Amber's Heat, page 10
Go after her. Go…
“I’m just…” Without looking at him, she hurried into the room’s small bathroom and closed the door.
Forcing himself to stay on the bed, he sucked in a long breath, and held it as he turned his attention to his side again.
The stitches pierced his flesh, the skin around the tiny entry points healthy. If he had a sharp knife, a blade of some sort, he’d remove them. They weren’t necessary anymore. “Thanks, Ray,” he mumbled with a smile, flopping back onto the mattress. “I owe you.”
He’d definitely get James to grant the guy a wish. Without Ray knowing what he was doing, of course. Amber may have been exposed to the nonhuman paranormal world, but as far as he knew, Ray was still unaware.
He frowned, trying to remember every second of being at the veterinarian’s clinic. He hadn’t shifted—that had been impossible—but had he done anything else, said anything?
“What a fucking mess,” he muttered, pushing himself off the bed.
He explored the small room. Opened the mini-fridge. Studied its contents. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t put anything in it since the previous morning. A coffee. That James had interrupted, if he had his timeline correct.
Did he? Hell, it had all been a chaotic whirlwind from the minute Kade had sent him and James a text while they’d been at the karaoke bar.
Reaching into the fridge, he snagged a bottle of cola. Sure, he could run to the nearest gas station or convenience store and get one cheaper, but—
With what?
He snorted, straightening from the fridge and opening the bottle. True. All he had on him were a pair of sweatpants. And he had no clue where they’d come from.
“Are you sure you should be on your feet?”
He turned at Amber’s soft question, and his breath caught in his throat.
She’d clearly attempted to tidy herself up in the bathroom, her long dark tangle of hair constrained once again in a thick braid that hung now over her right shoulder, its curled end brushing the tip of her breast. Tiny beads of water clung to her eyebrows and eyelashes, and her cheeks appeared flushed but brighter.
Had she splashed water on her face? The quick equivalent of a cold shower?
“I’m okay,” he answered. Giving her what he hoped was a silly grin, he jumped up and down on the spot three times. “See?”
Rolling her eyes, she walked back to the bed and dropped down onto the side. He started to join her, and stopped, seating himself at the room’s small table instead.
Her scent already played havoc with his senses, his control. Being closer to her wasn’t wise.
His wolf rumbled, impatient. For release? Or for Amber?
“So,” he said, turning the cola bottle around in his hands. If he focused on the cold, hard surface pressing against his fingers, maybe he could tune out her scent, the sound of her heart, the soft whisper of her breath… “Do you come here often?”
She closed her eyes and palmed her face. “That was lame,” she laughed.
“I’ve never been good with small talk,” he admitted.
A smile curled her lips and she met his gaze. “I loved our small talk at the café.”
An invisible band tightened around his chest and he pulled in another breath, tasting her on the air.
Damn it.
“Tell me about how I found your tooth at the dig in North Bijou Hills,” she said, settling into a cross-legged buddha position in the middle of the bed.
“For your paper on me?”
She let out a groan. “Okay, okay. Maybe I hadn’t considered everything fully, but who knew the life of a dire wolf shifter was so fraught with danger? Now tell me about the tooth.”
He chuckled, and then leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, stretching his legs out in front and crossing his ankles. “The dig, as you call it, is—or was—a dire wolf graveyard. For centuries, dire wolves would find their way there in their last days of living. Instinctually. Or, as was the case for dire wolf shifters, taken there by their pack if they’d died elsewhere.”
“Wow.” Her eyes sparkled, her face alive with curiosity. “I mean, seriously, wow. There’s a belief elephants do a similar thing with some compelling evidence to support such a claim, but I didn’t know it was a Canis behavior as well.”
“I don’t think contemporary wolves do it. Dire wolves and the common gray wolves alive today…well, we’re very different.”
She snorted. “A point I’ve argued about many times. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed to explain a dire wolf wasn’t just a bigger version of a Canis lupis.”
An image of her going toe to toe with a man in a white lab coat filled his head, her dark eyes flashing with ferocity, her finger jabbing at the man, her other hand on her hip.
“Why do I think you’d be scary to argue against?” he asked with another grin.
She preened. And then waved her hand. “Keep going. The tooth?”
The tooth.
Dropping his gaze to the bottle of cola, he let out a long breath. “I was there at the graveyard, mourning the last female of my kind, when I was attacked by a mountain lion shifter.”
“A what?”
“A mountain lion shifter.”
Mountain lion, she mouthed, stunned amazement filling her face before a frown pulled at her eyebrows. “Wait. You were there mourning…” She stopped, studying him for a moment. “Was she your…your mate?” The word cracked. “How long ago—”
“No.” Shaking his head, he pushed himself from the seat and walked around the small room. “We didn’t get along. Major personality clash. This was over two hundred years ago.”
“Two hundred—” She slapped her palm to her mouth, eyes wide as she stared at him.
He gave her a wry smile. “Yes, I’m an old man. Actually, I’m young for a dire wolf shifter. If you had to assign me a human age, it’d probably be in the mid-thirties. Give or take a decade.”
Her eyes grew wider, and she dropped her hand. “You look good for an old man.”
Laughing, he returned to the seat. Dropped into it. The stitches in his side gave a minute tug on his flesh and he pressed his hand to them. Definitely needed to cut them out as soon as he could. “Thank you.” He lifted the bottle, turning it again. “So I was there, and I was attacked, and lost a tooth during the fight. He hit me while I was human, but it tore from my jaw mid-shift. I guess that’s why it was so different. Why it was not quite a dire wolf tooth and not quite a human tooth.”
“Did you win?”
He snorted at the unexpected question. She never asked what he thought she would, never reacted the way he expected. He loved that.
Love?
Chest tightening, he stared at the bottle in his hand. “Let’s just say if you ever meet a one-armed, one-legged mountain lion shifter, it might be best not to mention you know me.”
She raised her eyebrows and pulled a serious face. “Oh, I’ll be sure not to. Thanks for the warning.”
A wave of warmth flowed through him, and he smiled. How could he be enjoying this conversation? It was such a painful part of his past, the guilt of Basia, the brutal fight with the other shifter, almost dying… He shouldn’t be enjoying himself.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Every minute you’ve ever spent with Amber, you’ve enjoyed. All those minutes in the café, when you thought she was just a vet, all the minutes spent with her as she struggled so hard to save you, care for you… Every minute is wonderful. She’s wonderful. And you feel wonderful when you’re with her. It’s as simple as that.
Swallowing the thick lump in his throat, he met her gaze. “So, that’s the story of the tooth.”
It didn’t matter how wonderful it all was, it was still dangerous. And he had to put a stop to it now.
*
Chewing on her lip, Amber digested what he’d told her. Or tried to. It was a lot to take in. She hadn’t considered his age when she’d first discovered his existence. Hadn’t considered there’d been others like him. A part of her must have assumed he wasn’t the only one, but maybe he was? A pang of sorrow shot through her. What would it be like, to be the only dire wolf shifter, the last of his kind?
A heavy lump settled in her stomach at the disquieting thought. To be alone, the only one, for centuries…
If he was the last of his kind, how had he stayed sane?
Or would it not worry him? He’d done such an incredible job blending into society, of existing in it, maybe he’d be fine with being alone.
He was trusting her with all this information now, after all…
Head buzzing, eyes prickling, she looked at him. “Okay,” she finally said with a nod. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, your turn.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Tell me about you. The real you.”
Her cheeks grew warm and she tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her ear. “You mean, the Amber who isn’t a veterinarian from LA?”
A smirk tugged at the edges of his mouth. “Yes. Tell me about Amber the paleontologist who has two older brothers who seem very protective.”
She snorted. “Well, Amber the paleologist lost her parents in a car accident when she was only little,” she said.
The words felt rough in her mouth. Talking about her dead parents, the accident…it still affected her, even after all these years.
Closing her eyes, she drew a steadying breath, picturing them.
“They were Italian. Dad was a zoologist. Mom an English interpreter. She got a job working at the Italian embassy here in LA when Ray and Mick were five. They all moved here, Dad started working at the LA Zoo, and five years later, boom, I was born.” Her grin stretched wide, and then faded. “I was almost ten when they died. I went to a boarding school and Ray and Mick looked after me, raised me, whenever school was out, until I was old enough to go to college.”
“That must have been hard.” Sorrow swam in Kitt’s eyes. He shook his head, watching her.
She wobbled her head and shrugged. “They were amazing. And overprotective. And scared off any boyfriend I tried to have. That was annoying.”
He chuckled, even as the hand not holding the cola bottle clenched. “I bet,” he said, voice low and almost a growl.
Jealous? Was he jealous?
A horde of butterflies took flight in her stomach, and she hid her nervous sigh in a hitchy laugh. “Ray let me keep any stray I found—whether it was a dog or a cat or a lizard.”
“Lizard?”
She smiled and ducked her head. “Hey, I was twelve at the time. When you’re twelve and you find a lizard on the sidewalk that lets you pick it up without too much effort, you bring it home with you, okay?”
“Oh, of course you do.” He dropped his own head, his laugh playing with her sanity. God, she loved the sound of it.
“Anyway,” she went on, wriggling her butt a little on the mattress, “Ray let me keep any strays whenever I was home from boarding school, and made sure they had good homes to go to before I’d head back. And Mick taught me how to fight. And made sure my science grades were always the best they could be. And introduced me to all the best classic movies.
“It was Mick who got me interested in dinosaurs. He sat me down one summer break—I think I was thirteen—and made me watch all the Jurassic Park movies with him. By the time the first one finished, I was hooked. I became a fossil nerd. I made them take me to the La Brea Tar Pits so many times, I think I could have gotten a job there as a guide. I think they were both happy when I went to college in San Francisco so they didn’t have to look at a fossil again.”
“I can’t imagine anyone being happy you left their lives,” Kitt said.
The low words, uttered with an almost casual calm, sent a shard of something warm and tight into her core.
She looked down at her fingers, playing with the hem of her cargo pants, and let out a choppy laugh. “Yeah, you’re probably right. They’re still overprotective and always sticking their noses into my life.”
She thought of Ray. Knocked out on his clinic floor. She hoped he was okay. She hoped he’d forgive her.
Lifting her head, she gave Kitt another shrug. “So I went to college, to study paleontology, and that’s where I discovered dire wolves. And kinda got a bit hung up on them. Of course, I’d started reading George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series by then, which probably didn’t help.”
Kitt let out an exasperated groan and rolled his eyes with melodramatic weariness.
She grinned. “Oh shush. Do you have any idea how famous you’d be if the world knew about you? Everyone who reads that series, everyone who watches the TV show, wants a dire wolf as a pet.”
“I’m no one’s pet,” he growled, arching an eyebrow.
A charge of energy radiated from him. He sat motionless, and yet she didn’t doubt at any given second he could move. Fast. So fast, she wouldn’t know he had until it was too late.
“Does that mean,” she said, holding his stare, “you’ll say no if I ask you to roll over so I can rub your belly?”
An iridescent golden light flickered in his eyes. His nostrils flared. “My wolf would probably love that.”
“Your wolf?” A ribbon of excitement unfurled through her. An image of the massive dire wolf she’d watched sprinting through the forest in the Topanga Canyon hills filled her head. Her pulse quickened at the thought of combing her fingers through its thick fur.
His thick fur.
She caught her lip and watched Kitt straighten from the chair.
Approaching her slowly, his lips curled. “I, however…”
The ribbon of excitement twisted into a knot of anticipation. She gazed up at him as he drew to a halt directly in front of her. The pit of her stomach dipped. Her mouth grew dry. Her nipples beaded, turning into hard points in her bra.
“You wouldn’t want your belly rubbed?” she whispered, brushing her hand against his bare stomach.
His sculpted abdominal muscles coiled beneath her palm. His swift intake of breath cut the room’s silence.
She lowered her focus to where her hand touched his skin. Marveled at the sublime perfection of his abs.
Her blood roared in her ears. Her heart hammered in her throat.
Swiping her tongue over her bottom lip, she inched her hand a little lower, skimming the shallow dip of his navel, before moving her fingers higher again.
A low groan vibrated through his body but he didn’t move. Didn’t stop her.
Licking her lips again, she lifted her head, her stomach clenching, her entire core clenching at the muted golden glow burning in his eyes.
At the unmistakable desire burning even hotter there.
“I want to kiss you, Kitt,” she whispered. “I know what I did, the way I deceived you, was unforgivable…but I really want to kiss—”
He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers.
Gently at first, a choppy groan falling from him as she tentatively touched his tongue with hers.
Pressing his palm to her jaw, he deepened the kiss. Took from her what she gladly and willingly offered. She slid her tongue over his again, shy and then not shy. Hungry.
A deep rumble vibrated in his chest and he moved his hand, gripping her braid for an intense second before cupping the back of her head.
She moaned, and mimicked his hold, every sense in her body thrumming at the cool strands of his hair against her fingers as she tugged him down to the bed with her. As she lifted one leg and slid her foot up and down the back of his thigh.
Tearing his lips from hers, he gazed down at her. “This can never work, Am,” he whispered, pleasure warring with grief on his face. “You’re human, and I’m not. My lifetime extends into centuries—on the assumption I’m not killed by a Monstrum Venator. Yours is constrained by human biology.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered.
His nostrils flared. His hard length throbbed at the junction of her thighs. “Every second with me puts you in even greater danger.”
She let out a breathy chuckle, and slid her foot up and down his thigh again. “Again, I don’t care. Now will you shut up and just—”
He crushed her lips with his.
Chapter 9
He’d been drawn to her from the second they’d met, a meeting he now knew she’d staged to learn more about him, to study him. He’d been attracted to her from that very moment—emotionally, mentally, sexually.
And now, here they were, locked away in a motel room together, momentarily lost to the world.
He kissed her, hungry and nervous and burning up with desire and need.
He’d never wanted to kiss someone like this before. Never wanted to share something of himself in the action.
And he shouldn’t now. Everything he’d said was true.
But it didn’t matter.
Not at that moment.
At that moment, the only thing that mattered was being with her.
Deep inside, the wolf growled. There was nothing angry or violent about the sound, the reaction. His inner animal joined in his pleasure, his joy.
Liquid heat pooled low in his groin. His body tingled, an ancient need to copulate surging through him. To flip her onto her stomach, mount her. Mate with her. Bite her on the back of her neck.
Mark her as his property.
No.
Pulling away, putting distance between them, Kitt stared at her, his breath bursting from him.
“Am,” he rasped. Hell, was that fear in her eyes? “I…I’m not…human, remember.”
She lifted a shoulder, the dimple teasing her right cheek again. “Big deal.”
“I’ve never done,” he swallowed, “this with a human.”
Her eyebrows dipped into a frown. “Are you…I mean, you’d stay in your human form while it’s…y’know…” Her cheeks turned bright red and she caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “Wouldn’t you?”
“What? Yes. Hell, yes!” A wobbly laugh fell from him. “I’d never shift during…not with you.” He dropped his face into his hand and shook his head. “Christ, this is an awkward conversation.”
Soft fingers touched his arm, making him lift his head.
