I felt like an asshole, but saw no point in stopping there. “If you don’t want to hear more stories like that, tell your bitches to back off or they’ll be just as dead as Julie.”
“If you fight them, whether you mean to or not, you are competing for me,” he pointed out.
“That’s not my problem.”
“Yes, it is. There are some females moving up quickly in the pack, challenging the higher ranking wolves. They will not fight fair.”
“If they’re fool enough to attack me, neither will I,” I growled.
“Damn it, Red, if you’d just let me help you,” he began.
“If I accept your offer, then you could protect me, is that right?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “So, that’s why you came by.”
“That’s not the only reason.” A touch of growl was creeping back into his voice.
“I’m sorry, Marco, but that’s not going to happen.”
He snarled and snapped at me in a quick gesture that, though not human, its meaning was clear.
“Fuck you, too,” I said as he retreated down the front steps into the rain.
“Any time you’re ready,” he growled over his shoulder.
“Wait, where’s your car?” I yelled to be heard above the storm.
“At the end of the drive,” he answered without turning around.
Through flashes of lightning I watched as Marco walked down the drive, the lines of his body rigid with anger. The rain had soaked him through before he’d even reached the arch of white roses across the yard. I put my hands in my pockets to prevent reaching out to him and bit my lip to keep from calling him back. Would I have been using Marco if I’d called him back? Was it just his animal magnetism that made me take an involuntary step forward? Or was it something else? I ended up sitting on the top step, just out of the rain. If I took another step, even to try to go back in the house, I knew my feet would end up taking me to him. As he moved farther down the drive, I thought of the long night ahead of me and slid to the next step.
The rain was a cold shock, like icy needles against my skin. His hips swayed as he walked and thoughts came to my mind so sexual and raw in nature, that I doubled over and crawled down the next two steps. I wanted Marco so much that it physically hurt to resist him. My clothes were soaked through by the cold rain, but I could not be cooled. A fever burned in me that had nothing to do with my power and everything to do with my desire to rip those wet jeans from his body and possess the warm flesh of the man beneath.
Steam began to rise from my body where the rain touched me, and I would not have been surprised if it sizzled. I crawled down the last few steps, gasping for breath around the longing that I felt. At last cool wet grass touched my hands and I lay face down in front of the steps. I could not allow myself to stand up. He was nearly past the curve in the driveway that would put him out of my sight. If I stood up, I would run to him.
My body seemed to have a mind of its own. I felt myself begin to crawl on my stomach across the grass. The rain hit the ground with such a violence that it splashed into my eyes, but still I moved toward him. When I reached the archway across the yard, I had a clear view of Marco as he reached the curve in the drive. He paused and for a minute I thought he would turn around. He must have been fighting the same feeling that I was. If he turned and saw me, I knew he would come back. I watched him for any sign that he was fighting as hard as I was to control himself, and for the longest time, he didn’t move. If he saw me there in the grass there would be no going back. Marco wouldn’t be leaving that night or maybe ever. He took a deep breath, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall before he moved those last few paces around the corner.
I rolled to my back and let the rain hit me in the face, blocked only slightly by the arch of roses. As I fought to regain control Marco’s words haunted me, “You will not find an ordinary man who can satisfy you.”
I’m not sure how long I lay there, trying to decide if I was disappointed or relieved that he hadn’t looked back, before I began to wonder what I was going to do. The desire I had felt only moments before had been powerful. Nothing I had ever experienced compared. This was not common lust. If it were, I was not without resources. I could take care of things on my own, but I needed something that batteries could not provide. Alfred needed to hurry before I did something stupid.
*****
After making my way back onto the porch, I stripped and wrung out my clothes before padding barefoot back into the house. The laundry room was located at the end of the hall, past Alfred’s room and the guest room. I slapped my wet clothes into the machine and found a towel to dry off with. As I traced my steps back through the house, mopping up my wet footprints, I felt like an idiot. At least Marco hadn’t seen me. No damage had been done except to my own pride. No one had ever made me even remotely want to crawl before, but I couldn’t stop myself from moving toward Marco. Even if someone had tied me up, I think I would have rolled to him.
Once I made my way upstairs and out of the shower for the second time, I was more than ready to sleep. When I replaced the lock of Mathias’ hair in the back of the journal, I realized that the pink stone hanging from the necklace was a rose quartz surrounded by a border of silver. If I had paid closer attention, I would have recognized the stone the first time. But, that was not important at the moment. At this point, I went to close the book, but the page that lay open had a new message:
Be careful who you love. We have the ability, through our most intimate of touches, to take on the characteristics of others. It could be some aspect of their personality, or just liking their favorite food. But you must choose wisely, for there are worse things than craving onions instead of candy.
Often times these effects do not last. It depends upon the power of the sorcerer or sorceress, and how close they were to the individual.
As I closed the book, I had the strong impression Mathias was trying to tell me that I could not causally take werewolves to my bed. After placing the journal on my bedside table, I turned out the light, slid between the sheets, and found sleep only a breath away.
*****
When I woke up the next morning, I looked at the clock to find it was only seven thirty. It chapped my ass how I could never sleep late when I had the opportunity. So, I crawled out of bed, slipped on a pair of green boxer shorts that clashed horribly with my purple t-shirt and went downstairs to make breakfast.
Mathias’ words from the night before played again through my head and I wondered exactly what he had meant by them. I was surprised that my dreams were not haunted by more perverse images, but if I’d had dreams, they were forgotten.
I had barely started the coffee when I heard a knock at the door.
“Good morning, Kat,” I yawned as I opened the door.
“Are you okay?” She took in my appearance with a glance and cringed at the neon green boxer shorts.
“It’s Saturday morning and I’m awake before nine o’clock. What do you think?”
She laughed. “I think you let a court jester pick out your clothes.”
“Up yours.” I started to walk away, and then turned back. “You want some breakfast?”
“Such manners,” she scolded. “I liked you better when Alfred was around.”
I glared at her and she quickly added, “Okay, I won’t go there.”
After rummaging around briefly, I decided I was in the mood for waffles and began gathering my ingredients.
“So, how did it go with the journal? What did you find out?”
It took me a minute to answer the question. I didn’t want to deliberately leave Kat out of the loop, but it seemed wrong to share with someone the information that Mathias had taken such great pains to make sure was for my eyes only.
She seemed to pick up on my hesitation. “It’s all right if you can’t tell me. I understand.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, some of it was just ... personal, about him and his life. But, I can te
ll you some things.”
“Okay.”
“Well, for one, the journal is enchanted. It says different things to different people.”
“Really? I wonder what it said to Marco?”
“That’s what I asked him.”
“Wait, you asked him? When did you talk to him?”
“He was here last night,” I said quickly, trying to get back to the subject, but Kat would not be deterred.
“Whoa. What are you not telling me?”
“I’m getting there, just hold on.” I turned back to the fridge to look for an egg.
“All right then, what were you saying?”
“The journal told Marco in no uncertain terms that he was supposed to give it to me. See, it was meant for me all along. So, Marco was only able to read it like a diary, telling Mathias’ day to day activities. It didn’t tell about how to control his power or anything like that.”
“I take it that’s what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can understand you not wanting to share that. I wouldn’t understand it anyway. I’ve never even met a wizard. So, your great, great, grandfather’s name was Mathias?”
“Yeah,” I answered, pouring batter into the waffle press. “Mathias Alexander, to be exact.”
“Are you going to tell the rest of your family?”
“I don’t think so. At least not until I straighten things out in my own mind. From the way he talked, I think it’s best if no one else knows.”
“Why, are you in some kind of danger?”
“If the wrong person were to find out, possibly.”
Kat told me about some new ideas for revamping her shop while I put a big golden brown waffle onto her plate.
“You know, I just come by here for the food.” She smiled.
“Yeah, I figured as much.”
“Well, that and the off chance I might get to see Alfred in a bath robe again.” She laughed.
“You’re sick,” I teased, passing her the syrup.
“Most likely.”
I told her how the date with Elijah had gone the night before. She listened with bated breath when I got to the part where Marco rang my doorbell.
“He just showed up on your front porch?”
“Mmhm, looking better than he had a right to, as usual.”
“I know the history between you two, and I swear if it were me, I’d do things to him that would make whatever went on in your dungeon look mild in comparison.”
“Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me,” I said sarcastically.
I finished telling her about my conversation with Marco the night before, only I left out the fact that I’d crawled across the yard after him.
“I love Alfred,” she began, “I really do, but have you lost your damn mind?”
Her reaction made me laugh. “Wait till you hear what Mathias had to say about the matter.”
Once I’d told Kat about Mathias’ last warning, she got up to get some more coffee with an exclaimed, “Damn.”
“I know. What really sucks is he’s probably right.”
“How can you know for sure what he meant though? I mean, he could see the future, right? He might have been warning you about somebody that you haven’t even met yet.”
“That’s true. You realize of course, that I’ve tumbled this around in my head in every way possible? I can only assume that it will become clear when it was meant to. Or maybe it’s just a general warning. Either way, it certainly explains some weirdness that went on when I was dating Bradley.”
Kat cringed at the sound of his name. “Ugh, not him again. What did it explain, that he’s a jerk-off?”
“No, I didn’t need an explanation for that. But, when I was dating him, I started to like things that he liked, things I previously didn’t have an interest in. Nothing severe, I just started eating his favorite foods and reading books that he enjoyed. But it all wore off once I didn’t have any more contact with him.”
“Creepy,” she mumbled around her second waffle.
“You know what’s sad? I didn’t get anything from Peter.”
“Except a broken heart,” Kat pointed out.
“Yeah, except that.”
Before Kat left, she made plans to come over Friday night and spend some time with Elijah and me. She was excited to get back to her shop and put up the pictures she’d had framed since Ms. Wilson’s tea party.
The remainder of my week was spent in meditation and when I wasn’t meditating, I was training. My dreams, which were seemingly absent for a few nights, had returned with a vengeance. My mind had been once again filled with images of a man whose presence I knew by heart, though I’d never seen his face. I’d had a few reoccurring dreams in my life, and he was one of them. He was tall, dark, and I had no doubt that he was handsome. By dark, I don’t mean his skin tone, but rather something about him. Darkness hung about his image like a cloak. Pictures of him were fleeting, as they always had been.
Aside from the tall, dark stranger, my dreams were visited by someone else. The more I closed my eyes, the clearer the face in my sketchbook became of the man with the kind eyes and blond hair. It was the opposite with him. I knew his face by heart, every line, every nuance of expression, but I had never felt his presence. I saw him speaking, but I did not hear his voice. In my dreams, I saw the rest of him, but when I awoke, only his face was clear.
Truthfully, it was his eyes that stuck with me the most. They were no ordinary brown, but the soft color of a pale honeyed tea without cream. His hair that I’d known the color of instinctively looked soft and dusty in my mind. It wasn’t quite a medium shade of blond, but a silvery almost gray version of the color.
These dreams might seem strange to someone else, but to me they were a comfort. I’d had dreams about the dark stranger since I was sixteen, so having him show up was almost like a visit from an old friend. I’d told Kat about him before and she said he was just a fantasy based on my ideal. As far as the reoccurring part, we’d both speculated that my mind produced images of him when I needed comfort. It made sense. What’s more comforting than a vision of some tall, dark, and handsome man?
The only problem with that theory was if it were my fantasy, there’d be more sex. What’s the point of having a tall, dark stranger around if you keep him at arm’s length? Besides, as often as I’d dreamed of him, we weren’t exactly strangers anymore. I had no doubt that should we ever meet, it wouldn’t matter that I’d never seen his face. I would know him.
As for the man in my sketchbook, I hadn’t told anyone about him. Looking into his eyes felt more intimate than most of the sex I’d had. I still felt like he would mean something more to me one day. But at the time, he meant a good night’s sleep.
*****
Friday came and I’d never been so excited about playing a board game. It bothered me to admit it, but without Alfred around, I was lonely. It had never occurred to me before how isolated I was, not just by physical location, but emotionally. I spoke to Kat a few times during the week, and Elijah had called once to confirm our plans. But pretty much, if people didn’t call me, I didn’t call them. I didn’t feel like writing. I was out of paint, and the werewolf community was keeping very quiet at the moment.
My father called early Friday morning and discussed with me briefly how my job might change in the event that the hearing went in favor of the wolves. There was a possibility that a special task force might be formed on Earth to help police the werewolf community. This would be a branch off The Hunters, and I would most likely head up the unit in my area.
I was glad to see his face and glad to have a reason to talk to someone. Once my dad had briefed me on the latest news, Alfred appeared. I truly didn’t know how much I had wanted to see his face until he smiled.
For a moment, I considered telling him to come home and forget about The Hunters and my dad’s spy games. I needed him. But then I came to my senses, and instead said, “Hello.”
We chatted polit
ely for a few minutes, after all, only so much could be said in front of my father. Finally, he said, “I’ve got something for you.”
“Really? What is it?”
“Give me about an hour and check the transporter.”
“All right.”
I saw my dad in the background become distracted with checking his other messages. Alfred’s hologram leaned in and whispered, “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“No, you’re not. You’re giving me that face again. What’s wrong?”
He kept looking over his shoulder.
“It’s nothing.”
My father cleared his throat and Alfred jumped.
“Come on, Lilith,” he whispered urgently, “don’t screw with me, I don’t have time.”
“I’m lonely.”
With that confession I let some of what I felt show in my eyes and Alfred whispered, “Mi manchi molto.” (I miss you very much.)
“What’s that?”
Alfred jumped again at the sound of my father’s voice, though less forcefully. He clearly did not know what to say, so I took over.
“Alfred’s been teaching me Italian,” I answered.
“Oh, that’s nice. You learning how to cuss people in a new language doesn’t surprise me.”
I couldn’t help laughing. That really was the first thing I’d learned.
“I hate to cut this short, but we’ve got work to do.” My dad smiled as he continued, “Relax, Lilith. In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve never learned Italian.”
And with a sarcastic smile, my dad’s communication ended.
It was unclear exactly what he’d meant by that last comment, but my father was no fool. If he suspected something was going on between Alfred and me and he didn’t like it, we’d have known about it by then. I felt better after hearing from them and went to make breakfast while I awaited Alfred’s “surprise.”
After making some coffee, I decided to take a cup in the sitting room where I could watch the gathering storm through the window. I love a good storm and hurricane season was rapidly approaching. I stretched out across the couch facing the fireplace. Here I had a good view through the bay windows on either side of the large hearth. As I watched the steam rising from my coffee where it sat on the table, I felt myself drifting toward sleep again.
Lilith Mercury, Werewolf Hunter Series (Boxed Set, Books 1-3) Page 22
