Blood Moon (23 page)

Frantic, my heart raced when I failed to
recognize where I was. Last I knew, I was in Phoenix… Was I still?
I took several deep breaths, running my trembling fingers partially
through my tangled hair as I tried to figure things out, but my
fear and anxiety continued to rise, making my stomach churn. Where
was I? What the hell happened last night?

Unable to answer my own silent questions, my
eyes tingled and burned, but I couldn’t afford to break down right
now, not while I could be in very real danger… Though, the more I
considered that possibility, the more I realized I didn’t actually
feel
threatened in the least. If anything, I felt like I was
in a safe place.

The bed dipped behind me, and a low groan
filled the room. At first, I was relieved, until I realized it
wasn’t
David behind me. Startled from my feelings of
security, I stood up and rushed across the room in a flash. I
pressed my back to the cold wall and stared at the uncovered and
equally naked body of a blond man. But not just
any
blond
man. No, this was a man I knew all too well.

Nick rolled over on the bed, which I noted
was covered in dirt transferred from my body—and, as it would seem,
his as well. I was so incredibly lost and confused, unable to even
begin to piece together the events of last night. All I knew was
that guilt quickly built inside me, and my head pounded as I tried
to make sense of everything.

Propping his head in his hand, Nick’s dark
eyes found me pressed against his bedroom wall, and a goofy smile
played at his lips. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, his voice
still low and gravelly with sleep. “Sleep well?”

The way his eyes devoured me made me
suddenly aware of how very naked I was in front of a man who
wasn’t
David, and I leaned forward, snatched the corner of
the sheet that hung from the corner of the bed, and held it against
my body as a shield. Admittedly, I didn’t really think far enough
in advance to realize that this would leave Nick completely
exposed, and I quickly forced my eyes to his so as not to stare. He
seemed unfazed by his own nudity, but he’d always been pretty
confident in his own skin.

And rightfully so
, I mused inwardly,
my eyes betraying their orders and glancing south.

“Wh-what happened last night?” I stammered,
looking around the room as though it would somehow hold the
answers. “How did I get here? Where are my clothes?”

“That’s a lot of questions for a guy who
just woke up after a long, exhausting night,” he replied cockily,
and I had the extremely violent urge to rush across the room and
attack him. “Your clothes are probably still in the woods, but
you’d better forget about finding them in one piece.” With a wink,
he scratched his stubble-ridden jawline, and an image of my tongue
running along it surfaced in my mind. A memory? Fantasy? I couldn’t
tell, but I swear the sensation of the act, as well as subtle notes
of copper, still lingered on my tongue.

The underlying implication to his answer
caused my heart to strain despite the ferocity of its unusual
rhythm, and my lips curled up into an angry snarl. Nick sat up,
possibly sensing my escalating anger. “Easy, Brooke,” he said, his
voice no longer holding a smug note, but one of concern. “You need
to harness that before you do something you’ll regret. Deep
breaths, baby.”

“Don’t,” I snarled through gritted teeth, my
self-control starting to slip away inch by fragile inch, “call me
that.” Warmth traveled under my skin, which prickled and crawled as
I grew more agitated, and my hands trembled as rage consumed me. It
was a feeling I recognized, and it didn’t take long to make the
connection to last night…right before everything went blank.

Nick’s eyes grew even more serious, and he
pushed himself up off the bed, slowly rounding the end of it.
“Okay, I’m sorry. You’re right. I was out of line.” His voice
remained steady—calm—and he took a few steps toward me.

My eyes betrayed my loyalty to David again,
and I glanced down at Nick’s naked lower half. Surprised and
horrified with myself, I found my desire for him awakened, burning
through my veins like wildfire. It pushed my anger aside for the
moment, and I reveled in the feeling. Something drew me to him
against my better judgment, and I knew he sensed it from his
position several feet away, because I saw the same yearning in his
darkening eyes. I shouldn’t have felt this way, but this went
beyond simple want. This felt deeper. It felt familiar.
Primal.

“What”—I took a deep, unsteady breath
through my nose—“happened?” The prickling sensation continued as
Nick stepped even closer, stopping once he reached his dresser to
grab a pair of long pants to pull on. As he covered himself up, I
noticed his upper body was covered in pink scratches similar to
mine, and bile churned in my stomach when I realized that we must
have gotten carried away. Knowing that we woke up naked in bed
together only pushed me toward this conclusion, and I couldn’t help
but feel even guiltier about what we likely did.

“Did we…?” I couldn’t bring myself to finish
the question that scorched the tip of my tongue.

That cocky, one-sided smirk returned to
Nick’s face as he perched himself on the edge of his messy bed.
“Have fun?” he quipped with an arched brow. “Well, I know I haven’t
had that much fun in years. You’ve got quite the bite.”

My heart dropped like a lead weight into my
roiling stomach, and my legs threatened to give out beneath me. I
clutched the sheet tighter to my chest and looked away from him,
noticing with tunnel-visioned clarity the two sets of muddy
footprints that covered his pale laminate floors.
Ours. They’re
ours.
I knew this because I saw a brief flash of the two of us
stumbling naked down the hall in the darkness, seemingly
intoxicated and laughing with blood trickling from the corners of
our mouths. The image slipped away into the dark recesses of my
mind.

Holding the sheet against me with my left
hand, I pinched the bridge of my nose with the thumb and forefinger
of the other and clenched my eyes shut. “I don’t…I don’t remember
what happened. How is that possible?” The question wasn’t directed
toward him. I was merely thinking out loud, but he answered
anyway.

“Memory loss is common the first time.”

Confused and concerned, my gaze snapped back
to his, only to find his forehead furrowed with remorse. “What do
you mean, ‘the first time’? Did you… Did you
drug
me?” I
seethed, glaring accusingly at him.

Looking more than a little offended, he held
his hands in front of him in some sort of surrender. “Whoa. Back
the hell up, Brooke. Did I
drug
you? Are you serious? I love
you…” His confession left me breathless, and he quickly
backpedaled, running his dirt-covered fingers through his hair.
“
Loved
.”

The pounding in my head returned, but it
traveled down my neck and into my left shoulder where it settled
and burned. “Nick,” I whispered, my tone taking on an air of
pleading. Before I could ask him about last night again, the
tremble in my knees turned a little more severe, and I slid down
the wall as they eventually buckled beneath me.

Nick crossed the room in a hurry, wrapping
his arms around my shoulders. He grabbed a corner of the sheet and
draped it around my shoulders to cover me completely as he led me
toward the bed to sit down. Without thinking, I rested my head on
his shoulder and tried with everything I had to recall
anything
from the missing hours in my brain. His hand moved
up and down my back, comforting me, and I shivered as the tips of
his fingers occasionally grazed the skin above the drape of the
sheet.

It was easy to get lost in the familiar
sensation of being wrapped in Nick’s arms. The way my body fit
against his, the musky way he smelled—like warmth and nature and
man—and the way his lips felt pressed against the top of my head
took me back to a time when things were simple. When Bobby was
alive. I held onto this feeling in the wake of my confused state,
because it helped keep me grounded.

I inhaled deeply, smelling the nutrient-rich
soil that coated our bodies as well as the subtle notes of rain and
clipped grass, and it forced the same images as before: the moon in
a pitch black sky, the amber eyes and white teeth of the wolf as it
lunged for my throat…no, wait. Upon digging into my dream a little
deeper, I saw that it wasn’t
my
throat, but that of another
wolf. One with a red-brown coat and yellow-green eyes.

That was as far as the image seemed to go,
though, and it both frustrated and unnerved me, because something
in the depths of my mind told me—screamed at me—that this wasn’t
just the lingering remnants of a dream, but a memory. I closed my
eyes again, trying to force my thoughts back to the two wolves.
Deep down I knew this was important, but it didn’t happen no matter
how hard I tried.

Nick sighed, and I snapped back to reality,
pushing myself away from him until my back was pressed against the
simple wooden headboard of his bed. I clutched the sheet to my
body, pulling my knees to my chest and noticing the dirt and grass
stains all over my feet.

“Please,” I pleaded quietly, the confusion
weighing heavily on me. “Nick, what did we do?”

Heaving a deep sigh, Nick leaned forward and
rested his forearms on his thighs. “Over the next few hours—maybe
even days—your memory will return.”

I shook my head slowly and thrust my fingers
through my hair. I clutched it tightly at the top, the sting
travelling down my spine. “I don’t have the next few days, Nick. I
have a life…a
boyfriend
. I need to know. I
deserve
to
know.”

He sighed again, dropping his eyes to the
bed between us, but not before I caught what looked like
disappointment flashing in them. “We didn’t have sex,” he assured
me. I believed him. While all the evidence could prove that we must
have slept together, the tenor of his voice was all the proof I
needed to know he was telling me the truth.

Of course, the fact that our clothes were
nowhere to be found and the bedroom was covered in bits of mud and
grass still left a lot of unanswered questions.

“But we…” I paused, still confused and
trying to wrap my head around this piece of information. “If we
didn’t sleep together,” I said quietly, my eyes slowly meeting his
again, “then what happened?”

His eyebrows pulled together, and a heavy
silence filled the air between us. Seconds passed by, but the
weight of the situation made time feel like it stretched on
infinitely. He looked exactly how I felt—minus the confusion,
because something told me he knew more than I did about last night.
His distress was evident in the heavy creases of his forehead and
the darkening of his eyes, though, and as I watched him carefully,
waiting for his reply, it was the first time since he re-inserted
himself back into my life that I
really
saw him.

Not only had his body filled out and his
hair gotten a little longer, but there was a sadness in his
eyes—one that I recognized all too well—and it made me wonder if he
was still as deeply affected by what happened to Bobby as I was. We
continued to stare at each other, and I lost myself in the depth of
his blue-green eyes, admiring how they faded to a bright amber
color around his pupil. I don’t think I’d ever noticed this
before.

He blinked, breaking the trance I’d fallen
into, and I held my breath when he opened his mouth to speak. I
don’t know what I expected him to say, but what came out of his
mouth wasn’t it.

“You changed.”

“C
hanged?”

Nick stared at me like he expected me to
understand immediately, and I waited in silence for him to
elaborate. I didn’t know what took him so long, but I grew tired of
waiting. “You need to give me a little more than that,” I snapped.
“You can’t just come back into my life after seven years and tell
me I’ve ‘changed.’”

Frustrated—which was a feeling I
wholeheartedly related to—Nick rubbed his hand over his face and
turned toward me, bringing one of his legs up onto the mattress.
“No,” he started, bringing his intense gaze to mine. “That’s not
what I mean.”

“Then what?” I impatiently prodded. “I don’t
understand, Nick.” My chin quivered and warm tears stung my
eyes.

His expression softened, and he scooted
toward me on the bed. My first instinct was to go to him and seek
comfort, but my second was to move away from him. I did neither.
“What can you remember from last night?” he asked gently.

Everything played out in my head again
before I replied. “I was with my team at that club—”

“
Gianna’s
?” I nodded, and Nick
growled in frustration. “Damn it, Brooke, I told you not to go
there!” he boomed.

“It’s my job, Nick,” I argued, getting off
point. “
Anyway
, I remember feeling overwhelmed and a little
sick, so I went outside for some fresh air. I…I ran, and I kept
running, and that’s it. Everything else is kind of fuzzy.”

I could see he was still upset about my
going against his demand—not that he was in any position to tell me
where I could and could not go—but he dropped it. For now. I had
this strong feeling he’d bring it up again before we were done.

“Did you dream?” he asked.

I found the question odd, but I placated him
with a simple, “Yes.”

“What about?”

“I’m not sure what my dreams have to do with
how I wound up naked
in your bed
, Nick,” I fired back,
annoyed that he seemed more interested in my dreams than helping me
figure out what the hell happened to me.

“Just answer the question, Brooke. I promise
it’s relevant.”