“Someone must have bit her, though,” he says. “You want me to go sniffing around tonight, try to find who did it?”
“Have you smelled anyone else since we’ve been in town?” All that I’ve noticed was Alicia—whose scent is a lot like ours, but just a bit different. A little eerie.
That’s the curse in her. Something I haven’t smelled in years, since our great grandfather was still alive. But we aren’t necessarily looking for someone who was cursed, too. It might have been another wolf like me—born instead of bit.
“No one else,” he confirms. “Could be a nearby town, though.”
That it could. “Go looking if you like. Or wait until she’s awake to tell us.”
Brandon stifles another laugh. “And when you get around to it again?”
I’ll get around to it. Because I’ve got a feeling it’s a conversation Alicia and I need to have first thing. Probably should have already had.
But she was so fucking hot. And so damn sweet. When she walked through that restaurant door, looking like she did and hurting so bad for release, as if she needed my cock more than anything, talking was the last thing in my head.
Now I know what put all those shadows in her eyes, though. She’s not sick. She’s been dealing with a curse.
I should have come sooner. “If you find this fucker—”
“I’ll leave him to you,” Brandon says, reading me so easily.
“Be careful with your own scent. Don’t spook him and give him a chance to run.” Not that it’d help him escape me. But I don’t want to waste time chasing the bastard. Not time that I could be spending with Alicia.
“You think this is my first time hunting some asshole?” A cold, dangerous look hardens my brother’s face—and is not an expression I see him wearing often. “The motherfucker won’t know I was there. You just work on helping your woman.”
There’s only one way to do that. And it’s the one thing Alicia asked me not to do.
I ease the door closed after he heads out. All the lights are off, but I can see just fine on the way to the bed—I could even without the moonshine spilling through the curtains, the moon still looking full and round against the night sky. But not completely full, like it was last night.
And I was in town last night, godfuckingdammit. If I’d had any inkling, I could have been with her. I’ve never met an untamed beast before, don’t know how she would have reacted to me. But I could have made sure Alicia was safe while she wasn’t in control.
It kills my heart that she was out there alone. That she probably woke up not knowing where she’d been or what she’d done. But it’ll never happen again.
And she’ll never be alone again.
Lying on her belly with all that gorgeous red hair in a tumble down her back, Alicia doesn’t stir when I climb into the bed beside her, just like she didn’t stir when I first left the bed or when I slid those dead sexy heels off her dainty little feet. She’s sleeping so damn hard that I keep stopping to listen and make sure she’s still breathing, that her heart’s still beating. Now I pull her against my chest so that I can feel her breaths and heartbeat, too, then drag a lungful of her scent into me, until my heart’s surrounded by the fragrance of her.
Don’t make me fall in love with you.
But that’s exactly what I intend to do. There’s a good chance she asked that without knowing how love could tame her beast—yet even if she wasn’t a werewolf, I’d do the same damn thing.
Until she asked, though, it never occurred to me that she didn’t know what I was, too. I assumed that the second she stepped into the restaurant, she must have smelled the difference in me and recognized what it meant. Just like I did her. But I’ve been a wolf all my life. I’ve had decades to learn scents. I figure she’s had about six months…in a town where there’s no one else like her, nothing to tell her what that scent means.
Right now, she’s probably afraid that her beast might tear me apart. But the only danger Alicia poses to me is the damage she might do to my heart if she doesn’t let herself fall in love.
So the talk we put off—we’ll be having that first thing.* * *I wake to the sensation of a slight weight straddling my hips and sharp claws skimming down my chest. The sultry perfume of Alicia’s arousal fills the air, but that soft growl isn’t hers.
Not exactly hers. Because I’ve heard Alicia make that same sound. Yet I don’t think she’s the one making it now.
Her beast is. Not fully transformed, but with fangs and claws and her eyes glowing green. Night still fills the sky outside, the moon low and shining straight through the sliding doors that lead out onto the small balcony. Maybe that’s how the beast took over. Or maybe she can while Alicia’s sleeping. I don’t know exactly how all that works.