Clearer in the Night (26 page)

I heard the apartment door open, but I was still surprised when his arms tightened around me, pinning my arms down. “Did I say you could get dressed?” he asked, his tone not entirely flirty.

I grinned over my shoulder. “I didn’t know I needed to ask your permission.”

He growled and picked me up, carrying me into the bedroom and tossing me face first onto the bed before I had time to brace myself against him. I laughed, and before I could roll over, his weight was on my thighs, and he was bending my hands behind my back. It didn’t hurt, but it danced at the edge of comfortable. This was Shan’s kind of play, not mine.

I turned my head to the side so that I wasn’t breathing feathers. “Let me up.”

He wrenched my arms up higher. A month ago I would have screamed. Now, there was a sense of straining muscles and ligaments, but I was okay. “What if I say no?” It wasn’t a sexy tone of voice; it stopped just this side of a snarl.

A tight curl of panic twisted through my guts. I was sure—mostly—that I could fight him off if it was really necessary, but there were too many times when that had not been the truth. When I’d prayed that my wits and my laugh would be enough to get me out of a nasty situation. “Let me go. Please?” The thin whine of pleading and fear that layered my tone made me sick, but it was what he needed to hear, apparently. He laughed, and his weight fell to the side. I rolled over, curling my knees up. Not quite to my chest—that would just provoke him again, I was sure of that—but I wasn’t open.

He kept running his fingers through my hair. “Sorry,” he said, but it sounded like the sorry you say when your parents order you to apologize to the neighbor’s kid. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“That’s not my scene,” I said, keeping my voice from shaking with a significant amount of effort. “Even as a joke.” The wolf begged to differ, though. She wanted him to bite her neck and growl, hold her down. She wanted to bare her throat and her belly to him, show him that she followed him. She’d filled my brain for the past day, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I could think right now, but I wanted to take advantage of it.

“Tell me about your grandfather,” I said. It was the most me-ish question I could think of.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “This again?”

“I don’t know anything about you. Who you are, where you’re from. You keep saying you love me, but you have no idea who I am.”

“I know enough. I know that you’re beautiful, and brilliant. I know that you have dimples. I know that you light me on fire.” He tugged at my hips, and I let him pull me close, starting up that flame again with a quiet, practiced movement of his fingers. I tried to hang on to the feeling of exposure and fear from just moments before, but it was evaporating under the flame. I tried to remember that there were things I needed to know, before I was submerged again inside my own mind.

“How did you turn up, right as everything went crazy? How did you find me?” But the answers didn’t matter, just his body against mine, in its primal and subtle rhythm.

Eventually, we slept.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7

It was pitch black when I woke up, but I could see him easily, without straining my eyes. He lay on his side, stroking his fingers down my cheek. After days of sex and food and abandon, we’d slept, finally.

“Will it hurt?” We both jumped, startled by my voice. “When the wolf takes over and I change.”

He was silent for a long time, and I listened as his heartbeat sped up and slowed down while he decided what to say. “I have been told that it is like losing control. If you fight, it can be more painful than you can imagine. If you can accept the change, be one with the creature, then it’s swift and sharp, like cutting yourself with a knife.”

“How do you know?”

Another long silence. Then, “My grandfather.”

“Was he…?”

“Yes. But he controlled the wolf and kept his humanity, even when he changed. He hunted animals, not people.” His dark eyes seemed brilliant in the darkness, glowing with a fervent light that should have lit the room.

“How did he die?”

He watched me for a long time, then simply laid his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes. The conversation was clearly done.

Why did he inspire so much trust in me, but refuse to share any of it in turn?

When I woke up again, it was light out. Birds were singing, big fluffy clouds were drifting across the sky, and I was lying in a patch of bone-baking sunlight. I could smell bacon sizzling. I could hear Wes singing tunelessly to himself in the kitchen.

I thought of doing that move from a dozen chick-flicks where the girl wraps herself up in a bed sheet and wanders out to the kitchen. But no, that was idiotic. So what did a person do when she reeked of sex and had terrible bedhead for the second time in a handful of days? Putting on my actual clothes seemed foolish, especially since my shirt wasn’t going to button anymore. Possibly never again. I was fairly sure I’d heard some fabric ripping, along with the buttons popping. After an internal debate that took a lot longer than was reasonable, I put his boxers and t-shirt back on. For now, anyway. I ran my fingers through my hair to get it in some vague attempt at order, and went out to the kitchen.

He was wearing gray jersey pajama bottoms and no shirt. The flex and pull of his shoulder muscles as he reached for the spatula and poked at the bacon made my knees go weak. He jostled the pan like a chef—and the grease burst into flame, somehow. He cursed and threw it into the sink. I saw him reach for the faucet, and I started to scream, and then he realized, grabbed a pan lid off the counter, and smothered the small fire before it got any more exciting.

“Fuck,” he said to the wall.

“Agreed.”

He spun, his shoulders tight and back, his hands raised—and then he laughed. His shoulders came down, but his eyes stayed distant. “You snuck up on me.”

“Turnabout’s fair play.” I sounded like a grandmother. Go me. “Weren’t you making me breakfast?”

His smile was sideways, just this side of a smirk. “Until I caught the bacon grease on fire, yes, that was the plan. How did you sleep? Any dreams?”

“No, actually.” It had been pleasant, waking up without feeling like I’d run for miles. I felt sleepy, but rested, and only sore in pleasant ways. And that was minor, given how sore I should have been. If there was any sense to the universe, I would be walking like a cowboy for a month. “Why do you think that is?”

He shrugged, turning back to his fridge. “If the wolf got what she wanted when you were awake, she’s less likely to take over your dreams. The more you can work with her instead of against her, the easier things will be for you.”

“You talk about it like it’s a separate entity.” I moved a pile of paper so that I could sit on one of his kitchen chairs.

“Doesn’t it feel like one?”

“I suppose. It seems like sometimes she wants things that I don’t.”

That got him to glance over at me, but I kept my face as blank as I could. He didn’t push. “There’s nothing else to eat here. Mind going out?”

“Sure, if I can borrow a shirt. You killed the buttons on mine, I think.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed, at least, even though he hadn’t been embarrassed at all when he was shredding my blouse to get at my breasts. “Sorry about that.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “It’s foolish to apologize for something you didn’t do.” The sentence rang in my head for a moment, echoing. Where had I heard it before? It took me a minute to think of it, and then I blushed. I didn’t want to think about Mr. Perfect. Not now, anyway. Preferably not ever, but definitely not now.

The blush made him smile, and he glided over to me, putting his hands on my waist and swaying me gently to some rhythm he could hear clearly inside his head. “You’re right,” he said, his eyes wide and honest. “I’m not sorry. I was dying to get you out of those clothes, and I’d shred a dozen shirts to get at your skin. Does that satisfy you?”

There was nowhere to put my hands. The hard solidity of his chest? The sculpted plane of his abs? I settled for the strength of his biceps. “Not for long if you don’t feed me,” I said.

He glanced at the clock, and it seemed to sink in suddenly that it had been about fourteen hours since we’d had anything to eat. He was the one, after all, who had told me that if I didn’t keep the wolf’s base hungers satisfied, I’d struggle harder with the more metaphysical ones.

His hands moved up my sides, grazing over the sides of my breasts. I kept the sigh internal through sheer effort. I kept my eyes locked on his, even when he smirked. It was better than nothing. It was the best that I could do. “Where should we go eat?” he asked, and I swallowed before answering to make sure I wouldn’t squeak.

“Depends. What are you in the mood for?”

He’d kissed me until my lips were swollen, but still, when his mouth came down over mine, my entire body lit on fire. He didn’t have to caress me, or crush me to him. The light weight of his hands on my waist made everything surge to attention. It was such a relief not to be asked or consulted or negotiated. He just took what he wanted, and I would have given him more if I could.

And then my stomach growled like a wild thing, and he fell away from me, laughing. “Feed you,” he said, laughing. Message received.

I was blushing like a maniac. My hands tangled around the hem of my shirt, and I barely managed to keep from shuffling my feet. “Sorry,” I said.

He tapped the end of my nose in this weird, almost affectionate way. “Forgiven,” he said. “Come on. I know where to get the best burgers in town.”

He actually kept his hands off me long enough for me to get dressed in a borrowed shirt and jeans. I had to roll up the cuffs like I was a kid, and they hung loose on my hips. Then he drove us to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant downtown. I’d walked by it a million times, but never gone in. It had four tables and a menu written on a piece of poster board. The choices were rare, medium rare, or medium, and a list of veggies you could add. The guy who took our order went into the back to cook the burgers and quickly brought them out, leaking juice onto our plates. When I bit into mine, I moaned. “Oh, God, that’s amazing,” I said, through a mouthful of medium rare culinary bliss.

“There’s a place out in Montana that’s better. I swear, the guy butchers the cow in the morning, makes hamburger in the afternoon, serves it for dinner.” He was quiet for a moment, chewing. “We could go there. We’d be there by Monday, easy. Want to?”

I stared at him, my food all but forgotten.

“We could stop by your place, if you want. You might want some of your stuff. Although you’ll probably find that most of it is replaceable. Once you really look at it.”

“I’d want to say good-bye to my mother.” I said. “And my friend Shannon.”

“Why?”

“Because I love them, and they love me.” I said it like a child, rote memorization.

“Do they? Is that why you’ve confided in them, told them all about what you’re going through? How you’re possessed by a monster, and can read their minds, and that you’re afraid you’re cursed for eternity?”

“I told Shannon.” Most of it, anyway. Some of it.

“And what was her response? Did she wait until you were all the way out of the room before she called the psych ward?”

Something deep inside of me was starting to quiver. “She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“How sure are you? Are you willing to risk your freedom? Because you have.”

The look Eli had given me. The look in his eyes when he said that I needed help. My stomach flipped and tightened. Crap. Was it safe to even go home? Were the men with the white coats looking for me right now? Wes was right. What did I have that wasn’t replaceable, when push came to shove? My clothes, my laptop? None of it was necessary, none of it would help keep me alive. I should get in his car and let him take me away, it would probably be weeks before anyone had any idea where I’d gone anyway, and they’d never find me, and I’d be with—