CHAPTER 5
Istood with my arms crossed over my chest, projecting an aura of hellfuckno.
Michael stared me down. “You have to do it.”
“No way.”
He crossed his arms, mirroring me. I tried not to stare at the way his biceps flexed, but Goddess help me, they were as big around as my thighs, and I was a red-blooded wolf within striking distance of her mate.
His dark eyes bored into mine. “Layla.”
“Get Lizzy to do it. She understands all this magical stuff.”
His upper lip curled in distaste. “You want me to ask my fourteen-year-old sister to flay me alive?”
I struggled not to squirm beneath his gaze. Okay, fine when he put it like that… “Then Ronald. He seems like he has a strong stomach.” Whereas I wanted to gag just picturing what he was asking me to do.
“And open up a world of questions as to why I need my head of security to cut a magical tattoo off my back?”
Wait a second. “Ronald doesn’t know you’re a mystic?”
Jaw clenched, Michael shook his head.
“Who does everyone think drew the ward around this house?”
He jerked like I’d slapped him. “How do you know I drew the ward?”
“Anna told me.”
A surge of anger slipped through the bond.
He let out a low growl and bit at the air.
It was the most wolfish he had acted in his human form, and my primitive brain howled in glee to see it.
I had to force myself to stay where I was.
The desire to launch myself at him was starting to become overwhelming.
His pupils expanded, and he took a deep breath through his nose and stepped toward me, closing his eyes.
His chest heaved as he sucked in another ragged breath.
“Layla, I implore you to focus. It’s taking all of my willpower to keep the walls up between us, and you constantly battering at them with lust isn’t helping. ”
Whoops.
Michael was the master of his emotions, but he’d confessed that mine were a little harder for him to handle. After everything that happened this morning, I’d forgotten to tamp down on my responses to him or try to mute the bond.
I opened my mouth to apologize and remembered we were on an apology ban. “I’ll try to do better.”
He nodded and opened his eyes. “Thank you.”
I kept my focus locked on his face and attempted to smother my arousal.
You’d think it would be an easy task, what with the shock of what he was asking me to do and the whole missing memories thing.
The problem was that when werewolves are stressed out, their wolf forms are closer to the surface, and instinctual responses become dominant.
In my wolf brain, my mate was within touching distance, which meant I should be touching him.
We hadn’t had intercourse yet, which meant I should be propositioning him.
Mom and Dad warned us how overwhelming the bond would be at first, but neither of us had been prepared for just how all-consuming it had become. Michael was handling it well, all things considered. The least I could do was step up and do my part.
I took one last deep breath and buried my need for him. “Better?”
His shoulders dropped, his whole body relaxing as the strain of fighting two sets of emotions disappeared. A small, relieved smile lifted the corner of his full lips. “Yes.”
Get it together, Layla, I told myself. Michael’s smiles were rare, and I coveted each and every one of them. I needed a distraction. I needed to focus on something far less pleasant than the sight of my shirtless mate.
“I think Anna did something to my memories,” I said.
He stilled, his gaze turning razor-sharp as he looked me over. “Why do you think that?”
“There are holes in them, and when I try to focus on our conversation, my head gets fuzzy and the memories sort of… slide away.”
He nodded as if I’d just confirmed something for him.
“I was worried that might have happened. You were so calm after she left, whereas just a few hours before, the mere thought of her caused you to break out in hives. Since she was able to thrall me, we need to discard everything else we know about vampires and assume that anything is now possible. A creature that old might be able to manipulate us as easily as she would a human.”
Looking back on it now, it seemed obvious that she’d done something to me. That dreamy sense of peace I felt, like all was well in the world, my utter lack of fear. Even now, half a day later, I still wasn’t afraid of her. I felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
“I should have realized something was wrong,” I said.
Michael closed the distance between us and put his hands on my shoulders, careful to place them on the fabric of my shirt and not bare skin. “You couldn’t help it. You were spelled.”
“Is there any way to restore what she took?”
He nodded. “I believe so, but we need to tackle one catastrophe at a time. First, I have to bind you. Which means I need to shed this tattoo.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Please tell me we’re not really doing this.”
He squeezed my shoulders. “We’re doing this.”
Five minutes of futile arguing later, we were in his bathroom.
He’d stripped naked, revealing the brutal beauty of his form.
The first time I laid eyes on him, I likened him to a common brawler.
He had the dense, compact build of a man who could take hit after hit and keep on rolling.
After seeing him fight a vampire, I now knew that to be true.
My traitorous gaze dropped to where his dick lay heavy against his thigh. The sight nearly undid me. I wanted to touch it. Stroke it to arousal and then drop down to my knees in front of him and worship his body just like I had the other night in the cave.
He turned, giving me a glorious look at the finest ass in all of wolfdom, and stepped into the large, rectangular shower stall.
I clamped down on my longing with an iron fist and stepped in after him, clutching the sharpest knife he owned—a six-inch-long, wicked-looking hunting blade. It shook in my fist.
“You can do this,” he said, his low voice echoing through the bathroom.
I really didn’t want to do this. But the alternative—like accidentally shooting sparks out of my fingers in front of Mary—was much worse.
I gripped the knife. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
Michael glanced at me over his shoulder. “Focus on the fact that the sooner you get this over with, the sooner we can get out of here.”
And away from his mother. If ever there was a way to motivate me, that was it. I closed the shower door behind me. He placed his hands on the dark tile lining the stall. The pose made his back look impossibly wide. I hadn’t imagined it; he was bigger. What the hell was that about?
I took a deep breath. One catastrophe at a time.
I lifted my hand and traced one of the runes that dotted his low back.
Heat burst over my fingers. Like Michael, part of me hoped that we never got over our sensitivity to each other.
I came alive when I touched him, even with just my fingertips, like every nerve in my body had grown deliciously hypersensitive.
He shied away from my fingers when they neared his side.
A small vein of hysteria laced with panic came over the bond.
I’d never felt anything like that from him before, so I ran my fingers up his ribs, trying to trigger the response again so I could pinpoint what it meant.
He bit out a yelp and lurched to the right.
A lightbulb went off in my head. “Are you ticklish?”
He stilled beneath my touch. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not you’ll use that information to harass me at a later date.”
I grinned and ran my fingers up his ribs again.
He shivered and jerked away. “Layla.”
A prickly sense of embarrassment and affront came through the bond. Wow, he was really ticklish. Oh yeah, I was going to have a field day with this at some point, preferably while he was dressed in a three-piece suit and wearing his snobbiest expression.
My amusement fled almost as soon as it surfaced, my gaze running down his tattoo. Shit, I was really about to do this. I stopped teasing him and pressed my hand to the middle of his back, trying to distract myself with the small jolts of lightning that shot up my arm.
“I’ve never hurt anyone like this before,” I said, voice low.
He glanced at me over his shoulder again. His eyes had lightened to pale brown, his wolf form closer to the surface. “I’m asking you to do this so that afterward, I can keep us safe.”
I’m sure his words were meant to comfort me, to absolve me of guilt, but they didn’t.
Nothing he might say could make this any better.
So soon after mating, the bond drove us near mad with the desire to protect each other.
Just a few days ago, I’d stepped into the path of a rampaging vampire to keep it from hurting Michael, and now he was asking me to literally skin him.
Sensing my hesitation, he let out a low growl. “Just do it, Layla.”
My body jerked forward as if wanting to obey.
There was an edge of command in his words that had nothing to do with magic or our shared power and everything to do with a wolf on the cusp of becoming an alpha.
This was Not Good. Thanks to the inherent magic of shifters, there was only ever one alpha in a pack.
Others might have the gene, but while their alpha lived, it was supposed to remain dormant.
Only when the alpha died would it flare to life, giving them the boost of power they’d need to battle other wolves and take their place as the next leader.
That was why Michael was bigger: He’d inherited the alpha gene from his mother.
The stress of our bond must have triggered it early.
I’d heard of this happening before in other mated wolves who’d faced immediate danger after bonding.
As if we didn’t have enough problems.