Page 18 of Moonlight's Mate
Some werelings—with the intrinsic wildness they could never fully tame—were incapable of dealing with a world where the wild was limited to national parks and weekend getaways. Her pack had successfully transitioned to modern life, via the magic of telecommuting. But now it turned out, strong wi-fi and a sizeable bank account were no replacement for cold, hard iron. For a nervous moment, Merrilee wondered if she was asking too much of her clever, artsy—and let’s face it—nerdy pack.
For a half second, she imagined a big, strong wereling crashing through the cottage door, hand-and-a-half iron sword waving over his wide shoulders. Maybe he’d say something suitably pithy, like, “I’ll save you!”
Before his face coalesced in her mind, she mentally kicked herself. After she kicked the imaginary savior out of her head.
Shehad to be the big, strong wereling here.
“Luckily we have a bronze sculptor—cougar-kind from Seattle—working here with friends,” Peter was saying. “He’ll have all the metal working equipment we need.”
“Lucky,” she muttered.
Keisha looked up from her sketches, her frown magnified by the round lenses of her glasses. “We got this, Mer. Why don’t you grab something to eat? You sound a little grumpy.”
Anybody else said that, Merrilee would’ve snapped their head off, madethather snack. But she nodded. Werelings were creatures of bodily passions, and she’d been neglecting hers, which was why she’d gone to Beck in the first place.
And just look where that had gotten her.
She left Keisha and Peter to geek out over the balance of iron throwing stars and padded down the hall to the kitchen, beer bottle in hand.
The windows framed a perfect darkness highlighted by the sprinkling of stars above the jagged peaks of the pines. She stared for a moment, feeling a strange mix of disquiet and pleasure at the stark view.
Run,it coaxed.
Run to? Or away?
She huffed softly and turned her back on the lure. Suddenly starving, she opened a microwavable package of mac and cheese. While she waited for the ding, she dug around in the cabinet for bacon bits. She assembled the ingredients—such as they were—and contemplated dumping the steaming orange mess into a real bowl. That comment from Beck about never using her cookware had stung, which was stupid. She didn’t cook, but she managed to keep her pack fed and happy, even if sometimes she didn’t have the time or energy to do more for herself. Certainly using a fork was concession enough to civility.
She took the meal outside to the back patio and settled into one of the Adirondack chairs. Balancing the hot bowl on one flat arm of the chair and the cold beer on the other, she started to ease back.
Then stopped.
She flared her nostrils. Unfortunately, cheese and bacon had overwhelmed her sensitive nose. But there was something…
She pushed silently to her feet. She had kicked off her shoes while waiting for Keisha and Peter, so she spread her toes across the pebbly concrete of the patio, muscles loose and ready.
From the shadows, a voice said, “Don’t let me interrupt your feast.”
Though she knew it was Beck the moment he inhaled to speak, instead of relaxing, her muscles tightened. But she forced herself to slouch back into the chair. “What are you doing here? You should be patrolling your town.”
“I have enough people. You don’t.”
“We got this,” she said, struggling for the note of confidence that had been in Keisha’s voice.
Beck stepped forward out of the shadows beneath the pines. He wasn’t wearing his usual biker leathers, which explained why she hadn’t heard the telltale din of the Harley.
He was naked.
See, this was the sort of thing that made her muscles tighten.
He sauntered toward her, the indirect light from the living room shining through the windows to illuminate the long lines of his body in warm light. Except for the dark line of curls across his chest and down toward his navel, skipping over the scars, to his… Her breath caught in her chest at the effort not to let her gaze drop any lower.
“I wanted to track the imp myself,” he said. “It was a bit of a run. Got an extra beer?”
She pursued her lips, thought of Keisha and Peter inside, and reluctantly handed over her bottle. “Help yourself.” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. It reminded her of their spat in the bar.
Clearly, he thought the same thing. His lips flattened, but he took the bottle from her hand. “Thanks.” Instead of sitting, he took a few steps back so he wasn’t looming over her.
Busying herself with the mac and cheese, she looked away when he tipped the bottle, exposing his throat. “The imp didn’t make it this far.”
