Chapter 15
The cold shower didn’t help. Neither did coming out of the shower to see her sitting at his kitchen table with her phone in one hand and furiously scribbling on his grocery list pad with the other.
Her brow was furrowed, and she was clearly focused on something scientific he hadn’t a prayer of understanding.
But the sight of her working at his kitchen table was so powerfully domestic that his belly tightened with need.
He wanted to see her there every day and every night.
He wanted to feed her when she forgot to eat.
And he wanted to pleasure her when she became too stressed to think.
“I can feel you staring. So either bend me over this table or let’s get to the hospital. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Her words short-circuited his brain and lust leapt to the fore, but he’d promised not to take her…for some reason he couldn’t remember. Then she looked up, her gaze confused and her lips incredibly kissable.
“Hank?”
“You don’t help my control. You know that right?”
She shrugged. “I know. But it’s fun to test your limits.”
“And if you cross too far?”
“Screaming Os until I’m hoarse?”
He swallowed. Damn it, he’d put on fresh jeans and they were too damn tight. “Is that what you want?”
She threw up her hands. “Can’t I want both? Screaming Os and my job? But since we’re being all self-denying in the name of freedom from magic, let’s get to the hospital.” She grabbed his notepad and headed for the door.
“Don’t you want your lab coat? It’s got your ID on it.”
She blinked and patted her hips as if her ID were somewhere in her leggings or tunic. He took a step forward and grabbed her coat from on top of his large beanbag cushion.
“Oh!” she breathed. “Thanks. There are too many things to remember, and you’re taking up half my brain space.”
Only half? He might be insulted if he didn’t know just how huge her brain was. And wasn’t that a surprising turn-on? He’d never gone for dumb girls, but brainiacs were never his type. Until now.
“This way.” Opening the door for her nearly undid him.
She stood right beside him, her hair up in a messy bun.
He smelled the passion on her, perfuming everything she wore.
He knew what that tasted like, he knew what it would feel like to run his fingers through the dark silk of her hair.
And how he wanted to tame her lips and her mouth.
“Hank,” she said, his name cracking as desire and denial fought in her voice. “This is going to be a problem for me.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Me, too.”
“How do we stop it? Or at least…” She shrugged. “Quiet it to a dull roar?”
Screaming Os filtered through his thoughts. As well as all sorts of wicked things he could do to her all over his apartment. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll tell you all the stories I’ve heard about bondings.”
She nodded and took a step into the hallway. “Do they end happily?”
He shook his head. “If they did, they wouldn’t be stories. They met, they humped, they lived happily ever after doesn’t make for a very good tale.”
“So it’s more like they met, someone stalked, someone said no—”
“And someone lived miserably ever after.”
She sighed, and he couldn’t help but agree.
Romantic souls liked the idea of being fated to another soul, but he was horrified by it.
He’d spent his life learning how to balance his needs and his bear’s needs until they lived in harmony.
This hunger he had for Cecilia wasn’t rational, and it certainly wasn’t balanced.
He didn’t want to lock on to Cecilia unless he chose it and she wanted it.
Right now, he couldn’t tell if this desire was a choice or a compulsion, and he wasn’t going to act on it until he knew the answer.
So rather than focus on that, he kept a wary eye on the environment as they moved to his car.
Things seemed to be quieter during the day, but violence could erupt any moment, especially with the city on edge.
The poison seemed to ramp up everyone’s aggression, not just the shifters, and those that could, hid inside as much as possible.
Or stayed perched over a toilet throwing up.
In any event, he and Cecilia seemed to be the only idiots who needed to drive all over the damn city.
Meanwhile, she kept talking, showing him that her mind was on the problem even while she scanned the area as much as he did.
“So the magic wants magical babies.”
“That’s the common interpretation.”
“What happens afterwards?”
He frowned. “After what?”
“Humping, pregnancy, bam beautiful baby.”
“Rinse and repeat until we’re too old or dead.”
He saw the news hit her. She paled and her steps hitched.
“Were you hoping to get pregnant and then be rid of me?” The question came out harsher than he intended. The idea that she’d conceive his child and then kick him out of her life was so infuriating that he grew murderous at the mere thought.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “What? No! And for the record, I want children. I’d love a couple kids and a husband who is there for me and them. I just haven’t had time to think about it.”
Her words warmed him, gave him hope well out of proportion for what she was saying. But he took the joy and held it close. Maybe, if he played his cards right, it would be possible for them.
“For the record,” he said slowly, his voice thick with need. “I want kids, too. And I’d be there for them and for my wife.”
She nodded, but she didn’t quite meet his gaze. “Okay, common interest has been established. But what about the magic? How long before it eases up?”
“Never,” he ground out.
“And you’re okay with that?”
He opened his mouth to answer. Sure, growing up, he’d always expected he’d have a wife and child someday. Maybe a whole bunch of kids. But not recently. Not since…
He winced. “After my brother died, Mom all but forced me into the military. She said it would instill discipline, burn off the aggression.”
“Get you past shifter adolescence?”
He nodded as they made it out to the parking lot.
He held her back, his hand on her belly as he sniffed the air.
Nothing unusual out here. Just the urban scents of exhaust, waste, and dog poop baking in the sun.
And her. Always her, perfuming the air until he wanted to breathe it all in, straight down to his soul.
“This way,” he said, guiding her to his car. He hadn’t thought he’d needed to, but she’d started heading in the wrong direction.
“Oh. Right,” she said, quickly adjusting. “So you went into the military for discipline. Did you get it?”
“Not like she thought.” Not like anyone thought. “Two firefights later, I lost my best friend.”
Her hand stilled on his car as her gaze shot to his. “The guy you have in a choke hold in the picture.”
He nodded. “Charlie was my best friend. And after losing my brother…”
“Double punch. Hank—”
“I went wild. Got drunk every chance I got and into fights. Shifted a few times that should have got me killed or at least exposed, but I got lucky.”
“What happened?” she asked the moment he climbed in behind the wheel.
“A shifter I met in a whorehouse taught me Zen Buddhism.”
She laughed, the sound bubbling out of her like a temple fountain.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I honestly don’t even know why she was there. She wasn’t working, that’s for sure. But one night she started saying things to me. Simple things.”
“What is the sound of one hand clapping? That kind of thing?”
He smiled in memory. “More like, the greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.” He glanced at her. “That one stood out.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet. You were grieving. It must have felt like your brain was going to explode.”
“More like my entire body. Into a bear. Then my friends would probably shoot me in self-defense.”
“So you discovered Zen at a whorehouse.”
He smiled. “I discovered the woman who taught me Zen there.” He shrugged. “She later told me that she was sent in a dream to find me and bring me peace.”
“And it became your spiritual focus?”
He nodded. “The greatest worth is self-mastery.” He arched a brow.
“I spent every moment I could at the temple studying. She had books on the history of shifters, scrolls that outlined the force of magic. They look like physics textbooks, but the words were all about the magic or the force or whatever the hell you want to call it.” He turned his attention back to the road.
“And she taught me to feel it at a level no one else does.”
Cecilia abruptly pushed forward. “You feel magic?”
He nodded, pushing himself to admit what he had told no one else. “Imagine standing in an electrical current all the time. First, you have to be aware of it, then you can sense changes in it. Like when it pushes you to do something.”
“You sense that?” she stressed.
“Yes.”
She leaned back in her seat and looked at him. “You’re a pretty fascinating guy.”
He didn’t think so. He felt like he’d bounced around a lot in his life. He’d gone into the army because his mother has forced him. He’d picked medicine because he was a terrible shot. And he hadn’t truly studied anything until he’d met the woman who’d taught him discipline, silence, and magic.
Meanwhile, Cecilia’s expression had turned wistful. “My grandmother tried to get me into Buddhism.” She shrugged. “I preferred to worship at the altar of science.”
That made sense.
“But now that I know magic is real…” Her voice trailed away, and he shot her a quick glance.
“You’re giving up science?”
“Hell no. But I might become an alchemist. That’s the word, right? People who put scientific methods to studying magic?”
“I thought it was more about turning copper to gold.”
She shrugged. “Well, that could be helpful, too. Do you know how underfunded the CDC is?”
No, he didn’t. But he had fun asking her about it and hearing stories about the lengths her coworkers had gone to get toner for their printers or extra lab coats after getting burned or gassed or spilled on.