Weremones (7 page)

He could barely contain the wolf. With his quarry found, the wolf wanted to take her, like before, to his lair.

Remembering vividly what a mistake that had been, Adam stepped back. Inside, the wolf howled with frustration at the loss of her next to his skin. With a tentative smile, Adam held out the olives.

———

“You.”

Diana stared at him, eyes wide. She took a couple of steps back, regaining her personal space. It was him. What were the chances of running into him so soon after her debacle at his house? Pretty darn high considering the size of the town. Her cheeks pinkened.

“Ah … thank you.” She took the jar he held out and gestured helplessly at the shelf. “Thank you. I’m, ah, a little short.”

The intensity in his pale blue eyes was somewhat unnerving. Dear God, Karen was right. The man was absolutely gorgeous. His near white blond hair was longish and pulled back at his neck. Several strands escaped to tease around his high cheekbones. Tall and broadly muscled, he looked like he had stepped from the cover of a Viking romance novel. That much testosterone should both be illegal and go hand in hand with medieval weaponry.

“That’s all right. I’m a little tall.” His hesitant smile broadened a bit, showing a glimpse of white, white teeth. “Makes up for not having a ladder handy.”

Oh. Something warm unfurled in Diana’s belly. She reminded herself that men this good looking did not purposefully flirt with women like her.

She squared her shoulders, gathered her wits, and set the jar in the basket before looking back at him. No, men like him did not have an interest in plump thirty-eight year old divorcees. She didn’t need to make a fool out of herself a second time.

Looking up, Diana met his direct gaze. He seemed to be waiting for something.

She imagined she knew what.

“About the other day.” Diana brushed a nervous hand through her short bangs.

“I’m sorry about all that. The hysterics.”

He cocked his head in that odd way she’d noticed. Like a dog. No, not a dog, he was all wolf. She imagined if he could, he’d have perked his ears forward. Her imagination brought a fresh flush of heat to her face.

“I mean … I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have … ah …”

He closed the distance swiftly, laid a gentle finger over her lips.

“Forgotten.” He hesitated a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was a deep comfortable rumble. “Does what we are bother you?”

“N-no, Mr. Weis.” She said against his finger. His presence mesmerized her. Heat seemed to roll off of him. She wanted to absorb the excess warmth, curl up next to him and stay there.

“Adam.” He moved his finger over her lips, tracing them, his intense eyes memorizing the shape. Every part of her was earthy, womanly, and erotically delicious to his senses.

“Adam.” Diana breathed against the digit. She noticed, with feminine pride, a shudder work its way from his arm to shoulder, and down his back.

Adam stepped back, the man regaining control. Ruthlessly, he pushed the wolf down. He leashed the instinct that pressed him to take the female, to drag her to his lair like a caveman and keep her there.
He
did not want a woman.

Yes, he did want her. But the wolf wanted more than sex, way more. Sex was all that the man was willing to give. He didn’t want a mate, especially not a human one that would not be strong enough to hold her place in the pack.

Diana blinked away the fantasy and watched Adam distance himself. Oh, well. At least she had plenty of fuel for her dreams, because really, the man was way out of her league. She pasted on a bright smile. “Diana.”

He drew his brows together, momentarily confused, and cocked his head again. He nodded when the proverbial light came on. His smile too, seemed more than it should be. He stepped over to his basket, taking possession of it.

“It has been a pleasure, Diana.”

She nodded in agreement, realizing his hurry to get away. Must be those divorcee cooties. Maybe a neon sign labeled
desperate
over her head with an arrow pointing down.

“Yes. And again, I’m sorry about last time.”

“Like I said, forgotten.”

He started down the aisle, the frustrated wolf gnawing at his resolve. He focused on leaving the store a civilized creature. He nearly made it to the end of the aisle when she called out to him.

“Adam!”

No, no, no.
He needed to get away.
He wanted to stay.
That part was the wolf.

The wolf wanted to stay long enough to claim the female. Then they’d go to his lair. Oh, the things he would do to her there.

“Adam!”

He turned, his frustration and inner turmoil boiling to the surface.

“What?”

“You’re leaking.”

“Huh?” Her soft, full breasts bounced as she hurried toward him.

“Your milk is leaking.”

He focused more intently on her full breasts. He would be able to smell her better with his nose buried between them, cushioning his cheeks.

“Milk?”

She brushed past him and leaned over his basket, giving him a better view of her heart-shaped ass. His mouth watered. His cock got harder.

He nearly choked when she reared back up and shoved a gallon of milk under his nose. The scent effectively obscured vanilla and citrus. He leaned away and refocused on the offending container. A small steady stream ran from the top, over the back of her hand, and dripped onto the floor. He had a sudden hankering for milk and woman
al dente
.

“Grab that box over there.”

Numb with raging hormones, Adam removed the last can of something off of the shelf, he didn’t care what, and handed Diana the box.

“Put it down there on the floor.”

Yeah. The floor was a good place. He could spread her out and lick all that milk off of her sweet skin. She pointed and, finally understanding her intent, Adam set the box down on the floor near the shelf. His reward was another first class view as she bent to set the gallon in the box. Regret when she straightened.

“Ugh.” She shook her hands of excess liquid. “I need to wash.”

Adam could help her clean up. He liked milk. The wolf agreed with a howl. He realized he’d been caught staring again when she sidled away to the end of his basket.

“Interesting choices you have there.”

What was wrong with his food?

Adam glanced at her basket. Mountains of vegetables, frozen and fresh, piled high. Lots of green leafy stuff. Yogurt and granola cereal peeked around various bags.

He looked down at his basket. Packages of steak and hamburger meat, frozen burritos, a dozen frozen pizzas, a case of hot dogs supported his cereal and Little Debbies. He had four different types chips, Gatorade, and about three more gallons of milk.

Did he need more bread? Was four loaves enough? Growing wolven ate a lot, about four or five meals a day. Snacks did not count.

Adam looked at her basket again, then at her expression of…disapproval?

He had a sudden urge to fling his body over the basket and growl, to warn her away from his food. Instead, he narrowed his eyes.

“What’s wrong with it?”

Diana realized she’d been rude again. Why was she always sticking her foot in her mouth around him? Or her knee in other inappropriate parts?

“I’m sorry.” She tried a smile and veered to more common ground to smooth things over. “I forgot that you have teenagers to feed, too. Sometimes they can be so picky, can’t they?”

Her meaning went over his head, but he seemed to take it in stride. Obviously, the junk in his basket was intended for his stomach, as well.

No man had ever worn that kind of diet so well. So much for the body builder, protein drink, and steroid theory she’d begun to formulate about him. But then, he was more than just a man, she reminded herself.

Those cool blue eyes watched her as if she would grab his basket and run. She could tell he wanted to leave. So much for her grand finesse.

He nodded warily and she could see the bristling man slowly calm down. He surprised her by speaking instead of simply brushing her off and pushing his cart away.

“Yeah. Five teens eat a lot. I’m always running out of stuff.”

Diana laughed. “I imagine so. Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

He nodded again, watching her go to her basket. His gaze bored into her back.

Diana wondered that she didn’t spontaneously combust. She waved once more as she wheeled out of the aisle and toward the cashier.

While stacking groceries in the trunk of her car, Diana replayed her reunion with Adam Weis and tried to regain control of her wayward female hormones. She tingled all over.

Good grief. She wasn’t some teenybopper. She was thirty-eight. She needed to get a hold of herself.

It wasn’t like the man had asked her on a date of anything. As if he would after she’d kneed him in the nuts the first time they’d met. This time around, she’d acted desperate, as if she couldn’t bear to let him out of her sight.

Pathetic.

Diana shook her head, disgusted with herself. She slammed the trunk closed.

She slid behind the wheel and flipped down the visor. She looked okay for her age. In the mirror, her plain brown eyes stared back at her, fringed and long due to a fifteen dollar tube of mascara. Only tiny lines were starting to form around her eyes. Her lips weren’t full enough, a vanity she hid by adding a hair more lipstick under her bottom lip line. Except for a strand or two, her short hair hadn’t started going gray yet. Thank God for small blessings.

As if a man like that was going to take a second look at her.

Perhaps she should go out with Bob Benedict? He was more her speed.

Diana imagined kissing steady, dependable Bob. He was a little older that her. His salt and pepper hair might be thinning on top, but he wasn’t fat. He wasn’t built like a Greek god either. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, the slightly myopic accountant didn’t focus sharply on her with arctic blue eyes.

She’d call Bob and arrange to have dinner with him. She’d wear her best dress and heels. She pulled out of the parking lot and told herself firmly that she liked steady and dependable.

Really, she did.

Adam strode through the door and tossed his keys in the direction of the TV. A hand shot up to catch them. Video game monsters growled and screamed their last breaths, subdued by artificial machine gun sounds. The mingled scents of popcorn, soda, and his laughing, sweaty pack permeated the house, a scene similar to his own teenage afternoons piled up with his half-brothers Dominick and Gavin. Here was pack unity, and he was the outsider.

“Unload the truck. Put up the groceries. I’ll start dinner in an hour.”

Adam didn’t notice five pairs of eyes shift to glance at one another, or the sudden stillness of the room. He continued on to his room, oblivious to the fact that not one of the boys uttered a word of argument in the distribution of the chore. They simply filed out.

In his room, Adam dropped his clothes on the floor and stepped into the shower, closing the stall door behind. He turned the cold tap on all the way, letting the icy spray sluice down his body, shocking his libido into submission. When the ice finally infiltrated his veins, he shut off the water. He gave a full body shake and stepped out, grabbing one of the thick towels out of the cabinet.

Great.

Now he was cold on top of being in a bad mood. Since he was already in the right frame of mind, Adam decided he’d take care of the bills. He didn’t feel like cleaning up, so he left his old clothes and the damp towel on the floor. The messy room fed his irritation in a dark and satisfying way.

He pulled a clean pair of jeans over his hips, buttoned up, and padded barefoot to his office. He grabbed the mail from the angled box fixed to the wall by the door before going in.

No one entered his domain here. The boys came and went pretty much everywhere in the house, but this room and his bedroom were off limits except by invitation. Or summoning. Their choice, not his.

Adam dropped the mail on his desk, then slouched into the leather chair behind his desk and glared at the dark computer.

He gave a canine snort. He could have almost any woman he wanted for sex.

He’d had both wolven and human females. At least with his own kind, he didn’t have to hold back. Humans were fragile creatures, their females more so.

He didn’t need to get involved with a human female. He barely understood wolven females. Why would he want to try to understand a human?

To hell with it. What male, of any species, understood women?

Adam opened an email message. The formal Canis to Canis greeting made him stop. Fourteen months after Paul had exiled him here with those words, he still wasn’t used to the title. A small thrill of pride warred with his sense of desertion.

Hail, Sire Adam,

Greetings, from Canis Tarrant.

Emotion engulfed Adam as he scanned the letter for news.
Damn,
he was about to become an uncle. His brother, Dominick, was going to be a father, a rare and happy occasion, since so few wolven females conceived or carried their babies to term. As a matter of superstition, wolven parents made no mention of the pregnancy until the last month. For their sakes, Adam hoped that Dominick and Valerie’s child survived.

What other changes had happened in the Tarrant County pack in the year he’d been gone?

He missed his old pack. He missed the hunts with his half-brothers, Dominick and Gavin, working as a unit to bring down a deer. Playing hide and seek in the woods at midnight. The comfort of a warm pile of bodies, not for sex. A wolven pack needed the touch and reassurance of its members as much as they needed to hunt. Even strays preferred to travel in pairs for protection and someone to touch.

Adam was aware that he was in a raw sulk. It was a self-indulgence that neither of his fathers would approve.

Adam missed his wolven father and former pack leader. Paul had been there for him since after his first Change, guiding him, teaching him things that his human father could not.