Cold Feet (Empathy in the PPNW Book 3) Page 10

  “Julian’s going to cook when he gets back, you shouldn’t spoil your appetite,” Sarah said. I shook my head.

  “No such thing as a spoiled appetite.”

  Mel lifted his hips to thrust them into the air, making eye contact with me to make sure I knew what he was offering and I rolled my eyes.

  “Except for where Mel’s junk is concerned. There is no such thing as an unspoiled appetite for that.”

  “But you’re saying you do have an appetite for it.”

  “I’m saying…” I trailed off, lacking a comeback. “Shut up.”

  Sarah chuckled, getting back on topic.

  “It may just be that your nose is off its game.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Mel said, insult lighting him up. “My nose is fine.”

  “You’re out in the city, sticking mostly to human form. I think you’re just getting rusty.” Sarah spared me a wink, before shrugging her shoulders and sighing dramatically. “I bet Julian could sniff it out in a heartbeat.”

  “What needs sniffing out?” Julian said from the deck. He’d wrapped a towel around his waist sometime before coming in and grown back his body hair. Unlike Mel, who’d looked freshly waxed every time I’d seen him shirtless, Julian had gone for the more rugged, mountain man look. Dark hair spread along his arms and chest, trailing from his belly button down under the towel.

  I fought my brain as it started to wonder if the trend continued lower. You can’t blame me! He’s a good-looking man and these are legitimate questions you think of when you first start hanging out with werewolves. I did feel a tinge of guilt ogling him with his wife so close, but luckily distraction came quickly.

  Puppies poured in then, barking, nipping. Lorelai led the pack as usual, but before she could reach her mother, Walter grabbed her tail at the base, yanked it back. When she twisted to attack, he danced nimbly out of the way, managed a crazy hop, bounce and leap straight into Sarah’s lap. Lorelai growled from her place on the floor but Walter just watched her, tongue hanging out.

  “Everyone hungry?” Julian asked. Puppies turned to bark in his direction, and he clapped his hands together gleefully. Turning to look over at his wife, he jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen and she nodded. When they’d all moved past the kitchen and through a doorway I had yet to venture into, I turned back to Mel.

  “What’d you find out today?”

  “That you’re stubborn and should put out more.”

  “You only just learned that? You’re slow, Somerset.”

  “I can be fast or slow, baby, whatever you please.”

  “I please you to tell me what you learned at lunch in the cafeteria.”

  “Well,” Mel said, shifting to lean forward as if he was about to give me a run-down of something very important.

  “We’ll have to talk to more people, but everything seemed above board. I took up with a whole table of couples, just asking them about how things are going so far and how they like their doctors. Everyone seemed okay, though it’s still early yet. We’ll have to check back in after a few days.”

  “We’ll still be here in a few days?” I whined. “You said it’d be two days tops. You swore we wouldn’t have to come up with a backstory or anything.”

  “Our backstory is that you love me too much and our problems spring from you not being able to handle all the feelings of lust I conjure up inside you.”

  “If we’re going with something totally asinine then I’d rather be my own transgender twin brother.”

  “That’s gonna be a hard sell with you not acting at all like a man.”

  “Uhh,” I said, realizing he’d pointed out the main flaw in my brilliant plan. Rather than confront my mistake I changed the subject. “So what are we doing tonight?”

  “Making sweet, passionate love.”

  “Not that.”

  “Okay, we’ll drive back out to the center and snoop for real. Then we’ll have gymnastic, satisfying sex.”

  “You know, gosh. I had definite plans to hurl myself off a bridge and into a rocky ravine tonight. So, we’ll snoop, and then I’ll hurl, and then maybe after that we can discuss the possibility of sex.”

  “I’d like to request a change in the order of our plans.”

  “I’d like a different fake husband, but life just isn’t fair.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Why aren’t you up?”

  I grunted at the voice, still at least eighty-percent asleep; with any luck, the voice would go away and I could reclaim the other twenty and get back to dreamland. After a few seconds I felt the bed sag under me, startling me enough that I growled out a disparaging remark and pulled the blankets over my head.

  “Gwen, we have to go. I told you to be up and ready by two, and you’re still in bed.”

  “You’re still in bed. Go away,” I mumbled. Mel grabbed my shoulder and shook. I did my best to wiggle out of his grip but he had me pretty good. Plus, he was completely conscious and had full control of his faculties. After another few seconds of silence, in which I blissfully started to drift off again, Mel spoke.

  “Okay, then. If you really want to stay here in bed, we can do that.”

  I squealed as cold air met my back and I felt the bed shift again. Mel tucked himself under the covers, wrapped himself bodily around me, and rested his head on the side of my face, pressing me hard into the pillow like he might try to suffocate me.

  I attempted to throw him off, but he had me completely trapped. Even his leg was draped over my hips, calf tucked down over the fronts of my thighs. He was barefoot and I could feel the cold of his heel even though my pants. Sighing obnoxiously, he squeezed my back against his chest. There was a moment, maybe a full minute, where we lay like that, silent, him holding me.

  My body and my brain were in agreement about Mel for once: both felt this was pretty nice, even with the near suffocation of having a pillow puffed around my face. The warmth of his tight grip was enticing me back toward sleep, which I’m sure wasn’t what he had meant it to do. The contrary part of me that always wanted Mel to never gets his way liked that quite a bit, but just before I was completely out again, Mel started speaking, much louder this time.

  “Isn’t this fantastic? So comfortable and warm. We could stay like this, just like this, all tangled together, alllll night. Yes, we’ll just lay here, snuggled like lovers, well into the morning.” He ignored my elbow weakly digging into his stomach and kept speaking. “Then Julian and Sarah will wonder where we’ve been and they’ll come on and find us here, folded together like taco shells. They’ll take pictures, send them to everyone we know, announcing our nuptials.” I ignored him and he paused long enough to let me comment, but I remained still, hoping maybe I would get so irritated I would go into a coma out of spite.

  “‘Come to the wedding of Mel and Gwen,’ the invitations will say. ‘The pair will be married Thursday morning. In bed. Still huddled together.’ I may kiss the bride? Well, splendid, I think I’ll do just that!” Mel turned his head slightly to press his lips to my cheek but it wasn’t really a kiss. If anything, it reminded me a baby who’s watched adults kiss and thinks it’s really just a ritual sloppy mashing of faces.

  I’ll admit that, at that point, I was just being stubborn. He’d torn me away from sleep so effectively that I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize it were I to see it again. Eyes squeezed shut, forehead pressed to the blankets I’d managed to keep near my face when he’d slid in, I pretended he wasn’t irritating me at all. I considered my position, my options and what I thought of the situation.

  On the one hand, it was Mel I was snuggling with. On the other hand, he was delightfully warm and it had been awhile since I’d been properly spooned. Before I could ponder on the pleasant side of the situation, though, he reminded me that hugging me and keeping me awake were not the worst things he could do to me.

  “But, really, to be completely comfortable,” he announced, still loud despite his lips wetly brushing my cheek. “I need to
take this constricting necklace off.”

  Anticipating my reaction, he tensed his arms, holding me in place when I screeched out a threat and struggled to get away. After my wiggling proved futile, he lifted his face so my head was no longer pinned to the pillow. The room was too dark to make out his expression as I twisted in an attempt to glare, but I was willing to bet my savings he was looking particularly pompous in that moment.

  “Get off.”

  “Well! I had no idea this was all it took to get you in the mood for—”

  “No innuendo, just get off!” I struggled again and I felt his chest vibrate with laughter. This was definitely no longer about getting me out of bed; this was solely about being the most annoying person in the room.

  “Your words, they confuse me.”

  “Your face confuses you, get away.”

  “Promise you’ll get up and drive me out to Tough Love?”

  “I promise I’ll hit you.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” he sang at me, tightening his arms just hard enough that I found it tough to take a full breath.

  “Fine!” I croaked. “Let go and I’ll drive you to the stupid center.”

  “You didn’t promise. You need to say it,” he teased. I paused, snarling for a moment, and then took a deep breath when he let up on the python squeeze.

  “It,” I said. He laughed and, just like that, I was alone in the bed, the covers bunched at my feet. I blinked, looked over to see the dark shape of him standing nearby. I strongly considered yanking the covers back over me and just going back to sleep, but part of me suspected that he’d follow through and take the necklace off. Or worse, spoon me again naked.

  “Get dressed, Chipmunk.”

  “You get dressed.”

  “You are really bad at banter at two in the morning.”

  “Your face is,” I hissed, pushing into a sitting position and trying to make my heavy body obey my orders. My brain was sizzling with annoyance at being forced to wake up, at being lulled into thinking pleasant thoughts about snuggling with Mel, and about the fact that some tiny corner of my mind hoped it would happen again. My body, on the other hand, was solely responding to being jerked out of sleep and forced to move through air that felt positively frigid compared to the warmth of heavy blankets.

  Mel just stood there, waiting silently.

  “I’m not getting dressed with you in here,” I said after a few moments.

  “I’m not leaving. You’ll just go back to sleep.”

  “Then I’m going in my pajamas,” I said, as if it was some real threat that would net me any leverage at all.

  “You’re not wearing a bra so I’m okay with that.”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I glared up at him. He just laughed, gesturing to the bathroom.

  “Change in there. I’ll wait out here.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after I’d taken my sweet time getting changed, I stepped back out into the bedroom to find Mel gone. He’d left the bedroom door open and the light on in the hall. Figuring I was supposed to follow, I yanked sneakers over my bare feet and padded out to meet him. I found him in the living room, naked.

  “Oh jeez,” I hissed, rolling my eyes and trying to decide if I was more annoyed with him or with myself for appreciating the view. He just smiled, flexed his pecs one after another and then jerked a thumb toward the front door.

  “I’ve got to wolf out, then we’ll drive over and I’ll sniff around.”

  “You can’t wear pants to wolf out?”

  “Have you ever even watched a werewolf movie?”

  “Hey, The Hulk manages pants.” I sighed, decided it was better to just enjoy the view and not give him the satisfaction of my annoyance. “Where are the keys?”

  “Hanging on the hook by the door. Do you need directions, or are you good?”

  “I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.” At my words, he got a thoughtful look on his face, let out a small chuckle.

  “I feel like this is the exact conversation we would share just before having sex,” he quipped. I rolled my eyes, but he was probably right. He gave a slow roll of his shoulders and leaned his head forward slightly; it brought my attention to the square of blue resting on his chest.

  “Wait!” I yelped, taking half a step forward. He lifted his brows, met my gaze.

  “What?”

  “I thought you couldn’t fit in the necklace with your fat wolf neck.”

  “My neck is not fat,” he snapped, genuine insult crossing his features.

  “Not the point, Somerset.”

  “Sarah got me a longer cord. I replaced it earlier. You didn’t notice?”

  “It looks the same to me.”

  Mel rolled his eyes and mumbled a word usually reserved for me to him: “Ugh.”

  Then, he changed.

  Watching a full-grown adult man turn into a werewolf was different than watching a small puppy turn human. Yes, that seems like the most obvious statement in the world, but until you’ve seen it, you can’t judge. Until you’ve been standing in a beautiful, homey living room with a naked man and watched him morph into a majestic canine, you can’t really understand what it’s like. You also can’t really know the strange leaps your brain makes between awe and moronically obvious thoughts like the one above.

  Once before, I’d watched Mel start to transform between human and wolf. It had been slow, fascinating, and he probably hadn’t meant for it to happen. The circumstances had been much different; he and I had been under the influence of a succubus that two of my friends had just killed.

  Standing naked in his brother’s living room, however, the process was much different. Rather than changing in fits and starts, gaining hair here and there, it went quickly and as smoothly as such a thing can. Fur grew along his skin almost instantaneously, making his nudity a non-issue.

  One moment, he was hairless, chiseled and naked; the next he was Bigfoot.

  Like Christian turning back into a human, Mel grunted a few times as tension ran through his limbs. His face pushed outward, as if something shoved through the back of his skull. His ears grew and shifted positions, his musculature rippled and then he fell forward as the joints in his limbs snapped and bowed.

  It probably took a minute, all in all, before Mel Somerset the irritating, oversexed private eye was a wolf. A goddamned wolf!

  His eyes were still a brilliant blue and his muzzle had some cute little spots of white high up, near his eyes. His tail, which I hadn’t even thought to watch for until he wagged it spastically during his post-change shake out, was a pale gray on the underside. He was still beefier than Julian, wider in the shoulders and hips, with a larger ruff around his neck. As he shook himself out, bent and stretched his limbs, I stared.

  I wasn’t sure I could move.

  It was another minute before he got to the door and, when I didn’t follow him, he turned, peered out of the entryway. I just continued to stare, feeling a little—no, a lot crazy. Had that just happened? Had I just witnessed a man become a wolf? Or was this all some elaborate fantasy my mind had cooked up in some bizarre Shutter Island scenario.

  “Am I Leonardo DiCaprio?” I whispered. Mel cocked his head to the side, lifted one doggy eyebrow. Blinking at me, he chuffed out a breath of air and jogged over, nudging my arm with his nose. A giant wolf that used to be a man was prodding me. A werewolf, currently in wolf shape, was nudging my arm. This was actually happening and I was standing there, staring down at him with my jaw hanging open. Apparently this wasn’t what he wanted.

  Switching tactics, he darted his head behind me and bit my ass.

  “Ow!” I snapped. Mel let out a low, quick, breathy bark and lowered his head toward my butt again. That got me moving.

  “Fine! Let’s go, jeez.” Despite the fact that I was already heading toward the door, Mel gave me one more nip, down around the side of my thigh this time, dancing out of the way when I reached back to smack him.

  ##

  The drive to t
he center was interesting. Mel sat in the front seat and didn’t demand I roll down the window or buckle him in. Well, perhaps he demanded both those things and I was just unable to tell what he wanted; without his emotions to guide me, I found myself pretty clueless about how to handle him.

  I couldn’t help glancing at him every few minutes, watching his silhouette in the light of the car’s control panel. He stayed silent, adjusting to keep himself upright as I turned or changed speed. It wasn’t like driving with an actual dog who had no awareness of what you were doing and therefore got knocked against the window or console with every turn or lane merge. As we pulled up into the long driveway, Mel barked once, put a paw on the emergency brake. I frowned at him, slowed down. When I didn’t stop, he let out a low growl, tapped the brake again.

  “We’re stopping?” he chuffed out a burst of air that could have been agreement or derision. “Okay, bark once if we’re stopping here, twice if we’re—” He barked once, and I pulled the car over. Mel waited patiently for me to turn the car off, unbuckle my seatbelt and come around to his side. When I opened the door, he hopped out, gave my thigh a quick bite, and took off in the direction of the facility literally faster than I could see.

  I stood there, unsure whether or not I was supposed to be following him. The trees around me offered no help and, in fact, made me feel rather uncomfortable and alone. Stuffing the keys in my pocket, I took off after Mel at a quick jog. I wasn’t in the best shape, but I could jog for five or ten minutes without killing myself. Not only did Chloe keep me active but I’d also recently acquired a friend with benefits who made me want to ensure my stamina was up to snuff. I hadn’t been benefitting from this friend in almost two months, but that didn’t mean I was against being prepared.

  Unfortunately, when I got to the end of the drive, slowing to a halt at the edge of the roundabout, I realized I had no idea where Mel had gone. I stood out in the open, in full view of the center, and looked around. The moon was a sliver in the sky, barely any help at all. At least I could be reasonably sure that if it wasn’t helping me see it wasn’t helping any security guards either. I hadn’t asked Mel if I should wear a mask or skulk around low to the ground, so I wasn’t sure if I was in danger of being caught. Swearing under my breath, my heart beating faster at the idea of getting caught, I slipped back into the trees. Stuck on the idea that I might be at risk of getting caught and thrown in Tough Love jail, I rounded the side of the property, heading toward where Mel and I had attempted to snoop that afternoon.