too, professionally and personally.
So—what? Jump on her? Ask for seconds? Get a refill on his milk glass? Ask her out for the next night and go home and try to sleep with a raging hard-on? (He didn’t know about other werewolves, but masturbation had always seemed to him silly and wasteful.) What?
“Do you want a refill?”
“No,” he snapped.
“Cripes, sorry. Well, why don’t we just get to it, then? But let me clear the dishes first.”
He sat like a lump while she cleaned off the small kitchen table, rinsed dishes, put the milk back in the fridge.
Had he heard her right? Get to it? Get to what? Maybe she had a slide show all prepared, or puppets in the closet, or something. It sure as shit couldn’t be what he was thinking. Nothing in his life had come easy; he didn’t expect things to change now.
He caught another whiff as she went by
and then realization hit and he backed up so fast his chair fell over.
“You’re ovulating!” he cried, and it was as much an accusation as “You’re the killer!”
She blinked owlish eyes at him; her pupils were enormous, and ringed in dark green.
“What?” she was asking. “I mean, I am, but how can you tell?”
“Because you smell like peaches in syrup. I was so distracted by all the other smells, I didn’t—no, no!” He backed away from her. “I have to go home now.”
She pouted. Her full lower lip actually poked out and he thought about sucking it into his—“But I wanted you to spend the night.”
“No way. Not if there’s a chance you’ll get pregnant.”
She blinked again, slowly. “But I’m on the Pill.”
“You’re lying.” It would only occur to him later to wonder why she had lied about such a thing.
“Well.” That seemed to give her pause. “You could wear a condom.”
“No.”
“Oh, so you’re one of
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but they don’t work,” he explained, as patiently as he could while climbing over the coffee table to stay away from her. “I guess latex doesn’t stop werewolf sperm.”
“Oh.” Weirdly (what the hell was going on?) she seemed pleased at the idea. “I guess you won’t believe me if I tell you I’ve got a diaphragm in the bathroom.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“But we haven’t had dessert!” she wailed, gesturing to the dishes of fresh pie.
Eight
Annoyingly, she could drive as fast as he could run, or almost, because he had barely slammed and locked his front door when she was hammering on it.
“Cole! Come on, don’t be a baby. Let me in and we’ll talk about this!”
“No!” he yelled back, resting against his front door. If he let her in, they were going to mate. If you put your hand in the fire you got burned, if you jumped into mud you got dirty, and if an ovulating female got too close to a werewolf, he got laid. They both did.
“Why are you acting like this?”
“I don’t want a baby!”
“Then stop acting like one!”
Argh. Faulty human hearing. “I didn’t say I wasn’t acting like one, I said I didn’t
“But why don’t you?”
“Because I don’t even know you!” he lied. Of all the reasons not to mate with a healthy, gorgeous, sweetly rounded, helpful, intelligent female, not “knowing” her was the least of it. “Now get back into your car and go away!”
“You know, the full moon’s over seven days away,” she said. “I looked it up. It’s not like you’re going to burst into hair right this second.”
“It’s four days away,” he corrected her. “Get lost.”
“Are we really going to have a conversation like this through your door?”
“Not if you get lost.”
She was silent. Thank God! He slumped to the floor, still throbbing, still wanting her. But he could never do that to
The thought made his heart hurt, actually cramp like when you swam too long and your legs burned. He ignored it; his personal feelings about someone he barely knew—
He slapped his hands over his eyes and shook his head. How would he know? Anyway, it was a perfect example of why he shouldn’t knock Charlene up. What if his son or daughter wanted to know these things in twenty years?
What the hell could he tell him or her? “Sorry, I was supposed to find out but I got your mom pregnant and settled in Mysteria instead, and never got around to finding my people. Well, good luck and all.”
Never.
He could hear Charlene rustling around the side of his house, doubtless looking for a way to get in. Silly bunny; she had no chance. He wished she would give up and break a window. Argh! He meant give up and go home, yeah, go home, that’s what he wanted.
He heard a double click, and instantly realized what had happened. As Char stepped through the back door, he howled,
“What?” the ghost asked petulantly. “Nobody’s gotten any in this place for decades. I think you should go for it.”
“I had no interest in it before—”
“So—what? That’s an electric drill in your pants?”
“—and I’m sure not doing it if you’re going to watch!”
“Oh, calm down, princess. After all these years, I’ve decided sex is fundamentally boring, at least from a voyeur’s point of view. I’ll be in the basement. Did you know the tap’s been leaking since last night?”
“Go fuck yourself, Rae!”
No answer. Just as well. Somewhere, Mama Zee could probably sense he had been swearing, not to mention rude to a lady. A dead lady, but still.
Charlene was stamping down the hall toward him, her breasts jiggling with every stamp. He tried to look at her face for about a second, immediately gave up the battle, and turned to scrabble at the locked door. His fingers were suddenly too big, the lock the size of a pin head.
If the neighborhood could see him now, the neighborhood enforcer scrambling to escape from a woman who barely came up to his chin . . .
Her arms were around him and she was raining kisses on the back of his neck. He groaned and fought the door as if it was a living thing, but it stubbornly resisted him.
