13. Giselle #2
My impression about his financial situation had indeed been correct. There was a joke in there about wolves on Wall Street and being wealthy, but I didn’t have the mental fortitude to make it.
“Here we are,” he said as he pulled to a stop in front of the garage.
Despite everything that had happened, he still got out first, then went around the front of the car to open my door. He offered me his hand, and I stared at him for a moment. Not that long ago, it had been a massive wolf paw, complete with claws that could easily slit my throat.
I would have to be stupid to take it. Simply moronic with absolutely no survival skills.
He was a predator, but he had sort of saved me.
How long could I guarantee that I would be safe in his presence?
The smart thing to do was not to go into his den, but to run to the closest building, calling for help as loudly as I could.
I took his hand.
Well, kind of. I actually reached down to grab my leftovers and handed them over to him.
“Really?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was simply incredulous at my action, impressed, or even amused.
“There’s shellfish in one of these,” I said simply. “We should refrigerate it if we’re going to be a while.”
He was still staring at me as if I was insane, which I probably was, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he transferred the bag to his other hand so he could extend his free one to me yet again.
Ever the gentleman.
Despite all the logic that screamed otherwise, I did feel better as his callous palm met my own. He was just so warm. And there was an inherent strength to his grip even though he was incredibly gentle with me.
He let go far too soon, but of course, I didn’t verbalize that. I stayed silent as we walked over the cobblestone pathway to his front door. I did pause outside, however, my head feeling clearer than it had ever since that stranger had thrown himself into the car.
“I have questions.”
“It would be strange if you didn’t.”
“But I want to be lucid when I ask them. So, you’ll have to be patient.”
He let out possibly the driest laugh I’d ever heard from him. “Trust me, I’m not in a hurry.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything at all as he let me into his house.
The interior was just as lovely as the exterior. All modern and organized, although there were signs of children everywhere. Pictures on the wall, drawings hung up with pride, large chests that were no doubt chock-full of toys, tons of blankies and pillows on the couch.
“Would you like to rest here for a bit?” he murmured softly, pointing to the couch. “Junior and Veronica are probably asleep. I’ll text Natalie that I’m home safe, but I have company.”
“If you tell her that, she’ll probably think something different is happening.” Asking a date to go back to their place was usually followed by something a whole lot more fun. Also, those festivities would elevate a heart rate rather than drop it down.
But that was so not happening. Although I still found Ben ridiculously attractive, it was impossible to ignore that everything had changed between us.
What a clusterfuck.
“Ah. I didn’t…” He shook his head. “I’ll tell her I’m home and ask her not to come downstairs. You can hang in here if you’d?—”
“Actually, do you have a place to sit in your kitchen?”
He nodded.
“Great. I’d love some fresh fruit or a spoonful of honey, if you have any.”
“Does that help, uh, whatever is going on?”
I shrugged. “It’s high in sugar, but low in iodine. Hopefully, it’ll help my stomach with the meds too.”
“I see. This way then.”
We walked through his rather expansive house and the kitchen was just as fancy as everything else, complete with shiny chrome appliances and a double-range stove.
“I’ve got a berry mix in the fridge. Do you want that with your honey?” he asked, sounding so uncertain of himself.
“That would be perfect, actually.”
Berries were also high in sugar and low in iodine, so hopefully it would help my body find equilibrium after the adrenaline rush. I hated to think of how many additional calories I’d burned with how hard my heart had been going at it.
I really needed to get around to buying those Ensures.
I sat down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my modest heels swinging slightly. I wasn’t short by any means, but stools always had a way of making me feel like I was. Too much torso and not enough leg, I guessed.
Ben put my leftovers in the fridge, then got me a plate for the berries and honey. I watched him with rapt attention, trying to figure out how the man in front of me had become a wild animal.
Was I crazy to say I could kind of see it now? Ben moved like he was holding back, as if he was in a glass shop and trying not to break anything. He held his shoulders like he was indeed an apex predator masquerading as a silly, piddly human.
Or maybe my fractured mind was trying to make sense of a senseless situation.
“Here you are,” he said, setting the plate in front of me and regarding me with those intensely blue eyes of his. Eyes I saw in a completely different way now.
Or did I?
I didn’t know. But who could blame me for being mixed up?
“Thanks,” I said, and that was all I said. I still needed to order my thoughts, so I focused on the fruits first, then the honey, slowly and methodically licking the spoon clean.
Once or twice, I felt eyes on me, but whenever I glanced up, Ben was doing something else and not even looking in my direction. I was probably just being paranoid.
Or he was a magical being who could move faster than I could perceive.
It was both, of course.
To his credit, Ben didn’t rush me. He let me sit there and stare at him and his surroundings while I chewed. Eventually, however, my plate was clear, my head wasn’t spinning anymore, and it only felt like I’d run a marathon rather than grabbed onto a live wire knocked loose in a storm.
“So, a werewolf, huh?” I asked. Even though I was talking quietly, mindful that there were two sleeping children upstairs, my voice seemed obnoxiously loud in the quiet.
There was that tiny sliver of a laugh again. Somehow, despite the situation, I could still make Ben smile. “You could call us that. We don’t, though.”
“Oh?” I asked. I had been slightly worried that he would be cagey, or even defensive, but no. Mostly, he just seemed exhausted.
“We refer to ourselves as shifters. Wolf shifters, specifically.”
I sat there, digesting that. We were only at question one, and already a dozen different branches were springing to life in my head, leading me down unique lines of interrogation.
“The way you said that would lead me to infer there are other types of shifters”
There went the corner of his lip, quirking upward ever so slightly. “You would be inferring right.”
Holy hell.
“How many types?”
“Hard to say exactly. It’s impossible to know everything, after all. But as far as I’ve seen, there are us wolves, bears, horses, seals—you guys call them selkies. Uh, snakes, which you’ll know as naga, yetis, cougars, tigers, and lions. Oh my.”
If I was drinking anything, I might have done a spit-take right then and there. And not because of the well-timed reference to The Wizard of Oz . “That many?”
“Again, that I know of. But there’s mostly only wolves, bears, horses, and Big Foot here in America. I’ve heard that Europe has fairies, though.” A strange expression crossed his face as he regarded me. “I thought that was what you were originally.”
“ Me? A fairy?”
There was that smile again. Softer. Sweeter. Still barely there, but I could see it. “The shoe seemed to fit.”
I was blushing. I was talking to a werewolf in his kitchen after being kidnapped during our date, and I was blushing.
God, what a weird night.
“So, you’re a wolf shifter.” In my opinion, the term werewolf was way cooler. “Does that mean Benny is too?”
“Technically yes, but no.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I can’t explain exactly how it works, but basically we wolves only get our animal form during puberty. Before that, we’re basically identical to humans. No enhanced senses, no enhanced strength, no healing, and certainly no becoming a wolf.”
“Wait, you have all that?” Talk about a stacked deck.
I swore his smile grew the tiniest bit bigger.
“Yeah. Even in our human bodies we can heal from most things that aren’t serious in just a couple of hours.
Things that would lay up a human for months or even possibly years can be healed in a couple of weeks, provided we have enough food.
The amount of calories our healing demands is actually quite insane. ”
Well, now his appetite certainly made sense. Although he wasn’t injured, I imagined the basic caloric needs for someone who could randomly explode into a wolf at will was pretty high.
“So one day Benny will...”
“Be a shifter too, yes. But he’s not yet. In fact, if children get seriously injured or even get some type of scars, oftentimes even the great change won’t get rid of those. They carry those marks around for life.”
Whoa. That seemed so monumentally consequential, which was silly considering that it was the exact same for humans.
But I couldn’t imagine living around other people who were all physically whole and healthy while I myself was horribly scarred.
If I was a shifter, I would be a helicopter parent.
The idea that a simple fall could mark my child apart from the rest of his community was pretty horrifying.
But then something hit me.
“Wait, when Benny told me to sit down...?”
“Yeah, I don’t have an explanation for that. He says he smelled something was off with you. He’s not supposed to have access to that skill yet.”
All of a sudden I was recontextualizing a lot that had happened over the past two weeks. Actually, scratch that, my brain was flicking through random memories of the entire school year like a rolodex, as if I would find other little juicy morsels of this werewolf backstory.