Page 32 of The Wolf Professor

Closed the door.

And now… this. These anguished sounds.

She couldn’t bear to think he was suffering in there alone.

Her heart beating fast, Charlie slid off the bed and crept over to the door.

She knocked gently. “Max, are you okay?”

Silence. Followed by another groan.

Charlie couldn’t care less about the fact that her dress was torn, that she was bruised and scratched and still shaky with shock. She pushed open the door and went inside.

Max was in human form, curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. Silver fur lay shed around him on the tiles like a blanket. His hands covered his face, his hair was completely disheveled, and a large gash on his calf bled profusely.

Charlie had never seen such a perfect specimen of a human male.

But there was no time to admire him. Quickly, she grabbed a towel off the back of the door and covered him. Then went to the bathroom cabinet and sorted through the contents. She found bandages, an array of aftershaves and finally, thank the gods, witch hazel and wolfbane lotion. What a stroke of luck.

She came back to his side. He was shuddering still, but she bent down and whispered in his ear, “Max, you’ve got a bad cut on your leg and now that you’ve shifted back into human form, it will bleed excessively if I don’t treat it.”

He lowered his hands and stared up at her, his eyes glazed.

“H-how do you know that?”

“I read it in The Almanac of Beasts.” She smirked a little. “The Wolf volume. Here, let me, please.”

Wincing, he shifted so that his back was propped up against the side of the bath, then grabbed his head with both hands. “Fuck.”

“That bad?”

“Like the worst migraine. But still not as horrible as the pain when I shifted into wolf.”

She started to bathe the wound, and he flinched and glanced at the bottle in her hand. “What is that?”

“Witch hazel and wolfbane lotion.”

“Wolfbane prevents shifting when taken by mouth,” Max mused weakly.

“I read that too. But this is a topical lotion for when you turn back to your human form. Apparently, it makes the blood clot faster.”

She worked gently, wiping away the blood and applying the lotion, which immediately stemmed the bleeding. As she worked, she tried not to notice the beauty of his pecs and abs, or the fact that the towel was loosely draped around his hips, showing a v of dark hair arrowing down toward his groin. “It’s antiseptic too, so hopefully there’ll be no infection from the bite.”

“Your touch alone feels healing,” he husked out.

She stilled for a moment and glanced at him. His eyes, still clouded with pain, held hers. “Thank you, Charlie.”

She tried to ignore the sudden pulse at her core. “On the contrary, I have to thankyou, Max, for finding me. I don’t know what I’d have done if?—”

“What were you doing there?”

“I left the party and kind of got lost.” She couldn’t help asking, “How did you know where to find me?”

“Let’s say I had a sixth sense.”

She longed to ask more, so many questions on the tip of her tongue, but this didn’t seem the right time to pursue it; he was in pain, and clearly exhausted.

Suddenly he looked at her properly, his eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a scratch on your face. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

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