’Fraid so. So your option is to surrender to me or I’ll hold you down so she can knock you senseless. Which story would you rather have circulating?
Shit. I surrender to you.
Werewolf’s honor?
You got it, big guy.
Aidan relaxed his grip and let Theo wiggle out from under him. Emma must have stil considered him a threat, because she smacked him a good one on the head with the hair dryer. He went down for the count.
The moment he was unconscious, he began shifting back to human form. Emma seemed transfixed by the sight. She stood there rigidly, her hand over her mouth.
Aidan padded into the master bath and nudged the door closed with his paw. By the time he came out wearing a towel, Emma had thrown her comforter over Theo while she continued to stare at him.
She glanced up when Aidan emerged from the bathroom. He met her gaze without flinching. In some ways he was relieved that she final y knew. But damage control was going to be a bitch.
She swal owed. “So it was you last night.”
“Yes.”
“Not a figment of my imagination. Not a nightmare.”
“No.”
“You a**hole!” She hurled the hair dryer at him, and the cord snaked out behind it.
He ducked, and the dryer smacked against the wal before dropping with a thud to the carpet. The plug had caught him on the arm as it went by. He’d have a welt there soon.
“Coming into your bedroom as a wolf was a tactical error,” he said.
She opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it again. Final y she shook her head. “Forgive me. You’re talking about tactical errors and I’m stil trying to—to get my head around ...”
“I know.” Instinctively he moved toward her.
She held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Keep your distance, Aidan. I don’t know who you are or what you are, and until I get my bearings, picture a large bubble of protection around me, okay?”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Just for the record, this is a whole new experience for me, too. I’ve never revealed myself to a human before.”
“So you’re not ... human.”
“I’m mostly human. But I can shift into wolf form, so that means that I—”
“I know a little something about werewolves, Aidan. I’ve been writing about them for six years. I just never expected to meet one.” She glanced down at Theo’s prone form. “Or two.”
“We should probably see if we can revive him.”
She glanced at his leg. “And stop your bleeding. You’re making an unholy mess. Is that real blood?”
“Yes, it’s real blood! I’m not an alien, for Christ’s sake. You write about this stuff.
You should know.”
“I make it al up!”
“Well, you happen to be correct about most things. I’m a man in this form, and I bleed like a man, but I’l heal faster because of the shift.” And he was making quite the mess. In the excitement of the moment, he’d forgotten that Theo had created a sizable gash in his calf when the kid had tried to cripple him. No doubt about it, Theo would have fol owed through if he’d hit Aidan’s Achil es tendon. Good thing that hadn’t happened.
“Get some washcloths from the bathroom,” Emma said. “You can hold one on your leg and I’l sponge Theo’s face. That might wake him up. Oh, and bring the tie from my bathrobe. I left it hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”
“What’s the tie for?”
“Theo, of course. When he’s conscious, he could be a lot of trouble. We’d better tie him up before we revive him.”
“We don’t have to tie him.”
She frowned. “I’d rather be safe than sorry. I don’t want the two of you getting in another fight, either as men or beasts. Once is plenty for me.”
“There won’t be another fight.”
“How can you be so sure? He’s whacked, Aidan. Not that you aren’t, too, but you’re whacked and seminormal. He’s thoroughly whacked.”
He decided to ignore her whacked and seminormal comment for the time being.
“Think about what you’ve written, Emma. Werewolves are pack animals. Once an alpha has subdued another pack member, he returns to his subservient position.
You had that very situation in Shifty Business. ”
“You mean I was right about that? Cool!”
“You were right about a lot of things.” He wondered how and when he should tel her that she’d been under investigation because of being so right. “On top of that, once Theo discovers he was knocked unconscious by a woman wielding a hair dryer, he won’t be any trouble at al . He’l never want the rest of the pack to know about that. We have blackmail material that will last a long time.”
“We? What do you mean, we? Come tomorrow morning, I’m outta here.” Her voice was ful of bravado, probably false bravado.
He wanted to avoid this discussion until they’d both calmed down. “We’l talk about that later.”
“What do you mean by that?” Her voice rose in pitch.
“Let’s take care of Theo and figure out the best way to get him home. Then we’l discuss the options.”
“There’s only one option. I’m leaving for Denver in the morning to continue my book tour.” Her chin lifted in defiance.
In truth, he wasn’t sure how to handle this. Security had been breached, and precautions must be taken. He couldn’t just let her fly off to Denver by herself. Not after she’d witnessed something like this.
“I’l get the washcloths.” He went into the bathroom.
She fol owed him. “Look, Aidan, I don’t care how rich you are or how much real estate you own. I don’t care if every single Wal ace is a werewolf.”
Thinking discretion was the better part of valor, he pul ed white washcloths from the toWellrack and stuck two under the faucet.
“I’m a free citizen of the United States of America,” she continued bravely, “and I’m going to Denver in the morning.”
He squeezed out the washcloths. “These should work for Theo.”
She took the washcloths and tossed them on the counter. “I mean it, Aidan. Don’t mess with my book tour. It’s important to my career.”
“I know.” He took a dry washcloth and pressed it against the wound in his leg.
She was standing close to him, close enough that her scent had begun working on him again. In the heat of battle, he blocked out any irrelevant sensory impressions, but afterward, there was always the urge to release tension in some way. A run through the woods worked. Sex worked.
“Here, let me do that.” She crouched down beside him. Apparently she no longer felt the need for the bubble of protection she’d claimed earlier.
“I’ve got it. Go see about Theo.” He didn’t dare look at her. From this position he could see down the front of her little black dress.
“You’re a real bossy-pants, Aidan, do you know that?”
“Just go check on him, please.”
“Al right.” With a sigh she rose, grabbed a washcloth from the counter, and walked into the bedroom.
He watched her go, his attention captured by the way her firm little backside moving seductively under the stretchy black material of her cocktail dress. His tailbone began to ache.
She cal ed to him from the bedroom. “He’s gone!”
Tossing the washcloth in the sink, Aidan left the bathroom. Sure enough, Theo was no longer lying unconscious on the floor.
Aidan wasn’t al that surprised. If he’d been in Theo’s place, he would have cut out the minute he regained consciousness. But the kid couldn’t have made it down the elevator and through the lobby nak*d.
Then Aidan figured it out. “Looks like he took the top sheet from your bed and wrapped himself in that so he could ride the elevator to the lobby.”
Her eyes widened. “And then what? He couldn’t hail a cab wearing a sheet. No cabdriver is going to take a chance on picking up what looks like a loony.”
“I’m sure once he made it out to the sidewalk, he found a dark al ey and shifted back to wolf form. He’s running now and praying nobody ever finds out how thoroughly he was humiliated tonight.”
Emma walked over to the bedroom window and pul ed back the curtain. “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him after the way he’s behaved, but I stil hate to think of him alone out there in the cold, especial y when he’s hurt. I popped him good with that hair dryer, and he had some gashes on his throat, too.”
“He’s a wolf, Emma. This is how a wolf reacts to humiliation. That was my goal, to humiliate and intimidate him. I wanted his complete surrender, and I got it.”
She shivered. “That seems harsh.”
“He was prepared to reveal himself to a human and break pack law. He had to be dealt with.”
She gazed at him. “But he succeeded, didn’t he? He did reveal himself to me. And so did you.”
“Yes.”
She continued to stare at him, and judging from her expression, she was beginning to realize the magnitude of the problem. “Well.”
This would be the time to offer some comforting platitude, like It’ll all work out. But he was too honest to give her false hope. He wasn’t sure how it would work out.
Her attention moved to his leg. “You’re stil bleeding. Let’s at least solve that issue. Go on back in the bathroom, and let me see if I can get it to stop.”
“Al right.” Tending to his wound seemed like the sensible thing to do, so he fol owed her suggestion, or rather, her order. He understood why she, too, might be getting a little bossy.
Her previous worldview had been shattered, and in sorting through the wreckage, she was trying to regain some measure of control. He could al ow her to dictate how his wound should be tended, but he couldn’t let her decide how the next few days would go, or maybe even the next few weeks or months.
He wondered whether she realized that her life had changed forever and it was never changing back.
Chapter 18
Emma was beginning to get the picture, and it was an unsettling one. Now that the initial shock had worn off and she could think, she’d started piecing things together.
Apparently, she’d stumbled upon a group of beings who didn’t want their presence known.
Or more precisely, they’d stumbled upon her. Al she’d intended to do was promote her book. She hadn’t invited real werewolves to show up. But they had, and now she possessed knowledge that the werewolves didn’t want other humans to find out.
If not for Aidan, she’d fear for her life. The simple way to plug the hole would be to eliminate her. Problem solved. But Aidan wielded power among werewolves. She’d seen that demonstrated with Theo. Aidan wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She was counting on that.
So the first order of business was taking care of her protector’s leg. She also wanted information, lots of information. The more she knew about this strange new world, the less she’d have to fear from it. At least that was the theory.
Back in the bathroom, she dampened a washcloth and knelt down so she could dab his wound. “I want to clean it up a little before I apply pressure. Do you suppose you need a tetanus shot?”
“No.”
“Rabies?”
“Werewolves are incredibly resistant to any kind of disease.”
She made a mental note of that. “Why?”
“We’re a very old species. We’ve built up immunity to most of the diseases known to either man or beast.”
“Makes sense.” She pressed the damp washcloth against the jagged tear in his skin, skin that looked and felt like that of a man but could transform into the hide of a wolf. Despite being in a very precarious spot, she was fascinated at the prospect of interacting with a creature she’d thought lived only in her imagination.
“I’l bet modern science would love to tap into that immune system.” She said it without thinking, but the heavy silence that greeted her comment conveyed volumes. “But of course that’s impossible,” she said quickly, “because then they’d know you existed.” Be smart, Emma. Even Aidan might not be able to protect you if you keep making remarks like that.
“In the old days, werewolves were hunted almost to extinction,” Aidan said. “We’re not eager to go back to those times.”
“I’m sure not. Aidan, you can trust me. I’m not going to put you or the others at risk.”
“That’s easy to say, Emma. Harder to do.”
Her sense of uneasiness grew, but she was reluctant to ask the hard questions for fear she’d get some hard answers. She liked her life the way it was. She didn’t want it to change.
“The bleeding’s slowing down some.” She held a dry washcloth against his leg and braced her other hand on the far side of his calf to apply some pressure to the wound. “I’m beginning to understand what the arranged marriage is about. You’re like the prince of the Wal ace family, and Nadia is the princess of the Henderson family.”
“We general y use the word pack instead of family.”
“Even when you’re in human form?” She found herself becoming more aware of his human form. He’d fastened a toWellaround his waist, but other than that, he was nak*d.
“Obviously not around other humans. But pack loyalty is important, even when we’re in human form. Although we spend the majority of our lives as humans, our wolf instincts remain strong.”
The thril of facing the unknown coursed through her. She might as Welladmit that she’d chosen to write about werewolves because she found them erotic. And now, here was an actual werewolf, right here in the bathroom with her. An almost nak*d werewolf.
Her body responded with a rush of moisture. But he was wounded. He needed rest and relaxation, not a rol in her king-sized bed.