Desperately Seeking Shapeshifter, page 12
part #2 of Midnight Liaisons Series
“I see.” My sister began to type. “And what are you looking for in a companion? Do we need to update anything?”
“I’ll do it,” Gracie said.
All eyes turned to her.
She gave us a coy, playful smile. “I’ve never dated a lion before. I’d love to try one on for size.”
Toby blushed. I’m pretty sure my sister did, too. I rolled my eyes. “What’s your father going to think about that, Gracie?”
“Daddy says I’m going wherever you’re going for the next month.” She continued to smile sweetly at Toby. “So if you’re at a dating agency all day long, I don’t see why I can’t date the clients if you’re my chaperone.”
“You don’t even have a profile yet,” I pointed out. “I’m not sure that Toby wants to date someone he doesn’t know anything about—”
“Sure,” Toby said in a slightly hoarse voice. “You wanna do lunch? Chili’s?”
Ouch. Not the smoothest choice for a first date.
But Gracie exclaimed, “Oh, mercy. That sounds delightful.” And she turned and gave me a wink. “Guess you should set up my profile right about now so we can get this logged in the system.”
“Guess so,” I muttered. “So what kind of date preference should I put on your profile?”
“All of them,” she said promptly.
“All?”
“You can even put a vampire or whatever else you’ve got on there.” Her blue eyes sparkled. “I’m open to everything as long as it’s a good time.”
Oh, boy. “Reservations at Chili’s, coming right up.”
The she-wolf took to shy Toby as if she’d been born to be at his side, and she laughed and flirted all the way through their lunch. I sat at a nearby booth, chaperoning.
Gracie didn’t have a shy bone in her body. She also had the charming ability to make whatever she was talking about sound fascinating to the male sex, I realized, as Toby leaned in, entranced by her description of going shopping for new dishes because her wild brothers had broken the others. Her bare feet wiggled on the floor as she chatted, clearly enjoying herself.
Meanwhile, I curled up with my BlackBerry and did a little remote work. I found a handyman in the database and immediately requested that he come out to Ramsey’s place for a quote the next day. He was a wolf, but between Ramsey and Gracie, I figured I could handle it. And with the mark on my neck, I felt a little more secure in my spot as Ramsey’s alleged mate.
The waiter gave me an odd stare as he refilled my glass, and I subconsciously touched my neck. His human scent hit my nostrils and I frowned. What was he staring at? I checked my reflection in my knife and winced. My hair looked like shit. Tangled and dry thanks to the hair color, it resembled a sickly gray-blue tumbleweed. It was a wonder Ramsey had wanted to bite me at all.
Thinking about Ramsey, I decided to message him. Hey, I texted. I’m changing my hair color. You got a preference?
After a minute, he sent back: You look fine.
Thanks for the compliment, but I’m still changing my hair color.
I liked it when it was brown.
Sweet man. I wanted to pinch his cheeks. Actually, thinking about last night, I wanted to do rather dirty things to him. How would he react if I kissed him again? Crawled all over that big body and let him know I was interested in fixing that virginity problem for him?
I shivered at the thought and texted again. How about red?
I like red.
Red it was.
By the time five o’clock rolled around, I was more than ready to leave. After we’d gotten Gracie back from her date (and she’d gotten Toby’s number), she’d insisted on tweaking her profile and going through the database, picking out a long list of candidates that she was interested in. Then she began to critique the sorts of questions asked on the profiles.
“Eye color?” She snorted. “Who cares about his eye color? All I want to know is if he’s still got both of ’em.”
When Gracie began to surf the database for eligible women for her brothers, I let her take over the computer and went to Marie’s empty desk. If Gracie wanted to set up her brothers, I certainly wasn’t going to stand in the way. By the time my ride showed up, I’d never been so glad to see Austin. Gracie was exhausting, a whirling dervish of ideas—most of them centered around men and how she could date them. She’d given Austin some rather heated looks that he’d returned with a scowl. The scowl only seemed to make her even more interested, as if he’d been a strange creature she was determined to figure out.
He stopped at the grocery store so I could run in for a few things. When Gracie offered to wait with him, Austin shot me a panicked look. I made her come with me, saying that I needed help carrying the groceries. I didn’t miss Austin’s look of relief. He totally owed me.
Once inside the store, Gracie wandered off, which I didn’t mind. Heck, if she wandered off for good, I’d be just fine with that. I grabbed a cart and pushed it down the beer aisle, staring into the rows of freezer cases. An ice-cold beer sounded really damn good right about now.
I opened the cooler door to pull out a six-pack, then hesitated. My “mate” probably wanted beer, too. It was going to be odd thinking about having a partner. I pulled out a case instead.
The glass door swung shut, blowing a puff of cold air into my face . . . and I caught the scent of wolf. I froze, momentarily confused. Was that my scent? Gracie’s? But it didn’t smell like either one of us. Wary, I glanced around. The supermarket was full of the scents of shoppers, the squeaking of carts, and the low murmur of voices. Was there another wolf here other than myself and Gracie? I guessed they could have been grocery shopping. I stared down the empty aisle, then turned my cart down the next one.
A man disappeared around the corner just as I turned, and I caught the scent of wolf again. My nape prickled with alarm. I forced myself to head down the next aisle, grab a box of red hair dye, and then keep going.
The smell of fresh, bloody meat wafted in my direction, and I automatically veered that way. Maybe a steak for dinner to go with the beer. I stared at the rows of steaks, the smell of blood heavy in my nostrils, and grabbed a package. Maybe two steaks. It smelled so good that I was tempted to rip off the cellophane and eat them in the middle of the store.
The smell of wolf hit me again, and I turned.
Gracie sauntered toward me, a wine bottle in her hand. “Buy me a drink, Sailor?”
Relieved, I took the bottle from her hand, ignoring the dirty looks a nearby customer was giving Gracie’s bare feet. “I’m pretty sure you’re not old enough to drink?”
“Of course I am,” she said smoothly. “I must have left my ID at home.”
Likely story. But I took the bottle and placed it in the cart anyhow. And then glanced around one more time. “Are there any others here?”
Gracie wrinkled her nose at me. “Any other whats?”
“You know,” I said, giving her a pointed look as an old woman stopped to browse the meat not too far away. “Others.”
“Other . . . shoppers?” Gracie said innocently.
I gritted my teeth. She was going to be like that, was she? I plucked the wine back out of the cart and handed it back. “You know what? You can just buy that yourself.”
“Of course no one else is here. You’re paranoid, you know that?” Gracie said and put the wine back in the cart.
Maybe I was. Still, I couldn’t trust her to tell the truth. She wasn’t trustworthy in the slightest. “Come on,” I said, turning my buggy toward the front. “Austin’s going to be tired of waiting for us.”
We checked out quickly and headed back out to the truck. When we pulled up to Ramsey’s house I saw a single light on inside, and it was sad how much it thrilled me. “Hey, we have electricity!”
Gracie wrinkled her nose. “I get the guesthouse, right?”
“Yeah. It’s on the far side of the yard. Let me show it to you.”
I showed her in to Connor’s old quarters, and Gracie dumped her bag on the bed. “You wanna color your hair now? Surprise your man?”
The thought of surprising Ramsey gave me unexpected pleasure, and I agreed. We slapped the steaks into the mini-fridge, then I stripped out of my T-shirt and borrowed an old one from her. Thirty minutes later, my hair was a vibrant shade of maroon.
“Wow, that color really took,” Gracie said with a grin. “I have a yellow sundress that would go awesome with that. You should try it on. Impress your man. It’ll show off those love bites really nicely.”
“I doubt it’ll fit. I’m kinda small in some areas.”
She was already pulling it out of her bag. “That’s okay, I buy ’em small.”
I slipped out of my bra and jeans and into Gracie’s sundress. It was too loose in the front, but Gracie tightened the laces in the front and the back so it emphasized my lean figure and downplayed my lack of curves.
As I changed, I noticed Gracie watching me, which made my hackles go up a little. Was she checking me out for her brothers? How creepy was that? But when I straightened, she came over to my side and adjusted one of the spaghetti straps.
She smiled. “Looks good. Shows off your mate marks.”
I exhaled. Maybe I was being paranoid. Gracie was a bit weird, and her smiles a little too toothy for my liking, but she seemed decent enough. Not like some of the other wolves. I gathered up my things and gave her a hesitant smile. “Thanks.”
She put her hands on my shoulders. “Now. About tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“You need to shift. Daddy says that you need to shift every night. You gonna shift with that man of yours?”
Awkward. “Um. I think so.”
“Okay. Remember what I said. Kegels. Find that muscle and flex it.”
“Got it,” I said in a small voice. “Kegels.”
“Attagirl. Now, go get some.” She swatted me on the ass when I turned to leave.
I headed back to the house, steaks and clothes clutched in hand, my damp red hair swinging against my cheeks. Would Ramsey see my new hair color and light up with lust? Or would he scowl at my frivolousness? Or worse, would he just ignore me like he had earlier?
I crept up the front porch steps and hesitated, bolstering my courage. I had to approach this the right way. One wrong move and I’d freak him out, or make him run away.
A hand dropped onto my shoulder from behind. “Hey, miss,” a voice drawled, and the scent of male wolf flooded my nostrils.
Roy grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me against a wall. “You need to show me if you’re strong enough to be my mate, girl. All I see here is a coward. I need to beat some toughness into you again, don’t I?”
I screamed.
Chapter Eleven
A low roar broke through the blood pounding in my ears. I stood up—didn’t realize I was crouching—and stared dazedly at the front yard. The stench of wolves was heavy in the air.
Ramsey had a smaller man pinned to the ground. I could hear Ramsey’s snarls from where I stood, trembling, on the porch. Thick brown hair coated his limbs, clearly on the verge of a change. Beneath him, the man struggled.
“I didn’t hurt her,” the man choked out.
A horn honked in the driveway and I swung around, staring. The side of the white van parked there read Jackson Wilder, Plumber and Handyman. Inside the van a teenage boy hammered on the horn, clearly terrified.
Oh . . . shit. I’d smelled wolf and thought it had been one of the Andersons come to kidnap me, but it was just the handyman. I inhaled sharply, and I smelled wolf, but . . . not what I’d smelled at the store earlier. This man was a stranger. His scent was new to me.
“Ramsey,” I cried out, tearing down the steps. “Ramsey, let him go. I made a mistake.”
He rolled off to one side immediately, crouching low on his hind legs. The other man rolled in the opposite direction, then raced for his van.
I watched the muscles in Ramsey’s legs tremble, his clothing straining at the seams, his face contorted in a snarl. After a moment, he shook off the change and got to his feet, muscles flexing. He looked over at me and held his hand out, calmly, deliberately, as if trying not to terrify me.
I extended my hand toward him slowly, realizing how much it shook. My entire body was quivering like a leaf.
“Hey,” Gracie called from the side of the house, running forward. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Misunderstanding,” Ramsey said, tugging me forward with gentle eyes and pulling me against him. My entire body trembled, my teeth chattering even as I tried to stammer and explain that I was just fine, and terribly sorry that I’d caused such a mess. Ramsey placed a hand along my jaw, shushing me, and pulled me close. I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head.
“It’s all right,” the handyman said, his voice low and soothing and almost hypnotic. “Don’t be alarmed. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“My mate has a bad past. Do not touch her or sneak up on her.” The words were said in a steady voice, but I could almost hear the snarl in Ramsey’s throat, and I placed a calming hand on his chest. My fingers had stopped shaking at least, but I felt no desire to leave Ramsey’s comforting embrace.
“My apologies,” the man said, his voice pleasant and unruffled. I wasn’t sure if he was deliberately trying to be soothing or if that was his normal demeanor, but it was already calming me down. “I was supposed to come by tomorrow for the job,” he said, “but we were in town tonight and I thought I’d stop by the place and give it a quick look-over.”
“It’s okay, Ramsey,” I said. “I called a handyman through the agency.”
The man scratched his head, his curly hair messy. “We’ll come back in the morning.” He flashed an awkward smile in my direction. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You want to come over to my cabin?” Gracie said to the man. “You can clean up the cuts on your face.”
I hadn’t even realized that Ramsey must have hit him.
The man shook his head. “I’m good. Thanks.” He put his baseball cap back on, tipped his hat, and got back in the van.
Gracie gave us an odd look and returned to her cabin, fishing her phone out of her pocket, no doubt to tell her father what a mess I was.
Ramsey rubbed my bare arm. “You okay?”
“Just a little shaken,” I said breathlessly. I took another deep breath to reassure myself. The scent of the handyman wasn’t what I had smelled at the store. Had I just been imagining the scent from earlier? Was I paranoid, like Gracie had said? I shuddered. “Let’s just go inside and forget it.”
Ramsey picked me up and, cradling me against his chest, went into the house. He set me down carefully in the center of the nearly empty living room and then began to run a big hand over my shoulders. “You sure you’re all right?”
I nodded. “I just had a fright. Bad memories.”
“Tell me.”
“No.” Reliving them once was enough. I didn’t want to go through it again.
His hand slid over my shoulder and across my collarbone, and I watched his gaze move to the mate mark on my neck, his eyes intense.
“I brought steaks,” I said suddenly. “For dinner.”
He quirked an eyebrow at me, and for the oddest moment, I had a feeling that Ramsey wanted to smile at me.
“I’ll get the steaks,” he said. “You sit here. Relax.”
I sat down on the old sofa and waited, smoothing the skirt of my borrowed dress. I felt like an idiot all around. I’d nearly gotten the handyman killed. I’d dressed up for a man who ran away at the thought of touching me. And I’d shown everyone that I was still the weak, fragile creature they thought me to be. I hated that.
I heard Ramsey toss the steaks in the fridge and then his big heavy feet move across the wood floors toward me. I straightened the spaghetti straps of my sundress and looked up at him.
“I need to change tonight,” I told him. “I need to change every night. To practice.”
He nodded.
“Will you help me?”
“Yes.”
It felt awkward to be around Ramsey while I was naked and waiting for my muscles to shift. I kept thinking of last night, and I guessed that he was, too, judging from the way he absolutely refused to look at my naked body. That was all right; it gave me a chance to look at his.
His chest was covered in a dusting of hair. His arms were impressively thick and his waist long and lean. A thick line of darker hair started at his navel and trailed down to the largest piece of male equipment I’d ever seen. I swallowed hard. I’d expected him to be big. I just hadn’t thought about how big. It distracted me, especially when Ramsey pulled my body tight against his again, his hands on my shoulders.
“Relax,” he told me in that deep, rumbling voice that reverberated through my muscles. “Look for that place in your mind. The shifting starts in your head, not in your body. If you think it through, you can encourage the shift. It’s hardest when you don’t anticipate it.”
I felt the warmth of his body, the slow thrum of his pulse. I stretched an arm out into the air, watching my skin tremble as it sprouted fur. To my surprise, Ramsey’s hand reached out and caught mine, grasping it tight.
I will always catch you, it seemed to say.
The change was not swift that night, but it was far less painful, which was encouraging. When I was in my wolf form, Ramsey’s large body shifted to bear, and he crouched low on all four of his massive legs. Immediately, his scent changed and my senses went on alert. A wolf always noticed when there was another predator in the area, and a much larger predator was standing right in front of me. The wolf-mind couldn’t handle it.
But Ramsey only moved forward and licked one of my ears, and then his scent became familiar all over again. He was still Ramsey underneath, and Ramsey would die before harming a hair on my head. My wolf-body relaxed and I danced away. When I dashed into the woods on the scent of a rabbit, he followed a fair distance behind, giving me room to breathe but still close enough to keep me safe.
I was hot on the tail of a rabbit, deep in the underbrush, when my body trembled and my legs seized. I collapsed onto the ground, startled to realize my body was changing back. That hadn’t happened before. It didn’t feel painful, though, only urgent, so I crouched low and let it happen.
