Motor City Wolf (3 page)

“I am fine. It’s only a scratch. What about you? I saw those flames hit you right in the face?” She reached up and touched his now-healed cheek and throat.

“Werewolves regenerate quickly,” he reminded her. “I’m good as new.” He wasn’t sure why he gathered her close to his chest and held her there. It felt like the right thing to do. For the moment, his need to hold her overrode his conscience.

Fee must have agreed. She looped her arms around his waist and held on as well, snuggling her face into his chest.

“Will you be okay going with Lana to George and Jase’s?” His voice sounded husky and thick. The full moon. He needed that run, and he needed it badly, or he’d never be able to keep his control around Fee.

“That will be fine, but what about you? Aren’t you going with us?”

“I’ve got some stuff to do. I’ll catch up with you there later.”

She looked up at him and the thick golden lashes framing her aquamarine eyes glinted. Tears? “I’m so sorry about your club. Will you be able to repair the damages?”

“Easily enough.” He couldn’t resist dropping a kiss on her tiny, upturned nose. “Mostly it will be cleaning up.” She blinked rapidly at that tiny kiss, licked her lips and moved closer. Damn, she ought to be pushing him away. “Get some sleep. We’ll be mopping and hauling garbage all day tomorrow.”

“I will be ready.” Three months ago she’d never even swept a floor. Now she was gamely jumping into wet, smelly manual labor. His Faerie princess had come a long way. He was prouder of her than he should probably admit.

He knew he shouldn’t kiss her. Not now, when his emotions were riding as high as his lupine hormones. But she was safe and in his arms and soft and smiling. He moved slowly, giving her plenty of time to move. She didn’t back away, but came up on her tiptoes to meet him.

Oh, damn.
Kissing Fee was like holding lightning in his hand. She barely seemed to know what she was doing, but she tasted sweet and her enthusiasm made up for any lack of technique. Her arms wrapped around his neck as she opened her lips. He delved inside, desperate for a taste of her. Holding her waist with one arm, he tangled his other hand in her long, silky hair, unbound and damp from the sprinkler.

Every instinct urged him to take her, mark her, claim her. He kept his eyes open during the kiss. She intrigued all his senses and he didn’t want to miss anything. A rosy flush tinted her cheeks and her eyelids had fluttered shut. Her slender body pressed into his and he felt every sinuous curve. Her ragged moans were music to his ears. Even over the smoke that clung to her skin, she smelled of vanilla soap and femininity. He could also scent her arousal, which only ramped up his own.

How long they stood there, lips fused, hearts pounding in tandem, he didn’t know. He’d tuned out the rest of the world and started to slide his hand up under Fee’s sweater when something—someone—shook his shoulder, hard.

“Greg, snap out of it. We need to leave the building now.”

He snarled as he broke the kiss, instinctively pushing Fee behind his back. It only took half a heartbeat for him to see Lana standing there, eyes flashing with laughter and a wicked grin on her face. “Maybe you two should take the apartment and I’ll take the inside guest room.”

Greg actually thought about it for a moment. He turned to look at Fee, whose kiss-swollen lips were still slightly parted, her eyes glazed. “No.” He bit his lip, hoping the pain would snap him out of his sensual haze. “You two stay together, inside the house.”

After his run, he was going to go to the empty apartment and take a long, cold shower, or maybe go jump into the Detroit River for, say, an hour or so. In early November it was above freezing, but not much. That might do the trick.

But he wasn’t counting on it. Barring the polar bear plunge, maybe he’d go use Jase’s home gym until he collapsed from exhaustion. Unfortunately, as a werewolf, that was going to take a hell of a long workout.

By noon the next day, the fire department had given them permission to go in and clean up the club. Tonight they’d even be able to sleep upstairs, back in their own apartments. It would still be a few days before the club could reopen. That was assuming, of course, that they ever finished cleaning up this soggy, smelly mess. Greg and George had spent the morning filling out forms and talking to insurance companies on the phone. More things Fianna didn’t understand. Scrubbing and mopping at least made sense.

Fianna had never dealt with so much
wet
in her life. She was ninety-eight years old, and until the past few months, had always relied on servants and magic for mundane tasks like cleaning. All she’d had to do was call for someone and they appeared. She could transport objects with a thought or change her clothes with a wave of her hand. Now here she was, wielding a mop as if she knew what she was doing. Stranger, still, she was laughing while she did so.

The banter between Greg, George, Lana and Jase was simply too entertaining to resist. Even the part-time help was pitching in, and Ric had promised to stop by later. In her previous life, she’d never even imagined having friends like that. Her uncle and cousin had kept her isolated at their estate, only bringing her to court when they wanted to show her off or needed a female ear in the right quarter. Since her uncle’s wife had died years earlier, and her cousin had never married, Fianna was the only woman with access to the queen’s circles. In Fae society, males and females held equal power, but within her uncle’s household, that had been far from the case.

Exhausted as she was from tossing and turning all night, she was revived by the spirit of camaraderie pervading the damaged bar.

“All the bottles need to come down and be dumped,” Greg said to Fianna over the scrape of chairs on the hardwood floor. Rock and roll blared from the undamaged sound system, adding to the din. “Make a list, for insurance purposes, showing each bottle and roughly how much was left in it, especially the top-shelf stuff.”

Fianna nodded. Some of the liquor was outrageously expensive, and throwing away that much would certainly not be cheap. Worrying about money was something else that would have never occurred to her a few months ago. It had to be done though. Even on the bottles where no water from the sprinklers had gotten through the metal pour spouts, the labels were soggy and shredded, making them unappealing to look at.

She rinsed out her mop and emptied the bucket in the utility room off the kitchen and returned with a small stepladder. Greg and George broke down and disposed of the charred remains of the tables, bandstand and Greg’s drums, while Jase and the part-time bartenders scrubbed walls and tables. Lana, the two cooks and a couple of the waitresses worked in the kitchen, cleaning up that mess. Only Vince hadn’t yet arrived, but Fianna was sure he would. Greg’s werewolf pack was small, but tightly knit.

The music was catchy, and Fianna hummed along as she moved the fifteen heavy glass bottles from the top shelf and the twenty or thirty from the next. The bottom two between them contained another fifty or more. Once they were all on the bar’s freshly scrubbed surface, she made a list of each bottle and noted the percentage of liquid remaining before dumping the contents into the sink.

Her lips still tingled from last night’s kiss, the sensation more noticeable than the mild sting of the minor burns on her palms or the cut on her arm. Greg’s caress made a much greater impact on her senses than the glass or flames. She’d lain awake all night in George and Jase’s comfortable guest room, wondering what would have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted. Would she have had the courage to pull him into her room? Would he have wanted her to?

When the Seelie queen had taken Fianna’s powers, other changes had plagued her, as well. Her entire body was different. Just a few sips of alcohol made her sleepy. A couple weeks ago she’d had her first cold and thought she was dying. Menstruation—well, she didn’t even want to think about that. Fae life cycles were so much slower that she was only used to a very minimal cycle once every few years. How did human women stand five whole days, every month, year after year? Her senses had grown less keen, but certain feelings ran stronger, became an almost visceral part of her being.

In her life as an elf, she’d never felt anything like the desire Greg aroused in her with nothing more than a look. When she’d first met him, she’d found him intriguing. She’d certainly never have let him kiss her during that house party at Aidan Greene’s otherwise. Back then, though, her skin hadn’t quivered at the thought of his touch, and her stomach hadn’t fluttered—at least not until after the kiss. And yet, Aidan and Ric, both full Fae, seemed to be passionate about their wives. Perhaps it was she who’d been deficient.

These new reactions were as confusing as they were uncomfortable, and each day that passed, they were only getting worse. Last night when Greg had kissed her, her breasts had swelled, as if wanting to be touched. A genuine ache between her legs had left her underwear damp. Before her transformation, the very idea of a man’s hands on her flesh had made her slightly nauseous. Of course the only ones who had tried were her cousin’s cronies. Thinking of
them
still upset her stomach. Could the freedom from her family have changed her emotionally, rather than her transformation into a human? She didn’t even have anyone to ask.

Once all the bottles were emptied, rinsed and deposited in the bin George had brought her for recycling, she stretched and looked around. Dusk had fallen, but much of the work was done. The walls and ceiling needed repainting, and a few of the tables and chairs would have to be replaced. Greg’s drums and the sound system for the stage were a true loss. Overall, though, the destruction was minimal. If they’d been upstairs in bed, as usual at that time, the entire building could have burned, with all of them in it. Despite the damage, they were truly lucky it hadn’t been worse.

“Okay, everyone, let’s call it a night,” Greg said finally, after gathering his staff around him. “Take tomorrow off, paid. Monday we’ll get the painters in and Tuesday, the electricians. Hopefully we can reopen for the weekend, so anyone who wants the hours can come in Wednesday morning to start restocking and setting up. If all goes well, we’ll open Friday afternoon.”

The employees cheered and made their way out, leaving Fianna alone with Greg and Lana. George and Jase had left sometime earlier. Vince had never shown up.

Lana slumped into a chair and stretched her long legs, clad in stretchy black leggings under an oversized red T-shirt. “I need a shower,” she announced. “I have a date. You two okay on your own?”

Greg and Fianna both nodded and watched as Lana left.

“You want to grab a pizza or something?” Greg looked over at Fianna and raised one thick black eyebrow. “I still wish you’d gone back to George and Jase’s for the night. I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone in the building when I go out later.”

Tonight was the full moon. Fianna knew the werewolves felt a strong need to shift into their lupine forms and run in the woods at this time every month, but she didn’t want to spend another night in someone else’s home. “I may not have magic any longer, but I don’t need to be minded like an infant, either. My apartment is warded, and I promise to lock my doors. If there are problems, I’ll phone the police like any other human.”

Greg drew in a deep breath before letting it out slowly through flared nostrils. Finally he nodded. “You’re right. You’re an adult and deserve to be treated like one.” His lips quirked into a grin. “Of course it would help if you didn’t look so damned young.”

“I’m nearly a century old, you know,” she reminded him with an answering smile. “Despite my appearance, I’m a lot older than you are.”

“Yeah, you’re the hottest centenarian I’ve ever met.” His grin faded away and a wrinkle formed between his brows. “But you’ve only been in this world—human—for a few months. There’s still a lot you have to learn.”

He thought she was hot? A tingle ran down her spine. “Things like driving a car and why you don’t wear leather in the rain, yes. How to dial a telephone, I think I’ve mastered.”

He kept on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I can shift and stay down here as a guard dog. Should have thought of that last night, anyway. I’ll take a run tomorrow, when Lana might be home, or I can get George to come play watchdog.” His scowl showed he wasn’t too pleased with his own idea.

“Greg, you don’t need to skip your run for my benefit. I promise I’ll be fine.” Fianna looked around the bar and realized she was out of garbage bags, but had somehow overlooked the piles of drenched paper napkins underneath the bar. “I’m running down to the storeroom. Do you need anything?”

He shook an empty gallon bottle of lemon oil. “Yeah, I want to put one more coat on these tables and the bar top tonight, but you don’t have to carry it up. I’ll come with you.”

Fianna shrugged and let him lead her through the kitchen down into the sub-basement storage room. As she understood it, the lower level had been built some eighty years earlier, when for some reason the American government had prohibited the sale of alcohol. Secret establishments had flourished, of course, and one of Greg’s ancestors had been the original proprietor of the New Moon, back during that time.

Now a sturdy steel door had replaced the secret panel leading to the storage area, which also held the large, walk-in refrigerator used by the kitchen staff. Instead of a few dim lamps, as she’d seen in the old photographs displayed on the walls upstairs, bright fluorescent lights now illuminated the stairs and the stone-walled chamber below.

Fianna still didn’t like this room. It felt like a dungeon, cool and dank, even though the walls were scrubbed clean, the old wooden flooring had been refinished with a thick coat of polyurethane and the shelving was modern plastic and steel. While they’d mopped the floor in this area, and most of the inventory had been protected from the sprinklers by the shelves, everything, including the air, was still damp, despite all of today’s cleaning.

“I think we may be out of garbage bags,” she called over her shoulder as she bent to search the shelf where they were normally kept.

“Check the restroom.” He gathered more cleaning supplies into a cardboard box. “There might be a partial box stashed in there.”

“Good idea.” There was a staff washroom on this level, probably a holdover from earlier years, which no one had ever bothered to remove. Sure enough, in the cabinet beneath the sink, she found half a box of trash bags.

As she moved back into main storeroom, she heard Greg yell, “Who’s up there?”

Fianna hadn’t heard any footsteps, but his hearing was better than hers.

With a loud, metallic clang, the door at the top of the steps slammed shut.

“What the fuck?” Greg ran up the stairs two at a time. “Not funny, assholes.” He pounded on the steel door with his fist. “Let us out.”

Fianna dropped the box of garbage bags and clutched the pole of a shelf. “What’s going on?” She was only faintly claustrophobic, she reminded herself. And surely, Greg would have them out in no time.

“I swear, if this is Vince or Lana playing a prank, I’m going to rip their tails off with my teeth,” he snarled, throwing his shoulder into the door to no effect.

“Why would they do that?” It didn’t make any sense at all.

“To throw us together, princess.” His voice softened at the nickname, which he’d originally used in such a derogatory tone when she’d first come to work for him. “I believe my brother and cousin think we ought to be a couple.”

“Really? Lana hasn’t said anything of the sort to me.” Although the other woman had been urging Fianna to wear tighter jeans and lower necklines, and she had gone out early tonight, leaving Greg and Fianna alone. “Can’t we phone someone for help?” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket.

Greg shook his head. “No signal. We’re too far underground. Sorry, Fee, I think we’re stuck here for the duration.”

Sweat had broken out on Fee’s forehead, and it was all Greg could do not to run over and take her into his arms. He knew she had claustrophobia issues. The rat-bastard cousin she’d grown up with had occasionally trapped her in their castle’s dungeons as a child, to fuel his own sense of superiority. Greg had found out about it last year, after he’d been a party to putting Fee in a holding cell at the Faerie Court. He’d sworn not to let anyone lock her up again. She was holding up well, but her faint trembling let him know she was anxious.

Greg swore and ran back up the stairs. This couldn’t be happening. He didn’t want to frighten Fee any further, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t a prank. It would be all too easy for whoever had tossed those Molotov cocktails to be watching the place, and to have taken this opportunity to do more damage. Greg and Fee might be in danger themselves if the building burned down around them, but more likely, locking them up meant someone could trash the rest of the place unimpeded.

He pressed his ear to the door and listened to the sounds of metal on metal, as someone systematically tossed the kitchen. A siren sounded in the distance, and the intruders, thankfully, swore and fled, the back door of the club slamming behind them. Unfortunately the siren kept going, passing in front of the club instead of stopping.
Damn.

Greg sank down to the top of the step. “They’re gone. I’m hoping they only smashed up the kitchen.”

Fee grimaced. “More cleaning.”

“Worse yet, we’re still stuck down here.” Even from the top of the stairs he could pick up her scent, and the knowledge that they were together, and trapped, made him want to howl.

“I don’t see why you’re so upset.” She sighed, examining her ragged fingernails which had once been so perfect. He was proud of how hard she’d worked today, of how far she’d come in a few short months. Right now, she lounged idly, presenting a façade of utter boredom, but she wasn’t fooling him. The fear in her scent gave her away. “Surely someone will be along in the morning to let us out. We’ve water, plenty of food, even lavatory facilities. We’ll be fine.”