CHAPTER 13

Eli found Josie curled up on her sofa wearing an ancient T-shirt that looked like it would fit three of her. She had her feet tucked up under the hem and her arms wrapped around her knees; her hair hung down around her shoulders in a dark, gleaming curtain. Beside her, Bruce lay on the sofa in a shaggy, dark-eyed lump, his chin propped on Josie’s elbow. She looked about sixteen years old, which—based on where his mind went every single time he laid eyes on her—made him a damn pervert.

She had left her apartment door unlocked, and he took that as an invitation. Any other time, he’d have taken it as a cue to read her a lecture on personal safety, security, and the inadvisability of being too trusting in this day and age, but at the moment he had more important things to discuss with her. He’d get to the lecture another time.

“How was Ben?” she asked as he lifted her from her cushion and usurped her place, settling her onto his lap instead. Bruce just sighed and curled himself into a hairy, lopsided ball.

“He’s fine. He was discussing where tonight would fit in his memoirs when I left him at his house. He already called one of his co-workers—Andrea, right?—and arranged to have her pick him up and drive him to work in the morning. Since he left his car downstairs.”

Josie rested her head against his shoulder and nodded. “Good. I didn’t think to ask him if he’d need a ride before you guys left. I guess I still wasn’t thinking clearly.”

They sat in silence for several more minutes, Eli stroking her silky hair while an old Cary Grant movie flickered on the television, the volume so low it was barely audible. In the end, Josie spoke first.

“I don’t want you to think that I was dumb enough to go into that cage after you left,” she said quietly, “but I did look into the room. I guess that was what you didn’t want me to ask about before you left with Ben, huh?”

Eli sighed, feeling suddenly tired. “I just knew it would be a discussion that didn’t need to keep Ben away from his own sofa. He needed to get home. And I’ll admit, I did kind of hope that you wouldn’t want to go back into that room after what had happened.”

Josie drew back and pierced him with an incredulous look. “In the time that I’ve known you, have I done anything to indicate that I’m a delicate little flower of womanhood who faints at the sight of blood and loses her head in a crisis?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what made you think that I wouldn’t want to go back in there?”

“Because I barely wanted to go back in there. Seeing Bill flip out like that shook me up. At first I was afraid he was going to kill Ben, then I was afraid he was going to hurt you, and then I was afraid I was going to have to take him down with a bullet. None of those options made me a very happy man.”

“And I can understand that, but I’m a vet, and at the moment, those two are my patients. I can’t just leave them in there to rot. They still need food and water and medications and wound care. That doesn’t change just because both of them are now acting like actual rabid wolves.”

He swore. “Rosemary, too?”

“Yes. I thought you saw her before and that’s why you didn’t want me to go in there.”

“No, she had started to wake up when I was there, but she still couldn’t stand. I didn’t want you to see what Bill did to his bedding.”

“That he’d shredded his bed and marked the stuffing?” She snorted. “If you think I haven’t seen worse than that on a slow night in vet school, you’re out of your mind. Besides, Rosemary was in the middle of doing the same thing the last time I saw her; she was just neater about it. She had all the stuffing piled into the corner in a new bed, and Bill was guarding her from all comers. I decided to leave them to it.”

“It wasn’t what he did; it was what it signifies.”

Josie looked confused. “What do you mean? I pretty much just assumed it signified that he was a wolf. Am I missing something?”

“That’s exactly it. Bill is acting like a wolf. And apparently, so is Rosemary.” When she shook her head mutely, he elaborated. “The aggression stemming from defensiveness and territoriality. The guarding of his mate and marking his territory. Those are all wolf behaviors, not things you see in Lupines.”

He saw when Josie began to understand what he was getting at. “You think they’re turning into actual wolves?”

“Sort of.” He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair and tried to order his thoughts. “There are rumors among all the animal shapeshifters about the dangers of spending too long in any form other than human. According to the stories, if a shifter spends too long in the between form, he or she will get stuck there and no longer be able to take on the shape of either a human or an animal. And not belonging in either world will drive the shifter into insanity.”

“God, that’s horrible.”

“They say something similar about staying in animal form, although some people take a sort of romantic view of the idea of reverting completely to the animal form. A shifter who takes on his animal shape and refuses to turn back could be trapped in that animal form forever. He wouldn’t be caught between two worlds, though. He would become fully an animal, with all an animal’s instincts and emotions, but with an ability to reason much more advanced than any other in his species. And the strength to match.”

“Like some kind of super wolf?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Josie sat up straight and turned to face him, her expression reflecting both horror at the idea and a sense of guilt at not being able to stop it. She seemed determined to take the entire world’s troubles on her shoulders.

“We can’t let that happen,” she declared firmly. “We have to find a way to fix this.”

“I agree. And that’s why we’ve sent the blood samples to Steve, and it’s why the witch is going to come out to evaluate Rosemary and Bill tomorrow.”

“Right. I just hope she can evaluate from a distance, because there’s no way I’m letting anyone into that kennel until I can figure out a way to get them sedated again.”

Eli blinked. “You think you can do that?”

“Clearly, sedatives have worked up until now. If we’re lucky, their bodies are just learning to cope with the chemicals they’ve been exposed to in the past, building up a resistance. If I can find a new chemical, one they haven’t been exposed to before, it might buy us some time to either treat them or keep them from hurting anyone else.”

“And you think that could work?”

“Theoretically, but I won’t know for sure until I try.”

The image of Josie walking into the kennel with a syringe in one hand and a dog biscuit in the other made him blanch. “You’re not going to try just giving them shots until you find the right drug.”

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind, which strangely made him feel better.

“Do I look suicidal to you? I don’t think so. Since we’re the only vet in a bit of a drive, we’re licensed to provide emergency care to wildlife, some of which don’t take well to being handled by strangers. We have an air gun that shoots tranquilizer darts. I can use that and shoot through the chain link. If I hit one of them, I just wait to see if they go down. If not, I try another drug, and if so, I shoot the other one.”

That really only offered him a minimal amount of comfort. “I still don’t like the idea of you getting too close to them.”

“I can’t treat them if I can’t touch them.”

“And you can’t touch them if they rip your arms off,” he shot back. “I want you to promise me that you won’t go in that cage on your own even if you think they’ve got them both sedated.”

“If they’re unconscious, I don’t see what they could do to hurt me.”

“Promise.”

“Eli—”

“Promise.”

She gave in with very little grace. “Fine. I won’t go in the cage unless I have someone else around.”

“Unless I’m around.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Eli, I can’t put my practice on hold and wait around for you to get off duty before I perform a medical procedure.”

“I’m not asking you to let me know when you have to put a splint on the leg of a cocker spaniel,” he argued, cupping her jaw in his hand. “This is a special circumstance, and this is the only time I’m going to insist. But I am going to insist. Understand?”

“Fine.”

Her grace seemed to be slipping away like the tide. He discovered he liked that. He didn’t want to think of Josie being cautious or polite with him. He wanted her to be comfortable and honest and completely herself. He wanted her to argue with him. Anything less would bore him silly.

His mouth curved and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she muttered, reaching up to drag him back down to her. “But just so you know, your aim stinks.”

Then she planted her mouth on his and proceeded to drive him crazy.

Absently, Eli heard Bruce heave a disgusted sigh and felt the sofa cushions shift. The dog jumped to the floor and padded his way into the bedroom. Absently, because Eli had much more important things to think about than Josie’s dog. Like Josie herself.

His hand moved from her jaw to the back of her head so he could hold her still while he turned the tables on her. He went from an ordinary male with bad aim to a pillaging conqueror in the space of a breath, and then he decided to steal her breath as well.

If it were possible, he wanted her to feel his hunger, actually experience it alongside him, not just respond to the evidence of it. He wanted her to know how warm and soft and feminine she felt in his arms, not just wriggle and strain in his grip. He wanted to share with her how it felt to slide inside her and feel that amazing, mind-blowing sensation of coming home.

And if he couldn’t do all of that, he at least wanted to imprint himself on her soul, so that she would never forget how he felt, how he smelled, how he tasted. Gods knew he could never forget her.

The hunger he had sated that morning stirred awake like the kraken rising from the sea. It welled up inside him until he wanted to swallow her whole just so he could carry her always inside of him. The crazy part was that he knew he was being ridiculous, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop himself.

He slid his hands under the hem of her oversize shirt and found nothing but warm, silky skin, and that by itself made his head spin faster than a mouthful of straight whiskey. He stroked her hip, her back, the curve of her waist and wondered who enjoyed the caresses more, the touched or the toucher? At the moment he felt like he could stay this way forever, just holding her closer, tasting her, breathing her in, and feeling the living velvet of her flesh beneath his hands.

She became impatient well before him. With a frustrated groan, she yanked the shirt off over her head and tossed it to the floor, leaving Eli to experience the epiphany of finding her more beautiful tonight than she had been last night, the first time he’d seen her nudity, or this morning under the bright lights of her clinic. He’d expected that the magic of looking on a lover for the first time could never be recaptured. It lived in that instant, in the revelation of something previously unknown. But he’d had it all wrong.

This was magic, this knowing that the sandy pink of her erect nipple would flush the most beguiling shade of rose when he circled it with his tongue, then deepen further still from the pressure of his suckling mouth. Magic lived in the way he knew that the tiny little cluster of moles on her left hip formed a shape like a compass rose. The magic nearly flattened him when she leaned forward and he felt the familiar weight of her breasts against his chest, the perfectly remembered fit of their bodies aligned.

Magic, he realized, had nothing to do with novelty.

Thirsty, he bent again to her mouth and drank of her sweetness. His hands stroked up her sides, cuddling her breasts in his palms, thumbs strumming against her nipples until she mewled like a hungry kitten. The sound echoed inside his head and left him dazed and aching. Her smallest sounds, her lightest touches, affected him like nothing else ever had. Her restless movements, however, warned him that for Josie, small and light was not nearly enough.

Suddenly urgent, her fingers fumbled with the fastening of his jeans. Eli reached down to help her. Between them, they managed to rid him of the confining fabric and that, too, fell unheeded to the floor.

Her hand closed around him and wrenched a sound from deep inside his chest. His head dropped back to the cushions behind him and his lips arched into her touch. Her graceful, elegant fingers tightened with surprising strength around the base of his erection and milked upward until he had to grit his teeth against the urge to beg. He felt no shame at the idea of leaving himself vulnerable to her, but he didn’t know whether to beg her to stop or to move faster, and he feared that if he opened his mouth, the wrong answer would spring forth.

He suffered the glory of half a dozen slow, taunting strokes and opened his mouth to beg for mercy, but thankfully, Josie showed him none. Gripping him with one hand, she swung her leg over both of his and slowly, slowly—cruelly slow—sank down and enveloped him.

And what had been magical became miraculous.

Her name poured from his throat in a tight, hoarse, rasping shadow of sound. He felt her inner muscles tighten around him, felt her body weeping in welcome, and thought that this was what it must mean to be blessed.

His control broke with a resounding snap, leaving his inner beast free to spring to the kill. His hands closed like a steel vise on her hips, wrenching the reins of their mating from her grasp. Ruthlessly, relentlessly, he held her down as his body pounded up into hers. Her breathing turned into a shuttering, gasping series of breathless pants, and he felt her thighs begin to quiver alongside his, but he ignored her and pushed them both farther toward oblivion.

Again and again their bodies slapped together in a primitive rhythm. Again and again Eli thought the next stroke would be his last, and again and again his beast would roar its displeasure and demand one more. One more. One more.

But there would always be one more, because Eli knew in the deepest recesses of his self that he would never have enough of this woman. Never have enough of his mate.

Never have enough.

But his body was as weak as hers, and they could take only so much. He rose up, slamming deep within her and touching off a shuddering series of internal contractions that dragged him over the edge with her.

Head back, jaw clenched, he screamed his pleasure and dominance to the night, and at the same time surrendered himself utterly to the woman he would never let go.

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