Chapter Four Sam #2
“That’s terrible, but this was just a punch. I’ll be fine in a couple days.”
“Your handsome face,” Susie mourns, stroking back my hair and looking at me with such tender eyes.
“You think I’m handsome?” I ask, surprised.
“Well... Yes. I have eyes, don’t I?”
“Well, I’ve got a little gray coming in and some of these laugh lines are putting up permanent settlements.”
“You look distinguished and gorgeous. A real dreamboat,” Susie sighs, stepping back with a blush.
She lets out a squeak when she sees the lurid covers of her leisure reading have been exposed.
She scrambles to pick them up, her perfect, shapely rear and long legs in sheet stockings beckoning to me like a siren to a sailor.
“Well. If I might be so bold to my secretary and nurse—you’re quite a dish yourself.
And you don’t have to be ashamed of those books, Susie.
I’ve read a few of them myself. No, they’re not great literature, but they’re chewing gum for the brain—and it’s always fun to see if you can figure out the whodunit before the detectives, isn’t it? ” I wink with my good eye.
“You know, I think you’re the best boss a girl could ask for, Mr. Silverman.”
“Oh, you’ve got to call me Sam now, honey. You’re nursing me back to health.”
“I will in just a second, that’s for sure. I’ll run down to Bond’s and get some iodine, unless you have it in here already.”
I have all kinds of things in my desk, including medical supplies. One never knows how one will wake up when you fall asleep with murderous claws three nights a month. “I probably have some in my desk. I’ll get it. I can patch myself up, Susie.”
“What happened to honey and sweetheart?” she flirts, batting her eyes.
“I got used to it in Washington, I guess. All the girls are ‘honey’ when they work with you long enough.”
“Oh.” Her face falls, and my heart falls with it.
“I didn’t want you to think I was a grabby boss who’d chase you around the desk,” I reassure, rising to meet her, staggering a little as my equilibrium is off (easy thing to happen when one eye is blurry and half your head feels bigger than the other half).
“Hmm. Maybe I’d like that. Not that I’m that kind of girl—” Susie bites her lip, bold one second, bashful the next.
Such a blend of tiger and kitten, the kind my wolf would absolutely love to pound into the forest floor.
“Maybe you would be for the right kind of guy? The settling down type?” I say before I can stop myself.
I know what I want. I want to have a nice little life.
I want to make this town peaceful. There will always be threats in the world, and Susie might come across them with me or without me.
I’ve put her in danger just bringing her to this town, so it’s my job to protect her.
That’s how I rationalize, what I tell myself when I want to keep her close to me, when I want to forget that I carry a dark secret that makes me the biggest threat of all.
Well, second biggest.
“Why, Mr. Silverman. A girl might think you had honorable intentions aimed at her with that kind of talk.” Susie’s smile is wide, and her eyes are sparkling.
The blush on her cheeks just highlights how perfectly beautiful I find her, like cherries and cream.
And her scent... her blood runs faster and hotter when she smiles so prettily at me. Is it all flirting? Just a game?
“Maybe she should think that way. Maybe she ought to know that if she keeps hanging around here, she’ll end up in my sight, honorable intentions incoming, “ I warn, stepping closer.
She doesn’t step away. “You don’t say that to all the girls, do you, Sam?” she whispers, hand landing on my lapel, running hesitant fingers down the fabric. Pulling me deeper into her embrace without even trying.
“Never said it to any girl. Not even one.” I allow myself to reach out and stroke her hair, brunette waves so soft in my hand.
Susie’s lips part, eyelids slowly close.
This could be the biggest mistake of my life, or the greatest thing I’ve ever done. If I kiss this girl, I’ll never be able to let her go. Wolves mate for life—and one day, she’ll have to know, unless I suddenly “get a job” that takes me away three nights of every month.
I hesitate too long. Any other girl would have backed away, reproach in her eyes, stammering and ashamed that I led her on and didn’t finish the job.
Susan Spade grabs me by the necktie and plants one on me.
It’s not elegant. It’s messy. I haven’t kissed anyone in years, and maybe she never has, not like this, but damn, it feels amazing.
She tastes like coffee and cherries, sweet and dark, and whatever she’s reading in those books, she’s putting to good use.
In seconds, I’ve got my arms around her, and the throbbing in my head is a tiny twinge compared to the pounding in my cock.
Thank God the phone rings.
“I’ll get it. You go to the drugstore,” I pant, pushing her off gently.
I’d rather keep holding her, but I’ll make a fool of myself if I do.
I don’t need the iodine, but I need ten minutes to slip into the washroom and take care of some “urgent business” that Susie’s probably going to notice in two seconds.
Susie nods, straightening her clothes and wiping her mouth, wide-eyed and breathless. “Iodine. Right!”
“See you in ten minutes, beautiful,” I tell her, and race into my office.
“Silverman,” I pant, snagging the phone as I lean on the desk with one hand.
“Sam?”
I recognize the voice at once. “Lionel. Good to hear from you.” I sit down heavily in my chair, head and heart doing some Latin number that threatens to put me in the hospital.
Wolves can go into heat, I’ve heard, a mindless, maddening rut.
I’m beginning to worry that Susie’s awakened that primal urge in me, and I don’t know how to stop it.
“I know it’s silly, and you’ve had some cockamamie theories about... Well, about all kinds of things.”
“I know, Lionel. That’s why I’m consulting for the top brass, honorably discharged instead of sullying your ranks, right?” I light a cigarette with a shaking hand as I hear Susie leave the office.
“Well, I know your theory about an operative being involved in the deaths of the three airmen who worked on Project Eagle’s Prey. Other operatives have been apprehended in conjunction with approaching Air Force officers and scientists.”
I want to growl. This isn’t news to me. Is he calling to rub my face in my failures?
“Look, I’m pretty sure one is in the New York State area, between the Pennsylvania border, Binghamton, and the city.
I had a run-in with him over the weekend and lost his tail, but I know I’m right. You don’t have to believe me.”
“I don’t know that I want to believe you, but I’m going to have to take a gamble, Sam.
Professor Llwellyn and his new wife are moving to Windsor, NY.
That’s a town near your patch. He’s retiring, and I can’t fault him.
He lost one son right after the war, testing a new engine over the Atlantic, lost his first wife right in the midst of burying the boy, and his other boy is a Colonel in the Army now.
I don’t think an operative could ever bribe him to talk. ”
“I’ve met Llwellyn. I don’t think he could be bought, either.”
“I very much doubt it, but... But the old man has a weakness to exploit. A pretty young wife, a wife young enough to start a new family with. Well, I say young, but I mean plump, pretty, and just around forty, a good twenty years his junior. If someone were to go after her, well...”
“He’d tell everything he knows about the project to keep her safe?”
“It’s one of the reasons he retired, if you ask me. He knows Washington is a hotbed right now, and intelligence is the best weapon and the best defense. Germany is rumbling, Sam. That new man of theirs...”
All the lust in me drains away. That “new man,” the Chancellor of Germany, will be a thousand times worse than any Kaiser, and I know it in my bones.
Any family we had left in Europe is heading to America now, before it’s too late.
“He’s Satan. His operatives will be inhuman, and they’ll do inhuman things. ”
“Now, Sam—”
“Trust me. There are things I know. Things that you might have known, if you had listened to me. For a decade, I served my country. Why would I suddenly become ‘loopy’ now?”
“Look, it wasn’t my decision to make, Sam. But I want you to meet with Llwellyn and keep an eye on him and his wife. It’s an isolated little spot, a nice little town. It should be safe—but in case you’re right, just know that I’m sending you a new contract by courier. He’s yours to watch over.”
“Now, wait a minute, that town might be an hour away. I can’t babysit him endlessly. You guys don’t even think there’s any operative in this area to catch!”
“But you do. And there are three dead men in a three-hour radius. Watch him for us, Sam. We need you to. He rejected a military detail—says it’ll cause too much attention. He just wants to slip into a quiet retirement. Hasn’t he earned it?”
“Fine. But you remember that you’re both saying you do and don’t believe me. You owe me,” I growl, and hang up.
I’m going to have to leave town for a few days. But maybe that’s good. If the beast out there knows of Llwellyn’s movements, he’ll be leaving town, too. I can confront him away from Susie.
Leaving town means leaving Susie, too, damn it. Just when things were heating up with her.
Susie. Susie, who’ll be back in ten minutes, and who made me ache in ways I’d all but forgotten. If she comes close to me again, I might not be able to resist her.
I hurry to the washroom, hand already retrieving my cock, now misshapen with a new bulb of flesh at the base.