Drive Me Wild (2 page)

For at least the last two centuries, Vircolac had easily retained its title as the best-kept secret in Manhattan. The only reason Tess had learned of it was because the Witches’ Council had a vested interest in some of the people who passed through its thick, oak doors.

Well,
people
might not exactly be the correct term, since the membership of Vircolac consisted entirely of the less human members of New York society. Vampires, werewolves, and shapeshifters of all kinds filled the club’s membership list, and the only humans who ever made it past the doorman were rumored to be closely connected with the club’s owner, Graham Winters. A werewolf himself, Winters ran the club like a medieval kingdom, and unless the general consensus had things entirely wrong, Vircolac generated about as much income as the average kingdom. Most people referred to it as a business empire, and for a single club to gain that distinction meant that Graham Winters probably had more money pass through his fingers on a daily basis than Tess’s little herb shop in the East Village could expect to generate between now and the end of time.

It must be good to be the king.

In addition to his duties to his business, Winters supposedly kept an equally tight rein on the Silverback Clan, the werewolf pack he led and the single largest collection of shapeshifters in Greater Manhattan. As Alpha, he was directly responsible for every single member of that pack, and he was said to take the job very seriously.

In his spare time, Tess supposed wryly.

Winters, though, was not why she was crouching in the shadows of some garbage bins on a Wednesday night in October. She didn’t have to deal with the werewolf, thank the gods. Instead, her grandfather had sent her here to bell the cat.

Rolling her eyes, Tess shifted her weight and sighed.

Right. Like she was so qualified to chase down a werecat with nothing more going for her than a diplomatic message and a sunny disposition. Blond hair, blue eyes, and a curvy figure against 350 pounds of muscle, razor-sharp teeth, and claws like tiny, lethal daggers? Sure, those were great odds.

Looking back at her conversation with her grandfather, Tess could recall bringing up those very salient points to him just yesterday. She had mentioned that she was absolutely the worst person for the job of delivering an official message from the council. Heck, she wasn’t even a
member
of the Witches’ Council, let alone a representative. She had precisely no knowledge of nor experience with werefolk of any kind (not that many witches did, since the two groups tended to avoid each other like a particularly nasty strain of the Ebola virus), and generally Tess tended to end up with her foot in her mouth at any and all available opportunities. So what made her the choice for this assignment again?

Oh, right. Grandfather’s standard answer. “Because I said so.”

Tess grumbled to herself and pressed the button on the side of her watch to illuminate the dial. According to the information the council had provided, the werecat she’d come to see was already ten minutes later than his regular timetable indicated. Apparently he didn’t realize he had a stalker with better things to do with her time. Sighing, she trained her gaze back on the door to Vircolac and settled in for an extended wait.

She didn’t get one.

Almost as soon as she had the carved oak doors back in her sight, the right side opened and a figure stepped out. It paused for a moment to speak to someone on the threshold.

“Finally,” she breathed, freezing in place, gaze fastened on the man across the street.

She got a brief look at his face while he stood in the pool of light cast by the fixture over the club’s doors, so she knew this was her guy. His features had the angular, slightly exotic cast of his Latin ancestors, and even in the artificial light she saw the bronze hue of his skin and the way his black hair gave off almost blue highlights. Add to that the tailored fit of his suit, the arrogant, graceful way he held himself, and the liquid quality to the way he moved, and Tess had no doubts. She had a bead on Rafael De Santos.

The problem was that she hadn’t expected him to be quite so mouthwateringly gorgeous.

Tess sat mesmerized for several minutes before a moth flying perilously close to her cheek reminded her that not only was her mouth gaping open like the legs of a cheerleader on prom night, her tongue was probably hanging out, too. She clamped her jaw shut with a click, but her reaction seemed almost beyond her control.

The man took her breath away.

For some reason she’d had this picture in her head of the shapeshifter as unappealing, sort of bestial and feral, his humanity a thin veil over his more savage nature. She knew that image didn’t exactly mesh with his reputation as a charming if feckless rogue, more Casanova than killer, but her mind had discounted the stories as rumor. No one could be as handsome and charming as the stories made out, not unless he worked in Hollywood and regularly appeared on the covers of national magazines.

But now here Tess was, finding them to be absolute fact. If not shameful understatements.

The only evidence she saw of this man’s bestial side was the animal magnetism she could feel rolling off him, even from fifty feet away. It made her fingers itch, her mouth dry out, and her—

Well, she really didn’t want to think about what her other parts were doing.

Focus, Tess. Focus.

Dragging her eyes off the werecat’s butt—conveniently positioned toward her as he spoke with the figure in the doorway—Tess ordered her heart to slow down and her thighs to unclench so she could get back to the task at hand. She’d need all her faculties operational for this one. She could just feel it.

Why does he have to be so gorgeous?

She eased herself to her feet and hugged the side of the stairway, completely engulfed in the shadows. She would be a lot more relaxed about taking a message to the leader of the Council of Others if he were a short, ugly were-gopher instead of a take-me-now jungle beast of a heartthrob.

Where’s the justice in the universe?
she silently cried.

No one answered.

Great. Now even my own subconscious is ignoring me.

She waited for him to wave farewell to the doorman and start off down the deserted street before easing from her hiding place and trailing after him in the shadows. She made it approximately three steps before she tripped over her own feet and went stumbling sideways into a trash can. Thankfully, it was plastic and not the old-fashioned metal kind. With that much noise, she might as well just have shouted his name.

She felt kind of stupid following him like this—instead of walking right up to him, introducing herself, and taking care of business like a reasonable adult—but not stupid enough to change her approach. She told herself she was taking a few minutes to build up her courage before taking the plunge. She just wished she were naive enough to believe it.

She would have to speak to him eventually, of course. It would be difficult to deliver the message otherwise. What she needed was an appropriate ice breaker.

Okay, so how about,
Excuse me, Mr. De Santos? I have some information you might be interested in.

No. Too Jehovah’s Witness.

Um …
Hey, are you Rafael De Santos, the famous werejaguar and leader of the Council of Others?

Nope. Too Bellevue escapee.

Mr. De Santos, I come bearing an urgent message from the High Authority of the Witches’ Council.

Ugh! Too sci-fi B movie.

Hm, maybe,
Mr. De Santos, my name is Tess Menzies, and I’m—oof!

The “oof!” was never intended to be part of the speech, but it’s what burst out of her mouth when two hundred and some-odd pounds of male muscle barreled into her from the side and drove her deep into a service alley halfway down the street.

Before she had time to yell
Fire!
—and she called herself a native New Yorker—she was pressed flat against the brick wall of one of the adjacent buildings with her hands yanked over her head and six feet of man pinning her in place.

“Who are you, and why the hell have you been following me?”

His growl rumbled through her with a menace she could feel down in her bones, and she knew instinctively that if he’d given her a full-fledged roar, she’d be fighting for control of her bladder right about now. Even so, his efforts would probably have made a normal person cry. The man had intimidation down to an art. He projected pure rage and menace, and the snarl he rumbled out right up against her face did manage to make her take a hearty gulp, but she rallied quickly and dealt with the situation the way she always did: She brazened through it.

“Sheesh.” She managed to get it out without squeaking and congratulated herself. “If you usually come on to women this strongly, I have to wonder that you ever get a date.”

What the hell are you doing?
a voice inside her demanded.

I have absolutely no idea,
she answered.

He snarled again. Lower this time. More menacing. “I said, who the hell are you?”

“I heard you.” She swallowed a knot of fear and lifted her chin. “I just didn’t think it was any of your business.”

His expression, which she could see clearly, given its current location about a nanometer away from hers—he had really great skin, she noticed, all smooth and even and bronze—turned incredulous.

“Pardon me? Unless I’m very much mistaken—and I know I’m not—you’ve been tailing me for three blocks. That makes your name, rank, serial number, and intentions very much my business.”

She forced a carefree grin and watched his golden eyes blaze. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the panic lurking in hers.

“Well, my name is Tess, my rank is absolutely nothing, I’m horrible with numbers, and my intentions are a little too complicated to explain to you in a dark alley. Plus, I generally talk with my hands, and you’re currently making that a wee bit difficult.”

He snarled. “I have no time for smart-aleck retorts. Why are you following me?”

She blinked up at him with wide blue eyes that generally made men smile at her indulgently while telling her to let them handle things and not worry her pretty little head. “Well, I thought that would be obvious. I wanted to know where you were going.”

He was ignoring the eyes.

How could he ignore the eyes?

“Not good enough. Explain. Now.”

Tess blinked, her mouth curving into the standard plan B pout. “That’s the truth. I wanted to know where you were going. You know, for someone with such a reputation for being a ladies’ man, you could use a little work on your manners.”

“My manners are fine when I’m with a lady. I’m not entirely sure you qualify.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that in my experience, ladies don’t follow men through deserted streets at two thirty in the morning. That’s what criminals and cowards do.”

The pout had clearly failed as miserably as the big blue eyes, and suddenly Tess felt a lot less confident about her plan C. It didn’t seem to be working. At all. Instead of simultaneously being smitten with her 1940s pin-up girl looks and completely underestimating both her intelligence and her character, the werecat appeared to be pissed off at her. His exotic amber eyes looked hard and impatient, and his sensual mouth looked tight and unamused. This was not the sort of reaction she was used to getting from men.

Shifting nervously, she tried tugging her hands free, but his grip only tightened. She gave a hard yank, and he responded with a low warning growl. Before she could seriously give in to panic and start struggling, he leaned into her and used his body to keep her immobile against the cold brick wall.

“Your explanation. Now.”

Tess swallowed hard. It was about the only movement she could make. He kept her hands pinned above her head, and now his chest crushed her flat while his hips pressed tightly against hers, rendering her completely immobile. She could feel the way he bent his legs to even out their heights, because those legs crowded against hers to keep her still. She couldn’t move a damned muscle, which meant she also couldn’t cast any damned spells. She was helpless. Time for plan D: the truth.

Just not too much of it.

“I already explained, sort of. I was supposed to wait for you outside Vircolac until you came out. Then I was supposed to deliver a message and leave. But I got curious to see where you were going in the wee hours of the morning.”

She made her tone and expression sullen, as if she had given in reluctantly. Which she had, so that could go in the truth column.

“If you hadn’t jumped me, you’d never have known I was following you. I was just going to see if you were going to a nightclub or something. I’ve never been to one and thought it would be fun to see where the cool ones are. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

That last part was, perhaps, fodder for the second column.

“What message?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s written down in a sealed envelope. It’s not like I read it or anything.”

That one, too.

She saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled deeply. His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. I can smell it on you.” He paused, then inhaled again, leaning in a little until Tess’s breath caught in her throat. “I can smell something else, too. There’s something…” Another sniff. “… different about you.”

Tess felt her eyes widen before she caught herself. “Well, I showered right before I left home,” she joked weakly, trying to shift even an inch away from him. “If you can smell me, I think I need to switch soaps.”

He didn’t appear to be listening. Instead he leaned forward and pressed his face into the curve of her neck. She froze as her stomach clenched. She felt the stir of his breath against her skin and choked on a swift shock of arousal. Apparently, her body hadn’t forgotten its first impression of him. It remembered quite clearly how attracted she’d been. And it chose now to remind her.

“That’s not it,” he muttered, and she could feel the movement of his lips as he spoke. “You smell … different…” Sniff. “Exotic…” Sniff … “Powerful…” Sniff, sniff. Then the dart of a tongue that rasped against her throat. Her knees quivered. “Other.”