Desperately Seeking Shapeshifter (6 page)

A slow grin began to slide across his rugged face, transforming it from harsh and forbidding to . . . blatantly sexy. Inviting. Delicious.

I cleared my throat and glanced toward the house, trying to distract him. “So do I get to go inside? Or are we bunking on your porch for the next few weeks?”

His mouth twitched. “House is all yours.”

Oh, goody. I ducked under his enormous arm. I had a fascination with old houses, and it was obvious that this one was well past its expiration date.

It was even worse inside. The paint was peeling, and tattered wallpaper hung from the walls. I glanced up at the staircase, where pretty much every other step was broken. Upstairs, I could see a hole punched through a wall and more ragged wallpaper hanging down.

Ramsey paused behind me and I felt his presence on the back of my neck, a subtle prickle.

I felt like I had to say something. “You sure you’re not into fixer-uppers?”

“No.”

Alrighty, then. “Did you just move in?”

“Twelve years ago,” he said in the same gruff tone.

My eyes widened and I moved away from the wall, which looked like it was in danger of crumbling. I regarded the wallpaper more closely. Had
age made it fall to tatters, or were those claw marks?

“Okay,” I said. I could handle this. Given some time and some effort, this could be a home. Even if it was a dump, it beat living as the wolf pack’s bitch. I took a few steps forward and put my hand on the banister, which wobbled, as if it was about to fall over. I glanced over at Ramsey. “I assume we’re going to clean up if we’re going to be staying here?”

He hadn’t moved from his spot in the hallway, perilously close to a hole in the floor and far more comfortable with it than I was. As he leaned one meaty shoulder against the wall, I expected to hear the entire house creak and groan. “We?”

“Yes, we,” I agreed. “You and I. The wonder duo. We’re supposed to be mated, and I’m not about to clean this heap by myself.”

Ramsey just stared at me with those too-serious dark eyes.

“And any woman in her right mind would not live in this sh—uh, place. It’s a mess. It’s like it gave birth to a mess. The
original
mess.”

His eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits. “I don’t normally stay here.”

“Duh,” I said before I could help myself. I wasn’t staying in this shithole if it continued to be a shithole, but that was a battle I could fight in the morning, when I wasn’t so tired.

I continued to make my way through the house, hoping to see an improvement on one of the upper floors, but they were all as wrecked as the first one. Ramsey followed me up the stairs like a grim specter,
and I paused in the hallway, kicking aside some rubble and broken glass before I moved forward.

“Our room’s down the hall,” he said, then turned and left.

Well, okay then.

There were several rooms down the hallway, but I peeked into each one. Empty. No furniture, so obviously not our room. I pushed open the last door at the end of the hall, but it stuck on the hinges, warped. Lovely. I shoved it twice before it opened halfway and then got stuck on the floor again. I shoved it once more, but it wouldn’t budge, so I squeezed through to get a look around at my room. A bed sagged at the far end of the room, the blankets neatly made but covered in dust. Leaves and debris peppered the floor, and I glanced upward at a hole in the ceiling—an impromptu skylight. I hoped it didn’t rain during my visit.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ignored the dust cloud that puffed up. The fixture overhead didn’t have a lightbulb, and I wondered if this heap even had wiring. I didn’t see a light switch anywhere.

If Ramsey wanted to ensure that we had privacy from Connor, this was a pretty good start. Was the guesthouse just as bad? I shuddered to think.

Well, wreck of a house or not, I was completely wrung out. I lay back on the bed and tucked my hands behind my head, gazing up at the purpling skies. No stars yet.

Exactly how long was I going to have to pretend to be in love with Ramsey?

Chapter Five

R
oy’s arm grabbed mine and bent it back at an impossible angle. “I thought I told you to come home right away.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. Roy didn’t like a show of weakness—it made him meaner. “I did. I came straight home—”

“Liar.” He backhanded me across the face. “Do I need to punish you again? Show you the wolf?”

Terror shot through my veins and I tried to pull away from him. The wolf was savage, horrible. The wolf kept biting even when I’d given up, long past the screams in my throat dried to hoarse rasps of pain. “No, Roy. Please. I’ll be good. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Were you late because you were with another man? Is that what it was?” The anger in his voice turned into a low, inhuman growl, his eyes reflecting the low light inside the dark house. He always waited for me in the darkness, even when it was pitch black outside. He liked to scare me, to force me to go inside and wait for him to grab me and throw me to the ground . . .

“No, Roy, I—”

His fist connected with my face, and I felt my jaw explode in pain, felt the teeth loosen. I fell to the floor, weeping. My hand went to my cheek and it felt wet, and I realized that he’d cut me with his claws.

The wolf was coming out.

“You need to learn. Maybe after you’ve had a few fingers bitten off, you’ll learn that you can’t look at any man but me.”

“No, please,” I sobbed, crouching into a ball and huddling against the wall. “I wasn’t looking at anyone. I promise.”

His eyes went red in the darkness, his mouth turning into nothing but fangs as he loomed over me.

“Time to teach you a lesson, girl . . .”

Big, warm hands grasped my shoulders. A large, heavy body pressed over my own. “Sara.”

I yelped, coming instantly awake. The wolf in me—so close to the surface—snarled in fear, and I lashed out. Someone was pinning me down. I had to break free, had to escape—

A hand stroked my hair off the side of my face, and the body over mine shifted, adjusting the weight. “Sara.”

The deep voice rumbling through the darkness jarred me out of my wild fear, and I stopped scratching and clawing, gasping as if I couldn’t draw enough oxygen. “R-R-Roy—”

“Ramsey,” said the soft, low voice. A thumb
brushed across my chin, my cheek. “Not Roy. Not wolf. Smell me.”

I inhaled sharply, my wildly hammering senses still a mass of confusion. The scent that met my nostrils was not the thick beer-and-wolf scent that I associated with Roy. The scent was clean and warm, and smelled of hints of sunshine . . . and of thick fur and the forest. Bear.

Ramsey.

“I . . . I . . . sorry,” I wheezed, my heart pounding as I tried to calm from the nightmare. “Did I wake you up?”

“You were screaming,” he said in a low voice. “Listen to me very carefully.” His voice was deep, slow, and even. “Relax your body. Think of me and my voice, and I want you to relax your muscles. Unclench them and just relax. Understand?”

I blinked in the darkness. “I think I’m okay now, really—”

“Listen to my voice,” he repeated. His form was immense; when he moved, his big shoulders hid the moonlight from the hole in the roof, blotting out the world in the darkness. He leaned in, so close I could feel the whisper of his breath on my cheek and neck. “I want you to think about me. Focus on my voice and my heartbeat. Can you do that?”

I stared at him, confused. “I—”

“Get away from her,” a male voice roared. The door to the bedroom crashed open with a massive scrape on the floorboards, and I saw Connor slam into the room, wolf-eyes gleaming. He clutched a
baseball bat in his hands. Before I could scream, he swung it and connected hard with Ramsey’s shoulder.

The bear-shifter grunted but didn’t move from where he crouched over me, caging me in his arms. Protecting me. I expected to hear a growl in his throat, but to my surprise, his voice remained slow and even, as if he’d been trying to calm a wild animal. “Leave us alone, wolf.”

Connor looked over at me, and then blanched. He took a step backward. “Oh. Oh, shit. Sara, are you okay?”

“Just a nightmare,” I said, then raised a hand to shoo him . . . and noticed my fingers were tipped with thick claws. In horror, I stared down at them. My arms were thick with gray fur, and my muscles vibrated with the need to change. Ramsey’s forearms bled in four long furrows—I’d attacked him in my dream.

“Sara,” Ramsey said in a low voice, ignoring Connor. “Listen to me. Think of me.” He moved over me, his gaze trapping mine. “Connor is going to leave us alone now.”

I looked over at the wolf, who was staring at me with something akin to horror. After a moment, Connor nodded and slung the bat back over his shoulder, mumbled something about seeing us in the morning, and shut the door behind him again.

I turned wild eyes to Ramsey. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry—”

“Shhh.” His fingers gently touched the sides of
my face again, stroked my hair, completely ignoring the fact that I’d carved his arms up or that Connor had attacked him. It must have hurt, but he showed no reaction, his gaze focused intensely on me. “Concentrate on my voice. On my breathing. My pulse. Follow me. Focus on me. Understand?”

Oh, jeez, it must have been worse than I imagined. I thought of Connor’s look of horror as he’d come in the room. He’d looked revolted at the sight of me. “My face is half changed, isn’t it?”

“That’s not important,” Ramsey said, large fingers continuing to stroke the sides of my face. “Listen to my breathing, and match yours to mine. Breathe with me.”

I did, inhaling slowly and breathing in the musk of his bear-scent. He didn’t smell like wolf, and the heavy feel of him over me didn’t feel like it was trapping me; it felt like it was protecting me. It took several minutes before my heart calmed to a steady pace again, in tandem with Ramsey’s slow, even beats.

After several minutes, he nodded and then sat up. “Better.”

I stole a peek at my hands—normal again. My fingers went to my face, and I touched my nose. Normal, except for a nosebleed. Thank God. One time I’d been stuck with a half-monster snarl for eight hours and had been terrified I’d never change back. The nosebleed was distressing, though. It reminded me of Levi’s words—that I was going to kill myself with my shifting. “Um. Got Kleenex up here?”

He stripped his shirt off and handed it to me. I
took the shirt and wadded it up, holding it to my nose. It smelled like Ramsey and sweat, an oddly pleasant combination. “Thank you.”

“Who is Roy?”

I blushed in the darkness. “The asshole who changed me.”

“You were screaming for him not to hurt you.” Not an accusation, a statement.

How embarrassing. “I don’t want to talk about this, please,” I said in a small voice. I expected Ramsey to push the issue, but he remained silent, his gaze watchful on me. I reached out a hand to his big arm. “Is your shoulder okay?”

“It’ll be fine by morning.” He stood and crossed over to the far side of the room, made sure the door was locked, and then returned to the bed.

I watched his body as he moved. I couldn’t help it. My entire body was tense with nerves. The last time I’d been in a room with a half-naked man, he’d usually beaten the crap out of me and told me I deserved it, so I was wary when it came to intimate relationships. Ramsey was massive, too. A lot of shifters were in great shape, thanks to the animal inside that loved to run and play, and most were corded with muscle, rippling with six-packs. Ramsey was just . . . mammoth. He was six and a half feet of pure, solid muscle on a massive frame. Thick and solid like a boxer. Suddenly I doubted very much that the bat had hurt him, and a quiver of fear shot through me when he sat on the other side of the bed and then lay down next to me. I clutched the shirt to my nose, waiting.

He simply closed his eyes as if I hadn’t been there.

“So about this,” I said, feeling the need to make excuses for my behavior. “I should have said something. It happens more often than I’d like. I’m sorry.”

He looked over at me at that. “Every night?”

“Not the nosebleeds,” I joked. “That’s special for tonight.”

He stared at me, his jaw clenched. “If you are frightened of me—”

“Oh, no, that’s not it,” I said hastily, surprised. He thought that was why I was having nightmares? How totally awkward. I mean, I was scared of him, but that wasn’t causing me to turn in my sleep. “I have these all the time. Roy, I was scared of. You? You’re just . . . big.”

He snorted.

“It’s true,” I said, deciding to tease him a little more to defuse the situation. “It’s like you’re Paul Bunyan. Or since you’re a shifter, maybe more like his ox.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “Bear.”

“Okay, then. I’m Goldilocks, and I got stuck with the biggest bear instead of the one that’s just right.”

Silence again. Then he turned toward me, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “I am big, Sara. I’m big and I don’t talk much, but I would never hurt you. You understand that?”