Barbie & The Beast (26 page)

“It was a costume,” Barbie insisted.

“No costume. No joke, I swear.”

“Then why aren’t you changing now? I’m close, I’m mostly naked, and there’s moonlight in your hair.”

“Sheer willpower,” he replied through tight teeth. “And not for much longer.”

“You mean that you’re about to become wolfish now?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying you’re a werewolf?”

“I am.”

“That’s what happened to you earlier, beneath the trees?”

“Yes.”

“So you have to be bitten by a wolf in order to become a werewolf?”

“I. . .don’t know how it works. I don’t know anyone who knows how it works. Some things, I have learned, simply are.”

“Montana?” Barbie said. “Not Transylvania?”

“Montana,” Darin told her softly, as though it was a word he couldn’t easily forget. “Outside of Billings.”

Several seconds of silence followed his tortured words before Barbie spoke again. “What did you tell everyone?”

Exhaustion careened through Darin’s body like one of those wayward summer lightning strikes. He was holding on so tightly
to the Darin Barbie knew him to be that he’d begun to sweat with the effort. Six more seconds, he calculated, then bye-bye
Barbie.

“Mainly, it’s my family who knows. My immediate family,” he told her. “They’ve watched the transformations. They know what
I am. It’s a part of our lives now, sort of like a monthly business trip. They’ve helped to keep my secret safe all these
years.”

“Then I’m—”

“The only other person who knows.”

Barbie sighed with a soft sound. They were both shaking now. Her pink pan ties were tiny, soft, and silky, but he couldn’t
enjoy them. He wanted them off of her, and it was too late for that, too.

“If you bite me, do I become one?” Barbie asked.

“I’d never do that.”

“You nipped at me before.”

“Not the same.”

“One good bite and you’re infected?”

“I’m supposing that’s the deal. I’m supposing it only works during the full moon, and if it’s a serious bite. I don’t know,
though. I don’t know how it can happen even then.”

Barbie took precious time to consider this. All six seconds had passed, and still Darin held. God, he wanted this so badly.
Please.

“What if you got mad at me? What if your teeth sort of slipped?” Barbie asked. “What about our children? Would they be born
werewolves? Wouldn’t nursing those children be dangerous? Oh, geez, could the female bitee have puppies?”

A laugh sprang up through Darin’s distress. A human
laugh, he was relieved to note. “I believe we’re way above date fifty with that last question,” he told her. “Yet anything
is possible.”

“No other werewolves nearby?” Barbie’s voice was thin.

“Not that I know of.”

Could he be a mental patient? Barbie would be wondering. Darin heard this quite clearly with Wolfy’s incredible talent for
reading things.

“You
saw
me,” Darin said with a short exhaled breath. “You’ve put it out of your mind. Think about what you saw.”

“I saw you strip to a costume.”

“Did you?”

“I thought your buttons popped off, though the pinging sound might have been my heart.”

“Your heart pings?”

“Usually around you.”

Please, Wolf! he begged. A minute more!

Her confession made him say, “It was the buttons, Barbie. The shirt tearing. What else did you see?”

“Your muscles might have bulged.”

“What else?”

“Your face might have seemed to have altered its shape.”

“It did change shape. Trust me on this.”

“If I’d thought it actually did change shape, I would have run the other way, Darin.”

“Maybe you didn’t really care.”

“I did imagine the bulging muscles, Darin. Right?”

“Do you want to find out?”

He watched Barbie bite her lip. Not so sure, she’d be thinking. She was not sure if she wanted to find out.

Darin rested the side of his face against the cool marble of the building to calm himself down. The only thing to do now,
he knew, was to trust Barbie and allow nature to take her course. Let fate take her course.

Barbie slugged Darin lightly in the chest. Her mind was bombarded with thoughts, all of them running along the same lines.
A life with Darin—what would her family think about her dating a werewolf? Judges were judgmental. Her brothers, criminal
defense attorneys and long over their early duct-tape antics (as far as she knew), would try to protect her. Her mother .
. .

Ugh. Her mother.

On the other hand, most of Barbie didn’t actually care about her family’s opinions at the moment. Her body, very much bigger
than her brain and therefore possessed of more voting power, was all for accepting Darin’s explanation at face value. Its
recent
bulging face
value. Her alien antennae, apparently so crucial to finding happiness, were spinning so fast that they were creating a breeze.
But with moonlight all around them, even though it wasn’t exactly
on
them, Darin was still Darin.

Barbie pulled his face down to hers. He was looking at her intently, his expressive eyes blazing, his skin very hot.

“We’re really talking about children?” he asked, his voice sounding strained, raw, and noticeably distant.

Didn’t he like children?

“Theoretically,” Barbie replied.

Trouble was, she liked children as much as the fine art of making them. Any partner of hers had to like kids as well. Yes,
it probably was a dating faux pas to allow the mind to wander there, so far behind the desired white picket fence. In her
defense, women naturally gravitated to these topics. Women were wired for nesting imagery.

The gist of all these thoughts was ultimately that she badly wanted to believe Darin. A werewolf excuse would be infinitely
preferable to him being a lousy two-timing schemer. Hands down. No contest. Moreover, how did she
know
there weren’t such things as werewolves? Who was she to argue the matter without proper documentation?

Likely, the only way to find out for sure if Darin spoke the whole truth, so help him God, would be to get him out into the
moonlight. Proof, or poof. He’d either turn into a werewolf, true to his word, or she’d be gone.

If he was unable to speak when the light hit him? Well, she’d better ask some questions now, just in case.

She kept her hands on his face, needing tactile sensation, and thought he might be growing even hotter still. “So, you usually
lock yourself up out here for those three days of moonshine, eh?”

“No,” he replied.

“No? What do you do?”

“Enjoy the animal side of things, the freedoms.”

“Such as. . .?”

“Running naked through the dark. Feeling the wind on my skin and the night on my back. Feeling dangerously alive in a new
and different way. Expanding the senses.”

Barbie experienced a surge of pleasurable recollection. She had to admit she had liked those same things. She had liked chasing
Darin, running with him, playing with him, in spite of assuming his wolf costume was a gag. She had
actually liked being without all her clothes, liked the sensation of grass between her toes, relished the whole effect that
those things produced on both her body and her soul. Who would have guessed? Most of all, though, she had relished the feel
of Darin’s mouth on hers. She responded to that memory with a shudder and a full-body hum.

Was any of this sane? Werewolves? For real?

Push him into the moonlight!

No, wait! her brain shouted.

“Where out here do you live during those nights?” she asked, still trying to fight off her arousal.

“Right around the corner,” Darin replied, his voice very throaty.

Barbie resisted the urge to glance at the buildings. “You don’t live in a crypt or mausoleum all the time, though. The other
days you have a place somewhere else?”

“Yes. In the city.” Voice even raspier, Darin’s dual-colored eyes were hidden from her behind the curtain of his midnight-hued
hair. He was clearly struggling with words. Barbie knew how he felt.

“Your digs here are like Walter’s?” Her lips curled down at the thought.

“Not. . .like Walter’s.”

“What about Walter? You said you didn’t know any other wolves, and Angie’s in there with him. Why is Walter out here in a
place like this? Is he in hiding for some reason, too?”

When Darin swayed slightly, Barbie could see he was in some kind of physical distress. She saw that his shoulders were once
again stretching. His hips were moving. His body had heated up to a feverish temperature.

“Walter is. . .no wolf. Something else,” he told her. Prickling skin and a few wayward goose bumps led Barbie to say, “But
not
criminal
. You were serious about that.”

“No. . .not criminal.”

“Are you saying there are other crazy things I don’t know about, besides werewolves?”

Gee, did she sound kind of excited or what? Did she feel hyped over the prospect of there truly being things that went bump
in the night? Maybe Hollywood hadn’t gotten things so wrong after all?

Her breath caught with the possibilities. If there were werewolves for real, there was no way of knowing what other creatures
might be hanging around. Get this! She had been worried about regular old perverts in the bushes!

“What is Walter, Darin? Tell me, please.”

Anticipation of what Darin might say left her feeling bloodless, lightheaded, incredibly anxious.

“Angie. . .should tell you. . .if anyone. We are. . .very private.”

Darin’s head had begun to turn from side to side very slowly. Barbie’s heart beat loudly in her chest. Unable to resist, she
finally stole a glance over her shoulder at the door to Walter’s mausoleum, keeping mum for the moment. Because if all this
turned out to be real, and not a dream. . .If Darin was telling the truth. . .

Then, what? What would she do?

Push him!

Her inner voice was getting louder and more insistent. Thing was, she was afraid to push him. She’d know the way of it if
she pushed him. This all might be over. She didn’t want it to be over.

Get on with it, you coward.

Get him into the moonlight.

Quit stalling.

She released his face and placed both hands against his chest, his beautiful, manly chest that she would hate to see morph
into anything grotesque. Her pulse roared in her ears
as she spread her fingers wide. She felt faint, but she was going to do this. She was going to push. Wasn’t she?

Bridesmaid Barbie, Bridesmaid Barbie, her mind taunted. But she was going to overcome the stigma of never making it to the
altar in anything other than her dreams. This was her chance.

She slid her hands sideways over the hills and valleys of his musculature, through the baby-fine hair on his chest.

Zing.

Darin gasped. His eyes found hers.

Clang!

More moistness down under. Tons of heat. She was excited, and was also a gal on a mission who hated lies and feared secrets.
Quite simply, Darin just had to be telling the truth. She had to be sure. Nerve was what she needed. Right now.

She’d count backward from ten, give herself a few more breaths of preparation.

Ten. . .

Nine. . .

Eight. . .

“Barbie.” His velvet voice had gone smoky, producing waves of anticipation in Barbie that rippled outward from a trembling
inner epicenter. She stopped counting, was unable to recall what number came next.

Push, her mind directed.

Pull, her body sang.

Each of her body’s pulses threatened to knock her off her feet, and still questions ran rampant in her mind. If Darin was
a werewolf, would he smell like a wet puppy in the shower? Wet puppies were irresistible. Did he need to eat raw food? She
liked sushi.

Her fingers dipped toward Darin’s navel all on their own, then slightly lower without permission. Maybe that wasn’t
the greatest place to apply enough pressure to get a big guy like Darin moving, especially as the intimacy of the touch brought
another moan from his lips—and a matching one from hers. One millimeter lower and she could kiss the Barbie of her past good-bye.
One more inch, and she’d feel the full power that was Darin Russell.

What would he say? What would he do? What excuse would she give for this bold behavior, in light of the obvious drawbacks
of this maybe not being real?

Also, would she want to test things, would she want to push him into the moonlight if she were allowed to feel around some
more? Already her knees were shaky. The floaty sensations that overtook her around Darin were back and shifting her into sexual
overdrive. Like invisible fingers on her pan ties, like hot breath right on top of that embroidered
Saturday
, everything was suddenly exciting and exhilarating. Heck with pushing him—she was about to throw him to the ground and jump
on for a ride. She was dealing with an immediate urge to merge.

Barbie gave in. In a deft downward detour, she brushed aside the cloth napkin that he held over his private parts without
giving him time to react. The werewolf thing? she reiterated. A turn-on. Naked guy? Huge turn-on.
Darin
being the naked guy? A dream come true.

Stunned at what the back of her hand brushed behind the napkin, realizing that Darin had no pump in sight and nothing up his
sleeve, Barbie fought back a moan. Wondering if any girl could handle something that large and survive, she decided she’d
be willing to give it a good old-fashioned try.

“Jess?” she whispered.

“My sister. I swear.”

The floaty sensations were back and wafting around Barbie’s ankles. No, not the floaties; her pan ties had slipped down without
her even noticing. In reaction Barbie leaned
closer, resting her head against Darin’s shoulder. Any minute now, she’d do it. She’d push him into the moonlight and see
what happened. But first—

Oooh.

Darin touched her in a private place, returning her favor. Barbie’s eyes sprang open in surprise. The touch, though brief,
was delicious, sharp, and mind-altering. Darin’s fingernails had raked the sensitive skin of her thighs, just as they’d raked
her palm in the Gypsy restaurant. His hand then cupped her down there, his touch featherlight, wonderfully erotic, terribly
exotic.

Barbie looked up above their heads to where the moon cast its gossamer light across the graveyard beyond the overhang. Sweet
lord, they couldn’t stay like this, so intimate, when the truth lay hidden. As good as this connection felt, Logical Barbie
remembered her objective. For this objective, all Barbies needed to work together.

His palm was caressing her slowly, agonizingly. In another moment she’d need CPR. She was going to faint. Again.

Come on, Barbie. Speak up! Clear your mind! her brain shouted.

“Blondes should stay in their places—which is with surfers and on runways,” she whispered as Darin’s hands located the very
center of the Land of Zing between her quivering thighs. This was round two of the foreplay they’d begun earlier, not ten
minutes ago.

“Barbie.” He spoke her name tenderly, urgently, with an inflection of longing and a hint of desperation. But the sheer shocking
pleasure of his hand on her was nearly eclipsed by Darin’s next three words.