Wolver's Rescue (12 page)

Tommie wiggled into the plain and serviceable
cotton panties, reminding herself that beggars can’t be choosers.
The jeans were two sizes smaller than she used to wear, but still
hung loosely on her hips. The soft suede-like boots were a little
big, too, but fit her perfectly in length. She hesitated a moment
before shrugging out of his tee and into the cotton tank before
adding the pretty red sweater. She was a little disappointed she
had no bra. Not that she needed one. Never very large to begin
with, her small breasts hung like deflated balloons, but a bra
might have given her a little shape.

Hopefully, a few good meals would take care
of that, too, since she was already feeling much better after
yesterday’s meal and her twelve hour sleep.

She was munching on yesterday’s leftover
turkey sandwich and looked up guiltily when Bull came back into the
room. She offered him the corner that was left.

“
Did you want
this?”

“
Not now,” he laughed. “I
thought since the clothes fit, we could stop at the diner up the
street and talk while we eat, but since you’ve already
eaten...”

“
No I haven’t,” she
interrupted. She snapped the box shut so he wouldn’t see that the
roast beef was gone, too. “This was just a little
snack.”

“
A snack? Damn, spitfire,
don’t tell me you always eat this way? I thought you were
starving.”

“
I know, sad isn’t it? Daddy
always said I was cheaper to house than feed.” She laughed a little
sadly at the memory. “And I am starving,” she added with a wave
over her thin frame. “I don’t normally look this bad. Really.” She
wanted him to believe that, too. “I can pay you back if you take me
home. I have money.”

He shook his head. “Can’t do that. Not until
I figure out what’s going on which won’t get done if I don’t get
something to eat. I don’t think very well on an empty stomach.” He
turned her around and gave her rear a thump. “Now go do what you
have to do and let’s go eat.”

Tommie almost snapped her usual, “Watch it,
buster”, but bit her tongue before she opened her mouth and stuck
her foot in it. For God’s sake, she’d slept with the big guy.
Granted, that’s all she did, but it would still sound pretty stupid
if she complained about a friendly pat on the ass.

“
Okay,” she told herself in
the mirror as she rinsed the toothpaste from her mouth. “So it felt
good and I liked it. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s a good
looking man and I’ve had little enough to feel good about
lately.”

Bull pounded on the door. “Come on, spitfire,
get that skinny ass of yours out here. I’m hungry.”

The thing inside her was hungry, too, but
Tommie didn’t think it was food the beast hungered for. And once
again, Tommie didn’t argue.

~*~

The waitress’s eyes widened a bit in
disbelief when Tommie ordered two super double cheeseburgers.

“
Are you sure you can eat
all that, honey? Why don’t you order one and see how that fits
before you order another. They’re awful big burgers for such a
little girl.” She gave Bull a conspiratorial wink and thrust her
oversized breasts in his direction. “Kids eyes can be bigger than
their bellies, if you get my drift. You her uncle or something?
‘Cause you sure don’t look old enough to be her daddy.” She raised
her eyebrows and ran her tongue across her lips in what she
probably figured was a sexy invitation. “O’course, I wouldn’t be
complaining if you were my daddy or uncle or something,” she added
suggestively.

Tommie’s insides churned and she pulled back
her lips in a mean looking smile. “You’d better be careful, honey,”
she threatened in a little girl voice that mimicked the waitress’s.
“The last girl Mom caught flirting with Daddy ended up with
thirty-six stitches. In her face,” she added for good measure.
“Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

“
You really are her father?”
The waitress looked to Bull for verification.

Bull kept his head down and traced the crack
in the laminate tabletop. His shoulders shook slightly.

“
He’s older than he looks,”
Tommie supplied. “It’s all that surgery, but you know all about
that, huh?” She looked pointedly at the woman’s breasts. “Mom says
he’s so old he can hardly get it up...Ow!” She bent to rub the spot
where Bull’s blunt toed boot had caught her shin.

“
That’s enough,” he pointed
at Tommie, “Mind your manners before this old man puts your butt in
a sling,” and then to the waitress. “I’ll have what she’s having
and keep the coffee coming.”

“
And add two more burgers to
go and a slice of that chocolate cake for dessert, please.” Tommie
felt that as the victor, it was only fair to be polite. The cake
was in celebration of the victory and the empty calories wouldn’t
hurt.

“
That was unnecessary. She
was only trying to be nice,” he scolded when the waitress left.
“And I’m not that old,” he added with a frown.

“
Pfft.” Tommie flicked her
hand at him dismissing his comment. “Maybe you’re not older, but
you’re a whole lot dumber than you look if you thought that was
nice. That,” she emphasized the word, “was an attack. She knew damn
well you weren’t my father and I’m not a little girl. And you asked
for it. You didn’t cut her off, so I was left with two choices. I
could crawl in your lap and stake my claim, or I could play her
game and beat her at it.”

“
Stake your claim?” he asked
and his mouth twitched as if he was trying not to laugh.

Should she tell him truth; that he’d already
become hers? That she’d always been like that? Her parents, her
friends at school, and later, the homeless and down-and-outs she’d
cared for at Harbor House; she’d fought for them, nurtured them,
and protected them as best she could. She’d bonded with them,
especially the women. She felt their fear and understood their
worries. Her successes with these women led to the most painful
part of her job. She had to let them go. The doctors had a lot to
say about that, too; her need to gather people to her and call them
hers.

Admittedly, her current feelings had nothing
to do with pathologically overblown maternal instincts. With Bull,
it was something else entirely and it wasn’t just sexual. Though
she couldn’t deny that the attraction was there, big time, she knew
there was something more even if she couldn’t define what it
was.

The thing inside her hummed in agreement,
which brought back the question Tommie had been asking herself
since she awakened from the best night’s sleep she’d had in
years.

“
Is it true?” she whispered,
forgetting her thoughts had not been spoken aloud.

“
What?” he asked and the
twitch of his lips turned into a smirk. “That you were staking a
claim? Or that the tits are fake?”

“
Neither,” she laughed in
spite of the seriousness of her question. “And it’s not nice to
call them tits.”

“
It wasn’t real nice of you
to call them fake, either,” he argued.

“
I told you, that was female
warfare,” she argued back, just a little proudly. “Every time she
aims those torpedoes at someone she’s going to wonder if they’re
admiring or speculating. And don’t tell me that men don’t care
because it’s not about what men think. It’s about what she
thinks.”

He laughed. “And here I thought you didn’t
have it in you. You are a cunning little bitch.”

“
I’m full of surprises and
bitch is another not-nice word.”

“
It is if you really are
one,” he said quietly and his raised eyebrows again brought Tommie
back to the question.

The other, more matronly looking waitress on
duty brought their coffee and winked at Tommie instead of Bull.
Tommie winked back and when the waitress left, turned to Bull.

“
You said trust works both
ways, so I’m trusting you to tell me the truth. Is what you said
while we were in bed true? About what I am, I mean. Or am I what
everyone else says I am? Was I dreaming again or was it real?” She
knew what she was risking. If he’d played her for a fool before,
she’d look like a bigger fool now, but she had to know.

Bull looked surprised and a little
embarrassed and that was all she needed to tell her it wasn’t a
dream. He had held her and whispered those words against her
hair.

The thing inside her knew
the word, too. “
Wolver
.”

And Tommie repeated it. “You told me I was a
wolver.”

Bull closed his eyes and let out a whistle of
air before he nodded. “And you told me I was crazy.”

“
Yeah, well, you have to
admit, for someone with my history, believing there’s a wolf inside
you is right up there with believing you’re Joan of Arc.” She sat
back against the booth and waited.

“
You’re not Joan of Arc,” he
said. “You’re a wolver. Like me.”

Tommie wiggled in her seat, her anticipation
both exciting and terrifying. “Can you prove it?”

“
You’ve already seen the
proof. You saw me take out those two guys in the
street.”

“
That looked like a dog, a
big dog,” she said, but as she said it, she recalled the shadow on
the wall and the flash of light. “Is there...?”

“
Don’t ever refer to a
wolver as a dog,” he said and she could tell he wasn’t kidding.
“You might hear it said between friends, but they’d better be
friends and it had better be a joke, or there’s going to be a
challenge.”

“
A challenge?”

It was like explaining a complicated game to
someone who’d never seen or played it. For every piece of
information he offered, Tommie had a question and for every
question, Bull had an answer, which only led to more questions. If
this was, indeed, some fantasy world that he’d created in his mind
or made up for her benefit, it was the most complex one she’d ever
heard of. By the time they were on their way back to the room, her
head was aching with the attempt to process it all.

It should have been totally unbelievable and
maybe it was, but the voice in her head was silent the whole time
they spoke and the thing inside her curled into a relaxed and
contented ball as if, after all this time, it had finally found the
place where it belonged.

“
Not thing,” she whispered
in wonder, “wolf. I have a wolf inside me. When can I see it?” she
asked.

Watching her dance circles around him in her
eagerness, Bull could easily see her as the girl the waitress
accused her of being. Her face had already lost some of its
sallowness and her cheeks were flushed from excitement and the cool
of the autumn air. Bull had seen that look on girls of fifteen in
anticipation of their first time going over the moon.

“
You don’t see it,” he told
her. “You are it. You can’t separate one from the
other.”

It wasn’t a total lie and he saw no reason to
tell the complete truth; she couldn’t separate one from the other,
but he could. Her wolf was no more connected to her than she was to
it and would be more than happy to cooperate. The lower functioning
animal mind would eventually forget the human half ever
existed.

Thomas, and damned if he’d ever get used to
that name, grabbed his hand and swung his arm up and back, along
with the bag of take-out burgers. “Not me. You. I need to see it,
Bull. You know, trust but verify.

“
All my life, I’ve felt this
thing inside me. I’ve heard its voice since I was fifteen. I can’t
control it. I can’t win against it. It twists and turns inside me.
It growls and snarls and claws at me. It wants to get out. It has
to get out and I can’t fight it anymore. I can’t live like this
anymore.”

She swung around to face him, not laughing
now, but looking up at him with a vulnerability that scared the
hell out of him. He was responsible for that look of hope and fear.
He was responsible for her. He wasn’t good at being responsible for
anyone but himself.

“
I want to believe, Bull.
Oh, God, you have no idea how much I want to believe. That’s why I
need proof that what you say is true and not just something I want
to believe. I did that once and ended up in that cage.”

This was what he’d planned to ask about once
they were back in the room, but maybe this was better. They’d been
about to cross the street in front of the motel when they’d stopped
and Bull glanced over her shoulder in a quick calculation of the
benefits of continuing their conversation out in the open during a
casual stroll versus the more intimate but confining walls of their
room.

He abruptly pulled Thomas back into his arms
with a muttered curse. Startled, she stiffened in the embrace and
didn’t relax when he bent his head to her ear.

“
They’re here.”

He turned to point her face toward the
motel’s glassed in office. A car like the one from the night of her
escape was parked under the archway in front of the door. Two men
in security uniforms were talking to the clerk and the clerk looked
nervous.

“
I thought you said we were
safe here,” she whispered as if the guards would hear if she spoke
too loudly. Bull could feel her heart pounding against his chest.
“How did they find us?”

“
When you didn’t go home,
where else would they look? They saw you not far from here. They’re
probably checking every flea bag motel in the area.”

Bull steered her a few feet farther along the
street until they were beside a parked car. He pushed her back
against the door and braced his hands on the hood to either side of
her head and bent his head to hers, shielding both their bodies and
faces from view. If the guards looked up, all they would see was a
guy putting the moves on his girl.