Between his schedule and my clever avoidance tactics I hadn't seen him for almost two months.
Even to my monocular gaze, he was beautiful, more beautiful than I remembered him being. I wanted to linger on his Slavic cheekbones and his sensuous mouth, damn it. I jerked my gaze to Samuel-which was hardly safer. He wasn't as pretty, but that didn't matter to my stupid hormones.
Samuel broke the silence first. "Why aren't you in bed, Mercy?" he drawled. "You look worse than the accident victim I had die on the table last week."
Adam came to his feet and crossed the living room in four long strides while I waited like a rabbit in a snare, knowing I should run, but unable to move. He stopped in front of me, whistling softly between his teeth as he examined the damage. When he leaned closer and touched my neck, I heard a noise from the kitchen.
Samuel had broken his coffee cup. He didn't look up at me as he set about cleaning the mess.
"Nasty," Adam said, drawing my attention back to him. "Can you see out of that eye?"
"Not as well as I see out of the other," I told him. "But I see well enough to tell that you aren't on your way to D.C. like you were supposed to be." He'd had to come back for Moon's Night, but I knew that he'd flown in yesterday afternoon and had been scheduled to fly out an hour ago.
The corner of his mouth kicked up, and I could have bitten off my tongue when I realized I'd just let him know that I was keeping track of his movements. "My schedule changed. I was supposed to fly out to Los Angeles a few hours ago. D.C. was last week and next week."
"So why are you still here?"
The amusement left his face and his eyes narrowed as he said curtly. "My ex-wife decided she is in love again. She and her new boyfriend headed off to Italy for an indefinite period. When I called, Jesse had already been alone for three days." Jesse was his fifteen-year-old daughter who had been living with her mother in Eugene for the summer. "I bought her a plane ticket and she should be here in a couple of hours. I told Bran I'm off duty. He'll have to shuffle politicians on his own for a while."
"Poor Jesse," I said. Jesse was one of the reasons I'd always respected Adam, even when he frustrated me the most. He'd never let anything, not business, not the pack, come before his daughter.
"So I'll be around for a while." It wasn't the words, it was the way he looked at me when he said them that forced me back a step. I hate it when that happens.
I decided to change the subject. "Good. Darryl's a great guy, but he's pretty hard on Warren when you aren't around."
Darryl was Adam's second and Warren his third. In most packs the two ranks were so close that there was always some tension between the wolves who held them, especially without the Alpha around. Warren 's sexual preferences made the tension even worse.
Being different among humans is hard. Being different among wolves is usually deadly. There aren't very many homosexual werewolves who survive for long. Warren was tough, self-reliant and Adam's best friend. The combination was enough to keep him alive but not always comfortable in the pack.
"I know," Adam said.
"It would help if Darryl weren't so cute," Samuel said casually as he crossed the living room to stand beside Adam.
Technically, he should have stood behind him, since Adam was the Alpha, and Samuel was a lone wolf, outside the pack hierarchy. But Samuel wasn't just any lone wolf, he was the Marrok's son and more dominant even than Adam if he'd wanted to push matters.
"I dare you to say that to Darryl," I challenged.
"Don't." Adam smiled, but his voice was serious. Though he spoke to Samuel, he'd never looked away from me. To me he said, "Samuel says you're going to need an escort to the vampire seethe sometime in the near future. Call me and I'll find someone to go with you."
"Thank you, I will."
He touched my sore cheek with a light finger. "I'd do it myself, but I don't think it would be wise."
I agreed with him wholeheartedly. A werewolf escort would serve both as a bodyguard and a statement that I wasn't without friends. The Alpha's escort would turn it into a power play between him and the vampires' leaders with Stefan caught in the middle.
"I know," I said. "Thank you."
I couldn't stay in that room with both men one more minute. Even a human woman could have drowned in the testosterone in the air, it was so strong. If I didn't leave, they were going to start fighting-I hadn't missed the way Samuel's eyes had whitened when Adam touched my cheek.
Then there was the need I had to bury my nose in Adam's neck and inhale the exotic scent of his skin. I looked away from him and found myself gazing into Samuel's white eyes. He was so close to turning that the distinctive black ring around the outside of his pupils was clearly visible. It should have scared me.
Samuel's nostrils flared-I smelled it, too. Arousal.
"I've got to go," I said, properly panicked.
I gave them a hasty wave as I scuttled out of the house, hastily pulling the door shut behind me. The relief of having a door between me and both men was intense. I was breathing hard, as if I'd run a race, adrenaline pushing the pain of the sorcerer's attack away. I took a deep breath of the morning air, trying to clear my lungs of werewolf, before heading out to my car.
I opened the Rabbit's door and the sudden smell of blood made me step abruptly back. The car had been parked where I always left it: I'd forgotten that Stefan must have used it to bring me back home. There were stains on both front seat covers-both of us must have been pretty bloody. But the most impressive thing was the fist-shaped dent on my dash, just above the radio.
Stefan had been upset.
* * *
I pulled into my garage and parked at the far end of the lot next to Zee's old truck. Never trust a mechanic who drives new cars. They're either charging too much money for their work, or they can't keep an old car running-maybe both.
VWs are good cars. They used to be cheap good cars; now they're expensive good cars. But every make has a few lemons. VW had the Thing (which at least looked cool), the Fox, and the Rabbit. I figured in another couple of years, my Rabbit would be the only one still running in the greater Tri-Cities.
I let the Rabbit idle for a moment and debated going in. I'd stopped at the nearest auto-parts store and picked up seat covers to replace the ones I'd had to throw away. Judging from the sick looks I'd gotten from the clerk, my battered face wasn't going to be drumming up business for me anytime soon.
But there were four cars parked in the lot, which meant we were busy. If I stayed in the garage, no one would see my face.