The Beast Within (3 page)

L
iv spent the day in an anxious fog, worrying about her sanity. She sat through her classes, the professors’ words white noise humming in the background of her rapid and frightened thoughts.

There had been semen on her leg. There was nothing else that it could have been.

So how did it get there? She had thought she was dreaming that she had made love to her ex-boyfriend, who was missing. She supposed it was possible that he could have returned, but it wasn’t possible that he could have changed from a wolf to a naked man in front of her eyes.

Maybe she had still been dreaming at that point, but afterwards…maybe that had been real?

But he hadn’t been there when she woke up.

And she didn’t know what was real anymore.

Just that as she sat through endless lecture after lecture on hard chair after hard chair, she was in fact post-sex sore between her legs, a maddening reminder that something had happened, though she wasn’t sure what.

Mary Fran called her as she was driving home, grateful it wasn’t her day for clinicals. In no way should she be responsible for the care of patients when she was feeling as anxious as she was. Gripping the wheel tightly with her left hand, she answered the phone with her right.

“Hey, want to meet me for a drink? It’s Friday night, and I for one am thrilled. My classes were endless this week.”

Liv blinked hard in the dark, her headlights splayed out over a black road that seemed to be undulating in front of her. She normally loved fall, but it got dark early now and she was suddenly having trouble focusing on the road. “I can’t. I’m not feeling good.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, what’s wrong?”

“I think…I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“What! Where are you?”

“Driving home.”

“Pull over. Put your head between your legs.”

Hearing Mary Fran take charge, not freaking out or judging her, somehow calmed her down. “No, it’s okay, I’m pulling in Scarborough’s driveway. I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”

There was a gigantic pause, where they both knew what Mary Fran was dying to say.

Cancel the wedding.

Liv knew she had to. Something was not right in her head, in her heart. She had to at least postpone it until she got a grip.

“I will,” she told her friend.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know what you were thinking. Don’t worry. As soon as Scarborough gets back, I’ll talk to him.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“Yeah.” Liv swallowed the bile that was crawling up her throat as she hit the door opener and pulled into the garage.

“Are you home yet?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Call me if you want to chat. I’ll be around.”

“Thanks.”

When she went in the house, Liv stood in the middle of its quiet elegance, a house she had wanted to make her home. But it wasn’t her home. There was still no real place for Liv to call her own. No home, no family, no happiness.

After three glasses of wine, she fell into a restless sleep in bed in front of the TV, wearing a soft T-shirt and PJ pants. When she saw the bride in her dreams, she almost sighed at the inevitability of her presence.

But the bride only briefly appeared before the scene shifted to the woods. Sebastian and Scarborough and their cousins were drinking beers and fishing on the edge of the river. The serenity of the scene, the good-natured joking dissolved almost immediately. There was a sharp movement, Scar over Sebastian, a knife in his shoulder, a shove into the river—the cousins shouting and waving arms and a general hysteria.

While Scarborough stood calm on the riverbank, his face a cool mask of satisfaction as he leaned down and wiped the blood off the blade in the grass.

The bride shifted back to human, and suddenly, Liv realized she was in the woods herself, in the body of a wolf.

Sebastian had been prepared for Liv to shift on the full moon a week later given what Nick had told him, but he hadn’t really expected she would shift earlier. Yet he still found himself poised outside Scar’s house in human form, watching, waiting. He told himself it was to ensure her safety, and that was true, but it was also the undeniable urge to be near her. He was here as a man so that he wouldn’t smell her, so that he could resist the urge to enter the room and touch her the way he had the night before.

Now that he knew the whole truth, he was torn over how to handle it. He needed to deal with his brother, and he would as soon as Scar came back to Wisconsin. That wasn’t worrying him. What was causing him to pace the edge of the woods behind the house as he watched the bedroom window was how to explain everything to Liv. She deserved to know the full truth, but he wasn’t sure how to deliver that, knowing that her trust had been compromised.

He didn’t know how to convince her that what they had shared was real, and that he wanted nothing more than to be with her.

Forever.

As her husband.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, he was unprepared for Liv to leap out of the open window and race down the stairs, so fast she actually stumbled on the bottom few steps before recovering her balance.

She was in wolf form.

Sebastian stared, astonished. She was beautiful. Petite and long-legged, her fur a soft auburn, snout small and delicate. It was exactly what he would have imagined she would look like, and the wolf in him growled low in his throat in appreciation.

This was his mate.

He knew that as both man and wolf.

Her hesitation as she moved across the grass gave him a clear view of her crystalline green eyes, and he sensed the uncertainty, the anxiety there. After shedding his clothes, he shifted, his plan to follow her.

But she had heard his movement and she was ten feet away, paused in her intention to enter the woods, staring at him, and snarling a warning.

It was fear, not menace he heard and he stood still, hoping she would take off running.

She did, and he followed, allowing distance between them so she wouldn’t feel threatened, but wanting to make sure she was safe. Only she realized he was in pursuit and she ran faster, forcing him to keep pace. Her maneuvers became a clear effort to confuse him, as she dodged in multiple directions, leaping over logs, her behavior frantic and frightened.

Sebastian wasn’t about to let her out of his sight though, whether he was scaring her or not. Liv didn’t even remember her nights in wolf form, and he couldn’t have her out there alone. Eventually she would get tired from her efforts and either return to the safety of the house or approach him.

Finally, after an extended chase that had them circling back around closer to the house, she drew up short, panting, and turned to confront him. Her teeth snapped and she growled in warning.

Clearly she didn’t understand who he was. Or hell, maybe she did, given what Scarborough had told her.

He remained loose, nonthreatening, even resting on his haunches to show her he had no interest in fighting.

She eyed him for a second, wary, then she launched herself at him, baring her teeth. Sebastian stood his ground. He wasn’t going to leave, but neither was he going to fight back if she chose to attack him. This was Liv, and he would defend himself only as necessary, but he wouldn’t harm her. In a wild lunge, she snapped at his neck. He dodged her, but she managed to clip his shoulder, digging into the flesh beneath the fur.

The pain was minimal, but an involuntary growl came out on instinct.

Liv yelped, backed up, and shifted.

Astonished, Sebastian realized she had frightened herself right back into human form, and she was crumpled on a pile of leaves, naked, eyes glassy and confused.

She spotted him and opened her mouth to scream.

Sebastian shifted too, and the scream he expected never arrived. Her eyes widened in astonishment and she lifted her head slightly for a better view.

“I’m dreaming again,” she murmured. “Dreaming, nothing more. Crazy, crazy dreaming.”

“You’re not dreaming. This is real,” he told her, moving carefully toward her, wanting to offer some kind of comfort. “It’s okay.”

“It can’t be real. You were a werewolf a second ago. I think I was a werewolf…none of that makes any sense. Those things aren’t real.”

“Do you feel awake?” he asked her, squatting down to the ground so he wasn’t towering over her.

She hesitated, but then she nodded as she sat up. “I feel awake. I’m cold and damp and my nose is running. It feels sharp, like reality. But it can’t be. I’m naked in the woods with you. This can’t be real.”

“I promise you it’s real,” he said softly. “And I promise you that I didn’t leave you.” Maybe he should explain other things first, like her shape-shifting heritage, but he couldn’t help himself, and he didn’t want her to stand up and bolt either. He reached out and brushed her hair off her forehead. “God, I’ve missed you, Liv.”

“Now I know I’m dreaming.” She swallowed visibly and shivered.

“Come on, let’s go back to the house. It’s cold out.”

But Liv was staring at his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

He glanced down. The wound wasn’t deep, but without a shirt on, there was blood chugging slowly down his arm. “It’s not bad. Don’t worry about it.”

“I did that, didn’t I?” she asked in a whisper, her green eyes enormous. Her finger came out to point at it, then quickly she drew it back, crossing her arms over her chest with a shiver.

“Yes. But it’s not a big deal. I startled you.”

“I bit you,” she said, hand flying up to her mouth and scrubbing at her lips and chin. When it came away with a thin smear of blood on her flesh, her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Liv!”

Sebastian reached out and caught her as she slumped into a dead faint.

Gathering her in his arms, he headed for the house, scooping up his clothes on the way. Ten minutes later he had her tucked into bed, wearing a T-shirt he’d dug out of the dresser, the covers pulled up over her. She had woken up in his arms as he was carrying her back to the house, but she hadn’t spoken. She had just looked up at him, then screwed her eyes shut again, her fingers squeezing his arms tightly.

Even when he had pulled the shirt on over her head after laying her down on the bed she hadn’t spoken. She just stared up at him, eyes glassy, unblinking.

Unsure of what to do or say, Sebastian brushed his lips across her forehead. “It’s okay. Do you need a glass of water or anything?”

Finally she spoke. “Did we have sex last night?”

Sebastian hesitated for a split second, then nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t resist when I saw you…. I missed you so much, sweetheart.”

“I thought I was dreaming.”

Stupidly that hurt him. He’d thought she was groggy, but he had still thought she’d known what she was doing. That she was well aware it was him in the flesh she was being intimate with.

He dropped his gaze to the bed so she wouldn’t see the pain there.

“No,” he said, his tone harsher than he intended it to be. “Sorry. No dream. This is real and last night was real.”

Her eyes darkened and her tone was suddenly feisty. “I want my money back.”

“What money?”

“The money you stole.”

“I didn’t steal your money!” He was going to kill his goddamn brother for putting that expression on Liv’s face. “Do you want to know what happened? Six months ago I went on a fishing trip with my brother and my cousins…you remember that, right?”

“Yes, I remember.” She sat up and held the sheet in front of her. “You decided not to come back, leaving me with no explanation other than you’re an asshole and a user.”

“I didn’t come back because my brother, my dear, loving brother, stabbed me in the fucking shoulder then tossed my body into the river to drown.”

Expecting Liv to scoff or argue or roll her eyes, Sebastian was surprised when she went very still, her fingers relaxing their hold on the sheet.

“Ohmigod. That’s what the bride wanted me to see.”

L
iv took deep breaths, afraid she was going to faint again. She couldn’t believe Sebastian was standing in front of her, wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans. He was as gorgeous as she remembered, as gorgeous as he’d been in the middle of the night when she’d been so certain she’d been dreaming.

And he had a wicked scar on his shoulder, one she had noted when he’d been poised above her, his body pushing into hers, but that she had dismissed as a quirk of her sleeping mind.

“What do you mean?” he asked, standing next to the bed. “Who is the bride?”

“I don’t know who she is,” Liv said, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to recreate the dream. “But she appears over and over in my dreams, dreams I’ve been having since you left. She was a bride, tossed from a carriage on her wedding night as they were being chased by giant wolves. The wedding party wanted to lighten the load so they could go faster, and she was the easiest to toss because she was petite. But she didn’t die…they turned her into a werewolf.”

The faint images of Scarborough stabbing Sebastian hovered behind her eyelids. “She showed me what you described. I dreamt it tonight. You and Scarborough at the river, him stabbing you, you going into the water…”

Liv snapped her eyes open. “I thought I just had a crazy, wild, active imagination, but…” She couldn’t even articulate where her thoughts were going.

When Sebastian had first said that Scarborough had stabbed him on that fishing trip, it had suddenly all seemed to make sense. The dreams had been reality, or showing her reality, and she had felt like she’d stumbled on an answer.

Now it seemed like sheer lunacy again.

Liv rubbed her temples and tried to clear her head.

“It’s not your imagination.” Sebastian sat down on the bed next to her. “Here is the truth, Liv, the whole truth, as unbelievable as it seems. The bride in your dreams is your great-grandmother. She was the first of the Lugaru line of werewolves, turned the way you saw it in your dream. She and the pack migrated to Canada from France and moved down into Wisconsin with my ancestors, the James clan.”

Liv knew her great-grandmother had been French, but she had known little other than that given that her own parents had died before she’d had much chance to ask them anything.

“Werewolves are real. I am one. You are one. Scarborough is one. As far as I know you never shifted before I was stabbed, but an emotional upheaval can cause the first shift.”

It had definitely been an emotional six months, there was no denying that.

But werewolves? It was impossible. They were the stuff of horror movies and medieval legends.

Yet she had seen Sebastian shift with her own eyes. She had felt herself shift in what she thought was a dream.

Sebastian was confirming the scene between him and Scarborough was real, and he had the scar on his shoulder to prove it.

“I…I don’t know what to say. This is…”

“Crazy. I know. But at least Scar and I had our parents to explain. Yours died before they could reveal the truth to you.”

Sebastian reached out and took her hand in his, and Liv stared down at his callused fingers covering hers, the touch warm and familiar. It brought a melancholy ache to her heart and she felt the tears pricking at her eyes.

If she believed in the impossible, in the insane story he was telling her, then she was a werewolf, a hairy, snarling beast.

But it also meant that Sebastian hadn’t left her willingly.

And God help her, she was actually thinking that was more appealing than shape-shifters not existing and Sebastian breaking her heart on purpose.

“I want you to understand something.” His expression was earnest, open. “The reason I never asked you to marry me was not because I didn’t want to be your husband. It was because I didn’t want you to ever feel that I had chosen you even in part for the purpose of an alliance, for the strength you would bring to our pack. I was pack leader, and you’re the sole survivor of our allies, a pack that has psychic abilities. Together, you and I would have given an edge to our pack, but I wanted no part of that.”

Sebastian’s finger trailed across her lip again, as it had the night before, and this time it was tender and soul shattering. “I just wanted you,” he said. “I wanted to be with you, for no other reason than for the fact that I love you.”

Liv felt her throat closing with emotion. The words he was saying were bizarre, convoluted, a description of a world she hadn’t known existed and didn’t understand, but when she stripped that away, what she heard was the truth in his voice that he did love her.

That the nightmare she’d been living in for the six months, the reality that had devastated her, was in fact fiction, and the dreams that had plagued her sleep were actually reality.

Nothing mattered but those last three words he’d just spoken. He loved her.

“Sebastian,” she said, nearly choking on his name.

He hadn’t betrayed her or used her. And now he was here, with her, and her emotions were sharp and too overwhelming for words. She could only stare at him, throat tight, eyes filling with tears, wanting to tell him she loved him, but unable to squeeze the words out.

But she didn’t have time to wonder or worry why she was speechless, because he closed the distance between them and brushed his mouth over hers, a soft sigh of a kiss, a gentle worship of her lips. Liv closed her eyes on a deep exhalation of air, her shoulders relaxing, fingers losing their grip on the sheet as he hovered over her mouth, in her space but not touching, his fingers traipsing across her forehead, down her cheek. This is what she wanted. Tenderness. The night before had been raw, exciting, a fantasy, now she wanted real, intimate, loving.

“I missed you,” he breathed, forehead resting lightly on hers. “The thought of you kept me alive when I was bleeding in that river.”

“I wish I had known.” Liv slid her hands down his shoulders, pausing to trace the mottled and angry outline of his scar. He had suffered as much as she had. More even, and her heart broke all over again for the pain he had endured, for how they had both needlessly suffered. There was dried blood on the laceration she had given him, and she shuddered as her fingers hovered over it.

Turning his head slightly, he brushed his lips over her fingers. “It doesn’t matter. What is important is we’re here, together, now. And that we’ll be together tomorrow.”

She sensed the question in that and she never hesitated. Sebastian’s eyes had always been oddly fascinating, one a pale sky blue, the other a mossy green, so different that she’d often thought they worked independently of each other, conveying their own distinct thoughts and emotions. An illusion, no doubt, based on the fact that the light hit them differently, but now as he looked up at her, there was no disparity, no variance.

Having experienced such little deep and unwavering love in her lonely life, she knew it when she saw it, and it was there in Sebastian’s unusual eyes.

“Yes, we’ll be together. Today, tomorrow, always.” Despite the last six months, despite realities that would have to be faced, it had always been, and always would be Sebastian for her.

Wanting to feel her skin against his skin, Liv pulled off the T-shirt he had just put on her and tossed it to the floor.

He kissed her then, a deep possessive kiss that swelled her heart and stirred her desire. As the touch lingered, as his hands moved to grip her shoulders, Liv became very aware of the fact that she was naked, he was naked. The sheet scraped against her tight nipples and rustled between her legs as she shifted to be closer to him. God, she had missed his touch, and as his kisses grew more urgent, hungrier, Liv dropped her mouth open and let him plunge his tongue inside her.

Tenderness had disappeared. His fingers were digging into her flesh and he was dominating her mouth, a hot skilled assault that left her limp and breathing hard, clinging to his arms for support. The fierceness of his possession both startled and excited her, and she suddenly realized there was one important piece of information Sebastian didn’t have.

“I have to tell you something,” she murmured between kisses, gasping when he nipped her bottom lip.

“Later.” Sebastian yanked the sheet down and eyed her breasts with blatant longing.

“No, it’s important.” She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the response of her body to his piercing gaze. “I never…we never…” She took a deep breath and forced the awkward words out. “We never had sex. Scarborough and I.” Her voice dropped down to a whisper on his brother’s name, and she felt her face heating up. This was a conversation she had never expected to have with him.

Sebastian’s eyes moved from her chest to hers and his eyebrows lifted. “Are you kidding me?”

She shook her head. “No. I just couldn’t.”

His hand came up and rubbed his jaw and he shook his head a little as he gave a small laugh. “That’s very good to hear. But what the fuck is the matter with my brother? Why the hell would he agree to live with you platonically?”

“I thought he was respecting my feelings, that he was giving me space until I was ready.” Now she wasn’t sure what any of Scar’s motivations had been. Not that it mattered. She was just glad she hadn’t shared anything more intimate with Scar than sleeping alongside him.

“I would have never agreed to that,” Sebastian said, his hand rising so that his fingers played with the very tip of her nipple.

The unexpected touch sent a jolt through Liv, and she sucked in her breath. “No?”

“No. I wouldn’t have been able to survive being so close to you and not touching you. I would have had you.”

“Very arrogant.” Not that she minded. To hear his possessiveness was sexy, flattering, arousing. “What if I had said no?” Liv realized she was leaning into his touch, and she tried to move back to put force behind her question, but he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, holding her in place with the desire his touch tripped off.

“I would talk you into it,” he said, his other index finger trailing down between her breasts to her belly button and dipping inside briefly before heading farther south. “And you wouldn’t regret it.”

Right as he reached the top of her pubic bone, he pulled his hand back and rested it on the linens pooling between her thighs. Liv gave a gasp of disappointment. In return, Sebastian gave her a small smile of satisfaction. “You wouldn’t regret it, would you, baby?”

She shook her head, her tongue suddenly feeling too thick to speak.

Sebastian yanked the sheet away from her body so that she was completely exposed to him, his palm pushing her knee so that her legs opened. His fingers fluttered over the small strip of hair there, tickling and teasing her. “Would you?”

Finding her voice, she said, “No. I wouldn’t regret it.”

Her reward was his finger smoothly sliding inside her. Liv gave a tiny moan. It was an unusual angle, with her sitting up, legs out, and the angle of his touch had him stroking her G-spot with unerring accuracy. “Oh, damn,” she breathed, her instinct to move backwards, away from the intensity of the pleasure.

But his hand on her thigh held her in place. “Stay.”

It was the simplicity of that command that had her going still, her thighs tensing as she tucked her feet behind them for a more comfortable position, her back arching as her hands came down on either side of his arm.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, his head dipping so that his lips were on her neck, kissing and sucking lightly.

His shoulder brushed against her chest and Liv shivered, every nerve alive and excited, every inch of her body aware of his. She had refused to think about this for six months, and only in her dreams had she indulged the idea that her sexuality still existed, buried under heavy emotion. But a few skillful kisses, a finger inside her, and a look of lust interlaced with love on Sebastian’s face brought all of her desire rushing to the forefront.

She loved sex with him, hot and wet and hard sex, and she rocked her hips into his touch with a total lack of self-consciousness. He made her feel beautiful, sexy, and she wanted to perform for him at the same time that she wanted to please herself. The way his eyes darkened indicated he liked what she was doing and she moved a little faster, pushing him a little deeper inside her.

“That’s it,” Sebastian breathed.

Liv leaned forward for more leverage and let the sensations sweep her away. The intense pleasure was like a whip, spurring her on to a quick, sharp rhythm, her eyes locked on his.

“Damn, that’s sexy,” he said. “Did you do this to yourself while I was gone? Did you use a vibrator?”

It hadn’t been often, but she had, so she nodded.

“Maybe you don’t even need me,” he said, his voice teasing.

It hadn’t even come close to satisfying her the way he did. “I do need you.” She panted, her muscles tightening around his finger, her hips slowing down. “I’m going to come.”

“Not yet.” He pulled his finger out.

Liv’s eyes flew open. “What the hell?” She had been right there, two seconds from completion.

“Shhh,” he said, his fingers brushing across her nipples as his lips teased her mouth. “We’ll get there. We have all night. I want to take it slow.”

Slow could happen later. Now she wanted to feel him inside her, full and throbbing and taking her, while she was one hundred percent awake and aware of what she was doing.

Sebastian was leaning over, his intention clearly to pull her nipple into his mouth, and she knew he wasn’t going to enter her yet.

Liv grabbed his head and stopped him. It was her turn to torture.

He looked at her in question.

She gave him a sly smile and moved down over him, gripping his erection firmly with her hand and flicking her tongue across the tip.

The moan he gave was almost as satisfying to her as his touch had been.