Big Bad Beast

CHAPTER 9

“I’m not dirty.”

She couldn’t even look at him she was so mortified. Mortified and embarrassed.

“Sorry?” Van Holtz said, all politeness. But she knew what he must be thinking. What she’d be thinking if the tables were turned.

“I said I’m not dirty,” Dee-Ann repeated. “I know that’s what you must be thinking after seeing that . . . thing in my apartment, but it’s not true.”

“Why must I be thinking that?”

“Gee, I don’t know. ’Cause there was a colony of rats in my place?”

“I’d probably be more concerned if you actually lived there, Dee-Ann. But you clearly haven’t been.” He stepped next to her and placed a plate in front of her. It was filled with a hunk of that angel food cake with white icing that he had at his restaurant. A cake that had become her all-time favorite. So did Ric just happen to have her favorite cake lying around? He preferred German chocolate cake from what she could tell.

“Except for the few clothes and your bag,” he went on, “your scent had faded. I didn’t see any weapons and Christ knows you’d have needed them in that place. So I’m in no way assuming you are some filthy rat-meister who breeds rats for your vicious army that will one day take over the world. Milk?”

Dee blinked, snorted a little. He’d made her laugh. At this moment, no less. For that alone, she might just love him a little. “I would like some milk. Thank you very kindly.”

Ric walked to the fridge and brought over an unopened carton of whole milk. “You can sleep in the room Lock used to use when he didn’t have his apartment yet. It’s got a bear-size king.” He filled a tall glass with milk, but left the carton. Dee knew she drank milk like a growing fourteen-year-old on the junior high football team, and Ric always seemed to make sure to have several fresh cartons in his apartment for when she dropped by to talk business. “And you can wear one of my T-shirts.”

“I sleep naked.”

She saw him swallow.

“And feel free to keep doing so.”

She laughed again. “All this fuss isn’t necessary. I don’t need to stay here.”

“I have tons of room.”

Yeah, he had tons of room all right. His place was huge, with high ceilings and extremely wide rooms. It was a place he’d bought himself and he only lived on the top floor. He leased out the rest of the building and made a fortune doing it. And not once, since Dee began showing up at all hours to meet with Ric about the Group, had she ever felt like she belonged here.

“I can crash at my cousin Bobby Ray’s place.”

“With the wild dogs?”

He had a point. “I can stay with Sissy Mae. She’s rarely there anyway.”

“But when she is, Mitch Shaw is with her and you’ll get the joy of dealing daily with a demanding lion male.”

Damn him, but he was right. More than once Dee had wondered how Sissy put up with Mitch Shaw and had often found herself daydreaming about all the ways she could tear pieces of him off his body without actually killing him.

“Guess it’ll be Rory then.” Great. More females she’d have to kick out on a daily basis, no matter how many times the man promised the latest one-night stand was the last. “He won’t mind.”

“I bet he won’t,” Van Holtz muttered, slamming his own plate of cake down as he sat cattycorner from her.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“No. Not at all. Crash at Reed’s, if that’s what you want. Hope you two are very happy together.”

“Just because I’m crashing at Rory’s place don’t mean we’re doing anything together . . . and why am I explaining this to you?”

He stared at her and asked, “Why do you think?”

Dee thought about it a minute. “You’re interested in Rory Lee?”

Ric lowered his head, his eyes shifting from human to wolf. They were blue when wolf. Like an Arctic wolf’s. “You cannot be that clueless, Dee-Ann.”

“Depends on who you ask.”

“You know what? Forget I said anything.” He pointed at the cake she hadn’t touched yet. “Are you going to eat that?”

“When I feel like it.”

“You don’t have to get snippy. I brought the cake from work for you.”

“Did I ask you to?” she snipped at him.

“Fine. Don’t eat the cake. I’ll eat it myself.” He reached for it and Dee, feeling really difficult, shoved it out of his way.

“Didn’t say I wouldn’t eat the cake, Van Holtz.”

“Then eat the damn cake and call me Ric.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“And what is that exactly? Do you even have a clue?”

“Yeah. I have a clue.”

“Then for God’s sake, do it already!”

Pissed off more than she could remember, Dee did exactly what Van Holtz suggested and “did it already” by wrapping her hand around the back of his neck, yanking him forward, and kissing him dead on the mouth.

Ric didn’t know what was happening. One second he was blindingly jealous of some oversized wolf who seemed to live his entire life being referred to as “one of the Reed boys” while wearing a myriad of baseball caps. And the next second . . .

He felt the anger in Dee’s kiss but Ric simply didn’t care. He’d been waiting way too long to kiss this She-wolf. Way too long to find out the depth and dimensions of this mouth, the heat. And to be quite blunt, Ric had grown tired of waiting.

With their mouths still fused together, Ric slid off the kitchen stool and caught hold of Dee around the waist with both hands, yanking her up and off her chair, pulling her in tight against his body. She groaned a little, her body jerking in surprise when Ric’s tongue dove in to her mouth.

God, she tasted perfect. Perfect for him.

The wolf inside him responded immediately, having already decided that Dee was the one for Ric as soon as they’d seen her amble into Lock’s hallway. Dirty, loose-fitting jeans hanging low on her hips, boots scuffing Lock’s hardwood floor, worn jacket that had seen better days hanging off a strong, powerful body.

Yet Ric fought the wolf’s need to make Dee-Ann his forever. He fought it because while his wolf ran on instinct and need, the man ran on logic and sense. Dee-Ann was not some female sitting around, waiting for her mate to show up. She was a wolf who didn’t like boundaries or limitations. She didn’t like feeling, to quote her, “hemmed in.” He knew that she didn’t automatically feel that a mate of her own meant she was trapped for eternity, but she did feel that she had to find the right mate. She had to find the one who understood that sometimes she’d wander off for no reason other than she needed some air. That she might disappear for days or weeks either to handle a job or because she needed to roam the forests and woods of the closest hunting ground. That she might stop talking for a few hours or days for no other reason than that she had absolutely nothing to say.

Any male who wanted to claim Dee-Ann as his own would have to understand these things—and Ric did. He understood these things about Dee-Ann and loved her more because of them. But he also knew she wasn’t ready to believe that Ric was the one for her. She wasn’t ready to grasp the depth of their connection yet.

In other words, she was going to be difficult to get. Not in his bed, but permanently in his life.

Faced with that realization, Ric quickly analyzed the situation, coming up with a big-picture question that would need to be answered. The question? How did a nice wolf-next-door lure the most dangerous She-wolf alive into his life for good? Astounding sex was the most immediate answer and, based on this kiss alone, Ric had no doubt that would be obtained with little effort on either of their parts.

Perhaps romantic declarations of love? Expensive gifts that sparkled? A whirlwind romance filled with exotic locals and high-end hotels complete with staff?

Heh. If Ric weren’t busy finding out how talented Dee was with her tongue, he’d laugh at that. All of it. Because none of those things mattered to Dee-Ann Smith. Words, money, glamour—to Dee, he might as well be speaking Cantonese. In fact, Ric was pretty sure doing any of that would only make his She-wolf run from him faster than a gazelle from a cheetah.

While his mind turned, he thought about the woman currently in his arms. This woman, this female, was a predator. A hardened predator that appreciated a meal more when it put up a fight. And that was true about Dee-Ann in every other facet of her life. She’d accept the easy meal, the half-eaten carcass lying in her path, waiting to be devoured. But that wasn’t nearly as fun as the moose calf hiding behind its pissed off mother.

No, if Ric merely bent Dee over the stainless-steel island in the middle of his kitchen, took her from behind, and told her she was his and they would be together forever, she’d laugh, take her orgasm, and go. He’d never see her again, even if he marked her with every fang in his head. He knew that with the same certainty as he knew how to breathe.

And that left only one option for the first phase of making Dee-Ann a permanent part of Ric’s life. A risky option Ric really didn’t want to take, but he had no choice. He wanted Dee forever, not just now, for tonight.

So Ric did the last thing he ever wanted to do.

He pulled away.

“Dee,” he forced himself to say around all that panting and a cock that was so hard it hurt and made it almost impossible to think straight. “We really shouldn’t be doing this.”

Yellow, predatory eyes watched him for a moment, her brain trying to wrap itself around the idea of a male, any male, stepping away from what she’d clearly been offering. First, it was confusion he saw in her eyes. Then, it was realization. But it wasn’t until those cold eyes narrowed the slightest bit, her gaze locking on Ric with an intensity that took his breath away that he understood something very important . . .

He was now running away simply so he could be caught.