The Thing About Weres

Wild man’s eyes. A little flicker of one single blue comet did a quick half turn around his dark pupil and then flickered out. He stared at me, with an expression I could only define as a look of distrust.

“Trowbridge?” I said in a little voice.

His brows knitted, then he started across the room, but so very, very slowly and deliberately. One foot placed directly in front of the other. An odd gait—as if he were walking a tightrope—head lowered just the fraction needed to stir fright and trepidation, eyes steady on the target of me.

Sex. The man oozed it. That, and suppressed violence.

His scent reached for me first, as it always had. Stretching out for me, before his hand ever met my flesh, to prepare the way, to brush my skin with invisible, silken fingers. “Hello, sweetheart. It’s me.” That’s how I remember it. Soft and light. Teasing. I’d replayed the sensation of it on my skin many a night as I lay in my bunk bed, running my own hand along my hairless arm, trying to reconstruct that wonderful sensation when his scent wrapped itself around me. But the unexpected rawness of it now on my skin was a far cry from my memories. It felt far more solid, as if his personal signature had been cooked over a high heat until it was thick as syrup. Potent, too, with a sexual heat so very different from the coaxing, tender element that I’d marked as Trowbridge’s. This essence of him didn’t have time for sweet whispers of seduction. It was arrogant and sure of itself. No flattery. No pretty words.

It hit me with the brute force of a linebacker, and my lady parts responded in an unexpectedly sharp contraction of desire. Well, isn’t that just dandy, I thought, woozily straightening as it wove me into its foreign embrace. Score one for his team.

Yes, his eyes replied. And for a second, in the brief curl of his wide mouth and the gleam in his eye, I saw the ghost of the man I’d shoved through the portal. But that faded away all too soon, as this new Trowbridge tilted his head back to inhale deeply.

Again, his nostrils flared.

It felt rude—that intimate assessment of my fuckability in front of others—and in reaction, I clamped my knees together, trying to contain the scent of my desire. My mate paused, mid-step, eyeing my resistance as if he were surprised, and then he began to stalk toward me again, chin up, cheekbones highlighted by the morning light spilling from the window, inhaling my essence without my permission. He came to a full stop in front of me, an arm reach away. Cocked his head to the side, and just studied my face for a bit. His gaze roamed. My hair. My face. My boobs.

One hot look was all it took for my nipples to bead and my breasts to swell.

His neck moved as he swallowed.

“Don’t look directly into his eyes,” I heard my brother say. “He’s still under the influence of the moon and part wolf.”

Seriously, shut up, Lexi.

Trowbridge took a step forward—claiming my personal space as his territory—to prop his arm on the wall above my head. Fuzzy ropes of hair tickled my cheek as he bent his head. I heard him inhale slowly through his nose.

I don’t carry your scent anymore.

But I was becoming … fragrant. I was wet, and positively aching.

So, there are two situations when a Fae exudes her own aroma. Never noticed that before. But then again, I only feel this way around Trowbridge, and usually if he’s naked, I am, too. And then it’s impossible to separate scents.

There is just the two of us, mixed together into one identity of heat, and flame, and passion.

“Hell.” I slanted my eyes to my left. Lexi held out a hand. “Slide away. Come to me, and I will protect you.”

Smack. Trowbridge flattened his left hand on the wall between us.

Well, I guess that would be a no. I stood there, trapped in the cradle of his body, quietly luxuriating in the warmth radiating from his arm. Trowbridge’s scent wrapped itself around me, now spiced by the musk of his arousal. Is this what violence and sex smells like? When it’s been welded onto the surface of a man?

I liked it.

Trowbridge had always been an insanely sensual visual feast … but now? All the civility had been stripped from him, and what was left was raw male power.

Who knew. I was a back-to-basics girl.

Like for instance—his arm. It was dusted with hair, a little dirty from the grime he’d picked up on the floor during his change, and well, not to overwork a theme, really freakin’ well muscled.

My vagina clenched like the buttocks of a cheerleader doing an aerial rah-rah. And suddenly, I was damn glad for the support of the wall because it was fifty-fifty that one of my knees was going to give out.

“Come now,” said my twin.

Like hell I will.

From the moment my hormones starting cranking out the girl pheromones, my inner-Were, my mortal heart, my very DNA—whatever you want to call the sum of my want for Trowbridge—had recognized him as mine. And now here he was. His body arched over mine. His cock full and heavy, its blunt head teasing the folds of the loose cotton T-shirt I wore.

His T-shirt, come to think of it.

“I don’t need protection from him,” I told my brother, my gaze clinging to Trowbridge’s parted lips.

“You don’t know what he is,” hissed Lexi.

“But I know who he is,” I said, touching my Trowbridge’s face. Oh, I recognized him. He was there, under all that wolf and tangled hair, buried deep. A muscle tensed under my finger as I stroked his skin. “He’s Robbie Trowbridge, son of the Alpha of Creemore. He lived in a big yellow house, he drove a Jeep, and he was the most popular guy at St. Hubert’s.”

The fanwork of lines at the corner of his eyes tightened.

“Some nights, he’d go sit under the tree on the lookout, and play his guitar. He thought he was alone, but he wasn’t.” A spark of a blue comet circled his pupils. I softened my voice, seducing him close with a low whisper, until his mouth was mere inches from mine. So close.

Kiss me, Trowbridge. Kiss me.

“I was there. Whenever I heard that guitar, I’d sneak out of the house and go find myself a hiding spot near the lookout on our ridge, so that I could listen to Robbie Trowbridge play. Sometimes, he’d play for a couple of hours. But other nights he’d only get halfway through a song before he stopped playing. Then he’d just sit there and stare up at the stars. I used to wonder what he was thinking. Even after I was back to my own bed, I’d ask myself. What was Robbie Trowbridge thinking when he looked up into the sky?”

My words were coaxing him closer, tugging the man hidden inside the wolf nearer, but it wasn’t enough. I’d waited so long. Hoped for so much.

Mine, mine, mine, crooned my wolf.

“Trowbridge, what did you see in the stars?” I asked, daring to cup his face.

The wolf wavered, reluctant to step back.

Then, because I play dirty, I did what I knew I must. I dropped every barrier I had, and flared the way I’d done the first time for him. For him, for us, I showed him all of me—what I am, what I should be, what I could be—through the pure light spilling from my eyes. Did you try to forget me? my flare asked. I will never let you. He made the smallest inhale, and then the beast was gone. My Trowbridge flared back and gifted me with a beautiful electric-blue light—fire hot, soul bright.

Our two separate flares flashed across a battlefield not of our making.

Evermore, you are mine.

For a moment—how long it was I’ll never be able to define—there was no Trowbridge electric blue, nor Hedi fluorescent green. Our individual flares merged into one, and the room that I remembered as being red turned into the warm blue-green of a sea that knew no turmoil, no current, no wind.

Evermore, I am yours.

My flare flickered out on the heels of that vow. His held for another half beat, then it, too, faded. “There you are,” I murmured, looking into his tired eyes. “There’s my Trowbridge.”