Moon Lovers Box Set (BBW Werewolf Romance) (8 page)

"Trying to prove to you that I'm real," he told me.

"I'm not doubting you're real, I'm doubting that you're really a-werewolf!" The reason for my excitement was his hand over mine. It wasn't a hand anymore, but a large, clawed paw with five fingers. Fur sprouted halfway up his arm and his eyes took on a yellowish tint. I tried to pull away, but he held me in a vise-like grip.

"Now do you believe me?"

"I-I'll believe anything if you let me go," I pleaded with him. He set me free and I pressed hard against the door to give myself that extra inch of space between us.

"You don't have to be afraid of me, I'm not going to hurt you," he insisted.

"Tell that to my cheek," I shot back. The thin slice of blood from his claw wound trailed down my chin. "It may never recover from the traumatizing experience." The rest of me wasn't doing so well, either.

Greg chuckled, and leaned back to sit on his butt. His arm morphed back into its original human state, but I didn't morph out of my panic state. "I don't know how you do it."

"How
I
do something? You're the one turning into a wolf boy!" I countered.

"Wolf
man
," he corrected me.

"I think the important thing is the wolf part," I replied.

"I suppose it is, but you are a very strange woman to want to change the topic away from yourself," he quipped.

"Call me quirky, it must be something in the full moon," I told him.

He chuckled again. "Your sense of humor would survive Doomsday."

I was flattered, but still no less scared. "Then I'd be laughing at myself for not eating more Twinkies, but mind giving me a bit more information on how you came to be furrier than a rug?" I wondered.

"I'd be delighted if we didn't have a problem." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and I heard the sounds of the angry villagers-er, occupants as they climbed up the rickety fire escape. "They won't be able to follow us all the way up here, but we should probably think up a good excuse for how you freed yourself from a large dog."

"Large dog?
Large dog
?" I repeated. "You think they're really going to buy that story?"

"The dog must have climbed in through the window!" I heard Cartwright yell.

I threw up my arms and sighed. "Fine, we'll go with big dog-"

"Large dog," he corrected me. "We have to keep this story straight."

"
Large
dog, then, but if you wanted to keep this werewolf stuff such a big secret then why didn't you run out of my apartment before they busted down the door?" I asked him.

"I didn't want you to be blamed for this killing," he told me.

"And I needed to be carried along for the ride?"

"I wanted to make sure you were absolutely safe."

I raised my hand and counted down from three fingers. "By tossing me over your shoulder, carrying me up a rickety old fire escape, and then scaling a wall over the top of a roof?"

"Yes."

"You have a funny way of showing it," I commented.

He gestured down to his half-nakedness. "I try my best to make you laugh," he joked.

"Well, Mr. Funny-man, how are you going to get yourself out of this mess?"

"Get
us
out of this mess," he rephrased.

"Oh no, there's no
we
in werewolf."

"Actually, there is."

"Fine, there is, but why do I have to be involved in your hair-gain problem? I'm no match for people with torches and pitchforks."

"You're involved in my problem because I'm involved in your problem," he told me.

"And what is my problem?"

He nodded back over to the fire escape. "There's a man down that alley who has a lot of friends who wear green bandannas. They won't be too happy to hear he's dead, and large dog or no large dog they might still blame you for his death."

"Because they're going to believe that little old me-" I paused and glanced down at myself, "-that large old me can toss one of their guys out windows?"

"No, because you're the key to lead them to someone who can," he pointed out. "I've saved your life twice, so they're going to see a connection."

I furrowed my brow. "Saved my life twice?" My eyes lit up and I snapped my fingers. "You're the guy in the laundry room, the hairy one!" I exclaimed. He clapped his hand over my mouth, pressed me against him and glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the fire escape.

"Tasha? You there?" Cartwright called to me.

Greg glanced down at me with a pleading look in his human eyes and his voice a ghost of a whisper. "Tell no one about what I am."

I tore his hand off my mouth and scowled at him, but I kept my voice low. "I've seen enough horror movies to know where that would end up. You being chased and staked in some dark castle."

"That's Dracula," he corrected me.

"Well, you ending up dead, and I might not like you as much as you like me, but I'm not going to get you killed." We both heard a scrambling noise on the other side of the roof.

Greg frowned. "That idiot is trying to climb up after me."

"Then you'd better go. I'm going to have a hard enough time explaining how I got pulled up here by a large dog without having to explain why you're half naked."

"Good point. I'll join the others as soon as I get some clothes on and we'll talk later," Greg promised. He stood up, and I have to admit I hesitated in letting his hand go. Maybe it was the cute smile on his face, or the fact that he was backing up toward the drop off the building.

"Behind you!" I hissed.

"I know," he whispered back before he stepped right off the edge.

I gasped and scrambled over to the precipice. I looked over the side and saw a large, furry shape land neatly on the ground and trot off. Showoff.

"Tasha!" Cartwright yelled.

I rolled my eyes. Even when that guy was trying to save me he was being annoying. "I'm over here!" I called back. A minute later Cartwright's head popped up over the roof and he glanced down the length of it to see me standing on the platform about twenty feet off. "What kept you?" I quipped.

Cartwright glanced down to what I presumed was a sizable crowd. "She's all right! She's up here on the roof!" he informed them. He turned back to me and pulled himself onto the roof. "It'll be all right, Tash, we'll get you down from here," he consoled me as he scurried over the slick metal roof to the platform.

"I wish you'd just get the door open, it's locked from the other side," I replied.

"Door?" he asked me. I pointed at the door that led into the attic. "What the hell? We have an attic?"

"Yep, but I can't get the door open. Mind lending me some of that brute strength?" I requested.

"What? Y-yeah, sure, but wait a minute, what happened to that thing?" He turned in a circle and didn't see what he thought he should be seeing. "Where's that thing that carried you up here?"

"You mean that large dog? Ran off across the roofs." I waved my hand in a general direction. "Guess it didn't like the taste of me or something."

"And what about that guy out there in the alley? Did he come out of your apartment?" Cartwright persisted.

"Yeah, he left in a hurry and tripped over his own shoe laces. Mind opening that door for me now so we can get off this cold roof?" A cool breeze blew over us, reminding me that I wasn't exactly dressed for being outside.

"Oh, sure! Sure! Let me at it."

"You guys okay?" a voice called over the roof.

"Yeah, we're fine. We're gonna go into the attic!" Cartwright replied.

"What attic?" the person shouted back.

"The attic at the top of the building, now shut up and meet us inside!" Cartwright yelled to them. He turned his attention and his shoulders to the door, and its old hinges were soon beaten out of their nails. I felt sorry for Greg because he'd have to fix that. Cartwright grinned triumphantly at his damage and clumsily swept his hand door the entrance. "See what I did there? Pure strength." I never assumed intelligence was involved in anything he did, but I held my tongue because he had gallantly come to save me. The only problem was I hadn't needed saving.

I wrapped my arms around myself and dodged past him. "It's a very nice door-bashing," I chattered out inside the dusty but warmish attic.

Cartwright stupidly grinned. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?" He followed after me as I made my way to the hatch. I let it down and descended the steps to find the entire fifth floor flooded with the apartment residents. They pushed against the door to the apartment above mine where Greg had scared the family, everyone wanting a look to see if they could spot the creature. They whispered and shouted like a pack of wolves themselves, and I could easily imagine them carrying pitchforks and torches.

Cartwright stepped down and in front of me. He waived his arms above his head and called out in a great, bellowing voice. "We got her back! It's all right!"

"What was that?" Mrs. Brooks shouted above the din. The attention of the great mass of curious people turned to Cartwright, and descended on me with smiles and cheering. People I'd never talked to said how happy they were to see I was safe, and I smiled and nodded my head with the aim of running downstairs and locking myself in Greg's apartment to wait for him.

I avoided the exercise because Greg himself came up the stairs and looked around with a grin and a shake of his head. He put his two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle that deafened everyone but those with hearing aids. "What was that?" Mrs. Brooks shouted above the silence. "Speak up!"

Greg held up his hands so everyone could see him. "Ladies and gentleman, the police have been called and the fifth floor wasn't designed to hold so many jubilant people. If you have business you'd rather not finish with them or don't reside on the fourth and fifth floors, please get back to your rooms. If you saw something, stay here," he instructed them. At the mention of the cops even some of the fifth floor slunk out into the night to avoid unwanted questions or recognitions from the police. We were down to six people, one of which was my modest savior, Cartwright.

"I'll do all the talking, Garrison," Cartwright demanded.

"And why is that?" Greg asked him.

"Because you didn't see nothing, and I saw everything," he pointed out.

Greg shrugged and folded his arms across his chest, but he still grinned. "All right, you can tell them how the man came into Miss Taylor's room and how he fell out the window."

"Yeah, I sure-what? I-I don't know what happened then," Cartwright stuttered out.

"Then perhaps we had better let Miss Taylor talk to the police. She knows the whole story," Greg suggested.

Lucky me.

Chapter 10

The police came, and half of them split off to the alley while a half dozen led by Officer Cranston. He didn't look happy, but remembering Greg's suspicions I wondered if he was disappointed to see me alive. I know I wasn't. "Good evening, Miss Taylor. What sort of trouble do we have this time?"

"One man dead and my mysterious hero seen again," I told him. Greg had to cover his smirk.

Cranston raised an eyebrow. "You mean that guy you saw in the laundry room that night with the gang members?"

Cartwright puffed up at mention of a hero, but deflated when the hero was revealed not to be him as I agreed with Cranston's guess. "Yep. I went into my apartment, and a Green Bandanna guy came out of my bedroom and attacked me. My hero broke through the window and tossed him out into the alley."

"Let's do the interview at your apartment so you can show us exactly what happened where," Cranston suggested.

Cartwright, Greg, the officers, and the witnesses followed me downstairs and I led the way through the broken-down door into my glass-littered apartment. What hadn't been touched during the fight had been trampled by the gawkers. I set back up my chair and sighed. "You'll have to excuse the mess, the guy wasn't too clean on his way out."

Officer Cranston bent down over the pile of glass in front of the windows and picked up a piece. "And the guy wasn't too clean on his way in," he commented. He held up the large shard. "Most of the glass is on this side of the window."

"That would be because of the guy who saved me," I told him. "As I told you, he crashed through the window and threw the bandanna member out. Then he grabbed me and put me safely on the roof."

Officer Cranston stuck his head out the window and glanced over to the fire escape. "Put you safely on the roof?" he asked me.

"Yeah, but through the fire escape," I explained.

"Did you see how he managed to jump through this window with the fire escape being all the way over there?"

I sat down in my chair, clasped my hands together to stop them from shaking and shrugged. "I don't know. I guess he must have jumped from the fire escape or climbed up."