Hi again everyone! Thank you all for reading. Let me apologize for the long wait on an update. We are remodeling our kitchen soon and we have loads of choices to make (and hopefully get right). As we come down to the wire, some things are becoming immediate and imperative.
Thanks so much for the awesome reviews! And lots of favorites, too, which I appreciate also. :)
6. Piddles Intervenes
Alcide regretted it all. He should have let Eric glamor her, and run for the hills. But he hadn't. And why not? Because he didn't want to lose her. He'd tried to say it wasn't fair to her, but really, it had been sheer personal desire to be around her.
In some ways, she'd given him the simple things that Debbie had frequently deprived him of; affection and acceptance. Even the most uncomfortable moments with her had an underlying current of consideration, thoughtfulness, and sincere caring.
He had craved it, and endangered her.
So he walked into Fangtasia by the employee's entrance. He kept to the shadows and crept quietly... he had no clothes. If anyone came through that entrance, he would be in trouble.
"Well, this is delicious," a voice said behind him. "Can I have a bite?"
It was Pam, of course. Alcide turned to face her. "I need clothes and I need to talk to Eric." He hated dealing with the vicious, unpredictable vampire. He was urbane and charming one second, and struck faster than any viper on the planet between one breath and the next. But he had no choice.
Ten minutes later, he was trying to get Eric to understand his point of view, and meeting brick walls everywhere he turned. No matter his explanation or reason, Eric countered it, point by point. It was frustrating in the extreme.
"Alcide, if I glamor her, she will still be hunted," Eric concluded. "She just won't know why."
Alcide was cornered. He couldn't get past that one.
The one thing he wanted was for her to be safe, and the one thing he'd taken away from her was her safety.
"Where is she now?" Eric asked, interrupting Alcide's inner reflection.
"I... don't know," Alcide answered. "The pack tore her house apart. I don't have any idea where she'd go from there."
"Well," Eric told him, "I guess you should make it your priority to find her. Do you not think so?"
"If I go around her, they'll smell me. If I stay away and the smell grows fainter, they may leave her alone," he argued.
Eric sighed. "Very well. I will see if I can locate her." He picked up the phone and gave the man on the other end of the line some information on Sky.
"In the meantime," he told Alcide after hanging up the phone, "you should go find a place to stay. Try a hotel." He gave Alcide another credit card with the reminder that he would owe Eric once the whole thing was over.
He hated it, but he had no choice.
It took four days for Eric to call him, and Alcide was exhausted from checking hotels. So far he had found nothing, anywhere. No one had even seen a woman answering her description.
So when the phone rang, he grabbed it eagerly, desperate for word of her.
"My man found her," Eric said without preamble. "It wasn't easy. She's staying at the Coff Inn."
"The vampire hotel?" Alcide asked stupidly. "The one here in Shreveport?"
"Yes. But you could have easily found her on your own. The only reason he figured out that she was staying there was that he tailed her from work."
"She's been going to work?" Alcide had to sit down. What had possessed the woman to go to work!
"He tailed her to find out where she was staying. Not only was the area's vampire hotel the last place he would have looked, but she paid in cash, as well. By the way, this won't be cheap. She's canny, this vet of yours. Not bad for a human."
The phone went dead.
Alcide sat it down.
He wanted to go find her immediately. But a werewolf walking into a vampire hotel? It would never happen in a million years. Which, of course, made it the perfect hiding spot when one was possibly being hunted by werewolves.
He shook his head. He had underestimated her. He suspected that the other weres had as well. Which was only to the good for her and for him, both. Yet on the other hand, the use of the vamp hotel could only protect her until the funds to stay there ran out. It wasn't cheap, by any stretch of imagination, and there was no way that she made enough money as a small town vet to pay that kind of bill for long.
But for now, he was stuck. He could do nothing. He couldn't walk into a vamp hotel any more than any other were could. Even his scent on her could have endangered her, though she probably hadn't thought of that.
He paced and worked out for most of the night. It was a long night as hour stacked on top of hour—a teetering skyscraper waiting to fall on the unsuspecting.
When morning came, he woke to the first rosy pink light of dawn. He wondered idly if the vamp hotel had a continental breakfast for their human guests, and rightly guessed that there were doubtless few to none there—and most would be on their vamp masters' schedules.
So he went to the veterinary clinic. He realized for the first time that he hadn't even known the name of her place of work: Under the Round Table. It seemed that Sky had an affection for the Arthurian legends. He hadn't even known about Marrok, and one would think the legend of a famous werewolf would be among the first told in his own culture.
Several hours passed and at last he saw her in the door, turning the sign around.
Looking around, he carefully sniffed the air. Warm currents indicated the first weakening of winter, but the air betrayed no presence of werewolves. Of course they could be downwind, so he was wary as he got out and approached the glass front windows of the store.
She wasn't inside that he could see. Deeply concerned and fearful of a trap, he opened the door. The laser set off the sensor and it chimed cheerfully. Sky's voice came from within, "I'll be right there!"
She walked out, and she smelled like lavender soap and tea tree oil. Her hair glowed with health, though she looked worried and drawn. She seemed distracted, though somehow, he found the doctor coat to be sexy because it drew attention to her face.
She had a puppy in her arms and was carrying a carrier. She sat the carrier down and then the puppy, patting it on the head. "Try to behave, Piddles," she said to the puppy. Then she looked up and saw Alcide.
He was surprised and almost stunned when her delicate, pretty face lit up with welcome.
"You're okay!" she greeted him. "I was worried." Then she stood in the hallway, wringing her hands as the puppy grabbed her coat and tugged on it. Bending down, she said, "Oh no, honey, don't do that. Here, this is your toy." She gave him a chewy toy, which he ignored in favor of her coat hem again.
"I couldn't find you," he told her. "I looked everywhere-"
She raised an eyebrow, cutting him off, "Not everywhere. I was here every day."
"I didn't think you'd be foolish enough to come in to work every day," he told her, then wanted to kick himself the minute the words came out.
But she just laughed. "Come now, Alcide. I'm on the edge of a business district and a residential district. Four houses down is Mrs. Charles, who snoops into everything. Two blocks away and around the corner is Mrs. Fortenberry, who wants me to 'steal her son from that vampire'. And across the street from me is Melody Fischer, who thinks that my shop is going to become so loud that no one will ever come to her pottery shop again.
"Are the werewolves really going to risk attacking me at such an exposed location in broad daylight with three busybodies around?"
He was grinning by the time she was done. "I didn't realize life was so hard here," he joked.
Her eyes twinkled. "It's a trial, believe me."
He took a risk and went over and hugged her, releasing her quickly. "I was worried," he admitted.
She blinked at him for a few seconds before smiling slightly. "I was, too." Then, her hands wringing again, she said, "You're a touchy-feely kind of person, aren't you?" It was obviously meant to be a joke, but it came out a bit high pitched.
"I'm sorry," he told her. "I guess it's the wolf in me. We're all like that."
"Well, thank god you didn't sniff my crotch while in wo-" She stopped abruptly, turning bright red. Her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh dear. I did it again. I... I am so sorry!"
He laughed. "Even among werewolves, that's considered rude," he told her. He couldn't help but think how adorable she was when she was flustered. Which, admittedly, was fairly frequently.
"I... of course. I shouldn't have-"
He stepped closer to her and cut her off with a kiss. He meant it to be a short, sweet peck on the lips so he could ask her out for breakfast without her running off in embarrassment first. But when his lips touched hers, she jumped slightly, then her lips parted. He decided to take the invitation—intentional or not.
He slid an arm around her, and she melted against him, the cloth of her coat jiggling against his arm from the puppy's diligent play. She smelled even better up close, and she tasted sweet, with the underlying flavor of toothpaste.
Her heartbeat was thunder to his heightened hearing, and the air was heavy with the smell of her body and the heat of her skin. He tasted her sweetness and felt her breasts pressed against him. Her breathing deepened and she responded to his kiss with a surprising eagerness.
But it went beyond that. He had kissed women before, even wanted to marry Debbie. His wolf had remained uninterested in them beyond 'female'. This time, though, as he kissed Sky, he felt something he had never felt before. His wolf half roared to life, hungry and filled with a possessive longing.
His wolf's ravenous lust drove into him, and he tightened his grip on Sky. A low growl rose in his throat as he felt her and smelled her and tasted her. Her ragged breathing ignited him in ways he hadn't felt since he was a teenager.
He felt as eager as she seemed.
His hand ran down to her butt, pressing her against his erection. He felt an overwhelming, stifling rage at the clothes between them, and barely recognized that it was his wolf. His wolf wanted to own her, to take her, to possess her. He wanted the same and had no power to resist the wolf, especially since he found no hesitation in her, either.
He was dragged out of it in the most mundane way.
The puppy peed on his foot.
Dragging himself back from her, he found his own breathing was harsh and deep. He looked at her and found her eyes half closed, a sensual, stunned look on her face. He almost didn't care about the puppy... his wolf was howling and growling in his mind like a demented banshee.
"The puppy peed on me," he told her, his voice husky and thick with lust.
She blinked at him a few times, then surprise, followed by embarrassed horror spread across her face. She jumped away.
"Oh my god! Oh god! No, Piddles!" she picked the puppy up, extricating him carefully from his new grip on Alcide's pant leg. He went into the puppy carrier with a protesting yelp as he scrabbled at the bars, trying to get back at his new toy. "Oh, I should have put him away right away! That's why I call him Piddles. I had to give him a saline IV and now he's peeing every couple of minutes. I'm so sorry, I got distracted, I-"
"It's okay, Sky. I'm not the first person to be peed on by a puppy."
"That's for sure. I get peed on so often that I barely notice it anymore." She stopped her flustered motions for a moment. "Oh, that didn't come out right." She shook her head. "I would just shut up now that I've eaten both of my feet and one of yours, too, except that I happen to have some of your clothes here, still. There's another pair of mocassins in the bunch if you want them."
She hunkered up slightly. "I mean, I have clothes I bought for you. Here. At the store. And there's a spot where you can clean your leg. And foot. Because... you... you got peed on. At my store." Her voice trailed off and she cleared her throat.
He stood watching her, trying to recover his equilibrium. His wolf was agitated, restless, and hungry—though not for food. He'd heard other weres speak that way about their wolves, but he'd never experienced it prior to Sky. He thought they'd been exaggerating, or maybe even making it up. Especially since most of them seemed to have it happen regarding every female that crossed their path.
He smiled at her when she finally quit talking. "I'd like those moccasins and pants, thank you."
She jumped so badly she startled him. "Oh! Oh, of course! God, what is wrong with me!" She rushed back into one of the rooms and came back with some packages. "Over here," she gestured and led him into a room clearly intended for bathing animals.
She dropped the packages on a steel counter and put some scissors beside them. "I'll just, uh... I'll be out front. With Piddles. In his container." Then she bolted so fast Alcide thought she might have left scorch marks from her passing.
He stood in the room for a long moment, smiling. She was hilarious and delightful and sexy as hell. His smile faded though, as deep in the recess of his mind where the wolf lived for most of the month, the beast snarled his dissatisfaction. Alcide had let the woman go without claiming her, and his wolf was furious and disgusted. The female was ready. The female smelled of sex and lust and welcome. The female was eager and the human half not aggressive enough.
Alcide accepted the censure with a sigh. The wolf didn't understand, human society wasn't like wolf society. The wolf didn't care. He wanted the woman.
Alcide pointed out that there were other women. There was Debbie. There was Sookie, who was fantastic in every way except for being vamp-smitten.
Debbie, the wolf informed him, was not Sky. Sookie, while she smelled nice, was also not Sky. And Debbie, the wolf communicated, was a bitch—and not in the wolf way. Then it went completely silent again and would commune with him no longer.