Chapter Three
C HAPTER T HREE
Some dogs take longer to train than others.
—Man’s Best Friend: An Essential Guide to Dogs
Claire opened her eyes, blinked once, and was instantly wide awake, surging upright in bed. Astonishing alertness for a woman who deliberately set her alarm thirty minutes early just so she could hit the snooze button three times. Her body required that extra half hour to adjust to the idea of waking.
From the darkness enveloping her, she knew it was still morning. The bedside clock read four fifteen.
She had slept only four hours?
Strange. She had been so exhausted.
Her belly rumbled. Thoughts of swinging by Krispy Kreme wormed into her head. Hmmm, or breakfast tacos from Tia Rosa. Her growling stomach made the decision. Both.
Lifting her arms, she stretched, remembering too late to have a care for her shoulder. But surprisingly the stretch didn’t hurt. She rotated her shoulder gingerly, waiting to feel her muscles’ protest. Nothing happened. She moved her shoulder more vigorously, delighted to discover no pain at all. It felt fine. In fact, every last inch of her felt fine—great, even. Like a woman reborn, bounding with energy. The alien impulse to don some sweats and take a Saturday morning jog seized her.
“Some drugs,” she muttered.
Then another urge asserted itself. Claire bounded from the bed. Arms outstretched, she made her way through the gloom to the bathroom.
Moments later she emerged and picked up her phone from the nightstand, noticing the missed calls. Apparently, she’d slept through her ringing phone.
Grateful she had her phone in her pocket and hadn’t lost it alongside her purse, she played the voicemail on speaker, wondering who would have called her in the middle of the night.
Returning to her bathroom, she flipped on the light and squinted against the glare. Giving her reflection a cursory inspection, she reached for her toothbrush as the voicemail played in the tight space.
Her gaze flew back to the mirror and the face that was her own. Yet not. She leaned forward warily over the sink, as though the woman in the mirror might leap out to harm her.
Her face was… different.
She stared hard, trying to put her finger on the difference.
“Claire, it’s your mother,” the voice rang out, tinny and jarring, from her phone. “Wanted to see if you want roast or spaghetti this Sunday. I can do either. Let me know. Love you. Bye.”
Tearing her attention from the mirror, she gave her phone a peculiar look—as though it held answers to the strangeness of that message.
Like clockwork, she ate dinner at her parents’ house every Sunday, and although her mother often checked to see what she preferred to eat, she had never called in the middle of a Friday night to verify. Shrugging, she returned to scrutinize her face, at last pinpointing the difference.
Her eyes. They weren’t the same mousy brown that looked back at her every day. They were silver. No light blue or grayish blue either. Silver. A startling silver, reminiscent of ice… and something else. Something familiar. Something recent. A memory niggled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite touch it.
Her fingers lightly grazed her cheekbone just below those strange eyes. Could drugs alter one’s eye color? Was this some sort of allergic reaction to the codeine? Or the tetanus shot?
She played her next voicemail and Maggie’s voice blared from her phone, penetrating her racing thoughts. Kids whooped and screamed in the background. “Just checking in. Call me if you get around to it. See you tomorrow…”
Why would Maggie think she was going to see her today? On Saturday? Shaking her head, Claire grabbed her remote control off the dresser and flipped on the television, clicking through channels until she found the local news. A human Barbie doll reported the early morning weather in cheery, singsong tones.
“Looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous day today. A great way to begin the week. Maybe it will make those headed-back-to-work-Monday blues easier…”
The remote control slipped from her suddenly slack fingers and thudded to the carpet. She backed up, sinking onto the bed as realization washed over her.
She had slept two nights. As impossible as it seemed, it was four fifteen Monday morning .
“No one can sleep that long,” she whispered over the drone of yet another message from her mother.
She jumped up and rushed back to the mirror, gripping her hands around the edge of her sink until her knuckles turned white. Inhaling through her nostrils, she lifted her face and met her gaze dead on. It was like looking at a stranger. Those eyes chilled her.
“What the hell’s going on?” she demanded of her reflection.
The last thing she expected was an answer.
“You’re one of them now,” a gravelly voice said.
She spun around, a scream lodged in her throat as she peered into the far corners of her room, searching for the owner of that voice.
He was a shadow. A large, motionless form occupying her wicker chair—presumably where he’d been sitting since the minute she awoke.
Pressing a hand to her pounding heart, her gaze darted wildly in search of a nearby weapon. Despite his marble-like stillness, an energy emanated from him that only heightened her agitation. He sat there like a deadly snake, frozen and still before the attack.
“Who are you?” She plucked a curling iron from the basket of rarely used hair products next to her sink.
“Gideon March.” Accompanying that less-than-enlightening introduction, something flew through the air to land on her bed, making her flinch. “You forgot that.”
Certain she detected amusement in his deep voice, she glanced at the object on her bed. Her purse. She looked back to the intruder’s shadowed features. “It was you in the alley,” she said slowly. “You saved me from that dog.”
Still brandishing the curling iron in her hand, she inched closer to flip on the bedside lamp. A soft glow filled the room, reaching its corners and granting her a better view of the man sitting so casually, so relaxed, in her bedroom—as if he had every right to be there. His large frame dwarfed the chair and she worried it might collapse beneath his weight. The muted haze of light did nothing to soften the hard planes of his face. Even as she acknowledged his arresting good looks, she had the distinct impression he rarely smiled. Lean bodied, stone faced with pale eyes—the exact color she couldn’t yet detect.
Gideon March nodded at the curling iron in her hand. “Planning to curl my hair?”
“What are you doing here?” Her fingers flexed around the curling iron’s steel grip, ready to club him over the head if he moved her way. “I don’t think you broke in to my apartment to return my purse.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
She ignored his question. “I don’t have any money. Whatever I had was in that purse.”
“I’m not here to rob you.”
“Then what do you want?”
He sighed. “Someone’s got to explain what’s happening to you.”
She scowled at his cryptic answer, then rushed on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Listen, if you leave now, I won’t call the police. You brought my purse back, now—”
“Don’t you want to know what’s happening to you?” He leaned forward, his hands—large like the rest of him—dangling off his knees. “You’re one of them now,” he continued, “and more has changed than your eye color.”
She knew she should concentrate on getting this intruder out of her home, but what he said resonated within her. How had he known about her eyes? She couldn’t resist asking, “One of who?”
“Remember the kid you followed into the alley?”
“Lenny?”
“Your student, right?”
She could only nod, wondering how he knew she was a teacher and then remembering her school identification was in her wallet.
“He was one of them. He attacked you. Bit you. And now you’re one of them, too.” He spoke as if he were explaining something very basic. As if she were a child. As if she were stupid.
“A dog attacked me. Not Lenny,” she said in a voice that left no doubt which of them she considered mentally deficient.
“It was Lenny,” he said with quiet certainty, then repeated as vaguely as before, “and now you’re one of them.”
What on earth was that supposed to mean? Had she been involved in some sort of gang initiation and didn’t know it?
“What are you talking about?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “One of who?”
“Lycans,” he said as though the term might ring a bell. When she didn’t respond, he explained, “Sort of like a werewolf. Only not like in the movies. Werewolves are Hollywood. Lycans are the real deal.”
“Werewolves,” she echoed, her gaze darting about again, renewing her search for a weapon, something better than a curling iron.
“You’re a lycan,” he said blandly, lacking the passion such a declaration might warrant—especially shouted from the padded room of the asylum where he must normally reside.
She didn’t move, didn’t speak, afraid anything she chose to say might set him off.
“You’re a lycan,” he repeated in the same mild tone. For all the emotion in his voice he could have been the anonymous person taking her order at a drive-through. “In a very short time you’ll be a perfect killing machine.”
“I see.” Her tongue darted out to moisten dry lips. With the utmost care, she adopted a slow, placating tone and said, “Let me get this straight. I’m a werewolf. And Lenny—” She stopped cold, recalling his exact words. Was. All need to placate fled.
“What do you mean was ?” she demanded, fighting back the urge to shout. “What happened to Lenny?”
“He’s dead.” Again, the flat voice.
“Dead,” she murmured, her arm falling lifelessly to her side, her fingers loose around her weapon. Dead. The word rolled over her in a numbing fog. No. Not Lenny. He couldn’t be dead. He never got a chance to live. Not the kind of life he deserved, anyway.
“And you will be too if you don’t start listening to me.”
“Lenny,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Listen to me.” His biting command cut through her spinning thoughts, through the sorrow threatening to swallow her. “You don’t have time to grieve. I need—”
“How do you know he’s dead?” Her gaze leapt back to his face. Why should she believe this man?
His mouth pressed shut and he glared at her.
Heedless of her own well-being, she lurched nearer, jabbing the curling iron in the air. “How do you know?” she demanded.
“Listen.” He clutched the fragile arms of her wicker chair as if battling for patience. “Your life is in danger. You need my help.”
Why couldn’t he just answer her question?
“He’s not dead,” she charged, shaking her head vigorously. “No way.” This intruder living under some very unhealthy delusions could hardly be counted on as a reliable source of information.
“He’s dead.” His voice broke through her denial with the viciousness of a whip. “And you will be too if you don’t get a grip and start worrying about your own ass.”
She tapped her chest with the curling iron. “Why am I in danger?”
He didn’t answer her. Again. Funny how he had a way of doing that whenever she asked a direct question. When her students didn’t immediately answer her, it was because they had something to hide. Her eyes widened, sweeping over him and suddenly she understood. She knew. She knew.
“You killed Lenny!” How else would he know for certain Lenny was dead? She staggered back and bumped into the wall so hard it rattled the picture frames.
“No,” he corrected, then added in a somewhat quieter voice, “I destroyed a lycan who used to be your student.”
“You’re insane!” Her lips worked silently as she struggled for an epithet foul enough to hurl at him.
“Listen. Lenny was a lycan. And as of Friday night, so are you. If you need proof, look at your shoulder where he bit you.”
Yeah, right. As if she would take her gaze off him to inspect her shoulder.
“Go look in the mirror,” he snapped, unfolding his great length from her chair. “See how insane I am.”
She slid farther along the wall, creeping slow inch by slow inch toward the bedroom doorway. “Stay back!”
He gestured at her shoulder impatiently. “Just look, damn it!”
She flinched at his raised voice. His sheer size coupled with his not so minor confession of murder left no doubt that the time for talking was over. She flung the curling iron at his head and bolted. His muffled curse told her the curling iron made contact.
Door, door, door. The word pounded through her mind like the heavy beat of a drum. She had to reach the door before—
A hand slammed down on her shoulder and spun her around. His other one muffled her scream as he hauled her against him, muttering, “Lady, don’t make me regret helping you.”
Helping her? Right. He was a regular Good Samaritan.
Keeping one hand on her mouth, he locked his other arm around her waist and lifted her off the carpet, imprisoning her against the rock-hard length of him. She landed a couple solid kicks to his shins with her heels. He grunted but still managed to carry her to the bathroom and drop her in front of the mirror.
Her pulse hammered at her neck in rhythm to the beat of his heart pounding at her back as he trapped her between his body and the counter. Hard body pressed behind hers, his hips pushed her into the counter. Staring at their reflection in the mirror, she saw with clinical dispassion just how good-looking he was. Even in the unflattering fluorescent lighting. And this, Claire mused quite irrationally, was vastly, horribly unfair. A manhandling brute should be ugly as sin.
His broad hand covered the bottom half of her face, his tanned skin a dark contrast to her paleness. Her lips parted and she tasted the saltiness of his skin with a dart of her tongue, detecting the rush of his blood just below the surface of his palm. Her breasts tightened and grew heavy and she had to resist the urge to take them in her hands and squeeze them.
Her attention moved to his eyes. Green. A pale green. At the moment those lovely eyes—unbefitting such a cold, harsh man—glared at her in the mirror. She focused on the tiny flecks of gold, too numerous to count near the night-dark pupils.
The hand on her waist moved to the opening of her robe and yanked it open, giving further credence to his utter ruthlessness. She gave a tiny gasp, mortified when the robe parted down to her navel. Thankfully the sash was belted tight enough to keep at least some of her business private. But not all. A single breast spilled out of her robe. She grappled to cover herself, but he was bent on his own agenda. He bared her shoulder and thrust it forward until her head almost touched the mirror.
Her gaze dropped to her shoulder. With a single, ruthless yank he tore off her bandage, and she quickly forgot about covering herself. Smooth, unblemished skin was all she saw. Not a scratch in sight. It was a miracle.
“Holy shit,” she muttered into his warm hand, doubly shocking herself at her use of profanity. She rarely swore. Her father insisted ladies did not curse. Yet if there was ever a time for profanity, this was it.
“There’s nothing holy about it. Your DNA regenerates at a greater speed now,” he replied, apparently able to decipher her muffled exclamation. “You’re facing a bleak future… the loss of your soul… unless you start listening to me.” He dropped his hand from her mouth and cocked an eyebrow in question.
Their gazes clashed in silent struggle: his urging her to accept the impossible, hers steadfast in disbelief. Although more disturbed by the disappearance of her wound than she was willing to admit, that didn’t mean she bought into his outrageous claims.
His gaze scanned her face and then dropped, examining the rest of her. All of her. She felt his crawling appraisal like a brand, hot and burning deep. The pressure of his hips against her brought forth a moan far back in her throat. Belatedly, she recalled that more than her shoulder was bared for his inspection. With clumsy hands, she yanked her robe back in place, but not before his gaze burned across her exposed flesh and her treacherous nipple pebbled and hardened, rising in salute to his silent appraisal.
The hard length of his body tightened like a wire behind hers, singeing her through their clothes. A sudden rush of moisture gathered between her legs, so sudden, so immediate, she almost came on the spot.
A telltale hardness swelled against her lower back, prodding insistently. The temptation to turn around and rub against that hardness insinuated itself. Her gaze shot up in the mirror. Twin flags of red stained her cheeks. Mortified at her body’s betrayal, she wiggled free from the hard press of his body and the wedge of counter, taking refuge in the far end of the room. Putting several feet between them, she fought for breath in the charged air.
His scent followed her. Earthy smells. Cedar, pine, and aroused male filled her nostrils. Clearly her imagination worked overtime. No way could she smell him several feet away.
The throbbing ache between her legs alarmed her, but not nearly as much as her longing for him to assuage that ache. Her body had never reacted this way before.
He had to leave. Immediately.
“Get out!” She pointed a shaking finger in the general direction of the front door, her voice shrill and unsteady. “Now,” she hissed.
Their eyes clashed in a battle of wills. At last, Gideon March turned to leave, but not before pausing to say, “I’ll give you some time to think. This is a lot to digest. But this isn’t over. On the next full moon, you will shift. And you will kill. I need your cooperation if I’m going to help you.”
“Go away,” she urged, resisting the impulse to weep from the inexplicable want that burned her blood. “I’m not a—” She couldn’t even utter the word aloud, wouldn’t give it that much power. “I don’t need your help,” she finished.
He nodded slowly, his pale eyes strangely regretful. “Then that’s too bad for you. Because without it, you’re dead.”
Then he was gone.
Legs suddenly too wobbly to support herself, she slid down the wall in a boneless pile. Her entire body shook. Yet strangely enough, not from fear. Her body thrummed for sexual release. She ached in places that had never experienced sensation before. Another second and she would have torn off her robe and pounced on him, wrested off his clothes, and explored that throbbing erection she had felt at her backside. What the hell was wrong with her?
With only one past lover, she didn’t feel those sensations. She hardly ever had. She didn’t have those needs. She didn’t indulge in primitive urges. They were things other women felt. Not her. Those urges were too wild, too primitive, too beastly. Especially to feel for a self-professed killer who broke in to her apartment and spouted insane allegations.
His smell swirled around her as if he were still in the room. She even thought she heard the echo of his steps well past her apartment door now.
She rose and moved toward the phone sitting on her bedside table, thinking she would call the police. Her hand hovered over it for a moment before pulling back. What would she tell them? Some guy returned her purse and warned her that she was going to turn into a werewolf on the next full moon? They’d lock her away, and then where would she be?
Besides, Claire had other problems. Like finding out what had happened to Lenny. No way did she accept that he was dead. He probably just took to the streets to get away from his foster father. And she needed to come up with an explanation for missing Sunday dinner. The flu seemed the easiest excuse. The way her body ached and throbbed, she certainly felt as though she were recovering from some malady.
Monday was off to an ominous start and she wasn’t taking any chances. Picking up the phone, she called the automated substitute system and reported her absence for the day.
She ended the call and made her way back to the mirror. The stranger with the wild, silver eyes was still there, waiting for her, preventing her from hiding and pretending everything was okay. As much as she longed to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over her head, and forget Gideon March, her desire-flushed face and tingling body wouldn’t let her.
She could, however, take care of one nagging ache, even if it wasn’t the bewildering, unwelcome ache between her legs. Grabbing her purse off the bed, she headed for the nearest Krispy Kreme.