CHAPTER 6

Eli watched the object of his fascination sway toward him and bit back the urge to reach out and haul her across the table. For most of the last twenty-four hours, he might have wondered whether Josie Barrett felt even a fraction of the attraction for him that he had developed for her; but if that slightly dazed look in her eyes and the smell of her sweet warm skin were any indication, his question had just been answered with a resounding yes.

He might actually have thrown caution to the wind and eaten her alive if her dog hadn’t chosen just that moment to switch his allegiance from his clearly neglectful mistress and drape his huge, drooling muzzle on the thigh of Eli’s jeans. Clamping his teeth together, Eli pulled back and sent the mutt an only half-joking glare. Somehow, the feel of canine saliva soaking through denim proved to be a real mood killer.

“What?” he growled at the dog, hoping Josie would assume he was teasing. “Are you trying to tell us it’s time for dessert?”

The veterinarian blushed scarlet at that question and reached for the dog’s collar. At least, he hoped it was from the question and the knowledge that each of them would like very much to have the other for dessert, instead of from the embarrassment of having a hungry hound assault her guest.

“Bruce!” she scolded sharply, grabbing her half-eaten dinner with her free hand and hauling both food and dog toward another room of the clinic. “You know better than to beg from company. Come on. You can finish my leftovers in the file room, if you can’t be trusted to behave yourself.”

Frankly, the only one whose behavior Eli distrusted at the moment was himself. He’d been about three seconds away from ravishing the pretty veterinarian on her own exam table, so what did that say about his company manners?

Josie returned a second later, already apologizing. “I’m so sorry about that. He doesn’t normally do that to people he’s just met, but I’m afraid that when it comes to Laura Beth’s meat loaf, the idiot just has no self-control.”

“Don’t worry about it. I understand about the futility of resisting that kind of temptation.”

Believe me, I know.

“I should thank you again for dinner,” she said, beginning to fuss with the debris of their meal, balling up napkins and dropping them into the discarded take-out sack. “It was very nice of you to bring it over so late.”

“Is that what it was?” Eli growled. He crushed his empty soda can in his fist and tossed it into the recycling bin under the counter. “I didn’t buy you dinner to be nice.”

Josie blinked up at him, her eyes wide and wary. “You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I wanted to. I wanted to get to know you better. I still do.”

She didn’t say anything at first, just kept her eyes fixed on the shiny surface of the exam table as she sprayed it with disinfectant and wiped it with a wad of paper towels. Eli almost found himself wishing for the first time that he were a vampire, so he could get an idea of what was going on in that head of hers.

“There’s really not that much to know,” she said finally. “I’ve already told you most of it. I grew up here in Stone Creek. I became a vet. I took over my dad’s practice when he and my mother decided to retire to Arizona. My older sister lives there, too, with her husband and two kids. And you already met Bruce. That’s pretty much the full story.”

They bumped shoulders when each of them reached to deposit their litter in the trash bin at the same time. Josie seemed to withdraw from the brief contact, and that pissed Eli off. He didn’t want her trying to get away from him.

He didn’t want her getting away.

Maybe he would have reacted differently if he hadn’t seen that he intrigued her just as much as she did him. He could read it in her eyes, in the rhythm of her breath. And he could smell it on her skin. This was a mutual fascination they had going between them, and he refused to let her ignore it.

Grabbing her gently by the elbow, Eli turned Josie to face him and softly tightened his grip. She lifted her chin, her gaze skittering away from his to settle somewhere in the vicinity of his left earlobe.

“That’s not what I meant, Josie,” he murmured quietly, but her shivers told him she heard. It wasn’t that cold inside the clinic, no matter how chilly it had gotten outside. He reached up and tucked an escaped strand of shiny dark hair behind her ear, and the shivering intensified. “I think you know that.”

She forced out half a chuckle. “Wow, wouldn’t I sound like an arrogant so-and-so if I said yes to that.”

“I don’t think you’d sound arrogant. Just honest. You want to get to know me, too. Don’t you?”

He could see that she wanted to deny it. He saw the impulse in her clear dark eyes, saw her wrestle with it, and saw when her conscience won out. She wouldn’t lie to him, not about that.

“I... maybe,” she admitted softly. “It’s weird. I mean, we must have bumped into each other a hundred times over the last three years. Stone Creek just isn’t that big. So how is it that this is happening now?”

“I don’t know. I’m just glad it is.”

A soft breath sighed from the softness of her mouth, and Eli could almost feel it part for him as he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers for the length of a stuttering heartbeat.

She tasted better than the scone he’d devoured that morning along with his coffee. Sweeter and richer and altogether more intoxicating. But what struck Eli wasn’t the way she tasted, but the way she made him feel. Just that gentle touch of lip to lip, skin to skin, made his heart pound as if he’d sprinted up the side of a mountain. His head spun, and his fingers literally itched and flexed with the need to touch her. It didn’t matter where. He just needed every bit of connection he could forge between them. He needed to convince himself that she was real.

He stepped closer. There was still space between them—he didn’t want to scare her off—but now he could feel the heat of her all along his front from his collarbone to his toes. He could feel the pulse of energy between them, and even without body-to-body contact the closeness soothed him. It calmed his restlessness even as it ramped up his desire, and he marveled that one woman could cause such conflicting reactions within him. She aroused and calmed, excited and comforted at the same time. He’d never experienced anything like it.

Never experienced anything like her.

Without thought he lifted a hand, cupped it along the curve of her jaw. His thumb swept across the baby-soft skin of her cheek, and his mouth swallowed the soft hitch of her breath as she shivered in response. She felt as much as he did; Eli could sense it.

The animal inside him urged him to grab her, pull her closer, devour her and assuage his hunger. It roared and snapped inside him, made his throat clench and his muscles tighten. But Eli instinctively knew that Josie meant too much for that; she was too important. He needed patience, needed to court her.

If only that could be done as easily as if she were Feline, too. If Josie were another Feline, he would find her in their cat forms, call to her from the dim cover of the trees. He would take her out on the hunt and trail her across the rocky hilltops, help her bring down their quarry and leave her the choicest bites.

That sounded so much simpler to him than the alternative. Since she was human, he’d have to settle for dinners and movies and conversations. She would expect them to talk and share their thoughts, compare opinions, and learn each other’s tastes.

Damn, why did humans have to make everything so complicated?

Of course, if there would be more of these kisses, Eli supposed he could take the strain of it.

His other arm reached out, intent on wrapping around her, pulling her closer. He wanted her leaning against him until he could feel her weight and the soft, feminine curves of her body. He wanted to see how they fit together, even if it meant he would get no sleep tonight because he’d be imagining the fit unencumbered by clothes or inhibitions.

The sound of heavy knocking on the clinic’s back door alerted him to an intruder.

Instinctively, he tore away from the embrace and turned, placing himself between Josie and any potential threat. For a moment he remained all snarling animal, tensed and waiting for an attack, his eyes scanning the horizon for threats. Then the door hinges creaked, and he caught the familiar scent of Lupine. Blinking away a thin haze of his animal self, Eli refocused on the sight of a short, sturdy male form peering around the edge of the heavy, metal security door.

“Pace, are you in there?” the man asked, and the sound of his voice let Eli put a name to the still-shadowed face.

“It’s me, Bill.” He took a casual step forward and gritted his teeth against the loss of Josie’s warmth. It didn’t matter that he was plenty hot on his own; he wanted to keep touching her. “What can I do for you?”

Bill Evans stepped inside the clinic and frowned anxiously up at him. “I just got a call from the Alpha. He said you found an injured Lupine last night and brought her back to town. To the vet, since Dr. Shad was away.”

Eli nodded. Bill was a member of Rick’s Stone Creek Clan, and if the man was coming here ahead of his Alpha, it meant the local pack leader suspected Bill knew the identity of Josie’s patient.

“I did. A female. Do you know who it might be?”

The man ran a hand through a shaggy mess of light brown hair and drew in a shaky breath. “Lady, I hope not,” he said. “Rick said she sounded like she was hurt pretty bad. But—it’s just... my Rosemary didn’t come home last night. We had a real stupid fight just before suppertime, and she took off. She does that sometimes when she needs to cool down. She says it’s that or rip my balls off, so I didn’t think about it at the time. But then she didn’t come home. I went out this morning to look for her, but I didn’t find nothing, and then the Alpha called and told me about the one you found. But it can’t be my Rosie. Can it?”

Eli had a very bad feeling that’s exactly who it was. He searched for some way to break the news to the obviously distraught Lupine, but Josie stepped forward and spoke with a note of sympathetic professionalism.

“Bill? I’m Dr. Barrett. I can’t say for sure who I’ve been treating, since there wasn’t any identification on her, but I can tell you that her condition is stable. Either way, I’m sure you’ll feel better if you can see her for yourself. She’s resting in the other room right now. Why don’t you come with me, and I can let you see the patient, and you can tell me whether or not you know her.”

Josie spoke softly to Bill as she led him through the back of the clinic to a small room with cabinets on one wall, sophisticated-looking equipment on another, and a third lined with assorted sizes of clean metal cages. Eli could see that most of them were empty, but in the bottom row, the largest of all the cages was nearly hidden by a monitor and IV stands. A twin-size air mattress complete with pillow and rumpled blanket lay a little to the side. Behind the wire door, the still form of the injured Lupine lay on a thick fleece blanket, her eyes closed but her side rising and falling steadily with her breathing.

“Oh, Goddess, no. Not my Rosie,” Bill groaned, throwing himself to his knees beside the cage. He made distressing little whimpers as his hands fumbled for the latch. “Rosie, baby, come on. Look at me. It’s Billy. Rosie! Rosie, can you hear me, sweetheart?”

Josie bent down beside him and gently brushed his hands away so she could open the cage herself. “She had a minor bullet wound on her flank, Bill, but we stitched that up with no problem. The more serious issue was some internal bleeding. I had to operate to see where it was coming from and to get it stopped. I had to take out her spleen, but she should do just fine without that.” She opened the door and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “She’s probably still sore, so you’ll need to be gentle with her.”

Bill nodded frantically, but his eyes stayed locked on Rosemary. As soon as the barrier between them shifted, he lay down next to her, half in and half out of the cage. One elbow propped up his torso beside her, while he reached for her with the other, his shaking fingers tenderly ruffling the fur just behind her jaw.

“Aw, Rosie, baby. Look what you’ve done to yourself. My poor girl.”

Josie looked over her shoulder at Eli and grimaced, a sentiment he wholeheartedly shared. It was almost painful to watch the Lupine’s obvious grief and concern. But as touching as Bill’s reunion with his wife might be, they really needed him to answer some questions. Like, who might have wanted to shoot at Rosemary? Why were her injuries not healing? Why was she still unconscious? What kind of infection could a Lupine have contracted without showing any of the usual signs of illness?

Eli cleared his throat.

“Bill, we’re so sorry that Rosemary was hurt,” Josie said before he had a chance to speak, “but we are taking very good care of her—”

“Then why is she in a cage?” Bill demanded, glaring up at her through watery, red-rimmed eyes. “She’s not an animal! Why are you treating her like an animal?”

Eli saw the look of hurt that flashed across Josie’s face and felt a snarl of irritation tickle the back of his throat. He wanted to smack the Lupine for talking to her that way, but sheriffs weren’t allowed to go around assaulting people. Even the ones who showed disrespect to their mates.

“Dr. Barrett isn’t treating your wife like an animal, Evans,” he bit out, his voice low and perhaps a bit snarly. “She’s treating her like a patient. In case you haven’t noticed, her clinic isn’t exactly fitted with beds and TVs.”

Josie shot him a glare, then softened her expression for the Lupine. “Mr. Evans, I feel just as bad about where I’ve had to put Rosemary, I assure you. I would love to see her in a real bed at the clinic, but unfortunately, Dr. Shad has been out of town this weekend, so he hasn’t been able to take over her care. I’ve done the best I could, but she does need to be kept quiet and still while her body heals.”

“She should be healed already. What did you do to her?”

That time, Eli did step forward. “I’m going to suggest you watch your tone, Bill. Dr. Barrett hasn’t done anything to Rosemary that didn’t need doing. She has taken excellent care of your wife, and I’m sure she will continue to do so. Neither of us has been able to explain why Rosemary hasn’t healed, or why she hasn’t shifted. In fact, I think the doctor was kind of hoping you’d be able to help us figure that out.”

Bill deflated at those words and shook his head. “I—I don’t know. I can’t think why not. I mean, it’s instinct. If you get hurt, the first thing you do is shift. It usually feels like hell, but it also takes care of most of the problem. That’s kid stuff. She should have done it as soon as she was hit.”

Josie frowned. “Was Rosemary sick at all in the last week or so, Mr. Evans? Did she have a cold or the flu? Anything like that?”

“Lupines don’t catch colds, Dr. Barrett. We’re immune to them. We’re immune to almost everything that makes humans sick. And I haven’t seen Rosie sick a day since I’ve known her. That’s been twelve years now.”

“Because if she was already sick, if her immune system were somehow compromised, that could explain the slow healing,” Josie insisted. “It might even explain the lack of shifting, if she just felt too weak to go through that.”

“I’m telling you, she wasn’t sick. Not ever. She’s as healthy as I am.”

Eli took hold of Josie’s arm and pulled her back from the cage. “All right, Bill. We had to ask. Would you like to spend a few minutes with Rosemary?”

“I’d like to stay with her. Stay the night. She might wake up. She might need me. I don’t want her waking up all alone in a cage. It’s just not right.”

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Evans,” Josie began, “but I just don’t have any place to put you. I slept on the air mattress last night, but believe me when I tell you I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I’d be happy to call you—”

The Lupine’s expression turned mulish. “No, I have to stay with her.”

“Mr. Evans, I honestly—”

“I can crawl into that cage with her,” Bill interrupted. “I won’t mind. It’s big enough for the two of us in wolf form. And I promise I’ll be careful of her tubes and stuff. We don’t get stupid just because we change shape. I can be careful.”

“I’m sure you can, but—”

Eli nudged her with a knee. “C’mon, Doc. Let him stay. He can keep an eye on her so you won’t have to sleep on the floor again, and maybe his presence will help bring her around. You never know.”

“It’s totally unorthodox—”

“Please.”

Josie gave in with a sigh. “All right, but you’re going to have to promise not to touch her monitor or her IV. She’s on an antibiotic in case there is some kind of infection, and until I know for sure that there isn’t, I don’t want the treatment interrupted. The last thing she needs is to develop an unknown resistance to an unknown bug.”

“Sure.”

“And you have to be up, out of the cage, and dressed by six o’clock. I don’t want my staff finding you still here in the morning and freaking out.”

“I promise!”

The vow barely made it through his teeth before Bill scrambled to his haunches, bowed his head, and shifted, shaking off layers of cloth to reveal thick fur. It happened so fast that Josie looked dizzy from the change. She made a strangled sound of protest when Bill the scraggly, buff-colored wolf climbed carefully into the cage with his mate and curled up against her back. He nuzzled her ear and gave a tender lick to the neat line of stitches on her flank before laying his muzzle gently over her shoulder with a heartfelt groan. Even the veterinarian in Josie didn’t try to stop him, though, and Eli thought that was the important part.

He tugged at her sleeve and nodded toward the door. “Come on. Let’s give them some privacy.”

He could see her medical training and her emotions warring inside her, their battle plans broadcast in those chocolate-dark eyes of hers, but in the end she sighed and followed him back through the swinging door to the triage area.

“Well, at least we know who she is now,” Josie said, sounding as if she lacked a certain amount of the excitement she thought appropriate.

“There is that,” Eli agreed, but his mind was already flipping through a million questions that Bill hadn’t been able to answer.

He wanted to talk to Rick some more, so that was a third call he’d have to make, and tomorrow morning, when he was ostensibly off duty, he could finally head back out to the scene of the shooting to see if there was anything worth seeing. His deputy hadn’t turned anything up, but if Eli got lucky, maybe his sharper Feline senses would help him find some tracks that belonged to the shooter, or even a bullet casing. Josie could deal with the medical mystery and puzzle out the reason for Rosemary’s delayed recovery, but Eli wanted to know why the Lupine had been shot in the first place.

Josie cleared her throat, tugging his attention back to her, and shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Well, um, thanks again. For dinner, I mean.”

The look on her face matched the hesitation in her speech, all uncertain and female and vulnerable. It made Eli’s mouth twitch and his chest swell.

His chest, and other things.

“We’ll do it again,” he told her, reaching up to tuck back a strand of silky dark hair that had slipped free from her ponytail. Then he couldn’t resist rubbing the pad of his thumb over the full center of her bottom lip. He’d never felt anything so soft, not in his life.

“We will?”

“Soon.”

He bent his head and took her mouth before she could stop him. Judging from the way she melted against him, though, stopping him didn’t number among her top priorities. He knew it was a fierce kiss, not the kind he’d planned on. Not right away. He’d meant it to be a good-night kiss, soft and sweet and a little bit seductive, but instead his beast had seized control, and it wanted to gobble her up like a Christmas cookie.

It took a serious expenditure of willpower to pull away, and even more to step back from her. When she looked at him like that, with her lips pink and swollen, her lids heavy, her eyes all soft and unfocused, it was all he could do not to carry her down to the nearest horizontal surface and show her exactly how she affected him. But this wasn’t the time.

It wasn’t the time.

He ended up repeating that to himself all the way home. It was the only thing that kept his feet headed in the right direction.

Exp. 10-1017.03

Log 03-00128

Technicians report three doses successfully administered, however one subject appears to have suffered a reaction and must be removed from the experiment. Have instructed techs to leave the remains. Will use them as unplanned aside to study if current product has any native mutation abilities that could be passed on through consumption of contaminated material.

Tomorrow will have technicians dose a replacement subject along with three new subjects for Stage 3C. New product will be ready by morning. Optimism remains high.

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