ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (235 page)

Everything but Brandi. She looked stunning in a halter top and white pants, and the more she drank, the friendlier she got. The alcohol I’d had was starting to make me forget all my troubles, and after the fourth drink I could feel the wolf falling asleep. For one night I could just be human.

I drank more. We went from one casino to the next in a whirlwind. Brandi won, we drank, she lost, we drank anyway. She won again.

At some point I stopped thinking, stopped remembering.

By the time we were back in the hotel room, the night had a golden haze to it. Brandi in the middle of it. Her hands were around my neck, her body pushed up against mine, and the next thing I knew her lips burned hot against my neck, my jaw, and then her tongue was pushing into my mouth.

I think the word ‘stop’ was somewhere deep inside me, but I’d drowned it, and I didn’t care. I had my hands under her shirt, she fiddled with my jeans, and we collapsed on the bed.

Being with Brandi was like walking in the desert my whole life, and then finally getting a tall drink of ice cold water. Being with her, on her, in her, was like coming home.

3

Sunlight fell in through curtains that weren’t drawn, and onto my face. I cracked open one eye, and squeezed it shut immediately. My head pounded like a thousand chisels were being driven into my temples, and the room turned slowly around me. My stomach turned with it.

“Oh my god,” I groaned, rolling over. My hands found Brandi, and I lifted my head, frowning. She was on her stomach, dark hair splayed across the pillow, naked. The bottom half of her body was covered with a sheet. When I took inventory on myself, I found I was naked too.

Shit.

I’d slept with Brandi.

I sat up and held my head. It felt like it was cracked. Brandi stirred next to me.

“What happened?” she asked into the pillow, her hands wrapped around her own head.

“Tequila,” I answered. She pushed up, and when she realized our situation she grabbed the sheets and clutched them to her chest.

“Oh no…” she said. “Did we…?”

I nodded slowly. She raised her fingers to her lips. A ring sparkled on her hand, and I squinted at it. My body went cold.

Brandi saw my face, and lifted her own hand. Her eyes fell on the ring, and she frowned. Her eyes widened when she put the pieces together.

“Did we get
married
?” she asked.

“I think it’s a mistake,” I said. “Can you remember where we were last night?”

She shook her head. I couldn’t either. The last half of the night was a blur. I looked around the room, and my eyes fell on the nightstand, where a piece of paper lay square and foreboding.

I picked it up. It was a marriage certificate.

“Shit!” Brandi said, grabbing it out of my hands and reading through it. “This can’t be happening! I can’t be married right now. I don’t even know if I want to be married, ever.”

I was hyperventilating. My chest was tight and I was trying to breathe around a sharp pain that had lodged itself into my sternum. Brandi was panicking because she’d just married her best friend in Vegas. I was panicking because she couldn’t know I was a wolf.

And they would get her now. The wolves would know, they would feel it in their blood. I could feel it in mine. A fire. An itch I couldn’t scratch. My teeth felt weird. The wolves were threatened again, and they would do everything they could to take her out now. If I tried to save her, they would take me out too.

Shit.

“Look, maybe we just need to think about this for a second,” I said. She sat on the bed, staring down at the certificate, not moving. When she looked up at me her eyes were so sad, I wasn’t sure what had just happened.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I just suddenly thought of my father,” she said. “The way he died. I don’t know why it just came to me.” She started to cry.

I knew exactly what it was. The talent had kicked in. She could realize her potential now. And the fate of her bloodline was etched in her mind now too, a reminder why she had to do what she had to do. That was how it worked with wolf-hunters. She just didn’t know what it was she was feeling. Nevertheless, that wouldn’t stop them from taking her out.

“We have to get a divorce,” she finally said. If only that would make a difference. It didn’t matter what happened after marriage. It wouldn’t take it away again. Something inside me steeled.

“I can’t let that happen,” I said. Brandi snapped her head up and narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re going to force me to stay in this with you?”

I nodded slowly. It was the only way I could keep her safe. Now she would be a real target. They would actively come after her and she didn’t know how to keep herself safe. The only person that could do that was me. And because we were married, and for as long as we were, I could track her anywhere she was. I could feel her hum in my veins now. I could feel her sorrow. I would know where she was at all times, and I would be able to find her if she was in trouble.

Brandi frowned, and I could feel confusion leaking out of her. She thought she’d known me so well, she was questioning it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let’s just not rush into anything, okay?”

“Yeah, because it was careful thought that got us here, wasn’t it?” she said. Her voice was cold and sarcastic.

I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, she’d gotten up and walked toward the bathroom. My skin prickled, and I realized the wolf had woken up too. Suddenly I was furious. I wanted to break something. If I thought a man with a hangover was bad, try a wolf.

“I’ll be back,” I said. Brandi called something from the bathroom, but I slipped out the door and slammed it. I shifted almost the moment I was in the narrow passage. The shift was quick and painful, and when I was in wolf form, I was groggy. My lips curled away from my teeth in a snarl and I snapped my jaw twice.

To my relief no one saw me. I ran toward the service stairs, finding a way out of the building. When I finally broke free form the hotel I ran, faster than I ever had before. The wolf was angry. I could feet hatred in my bones, and I knew it was for Brandi. I may have loved her, but the wolf hated her. It was like I had a split-personality.

On I ran. I tried to burn off the anger in me, but the harder I ran, the more it raged. My head pounded with adrenaline rather than a hangover, and my limbs became loose as I ran. Finally I was far out of the city. I stopped to catch my breath.

“She’s ours now,” I heard a voice, dancing around me. A malicious whisper, like it had been carried on the wind. I looked around, but I saw nothing. “There’s nothing you can do to save her now. Even your wolf will turn against her.” The voice was cold and dangerous. My body felt like lead, and I knew that he was right. I wasn’t sure who’s voice I was hearing, mine or the pack’s. In a way it felt like it was both. The pack had already felt the surge, the change in space and time. The age old fact that wolves weren’t safe now. The magic we felt didn’t care if Brandi knew. It cared that we should know.

And every wolf knew. It wasn’t just the wolves in our pack in the city. It was wolves everywhere.

I flung myself around and ran back to the city, to the neon lights that were on the horizon now. I couldn’t leave her alone, not for one second. She was in too much danger.

“Run, little wolf. You might not make it on time,” the voice chased after me, a rolling laughter followed. I shook my head and tried to get away from it, but it followed me.

When I reached the edge of the city, the hatred flared up again. It pulled toward the hotel where Brandi was like a magnet, and I knew I would have found her even if I didn’t know where she was. My insides were torn. The one half of me wanted her, knew where she was to keep her safe. And the other half wanted to take her out, pulled toward her to end this. I shook my head, but it wouldn’t go away. I growled, fighting myself, but I was losing.

I howled, not caring who heard me, and then I forced a change. It was harder than before, and the fear curled in my chest that I wouldn’t be able to change back to human again. Tonight would be the first night of the full moon. What if I was kept in this form until afterward? Then Brandi would need protection from me, too.

But thankfully, finally, I shifted. In human form the hatred was so dim I could ignore it. Compassion and love washed over it, and I ran to the hotel. At least as a human, I could be there for her. Protect her. As a wolf I didn’t know if I could trust myself.

I could feel the moon, hiding behind the break of day. If night came, I was going to be in deep shit.

4

“Where were you?” Brandi asked when I came back into the room. She wore a loose summer dress that stopped just above the knee and the green and blue patterns brought out her eyes.

“I had to clear my head,” I said.

“That’s nice.” Her attitude was cold. I hated it. In all the time we’d been friends I’d seen her like this with all the guys she’s broken up with, but she’d never turned her icy attitude on me.

“Don’t be like this, B. It’s not like I planned this any more than you did.”

She sighed and sank down onto the bed.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She covered her face with her hands. “It’s just so weird, you know? I came here to escape my troubles, not to make them worse.”

That stung. I know she didn’t want to be married, least of all to me, but really, how bad could I be? I pushed the fact the I was a werewolf to the side.

“Look, let’s just get out of here, okay?” I said. I was anxious to get her home. If I could stay with her, I could protect her. I knew her house. I knew the exits. I knew the parts that were safe and where I had to watch out to see danger coming. In the hotel we were vulnerable because Vegas was a big place, and there were so many people that could get at us from so many different angles.

Brandi nodded. “Home might be a good idea,” she said. “I don’t really feel like spending another night here, anyway.”

Night. The reminder dragged down my spine like an icy finger. It would be the first night of the full moon. How was I going to keep her safe? I took a deep breath.

One step at a time.

And that first step would have to be preparing her, at least mentally. I dreaded her finding out that I was a wolf. If I could, I would spare her that. But she needed to know who she was, and why she was going to be hunted.

We got on a plane, and then a taxi from the airport. When Brandi unlocked her front door I followed her inside, and closed it behind me. I went from window to window, drawing the curtains.

“What are you doing?” she asked, watching me.

“We need to talk about a couple of things,” I said, checking the windows before closing them up. There were only two way in and out of her house, and only one way into the yard, if I didn’t count wolves that could jump over walls. Still, it was better than nothing.

“We need to talk in the dark?” she asked.

I finally sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to me, inviting her to sit down too. She hesitated before she came to me.

“John, you’re scaring me,” she said. “We’ve been friends for nearly ten years, and you’ve never acted weird. But you’re pulling crazy on me, and it’s scary.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. My skin was on fire, the nerve endings prickling. I could almost feel the moon, somewhere behind the horizon, not ready to call to me yet. But it was there.

“I have to tell you something, but you have to promise to be very open-minded about this. Okay? This is really serious.”

“Okay?” she said. I could feel her fear, almost like a faint smoke tickling my nose.

I took a deep breath.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you. I knew your father.”

She gasped, but I held up my hand. She had to let me finish.

“I was with him the night he died. I was one of the men he chose for the meeting.” I’d started at Ernest’s company two weeks earlier, and I’d worked a lot of overtime. I liked the guy form the moment I’d met him, and I must have grown on him too, because when he’d told me that he had a late meeting with a potential client and he needed three of his men to go with him, I was chosen as one of them.

“I didn’t know he had three people with him. They police only found two bodies,” Brandi said. Her eyes were shimmering, like she was going to cry, and I hated doing this to her.

“I know I didn’t die that night.”

“I can see that.” Her voice was hard.

“The attack wasn’t just a bunch of rogues, like they said. It was a lot more… organized… than that.” How could I tell her it had been werewolves? She would think I was crazy. I couldn’t say the words, not only because I would be giving myself and my pack away, but because she would think I was crazy.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Well, your father had something they really wanted. And they weren’t going to let him live. He tried to get away… I tried to save him—“

My own voice cracked when I spoke. I was reliving that night. The glint of the then-Alpha’s eyes when they locked on Ernest. The fear in his eyes – he may not have known what he was, but every man knew death when it started him in the face. I’d ran forward, thrown myself in between the Alpha and Ernest. He’d hurt me so badly I’d thought I was going to die.