TEN
A werewolf.
Malinda Rose had been through a lot in her life. Bad relationships. Failed jobs. No prospects and a life that had seemed to come to a grinding halt. Falling for an amazing man with curly, dark hair and a sculpted body, taking him into her bed—more than once—only to find out he had a terrible secret past.
A secret past that wasn’t only ruining his life. Now it was ruining hers.
As bad as anything from her past life had been, what was happening to her now was worse.
She was a werewolf.
The bite had been to her neck. It still ached. The swelling had gone down and the puncture wounds were only red dots marching across her skin, but it still hurt. Maybe it would always hurt. She thought that it would be right, somehow, if her shoulder hurt for the rest of her life to remind her that two days ago her life had ended.
She had time enough to scream before the animal was on her. Its teeth sank into her arm, her broken and dead left arm, and she screamed because she knew it should hurt. It didn’t. There was no pain. Where the arm had ached before, it was only dead weight now in the wolf’s jaws. It pulled her down and shook her and the world became a black tunnel that she traveled down, down, down…
That memory was seared into her brain. The bite from a Shifter. A human with an animal spirit inhabiting their body, giving them the ability to change into that animal. Not for the first time today, Malinda laughed out loud. She didn’t even understand all of this. Garrett had tried to explain it to her. Maybe she didn’t want to understand it.
Around her, the room fell into thick silence. Her rooms in Garrett Millieur’s estate were spacious and comfortable and right now they seemed like a gilded cage. She was trapped here now. This job had seemed like a Godsend. The answer to her prayers. As badly as she had wanted to stay in New York City, this seemed the perfect way to do it. Now she saw it for what it was. A mistake.
If she had gone back to live with her mother out west, she wouldn’t be trapped in this bizarre world of insanity.
A part of her knew she wanted to be here, no matter how messed up things had gotten. Here. With Garrett. If she had been poisoned by some werewolf’s DNA and now she was going to sprout hair in embarrassing places every full moon and howl at the stars, then hey, that was just life.
And life always went on.
Even when you didn’t want it to.
She used to say that to herself all the time as a way to make herself feel better. Life goes on. No matter what, life went on. Ever since she had come to this house she had found herself adding little caveats to her favorite saying. Like she’d just done. Life goes on, even when you don’t want it to. She hated that she couldn’t even look at her childhood motto anymore without being cynical. In less than a week in this house, her whole outlook on life had changed.
Of course, she hadn’t changed yet. Maybe that meant that she wasn’t going to. Maybe. She held onto that hope like a rope in the hands of someone sinking into quicksand. There was a chance she wasn’t a werewolf, wasn’t there?
Or was she just kidding herself?
There was a knock on her door, and she knew who it would be. Some sixth sense told her that Garrett was standing out there, timidly asking permission to come in and see her. Or maybe it was just the fact that he had done the same thing over and over, each day since the Shifter Raul had bit her. He blamed himself.
So did she.
Maybe that was unfair, but there it was. This was his fault.
But she couldn’t avoid him forever. Not while she was planning on living under his roof.
“Come in, Garrett.”
She was in bed still, oversized fuzzy pajamas wrapping her up in softness, buried under the fluffy blankets up to her neck. She still felt naked as he opened the door wide enough to lean in.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
That was maybe the stupidest question she had ever heard in her life. No. She was not all right. She would never be all right again.
Damn, he was beautiful.
Her thoughts skipped a track at the sight of him, all angelic face and curly dark hair and crystal green eyes. His tailored dress suit and pants fit him in all the right ways and her gaze strayed over the most interesting parts…
Then, in a flash, Malinda remembered she was mad at him. This was typical for her, whenever he was this close. She couldn’t control herself around him. It had only gotten worse since she had been attacked, too, like her body was telling her she needed his protection and she should give herself to him completely so that he could hold her and touch her and cover her with those lips of his. From her toes, to the top of her head, and everywhere in-between.
Everywhere.
She sat up, folding her legs closer to her chest, hoping he didn’t notice her body’s reaction. Not that he could, but she was sure it was written all over her face.
“Garrett, why are you here?” she asked him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching over Brandon?” he countered, one eyebrow up, a not-quite-frown turning down the corners of his mouth.
“I…yes,” she admitted, scrubbing her hands over her face. “I’m sorry. I know he’s been scared and worried, what with Raul stealing him right out from his bed like that. It’s more than a ten-year-old boy should have to endure.”
That last part was said with an edge that she fully intended to cut him. She could see that it did. He closed his eyes, and nodded.
“He needs us both,” was what Garrett finally said to her.
“I agree. I made sure he got to sleep last night. It was all I could do. I still don’t feel right. Not completely. I get tired easy, and dizzy, sometimes.”
“Which is why I haven’t gone to work today,” he explained. “One of us has to be here for him. All the time, not just when you’re able to get up out of this bed.”
She took that like a slap across the face, and the next thing she knew she was up out of the covers, tossing them aside, hands fisted at her sides as the pajama top slid down one shoulder. It was the shoulder she’d been bit on, and she could see his eyes shift to look at the little scars. She didn’t care.
“See? I can get out of bed. I just don’t want to! At least in this bed I don’t have to face the truth of what you are and the dangers you live in and…damn it…what I’m going to turn into…”
The room spun, and somehow the bed was rushing up toward her face. She closed her eyes shut tight and brought her hands up to defend herself, not understanding how the bed could be attacking her.
Garrett caught her as she fell, and then in his arms she regained her balance. The world righted itself and the layered walls of defense she’d put up within herself to keep him out started to crumble.
“I don’t want to be a werewolf,” she admitted, fisting her hands into his shirt, giving in to her feelings for him no matter what her rational mind said. He was here, and he was so strong holding onto her, and he smelled so good…
She kissed the hollow of Garrett’s throat where it was exposed at the open neck of his shirt. She could feel his pulse against her lips. Quick. Throbbing. His breath played over her cheeks, stirring the strands of her hair, caressing and warm. Gently, he laid her down on the bed. The mussed blankets made soft mounds to nestle into. He tried to leave her there, to be a gentleman and respect her emotional state and not take advantage of her.
Keeping her hands tightly bunched into his shirt, she pulled him down with her, on top of her, and nodded to the question in his eyes. She didn’t want a gentleman right now.
She wanted an animal.
Sucking her lower lip in-between her teeth she held back a gasp that built up inside of her. Her heart throbbed in time to his pulse. Her toes curled. Her thoughts tangled up into knots and all she knew was that she wanted this. Very, very badly.
His hands spread themselves through the space between two of the large buttons on her top. Right across the smooth skin of her tummy, then up, under the heavy material, to cup the undersides of her breasts. Her back arched, and her nipples stiffened and when he swept his thumbs over their tips she begged him to lock the door and come back to her, quick, quick, quick!
That same urgency burned in his eyes, turning them darker, bluer, intense and hungry. He was on her again as soon as he’d thrown the lock and the deadbolt. Malinda had already kicked off her bottoms, undone the buttons on her top. Except for what her red panties covered, she was exposed to him.
Her nipples throbbed for him to pay more attention to them. Instead, he dipped his head down between her legs and planted his mouth against her underwear, right over the wet spot of her crease. The motion he started was echoed inside of her core.
“Take them off,” she whispered, staring up at the ceiling.
She felt his fingers slipping under her panties, and they touched her where his tongue had been. Her release was explosive.
When they were both naked and he was on her and in her and all around her, she made him take his time, tilting her hips this way, then that way, making him work for it.
Until she couldn’t take it anymore and let him go as hard and fast as he wanted to and they were both panting into the climax of their love.
Malinda didn’t have time to analyze how she could be so deeply in love with a man she had only just met. Her mind was wrapped in lines of golden afterglow. Their love for each other was real, and it simply was. It didn’t matter how it had happened. They were meant for each other.
She belonged to him.
After, he held her closely, kissing her skin, breathing her in. Like the animal he was. He was still in her, and every little movement drove her crazy.
“I want you again,” she told him, wondering if she would ever get enough of him. “And I want to beat you with my own two hands all at the same time.”
He nodded into her neck. “I get that. I want you to know that I love you, too. I hate what Raul did to you. I don’t want this damned animal spirit taking up space inside my soul. I certainly didn’t want it for you. I wouldn’t wish this on my own worst enemy.”
“It was your worst enemy that did this to me,” she grumbled. “I don’t want to be a Shifter. I don’t want this, Garrett.”
“Neither do I.” Now he pulled away from her, rolling over onto his side, making her shiver and want to curl up to him again. “I fight against the bear inside of me every day. And most days, I lose.”
“So what am I supposed to do? If you can’t fight it, what chance do I have?”
He sat up, crossing his legs, drawing Malinda’s line of sight down below his belly button. “I’m working on something. It might keep you safe.”
“From the change or from evil Shifters trying to eat me?”
That brought a little laugh from him. “Maybe both. Not so much from the change, though. That’s going to happen. There’s no helping it. I’m… I’m sorry, Malinda. Like I said I wouldn’t wish the change on anyone.”
“What hurts the most? When you change?”
After a moment’s thought, he answered, “The tail. When that pushes out through the tip of my ass I want to just claw it off with my own two bare hands.”
She giggled behind her hand, then straightened her face out and tried to focus on the problem—no, problems—they were facing. “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for what happened to me just because I let you, um, blow my mind.”
“Hmm,” he teased. “Maybe you’ve forgiven me just a little?”
She reached for the anger she had held onto so fiercely for the last two days and to her surprise found it wasn’t there anymore. “Fine. Maybe just a little. But as much as I want to scream and tear my hair out and be a baby about what happened, we have a more important problem.”
“You mean like finding Raul and cutting him into little tiny pieces?”
Malinda blinked. He’d said it with such cold calculation that he might have been ordering lunch instead of contemplating murder. “Uh, yeah, I guess. That too. I was talking about Brandon, though. Your son needs you to be his father right now. You two have always been friends, but now he needs his dad. Talk to him.”
Garrett looked at her out of the corner of his eye, turning his face away. “I’ve tried, Malinda. While you’ve been up here in your bed, I’ve spent almost every waking minute with Brandon. First he was terrified, then he was fascinated and asked me a million questions all at once. I love the kid, but there are things he’s not ready to hear. Then, he shut down completely. I can’t get him to talk to me in sentences more than two words long.”
She nodded, thinking she might understand why. “Maybe it’s because you’re treating him like a little kid still, holding things back from him.”
“He is a little kid.” Garrett swung down off the bed. How many times had he had this same conversation? With Brandon’s instructors, with that traitorous rat bastard Wilson, even with Malinda herself. Usually it brought him to the edge of fury because he knew his son. Who could possibly know him better?
At the edge of the bed, Malinda reached out and stroked the fine curve of his manly ass with one hand. “I know he’s still a little kid. At least in age, he is. In every other way he is very much your son. Old beyond his years. He always knew something was going on with you. Now he knows what it is and you’re still shutting him out. He’s going to hold that against you. Let him in, Garrett. Give him a chance to show you how adult he can be. He’ll come around.”
She saw him take a deep breath, watched appreciatively the way it stretched the tight muscles across his back. She was right, and he knew it.
He stood there, letting her fingertips touch him in a very intimate way, until finally the words came out. “Can you help me? Talk to him, I mean.”
“Of course, Garrett. I can’t explain it, but I already think of Brandon as part of my family. He just has that sort of way about him. You do, too. We knew we were meant for each other from the second we laid eyes on each other.”
“I can feel your eyes on me now,” he said, his voice low and husky.
It made her breath come quicker. Her heart pumped a little faster. She leaned forward, closer to him, and trailed wet kisses up the curve of his ass. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes.” A whisper of sound, she barely heard his answer over the beating of her own heart.
Her fingernails dragged lines down the back of his leg.
“We’ll never leave this room,” he warned her, “if you don’t stop that.”
“Just once more,” she begged him, already hot and aching for him. “I promise. Just once more…”