Beauty Dates the Beast (7 page)

I glanced over at my sister. She was a dainty, fragile sort, so unlike me with my tall, sturdy frame. Tonight she seemed even smaller, staring at the house with worried eyes, waiting for Mike to discover her secret and ruin her life. She was shivering, too.

I sighed. “She could use a good night’s sleep. Thank you. We’ll stay at the hotel.”

He nodded and pulled me against him, tucking me under his chin and cradling my body to his.

I stiffened a little, but he only ran his hands gently up and down my back. It felt lovely and soothing, and I finally relaxed a little.

Unfortunately, snuggling with a man was not the way to get rid of him.

At the hotel, Beau got us the room adjoining his. The hotel room was lovely, the blankets turned down, and fluffy robes hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I felt sleepy just looking at the big, plush bed.

“I’ll be on the other side if you need me,” Beau said, standing in the doorway that connected the two rooms. “Sleep tight, ladies.”

With a wink at me, he closed the door.

As soon as he was gone, I slumped on the edge of the bed and sighed. “God, I wish he wasn’t so hot. That would make this all so much easier.”

Sara tapped her ear, indicating that his shifter hearing could hear our conversation.

Oh, well. It wasn’t like I’d done a good job hiding it anyhow.

She moved to the closet and opened it, scanning the contents. Then she turned to me and mouthed, “Are there extra blankets?”

“Why?” I mouthed back.

She gestured at herself. “I still smell like whatever was in the house,” she mouthed, her voice barely audible. “I need to shower and get the stink off of me. But if I do …”

She’d smell like herself again. And if I slept next to her all night, I’d smell like her, too, because I didn’t have any other clothes to sleep in.

Should I go downstairs and get a third room? Beau was sure to be curious if I did, and we would have to be more cautious than ever.

Unless … he’d already figured out that Sara was a werewolf? I discarded the thought. He’d have questioned me about it immediately if he had, or demanded to speak to Sara. Our secret was still safe.

Sara trembled slightly as she stared down at the bed, knowing she couldn’t get into it and relax.
Knowing that our being here wasn’t a full reprieve, that in the next room was a man who could give away everything we had worked so hard to conceal. As I watched, she rubbed her arms. They were covered in goose pimples, a sure sign that she was about to shift due to stress.

I waved a hand to get her attention, then gestured at the connecting door. “I’m going to go sleep with Beau,” I mouthed. “You take this bed.”

Her eyes went wide with shock and she forgot to whisper. “Bath, what—”

I cut her off with a quick wave of my hand, then mouthed, “Not like
that
!” I moved closer to her to explain my plan. “I’ll just tell him that you snore and I won’t be able to sleep. It’s perfect, because if I sleep in the same bed as him we’ll have the same scent, and he won’t suspect a thing.”

It
was
a perfect plan, but it wasn’t why I wanted to sleep next to him. I wanted to sleep next to him because the very thought made me shiver with excitement.

“Bath,
no
.” Sara mouthed the protest. “What if he’s a creep?”

I shook my head. “He’s not a creep,” I whispered back. “He’s nice. He won’t do anything.” I decided not to mention the whole “in heat” thing.

She didn’t look convinced, but I saw her gaze sneak back to the bed, and she sighed. “I can sleep
on the floor,” she began, but my eye roll cut her off.

She sat down on the foot of the bed, then gave me a weak thumbs-up that I returned. When she was freshly showered and wrapped in the bathrobe, I flicked the lights off, then closed the door behind me, stepping back out into the hall.

A loud, fake snore began to rise from the room, so I took a deep breath and knocked on Beau’s door.

He opened it a few moments later, his hair tousled, chest bare. My gaze went immediately to the low-slung plaid sleep pants around his waist, noticing the dark trail of hair that crept down his abdomen.

“Hi, again,” he said.

I jerked my head up, caught staring. “Oh. Hi.”

“Something wrong?”

Not in the slightest
, I thought as warmth spread through my body. I gestured at our room. “I hate to ask, but my sister snores and I thought I might sleep with you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Sleep in the same room as you,” I amended quickly. “We could put pillows between us or something. And it’ll give us a chance to … talk.”

“I can get another room,” he began.

“I’d rather stay with you,” I said. “It’s not a
come-on. I just feel safer with you in the room, if that’s all right.”

He stepped aside to let me in. “Of course.”

Ever the gentleman, Beau immediately offered me a spare set of pajamas, and I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth with the complimentary toothbrush. When I emerged the room was empty, with a note that Beau had gone to get extra pillows from the front desk.

He returned a short time later. The click of the lock on the door was the only thing that let me know that he’d come back; other than that, he moved as silently as a cat. Hah.

I had already prepared the bed for his return. Pillows were stacked in the middle and I’d wrapped myself in one of the extra blankets, leaving him the sheet and the duvet. His lips twitched at the sight, but he said nothing. He simply put the extra pillows down and clicked the light off.

“I thought we were going to talk,” I reminded him.

The other side of the mattress dipped with Beau’s weight as he chuckled. “My mouth works just fine in the dark, Bathsheba. I imagine yours does, too.”

Now
that
was a blatant double entendre. My heart pounded with nervous excitement. Oddly enough, I was a little breathless at his pursuit.
Would he shove the pillows aside and take me into his arms? Kiss me senseless?

I squirmed a little at the thought and forced myself not to think such things. I had told him this would be innocent, and he had agreed. Why was I fantasizing about him ravishing me? I rolled over on my side, facing away from Beau, and tried to relax. It was a near-impossible task—my body was utterly conscious of the man who lay so close to me.

I tried to think of something to say. After all, the premise of my being here was that I wanted to talk to him, right? So I needed to talk.

One arm snaked out and grabbed me by the waist, pulling me across the bed. Instead of the wall of pillows I expected to meet, I slid across the sheets and bumped into his chest. “Shhh,” he said softly in my ear, his breath warm. Hot snakes of desire coiled through me.

“So tell me,” he whispered quietly in my ear. “Who would want to kill Sara?” His thumb began to stroke my arm in a rather distracting, shivery pattern.

I stilled in his arms, shocked by the rush that crept over my skin. It took me a moment to recover, and then I realized what he was asking. Lots and lots of people probably wanted to kill Sara, but I couldn’t tell him that. I feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”

“Whoever was in the house.” He pulled me closer until my backside was spooned against his front. The breath stole out of my lungs at the warmth that flooded through me. His arms enveloped me, and huddled next to him, I felt like the smallest, daintiest woman in the world rather than my five-foot-ten self. It was pretty close to heaven.

“The intruder?” I asked. “No one who knows Sara wants to kill her.”

It was all those wolves that
didn’t
know her that were the problem.

I could feel his warm breath against my ear and neck. “Any ex-boyfriends or angry lovers?”

I was silent. The only ex-boyfriend she had was a dead one.

I knew he was dead because I’d shot him.

“No angry lovers,” I said. “Sara’s not seeing anyone. Do you think she was the target?”

I could feel his chest moving with every breath. His hand slid off my arm and down my waist, then across the cradle of my hips in a very intimate embrace. “Would someone be after you, then?”

He was making it damn hard to concentrate. I struggled to gather my thoughts and shook my head. “Not unless I’ve pissed off the bookkeeping mafia. We’re dangerous people, you know.”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down,” he said, then bit my earlobe gently.

That playful caress made my entire body flare, and I flexed my hips back against his instinctively. A small whimper rose in my throat.

I heard his groan in my ear, and his spread hand flexed across my belly. “Did you like that?” he murmured, and repeated the action. His teeth scored against the edge of my earlobe, and I felt his tongue flick against my earring. “Shall I tell you how sexy you look wearing nothing but my pajamas?” Nip, nip.

Dear God, this was the best thing I’d ever felt. Why in the world was I still a virgin? My hand covered his, my fingers pulsing in time with his, kneading the flesh of my stomach as well. I felt his cock against my backside, hard and obvious, and began to entertain some very naughty thoughts.

But I couldn’t. I removed his hand from my belly and could have wept. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Beau.”

He chuckled as I tried to move my head. He was lying on my still-damp hair. “Who says we have to sleep?”

I jerked on my hair and he moved, leaning over me instead of next to me. His breath fanned across my neck. Though I was free now, I made no attempt to move, excited and quivering. What would he do?

To my surprise, Beau leaned over me and bit
my collarbone. Too low to be a vampire bite at the carotid, but I felt the definite scrape of teeth at the base of my neck, and then the sensual slide of his tongue over my flesh.

It felt so good that I wasn’t able to contain my moan of pleasure, and when his tongue stroked over the sensitive spot again, my hand twined in his hair to hold him in place, encouraging him to do it again. With every stroke of his tongue, a whimper of enjoyment slid from my throat.

“Shhh,” he whispered against my ear before nibbling at it again. “You’re going to wake up the neighbors.”

Through the wall, I could hear Sara fake-snore loudly.

I froze.

What was I
doing
? I wanted to thank Sara for the obvious reminder, and smack her on the head for interrupting. As smoking-hot as Beau was, he was a shifter, and off-limits in more ways than he could imagine. He also just wanted someone to slake his needs while he was in heat.

My sister was probably scarred for life, listening to me make out with Beau. My hand went to his face and I pushed him away. I felt Beau’s snort of amusement against my fingers, but he took the hint and backed off, returning to his side of the bed.

There, he grabbed my hand, then pressed a kiss to my palm. “We’ll talk in the morning, Bathsheba. Get some sleep.”

“Good night,” I whispered back. I lay there, awake and breathing hard for long minutes. My body still thrummed and my legs felt curiously liquid. Just from a nip or two at the neck and ear.

I fell asleep picturing myself and Beau in some naughty situations, hoping I wouldn’t say his name in my sleep.

W
hen I awoke and squinted at the sunlight streaming in through the window, Beau’s side of the bed was cold and he was gone. A note sat on a nearby stack of clothing, along with my keys.

I sat up and grabbed the note—not that I was eager to hear from him. Nope. I squelched the shadow of disappointment that I felt at not seeing Beau this morning. Like I cared how he looked in the morning. Or if he had a five-o-clock shadow.

Or if he had those cute, tousled cowlicks in his hair when he woke up. Or if his eyes had that sleepy look that made my legs jelly. Nope. Didn’t care.

His handwriting was scrawly and loose, but somehow intimate, and just looking at it gave me the warm fuzzies.

Bathsheba,

Mike didn’t find anything unusual in the house. I’m going to go and check things out for myself. I’ll be watching the house to make sure nothing—or no one—returns. If you can, please stay away for a few more hours, until I know it’s safe. I went down to the gift shop and got you both some clothes—I guessed at your sizes. Hope that’s okay. There’s some money in the pocket for a cab, and use my credit card if you need it. You have my cell number. Call me later today and we can make plans. I’m not letting you get away easily.

I sighed.

In true masculine form, Beau had incorrectly guessed at both our sizes. The Dallas Cowboys sweatpants and T-shirt he’d gotten for Sara were about two sizes too big. Her slim form swam in the sporty clothing, but she gushed about how thoughtful Beau was.

My clothes—me being taller and bustier than Sara—were too tight. The shirt was indecent and the jogging pants were so short they could have
been capris. I put them on anyhow and wore my minidress over them as a tunic.

“Good thing Giselle is never in the office,” Sara said, rolling up her sleeves. “She’d have a heart attack if she saw us dressed like this to come to work.”

Luck was not on our side. We’d no more than arrived at the small Liaisons office and told the nighttime girls (Ryder and Marie) about our harrowing break-in before Giselle breezed in, a vision in a red minidress. Her dark, wavy hair cascaded over her shoulders.

I swallowed hard at the sight of my boss. “Giselle,” I said weakly. “You’re back early.” Well, shit. That just complicated things.

“Bathsheba,” she called in a clipped accent. “I want to see you in my office. Now.” She didn’t bother to look at the four of us gathered at Sara’s desk.

All my senses on alert, I straightened my clothes. Giselle must have somehow heard about my date with Beau and had come into the office to put the smack down on me. Shit.

Sara gave me a wide-eyed look as I passed, but she didn’t scurry for the file room. The other girls in the office weren’t shifters, and Giselle was a siren. Sirens had a lot going for them, but the preternatural sense of smell wasn’t one of them. It was why we’d been able to work here for so long.