His Curse to Give, page 1
HIS CURSE TO GIVE
(WOLVES TO BE, SHORT STORY 1)
By T. S. JOYCE
His Curse to Give
Copyright © 2023 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2023, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: April 2018 under author’s real name – Tera Shanley & a publisher
Rights reverted, short story series was re-written, and new electronic publication occurred under
T. S. Joyce & her own publisher, Wicked Willow Press
Published as a re-written series April 2023
T. S. Joyce
www.tsjoyce.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America.
More Books in this Series
What He Is Now (Wolves to Be, Short Story 2)
Under Him (Wolves to Be, Short Story 3)
Contents
Copyright
More Books in this Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
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Chapter One
Summer Dicarlo was dying.
Two years ago, that would’ve sounded so melodramatic to her. She would’ve made a joke about that if she ran a mile without stopping, or broke up with a boyfriend, or was entangled in some drama in her friend group, but these days?
She was really dying.
Summer scanned the elegant hotel room with its flowing gold curtains and cream and shimmery yellow wallpaper. A trio of miniature vodka bottles stood empty by a stainless-steel sink, and the king-sized bed under her didn’t give so much as a grunt as she shifted positions. With her legs curled under her, she strapped on a pair of black, shimmery heels she’d emptied out her savings account to purchase. They weren’t her style by a long shot, but tonight she wanted to let loose, and forget her worries for a little while.
Dying. Dying? God, she was too young for this. The word was a constant and uninvited companion with every routine outing and errand. She’d begun calculating her tasks with time. This morning, she’d wasted thirty minutes of her remaining life curling her hair. She’d wasted forty-three minutes grocery shopping for food she didn’t have an appetite to eat. She’d just wasted two minutes strapping these high heels onto her feet.
This was the problem she’d run into as she’d gone through the process of grieving and acceptance. She had no idea what she wanted to spend the rest of her minutes on. She’d never figured it out, and something about that felt so unfair. She had wasted her life, thinking she had forever to figure everything out.
Summer glared at her naked toenails, which she really should’ve taken the time to paint before heading out for a night on the town with the girls.
The girls. How on God’s green and blue planet was she supposed to tell them?
They’d just celebrated a hopeful doctor’s good news last year, and she’d hidden when things had stopped looking so bright. She’d hidden it all. Her friends had lives, and hope, and futures, and she didn’t want to waste her minutes bringing them down.
How could she tell them the speed at which her health had tanked?
She shook herself and straightened her spine. That was an easy one. She simply wouldn’t tell them, just like every other night they’d gone out over the last year. She would go out to Meredith’s fancy party and throw a few drinks back, make the girls laugh like she always did, and maybe even flirt with a man. The man didn’t matter, so long as he got her mind off the future, or lack thereof.
She stood and walked unsteadily to the gold-framed full-length mirror that stretched up the wall. Damned heels. They were much less comfortable than her preferred flats or tennis shoes, but—she grinned at her reflected profile—they lifted her backside by glorious inches. The red sequined dress hit just above her knees, and hugged her curves. The only thing lacking was makeup. Oh, she’d done it up, just not enough for a dress like this.
She smeared another layer of shimmery dark shadow over her dove gray eyes, and brushed on another layer of mascara, then plumped her lips with lady-of-the-night red lip gloss. She didn’t even look like herself anymore but that was the point, wasn’t it? To escape for one night?
Tired of her reflection, she snatched her purse and headed downstairs to wait for the limousine Meredith had rented. Heels clacking loudly against the polished wood floors, she glanced back once before shutting the door to room 1010 behind her. The hallway swayed outside, growing longer and curving until she leaned against the wall under a silver-plated electric sconce that probably cost more than her groceries for a year.
“Waste,” she muttered as she shook the dizziness off, and stumbled for the elevator. It took three pokes to hit the down button, but that was probably just the triple shot of vodka she’d taken to steady her nerves. She was on some phenomenal medicines. The ding! of the opening door was abnormally dizzying.
Okay, or maybe not.
Her heel got stuck in the crack when she stepped wrong trying to get into the elevator, and with a muttered curse, she yanked it free, and stumbled directly into a man in a black suit.
“Are you okay?” the older gentleman asked as a younger one stepped between them.
“I’m awesome. Hey, I know you,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. She knew his face. He was…oh crap, where did she know him from?
“You have me mistaken with someone else,” the older gentleman said.
Summer tossed a glance at the tall man wearing-sunglasses-inside, who was currently trying to block her view of the…politician.
“You’re in politics. I saw you on the TV the other day. Sam. Samuel…Rrrr. Starts with an R. Right?”
God, this dizziness was getting intense. Maybe she needed that medicine Dr. Latham had prescribed to her a couple weeks ago. “Great idea,” she murmured to herself as she dug through her purse. “Mixing alcohol and medicine. Way to go Summer.”
Had she forgotten the medicine?
“Ma’am,” the younger man warned. “Ma’am, please stop what you’re doing.”
“Why are we going up?” she asked, squatting so she could dig through her purse easier.
“Because the elevator is taking us to the twentieth floor. Stop digging through your purse or I’m going to have to restrain you.”
“Okay, restraining sounds awesome,” she murmured, “but you don’t look like you would make it that fun.” The tall man was standing ramrod straight, and full of tension, like he had no sense of humor at all. The room grew darker as if someone had brushed a dimmer switch. “Oh no, oh no,” she murmured, frantically searching for the meds.
The man kicked her purse out of her grasp. “Hudson, we have a situation up here,” he said into his coat sleeve just as the world turned to shadows.
Chapter Two
Nash Hudson rolled his shoulders, but it didn’t loosen the tightness that came along with wearing a suit. The only thing he hated about being a bodyguard was the work attire. The rest—the violence, the need for his extra senses, tackling people, ongoing weapons training—all of that worked just fine for him. In fact, he couldn’t think of a better job for a werewolf, and apparently half the Pack thought so too because Primal Protective Services, the company he worked for, was made entirely of supernatural employees.
His oversensitive hearing had picked up on the static that preceded conversation in the microphone tucked into his ear, and he was already moving toward the elevator when Liam said, “Hudson, we have a situation up here.”
Nash broke into a jog and unlatched the weapon holstered at his hip.
“Wait,” Liam said. “False alarm. Just a lady looking for a pocket-shot or something. We’re off the elevator and headed to the suite. Stand by.”
The soles of Nash’s dress shoes had slid like ice skates across the polished marble floor, and he’d skidded to a stop. Gary, the concierge, glanced up and nodded a greeting. He knew him from other jobs at this hotel. “Standing by,” he said quietly into the microphone hidden in his sleeve as he scanned the lobby of the hotel and took his place next to the elevator doors. With one quick glance, he memorized the facial features of the nineteen people milling about. He could describe their attire, down to their likely shoe sizes. No one down here was prickling on his senses. They were just pairs and trios talking near the entrance to a bar. One couple was checking in across the lobby under the name Hamilton, and telling th
A minute passed then Liam said, “The panther is in his den. I’ll be down when the replacements get here.”
That small hint of a problem had kicked Nash’s heart beat into a gallop, and if he was being honest, he was a little disappointed that there was no action tonight. Some bodyguards prayed for quiet nights. Maybe that would be Nash someday, when he was older, and his wolf was ready to settle down. Tonight though? It had been too long since he had Changed, and he was itching for a fight.
The small ding! of the elevator behind him rang against his sensitive eardrums. A flash of shimmering red glitter showed in his peripheral vision. It must have been the lady who had stressed Liam out.
She was maybe five-foot-five and skinny as a rail.
Nash snorted. Liam was such a wuss.
He strode for the front counter to take a peek around the corner to see if anyone new had come in. Nash scanned the cavernous entryway. Four men sat with glasses of what looked like scotch near a high-end bar in the back. They’d been there for fifty-eight minutes, and from their conversation were old friends from a law firm they all used to work at. A family of four was dressed to the nines, and hustled from a hallway to his right toward the main exit. They must’ve been heading out to see a show or something. New York was filled with theaters.
The woman in the red dress had sat on an empty leather couch, under the big entryway chandelier. The crystals threw little rays of red sunset light all over the room as it caught the color of her dress. The humans here perhaps couldn’t see the color change, but he could.
Nash studied her face curiously. She wore bright red lipstick, and her dark makeup made her soft gray eyes look even lighter. Humans didn’t usually have eyes that striking. Her full lips were puckered slightly with the thoughtful expression on her face. She had stretched her leg out gracefully, and was…Nash frowned. She was painting her toe nails. Right here in the lobby of a four-star hotel, she was painting a layer of red on them.
Damn, she was smokin’ hot. The kind of hot that made him do a quick glance around and subtly adjust himself.
Her dark hair fell forward and cascaded down her shoulders and covered her profile, hiding her face from him. He looked around again, but no one seemed concerned with the woman performing a pedicure on herself in the lobby.
The woman’s phone trilled from inside of her purse but she acted as if she didn’t hear it
Her ringtone was a rap song about a thong.
Nash pursed his lips against a smile. Nice. He hadn’t heard that song in years.
She still wasn’t answering it, and she kept painting the same toe. The smile slipped from Nash’s lips, and he cocked his head, studying the woman. Something was wrong.
“Hudson!” Tristan, his replacement, barked.
“Yeah?” he asked, ripping his attention away from the woman.
“I said your name three times, man.”
“Uhh, sorry. Long night.”
“Anything happen?” he asked as he gave a two-fingered wave to Danny, who was headed to the elevator to replace Liam.
“I should’ve clarified…a long boring night.”
Tristan snorted and clapped him on the back. “There’s always tomorrow. Maybe you’ll get to take a bullet for him then.”
Nash rolled his eyes. He’d taken a couple bullets for a client before. Healing from that had been easy. He cast his gaze back to the woman. She was still painting the same toe. At least her phone had stopped ringing.
Tristan squinted, looked from him to the woman in the red dress and nodded. “Ahh, I get it. She’s hot all right. Look, I don’t care what you do tonight, but you better be here to relieve me by eight in the morning. I’m just now getting used to working nights. Don’t fuck up my sleep schedule.”
Nash still hadn’t taken his eyes from the woman, but he clapped Tristan on the back. “Have I ever let you down?” He headed for the strange woman.
“Noooo,” Tristan drawled out. “Now’s not the time to start either. Eight o’clock.”
Nash loosened his tie as he approached the woman, and stood near her. After clearing his throat, he said “Are you okay, Ma’am?”
Silence greeted him, except for the rhythmic miniature brush over her nail.
“Ma’am?” he asked.
Slowly she shifted her gaze to him, and he could see it. Her eyes were rimmed with tears. “I don’t know how to tell them,” she said softly.
God, she was so pretty. Stunning, really, but he could smell sickness. Deep sickness.
Shhhit.
Nash sat on the couch beside her. “Your toe nails look good. I think they might be done.”
The woman looked down at where she was smearing the toe nail polish onto her toe. She frowned at the small wand in her fingertips and then pushed it into the little bottle of polish and twisted the lid into place. “I’m wasting my minutes,” she whispered.
He scooted closer to her by inches. “Can I get you anything? Water?”
“They don’t even know this is my last night with them,” she said.
“Who?”
Her dark, delicate, perfectly arched eyebrows furrowed. “My friends. They’ll be here any minute.” She looked around in confusion. “They should’ve called by now.”
“I think they did. Your phone was ringing.”
Wide-eyed, she looked at the little bottle of nail polish in her hand. “Oh my gosh,” she breathed.
Yep, others were definitely taking notice now. Gary held up a phone with a questioning glance. Nash shook his head. No need for security on this one.
She dumped her purse onto the table with shaking hands and a small mountain of feminine bejeweled gadgets fell out. “Where is it, where is it?” she murmured, sifting through the sparkling rubble.
As her elegant hand landed on an orange pill bottle, she sighed out a trembling breath. He stood and jogged to Gary, begged a bottled water and was back before she had even managed to open the lid. “Here, let me,” he said, handing her the drink. “How many?”
She took a small sip of water, and he could see her hand shaking. “Two,” she said.
He dropped two of the white pills into her outstretched hand. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he’d been careful not to touch her skin. Her sickness wasn’t catching, and a werewolf couldn’t get sick even if it was, but the thought of brushing his skin against hers seemed dangerous somehow.
As she shoveled the paraphernalia back into her purse, her phone rang again and she answered it. “Sorry, I’ll be right there.”
Her full red lips turned up in a careful smile but she didn’t meet his eyes. He asked, “Are you sure you’re okay to be going out in your condition?”
The woman bit her bottom lip and then looked up at him, and squared her shoulders. “My condition is my business.”
Well, she had a point. He didn’t know a thing about her, so why was he still standing here, taking up space next to her? “Fair enough.” He pulled out his wallet and dropped a business card into her purse. “Call me if you get into too much trouble tonight, Wild Thing.”
“Is this how you pick up women?” She pulled his card out and scanned it. “You drop your card and walk away so we can see the fancy job you work at, and run after you?”
She wobbled on her way up so he gripped her elbow to steady her. An electrifying sensation raced up his arm, and he jerked away from her. Frowning at his fingertips, he said, “Oh yeah. Telling women I’m a mediocre-paid bodyguard has them flocking to my bed. I was just trying to help.”
“Oh.” The woman’s frown was back. “Sorry. I just thought— I don’t know what I thought.”
“Great, well I have work early. Are your friends here? If so, I can walk you out.”
“Summer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My name is Summer Dicarlo.”
The way her name rolled off her lips was really sexy. With effort, he drew his gaze from the glossy red and smiled politely so she wouldn’t see the devil in him. His wolf was getting ramped up by her for no damn good reason. “I’m Nash Hudson.”
