her at this very table. Too bad this one was so much less appealing than Laird.
“We have a visitor,” she muttered. Meg turned around just in time to see the eager bastard who’d decided to invade their space.
“Hello, saucy lady,” the man said as he approached, his eyes fixed firmly on Emma’s. He was tall, lanky and pasty, his eyes a little sunken. In addition to his resemblance to an amphibian, he looked from his ambling gait as though he’d probably already had a few drinks too many.
“Hello,” Emma replied, immediately regretting starting the conversation with anything other than “Sod off, you odoriferous wank-monkey.”
“What’s your name, then?” he asked, leaning forward, grasping the edges of the table. “You’re a beauty, aren’t you?” For some insane reason, he was ignoring Meg altogether, focusing all his attention on Emma. It made no sense; Meg was the beauty. She was the tall goddess. Yet here the fucker was, breathing his foulness all over her. She winced at the smell of his breath. Halibut and beer together. Awful. She didn’t open her mouth to answer him, if only for fear that she’d taste his scent on her tongue.
He slipped around the table, pressing his hip into her shoulder and taking a strand of her hair between his fingers. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what your name is. You’re a real beauty. That’s all I care about.”
“Look, you prick, my friend has no desire to speak to you,” Meg hissed at him. He turned to her for a moment, sneered, then went back to harassing Emma.
“Please, go away,” Emma finally said, narrowing her eyes. It was as rude as she dared to be. What if this man was another shifter? What if he was strong enough to hurt both her and her friend? Meg didn’t know about their kind. She didn’t know that they might be in grave danger.
But no, he couldn’t be. He didn’t feel right, somehow. The bastard was just an average human shite, hanging about in a pub. The sort of sleazy man who thought that the way to a woman’s heart was through physical intimidation and pressure.
“Go away?” the man asked, grabbing her shoulder and rubbing it far too aggressively. He probably thought she was enjoying it, the idiot. “You don’t really want me to do that, do you?”
“Yes, in fact I do,” she snarled. She considered trying to stand, trying to push him away, but she didn’t want to cause a scene.
Stupid girl. Cause a fucking scene. Wreak havoc. Kick him in the bollocks. What are you so scared of?
“No you don’t,” he said. “I think you want some company.” The man was leaning down now, breathing his foulness into her ear. “I saw how you were touching yourself, love. I saw how you looked at me.”
“I wasn’t…” she began, but her honesty stopped her from proceeding. Well, she had been touching herself, but not because of him. “I was thinking about someone else,” she protested.
“Oh, do fuck off, you manure-flavoured ponce,” Meg growled, rising to her feet. She was taller than the slimy arsehole, but that didn’t seem to intimidate him. No doubt he knew that he was stronger than any woman; he could as easily push her away as move a chair.
“Why don’t you fuck off, lass?” he asked, his fingers holding into Emma’s shoulder like he wanted to ensure to trap her in her seat while he dealt with her inconvenient colleague. “Go find your own shag for the night. Your friend here has found hers already.”
Emma looked up at Meg, her eyes pleading, as if to say do something, please. But she knew perfectly well that there was little her friend could do. The fucker wasn’t going to leave her alone unless someone forced him to.
Bloody hell. This evening was so not going as she’d hoped.
“I’m off to fetch the manager,” Meg said, her tone hard and ice cold, her eyes locking on Emma’s. “Screw this.”
She stormed off towards the bar, even as the man knelt down next to Emma and pushed his face towards hers, hand still on her shoulder. He was way too close now. She’d have to do something, whether he was digging his claws into her or not.
She hardened her insides, rolling her fists into stones, ready to punch him in the face if his disgusting face moved one inch closer. There was no way she was letting him put his lips on her. No way he would lay a finger on the places that Roth and Laird had stroked.
She shut her eyes, preparing to thrust her fist wildly in his direction if she felt his vile breath on her skin one more time. Right, Emma. You can do this. Just nail him in his nasty nose. Don’t be such a bloody coward.
But when a sudden hard gust of wind blew across her face and a choking gasp met her ears, her eyes popped back open, her jaw dropping as she felt the man’s hand yank suddenly away from her shoulder.
Emma drew a hard intake of breath, shocked and delighted to see that her unwelcome suitor was flying through the air, his back slamming hard into a solid oak table.
He slumped down to the ground, groaning in pain, his hand clutching at his chest, his breath coming in short, tight bursts.
“Holy shit,” Emma murmured under her breath. Once again, she’d been rescued by an unseen entity.
One of these days she was going to have to learn to rescue herself.
11
Emma flung her chair backwards as she sprang to her feet. Spinning around to see what invisible force had shoved her smelly admirer away, her eyes locked on the impossibly bright irises of what could only be a Dire Wolf shifter.
The strange part was that he wasn’t one of her two almost-lovers.
This man was a stranger.
“Who are you?” she gasped. Were they coming out of the woodwork now? Was she the butt of some bizarre Dire Wolf practical joke?
“My name’s Cillian,” said the man, a friendly smile telling Emma that somehow he knew exactly who she was, and that this was no joke. “With a C, though it sounds like a K.”
“Right, Cillian with a C,” she replied, “but…um…who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m a friend of Roth’s and Laird’s, at your service.” He pulled up a chair and sat down, looking over his shoulder towards the pub’s door. “They told me to check in and see if you were here. They’ll be here soon, incidentally. Are you all right, then?”
Emma let out a hard shudder, releasing all the tension that had built up inside her muscles over the last few minutes. “Yes, fine,” she said. “Thank you for that,” she added, nodding to the groaning man who was slowly pulling himself to his feet several feet away.
“No problem at all.” Cillian threw the man a quick glance and let out a chuckle before returning his attention to Emma. “Listen, I noticed that you’re here with a friend. I’m sure you agree that it would be best that she doesn’t know what I am,” he said, his eyes moving to the blond woman who was now making her way back towards the table. He rose to his feet and extended a hand towards her.
“What’s happened?” Meg asked as she shook it. “I saw the tosser go flying…are you responsible for that?”
“This is Cillian,” said Emma, gesturing to her new acquaintance. He’s just a normal everyday extremely handsome fellow with big muscles and definitely not a Dire Wolf shifter or any other sort of mythological creature. “He, um, helped me.”
“Well, hello there,” Meg replied, her tone of voice losing its edge as she smiled at the very tall young man. “Blimey, who designed you? You’re a gorgeous one, aren’t you? What on earth are you doing in a place like this?”
All of a sudden, Emma wanted to bury her face in her hands and either laugh or cry. This was all too much. Meg had already figured out that there was something special about Cillian, and to add to it, Roth and Laird were apparently about to show up. There would be no explaining to Meg how she’d come to be acquainted with three such men.
As if in response to her quandary, the p
ub’s door opened and two large figures made their way inside, striding immediately over to the table. Emma turned to face them, her heart leaping into a space very close to her throat.
“Hello, lovely,” Laird said, a warm smile on his face as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. He seemed to be ignoring the man in his periphery who was currently in the process of crawling back to his stool by the bar.
“Hello,” Emma replied. A smile twitched her lips upwards for what felt like the first time since she’d said good-bye to them the previous night. She turned around, gesturing again towards her co-worker. “This is my friend and colleague, Meg. Meg, this is…Laird…and Roth.”
Cillian moved in to say something quiet to Roth, and Meg took advantage of the chance to pull her friend aside.
“What the hell is going on here? What sort of secret life have you been living?” she asked, pressing her face close to Emma’s, her jaw slack as she took in the three men. “It’s like a Sexy Bloke Convention in here all of a sudden.”
“There’s no secret life,” Emma assured her, wondering how starkly the lie must be painting itself on her face. “I only met Roth and Laird for the first time last night. I’ve never met Cillian before just now, I swear.”
“Well, they all seem very, very pleasant. It’s no wonder you didn’t sleep last night, woman. No wonder you were so distracted today.” Meg finally shut her mouth, seemingly thinking it best not to ramble about the men’s ridiculous handsomeness any further while they were standing so close by. They’d finished their conversation, and Cillian was now in the process of wandering over.
“Meg, I wonder, would you care to join me for dinner so that we could leave these three alone?” he asked, smiling warmly. “There’s a great place not far from here that I was thinking of heading to myself.”
Emma watched him closely. His eyes looked brighter than before, his smile more engaging. No doubt he was doing something to her colleague’s mind, just as Roth had done to her from across the room the previous night. Cillian was probably charming Meg—not that it took much, with such a willing victim. He was splendid-looking, all broad jaw and wicked, cunning eyes. Just Meg’s type.
Alpha’s Mate: Dire Wolves of London, Book One Page 8
