Doctor Wolf (The Collegium Book 4)

by Jenny Schwartz

  Phil and Natalie wandered off to talk with friends they’d seen at court, and probably, to take a sense of the emotional mood among the weres.

  Liz’s mom had hooked Fay into a discussion on wedding favors. Liz, conscious of her duties as bridesmaid, joined in. “Mom, do you really think Fay looks like a bride who’d give people pink candy hearts? Really? and as for Steve?” Her brother grinned at her. “Do you really think he reminds people of pink candy hearts?”

  “I thought it would soften his image,” Michelle said.

  Steve cracked up. The last of the tension that had gripped him through the court session and afterwards vanished.

  Michelle winked at Fay.

  Oh. Liz belatedly comprehended. Her mom was giving Fay some on-the-job training of ways to help Steve. Her brother had a great sense of humor, but his sense of responsibility was just as strong. He needed to be able to shed that weight when he was with Fay and family, and sometimes Fay would have to give him a nudge. Wedding favors didn’t matter. What mattered was focusing on positive things, personal things.

  “All right, we’ll talk about the wedding back in London,” Michelle said. “I want to go to the souk here before I return. Hosni the silversmith was making me a pair of earrings.”

  Liz’s dad rose leisurely, stretching. “I’ll come with you.” Of course he would. David adored the souk and had long-standing friendships with its traders. His Arabic was flawless and idiomatic.

  Which left Liz and Carson with Fay and Steve.

  “More coffee?” Fay offered.

  Everyone declined.

  “Actually, I have a couple of things to check on in London,” Carson said. “I should be heading back.”

  Liz stood when he did. “Me, too. I’d like to see my house. What needs repairing, cleaning.”

  “It’s been done,” Steve said.

  “And warded.” Fay grimaced. “I know I should have asked your permission, first.”

  “You’re family.” Liz smiled at her. “In our family, you don’t need permission to care. Thank you, Fay.”

  “I told you it would be okay,” Steve said.

  He stood, and like their dad, stretched.

  Liz caught Fay watching him, and the look in her eyes…it was definitely time to go! Liz smiled to herself. “We’ll see you in London. No hurry!”

  Her brother pulled her in for a big hug, laughing under his breath. “Dinner tomorrow night.” He grew serious. “But phone me if you want to talk or need anything.”

  “I will.”

  Steve and Carson shook hands, with Steve saying quietly, “We’ll talk soon.”

  Walking down to the portal chamber, the soft scuff of her feet against the worn stone steps of the staircase was a familiar sound. The rhythm of descending the steps was a part of her childhood. She remembered racing up and down the staircase, eager to visit with her grandparents or just as eager to be off again, returning to London and the excitements of her life there.

  “I’m lucky,” she said.

  “Pardon?” Evidently she’d pulled Carson from his own thoughts. He walked silently beside her, his right shoulder just brushing the wall of the staircase.

  “I was thinking out loud, how lucky I am. Privileged life. But more than that. My family. I’ve never doubted their love.”

  “It’s obvious. You have strong bonds…to your pack, too.”

  Voices rose from the portal chamber. A group of five weres started up the stairs, moving single file. Two nodded to Liz. They were marshals she knew. None stopped.

  I hope they’re reporting to Lilith and not Steve, Liz thought. She didn’t think Steve and Fay would appreciate an interruption.

  “Like Central Station, today,” Faroud said of the activity at his portal. Someone shouted to him through it. “Yes, I’m here, send her through.” He stretched his hand into the portal, while still looking at Liz. “I’d hoped to chat with you, but…” An older tiger-were stepped out.

  “You’re busy,” Liz finished for Faroud. She smiled politely at the new arrival.

  The old woman frowned back. “Portal travel is for fools.”

  Faroud rolled his eyes and pointed. “The bathroom is that way.” He lowered his voice as the woman hurried in the direction he indicated. “Portal sick. It affects some people that way. Now, London?”

  “Yes,” Carson said. “Please.”

  Faroud shouted into the portal, and a minute later, handed them through to Trevor.

  “Lunch rush,” the publican said. “And I’m down two waiters. Have to love you and leave you, ducks. You know the way out.” He dashed up a secondary set of stairs, private ones that led to the back rooms.

  Liz stared after him, then blankly at Carson.

  “Come on,” he said. “I have to check on the gentians, but first we’ll go to your house and see how everything is there.”

  “You don’t have to come with me.” She’d really like him to. It was her home, she loved it and she wouldn’t be forced out by bad memories, but having him with her on the first visit would really help.

  “Cab or bus?” he asked.

  “Bus.” She linked her arm with his. “Thank you.”

  Liz liked the bus. Yes, it stank. Her wolf-were senses picked up stale smells of people and—had someone really carried Limburger cheese on a bus? She preferred to believe so than to think of someone’s feet smelling that bad! Still, being surrounded by people busy with ordinary life grounded her. And sitting near Carson had its own sort of rightness.

  They alighted a stop earlier though. He couldn’t stand the smells on the bus.

  “You should try the emergency department on a Friday night.” Liz smiled ruefully. “Now, there are some stinks.”

  “Ugh.” He clasped her hand and they walked on companionably.

  A couple of Liz’s neighbors—or rather, since her neighbors were often away from home, their resident staff—saw Liz and asked how she was. The first woman, a butler, was obviously a little thrilled at the excitement of the break in. But the second person to stop them was a head of security, and his attention was as much for Carson as for Liz. She realized that the guy had been one of those who’d responded to the attack on her and Daria. He’d seen the aftermath of Carson’s defense.

  No wonder he looked wary. However, he noted their clasped hands and some of his tension relaxed. “Stay safe.” He gave a casual salute and walked back into the home he guarded.

  “He assumed we’re a couple,” Liz said. From the front, her house looked normal. The broken door had been replaced. She didn’t feel Fay’s wards, but then, as a were, she wouldn’t. She took a deep breath.

  Carson pulled her back against his side.

  She glanced at him, surprised. “What?” She strained her senses, trying to guess what had worried him. Everything seemed normal. There were people in the park, but no one seemed to be staring in their direction. The normal amount of traffic crawled past, admittedly some of it with tinted privacy windows and chauffeur-driven.

  “About being a couple,” Carson began.

  Her heartrate picked up, but she faked breeziness. “Let’s go inside.” The security system recognized her hand scan and the front door clicked open.

  The house smelled almost the same as normal. There was just an additional hint of cleaning products to testify to the thorough job someone had done at setting her home to rights. She’d have to find out who—probably the half of the pack who hadn’t wanted to hunt Brandon. The nurturers. Everyone pitched in to help.

  Apricot roses in a low bowl had the imperfections of a homegrown gift. Liz stroked a soft petal.

  Carson closed and locked the door. He didn’t move away from it though. He stayed there and looked across the room to where she stood by the walnut coffee table. “I still have the secret of the gentians to protect. Obviously it’s not a secret to certain people any more, and I have to look into who hired the Russian mage for Brandon. Who else is involved? The danger of the Gentiana Aeternae remains. If anything
it’s increased. But it’s no longer a case of staying away from you to keep you safe.”

  “Because people already believe we’re together. That I’m important to you.” She walked back to him, watching him watch her; seeing the giveaway of his tension as his fingers flexed at his sides. “I thought of that. Now, if you’re not interested in me, you have to say so. There’s nowhere to hide.”

  “I don’t hide,” he said, and reached for her.

  Their kiss was heat and hunger, and something that felt like homecoming. All the tension of the last couple of days exploded into that kiss. Carson turned, stepped backwards, and dropped full length onto the long sofa, pulling Liz down with him. Their bodies bounced.

  “Your ribs!”

  “No pain.”

  “Incredible,” she mumbled, then arched her neck as he kissed a path down her throat.

  He moved under her, adjusting so that she straddled him. He gripped her butt, holding her there as he thrust against her.

  She found his mouth, licked at his lower lip and moaned her pleasure as his tongue invaded. The flavor of him filled her. She rocked against his movements.

  “I’ll come in my jeans,” he growled.

  “What a waste,” she teased, and received a nip to her earlobe that had her growling in excitement.

  He tumbled her down, gently, from the low sofa to the floor and landed over her, caging her, bracing himself on his arms and keeping his body tantalizingly removed as he kissed her.

  Liz wasn’t having that! She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him down, taking his weight, feeling…so much feeling. His hand, inside her shirt, pushing aside her bra to cup one breast, had her coming up off the floor. “I love your hands.”

  His eyes blazed, emotion and the wolf looking into hers. “I want you naked.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He grinned, just for a fraction, fierce and consuming, before he took her mouth again.

  She tried to get her hands between them to take off her shirt, shed the bra, unzip her jeans, but the wall of muscle that was his gorgeous chest was in the way.

  He broke the kiss. “We have to wait.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because once we make love, I won’t leave, and I have to check on the gentians.”

  “The gentians?” Her brain was foggy, switched off in favor of her body, which was storming with hormones. “Your plants? Right. Glasshouse. Guards.”

  “But the guards aren’t gardeners. I need to check that everything’s okay. Then I’ll be back.” Another fierce kiss. “I’ll stay the night?” The merest hint of a question.

  “All night.” She tightened her arms around him.

  He ground into her, promising, reacting, as aroused as her.

  His scent. Wildness and greenery, freedom. She wanted his scent on her skin. Imprinted.

  Mate-bond flashed through her mind. The idea didn’t scare her. Carson would be an incredible mate.

  “Liz.” Her name was a groan. “I thought I’d walk through the house with you, make sure everything was okay.” His breath hitched as she ran her hands down his spine, back up and through his hair. “Talk.”

  “We’re talking.” She smiled and kissed him.

  He kissed her back as if neither of them needed to breathe, before pulling away, panting. He rolled onto his back on the floor.

  “Mmmhmm.” She turned on one side, propping her head on an elbow and studied him. “You should go, now,” she teased. “Or I’ll jump you.”

  He grinned at her, rueful and wanting. “And I’d let you. But I need a few minutes before I’m decent enough to walk out of your house.”

  She could see the bulge behind his jeans fly. “You’ll have to wear your shirt out.” She stroked his chest and he covered her hand with his, trapping it on his ridged stomach. She felt the tautness of his muscles. “You can borrow my car. You’ll get to the greenhouse and back quicker. In fact, I’ll come with you.”

  “And you won’t be a distraction at all?” he mocked her.

  She fluttered her eyelashes. “I don’t promise the impossible.”

  He laughed as he scrambled up, then pulled her to her feet for a quick hug and kiss. “Let’s walk through your house, so you can see everything’s okay, and then, we’ll go.”

  “Before we return and you ravish me.”

  He nodded, mock-solemnly. “That’s the plan.”

  “Awesome!”

  They hurried through the house. Simmering sexual need proved a fantastic method of wiping out bad memories. She could see her upstairs rooms, the kitchen, everything without dwelling on the attack. All she was conscious of was Carson beside her, behind her, caressing, stealing kisses; caring for her even as he played at foreplay.

  “You can drive.” She handed over the keys to her car. It was black and fast, as discreet as a sports car could be—which was to say, not very. But it was fun, even on London’s crowded streets.

  Carson snatched the tossed keys out of the air. “You must love me,” he teased.

  Their eyes met.

  “Gentians,” he said.

  The distraction was both an anticlimax and a relief. Things were moving fast. Too fast?

  No! She’d known Carson for months, and for months they’d danced around each other pretending that the attraction between them didn’t consume all the oxygen in the air. Wildfire. Just sitting beside him in her small car made her conscious of his maleness, of all the power in him. All mine. She was crawling out of her skin with the need to make love with him.

  He felt the same. “I’m going out of my mind wanting to feel your hands on me. I keep thinking of how we danced at the salsa club.”

  It had been about more than hands. Their bodies had writhed to the same rhythm, chased the same pulse. Shared it.

  Eyes on the traffic and alert to the mad impulses London pedestrians were prone to, he continued. “You’re gorgeous when you dance, honey. Gorgeous all the time. But when you dance, you don’t hold anything back, and I want it all.”

  “When I dance.” She wet her lips. “I like a strong partner.”

  He glanced at her, fast and hot. “Trust me with everything. I won’t break.”

  She put her hand briefly on his thigh. “I know.”

  For Carson, the short drive to his Brentford house and the gentians was torture. Incredibly stimulating torture, but agonizing. Every breath brought Liz’s scent. Her voice made him wonder if she was a silent lover. He doubted it, and he hoped not. He wanted her to tell him what she liked; to pet him verbally, responding to everything, revealing her turn-ons. She was so close. When he changed gear, his knuckles brushed against her leg.

  If it wasn’t for the security guards at the house, he’d take her inside, leave her for twenty minutes, no more, in his room as he checked on the gentians, and then, they’d make love. But the security guards were hired by John, Liz’s grandfather. And they were weres, with weres’ acute hearing.

  No, he and Liz would be returning to her home for privacy their first night together.

  He pulled into the house’s driveway and groaned. “Now what?”

  “Albert got out of hospital fast. With his injuries…” Liz’s gaze narrowed on the mage standing in the narrow strip of front garden. “He looks healed. Do you think Grandfather gave Albert some of the gentian extract?”

  “No. I think that since mages, unlike weres, can be healed by magic, Albert decided he’d had enough of hospital, forked over the money or favors for magical treatment, and got out.”

  “Ah.”

  Their car doors slammed behind them.

  Albert continued kicking at the dirt with the heel of his boot.

  “Problems?” Carson asked, foregoing courtesies such as hello because this was Albert.

  “Spellcasting. Go away.” Albert glanced up momentarily. Power glowed in his eyes, then he looked back at the dirt. “Don’t go far. I’ll need you in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be in the greenhouse.”


  “I’ll find you.”

  They were dismissed.

  “Little guy freaks me out.” The security guard, Matthew, hovered just inside the door. Apparently, he’d recovered from the bump on his head. “I figured I’d keep an eye on him. Yan’s staying out of the way in the kitchen where he can see the greenhouse.”

  Carson nodded acknowledgement. “We’ll be in the greenhouse.” He looked at Liz. “Unless you’d rather stay in the kitchen?”

  “Nope. Whither thou goest…” She smiled brilliantly.

  Matthew raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  They left him watching Albert through the sitting room window.

  Inside the greenhouse, the gentians looked fine. The herbal, sweet scent of their leaves mixed with the fuggy smell of the watering system and the damp earth. Intoxicating for him.

  Liz wrinkled her nose. But she didn’t comment on the smell, and she wandered along the rows of plants while he took measurements and readjusted the watering set up.

  Was that an aphid? He crouched to study the tender new shoots of a gentian plant near the door. He’d been fanatical about keeping everything closed against pests. He didn’t want to have to grow the Elixir Gentian with chemical agents. If this was the beginning of an aphid infestation, he’d get out the garlic and hot pepper spray.

  Liz looked over at Carson and saw him intent, frowningly intent, on a gentian. She smiled. She liked seeing him at work. He had the single-minded focus of someone committed to a career they loved. She felt the same about emergency medicine.

  But since he was preoccupied, she wandered over to his desk which was set up against the back wall of the glasshouse, midway along.

  She pulled the single chair, on its casters, away from the desk, and paused.

  The smell of the gentians, although not unpleasant, seemed stronger here. In fact, it smelled more like the gentian extract Carson had swallowed yesterday than of the fresh plants. He must have made it here and some had spilled. Except, as she looked idly for a stain on the floor, she saw, tucked halfway under the desk, a square outlined in the stone floor.