The Werewolf Wears Prada (Entangled Covet) (San Francisco Wolf Pack) (13 page)

As he unsheathed himself from her core, Hayden made a vow to himself, to her. No matter what, he couldn’t let their connection grow any further.

But for now, for today and tonight, she was his.

He lifted his angel into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he laid her down and tucked her against him. Somewhere between her gentle intake of breath and the drumming sound of her heartbeat, Hayden’s eyes closed and he drifted to sleep.

He’d never slept so sound.

Chapter Nineteen

Melina awoke to the muffled hush of a shower, and a deep, husky whistle. The tune was familiar and upbeat. Was it Sinatra? She’d always loved the smooth melody of the classics. It was dark as pitch outside, which meant it was late Sunday night and she had another few hours with Hayden before thinking about Monday morning and all the worry it’d bring.

With a long, relaxed sigh, she rolled over and spread-eagled over the bed.

If only every night could be this way. After their first interlude in the kitchen, he’d brought her to his master suite. They hadn’t slept more than thirty minutes before she rolled over, felt him beside her, and pounced on him. Sexcapade number two quickly turned to number three…and then four. They’d wasted Sunday morning and afternoon tangled in his sheets, though wasted was the wrong word to use.

She couldn’t get enough of him.

Her body felt as if it’d gone into some sort of sexual overdrive. She flipped from hot to cold—the way he’d said she would, oddly enough—and couldn’t look at him for more than a few seconds without having the insatiable need to jump his bones.

He didn’t seem to mind, she thought with a grin.

Sighing, she rolled over and tucked her arms beneath the pillow. This place was nothing like what she’d expected it to be. His beach home was understated. No grand piano and no bar. No original pieces of art, and no secretaries or butlers. It was a refreshing getaway far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. The whole place gave Melina the feeling Hayden only bought the things he absolutely needed, rather than what money could buy him.

She could breathe here,
she realized, staring at the closed door to the master bathroom. She hadn’t thought about work or the article since the event at the aquarium, actually.

She’d have to get back to work mode bright and early tomorrow morning when she clocked in.

A hint of the blues struck her as she thought about this weekend coming to an end. Couldn’t they stay here? Just the two of them? Somehow, in such a short amount of time, Hayden had become a completely different person. In this place, he wasn’t the playboy millionaire who smiled for the cameras, partied too hard, and slept around too much. He wasn’t rude or pretentious. He wasn’t cocky or arrogant.

He was exactly the person she’d thought he was when she first met him at Starbucks last year—the man she’d spent the last week with.

It was going to be easier to write the article for
Celeb Crush
than she thought.

As the sound of water hitting tile echoed into the bedroom, Melina slid to the edge of the bed and let her feet dangle over the side. The bed was huge, she realized. The biggest one she’d ever seen. It was fit for a king.

How surprised would the “king” be if she joined him in the shower? Merely thinking about water sluicing down Hayden’s rippling muscles made butterflies dance through her belly.

She grinned as her mind went ravenous with ideas.

Ping!

The bleep came from the nightstand beside her. Besides a lamp, an alarm clock, and a bottle of Dasani, the table was empty.

Ping! Ping!

Opening the top drawer, she pulled out an iPad and set it on her lap. The screen was alive with snippets of emails, but one in particular caught her eye.

Rogue Wolves: the information you requested.

Email sender: Gabriel Park.

The breath whooshed out of Melina’s lungs as she read the snippet over and over again. She’d figured the wolf thing was a stupid fantasy, or a joke of some sort Hayden liked to play on the women he dated. Unless Hayden had told Gabriel to email him, and had planned on Melina digging through his bedside table to find the message, the email had to have been legit.

But that couldn’t be right.

Tingles of awareness pricked the back of Melina’s neck. Suddenly cold, she ripped a fuzzy blanket off the back of the bed and wrapped it around her. A shiver rolled through her as she swiped her finger across the bottom of the iPad. Gabriel’s email filled the screen. Melina skimmed quickly, picking up bits and pieces she didn’t understand. She bit her lip so hard it hurt, but she had to feel
something
. She’d gone numb. Her heart rate skyrocketed, thumping wild in her ears.

Multiple attacks.

Rogues forming a pack on Church Street.

Asher has claimed responsibility. New intel suggests he’s working for someone higher up in the pack.

Melina…

She let out a yelp when she spotted her name.

“Melina?” Hayden shouted. The shower turned off. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine!” But she didn’t sound fine. Her voice was strained.

She read quickly.

Melina will need to be inducted into the pack immediately if she wants our protection. I’m sorry this happened. I know it’s not the way you wanted things to go down between you.

The bathroom door swung open.

“What are you doing?” Hayden stood in the doorway, soaking wet, holding a towel over his groin. Even when she was pissed at him, and confused beyond belief, his hotness permeated her thoughts. “What’s going on?”

God, she didn’t know.

“I’m, uh…reading.” She swallowed down the desire to shoot a gazillion questions at him. “It went off, and I found it.”

How stupid could she sound? She was having problems finding the words, and feared she never would.

He nodded, his dark eyes giving away nothing. “Anything interesting?”

“Gabriel emailed you.”

His lips went white as he ate up the room in a few solid strides and removed the iPad from her grasp. He scanned quickly, and then met her gaze.

“I’ve asked him to follow up on the rogues who attacked you.” As he dried off, the sound of water splattering on the tile hit her ears. “I’ve also put in a request to the council to have the guards move toward the Mission and scour the streets for any sign of the rogues. They’ll be regrouping soon to reevaluate their strategy. I don’t think they’d planned for you to escape. Heads will roll and plans will change.”

Rogues and attacks had been mentioned before, but suddenly, with the weight of a thousand bricks, reality set in. She couldn’t be the brunt of the longest running prank in history, could she? When he spoke about werewolves, a hard truth burned in his eyes. There was no hint of laughter, no teasing undercurrent.

“You’re, ah…” She swallowed hard, fearing the words. “…not joking?”

“This isn’t a joke to me, Melina.” He sat beside her, the towel creeping up his thighs. “Your safety is
far
from a joke.”

“And I’m…” Panic tightened her throat, cutting off her air supply. “I’m a—I’ve been bitten and there are—and I’m going to be a—”

“Werewolf. We went over this earlier, remember?” His hand found her shoulder. Chills spread from his palm, down into her chest. “I know transition can be disorientating, but what happened wasn’t a dream. Is that what you thought?”

Shrinking away from his touch, she leaped off the bed and cinched the blanket around her. “Stay away from me.”

His lips quirked in that sexy way that curled her toes. Even in the face of fear, her body responded to his on a primal level.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. He sounded as though he meant it. “I brought you here so you’d be safe. The last thing I want is for this to be hard for you. Why don’t you sit?”

She didn’t fear him. Not really. If he’d wanted to hurt her, he would’ve done it already. What she feared was much worse…

“Why don’t you tell me who the hell you are? No more bullshit.”

“I’m Hayden Dean, the same man I was yesterday.”

“Okay then,” she said, skepticism setting in, “
what
are you?”

Exhaling heavily, he leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. “I’m a two-hundred-year-old werewolf. I was born to non-shifter parents, who died when I was young. I lived on the streets, was attacked by a werewolf, and transitioned during the next full moon. Angus Dean saved me from the streets, accepted me into his pack, and adopted me as his only son. Your path to this point isn’t much different, but if you look at how much I’ve done with my life from then to now, you’ll realize everything’s going to be fine.”

Her breathing became shallow and little pinpricks of starbursts swirled in her line of vision. She shuffled to the end of the bed, stared out the window at the crashing waves, and used the bedpost at the foot of the bed to support her weight. She seemed to sway with the ocean swell, her ears filled with the same muffled hush and boom.

She couldn’t wrap her head around the reality Hayden had painted. It might as well have been the script from a movie.

“I was kidnapped…” she fought out, strangling the end of the blanket in her grasp. “By werewolves.”

Wouldn’t she have remembered something like that?

“They took you from somewhere on the Embarcadero, probably before you reached the place we had dinner.” There was truth in Hayden’s voice. Remorse, too. “The transition from non-shifter to werewolf can make your memory patchy. That might explain why you have blank parts when you try to recall what happened, but if you try to piece it together, it’ll come back.”

A blacked-out car parked at the curb on Pier 39 streamed into her mind. Someone had emerged from the back of the car, chased her down, and stabbed her with something in the neck.

Touching the spot under her jaw unleashed an onslaught of horrific memories.

Quasimodo. The horror of the first bite. Hayden finding her.

He’d saved her.

“And then…” She couldn’t speak the awful words.

“You fought one of them.” He shook his head and lowered his gaze. “You were so brave, Melina. There are wolves in my pack who wouldn’t fight a rogue head to head. They don’t have honor or live by codes the way we do, which is why they split off to begin with.”

“I just want to clarify something.”
One breath
.
Two.
“We’re talking about werewolves.” Her head spun as she tried to get the details right. Air
whooshed
in and out of her lungs, deep and labored. “As in, men who turn into hairy, snarling, beastly wolves.”

“We’re not snarling or beastly, but the hairy part would depend on the man, I suppose.” He cracked a smile, but recovered quickly. “And it’s not only men. Women, too.”

Her hands and feet tingled. “This isn’t real. This can’t be happening.”

Hayden rose and stood behind her She could feel his presence against her back, though he didn’t touch her. “We went over the details yesterday, remember?”

“Oh yeah, I remember everything you said.” She spun. Right into his chest. “I remember the two pulse point thing and the rogue pack thing, blabitty-blah, but I didn’t think you were telling the truth.”

He chuckled, and then cut his laugh short. “Why would I lie to you about something like that?”

“I thought you had a twisted sense of humor.”

“Oh, my sense of humor is definitely twisted. But not about this. You look red.” His hand touched her bare shoulder, radiating delicious warmth through her body. He took back his hand as if she’d shocked him. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Okay? No, Hayden Wolfie Dean, I am most definitely
not
okay!”

“Wolfie?” He grinned, shaking his head. “Is that the best you can come up with?”

She paced back and forth, to the windows and back to him again. Without warning, her skin flushed hot and her head pounded. Hayden had mentioned hot and cold flashes earlier. As if the clouds parted, she recalled every crazy part of their conversation.

“I’m a werewolf?” she screeched. “And you’re a werewolf and you’re really freaking old—”

“Whoa, no need to fight dirty.” He threw up his hands. “I’m not old. For a werewolf, I’m in my prime.”

“How old will I get?”

“About three hundred if you live alone, and a thousand if you bond with your fated mate. Theoretically speaking.”

“A thousand?” Stars danced in front of her eyes. “As in, one thousand years. Wonderful. I’m going to be a horrible old woman. Bitter and really freaking hairy.”

“You won’t look much older than you do now,” he said, his voice soothing to her ears. “You’ll age gracefully. As for the bitter part, I think you’re already there.”

She gasped, and fought the urge to smack him.

“And
Gabriel
knows about the werewolves too,” she rambled on. “He sent you the email, so he’s in on this. How many more of you are there?”

“I’m not sure how many populate the world at this point, but we have hundreds of werewolves in the San Francisco Wolf Pack and there are hundreds of others in packs surrounding our area.”

“Uh-huh, yeah,” she said, nodding frantically, “and I’m going to
shift
—isn’t that what you called it?—and grow a bunch of hair and howl at the moon, and oh God, that’s not cute. I’ll look like Chewbacca.”

“I’m sure there are some people who think Chewbacca’s cute.” He laughed, hard and deep. This time, she did smack him, right in the shoulder. He cowered, probably for her benefit. “I’m kidding, slugger. You won’t be anything like Chewy. You’ll be dainty and sleek, most likely, and will have the same color coat as the hair on your head. It’ll be dark and silky, and fall through my fingers just the same.”

She softened. Damn him.

“This is so surreal. So freaking unbelievable. Do they make Nair for dogs?”

“Not that I know of, but you won’t need—”

“It’s hopeless.” She slapped her forehead. It was ice cold. Clammy. “Does it hurt when it happens? When you shift?”

How could he be so calm about all this?

“Shifting is scary at first, so you naturally resist the change, which makes the process uncomfortable.” He leaned against the bedpost and folded his arms over his chest. “But after that, it’s the most freeing feeling in the world.”

“Freeing?”

He nodded.

She rubbed the mark on her neck, and then eyed her wrist where his teeth had pierced her flesh. Vaguely, images took root in her mind. He’d held her hand. He’d apologized over the decision to bite her—she recalled the agony in his voice.