The Catalyst (5 page)

He shook his head and made his way down the street to
the hardware store. His eyes cut from side to side, searching for
evidence of the vampire. He didn’t sense or see anything, but he
decided to stay away from the cave until morning. There was no
chance he’d be followed in daylight.

Chapter Three

Fiona had lain awake on the couch for the past two
hours. Though it was comfortable and doubled great as a bed, she’d
slept fitfully and woken angry. Sure, Z didn’t owe her anything,
and she couldn’t expect much civilized behavior from a panther
therian that had kidnapped her, anyway. But it still stung and
riled her that he’d stayed out all night. The least he could do was
show a little basic respect. He’d enlisted her to be a nanny
without offering her payment or the choice to refuse. The least he
could do was not run off to scratch whatever itches he’d been
scratching ’til dawn.

Did it take all night to go to the hardware
store?

She wouldn’t admit she was worried for him. Anger was
easier. Though both emotions were inappropriate. She didn’t know
him. He was good-looking and was sane enough part of the time, but
just because she’d been locked away in her house in the woods
separated from people didn’t mean she needed to start yearning for
the first hot guy to break through her kitchen window.

Since Z hadn’t returned with a way to fix the cage,
at midnight, Fiona had dutifully locked the pup up. She felt guilty
about it, but it was for his own safety. Since the latch on the
door was broken, she’d shoved the couch against the cage. The pup
was pretty strong for his size. Therians born in their fur often
were.

She’d been tempted to sleep in the bedroom. If Z
wasn’t going to make use of the bed, someone should. But the
realization that the pup might still be able to get out, with just
the couch as a barrier to the outside, had her adding her own
weight.

Even if he could move both the couch and her, at
least she’d wake up during the attempt. Fiona glanced at her watch.
Seven in the morning. The sun must already be up, and here she was
still stranded alone with the pup. Z didn’t even have a TV so she
could keep up with her soaps.

At least the wolf was asleep. After about twenty
minutes of whining and banging against the door with his small
body, he’d given up and curled up in the far back corner.

Fiona jumped when Z entered the cave. The ranting and
nagging she’d had planned like some surly fishwife died in her
throat as he dropped the bag from the hardware store on the table.
He looked wiped.

“Where were you?” She tried to make it sound as
non-accusatory as possible.

He gave her an irritated look. “I had to stay out. I
went to the coffee shop last night on my way to the hardware store
and ran into a vampire, one of the ones who wants the pup. He must
have been waiting for me to show up in town. I couldn’t risk coming
back here again until morning. I have wards on the cave, but
there’s no reason to let them know where we are if we don’t have
to. It’s safer if our location stays secret.”

Fiona turned all that over in her head, trying to
determine if it was the truth. “Did he say what he wanted with the
wolf?”

Z shook his head and peeled the T-shirt off, draping
it over the chair. She wished he’d stop doing that. Did he have to
show her all that sleek muscle at every opportunity? Was he teasing
her? Tempting her? He kicked his shoes off and emptied his
pockets.

“What’s that?” A cream-colored rectangle of paper
with a phone number and nothing else on it glared out from the pile
of loose change on the table.

Z crumpled the card and tossed it in the fire. “It’s
nothing.”

Sure it was nothing. It was some girl he’d been out
with all night.

“You don’t have to lie to me about where you go. Why
should I care who you sleep with?” Fiona managed to get the words
out without much emotion. The truth was that she was jealous of
whoever he’d shared his bed with, but she had no claim on him.
Aside from his one remark in her kitchen about getting down to
business, he hadn’t made any passes at her. It probably was just
that he’d been keyed up the day before from the adrenaline and, as
he said, being a wild animal.

Z stalked closer. She would never forget what he
was—not with the sinewy, perfect way he moved. It looked like he’d
practiced for hours in front of a mirror to move with that lethal,
graceful precision, but she knew it was just his natural movement.
If you paid attention to your surroundings, a therian—even in human
form—had a tell. This was Z’s.

His eyes raked over her, and she felt her flesh heat.
Anytime he looked at her, X-rated images filled her mind. She
needed to stop that.

“You don’t care who I fuck? I don’t believe that’s
true. You’re jealous. You’ve kept yourself cloistered from the rest
of the world your whole adult life, and now that you’ve spent five
minutes near a man, you want to keep tabs on me and keep me locked
away. Don’t you? I’m sure you have a lot of time to make up for, a
lot of needs that haven’t been attended to?”

She shivered as his fingertips trailed over her
cheek. His voice was low, deep, dark, rich like chocolate.
Hypnotic. If she hadn’t known what he was, she might have mistaken
him for a vampire or incubus from the effect he was having on her.
She backed away, working hard to reclaim her feigned nonchalance at
his closeness, pretending a worldliness they both knew was far from
the truth.

“I’m not stupid. You were out all night; you have a
phone number on a card. Just don’t lie, okay? It’s not my business
what you do.”

“You’re right. It isn’t. And what I told you is the
truth. The number belongs to the vampire.”

Even if it wasn’t her business, she still didn’t
believe him. Why would the vampire give him a phone number? Unless
it had been a female vampire. Fiona had assumed a male. The idea
that he might sleep with the enemy just for the hell of it repulsed
her.

She would have argued the point further, but she’d
forgotten how to think in complete sentences, since he kept
refusing to wear a shirt. She could smell the wildness on him and
wondered if he’d been hunting. She wished she’d developed her
witchcraft more. Another witch might have known if he’d had a
woman, or if the essence of blood and death still clung to him from
a recent hunt.

Fiona turned away and went to the cage. “The pup
needs to be let out. He’s been in there all night.”

Electricity shot up her arm as Z grabbed her wrist
and spun her around. “Oh no, you’re not getting away that easy. We
were having a conversation I find interesting.”

Fiona shook her head. “No, it was just a
misunderstanding. I just … didn’t want you to feel weird or awkward
living your life as you usually do. I’m not going to judge
you.”

She froze as he pressed his face against her neck,
breathing in her scent.

“With the pup around, I don’t get much action. Do you
know how crazy that will drive a man?”

She couldn’t imagine him much crazier than he’d
already proven to be, but she chose not to verbalize that
thought.

“Z…”

“Fiona…” he mocked.

He held her cradled in his arms for several minutes,
breathing in her scent, sniffing her like he might eat her. She
stood stiff for a second, then tried to pull away. But he held on
tighter.

She sighed and relented to his embrace, trying not to
feel awkward… or aroused. But she knew he could smell it on her.
Damned therians and their super senses.

“You don’t know how much I wish you weren’t a virgin
right now.”

“What?” She tried to pull away again, and this time
his grip loosened, allowing her to put several feet between them.
“What difference does that make?” Not that she’d sleep with him
either way.

She felt like a child standing there with him sizing
her up the way he was. Z moved back a few paces to lean against the
counter.

“Don’t be stupid, Fiona. You’re not a quick fuck.
You’re complicated.”

“Just because I have some anxiety issues doesn’t
mean—”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. I can’t
sleep with you and forget you. And I sure as hell can’t commit to
you, so as hot as you are and as much as I just want to bury myself
inside you, it can’t happen. I’m leaving town tomorrow to search
for the pup’s family, so at least the temptation to do something
stupid will be gone.”

Fiona stood there a minute, her mouth hanging open,
her flesh rising to an impossibly high temperature. She couldn’t
decide which emotion to settle on. Several were battling it out in
her brain for dominance. First there was the anger at his general
attitude toward women, then there was the sudden shyness and shock
over his pronouncement of her supposed hotness and what he wanted
to do with her, then there was the used feeling that he could
somehow create without ever penetrating her body.

What if something happened to Z? She couldn’t care
for a pup. She had no access to her money from here. And what about
her job? They’d run out of food and starve to death if she couldn’t
bring herself to go outside. But had he once thought about that?
Whether it was her body or her babysitting and animal understanding
skills, either way he was using her.

Tears slid down her cheeks.

“Please don’t do that,” Z said. “I’m trying to
not
be an asshole here.”

Fiona laughed bitterly. “This is you holding back?
Wow. Just wow.” She turned and left the room, not wanting him to
see any more tears.

***

Z stared after her, wondering what the hell had just
happened. After a moment, he shrugged and took the new lock from
the hardware store and tried it on the cage. He tested it with his
own strength. It would hold. He unlocked it and swung the door back
to let the pup out to play. The wolf raced around the cave at warp
speed, his tongue lolling out.

After a couple of laps, he went back into the open
cage to get a bit of water, then he looked around and started to
whimper. Z followed as the wolf sniffed like a bloodhound until he
got to the bathroom. He laid outside the door with his nose between
his paws, occasionally rising up and scratching at the door.

Z’s jaw clenched at hearing Fiona crying on the other
side. This had been so stupid. He could have found someone else to
watch the pup while he went searching for the family. This had been
a dumb plan. Surely it didn’t take her particular gift to figure
out how to care for the thing. There was too much attraction with
completely wrong circumstances.

Z knocked.

“Go away.”

“Fiona, come on. This is my home, and I need to take
a shower.”

“Then I’m never coming out,” she said petulantly from
the other side.

Z rolled his eyes. He could break it down, but
fitting a door into a cave like this was no small feat. He’d be
damned if he was going to mess up so many hours of labor only to
have to redo it. He’d built this place with his own hands. There
was no way he was going to destroy it in a rage just because a
witch was getting under his skin.

“Tell me what I did wrong. Do you think it would be
right to take advantage of you?”

“I’m not a child!”

Z growled, almost shifting. He needed to hunt
something. His nerves were already on edge. He’d come straight home
when the sun had risen, and this was the thanks he got.

A few minutes passed when she said, “I want to go
home.”

“You said you’d help me. For God’s sake, Fiona. I’ll
be out of your hair tomorrow morning. You won’t have to deal with
me. And when I find the pup’s family, you can go home.”

“What if something happens to you? I’ll be trapped
here. You won’t let me have my books and tools. What about access
to a computer so I can get to my money? What about my
job
?
If I don’t log in tomorrow, they might fire me. You’ve made me
helpless while you run out to who knows where.”

This was why he wasn’t good with women, why he only
had one-night stands. He didn’t think things all the way through
sometimes. Any woman who spent more than a single night with him
would figure that out and run screaming in the other direction.

And who was he kidding? Fiona wasn’t a bad witch. She
didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She wasn’t going to hex him.
So why had he acted like he had? As if she were some kind of
magical terrorist. He’d known from the moment he’d met her that she
wasn’t a danger to him. He could smell the sweetness on her. And
that was part of the problem.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go to your house and get your stuff.
Just make me a list of what you need.”

She opened the door and poked her head out. His heart
clenched at her tear-stained face. All in all, she was taking all
the shit he’d put her through pretty well.

“You’d do that?”

Z nodded. “I should have let you have the stuff you
needed to feel protected. It was wrong and selfish for me not to.”
He was just going to skim right past the chloroform and kidnapping
bit.

“Okay.”

“Now can I have a shower and breakfast first?”

She nodded, wiping her face with the back of her
hand, a sudden embarrassment seeming to come over her. The alien
notion that he should reach out and comfort her in some way popped
into his mind. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her again.
Still, her arm bumped him as she passed, and he felt the physical
chemistry that crackled between them. Could she not feel that?

But she left him standing there. The pup followed
behind her like a guard dog and growled back at him.

In the shower, Z scrubbed himself raw, the
self-recriminations pounding through his head. He was right not to
sleep with her. She was far too innocent. And he couldn’t take care
of her the way she needed. Not that he thought she was helpless.
Despite her peculiar issues, she wasn’t a weakling. She’d shown
surprising courage and calm in the face of her circumstances. Z
thought she was much stronger than she knew. It mystified him that
she couldn’t see that and leave the self-created prison her house
had become.