Chapter Ten
C HAPTER T EN
A pack species, dogs are social creatures.
—Man’s Best Friend: An Essential Guide to Dogs
Now what?” Claire asked, eyeing the long length of weathered bar—stained and sticky from unidentifiable fluids—for its dish of complimentary peanuts.
“We wait,” Gideon replied, scanning the room without glancing her way. He thrust a beer into her hand with a terse “Drink.”
Wrinkling her nose, she looked askance at the beer in her hand. She never drank beer. Occasionally, a glass of wine. But never beer. Her father drank beer. By the truckloads.
She stared at the bottle in her hand as if it might sprout teeth and bite her. Looking up, she caught the hulk of a bartender leering down her cleavage from behind the bar. He smoothed a hand over his forest of a goatee and blew her a kiss.
Stifling a shudder, she turned and watched Gideon take a swig from his bottle. Growing up, she usually closeted herself in her room when her father sat drinking in front of the television. A safe place to avoid the path of his red-eyed gaze. Of course sometimes not even the barrier of her door could protect her.
“I hate beer,” she muttered, her father’s slurred insults echoing in her mind. Her nose twitched, almost smelling his foul beer breath hissing in her face.
“And why’s that?”
She shrugged. “When my father wasn’t working on a job, he was home. Drinking.” She nodded. “And that was pretty much it.” She snorted, a pained smile curving her lips. “God, we couldn’t wait for him to leave.”
Silence fell between them, filled by the din of the bar. She wondered what had inspired her to bring up her father. She never talked about him. Not with anyone. Not even with her mother.
“Was he a mean drunk?” The question fell hard from his mouth, almost startling her.
“Mean better describes him sober. Drunk, he’s something else.” Something worse. “I learned to stay out of his way.” She crossed her arms, rubbing flesh that suddenly felt chilled as she remembered the times she had not escaped his notice. “For the most part.”
He stared out into the bar, the rigid line of his profile resembling carved stone. Suddenly, he said, “The timid little mouse suddenly makes such sense.”
Heat crawled over her cheeks. Their conversation at dinner flooded back over her. “I’m not passive, remember,” she snapped. “Not a mouse.”
He turned his gaze on her, eyes a cool and steady green.
Dropping her arms, she met his stare directly, challenging.
“If you are—were,” he amended, gaze flicking over her, taking in her shiny halter top, slowly roaming over the swells of her breasts, “it sounds as though you had good reason.”
“To be weak?” she growled. Vulnerable? Submissive? Her mother? She shook her head fiercely.
“No,” he countered, eyes burning as they drifted back to her face, drilling into hers. “To be human.”
Human. Something she could no longer lay claim to either. At that moment, he must have realized the same thing, too.
His eyes changed, the green deepening, assessing her with a burning intensity. The air between them altered, grew charged. Hunger pumped through her veins and her nipples hardened against the thin, satiny fabric of her top. The muscles along his square-cut jaw knotted and she scented his reaction to her—visceral and immediate, earthy, a spicy musk on the air.
He tore his gaze from her and looked out at the bar again, severing the moment.
She gripped the cold, wet bottle and did her best not to shatter the glass in her hand. Studying him, she tried to steady her breathing and suppress her annoyance that he no longer looked at her, that he had clamped down hard on the desire flaring between them, snuffing it out like a flame between his fingers.
Leaning his elbows back on the bar, he took another long swig of beer. Casual. Calm. She watched, mesmerized by the play of muscles in his throat. God, he was… incredible.
Tearing her gaze away, she tried to shake off this damned attraction for him. In a very short time, she’d either be dead or wimpy again. In either case, Gideon didn’t fit in to the equation, so there was no sense getting worked up over him.
The Eagles crooned “Take It Easy” in the background, mocking her tension. Taking a delicate sip of beer, she wet her lips and asked, “What are we looking for?”
The small sip of the Texas-brewed Shiner rolled down her throat in a bitter trail. She tried to hide her wince, wanting to appear tough, the kind of woman who hung with the guys and tossed back a few bottles. The kind of woman he might like.
He scanned the smoky bar steadily filling to capacity. Attention trained on the room, he pointed his bottle at a distant table. “Look, I’m going to sit over there—you sit there.”
She looked at the two tables he indicated—so very far apart. Her stomach clenched.
“Why?” she asked, alarmed.
“They’re more likely to approach if you’re alone.”
“How do you know they’ll even approach me?” She forced a sip of beer into her suddenly dry mouth, surprised to find that it didn’t taste so bad anymore.
He looked down at his boots. The action was almost guilty—if she could ever apply such an improbable emotion to him, which she couldn’t. There was nothing the least repentant about him.
“They will,” he answered, still avoiding her eyes.
Claire studied him as he rubbed the back of his neck beneath his hair. She got the feeling he hadn’t told her everything.
What was he hiding? And what made him so certain they would approach her?
Shaking her head, she asked, “Why would they waste their time if I’m not in their pack?”
“They will. Trust me.”
She eyed him uncertainly, but accepted his answer. She had wasted too much time already refusing to believe him.
Another question burned on her mind. “How do I know whether someone’s like me?”
“Their eyes will be the first giveaway, unless disguised, but even then you should sense them.”
At her frustrated look, he elaborated. “It’s not something I can explain. I only know that lycans seem to recognize each other on a primal level.” He smiled wryly. “I’ve never experienced it myself. Maybe you can fill me in later. When you’re back to normal.”
Back to normal. After she encountered her first werewolf. After they killed the alpha. After this was all over and she returned to her old self. The mouse. While that didn’t exactly excite her, the prospect of staying alive did. Just hearing him say those words so calmly, so confidently, reassured her that she was going to come out on top.
Gideon stepped from her side, and she resisted grabbing his arm. Don’t be a coward. Just tap into all that newfound confidence. That bolstered her for the barest second. Until she realized these other lycans would be confident too, and aggressive, and experienced. Not to mention they had strength in numbers, since, according to Gideon, they traveled in packs.
She knew he did this sort of thing for a living, but how could Gideon contend with multiple creatures possessing unnatural strength?
He must have sensed her anxiety because he turned back to her, pale eyes glowing in the smoke-thick air. “Don’t worry about knowing who they are. They’ll know you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered as he walked away and left her at the bar.
Once he took his seat at the designated table, he sent her a wink. A small comfort considering how suddenly, terribly alone she felt—like a dinghy cast adrift from its mother ship. She moved slowly to her table.
The bar attracted a young crowd, and she hoped she didn’t run into any students but knew it likely. Gideon had last seen Lenny here, after all. She’d heard students mention the place before. Apparently the management didn’t care too much if they allowed minors inside.
“Hey there.”
She looked up at a guy not a day over twenty, his face blotchy with acne. Claire scrutinized him intently, opening her senses for a sign, anything that would tell her one way or another.
He glanced over his shoulder to where a group of equally unappealing guys mouthed encouragement and sent him indiscreet thumbs-ups.
“Hello,” she returned, darting a glance at Gideon, sitting with a sudden alertness in his chair.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked abruptly, his manner that of a man unaccustomed to picking up women.
Clearly, the question was intended “to pave the way,” considering she held a three-fourths-full beer in her hand. She snuck another glance at Gideon and caught him shaking his head no. Apparently he had reached the same conclusion. This guy wasn’t a werewolf.
“Ah, no thanks.” She lifted her beer in the air. “Already got one.”
“Uh, like some company, then?”
“I’m waiting for someone.” Not exactly a lie.
“Sure,” he mumbled a touch resentfully before returning to his friends.
A glance around revealed several eyes focused on her. Many of which belonged to pimply-faced prepubescents like the one she ran off. Any of those eyes watching her could belong to a lycan, she reminded herself. Ageless eyes, disguised in a youthful shell. Still, she found it hard to remember this when—
Whoa, there. A man walked her way. Not a kid. Claire leaned forward as he approached in all his black-leather-pants-and-Henley glory. She rested an elbow on the table and set her chin in her palm, her body warming and tingling as he approached.
“Where’ve you been all my life?” he asked.
God, guys actually said things like that? Sadly, it didn’t sound that bad coming from his lips.
Flipping her hair over her shoulder with a flirtiness she never knew she possessed, Claire patted the seat beside her and opened her mouth, ready to invite him to sit down. Then she remembered her purpose tonight. Darting a glance across the room, she met Gideon’s unhappy gaze head-on. His eyes glittered dangerously. Swiping one finger swiftly beneath his neck in a cutting motion, he indicated she should end the conversation and set this one loose.
With a sigh of reluctance, Claire repeated her earlier excuse, “Sorry, I’m waiting for someone.”
With an odd sense of frustration simmering inside her, she watched him walk away. She turned a glare on Gideon. He stared back at her with a glare of his own, shaking his head side to side as though disgusted.
What’s wrong with basking in the admiration of an attractive man? She wasn’t getting any attention from Mr. Lycan Hunter over there. At least not the kind her body craved. She was the one looking death in the eye. If she wanted one last hurrah, who was he to stop her?
They walked silently through the parking lot, their feet crunching over loose gravel, the distant thrum of Aerosmith beating steadily behind them. The air was thick and balmy, the loss of the sun doing nothing to ease the stifling humidity.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Gideon said.
She nodded and forced a smile despite the defeat lodged deep in her chest.
Her skin began to hum, prickling with awareness. Her smile slipped. They were in a particularly dark part of the lot, the last security light several feet behind them. Her feet skidded quietly to a stop. She scanned the parking lot, her vision adjusting to the night, flitting over the hoods of cars and trucks, seeing well despite the darkness.
Gideon stopped ahead of her, apparently realizing she wasn’t walking next to him any longer. He turned to face her. “Claire?”
She wet her lips and inhaled deeply, smelling… something.
The tingling in her skin intensified, the tiny hairs on her neck standing on end. Turning her head left and right, she peered at the shadows lurking in the far end of the lot, feeling the eyes that watched her every movement.
They weren’t alone.
Then she heard it. Feet flying like wind across the parking lot. Gaze flying to Gideon, she opened her mouth to cry a warning. Before she had the chance, a dark blur flashed between them, knocking Gideon down.
A clammy hand slammed over her mouth, smothering her scream. She tasted the warm saltiness of sweat and animal over her open mouth. An arm snaked around her waist and lifted her off her feet.
She struggled, kicking, jabbing, thrashing as she was heaved higher off the ground.
Gideon’s grunts and curses came from somewhere below her kicking feet.
Her captor was strong. Too strong. Far stronger than she. And intuitively she knew.
He wrenched her around to face him. He was young. And yet not. The way his gaze scoured her face and body, so knowingly—it was as though he knew her intimately. That look spoke of years lived. She had never seen him before, yet she knew him. Just as he knew her. As a species recognizes one of its own. In one startling instant, she realized just how well she knew him. She was him .
“Claire,” Gideon shouted.
She tore free of her captor’s gaze, no less magnetic for his brown-colored contacts, and searched for a glimpse of Gideon again. She spotted him rolling on the ground, locked in struggle with another lycan.
“Don’t worry about the human.” Hard fingers dug into her cheeks, forcing her to face her attacker again. “Tony will take care of him. Right now I want to get to know you better.”
Fabric ripped. It was an ugly sound. Frightening. Violent. Her hands dove for the tattered scraps of her halter top.
“Why are you fighting it?” he demanded, seizing her hands and squeezing the bones of her wrists until she feared they would snap.
“Come on, baby. I could smell you a mile away.” He cupped her chin, cold fingers fanning her cheek possessively as he nuzzled her neck, his wet breath rising hot and rancid to her sensitive nose. “You’re hurting for it. Let me make you feel better.”
His mouth covered hers, his fetid tongue pushing past her teeth. Claire gagged, her stomach rolling at the disgusting taste of him. Hands, hard and cruel, grabbed her waist and hefted her on top of a nearby hood. She cried out as her bottom slammed down on unforgiving steel.
A strange, animal-like cry rose up from deep in her throat. She raked her nails down his face in a savage swipe, his blood coating her palms. He snatched hold of her wrists and yanked them high above her head.
A fierce instinct burned through her blood. With a growl, she bared her teeth and sank them into his arm. Cursing, he dropped her wrists. She took advantage, curling her hand into a fist and striking him so hard his head snapped back. She surged against him, trying to throw him off her. But he was strong. Shoving her down on the hood, her head smacked steel, stunning her motionless as he fumbled with the hook at her waistband. His triumphant cry stabbed the air. Her zipper sang out as he tugged at her pants, his jerks frantic. The fabric was too tight to slip off with ease, so her body slid up and down the hood with each rough yank.
A million stars stared down at her, the twinkling dots of light mocking her as her head cleared and she renewed her struggles.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
A sudden crack of gunfire shattered the air. Her gaze sought Gideon. He stood several feet away, his gun in his hand, a lifeless body at his feet.
Her attacker spun around, a deep growl vibrating from him at the sight of his fallen comrade. “You’ll beg for death before I’m through with you,” he ground out.
Before he could make good on the threat, she sprang on his back. Wrapping her arms around his throat, she squeezed with all her strength. He thrashed side to side, trying to toss her off him.
Suddenly another shot split the night. Both she and the lycan fell back from the force. Air rushed from her lungs. Pinned beneath the dead weight of him, Claire pushed at his body, struggling and choking on a mouthful of scraggly hair that fell in her face.
With a grunt, she flung him off her and sucked in sweet gulps of air as she zipped her pants back up.
Gideon snatched her hand and pulled her off the ground. Her gaze landed on the sprawled bodies. She lifted her gaze to him.
Eyes on the building in the distance, he spoke quickly, “I didn’t have time to attach the silencer. We gotta get out of here.”
The warm hold of his hand on hers felt wonderfully reassuring and she tightened her grip, hurrying alongside him, glancing one last time at the two bodies. “What just happened?”
“We were ambushed.”
“You killed them,” she murmured as they neared the Jeep.
“No. I didn’t,” he said without breaking stride. “They were already dead.”
She released his hand when they reached the Jeep and barely had both feet inside before he gunned the engine to life. They tore out of the parking lot, tires spinning and gravel flying.
“Their fate was sealed the second they became infected,” Gideon said. “A long time ago, I’m guessing.”
She looked away from the road to stare at his profile, absorbing his words before she announced, “Then I’m dead, too.”
He glanced at her, the lights of an oncoming car casting the hard lines of his stern features into relief. “Not yet. I wouldn’t help you if you were.”
She shook her head and stared ahead, the streetlights narrow streaks of rainbow flying past. “I don’t understand. Why are you helping me at all?”
“Maybe I’ve gone soft. Maybe I’ve gotten tired of killing and felt like saving a life instead. Maybe you’re…”
“I’m what?”
He shook his head, whatever he thought to say held in check.
Claire hugged herself, her fingers digging into her arms as she recalled the brutality of her attack. “I’d rather be dead than become like them.”
“If it comes down to that, I’ll pull the trigger myself.”
She glared at him. “So you’ve said.”
He was so cold. So calculated. And in that moment, she hated him for it. Even if she knew he couldn’t afford to be any other way.
Gideon glanced at her as she crossed her arms in a noisy huff, clearly offended by his bluntness. He sighed. It wasn’t as if he would enjoy ending her life. Not hers. Not Claire.
There had been a time when he enjoyed the hunt, relished the kill. Each successful mission avenged his parents. At least when he started out, when he was young, that was the case. He hardly slept, hardly ate—only hunted. His sole purpose had been to hunt and destroy. And standing over each of his kills, he had imagined that dead lycan to be the one who infected his mother.
Lately, that driving need to annihilate lycans had vanished. Partly because he now accepted that they could never totally be eradicated. His efforts only added sand to a constantly widening hole. Lycans had walked this earth for generations. They were a finely honed species, built to endure the expanse of time, built to withstand NODEAL and the other underground societies created to hunt and destroy them.
The most he got out of the hunt anymore was a minor sense of accomplishment. That he had performed a small, necessary service for society. Gideon realized, however, that he wouldn’t even have that peace of mind if he destroyed her . He would only feel failure. And, he admitted, a sense of loss.
Because Claire Morgan had gotten under his skin.
She had infiltrated his resolve to keep their relationship impersonal. He wanted her. He pounded the steering wheel with his fist and pushed the impossible thought from his head.
Tonight, when she’d hinted at the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father, he had experienced a violent impulse no less savage than that which drove lycans. He wanted nothing more than to drive across town and beat the shit out of the bastard with his bare hands. For hurting Claire, for reducing her to a ghost that clung to shadows rather than stepping into the light, for failing to be the father he should have been, the kind that made her know how special she was. He took a curve a bit too fast, hugging the guardrail, his back right tire lifting.
Sitting rigidly beside him, she looked nervously between the road and him, as if expecting him to crash into the guardrail. Realizing how fast he was driving, he eased his foot off the accelerator. No sirens chased them. They were safe. For now.
He shook his head in disgust, thinking back to the two lycans. They mustn’t have been in the club. They carried themselves like predators, like lycans. The sight of them would have immediately put him on alert.
“I killed them both,” he spat out. His goal had been to keep a lycan alive for questioning. “Now we’ve got nothing.” She jumped beside him when he hit the steering wheel a second time.
This was going to be even harder than he had first thought. Their only lead was Lenny, a dead lycan. What could Gideon do? Go around town killing as many lycans as possible in hopes of nailing the right one? That would never save her in time.
He pulled his phone out and stared at the glowing face for a long moment, debating whether to put in the call. He had left two dead lycans behind. Questions would arise within the organization. Shoving the phone back into his pocket, he muttered another curse. Too bad. He couldn’t risk it. Not with Claire.
NODEAL could cope. He cringed, imagining Cooper on a rampage, searching for a rogue agent when he discovered two dead bodies with silver bullets lodged in the corpses. Two dead lycans and no one claiming the job. Cooper would go nuts.
“You okay?” he finally asked, glancing at her. She clutched the tatters of her halter top to her chest, her black satin bra peeking out. He forced his gaze back to the road, both disturbed and tantalized by the sight.
“Sure,” she said slowly, appearing to weigh his question. “I just had a werewolf—”
“Lycan,” he automatically corrected.
“Semantics,” Claire snapped, glaring at him before continuing. “I just had a werewolf try to rape me on the hood of a car, but I’m swell.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” he replied.
“Yeah, well, I’ll deal with this my way.” Her brow scrunched and this time her voice came out subdued when she asked, “Why did he say I wanted it?”
He stared at the road, lips pressed tightly together as if he could hold back the truth.
“It wasn’t just talk,” she insisted. “He really believed I wanted it.”
At this point, he knew he couldn’t keep the truth from her any longer.
Considering the vibes she put out, the lycan hadn’t been far off. She did want it. She just didn’t realize it yet. Had it only been yesterday that they had nearly fucked on the floor of her family’s lake house? It had taken every ounce of restraint to reject what she so eagerly offered and slam those cuffs on her wrists.
It was foolish, even unrealistic of him, but he had hoped to avoid telling her. There had been enough revelations yesterday. She didn’t understand her urges. But he did. He had seen the way she responded to Mr. Black Leather Pants in the bar. The woman needed a chastity belt with one very big lock.
Hell, she could be lying on her back under him right now if he only crooked a finger. That image made him shift uncomfortably in his seat and his hands clenched the steering wheel. No way around it. He had to tell her. Then maybe she would understand. Maybe she could fight it. Because, God help him, he found it harder and harder to resist her.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded, her voice cracking.
“Lycans follow… primitive urges,” he began, searching for the appropriate wording.
She waved impatiently for him to continue.
“They feed and they procreate. The objective being to further the species.” He shrugged and flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “Simple, really.”
Her look told him she disagreed.
“What are you saying?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
And that, he guessed, was because she didn’t want to. He knew her well enough at this point to realize she had a hard time accepting ugly truths.
“It’s not conscious. It’s instinctual,” he elaborated.
“Procreate?” she echoed.
“You know, to reproduce—”
“I know what it means,” she snapped.
“They’re a pack society. A lone female of childbearing years, without any other lycans—male lycans—protecting her, is a prime target.”
She leaned back in her seat, her head bouncing against the headrest several times. “Unbelievable. I’m a sex target,” she muttered. Her head shot off the seat, apparently struck with a sudden thought. “And you sent me out tonight without telling me any of this?”
“I wanted you calm.”
“I could have better prepared myself.”
“It would have gone down the same. You were already freaked out enough. Now look at you. You’re nearly hysterical.”
“I am not hysterical,” she said tightly, trying, he guessed, to keep herself from yelling and lending credence to his claim. “So you’re saying that as long as I’m without a pack, every werewolf we come across will want to jump my bones?”
“Pretty much.”
“Great.”
“And you haven’t exactly helped the situation.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded, her look indignant.
“You’ve… embraced your urges.” He wondered why he even mentioned it, except that he was annoyed at her total na?veté. Was she completely unaware of the signals she put out—how she looked, how she moved, how she affected him?
“How?” Her lips worked like a fish’s, searching for words. “I don’t have any urges.”
He laughed as he turned into his driveway. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she countered.
He shut the motor off and faced her, the leather creaking beneath his shifting weight. “Yes. You do.”
She shook her head again.
“And I suppose you still think this change in appearance—” He waved a hand over her person. “—is just coincidental?”
Her eyes flared wide, the brilliant silver glowing even brighter. She jabbed a finger through the air accusingly. “You told me to dress provocatively!”
“You changed your looks before I made any suggestion about how you should dress tonight.”
Her knuckles whitened where they held her top together. “You got me to dress like this when you knew they would come after me.”
“I didn’t know you were going to dress like this. You’re the one who sent that lycan into overload.”
“Oh,” she squeaked, face flushing a vivid red.
Before she could arrive at a more dignified answer, he hopped out of the Jeep. Heading toward the back door, he called over his shoulder, “That lycan was right. You want to give it up.”
Gideon bit the inside of his cheek, stopping himself from adding that he wanted to be the one to receive it.