by Anne Marsh
“Give me a believable reason.” Because she needed something other than the niggling recollection that animal control didn’t work after hours. She could have a rampaging dinosaur in her backyard, but it would only be collected between the hours of nine and five.
“That’s not a wolf.”
“Uh-huh.” And, hallelujah, they’d set a new record. Luc had agreed with her twice in one evening.
“That’s a werewolf.”
“Werewolves are a really fun literary fiction. There’s no such thing—and definitely not in my backyard.”
“Am I a figment of your imagination?”
“Are you telling me that you’re a werewolf?”
He stared at her levelly. “You know that I am. I shifted in front of you in Vegas ten years ago.”
“I thought I’d imagined that. Werewolves in Las Vegas. You expect me to believe that?”
His cool amusement wasn’t funny at all. He was bad news, offering raw sex and appealing to her inner bad girl. “I’m not trapped in the bayou, boo. So I’m sayin’ it one more time. That male out there—he’s not a dog. Animal Control isn’t goin’ to be a solution here.”
“Uh-huh.” She shoved off the couch and he let her go. “Is this where you tell me you’ve got a better plan?”
“Shit, shug. Do we have to play show and tell right now? What do you think happened to those wolves chasin’ you earlier tonight?”
***
I’m a werewolf.
I tore that last pack of bastards apart with my hands—and I’ll do this wolf with my teeth.
Yeah. He didn’t need an inner consult to know his mate didn’t want to hear those things. For her, what happened in Vegas had stayed there—until tonight. She was his fated mate, his only and one shot at staying human. That made her the center of his fucking universe, whether he liked it or not. Equally clearly, she didn’t reciprocate the feeling. He was more like a scribble in the margin on the page of her life. Or something. He didn’t have words to describe what he felt, but…hurt might cover it.
Even after just their one night in Vegas, he’d known things about her. That she was driven, motivated and smart. She’d made it clear she was pursuing a law career—and that it consumed the better portion of her time. She was modern, independent and…the slightest bit fragile, although she would have killed rather than admit it. She’d been trying to move past her trailer park childhood and she’d been succeeding. He, on the other hand, was an atavistic wolf, more brutal predator than man and, after a few days in the city, he yearned for the solitude of the bayou. They weren’t even opposites, they were so far apart. How could he have dragged her back with him, forced her to live with the Pack?
She also still didn’t back down. She advanced on him, her words smacking into him like bullets, the not-a-wolf outside temporarily forgotten. Her proximity made him want to growl. To touch. He’d had his hands all over his, his mouth on her pussy, but now she was pushing him away.
She leaned down, slapping her hands on either side of him on the pretty cream sofa. “If you’ve got proof, show me. I’m not basing any decision on something I might—or might not—have seen ten years ago in Vegas. I’d been drinking. I was tired.”
Right. Proof. His mate preferred the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. Since offering her proof was the one thing he could do, he stood up and reached for the hem of his T-shirt. She backed the hell up, giving him space to work as his hands went to the buttons on his jeans. Piece-by-piece, he dropped his clothes on her sofa and his boots on her floor. Her calm face didn’t give away a thing as she watched him. The counselor was in the room.
“I didn’t realize your proof included a free show.”
Nothing in this life was free, but he imagined she’d learned that years ago. When he stood there naked, he shifted. Bones cracked as his body reformed, fur rolling over his skin. The wolf saw in black and white. The place smelled faintly of lemon furniture polish and long-gone Lean Cuisine. Biolage shampoo and the sweet, musky scent of Gianna herself.
Her quick whiff of fear was gone as fast as it had arrived.
She sat back down on the couch. The wolf padded over, bumping its head against her leg. “Shoot. I was really, really hoping I was crazy.”
***
For years, Gianna had told herself that what she’d seen that crazy night in Vegas was pure hallucination or too much television. She’d imagined things. Men simply didn’t turn into wolves.
Luc’s wolf called bullshit on that one, butting its head against her leg. The animal was well over two hundred pounds and maybe she should have been more worried. But…this was Luc. If he’d wanted her hurt, he’d have left her alone with the other wolf pack, rather than riding to the rescue. The other wolf pack. Before the night could get any crazier, she grabbed her phone and snapped a picture. No one would believe her, but she wanted the image for herself. Go figure that she and Luc weren’t trading normal pictures.
“Point made.” What did she do with a wolf in her living room?
The wolf rubbed the top of its head against her leg, its fur brushing sensually against her bare legs. Then he shifted, the wolf flowing into the man just as quickly as that. Luc stood there, casually, like he wasn’t buck naked or clearly nonhuman. The naked part was where her head stopped. Yeah. She took a good, long look. There was plenty of Luc to admire. When he wasn’t talking, she liked him just fine.
“Glad we’ve got that settled,” he drawled. Reaching over, he snagged her phone and deleted her pictures. Fine by her. She had an automatic upload to Dropbox.
She looked at him and recognized the leashed power. This was no backwoods man. This man was king in his domain. “You should know that my office knows precisely where I live.”
He reached for his pants, a move that both pleased and disappointed her. “I don’ wan’ to hurt you. Convincin’ you would be plenty fun, however.”
Instead of pulling on his clothes, however, he strode towards her door.
“Where are you going?” Not that she cared.
“To take care of your wolf problem,” he snapped, grabbing the pile of his clothes and tucking them under his arm. “When I’m done, I’d prefer to not be strollin’ down your street naked.”
Her female neighbors certainly wouldn’t be complaining. When she looked out the window, however, she spotted more of those dark shadows. Yellow eyes gleamed in the light.
“How do you plan on doing that?”
He gave her a look. “I’m a hands-on kind of a man, shug. I’m goin’ out there to kick some ass. Close the door behind me and lock it.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Close the door. Lock it.”
Yeah, see, his first problem was that, even if he was really, really good at issuing commands, she didn’t take orders. He needed a different wife if he was interested in blind obedience.
“I heard you the first time.”
“All you have to do is listen to me once.”
Nope. Not happening when he was playing the jump when I say jump game. “Are you coming back in?”
“I won’ leave you alone to face them. It would be better if you came on out to the bayou. Let me defend you on my own territory.”
The Louisiana bayou was rough backcountry with nothing civilized or citified about the place. Going there voluntarily? Yeah. So not her thing. A body thudded against her French doors, the glass shuddering. Luc cursed.
“You got to make up your mind fast.”
“Time’s up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t sign up for this,” she pointed out. The French door shook a second time. How fast could a 9-1-1 call get the police here? The army. A tank. A vet with a huge fucking tranquilizer gun. She didn’t care which option worked, but she was fairly certain that if the wolf on the other side of the door made it inside her house, she was screwed. And not in the good way.
“Non.” He loped back towards her and brushed his mouth against her cheek. “I’ll fix it f
or you, shug.”
Then he opened the door and shifted.
Her hand hovered over her phone, like her fingers were waiting for instructions from her head. Her heart. She had no idea what she was doing. Animal control couldn’t do anything here, but playing the part of the peanut gallery wasn’t her choice either.
Bodies slammed into each other, snarls filling the air. She folded up his clothes, setting the stack and the boots outside her front door. Activated the security alarm, even though the gesture seemed stupid and petty. More sounds filtered into the house from her backyard and, God help her, she had no idea what to do.
What she should do.
He wanted to fix this wolf problem she had—and she was in way over her head. She pressed her cheek against the cool glass, but the wolves were nothing but shadows in her garden now. She couldn’t see what was happening, but the racket was dying down. A shadowy form bolted away, followed by a tall male striding toward her front gate.
Luc.
For the briefest moment, he hesitated, like maybe he was waiting for something from her. Right. He was a werewolf. He was her ex. He’d given her one hell of an orgasm and she wanted more. All of which were good reasons to let him keep right on walking away from her.
He stopped and swiped up the pile of clothes she’d left for him, then disappeared into the dark.
Problem solved.
3
Gianna parked her BMW in the B&B’s lot. Now that she was actually here and not tearing up the highway with the radio cranking, she had a whole lot of so now what? running through her head. The wedding invitation she’d tossed on the dashboard didn’t look like a ticking time bomb. In fact, it was real pretty, hand-printed on cream-colored paper in bold, calligraphic slashes. If she’d been getting married, she might have picked the same thing.
Of course, before she could send out wedding announcements, she needed to find a guy, date him, fall in love with him, and then pop the question. She wouldn’t mind if he beat her to the last step in the process and he asked her, but it wasn’t a deal killer either. She was perfectly okay doing the asking. Cruz Jones’s face did a little hey look at me dance in her imagination. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling for the man, but she had every intention of checking it out.
Just as soon as she was free to do so.
Port Leon wasn’t exactly a tourism hotspot. She counted three bars, a gas station, an oyster bar and market, and the B&B. She’d passed a small veterinary practice on her way into town, but otherwise Port Leon consisted of weatherworn clapboard houses and riverbank. Apparently, if you wanted groceries or a home-cooked meal, you’d better be growing the stuff in your backyard, catching it with your bare hands, or hopping in your truck and hotfooting it out of town.
She grabbed the wedding invitation. The words printed on the front hadn’t changed since she’d found the thing propped up on her kitchen counter two weeks ago. Dag Breaux and Riley Jones request the pleasure of your company. Dag Breaux. Luc’s brother. As she got out of the BMW, she tried to convince herself that this was a smart move. She needed to get out of town for a few days while the Baton Rouge police dealt with the biker gang. This was an invitation to do so.
The B&B had been an old plantation house. Her guestroom was pretty, with a big claw-foot tub that might fit two, if those two people didn’t mind getting real, real close. Since she didn’t need to be imagining sexy times with Luc Breaux—or anyone—she fished her cellphone out of her bag, half-surprised that she had reception this far out. Cruz Jones had given her his number in case she needed to get in touch with him and, look at her, she was currently parked in his town.
“Jones here.” The sheriff’s rough tones were comfortingly familiar. He was big, no nonsense man. They’d hit it off—or so she’d thought—but everything had been strictly professional, despite the frisson of sexual chemistry that had had her thinking that ten years was too long and she really needed some me time. Now that Luc was back in her life, dating was out of the question.
“This is Gianna Lynn.” And…there was the awkward moment she’d been dreading. What if he didn’t remember her?
“Ms. Lynn.” Warmth filled his voice, like he’d just been sitting around waiting for her to pick up the phone and make the call. “What can I do for you?”
Quickly, she recapped the threats from the Baton Rouge biker gang. “The local police are handling that, but they believed it would be wisest if I left town briefly. Gave them some room to work without worrying about my personal safety.”
Was that a growl? Impossible. She simply had growly men on the brain.
“They don’ wan’ to worry about your safety? Boo, you come to Port Leon and I’ll personally make sure no one gets near you.”
“About that…I’m already here.” She dropped awkward conversational bomb number two. Cruz, bless his heart, didn’t miss a beat.
“You got a place to stay?”
“I’m booked into the local B&B.”
In the ensuing silence, she could practically hear him running scenarios in his head. “That’ll do,” he said finally. “I can have some guys keep an eye on the place when I can’t. No one’s gettin’ to you, not in my town.”
“Thank you.” What was his anti-wolf policy? Thinking about biker gangs and wolves seemed surreal now that she’d put some miles between herself and Baton Rouge.
“I’ll come out now. Check in and make sure you’re doing okay.”
“Ah. That’s the thing.” She looked down at the wedding invite in her hand. “I’m supposed to be attending a wedding reception.”
“I’ll drive you. The Breaux do?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No.” His chuckle was rueful, husky. God, he had a nice laugh. That wasn’t grounds for happily-ever-after but surely it could be a start? He was downright hot, he was clearly a paragon of responsibility who saved lives on a daily basis, and she liked the way he laughed. Surely, he had to be a better choice for her than Luc Breaux. “The thing is, I’ve got an invite to the wedding reception myself and a command appearance to make.”
“Dag Breaux and Riley Jones request the pleasure of your company?” she asked lightly. Was Dag a werewolf like his brother? Did Cruz know?
“Uh-huh. That would be the one.” There was a pause. “I’d still be happy to take you out.”
And…once again, she wasn’t sure what he meant. Misunderstanding would be an embarrassment of epic proportions. Plus, she really, really wasn’t free to date. Not that she didn’t want to be but…it was complicated. And she had no idea what to do, because her rulebook and libido weren’t talking to each other.
That was the thing about Cruz Jones. He was a big man, rough around the edges, more backwoods than city boy, but he made her feel…happy. She liked being around him. He was comfortable.
He was the antithesis of Luc.
“That didn’t come out right at all, did it? Not that I wouldn’t be happy to be datin’ you, boo, but I’m bettin’ your current situation doesn’t make for a social life.”
“Yeah.” She debated telling him the truth, but she had no idea how to explain the situation in which she found herself. How did she say: I’ve got a biker gang stalking me that just might allow werewolves as members, plus my long-lost fiancé recently surfaced and dating isn’t on the table for me yet until I sort out my feelings for him. Oh, and by the way—he’s a werewolf and his brother’s marrying into your family.
“My life is complicated,” she admitted.
“No worries,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “When you’re ready for somethin’ more, you know where to find me. In the meantime, why don’ you let me drive you out to this reception and we’ll have us a little bit of a good time.”
He sounded like he’d proposed a trip to the dentist or forty hours of overtime after putting in an eighty-hour week. Happy didn’t begin to cover the way he said reception. Or maybe it was just a guy thing, not wanting to get dressed up and dance.
“You do
n’t like weddings?”
“That’s not it at all.” He exhaled. “I’ll be there in five. That work for you?”
“If you’re sure it’s no problem.” She liked the idea of not showing up alone. Luc might have left the invitation for her, but she had no idea why he wanted her attending or if she’d even see him there. The man redefined confusing and that just pissed her off. So shoot her. She liked things black and white.
Cruz groaned. “It’s no problem at all. That’s my sister gettin’ her sweet self married.”
***
True to his word, Cruz showed up in five. Looking anxious was a bad move, but sweet baby Jesus…he’d taken one look at Gianna Lynn strutting her stuff in the courtroom, and he’d been a goner. The effect her sassy-assed business suit had had on him should be illegal. He’d bet he wasn’t the only man imagining pushing that skirt up to her waist and eating her pussy. And then she’d opened her mouth and done her lawyer thing and, while the sexual chemistry hadn’t dialed it down any, he’d had a whole lot of respect for her. She was damned good at lawyering. She’d owned that courtroom and, once she’d started arguing, it hadn’t had anything to do with her skirt or her sex. Nope. She’d been all brain and soul, and yeah, he’d gotten harder on the spot.
So helping her out here was a downright pleasure. He’d get close to her however he could. When she was ready to start looking about her for a man, he planned on being the lucky guy. By the time he’d put his truck into park, she was out and waiting for him on the B&B’s front porch. She was every bit as sexy gorgeous as he remembered. She wore some kind of sheathe dress in pink cotton. When she came down the porch, all tap-tap-tap, her fancy heels flashed red soles and the little straps and buckles wrapped around her ankles made him think of bedroom activities.
He swung down from the truck and came around to meet her, smiling like a loon. She’d pressed her long curtain of dark hair into a straight sheet and painted herself a pair of deep pink lips and smoky eyes. She’d gone all out. But, underneath the war paint, she looked nervous, like she was a fish out of water and knew it. He had no idea how she’d ended up here either, but he was grateful. That was the truth, pure and simple, and he’d make the most of his opportunity.
