by Ann Gimpel
“You can box up the rest of the lady’s meal,” Max said. “You wouldn’t happen to have that delectable chocolate mousse?”
The waiter’s mouth formed an apologetic moue. “Not tonight, sir. We have lemon cheesecake, a cheese and fruit plate with brandy, or ice cream.”
“Does any of that sound good?” Max glanced at Audrey. Her eyes were wide with delight.
“Oooooh, it all sounds wonderful. I can’t even remember the last time I had real ice cream. That frozen crap they sell nowadays doesn’t even have any dairy products in it.”
“Could you bring us a sampler plate with a little of everything?” Max asked.
“Of course. Coming right up.” The waiter snatched their plates and left.
“Not that I wouldn’t love something sweet,” she said a bit wistfully, “but I thought we’d decided it was late and—”
Max kicked himself. They had decided that—sort of. He was enjoying himself, and he didn’t want the evening to end, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could—or should—say to his secretary. He shrugged. “You seem to finally be relaxing. After what happened at the office, you deserve a little R and R. You really can come in an hour or two later tomorrow.”
Her gaze softened. “Thank you.”
Dessert and brandy were over far too soon. Since he couldn’t come up with any more credible reasons to extend their time together, Max followed her out the door of their private dining room. Two security guards flanked it. Max recognized both of them.
“Car’s right out front, sir,” one said.
“Yes, the waiter kept us apprised of your supper progress,” the other added. Tall, lean, and dark, with hard eyes, he could have been a clone of the other guard. Max wondered if they were related.
“Whoops!” Max flipped around. “Got to get all those documents. Hold the door, would you?”
“Sorry, sir,” Audrey said, looking chagrined. “I should have remembered—”
“No worries, I’ve got them. They’re fodder for the shredder at this point.”
They walked out of the restaurant with one guard in front and one behind. Max tucked the ragged document stack under one arm, held the limousine’s rear door, and helped Audrey in. “Drop me at the Capitol, and then take Miss Westen home, please.”
“I have a car in the garage,” she protested, as the limousine rolled away from the curb. “I got here there early enough this morning to park next to a plug, so my battery should be as fully charged as it ever gets.”
“Yes, but it’s late. I’ll send a car for you in the morning. That way I can make certain you’ve gotten a full night’s rest.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said a bit stiffly. “You’ve done far too much for me tonight as it is. I don’t need to be mollycoddled.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” He smiled, face turned away so she wouldn’t notice. He was treating her more like a date than his employee but couldn’t seem to do a damned thing to alter it. He aimed for a light, bantering tone. “Here I thought I was just making sure I’d have wide-awake help tomorrow.”
“Thank you again, sir.” Audrey gazed at her hands. She fidgeted, opened her mouth, and then closed it.
Max started to ask what she wanted to say, but the car rolled to a stop. One of the guards said, “I’ll escort you upstairs, sir, and stay until you’re ready to quit for the night. I can call in another guard if you’d be more comfortable, or we can grit it out until Bart,” he tapped the other guard’s arm, “gets back.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine for however long it takes him to drive Miss Westen home and return,” Max murmured. He didn’t want to leave Audrey’s warm eyes or her enticing scent. It didn’t help that his wolf, nearly mad with lust, was so close to the surface claws pressed against the ends of his fingertips and toes.
Max inclined his head toward her. “Good night. Thanks for the dinner idea. It was a good one.” Because he couldn’t stop himself, he patted her hands folded in her lap.
The guard who’d spoken got out and opened the limo’s back door on Max’s side. Audrey dropped her gaze in the sudden glare from the car’s dome light. “Who should I call in the morning when I’m ready to come to work?”
Max gathered up the files and documents sitting between them on the seat. Possessiveness raced through him, searing his nerve endings. “Me,” he all but growled. “Call me.” Yes. I take care of my own.
Chapter 3
Audrey leaned back against the plush leather seat; her head spun from far more than wine and brandy. She’d actually just spent several hours with her boss, a man she’d lusted after ever since he was elected as the state’s governor a year and a half ago. Even before he’d won the election, she’d been unaccountably excited, viewing his image on the vid feed. What a gorgeous guy, with his white blond hair and piercing blue eyes. His face looked as if he had Asiatic blood with high, defined cheekbones and a strong jaw. Perfect teeth gleamed when he smiled, which wasn’t often. And if all that weren’t enough, he was tall, broad shouldered, and wore his tailored clothes like a model.
Shit! I’m even in love with his hands. She pictured Max’s long, tapering fingers and wondered, for the umpteenth time, how they’d feel on her naked flesh.
“Where to, Miss Westen?” The guard’s voice shook her out of her reverie.
“I don’t live far from here. Midtown. Go to Alhambra and then…” By the time she was done giving the guard directions, a whopping dose of reality had set in. She’d scarcely been a scintillating conversationalist during her time with Max. At first she’d been so shaken by the phony guard and being right up next to someone dead, she’d been tongue-tied. Then she’d decided she had to confide in him, which was both risky and stupid. A man like him would never consider dating a woman with tainted blood, even if she didn’t work for him.
I couldn’t date him and not tell him.
Rein it in, sweetie. Last time I checked, he wasn’t asking me out. He’s a nice man, but not for me. She thought about O’Hare and the venom in his voice when he’d called her a shifter and a dirty, fucking traitor. She got the shifter part, but the traitor epithet was a mystery. Audrey blew out a sad breath. Ever since the governmental directive targeting shifters, she’d been trapped in a no-man’s land where many of her fully human friends and acquaintances shunned her. Oh, they were polite enough about it, but they found excuses to not drop by or accept her invitations to catch a bite or window shop on the vid feed.
Audrey unclenched fists that had balled in her lap. She wanted to be a shifter. She’d had wolf dreams ever since she was a young teenager. From conversations with full-blood relatives, she was certain the striking black and gray timber wolf that stalked her night hours was her wolf. Audrey longed to find out. Though it wasn’t sexual, the intensity of her need was akin to what she might feel for a lover. Some nights, it seemed as if she got close enough to breathe her bond animal’s hot, wolfy breath…But she always woke up empty handed.
“This is the street, right?”
“Huh? Sorry, I need to be more attentive.” She glanced outside. “Yes. One more block. It’s the blue Victorian on the right that’s been split into an eight-plex.”
“This isn’t the best neighborhood. Lots of crime reports originate from these few blocks.”
“How do you know that?”
Bart shrugged. “Used to work for the Sacramento City Police Department. Jumped ship about six months ago. They wanted me to take an intravenous infusion. I hate needles, so I looked for another job.”
Audrey opened her mouth to ask if he had shifter blood but clacked it shut. People simply didn’t talk about things like that casually. She rubbed her right forearm. It still ached from her first infusion. She’d lied to Max. Far from ignorant about the black market, she frequented it for things she couldn’t get elsewhere—which was just about everything. And she’d known about the transformative serum before reading about it in her stack of intel.
Bart pulled into a red zone, got out,
and held her door open. “I’m walking you to your door,” he announced gruffly.
“There’s really no need. You can watch me from here.”
“What floor’s your place on?”
“Second.”
“I’m going with you. I’ll lock the car. It will be fine for five minutes.”
She considered arguing but decided it wasn’t worth it.
Bart trooped up two long flights of stairs right behind her. The Victorian’s lower floor had fifteen-foot ceilings. She clicked keys on her wrist computer to unlock the half dozen electronic deadbolts and pushed the door open. “Thanks and good night.”
“Uh, Audrey, I mean, Miss Westen.”
Something about his tone bothered her enough to make her muscles tense. She turned to face him. “What?”
“You’re a good looking woman. If you’d like to, um, go somewhere just let me know. I couldn’t afford anything as grand as where you were tonight, but—”
She laid a hand on his arm. “Aw, that’s really sweet, Bart. I don’t date. Just got out of a truly miserable marriage, and I need some breathing room.”
His tanned skin developed a rosy hint. “Well, offer’s open. Just let me know. Be sure to lock up. I’ll stand here until I hear every one of those locks engage.”
She closed the door and reversed the procedure with her wrist computer to secure it. Apparently Bart was satisfied because she heard his heavy tread fade as he moved toward the stairwell. Audrey glanced around her modest, one-bedroom flat. A couch sat against one wall. Two overstuffed chairs against another had a small table between them. Shelves overflowed with books, an archaic indulgence. A small dinette was just off the even smaller kitchen. All she had was a microwave and a fridge. No one had real stoves anymore, which made food preparation a challenge. The meals she remembered concocting in her mother’s kitchen were truly a thing of the past.
I’d never be able to get the ingredients anyway…Or not very often at black market prices.
A screen filled most of one wall. It blinked with messages. She kicked off her high heels, took a seat in front of her computer console, and used the voice module to bring it out of sleep mode. Other than work messages, there was one from her brother. He was the only one she’d confided in about her experiment with the infusions. He was worried about her but couched his inquiry in bland language that could mean anything.
She reassured him she was fine and then drew her sleeve up her arm. A bruise extended from wrist to elbow, but it seemed a little less colorful than it had been the day before when she’d gotten the shot. She planned to wait another day or two and then try to reach for her wolf form. If it didn’t work, she’d get another infusion. They were expensive. Five thousand credits. Her brother had told her the cops were getting either five or six. She hoped she wouldn’t need that many.
“Doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “I got a nice settlement with the divorce.” She’d taken a lump sum in lieu of spousal support because she didn’t trust her ex and figured it would be a battle to get money out of him every month. Audrey commanded her computer to return to sleep mode and pushed out of her chair. She really was tired. It was an hour past when she usually went to bed.
She deactivated the alarm on her wrist computer as she walked to the small bedroom. A bed and dresser took up nearly all the available floor space. Max had suggested she come in late. He must have meant it because he’d said it twice. She stripped off her jacket and shirt, grimacing as she looked at them. The shirt, which had been crisp and pressed that morning, was a mass of wrinkles. She’d need to launder it. She could try to steam out the suit coat’s creases. If that didn’t work, she’d need to run it through the building’s washer with dry cleaning solvent.
Audrey grabbed hangars from her closet, hung the jacket, and shimmied out of her skirt. She clipped it into place beneath the jacket, started to hunt for her steamer, and decided she’d do it later. She liked to take care of her clothes as soon as she took them off. They lasted longer that way, but it wasn’t usually this late when she got home. She stepped into the adjoining bathroom to brush her teeth, take the rest of her hair down, and brush it out. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she rolled her eyes. Half her hair had fallen out of its clips, giving her a disheveled look. She removed the remaining clips and pins and picked up her brush.
Yup. A few more reasons he’d never be interested in me. Clothes are a mass of wrinkles. Stockings have runs in them, and I look like I lost my hairbrush.
She returned to the bedroom and ran her hand over the master panel to kill the lights. It left the computer in low power status but didn’t turn it off, so messages would continue to flow in during the night. Grappling at the end of the bed, she separated the old T-shirt she used for a nightgown from the bedclothes, and got out of her underwear before pulling it over her head.
The soft cotton settled around her. She luxuriated in the feel of it next to her bare skin. The shirt had been another black market item. No one made cotton garments anymore. Everything was synthetic. The cotton fields had long since been swapped out to grow food. Audrey stretched out and snugged the coverlet around her. She closed her eyes, not surprised to see Max’s image. Raising her fingers to her lips, she blew him a kiss and then felt like a fool. Tomorrow, they’d be back to business as usual. No more cozy dinners with him close enough to touch.
She inhaled deeply. Even though it was impossible, she thought she could still smell his heady, exotic scent. He smelled like bay rum, musk, and something she didn’t have a name for. She’d almost asked him what aftershave he used a dozen times, but the question seemed much too personal. Besides, it wasn’t any of her business, though she could have pretended she wanted to buy the same thing for a mythical boyfriend.
She wondered why Max wasn’t married. Insofar as the Capitol gossip mavens knew, he never had been. He’d been an international businessman before running for governor. She pressed her tongue against her teeth. She’d tried to dig up background information on Max but had run into enough dead ends to understand he’d had pros erase all but a carefully constructed snapshot of his past. Maybe he was gay. That would certainly explain his lack of female companionship, but he didn’t seem to have boyfriends, either, although he might be gun shy of coming out. Worried it might hurt his chances at reelection.
Her eyes widened. Reelection. If he didn’t win next time, she’d never see him again. She sat up in bed, suddenly not all that sleepy. Not working side-by-side with Max and seeing him most days simply wasn’t acceptable. Maybe she could offer to follow him to his next job, whatever it might be. After all, men in charge of things always needed assistants, and he was used to her, a rather large plus in the business world.
“Calm down,” she muttered and rearranged herself in bed. “It’s two and a half years away. A lot can happen in that amount of time.”
Yeah, like he could take up with that columnist who practically lives at the office.
Well, he hasn’t yet, so why would he?
Audrey laughed. She was so tired, she was holding nonsensical conversations with herself. What she needed was sleep. Her wolf would be there tonight like she always was. Definitely something to look forward to.
* * * *
Snaps and snarls dragged her out of a deep sleep. What the fuck? It sounds like a rabid dog. Heart in her throat, Audrey reached for the panel that controlled the lights, but her hand wouldn’t cooperate. Body tangled in the sheets, she struggled to free herself. Surely if she got a bit closer, she could turn on the lights. Please God, let the intruder wait that long…
“Calm down. No one else is in here. Just us.”
“What?” Her panic escalated. “Who said that?” The sound of fabric tearing as a sheet gave way was louder than it should have been. What the hell was wrong with her ears? She’d just said something, but she hadn’t heard the words. Not out loud anyway. They’d echoed in the recesses of her mind.
“I said it. I’m your wolf. Except you’r
e inside me this time instead of the other way around.”
Her writhing body fell off the bed and landed with a solid thunk on the floor. “W-what did you say?” Audrey lay where she’d fallen, breath knocked out of her.
“Breathe. You shifted. It’s not a big deal. Enjoy me. I’ve waited a long time for you.”
Her eyes felt hot and gritty. Her vision was odd, her hearing so acute, she was sure she could hear a faint breeze rustling the tree outside her closed window. She focused her eyes and realized she could actually see.
“Of course you can. Our eyes are much sharper in this form.”
So keyed up, breathing was a struggle, Audrey got to her feet—all four of them. She shook out each leg experimentally and then walked around her bed.
“Go ahead. Live dangerously. Let’s stroll through the living room.”
She snorted. It came out like a low, whuffling rumble. Her wolf had a sense of humor. She made a tentative transit of her flat and then sat on her haunches, marveling at what felt a lot like a miracle.
“How can I be human again?”
“Hmmmm…Maybe the same way you got to be a wolf?”
“But I don’t know what that was; I was asleep.”
“Good thing I wasn’t. I visit you when you dream looking for a way in. Tonight, something was different. You accepted me, and here we are.” The wolf sounded terribly pleased.
“I’m going to try a few things. I need to learn to move from wolf to human and back again.”
“Agreed. Tell me how I can help.”
Audrey tried visualizing her human body. She relaxed into it. When that didn’t work, she tried to force her way in. After half an hour, she was panting. “Aw shit,” she moaned—it came out as a whine. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to keep experimenting until you’ve got it. I’ve never heard of a shifter who got stuck in one form or another. You’ll figure this out. I have faith in you.”
Warmth and tenderness filled her. The last time anyone had told her they believed in her was so long ago, she couldn’t remember which of her parents had said it. They’d gone into hiding, so she hadn’t seen either of them in the past two years. “Thanks.”
