The Trouble with Fate (11 page)

Other than my half-naked Were, there wasn’t much in the room. No luggage, no books,
no iPod, nothing personal beyond the wallet and cell phone I picked up and examined.
I’m never greedy. I put the wallet back. Then I slid the dresser drawers open and
felt around inside them, all the time keeping an eye on the lump on the bed.

I checked the bathroom. He didn’t even have a toothbrush. I came out and studied him
again. A thick wedge of dark hair covered most of his long nose. His chin was scruffy
with a beard, not the type that said metro, but the type that spelled unemployed.
What do you do for a living, Trowbridge?
I tried to imagine him wearing a Creemore Springs Brewery uniform like my dad’s and
failed.

The amulet was still probably around his neck.

I inched to the bed, crinkling my nose as I got closer, because the nearer I got,
the clearer it was that he’d sprayed the entire bottle of Febreeze in a circle around
it. It pretty much obliterated his own natural scent, which was tangled up in the
air freshener, and the other things leaching out of his pores—alcohol and some emotion
that I couldn’t place. It wasn’t happiness and it wasn’t anger. Those two opposites
I understood and remembered from childhood. It wasn’t fear either. I knew that smell.
But the emotion scent was strong, and it tickled the back of my mind, as if I should
remember it, but just couldn’t.

Enough. His emotions weren’t my problem. I was bent over him thinking that the amulet
was probably underneath all that swaddling cotton bunched up around his neck when
Merry suddenly high-dived off her perch on my bodice to land with a plop on his pillow.

I reached for her, but she pivoted like a scorpion, one stinging tendril poised. I
shook my head, and tapped her chain with my finger, but she obstinately hooked herself
into the cheap cotton pillowcase. She was going to get us killed.

I let her go. Her chain dug into the back of my neck as she streaked over the thin
pillow toward the folds of T-shirt bunched by his neck. She worked a piece of gold
free from its coil around her setting. It thinned and stretched, until it was no wider
than a pencil lead.

Of the two of us, I was better at the sleight of hand because I was the only one who
actually had two hands. “No,” I mouthed, with a small shake of my head. What was
with
her?

She rolled the end into a hook and slid it smoothly under the crumpled cotton. I used
a hand on the wall to steady myself, and concentrated on keeping my breath shallow
and light as the material quivered under her examination. If Trowbridge sat up, he’d
be discovering the ceiling was a lot lower than it had been when he went to bed. Providing
he could remember going to bed.

I don’t remember my father ever drinking. Or smoking.

Merry backed out, empty-handed.
Crap.
I reached down to scoop her up, and as I did, my braid slid over my shoulder and
fell onto his pillow. For a comatose drunk, he was pretty damn fast. Before I could
stand up, his hand had snagged my hair. Sure, an ambulatory amulet lands on his pillow
and he’s out cold. A woman’s braid comes within his reach and suddenly he’s Freddy
the Wonder Dog snatching a Frisbee out of midair. There were a lot of painful things
he could do with my braid. I was working on the short list when he did something unexpected.
He sighed into his pillow and rolled his thumb over the bristled end. Eyes still closed,
he played with it for a few seconds, until the corner of his mouth pulled into a weary
smile. He shifted onto his side toward me.

My hair fell from his lax grip. Straightening up, I held my breath and took a half
step backward. I flinched as his hand reached out and surrounded my thigh. Panic started
to flutter at my throat. Sleepily, he ran his palm up to the swell of my ass and then
back down to the sensitive back of my knee in a gentle motion that probably was meant
to be soothing, but wasn’t in the least. It was distracting and uncomfortable, particularly
when the Were-bitch inside me raised her head from her sleep, and said, “Is that a
Were, fondling my leg?”

The bitch had been struggling to get out since puberty. She could keep on yipping
until she was hoarse. I wasn’t letting her out. Ever.
And not for him. He left me in a burning house.

“Sorry,” he said. He dug his head into his pillow and sighed. “Sorry I was so late.
Come back to bed.”

His hand slid slowly up to my bottom to cup its curve.
Stop touching me!
He gave my butt an affectionate squeeze. Then to my relief, he yawned wide, and rolled
flat onto his back, the bedsprings creaking in protest. His T-shirt didn’t roll with
him, which judging by the scowl that turned his face from cover-boy pretty to something
wolf-sharp and harsh, really pissed him off. Snoozing Beauty growled low in his throat—
and they called me a mutt
—then grabbed a handful of the offensive T-shirt and tore it in two. He tossed the
shredded jersey onto the bed. I held my breath in my chest, scared to so much as twitch,
but he simply cleared his throat, dug his head deeper into the thin pillow, and covered
his eyes with his forearm. His neck was red from where he’d torn the T-shirt away,
but his throat was bare.

He wasn’t wearing the amulet.

“Don’t be mad,” he said drowsily.

What the hell had he done with the amulet? I was turning to reinspect the room when
Merry squeezed my thumb. She pointed to his fist with one trembling leaf. Well, bless
my Fae Stars. He wasn’t wearing the amulet. He was holding it tight in his palm, the
chain wrapped around his knuckles. Merry scrambled for a handhold on my cotton sweatshirt
as I leaned in to take a closer look.

“Everything’s okay now,” he said.

“Mmm-hhhm,” I murmured, eyeing the prize. My blood started humming in my veins.

Trowbridge’s heel rasped on the rough cotton sheets as he straightened his leg. Then
he exhaled through his nose, and I found myself suddenly fascinated by the way the
hand resting on his flat belly rose and fell with each of his deep breaths. A little
trail of dark hair ran south of the dip of his belly button, in a straight, come-on-it’s-this-way
line that disappeared under the elastic waist of his underwear.

Okay, he
was
a fine specimen of Were. Bodywise, anyhow.

He hadn’t been burdened with the excessive hair that made some of my father’s kin
look like extras for
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
. He had some fur between his two small nipples, but it was soft looking.

Temptation bit. I tested it with my finger.

It was soft. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

His hand left his taut belly, and slowly traveled northward. Over the edge of his
rib cage. Up, past his heart. Up, to where my finger lightly teased his chest hair.
He touched my finger with one of the two calloused ones left on his scarred hand,
and then circled my whole hand with his. I forced myself to let my fingers lie there
calmly in his palm.

Warm. Rough. Large and gentle.

“Come to bed,” he said, tugging on my fingers.

“Soon.” I put a knee on the bed, and with that his eyelids flickered and began to
lift.
No!
I yanked my hand free. His shredded T-shirt was by my knee, and then it wasn’t; it
was in my hands, and then it was stretched over his eyes. I’d gone and blindfolded
a Were. With a T-shirt.
Now what?

He reached for the T-shirt, but I blocked his hand with the first thing that was available.
His palm slapped my forehead. I turned my head and pressed a kiss on his warm knuckle.
“Let’s play,” I whispered, urging his head up.

His face froze. And then the right corner of his mouth lifted. He gave a huff of laughter.
“Cute.”

“That’s me,” I said in that same toneless whisper as I tucked the tails under his
head.

His long arm came out and swept me down on top of him. Heart, brain, breath, muscles—all
of my vital organs temporarily forgot their duties and I froze rabbit-scared for one
time-splintered second.

No one had touched me for such a long time. No one had held me in forever.

“Fun, but I’m tired,” he said drowsily, rubbing his bristly chin on the top of my
head. “I’m so tired.”

A blindfolded almost-naked man pulls me into his arms, and all he can think of is
his fatigue? I was so going to die a virgin.

But I wasn’t in Joan of Arc pain, was I? Trowbridge’s clutch was heated, because Weres
are hot, that’s just a fact. Hot looking, fiery tempered, and bone-meltingly warm
to the touch. Your own personal hot water bottle in winter. A little too steamy in
the summer, but air-conditioning took care of that. Trowbridge’s embrace didn’t hurt.
For the first time since I was a kid, someone was cuddling me and I wasn’t writhing
in pain and breaking out in heat blisters. By a monumental oversight, Weres were exempt
from the burn-her-flesh curse that some miserable sod of a Fae mage conceived to keep
Fae travelers from mixing with mortals who had dangly bits.

I wished I were naked, just to explore how much this cuddling didn’t hurt.

My right leg was between his. My breasts were mashed against his chest. So this is
what it was like to be pressed thigh and hip tight with a man. I felt deliciously
small, and decidedly feminine. There was no give to his muscles, no softness to the
flesh beneath the skin. Unless you’re talking that mound down there. Poor devil, he
really was tired. Very softly I nudged his manhood with the inside of my leg.

Down there
approved. My eyebrows rose as his penis twitched against my leg. I gave it another
coaxing rub, and it started to rise like the warning gate at a railroad crossing.
Okay, I know—it’s politically incorrect and probably illegal to tease a comatose male,
but I’d never experienced the thrill of sexual power before and I’m not ashamed to
admit I liked it. Suddenly I knew exactly what sort of smile Eve had when she turned
to Adam with an apple in her hand.

I lifted my head to look at him.

Trowbridge had two deep lines running vertically between his brows, visible over the
strip of T-shirt blindfolding him. Merry squirmed impatiently in my grip. “Okay,”
I mouthed to her and started to roll off Mr. Hard-body. His arm tightened around me.

Huh. I planted a forearm on his chest, and strained backward, but that just rammed
the lower part of me harder into the lower part of him.

“Mmphh,” he said, digging his heels into the mattress. He flexed his hips, and I rose
with him. The guy had serious thigh muscles. The Were-bitch inside me anxiously whined—something
she usually only did passing the food court.
Go back to sleep,
I warned her. I tried to slide off his body, but he wasn’t about to let me go—he
clutched my upper body like I was his favorite blow-up doll. Clearly his happy-stick
was sad and lonely. He registered its discontent with a few pelvic tilts, putting
a severe strain on the elastic waist of his tented shorts. With that, Were musk permeated
the room.

Oh my word.

It was like someone flicked the switch to “on.” I went from curious, to hazy-in-lust
as my Were’s mating instinct woke up with a start. Indiscriminate bitch. My fingers
forgot all about the amulet, and slipped down to lightly skim the skin south of his
belly button. He sucked in his breath obligingly.

I ran a fingernail along the elastic edge of his underwear, encountering something
hot and hard. He pulled his belly muscles in so tightly that the vein running along
his hip stood out. “Candy-girl,” he whispered, a wealth of yearning in his voice.
And there it was. The lick of lust faded as fast as a sugar high after an Oreo. I
put my head on his hot shoulder for a moment and breathed in the deep mix of him:
scotch, sex, and salt, woods, grasses—that indefinable combination of scents that
spoke of a male Were—before I pulled my hand out of Candy’s territory.

Even my Were reluctantly agreed. There is theft and then there is
theft
.

“I have to go pee,” I said, feeling sad, my lips moving against his salty skin. His
groan was more of a low growl, but he relaxed his grip on me, and I sat up.
Focus.
I said that to myself twice. The second time it stuck.

The tail of the chain still dangled from his grasp. I carefully teased it away from
each finger, getting as far as his thumb before I met any resistance. Gently, I gave
it a tug. He growled, low in his throat, and tightened his hand into a fist again.

If the Candy-loving Trowbridge wasn’t going to give the amulet up on his own, I better
make sure he was really out. I twisted my head to eye the room for a weapon. The light
was bolted into the cheap furniture. The television remote was too small. There was
a flimsy wooden chair with a truly ugly cushion, that would likely break into kindling
over his tough Were head. There was the empty bottle, but it would shatter and then
I’d be in a room with shards of glass and an enraged Were. I smothered a sigh. It
would have to be the television again, but at least I could unscrew it from the cable
before I sent it flying through the air. I brought a toe to the floor.

Trowbridge let out a sigh of his own. Not an I’m-waiting-and-ready sigh. More of an
I’m-too-wasted-to-stay-awake sigh. I looked at his hand and smiled. It no longer clutched
the amulet—it cradled it, leaving the necklace there for the taking in his open palm,
with its chain hanging like a garland from his fingers.

See? Opportunity. I tossed Merry over my shoulder, and quickly leaned over to untwine
the amulet’s chain from his fingers. My lips were curving into a victory smile when
his hand came up again, cupped the back of my head, and pulled me down for a kiss.

My First Kiss.

His lips were hot and his beard was scratchy, his breath was a trifle sour. I could
get over that. Because his lips … oh Goddess, the feeling of them pressed to mine.
Warm, heated by his heart. Soft and tender. A little damp. Larger than mine, but mobile
and never still. A press, a lick, a little nibble on my lower lip. The bristles of
his beard were not sharp at all—if anything, their tickle felt intimate and male.
A soft noise escaped my lips. His hands suddenly moved—one to capture the nape of
my neck, the other to cradle my jaw. My Were gave a food-hungry moan. A scent exuded
from him, foreign to my nose, but it spoke of urgency and want. Sighing, I threaded
my own hand through his curly mane.
So soft, and silky
. I mirrored his cupped hand against my chin.