Full Blooded (28 page)

Rourke climbed onto one of the rocks bordering the pool. A lock of his sand-colored hair fell over his forehead as the sun reflected on his still bare chest, illuminating the tiny droplets of water stuck to him from walking in the stream.

That man should be arrested
, I grumbled at my wolf. It was a grumble kind of day.

My wolf let off a low growl, her eyes tracking Rourke’s every move, but they were sounding less like growls and more like purrs. The hair on my arms began to stand on end without my permission. I hugged my jacket-wrapped weapons tighter to my chest. I hoped like hell he didn’t notice the effect he was having on me. It was embarrassing.

When he didn’t answer my question about the sulfur, I asked, “What?” a little defensively. “It’s a legitimate question. It’s getting harder for me to remember how I smelled things before as a human. Things are muddled.”

His eyes danced for a moment and I caught a quick flash of green, like a lighter sparking right before it jumps to full flame. “It smells more mild to humans, not like it does to us. Sulfur is a powerful natural element. It does a good job of masking our scent naturally. When the wolves arrive here, they’ll have a hard time picking up our trail with a nose full of sulfur.” He grinned mischievously. “Now I’m going to need you to submerse yourself in the pool.” He gestured out to the middle. “Completely.”

“Is that really
necessary?” I eyed the pool. “Can’t we just splash ourselves with that?” I pointed to the stream trickling out of the rocks. “It smells much worse.”

“We will need to do both.” He set his jacket and boots down on an exposed rock. “The water in the pool will strip us of our sweat, the sulfur stream will mask us on the way out.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, instead he dove straight into the deepest part of the pool, surfacing a good distance away. It appeared to be quite deep. The sunlight glinted off his wet hair, making him look like some kind of water deity when he surfaced.

It so figured.

“I thought cats hated to get wet.”

He gave me a cagey grin. “There’s nothing I like better than being wet.” He dove under, his broad, powerful back skimming just under the surface.

“Fine,” I muttered, resigning myself to my fate. “Whatever you say.” I set down my jacket wrapped with goodies and picked my way to the edge of the pool.

My white camisole had stayed dry for the most part, but my black pants were completely soaked from splashing my way through the river. I bit my lip. On second thought, I went back and plucked up my jacket, untangling it from the pile, leaving my weapons and shoes sitting exposed on the rock.

I picked my way over to another area, the one closest to the sulfur stream, and hung it carefully on a dead tree branch jutting over the pool so I could grab it when I emerged soaking wet.

I turned back to the pool. Rourke was grinning at me again. “No need to be smug about it, cat,” I growled. “I’m getting in the damn water.”

Rourke’s laughter
bounced off the boulders and echoed back into my ears. “Nothing smug about me, sweetheart.” He turned onto his back to float. “Just taking some time out of my busy day to enjoy the beauty around me.”

“You’re lucky I grew up around a bunch of wolves. I learned early on to check my modesty at the door.” Well, mostly anyway. I glanced at my dangling jacket.

It was nice to have a backup plan.

I turned back to the pool, contemplated my fate for a second, and dove off the rocks.

Right into a pool with a predator who looked like he wanted to eat me for breakfast.

“Rourke?” I asked
as we swam. “With what you know about the supernatural world, do you think my Pack is winning this battle? I absolutely hate that I’m not there. I know very little about the Southern wolves, but from what I do know, it seems surprising that they’re this efficiently organized. Redman Martin is an arrogant asshole from the stories I’ve heard over the years, so it’s understandable, but it seems strange that he would wage a war so soon, after what happened with the division of Pack lines all those years ago.” Red Martin was the Alpha of the U.S. Southern Territories and he and my father were enemies. It was because of Redman that there were two U.S. Packs instead of one.

“I have a hard time believing any other wolves can best your father and his Pack,” he answered. “He’s a powerful leader and his wolves are fierce fighters. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’ve only ever had a few run-ins with Red, but as much as he is arrogant, he’s equal parts lazy. He likely wants to ransom you to the highest bidder or has some other slimy, easy-to-profit-from plan in place. It may even be as simple as he wants to pay back your father for any perceived wrongdoings. My guess is the fighting won’t last long once they find out you’re gone. You’re their prize. No prize, no fight. He knows he won’t win a combat battle, which is why no wolves were fighting on the streets. They were looking for you. You did your Pack a favor by leaving.”

I
hoped what he said was true. We didn’t swim for very long, time being of the essence. Rourke emerged first, and I watched him from my spot on the other side of the pool. He picked his way over the rocks with ease, his jeans conveniently sticking to all the important parts. Water sluiced off his shoulders, running down his back in cascading rivers. His hair looked much darker wet than it had dry.

He tilted his head at me, like he was enjoying the weight of my stare. Cocky bastard. At that precise moment, the sun glinted perfectly on his irises and they flashed the palest green, almost white.

“Rourke, your eyes are completely insane.” I swam over to the edge closest to where he was standing and stared, shielding my eyes to the sun as I glanced up. “Humans must comment on them all the time. How do you explain them away?”

He shrugged like having diamonds for eyes was a normal everyday occurrence. “If I think they deserve an answer, I usually tell them I have my mother’s eyes,” he said. “And if I don’t, I tell them it’s none of their goddamn business.”

“And they actually believe you?”

“Humans already know they’re going to have to accept whatever excuse I give them, before they even ask. Thinking I’m ‘Other’ is not an option. So they ask with the idea that they’ll get a logical explanation, and once I give them one, they usually take it without question.” He gave me a lopsided grin, which made him seem more human. “But sometimes it takes a little more finesse on my part to win them over.”

“Are
they really your mother’s eyes?” I asked, choosing pointedly to ignore my wolf, who bristled at the “finesse” part.
He’s not ours
, I scolded.
He can finesse anyone he wants.
She bit the air.

“I guess you could say that,” he said. “My shifter genes came from my father, like everyone’s do, but my mother had very unusual eyes to begin with, or so I’d been told. I don’t remember her much. It was a very long time ago.” He grabbed his clothes and started around the pool toward the sulfur trickle coming out of the large boulder.

I swam over to where my jacket was hanging and hoisted myself up. I turned away demurely and was about to put it back on to cover myself when Rourke cleared his voice right behind me. “Um, sorry, sweetheart, but I’m going to need that jacket now.”

“Huh?” I asked, dripping wet, arms crossed over my chest.

“Scent trail. Our scent stops at this pool.”

I took my jacket off the branch with my index finger and reluctantly swung it out to him. He took it and walked to the edge of the pool, grabbed a large piece of floating wood and draped my jacket over, and sent it off. I watched with a heavy heart as my coverage floated down the stream. “Wait, you just sent my jacket downstream where we just came from. How is that going to help?”

“It will eventually float to shore. Hopefully that’s where they’ll think we got out. Having a buildup of your scent downstream can only help us.” He headed to the sulfur without looking back, and started cupping the smelly water and splashing it all over his body.

I made
my way over to him. “You just sent my modesty downstream for a two-minute diversion?”

“Hey, I’ll take any advantage I can get.”

“That wasn’t an advantage, that was sneaky.” I walked up next to him and started pouring water over my head, cupping my hands tightly to catch it. It smelled awful this close, like rancid eggs right in my nostrils. Rourke stayed focused on his task. At least he wasn’t trying to ogle my breasts. Though it would’ve been easier to dislike him if he had. Instead I was feeling quite the opposite. He was just so … normal. Not at all what I’d been expecting. It was throwing me off.
We have to remember he’s dangerous, right?
My wolf huffed at me, and instead of agreeing, she flashed me a picture of him getting out of the pool without his jeans.
Stop it! You’re not helping! He could snap at any moment and try to kill us.
She turned her back on me.
Plus, he doesn’t seem to be that into us anyway.
Other than a few lighthearted comments, and some dazzling smiles, he hadn’t sent us any real signals.

I cleared my voice and hoped I sounded normal. “Rourke, what kind of werecat are you?”

He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. Then he narrowed his eyes, flashing me a toothy grin. “I never kiss and tell on the first date.”

He turned back to the putrid water and splashed more of it on his chest.

My wolf licked her lips and let out a mew.
We don’t mew.

She snuffed at me.

“Come on, you can tell me.” I moved in beside him, cupping more water between my palms. “I won’t spill your secret. I’ve got enough to worry about, why would I have any reason to tell?”

We stood close and heat from him radiated into my body, along with his strong power current. It prickled my skin again like a million tiny pressure points tapping at the same time. Standing this close to him was an at-my-own-risk kind of deal, but I was doing it anyway. Rourke turned, tendrils of water snaking their way down his body, disappearing under the lip of his denim. A spark ignited somewhere deep in his eyes, and chills ran down my spine. That had been a little on the “real” side.

He
said, “I haven’t told a single person in over five hundred years what I am, and I’m not planning on breaking my streak now.”

“Why the big cloak-and-dagger?” I asked. “It can’t matter that much if people know what you are.” I poured a palmful of the stink over my head. I tried to face away from him, toward the rock, so my see-through camisole was aimed at something innocuous.

“If they know what I am, they can better anticipate how I may react in a certain situation. Secrecy may aid me only a little in that respect, but the unknown tends to be more frightening than reality anyway.” He grinned. “As a rule.”

He literally towered over me, but the weird thing was, I didn’t feel threatened by him at all. It bugged me, because he was a predator, most likely a natural enemy of mine. I should feel threatened nonstop. My hackles should be raised and I should be baring my teeth. Shifters rarely got along with other shifters. We were animals. Animals fought. They didn’t hang out in a creek together splashing around. My wolf should want to rip her canines into him and sever his jugular, not mew at him like a lovestruck teenager.

Instead of ripping his heart out, her tongue lolled out while she enjoyed the view.
Put your tongue back in your mouth. You’re embarrassing me.

I stopped dumping water over my head to take in what he’d just said. “So, let me get this straight. If people think you may be … let’s say, a saber-toothed tiger, they’ll be more afraid of you than say … if they found out you were a common house cat? Is that the real reasoning behind all your mysterious mystique?”

Rourke
chuckled. “Jessica, you’re no shrinking violet, that’s for damn sure.” He shook his head back and forth, water spraying us both. “My ‘mysterious mystique,’ as you so nicely put it, has gone a long way in facilitating my reputation as a resident badass. If you build up the rumors and the fear, it makes your job a hell of a lot easier. I like easy.” He pinned me with his eyes. “And I can promise you I am most certainly
not
a house cat.” He chuckled again.

I stopped moving.

When he’d used my name in the familiar, blood had thundered around in my brain. My wolf and I had both snapped to immediate attention, the effect of his words had been physical. My blood pumped wildly and little tremors broke out all over my body, making me twitch.
I don’t even know this guy. He shouldn’t have any effect on us. What just happened? Why is our body doing that?
My wolf was too busy running in circles excitedly yipping to answer me. Plus I was having trouble focusing on what I’d just been saying as Rourke raised his arms over his head again. Water coated his face and ran freely down his body. A low sound emerged in the back of my throat. I brought a hand to my neck.
Jesus, you have to stop doing that. Calm yourself down!
I seriously hoped that sound had not been uttered out loud.
Listen, you have to get a hold of this. We’re not sleeping with every single person we meet.
My wolf was just short of jumping up and down.
You can’t be into this guy like that. He’s a mercenary who was hired to stalk us, possibly even kidnap us. We are not going there. Do you hear me?
She wasn’t listening because she was lost to her own personal frenzy.