But I could not look away, and nothing about this felt normal.
Not only could I not tear my eyes from him, something inside me pulled closer, dragging me nearer like a leash being tugged. There was a piece of me that wanted nothing more than to go to him. He was beautiful, I couldn’t deny that, but he was a stranger, and this reaction was strange to say the least. This was more than magnetism; it was practically a law of attraction. The pull knotted inside me, fluttering in my stomach with the feeling of a thousand desperate moths crowding together to seek the light of a single bare bulb. My body demanded I go to him, and I realized I was now standing. My chair was several inches behind me, and I held my drink in trembling hands. When had I stood?
His friends were watching me too, like they knew what was happening between us. They were both interested and unconcerned by my reaction. I bet none of them had to make much of an effort to attract the ladies, considering all three were picture-perfect male specimens. The man in the middle smiled, a flash of white canines, and it dawned on me what I was smelling below the cinnamon and electricity. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Wolf,” I said. It was almost a hiss, the sound an animal makes when threatened.
My stupid werewolf half was being lured by him, and I wasn’t about to have any part of it. I had no intention of letting some animal dupe me with werewolf lust. I’d heard about this, weres using their powers to overwhelm newer or lesser wolves. I’d been dealing with my lycanthrope half since birth, which was a lot longer than most adults with the affliction. Just because I’d never shifted as an adult didn’t mean some twenty-something who’d probably been turned last week was going to get the best of me.
I tended to shut out my werewolf half far more than my vampire half. Vampires, for all their flaws, were still primarily human in their behavior. I could accept that and relate to it. Their society had laws, structure and regulation. They were very political in their hierarchical organization.
Werewolves left me feeling more unsettled. They were animals. Primal beings. They were willing to abandon the human aspects of themselves to embrace something wild and reckless. I’d never tried to learn about their world because I didn’t want to be a part of something that catered to such careless freedom. I did not have the luxury to let myself lose control in that way. If I did, I risked releasing much more than my inner wolf.
I turned away from him, and his face fogged with confusion again. I was not going to play his games. Heading towards the back entrance of the patio, I made a break for it. I was almost at the corner of the block before I hazarded a glance back. They were gone.
I stopped walking, still clutching my latte. Maybe he’d been willing to let it go when he saw I clearly wasn’t interested. I breathed a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about for the night. My plate was already overburdened as it was. The last thing I needed was to fend off some pushy frat boy’s puppy love.
Turning back to the corner, I walked smack into the tall brunet who had been with the man. A small sound of surprise escaped my lips.
“What the—?”
“I’d like you to come with me, miss.”
“Like hell.” I dropped my drink and was reaching for the gun at the small of my back, but he grabbed my arm first.
“That won’t be necessary. We only want to have a quick word with you about what just happened at the café.”
Before I could find the proper string of profanities to explain I had no intention of going anywhere with him, he was dragging me none too gently towards a waiting car. He pushed me into the backseat as the door opened, pulling the gun from the back of my belt as he did.
And I thought my night couldn’t get any worse.
Chapter Six
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I was in the back of a sleek town car sitting next to the handsome man from the café and loving tinted windows a lot less than I had earlier that evening.
“My name is—”
“Look, I don’t care who you are, pal. You don’t go around sending out your lupine mojo to random girls and then kidnapping them when you get rejected! I don’t care what bit you, that’s just not how it’s done.”
He regarded me with careful silence for a moment, then ignoring everything I’d said or perhaps because of it, he smiled. “Lupine mojo?” Chuckling, he shared an amused glance with the brunet. “Is that what you think that was? You think you were attracted to me because of wolf magic?” He said the last two words with a sarcastic flourish, spreading his palms wide to mimic casting a spell.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t attracted to you.” My arms were crossed and I was pressed so hard against the door there would be an imprint of the handle in my hip later. I wanted to be as far from him as possible in such a small space. His face was half hidden by the dark interior of the car, so I only caught glimpses of him when we passed under a light. “This next corner will be just fine.” This was directed to the blond driver, the other man who’d been with him.
“Oh, I’m afraid not,” my objectionable companion replied.
I was steadily going from put out to pissed off. “Please believe that you will be letting me out of this car.”
“I plan to let you go, no harm done, but there are some things that you and I need to discuss first.”
“I have nothing to discuss with a man who uses his goons to throw me into a car. Where I’m from, if a guy wants to get to know a girl he buys her dinner first. Kidnapping went out in the caveman era.”
“Well, perhaps if I bought you dinner…”
“You have got to be kidding me.” My mouth hung open. I was unable to suppress my shock at the shift in his methods.
“No. I’m entirely serious.”
“Pull over the car.”
“Dominick, you heard the lady. Would you please pull the car over?”
“Yes, Mr. Rain.” There was something forced about the way he said it, like it wasn’t typical for such a formal address to be used between them.
The car rolled to a stop, but when I went to open the door it was—big shocker—still locked.
Continuing the farce of a pleasant conversation, Mr. Rain said, “I take it that you were not close with the one who bit you.”
“I was never bitten,” I snapped. “Don’t try to pretend like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to me, puppy. You have no idea who I am.”
“You are wolf, though. I can smell it on you.”
I tried the door again. So far he was just talking; he hadn’t tried to touch me or move closer. The tangible, electric vibe was still filling the backseat like an invisible twilight fog, and it made it hard for me to be there. The hairs on the back of my arms and neck rose being near him.
“What do you want from me?”
“I just need to ask you a few questions. Perhaps answer some of your own. You seem willfully ignorant of what it means to be a wolf, otherwise you wouldn’t be fighting this so hard. I believe I may be able to put right the negative opinion you have of your own kind.”
Questions? I had never known what it meant to be a wolf, and sure I had questions. But was I really going to trust a stranger? One who had kidnapped me, no less. Did I really have a choice?
“I’ll answer your questions, on one condition,” I offered.
“Name it.”
“I get my gun back.”
From the front seat I heard two very different reactions. Dominick, the short blond behind the wheel, let out an abrupt laugh. I was getting mightily sick of being laughed at tonight. The dark-haired one who was in possession of my gun was utterly humorless. He let out an almost inaudible growl.
“You promise to sit down and have a conversation with me if I return your weapon to you?” the handsome, mysteriously named Mr. Rain asked me. And why did I feel like that name should mean something? I was too distracted to rack my brain for where I might have heard it before.
This guy was good. I didn’t want to agree, but something about the way he was talking to me made it difficult for me to refuse him.
“Promise me,” he repeated.
“Yes. I promise. Now give me my gun.” I held my hand out to the front seat expectantly.
“Desmond, please oblige the young lady.”
I stared at the brunet wolf, my eyes locked on to the odd-colored pools of his own, and saw the unspoken threat there. His eyes told me if I stepped out of line he would be on me. Deep inside a part of me bristled, the internal-organ equivalent to a dog’s ruff going up when alarmed. What was it with these guys? I’d been with them less than fifteen minutes and they’d already gotten more reaction out of my wolf than anyone had in the past twenty-two years combined. I’d been so careful to keep my inner dog collared, I often forgot it was there at all. But it was awake now, and everything happening had it both snarling and wagging its tail.
Traitorous beast.
The wolf named Desmond handed me my gun, and once I was holding it I resisted the urge to point it at anyone. It wouldn’t do me any good anyway. The bullets in the weapon weren’t silver. While vampires were just as prone to silver injuries as werewolves were, I’d learned that when you were using the gun to blow off someone’s head it didn’t matter what kind of metal you were using. My job description almost never included hunting werewolves, so using silver bullets for everyday jobs was an unnecessary expense. It was experiences like this that made me think maybe I should splurge and use silver bullets all the time.
I didn’t point the gun at Mr. Rain or either of his men. Promises were promises after all, so the gun went back into the waist of my pants. Why I hadn’t considered wearing my holster today was beyond me. I’d wanted a quiet night, but it was no excuse for being so unprepared. If there were a Boy Scout motto for bounty hunters, it would be Always Be Armed.
Dominick had left the car and was opening my door from the outside. Desmond and I exited at the same moment, and I had no doubt he would stick to my side like a stretched-out shadow for the rest of the evening. His attitude was doing a lot to tell me that he liked this situation even less than I did. He was taking great efforts to stay close without actually touching me.
