The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (28 page)

I felt Nick slide up onto the couch and pull me against him. I pressed my face into his chest and hummed happily. “You’re wrong, that was dangerous.
I think I’ve gone blind. Which is too bad, because I was planning on reciprocating.” Nick gently nudged my eyelids with his fingertips. I popped them open. “Oh, there we go.”

“I’m a problem solver,” he said as I kissed my way down his chest. I stopped, my ears perking at a soft noise outside. I cocked my head toward the door. “Hey, is your door unlock—”

Cooper stuck his head in through the front door and called, “Hey, Nick, you ready to go?”

His jaw dropped at the sight of me lying at eye level with Nick’s navel, both of us buck naked. He clapped his hand over his eyes.

“Ack!”

“Cooper!” I yelled.

“Sorry!” he exclaimed, stumbling into the door frame and smacking his head into the wall. “So sorry! I’m just going to go . . . gouge out my eyes now.”

“I forgot he was coming over,” Nick groaned as Cooper turned a corner and continued whacking his forehead against the wall. “You were naked, and I lost track of time.”

“Why is he here?”

“The whole leaving early thing was sort of a smokescreen. I’ve been talking to Cooper whenever I go into the saloon. He was worried about you not having a truck. And since I sort of played a role in its destruction, I wanted to help you replace it. We were going to go look at dealerships in Burney before I drove up to Anchorage. Surprise . . .” he finished weakly.

“You were going to buy me a truck, just like that?” I asked, my heart doing that weird fluttering thing again. “And you were wearing your professor duds to cover your trail?”

“No, I wanted to look respectable at the dealership,” Nick said, all defeated and puppylike. “I was going to make it look like Cooper found some older model for a song.”

“Aw!” I rose on the balls of my feet and kissed the tip of his nose. “That’s incredibly sweet but unnecessary. I have money of my own saved up. It’s not like I pay Mom rent or anything. And Clay thinks he might be able to save my old truck.”

“I hate to be the one to break up this little love fest, but could you two go put on some clothes, please?” Cooper demanded.

I rolled my eyes. Nick threw me some sweats and a T-shirt.

Cooper finally uncovered his eyes. “Look, I like you, Nick. I’ve seen the way you are with my sister, and I approve. The love of my life is a human and an outsider . . . and an incredible smart-ass. So, who the hell am I to judge who Maggie chooses? And considering the fresh bite I see on your neck, I know you’re mated and not doing anything wrong. But right now, I’m trying to control my brotherly instincts to kill you . . . just give me a minute, OK?”

“Yep,” Nick said, wisely stepping away from my brother and bracing himself behind the breakfast bar.

“So, um, Mags, would you mind telling me why
you’re here at this hour? Without going into specifics, please?”

“Nick and I are putting on a puppet show, Coop,” I responded dryly.

“Please, Lord, don’t let that be a position I haven’t heard of,” Cooper said, shuddering.

N
ICK HAD TO LEAVE
for his lecture, though I managed to talk him out of the truck purchase so we could spend the extra day . . . um, talking. Cooper was happy to leave us alone before we could start another conversation.

And because my brother is basically a gossiping old woman, nobody was surprised when I returned to the valley and announced that Nick and I were mated. In fact, the aunties had already arranged a potluck supper in our honor when Nick returned a week later, which was a little embarrassing. Nothing says family closeness like a “Congratulations on Doing It” dinner.

I can’t say every member of the pack was thrilled with my choice. An aunt or two sniffed at another Graham taking a chance with the family wolf genes. And a few of my cousins took bets on how long it
would last before Nick’s body turned up in a gulley somewhere, which was sort of mean.

Pops’s contribution was to shake Nick’s hand, level him with that inscrutable gaze, and say, “You’re not good enough for her.”

It was times like this that I wished I wasn’t Pops’s favorite granddaughter. But Nick, who was managing not to fold like a cheap card table under Pops’s unrelenting grip, simply smiled and said, “I know that, sir, but no one is.”

Pops sniffed and sauntered toward the beer weenies. I gave Nick a wink to let him know he’d handled that very well.

And at the end of the night, as much as it pained me, Nick went to sleep at Samson’s house. Because as evolved and open as my family was, the idea of having sex under my mother’s roof really creeped me out. It was bad enough having the first “post-game” conversation with my mom. After I made the mating announcement, she took me aside and asked me if I “wanted to talk about it.”

I sprang up from my chair, suddenly very keen to know whether the top drawer of my filing cabinet was locked. “God, no!”

Mom seemed perplexed. “I don’t know why not. It’s nothing to be afraid of. My first time with your father was fantastic.”

“Mom, I don’t want to hear about your honeymoon hijinks, OK?”

“Oh, honey, it wasn’t on our wedding night. We took care of that a long time before we got married.”

“Ohmygod!” I howled. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Well, we were already mated. Your dad had claimed me. Why wait until the wedding when we wanted to have kids right away? Honey, what are you doing?” she said as I rifled through my desk drawers.

“Looking for something to gouge out my eardrums.”

It was obvious that Nick and I were going to have to make some sort of separate living arrangement soon. Obviously, I couldn’t move too far away. There was no way we could stay at his place in Grundy. Sure, I’d been relieved that despite my dire sense of foreboding, I came home to find nothing had happened while I was gone. Still, I needed to be among my packmates, to help with the everyday management of the valley. And it helped to have some semblance of authority in their midst. I’d worked too hard for their respect and trust to walk away now.

But the idea of a separate address, where we could be alone at the end of the day, was definitely appealing. I mulled it over for a few days, trying to find a way to fit it into the conversation that wouldn’t make me sound like a demanding potential wife. Mom saw this as some sort of sign of maturity, that I was actually taking his feelings into account.

The problem was that there were a limited number of houses in the valley, and all of them were occupied at the moment. Houses were passed through family lines, like everything else in the pack. And
there hadn’t been a new house built since the early 1980s. Then again, we didn’t get a lot of new arrivals here in town. Alicia and Clay were the last people to move to the valley since my mother had arrived.

Speaking of Clay, he seemed to be spending less and less time in the valley. I wasn’t sure if that was because of my choosing Nick or because the garage was keeping him that busy. When I realized how little consideration I’d given him during the whole mate-choosing thing, I felt a pulse of guilt constrict my chest. Even if we weren’t committed or exclusive, he deserved more than that. I kicked myself for not ending things with him before taking any sort of step with Nick. But sometimes life is messy and complicated, and you just don’t have time to pencil things into your schedule, such as “Dump perfectly nice werewolf suitor before getting naked with human sweetie.” Clay skipped the pack dinner, and he didn’t seem to want to talk to me or Samson, and I couldn’t blame him. And because I didn’t want it to fester, I ended up cornering him down in the work shed one afternoon as he tinkered with a chain saw.

Overall, it might not have been my
brightest
idea.

After I stepped into the shed, Clay gave me the silent treatment I so richly deserved for a few moments. But before long, his lips were twitching, and he gave me crooked little grin. “So . . . Nick, huh?”

I grimaced and gave him a sheepish little smile. “I should have talked to you about it first. It just sort of happened. If you want to kick my ass over it, I’d understand.”

He shook his head. “Nah. Don’t get me wrong.
I’m disappointed. But sometimes the heart just wants what it wants, right? Who am I to get in the way of my alpha’s true love?” His voice was tight, but he covered by looking over the chain saw parts and selecting a few gears for cleaning.

I asked, “Need some help?”

He tossed me a rag and some mineral oil. “Sure.”

And that was pretty much it. We basically broke up without really hashing it out. And considering how guilty I felt
without
talking it to death, I can only imagine how bad a prolonged discussion would have made me feel. So, silence is a method I wholeheartedly endorse. It left things sort of unsettled, but Cousin Teresa suddenly seemed much happier.

To top the guilt sundae off, Clay’s occasional absences meant that Alicia was more frazzled than usual, and Billie seemed to be getting worse. The doc had to prescribe stronger sedatives for her, as her once occasional “episodes” were becoming an almost-daily event. The day I came home, Billie had wandered out onto Main Street in her housecoat, screaming that there was a “redheaded bitch” trying to run her house.

While the high school kids got a kick out of the sweet, level-headed auntie who used to knit them Christmas stockings cursing like a sailor in the middle of the street, this latest bout made me wonder whether we needed to find a better situation for Billie. There was no such thing as a werewolf nursing home, but there must be some way to make her more comfortable.

I was sitting on my front porch, mulling over calling
Billie’s great-nephew Matthew, the alpha of her home pack in Canada. I rarely spoke to Matthew, who was sort of hyper and always seemed to have some huge project going that inhibited his ability to return phone calls. And he still didn’t know how to work his voice mail. It was sort of an ADHD werewolf’s double whammy. He still hadn’t responded to several messages I had left months before, thanking him for sending Clay and Alicia. But his pack was bigger than mine and located closer to urban areas. Maybe he had a suggestion (or twenty) on how to help his auntie.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the sturdy pine rocking chair. It was late February, and the weather would be cold for another few months, but the sun was setting, and it was comfortable to sit outside for a while. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the dying rays of sunlight, stretching and yawning.

Somehow, in the midst of all this, I was pretty damned content. Probably the happiest I had been in my short, surly life. I’d claimed a mate. I felt the same need for Nick, for the comfort of his presence, than I did before. Nick and I were still working on the whole “exploring” issue. It helped that we were basically chaperoned by my entire family and couldn’t get away with much. I think I was learning far more about what I liked than what Nick liked. Because it turns out guys like everything. Orgasms are like pizza or a Dolph Lundgren movie; even when they’re not great, you still enjoy yourself.

I was perfecting my oral skills, although I think
the whole “my girlfriend has wolf teeth” thing made him a little nervous. And my man could play “Stairway to Heaven” guitar riffs with his tongue if he wanted to, so overall, we were both pretty happy.

Of course, given all that happiness, I really should have seen this next thing coming.

My ears perked up at the sound of shuffling footsteps moving toward me. My eyes snapped open, and I saw Samson stumbling toward the porch. He was naked, which meant he’d just come in from a run. His expression was pinched, as if every step hurt him. He missed a step and stumbled onto the porch, clutching his side.

“Maggie?” he whispered, gripping his side.

I yawned again. “Ha ha, Samson, I’m not falling for that again. It was a sick joke when you pretended to be chain-saw-massacred on Halloween, and it’s a sick joke now.”

He didn’t get up.

“Sam . . . Sam?” The wind changed directions, and the smell of his blood finally made it to my nostrils. “Mom!” I yelled, scrambling next to him. My knees hit the boards with a thud. I rolled him over and found a quarter-sized hole just under his ribs. My hands were red and wet as the blood welled over the fingers pressing against his wound.