When He Was Bad (8 page)

“Answer you about what?”

“About everything I just said to you.”

“Oh. That. I stopped listening and just stared at your lips instead, which are quite beautiful, by the way. But I could tell you weren’t going to say anything I wanted to hear, so I just ignored you.”

She had absolutely no idea what to say to the man. For once, someone had left her speechless and…slightly amused.

“Is ignoring me supposed to endear you to me somehow?”

“No. That’s the job of my thighs and my get-lost-in-them-forever dreamy eyes.” He leaned in even closer and blinked his eyes several times. “Mesmerizing, aren’t they?”

Irene couldn’t hold it back anymore. It flooded out of her and she couldn’t stop it. Even when everyone turned and stared at her, including Jackie and Paul, she couldn’t stop. And she tried.

Because laughing this much really would only exacerbate his ego even more.

He knew he wasn’t playing fair but he didn’t have a choice. If he’d asked her to go to dinner with him, she would have automatically said no. So he invited her friends and assumed she’d come along. Which…she did.

If he’d asked her to come home with him, she would have said no. So he used the fact that Paul and Jackie were just mated by arranging for them to get a night in the honeymoon suite at his cousin’s five-star hotel downtown before they took off for a few days in Mexico. Then he had his limo driver take them to said hotel. Which kinda, sorta left Irene stranded.

Van waved at the limo one more time before turning around. She stood there in that scintillating red, full-length gown, one foot tapping, arms crossed over her chest, not looking nearly as annoyed as she probably wanted to be.

“Well?” she snapped.

“Well, what?”

“How am I getting home?” She held up her tiny purse. “I have all of five dollars in this bag because Paul was going to pay for the taxi.”

“You should always carry more money on you than that.” Her eyes narrowed and Van held his hands up. “Sorry, sorry.” He shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d want to see my apartment. It’s just down the street.”

“Why would I want to see your apartment? Are there zoo animals there?”

She asked the strangest questions. “No. No zoo animals.” He grinned. “Except me, of course.”

“Would I have to pretend I like it even if I don’t?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because my first response is usually my most honest but I’ve actually lost the university charity money because my first response insulted someone important. Your family gives a lot of money to the university; I need to know if I should plaster on that fake smile that makes my face ache.”

“No. I always want you to be honest with me, Irene. Even when the honesty sucks.”

“Will we have sex again?” she asked the same way someone might ask if the IRS was about to give them an audit.

“If you want to.”

“Do you want to?”

He groaned. “You have no idea.”

She glanced around the empty street. “I have work to do.”

“You always have work to do. It can’t be healthy, Irene. You have to take some time for yourself.”

“Well…I would like to have sex with you again.” She looked at him with that brutally honest face and said, “It was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be.”

Knowing she wasn’t in any way joking, Van replied, “Yes. I enjoyed it a lot, too. Maybe you could spend the weekend with me.”

“I should work.”

That definitely wasn’t a “no.”

“You can work in the afternoon.”

“And the rest of the time we’ll have sex?”

Van cleared his throat. “Yes, Irene. The rest of the time we’ll have sex.”

After several long moments, she nodded. “All right, then. Which way is your apartment?”

“That way.”

Irene started walking west and Van called after her, “Irene?” She turned around and looked at him. He held his hand out and she stared at it for several more long seconds. He could almost see her brain sifting through the appropriate responses. Finally, she reached out and placed her hand in his.

Van interlaced their fingers and headed home with Irene right next to him.

And he’d never been happier.

“Do you actually need all this room or is this the only place you could find where you could fit your head?”

Irene accepted the glass of wine Van handed her.

“My, my, we certainly are rolling with the jokes this evening.”

She shrugged. “I guess. I find myself surprisingly comfortable around you. Well…as comfortable as I can be with anyone remotely human. And you are somewhat remotely human.”

“Such compliments.” He took her hand, and it felt strange to her to not automatically want to pull it away again.

Van led her through the apartment. Apparently he owned it and the entire building. The furniture was tasteful but useful. She actually felt like she could sit on the couch. Each room was tidy and well kept. But his kitchen…she’d never seen such a sparkling kitchen outside of a cleaning-fluid ad.

“This is very…clean.”

“It’s the kitchen. Of course it’s clean. Would you prefer to think your food is coming from some place with roaches?”

“No. But this does seem to be above and beyond the standard clean.”

“Not at all.” Van turned to take a beer from the refrigerator.

With him facing away from her, Irene shifted the big knife block on the counter slightly to the left.

“I grew up around chefs,” he continued, turning back around and immediately shifting the knife block back to its original position. He probably didn’t even realize he’d done it. “You always keep your kitchen clean or you hear about it. And my uncles can be mean. Usually fangs are involved.”

Irene nodded, surprisingly enthused to find a little obsessive-compulsive behavior in the always-controlled but perpetually laid-back wolf.

He stared at her and Irene didn’t know what to make of it. To get things moving she said, “So are we going to do this or what?”

She already had the straps of her gown halfway off her shoulders when he left his unopened beer on the pristine counter and grabbed her hands.

“Hey, hey. What’s the rush?”

Irene sighed in annoyance. “Look, I’ve got responsibilities. Things to do. I’m not some rich kid who can do whatever I want. In other words, I need to get this done and then get back to work.”

“Are lives being lost because you’re spending some time in my kitchen?”

“Lives? Of course not, but—”

“Then relax, Irene.”

Irene realized he had a point and frowned in concentration as she tried to force herself to relax.

Van Holtz released her. “Is that you relaxing?”

She growled. “If you keep talking I won’t be able to. I need to focus to get myself to relax. Focusing is the key.”

“All right. That’s it.” Van Holtz grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room.

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer but dragged her into a bedroom. She briefly thought,
Oh, good.
But then he kept walking into a bathroom that could have housed the entire Foreign Legion. He released her and closed the bathroom door.

Irene shrugged. “A shower? Do I not smell fresh?”

Van Holtz snorted a laugh. “Doc, you smell wonderful.”

“Then why are we in your bathroom?”

He went over to the obscenely large tub that looked more like a pool and turned on the water. It began to fill up quickly. “I thought we’d take a bath.”

“A bath? What am I, eight? Will there be bubbles, too?”

He snapped his fingers. “Good call, doc.” He walked over to one of the cabinets and popped open the doors. “One of my cousins from Germany stayed here about six months ago and she has three daughters. I think they left…yes!” He turned around, holding a plastic bottle. “Pink bubbles.”

“I don’t understand. Is this a prelude to sex?”

“Everything with me is a prelude to sex,” he muttered, checking the temperature of the water before pouring in the entire contents of the bottle. “But this isn’t only about sex. I’ve decided.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “Decided what?”

“That you’re staying the weekend.”

“I haven’t agreed to that and why would I?”

Van Holtz stood and walked over to her. “Because you and I are going to hang out. We’re going to watch TV, eat delicious food that I make, maybe go shopping for shit we don’t need, and neither one of us is going to do any work of any kind.”

“Again…why would I do that?”

“Because we’re going to spend the weekend getting to know each other.”

“I thought we did know each other. And we’d come to the conclusion that we were friends…only.”

“We are friends. And friends hang out doing nothing.”

“Forget it.” Irene headed toward the door. “I’ve got a ton of lab work waiting for me and—”

“There’ll be lots of sex, too.”

Irene stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Sex?”

“
Lots
of sex.”

“Truly? Or is this some kind of Van Holtz torture?”

He stepped up behind her and she could feel his body heat, the touch of his hands on her shoulder, fingers sliding under the straps of her gown. “Oh, there’ll be a little torture,” he promised. “But only the good kind.”

Van never realized until this moment how much of his childhood he’d taken for granted. Going to school, playing with the other pups in the Pack, dating human girls, and debating with his friends the best way to keep their fangs in during sex. Hell, even going hunting every Christmas in Connecticut with his parents and sister. Things he did for enjoyment, not because he’d been born into money, but because he hadn’t been born any more or less special than any other shifter. He hadn’t been any different from some pup from the Magnus Pack or the Smiths. All his parents ever asked of him was to not bare his fangs in public, not let his junior-high buddies pay to see his sister naked when she was getting out of the shower, and not to lick his balls when he thought the Pack wasn’t looking…because they usually were.

He simply couldn’t imagine people expecting any more from him than that at the age of five, ten, even twenty. But they’d expected it of Irene. At a charity event, he heard two older professors discussing how they once saw Irene give a speech at the United Nations nearly fifteen years ago. Why a ten-year-old needed to give a speech, in several languages no less, to U.N. delegates for any other reason than a dog and pony show, Van had no idea. Of course, it completely explained why she was the prickliest woman he’d ever known. How could she be anything but prickly and a tad uptight?

Yet as Irene stood in his kitchen, desperately trying to force herself to relax, he suddenly knew what he had to do. What he wanted to do. He wanted to show her what it was like to be brutally, painfully, wonderfully average. Not all the time—he knew she’d never allow that—but enough so she could learn to enjoy all the amazing things she could do. And so she wouldn’t die of an ulcer and high blood pressure by the time she was forty-five.

First, though, he had to teach her basic relaxation skills.
Like taking a bath
, he thought as he tossed her naked body into his bathtub. She squealed like an actual girl until she hit the water and then she came up sputtering and pretty pissed off. But by then he was naked and in the water with her, so he easily grabbed her waist and dragged her back in before she could stomp off mad.

“You do things just to irritate me, don’t you?”

Smiling, enjoying himself immensely, and determined to give her a wonderful and relaxing weekend, Van pushed Irene’s wet hair from her face. “Don’t be silly, doc.” He kissed her lips, nuzzled her chin. “Of course I do things just to irritate you.”

How annoying. She actually found him cute. And charming. When did that happen? She’d always thought of Van Holtz as a spoiled rich boy from a one-time barbarian Pack of ravening wolves. But, when so motivated, he could be cute and—
damn him
—charming. Even when tossing her into water. Something Irene had always hated. But she did like feeling him press his body against hers as the bath water lapped around them and the bubbles sneaked up her nose.

She also liked the way he looked at her. Most men looked right through her. Women, too. Everyone looked through her unless they wanted something from her. And what they usually wanted involved academia. At the moment, Van Holtz looked like he couldn’t care less about her mind than those in the English department. Most women would be insulted. And, as a rather proud feminist, she would be too…if she actually wanted a discourse on the Chaos Theory. She didn’t. She wanted him. She wanted to have sexual intercourse with him. Wait. That was wrong. No, she didn’t. She had sexual intercourse with men like Bradley. She didn’t want that with Van Holtz.

She wanted to fuck him. She wanted to be fucked by him. She wanted to get sweaty and transfer fluids and forget her name. She wanted everything that a night with Niles Van Holtz promised, but she refused to want more. She refused to get so caught up in her sexual urges that she would believe, for a second, that this thing they were indulging in would ever lead to anything more. When this was done—and it would be done sooner rather than later—she’d find another Bradley who’d make a great fourth at dinner with the dean.

Irene knew it was a very cold way of looking at relationships, even for her, but she had no delusions she’d ever get more. She was too strange, too off-key—and not in a cute, adorable way either—to ever hope someone could love her as she was, and she was smart enough to know she’d never change. Not inherently. Not where it counted. Even if she curbed her tongue and stopped scaring her students, she’d still be Irene Conridge, freak. Nothing she did would ever change that.

But she’d indulge herself this time. She deserved it. For at least twenty years she’d always done what people expected and wanted. Now she’d do what she wanted, even if it was only for the weekend. Only for this brief time in her life.

Big thumbs brushed her nipples and all Irene’s important thoughts floated away, leaving nothing but deep-seated lust.

She wrapped her arms around Van Holtz’s neck and her legs around his waist, pulling him close to her. She marveled at the heat of him. His body was always warm or sometimes, like now, hot. She wondered if that was normal for shifters. If their body temperatures were hotter than other, normal humans. She wondered if he’d let her take a sample of his blood. Then he lifted her up and laid her out on the tile floor and she quickly stopped caring about his DNA strain.

Before she realized what was happening, Van Holtz slid his tongue inside her and Irene gripped his wet hair, keeping his mouth against her. Her body rocked against his face, her hips and pelvis pushing into him. Leaving the warm water made her thoroughly aware of the chill in the air, her nipples hardening almost painfully, goosebumps racing across her skin. But the sudden cold also made her more thoroughly aware of Van Holtz’s big hands tightly gripping her thighs, his mouth and tongue stroking her to orgasm as she shook and moaned beneath his mouth and hands.

Little else held her interest as he ate at her. Devoured her with a single-minded intensity that took her breath away.

Irene groaned as she came. She groaned and moaned and begged him not to stop. He didn’t. He took her over again and again, until she lay exhausted on his tile floor, her breathing ragged, her body trembling.

He pulled her back into the warm water, the bubbles much less than when she’d first gotten in. He held her against his body, stroking her back and arms until her trembling stopped.

“Sorry about that,” he ridiculously apologized. “But all I could think about was going down on you.”

She rested her head in the crook of his neck and sighed. “Anytime. And no apology necessary.”

He tried nothing else, even though she could feel his own unfulfilled lust resting hard and hot against her inner thigh.

Combing her fingers through his hair, she let out a satisfied sigh—and decided to have some fun of her own.

“You know, I read so many books,” he heard her say softly in his ear.
Books?
She wanted to talk about books now? But he didn’t have the heart to tell her to shut up. He quickly realized talking about books and what she knew gave her a sense of control she probably had in few other areas of her life.

“And,” she went on, “I read this book once written by a young homosexual writer.”

Van frowned, wondering where this particular conversation might be going. With Irene you really never knew.

“It was informational. About how to perform oral sex on men. You know, one man teaching another. It was really fascinating and I’ve always wondered about the techniques he discussed—ow. Ow! You’re squeezing a little hard, Van Holtz.”

Forcing himself to loosen the grip he had on her, Van leaned back a bit and looked at Irene. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Just remember I bruise easily. Now…where was I?”

“You always wondered about the techniques he discussed.”

“Oh. Yes. That’s right.” She glanced at him under eyelashes he’d never noticed were ridiculously long. Dark brown and long, which contrasted with those ice-blue eyes of hers. But it was the look she gave him and Van knew, in that moment, she was teasing him. Not teasing him in the sense she’d leave him and his poor cock to fend for themselves, but playfully teasing him like a lover would. “Anyway, I found some of the techniques he suggested fascinating, but I didn’t know if any of them could truly produce the response he promised.”

Van gritted his teeth. “And?”

“Well, if you’re willing to be my test subject—ack!”

He didn’t mean to toss her out of the bathtub like that and when she went sliding across the tiles he’d made wet and slippery from tossing her in and out of the water in the first place, he did feel a twinge of guilt. But it didn’t last as his cock took complete control of his brain. Slapping his hands against the edge of the tub, he gave one push and landed nearly five feet away. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around Irene, and carried her to the bedroom.

He placed her carefully on the floor and walked away, giving them a little distance. He was terrified he’d pounce on her like some unsuspecting rabbit he’d found in his backyard.

Van closed the bedroom door—strictly because he needed something to do with his hands—and leaned against it. Letting out a breath, he looked at her.
Let her take the lead
, he warned himself.