Taming the Night (Creatures of the Night Book 1) (8 page)

She looked confused all of a sudden as she pulled away and ga
zed up at him, her eyes large and innocent looking. “Why?” she asked him.

“Why what?”

“Why do you even care? The last time you met me you ended up in a hospital room with a broken arm and stitches. Can’t you tell that being around me is a hazard to your health?”

He thought about that for a moment. It was impossible to tell what was going through her mind.

*

She looked up at him unable to believe what he’d said. He was telling her that she couldn’t talk bad about herself. She couldn’t even count the number of times in the last few years she’d saved the life of one person or the other, but never, not once, had she seen this in their eyes. He looked at her as if… as if he wanted to save her. She tried to pull away but he held firm.

She could get away if she wanted to. She knew he knew that if she wanted to, she could toss him across the room. Instead… she was holding her breath like some stupid little school girl, afraid that that protective look would leave his eyes.

“It’s just the cop in you that has to say that,” she said grasping at something, anything, to deflect the emotions that had suddenly risen in her at his simple words. She tried to pull away again but he wouldn’t release her. She watched the muscle flex in his arm as he pulled her up to him.

“What’s the matter? Does me saying that you don’t deserve to be called an animal bother you? Am I the first one to want to break through that front you put on? Am I the first one to think that you have more to offer than this beautiful body?” he asked as his hand snaked down and cupped her ass, pulling her up against him.

The look in his deep chocola
te eyes nearly drowned her. She was completely unprepared for the attack on her senses. “Whoa there stud. We haven’t even had a first date. It’s a little soon for that kind of talk.” She tried to sound flippant but it came out a little breathless. She pressed into him and felt his desire pressed hard against her abs. Her breathing got so heavy she could nearly be moving under water.

“I told you not to do that. What does it matter to you to care about me a little? You’re going to do the whole Brachial Stun thing
later so I won’t remember right?”

She smiled, despite herself. He had gumption. He wasn’t going to fight her on what she had to do
, which made him all the more adorable to her.

“Why don’t you just fall in love with me for the next few
hours? I give you full permission,” he went on.

“Few hours? My. We are full of ourselves. And what makes you think I will fall madly in love with you?”

“It’s my counter attack. I figure if you fall for me then you’ll forget all about the Brachial thing and just spill all of your secrets.”

“And what makes you think a little goo
d sex will cause that to happen?” His lips neared hers and she felt his heat brush her lips. A tremor traveled up and down her spine.

“Cause if it doesn’t
, I have one of those flashy mind thingy’s in my back pocket.”

She did laugh then. She laughed like she hadn’t laughed in years and then he was laughing with her. His chest rumbled with the laughter and made her feel warm inside. Even that stupid little hotel Air Conditioner wouldn’t cool her off now. He lowered his head and clamped down on her neck and she closed her eyes. As his tongue flipped over her jugular, stars exploded behind her eyes.

Her nipples pulled tight as he continued to play his tongue over the sensitive skin on her neck. She fell open to him like a flower and it seemed like he was there all at once, pressing his rock hard body against her. The few clothes she had on seemed to be very uncomfortable at the moment. Her knees were parted and her breasts rubbed against his chest. She rubbed against him until her breasts popped loose of the bustier and then she buried her hands in the length of his black hair, pulling his mouth from her neck to her breast.

She nearly came right then as his mouth clamped down on the tiny bud of her nipple. He swirled it around and pulled it hard into his mouth and all she could see where vision
s of that mouth clamping down on her clit. She was so on fire that she didn’t even know if she could wait for that. She wanted his cock deep inside her. She wanted him moving over her, pushing harder and harder, deeper inside of her. She wanted…

Suddenly her concentration was broken and she sat straight up. When had they fallen back onto the bed
, and when did his hand work its way into the back of her pants to cup her bare ass? He sat up with her pulling his hand away.

“I’m sorry. I got a little carried away. You were just looking at me like… and I
thought you wanted-”

“Shhh,” she hissed, halting his mumbling apology
as she pulled her shirt up. It came on her quickly. The sensation climbed up the back of her neck and danced over her skull as her nails extended. “What the fuck?”

*

Jerry wasn’t quit sure how he’d gone from scolding her about talking down about herself, to laying on top of her with her nipple in his mouth and his hand down her pants, but he had never done that before with another woman. Not even with… He began to apologize when he noticed her eyes. Not only were they violet but they looked somehow… feline. He heard her mumble a curse before, without warning, she picked him up and tossed him over her body and against the far wall.

He hit with a thud and was crashing to the floor when he heard the door crack and come flying into the room. The stench hit him as the creature appeared.
It put one clawed hand on either side of the door and roared into the room, saliva and spit flying in at them. The thing looked straight into his eyes and he realized its intent immediately. It was coming for him. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for it. He dashed to the side for one of the guns on the dresser. He just got his hand on one when he heard the small twenty two that Al had pulled on him earlier discharge.

The thing screeched as it hit the floor but only half of it was burning.
He stared at it stupidly as it writhed in pain. It lashed out and grabbed his ankle and he went down hard. Al was there all of a sudden, standing over it, and she fired into the arm that was still moving. The rest of the wolf went up in flames as well. She hovered over Jerry with a disapproving look before she shook her head and snatched the gun from his hand.

“Where you going to stand there and let it bite you!? Don’t you have any sense of self preservation? Obviously not if you think hanging around me is a good idea.”

She turned and stalked to her saddle bags. She started tossing guns and ammo inside. He went to sit up but a pain bit into his side and he winced. She came back to him immediately. When she tried to pick him up he gave her a sharp look. He wiped away the blood that had trickled from his nose with his already ruined shirt. After she helped him sit with his back up against the wall she backed away.

“You probably have a broken rib and…” she stopped when she saw the blood oozing from his leg. Her face went ashen.

“Did it bite you?” she asked kneeling down and pulling up the pants leg.

“No. It just scratched me.”

She sighed in relief when she saw that he hadn’t been bitten. “Mon Due! You idiot! You know what I would have had to do if…”

She shook her head and went back to loading her satchel. “That’s why it’s not safe. You should never have been around me, especially not at night.”

“You didn’t make that thing come here. This isn’t your fault,” he argued as he clutched at his calf. It was burning like fire where the thing had scratched him.

“Don’t you see? That’s exactly what I do. I draw them. They come to ole Al like a moth to a flame
, cher. I was never safe for you to be around so I’ll just-“

The sirens pulled into the motel parking lot suddenly. She cursed as she looked out the window. “I should have heard them comin’ fr
om a mile away. Why are they so on the spot?” she grouched.

“They were probably over at the dinner all ready. It’s the only all night dinner in town.”

She cursed again. She went to the back window and tossed her guns far into the trees. It would do her no good if her guns were taken away for the remainder of the night. She shouldn’t have needed them again. She wouldn’t have let her guard down so thoroughly with Officer Cayman if she’d thought she’d be facing another beast so soon. Where were they all coming from?

There shouldn’t have been another creature in a hundred mile radius of here she had killed so many a few nights ago. “Bears,” she said as she kept one gun tucked in her waistband and stood square to the door.

“Bears?” he asked, still a little in shock.

“A bear got in looking for
food, we caught him and shot at him, he ran out the back window after he clawed your leg,” she said as she dumped her ash tray on the floor where the creature had burned. He gave her a questioning look.

“To make it look like the ashes are from my ash tray. You know what. Why don’t you just say you took a hit to the head and don’t remember anything at all.”

The police entered the room, guns drawn, and Al could do nothing but put her hands up in surrender.

Chapter Five

“I’m just saying she seems to be around when a lot of strange things are going on. First you’re pulling her over for speeding, she sees your cruiser take a hit, then fixes you up and drives off into the night. Then Russ gets attacked by a bear and he’s still out cold
and where was she? There. Then you all just happen to come across a bear in her room and you get ripped to shreds yet again and where was she?” his Uncle railed at him.

Jerry let his head fall back as the pain killers began wearing off. He’d needed five more stitches on his calf.
There were some scratches that were just the depth that they couldn’t be stitched, but needed butterfly bandages to hold them together. The scratches still burned like fire, though the pain was dulled a bit by the drugs. Jerry saw his uncle continue to pace from the corner of his eye. He raked a hand through his salt and pepper hair. If it weren’t for the gray in Victor’s hair, people would probably mistake them for brothers.

“So you want to haul her in for… trai
ning bears to attack people?” Jerry asked as he lifted his head and looked at his Uncle.

Victor
turned blazing brown eyes on him. “I want to haul her ass in because every time you’re around her you end up back here in the hospital! I want to arrest her because she acts like she doesn’t give a damn that people around her keep ending up in the hospital. I want to arrest her because if she told you she doesn’t know who hit you then she is lying her ass off. I want to arrest her because I don’t know why you trust her and she is only going to get you hurt some more, but you are too smitten to see it!”

“I am not smitten,” Jerry objected quietly.

“Oh yeah? Then why is it you were so ready to hold her ass to the fire when you woke up from your accident, but now that you’ve met her and all her long legs you’re so willing to forgive her?”

Jerry didn’t realize just how intimidating his uncle could be. He’d never been on this side of a grilling and his uncle was like a looming mountain towering over him.

“Because she didn’t have to save my ass but she did and she didn’t have to save Russ’s ass. Hell I don’t know if Jesus Christ himself would save Russ’s ass, but she did. She’s a decent person. She’s selfless. So what if she’s made a few errors in speeding, who hasn’t? Sometimes people need to be cut some slack, it’s not her fault if unlucky things happen to her sometimes. I imagine she feels pretty stinkin’ bad about the things that happen to the people around her. Put yourself in her shoes and just get off her back will you!”

Jerry shocked him
self with the ferocity of his defense of her. His Uncle just shook his head and stood back. “Jerry. I don’t even know you any more. You’re a cop. There are grey areas but you’ve crossed too far into that arena with her. You need to pull back and see things in black and white for a little while. You need to stop assuming she’s the victim. She knows something that she’s not sharing with us and you are too blinded by a nice rack and long legs to see it. Women make you plumb stupid!”

Before he could say anything else in Al’s defense his uncle scooped up his hat and started for the door. “I am going to get some air, check on the station. When I get back I expect you to be thinking a little more clearly. I didn’t give you this second chance to get your life together just to let you have another woman ruin it. Think about that.”

Jerry picked up the ice bucket and tossed it as the door closed behind his uncle. A second later Sarah Watkins walked into the room. She had been a nurse in this hospital for as long as he could remember. She also attended the church that his father and mother had forced him to attend when he was a young boy. Was he ever glad his mother was away on a cruise right now. She would be a pile of nerves to see him in this hospital bed.

“Are you supposed to let him harass me like that? Couldn’t you have come in and said something like ‘He needs his rest. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’?”

The older woman smiled and shook her head as she stepped over the scattered ice on the floor. “You watch too much T.V. I don’t usually interrupt a patient’s visit and I don’t tell the Sheriff that he needs to leave so my patient can rest.”

“He’s a Chief, not a Sheriff.”

“In this one horse town he’s the Sheriff and the Chief and that is all the more reason for me not to interfere with his family issues.”

She walked over to check his bandages. His ribs were wrapped so tight it felt like he could hardly breathe. “When can I take this off?”

“Only to shower and then you have to put it right back on for it to heal right.”

“Where’s Doctor
Lana. I want to get out of here before she comes back. I don’t need another lecture about how I-”

“Need to be more careful. Apparently I need to be telling you not to climb into trees, walk on your two feet, or enter rooms where bears are feasting on the mini bar,” Doctor Lana said as she swept into the room on a current of fresh air.

Jerry turned to Nurse Watkins and moved his hand as if to prompt her. “My patient needs rest, I’ll have to ask you to leave now,” he whispered to her as if to feed her her lines.

Lana shook her head and smiled at this. “You can go now Nurse Watkins. I’ll send you back in when I’m through talking to him. Jerry. I brought someone in who wanted to see you.”

Nurse Watkins picked up the ice bucket and the ice and left just as Al entered. She was wearing a leather cat suit and her duster again and she had the duster buttoned up to her chin. It was too hot outside for the outfit and Jerry knew instinctively that she was once again armed to the teeth beneath the coat. Her long hair was braided in a long braid that hung down her back past her butt, but he could still remember how it looked and felt when it was wild and free. She let one dark eyebrow drift upward as she looked over his hospital gown.

“That looks… comfy,” she said suppressing a grin.

“Yeah well you know. I like to set new trends, leave the ladies panting,” he said calmly to which she laughed. Doctor Lana sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at him.

“I had a talk with your new friend here and I think we both agree that we don’t want to see you in here again.”

Jerry felt a little shocked. For a backwoods Doctor, she was certainly very open minded about Alicia. Most people in these parts would take one look at Al in that getup and label her as up to no good, but then he supposed the Doc had her own set of stereotypes to deal with being a female doctor in these parts.

“Well she’s the one who pushed me out of the way
and knocked me into a wall,” he argued in his own defense.

“She told me if she hadn’t done it you would be bear meat right now. I’m releasing you but I want you to understand that you can’t just go running around town with those stitches and that broken arm. You just barely got your other stitches out before you got a new set. We heard the argument in here… You’re Uncle is just worried about you and so are we.”

Doc Lana stood up, checked her chart and shook her head. “If I could keep you here I would, but there’s nothing wrong with you now except for having a hard head. And you,” she said turning to Al. “We made ourselves an agreement. I brought you back here. I hope you hold up your end of the deal.”

Jerry looked to Al as Doc Lana left the room
. “You seem to have won yourself a fan. How did you get her to let you come back?”

Al sighed as she pulled out a big syringe. “I wanted to wait but… I told her I’d go away and leave you alone if she let me make sure for myself that you were all right.”

He felt anger well up inside him. “But you don’t really care if I’m all right. You only care about doing your job.” He shoved his arm up at her then. “Go ahead. Do it. I’m tired of your bullshit. I don’t need one more person screwing around with me so just get it over with.”

“I didn’t…”

“It doesn’t matter Alicia. Keep your secrets. Ride off into the night. I’m sure you won’t even think of me again,” he growled as he grabbed her hand. He brought the syringe closer.

“Forever is a long time not to think of someone,” she said. He could have been mistaken but it seemed like her hand was trembling
.

*

Al looked at the vein he presented to her. He offered her escape so freely. Why was she feeling this way? He was just another human. She had done this a thousand times. She had done this to men who lay in her bed still asleep after what they thought was the best one night stand they’d ever dreamed they had. She had taken what she’d needed from those men and it had never once bothered her.

People used each other everyday, why should she be the exception. Maybe that was the difference. Maybe she was feeling guilty because she hadn’t given him a good experience. He wouldn’t wake up thinking he’d had some great dream about a beautiful woman using his body. He wouldn’t remember anything at all. She was taking something from him without giving him anything in return. She held the needle over his arm
and reprimanded herself.
Just do it already!

“They will eventually come,” she said at last. She capped the syringe and put it back in her pocket.
This was so stupid. She should just do it, but she found that she suddenly wanted very badly for him to remember her. She didn’t know why. She just did.

“Who will come?”
The relief was written all over his face and she had to suppress her own feelings of relief. Why should she be relieved? He was going to be in real trouble now.

“The League of Extraordinary Gentlem
en, who do you think?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I could
… just not say anything to anyone about it.”

She let out a frustrated breath as she sank into the chair behind her. “And what will you do in the meantime? Walk around with silver bullets in your gun and tell the Sheriff that you’r
e using them to go bear hunting?” she asked.

She could feel his eyes on her as hysterical laugher bubbled up out of her. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to feel anything. Why should she care what happened to this backwoods cop
or if he remembered her or not?

“Chief.”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“My Uncle is the Chief. We don’t have any Sheriff and Deputies here. We are only part of a larger county.”

She blinked at a loss for what to say. He helped her with that. “I could go with you.”

In her life time she had witnessed some very strange things. Monsters that were only supposed to be in fairytales. The dead coming back to life. But this had to be one of the crazier things she’d heard. “You want to buy a matching motorcycle to mine and ride around the countryside with me
, until one day we are in a fierce fight and one of those things bites you? Then I’ll have the pleasure of blowing your brains to mush and watchin’ you catch on fire? Darlin’, that just sounds like a barrel a laughs. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“
I didn’t die the last two times,” he said defensively.

She shook her head. “That makes you lucky not talented.”

He crossed his arms and then his hairy bare legs. She remembered all of a sudden that he was still in a hospital gown and smiled in spite of herself. “What if I did arm myself with some of your ammo in case the… nightmares return, and then you can stop through to see me once in a while. I won’t tell anyone what I know. You won’t tell anyone that I know what I know… what would be the harm in that?”

“I told you
, cherie. I’m a magnet.”

His forehead crinkled in thought. “You’re a magnet?”

“Now that I am the way I am, I produce somethin’ in my blood that calls to them like a beacon in the night. They come to me and we do the tango. When I’m around, you can bet they will be on the way. When I’m gone the chances of you comin’ across one of them is like… the chances of you winnin’ the lottery. You know it happens to some people but only one in three hundred million.”

“And
the people who come across them? What happens to them? I mean… do they all become… you know. I mean even if it was rare to come across them, at some point it wouldn’t be so rare. Eventually they will gain in numbers.”

She shook her head. “Naw. They rarely bite people for the purpose of c
hanging them. Getting changed is usually only a mistake. Most of the time, they eat their catch. But sometimes they find a human that is of a size to be a very strong wolf, or, they get interrupted and don’t get to finish eating their catch so they just run off leaving the bitten one behind.” She stopped talking as memories flooded her mind. She had to shut her eyes to stop the memories from overtaking her completely.

“What about the families of the people who go missing? Someo
ne will eventually notice that-”

“They notice. The families drive themselves crazy looking for their loved ones and I sometimes think that’s the hardest part of my job. Knowing, and not bei
ng able to do anything to ease-”

“Excuse me.” They both looked to the door to see that Nurse Watkins had stuck her aged head in the door. “The Doc told me to give you your final instructions and to help you get dressed.”

“Give us just a minute,” he snapped at her. She nodded and left them alone again. Al stood up preparing to leave. “Will you think about it?”