Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) (31 page)

“I’ll try my best,” he vowed. “I don’t want anything to happen to you either, you know.”

“How could it with you around? You got on top of me. You got shot because you covered me, used your own body as a shield. That was stupid, you know.”

“It’s hard to think with bullets zinging around your face,” he teased.

“Does it still hurt? Where you got shot?”

He switched on the bedside lamp and showed me his arm. An angry red line zig-zagged down his forearm. Above it, on his bicep, was a puckered scar in the shape of a bite. My wolf’s legacy. Now he’d have another scar because of me.

“I didn’t get shot, Stanzie. It grazed me, that’s all. You see?”

I nodded, but I was far from placated.

“Drink this.” He handed me a glass of water and I gulped most of it down. My stomach gurgled and he laughed.

“You’re hungry.” He handed me a butterscotch square. Kathy Manning had been baking again. She’d left a plate of them in the bedroom for us.

“You eat something too,” I said and so he took one and we had a midnight picnic in bed together.

“Jaysus, that woman can bake,” mumbled Murphy around a huge mouthful.

I laughed and waited for Murphy to swallow before breaking off a piece of my butterscotch square so I could feed it to him with my fingers.

He ate it then he kissed me. I tasted butterscotch and his breath—a tantalizing combination.

Midnight picnic forgotten we collapsed together onto the mattress. Murphy filled my ears with a singsong string of Irish as he deftly removed my pajamas and I tore off his.

I wrapped my legs tight around his waist, and closed my eyes as he thrust deep inside me. There was desperation to our passion that night we’d never experienced before. Getting shot at proved to be something of an aphrodisiac. It almost made it worth it. Almost.

* * * *

The car was where we’d left it in the parking lot when Murphy and I returned the next day with Kathy Manning. Instead of her sporty green Jaguar, she drove a sleek black Lincoln Town Car.

The Jaguar was in the parking lot when we pulled in off the rutted, rural road that dead-ended at the entrance to the park. It was parked prudently far from the Prelude, although judging by the open doors, trunk and hood of the Prelude, it had been an unnecessary precaution.

“No car bomb,” I said. The Town Car’s windows were tinted and, sitting in the back seat, I felt like a rock star being ferried from my hotel to a gig even though I supposed rock stars rode in limos.

I’d been a baby about Kathy driving but she hadn’t given in to me. She’d just smiled and told me to sit in the back and buckle my seat belt. I really did feel about five years old around her, like she was my mother or something.

I could tell Murphy wanted to argue with her but she hadn’t given him the opportunity. She was good, but then she was a Councilor. She’d told him to buckle his seat belt too and help her with the GPS navigation system.

“I know where we’re going.” I’d pouted from the back seat. “Murphy does too. We were there yesterday.”

“Indulge me,” said Kathy as she’d settled herself behind the wheel. Pulling down the sun visor, she’d examined her appearance and rearranged a few stray locks of hair before pushing the visor back up.

In her dark-green DKNY pantsuit and forest-brown woolen coat, she was the quintessential New England upper middle class young matron. Tiny pearl studs adorned her ears and a strand of bigger ones encircled her throat. If she wore her bond pendant, it didn’t show.

Her shoes were nice—brown, flat ballerinas with gold buckles on the toe. Gucci. Too bland and conformist for me, although before Murphy I couldn’t have hoped to afford them. It was beyond my comprehension to fathom why anybody would wear ballerina flats in this weather. The parking lot at the state park had been plowed once during the beginning of the storm but it was hardly clear. Her shoes could be ruined if she walked through snow in them. Maybe she didn’t care. Maybe she had a closet full of shoe racks in a Rhode Island mansion in Providence.

My own boots were black—a pair of Guess ankle boots loaded with unnecessary but fabulous buckles, lined with red-and-black plaid flannel and imminently suitable for snow. They were kick-ass cute.

I’d admired them as we traveled because I couldn’t look at the way Kathy Manning drove. She was a fiddler. She’d fiddled with the radio station then switched to the CD player. Then she’d switched songs. Then the entire CD. She’d rummaged in her purse for a stick of gum then her cellphone. The third time she went for her purse Murphy had picked it up and all but thrown it into the back seat with me. He’d been watching me turn progressively paler despite the allure of my boots.

When she’d started texting as she drove that did it. He’d blown up and declared that she was either going to drive or she was going to blather on with her friends, not both, so make up her mind. If she preferred to text, she’d better pull the damn car over and let him drive. If she was hell-bent on driving, she’d better put the goddamn phone down now.

After casting him an amused smile, she’d put the phone down. She’d managed to hit send before she did so and, a moment later, a reply bleep shattered the simmering silence and Murphy had sworn in Irish.

“Do you mind telling me what that says?” Kathy had asked sweetly and Murphy’s face went apoplectic. He’d almost been rendered speechless but managed to snarl, “I fucking do,” which had only made Kathy laugh.

“I’m trying to make sure my son is going to school. He has this annoying tendency to skip. He’s seventeen and thinks he knows everything.”

“Takes after his mother,” Murphy had grumbled and Kathy laughed again.

“Your son goes to a public school? With Others?” I’d asked, fingers clenched, eyes fixed on my boots.

There had been a beat of silence because apparently nobody had expected me to be able to talk past my panic.

I had been panicking a little. I was sweating and my heart thumped uncomfortably in my chest. On the plus side, we were nearly at the park and were still alive, so we’d had that going for us.

“We home schooled until he was in the third grade but after that he wanted to go to public school and so we let him. It’s been great for him. He has tons of friends and lots of self-confidence. Along with an annoying tendency to skip now that he’s a senior and thinks he’s a big shot.” Kathy had looked at me in the rearview mirror while she talked, hardly keeping an eye on the road.

I felt the panic claw at my stomach and wished like hell she’d look at the cars in front of us. They had all been moving fast, but what if there was a sudden stop or some black ice?

“There’s a small pack in Houston called Dark Bayou and a little girl named Mindy went to the public school there. One night her father was in a hot tub and a grandmother in the pack brought him out a beer. Spiked with sleeping pills. When he fell asleep, she held him under the water until he drowned.” My voice had been matter of fact and clinical but Murphy half-turned around in his seat anyway and had given me a concerned look.

“Constance, not all grandmothers and grandfathers are part of the conspiracy. I trust the ones in my pack.” Kathy’s tone had been slightly condescending and dismissive.

“I trusted the one in mine too.” I had shrugged.

“So when you and Murphy have a child, you’re not going to let him or her go to public school because you’re afraid of the grandmothers and grandfathers?” Kathy had wondered.

“I don’t want a child,” I’d declared mutinously. Hurt washed over Murphy’s face for a split second. He’d thought I didn’t want his child.

“I’ve never wanted a child,” I had clarified. “If Grey, Elena and I had ever gotten to be Alphas of our pack, she was the one who was going to have a baby or at least go off birth control. I was going to stay on it.”

“Grey and Elena knew this?” Kathy had been fascinated.

“Of course. It’s not a big thing, Kathy.”

Her smile said otherwise and I felt my face warm with humiliation and growing wrath. I hated to discuss children with women of the Pack. They never understood my position.

“You’re afraid to have a baby, aren’t you?” Kathy had guessed with an astuteness that made me squirm against the leather seat.

“I’m not scared,” I protested, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“So it’s not just the conspiracy, it’s all your life, this fear. You’ve let fear rule your entire existence, haven’t you? You never developed your wolf because you were scared. You don’t want a baby because you’re scared. You look at a grandmother or a grandfather and you’re scared. So tell me, Stanzie, all this fear, has it ever stopped the bad shit from happening anyway?” Kathy had tried to meet my gaze in the rearview mirror again but I stared at my boots. All at once, they’d seemed far less cute than they used to be.

Chapter 22

Murphy took me aside after we parked the damn car. Kathy strode on ahead to get to Allerton, who stood by the Prelude with two other Pack. From the distance I didn’t recognize them, and assumed they must be from one of the New England packs or maybe New York—people with experience as far as car bombs or explosives were concerned. That even such Pack members existed made me want to cry. When had we become so violent? Had we lost our way, or was this normal?

“She was too hard on you.” Murphy held onto my arm even though I tried to get free so I could follow her. I didn’t want to have this conversation with him.

“Maybe you’re being too easy on me,” I argued when it was clear he wouldn’t let go. I stopped trying to get free and faced him. “I hid behind Grey and Elena, and I’m hiding behind you, and she’s right, I am scared of too many things. I always have been.”

“You do not have to have a baby,” he told me in a very gentle tone. He looked so understanding and approachable. I knew I could touch him if I wanted. I knew he would take me in his arms if I wanted him to and I did want him to—so much it physically hurt. I stood my ground.

“When we’re Alpha, you can stay on birth control,” he told me.

“No!” Frustrated tears blinded me until I blinked them away. “No, Murphy, I can’t. Not only is that against everything the Alpha system stands for, it’s not fair to the woman who might have been Alpha instead of me, who might lose her chance at having a baby because I was Alpha during her fertile period and she wasn’t. I can’t do that. In Riverglow I could have done that. Elena was there, for one thing, but I can’t deprive someone of a potential child just so you and I can become Councilors. No. If we’re Alpha, we’ll have a baby. Or at least try to have one. Or I don’t want to be Alpha.”

“Maybe I don’t want to either,” he countered and I shook my head violently.

“No! You want to be a Councilor. You are not going to let me and my fear take away that potential too. No. This has been going on too long! I’m not going to let fear rule my whole life anymore!”

He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me.

“I know you like to play the protector, but it’s going to get old and then you’ll resent and hate me,” I predicted.

“I’m not playing anything with you,” he said, his eyes flashing. “I’m telling you, you don’t have to do all this shit just for me. That what you want counts too, that’s all I’m saying!”

“Allerton’s waving us over. I think we can leave. I want to drive back,” I cried.

He swept a frustrated hand through his hair. “Damn that woman! You do not have to do everything all at once. You do not have to face every single goddamn fear you have in one damn day, Stanzie! We were doing fine and then we had to come here and now you’re letting that bloody busybody woman lecture you. You’re letting Allerton’s expectations get to you. You’re letting that old man scare you from the grave and you think you have to do all this shit on your own when you don’t have to. It was you and me before. Why should that change?”

“I hide behind you!” I shouted. “I hide! And you’re letting me! I think you get off on it, you like the chase, and right now you’re chasing my fears but I’m the one who has to do that, not you!”

He let go of my arm and before he erased all the expression on his face, he looked vulnerable and lost. Unsure. All his usual confidence destroyed.

I left him standing there by the Town Car and stomped my way across the icy parking lot to where Allerton, Kathy and the two strangers stood by the Prelude.

“Everything all right?” Allerton asked me and I nodded, too strangled by emotion to speak. “I’ll give Liam the keys. The Prelude is fine, Constance.”