Curran pointed to the two doors on his left.
I untangled myself from the sheets. I really had to go to the bathroom. The question was: would my legs support me?
Curran smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your panties have a bow,” he said.
I looked down. I was wearing a short tank top—not mine—and my blue panties with a narrow white strip of lace at the top and a tiny white bow. Would it have killed me to check what I was wearing before I pulled the blanket down? “What’s wrong with bows?”
“Nothing.” He was grinning now. “I expected barbed wire. Or one of those steel chains.”
Wiseass. “I’m secure enough in myself to wear panties with bows on them. Besides, they are comfy and soft.”
“I bet.” He almost purred.
I gulped. Okay, I needed to either crawl back into bed and cover myself with the blanket or get the hell to the bathroom and back. Since I didn’t fancy peeing on myself, the bathroom was my only option.
“I don’t suppose you’d mind giving me a bit of privacy for my trip?”
“Not a chance,” he said.
I tried to get off the bed. Everything was under control until my weight actually hit my legs and then the room decided to crawl sideways. Curran caught me. His arm hugged my back, his touch sending an electric shiver along my skin. Oh no.
“Need some help, ass kicker?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I pushed away from him. He held on to me for a second, letting me know that he could restrain me against my will with laughable ease, and let go. I clenched my teeth. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll be back on my feet soon.
I walked away from him, successfully maintaining vertical position, and zeroed in on the nearest door.
“That’s the closet,” he said.
Why me?
I made a small adjustment to my course, arrived at the bathroom door, got inside, and let out a breath. That was entirely too close for comfort.
“You okay in there?” he asked. “You need me to come and hold your hand or something?”
I locked the door and heard him laughing. Bastard.
I found a white bathrobe in the bathroom, which permitted me to emerge with some small shred of dignity intact. Curran raised his eyebrows at the robe but didn’t say anything.
I made it to the bed, crawled in, and hugged Slayer. While I was in the bathroom, somebody had taken away the soup. I had still had a little bit left in my last bowl.
Outside the window was dark. “What time is it?”
“Early morning. You’ve been out for about six hours.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “What do you want?”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
He spoke slowly, carefully shaping the words as if I was slow or hard of hearing. “What do you want for the maps?”
I wanted to hit him in the mouth really hard. “One of the Pack members came to me for help. If I tell you, will you promise not to punish the persons involved?”
“I can’t promise that. I don’t know what you’ll say. You should tell me anyway. I’m curious now and I don’t like being out of the loop.”
“And have you embark on a bloody rampage?”
“I grow tired of your mouth.” Bones shifted under Curran’s skin. The nose widened, the jaws grew, the top lip split, displaying enormous teeth. I was staring into the face of a nightmare, a horrible meld of human and lion. If a thing that weighed over six hundred pounds in beast-form could be called a lion. His eyes never changed. The rest of him—the body, the arms, the legs, even his hair and skin remained human. The shapeshifters had three forms: beast, human, and half. They could shift into any of the three, but they always changed shape completely. Most had to strain to maintain the half-form and to be able to speak in it was a great achievement. Only Curran could do this: turn part of his body into one shape while keeping the rest in another.
Normally I had no trouble with Curran’s face in half-form. It was well-proportioned, even—many shapeshifters suffered the “my jaws are way too big and don’t fit together” syndrome—but I was used to that half-form face being sheathed in gray fur. Having human skin stretched over it was nausea inducing.
He noticed my heroic efforts not to barf. “What is it now?”
I waved my hand around my face. “Fur.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your face has no fur.”
Curran touched his chin. And just like that all traces of the beast vanished. He sat before me fully human.
He massaged his jaw.
The beast grew stronger during the flare. Curran’s irritation caused his control to slip just a hair.
“Having technical difficulties?” I asked and immediately regretted it. Pointing out loss of control to a control freak wasn’t the brightest idea.
“You shouldn’t provoke me.” His voice dropped low. He suddenly looked slightly hungry. “You never know what I might do if I’m not fully in control of myself.”
Mayday, Mayday. “I shudder at the thought.”
“I usually have that effect on women.”
Ha! “Is that before or after they pee on themselves and show you their furry bellies?”
He leaned forward. “I’m leaving. Last chance.”
“Myong came to see me.”
“Oh,” he said. “That.”
The muscles on his jaw went tight. We sat in grim silence for several minutes. I waited until I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Myong,” I said gently.
“You know who she wants to marry?”
She wants to marry my “ex–could have been” boyfriend whom I accused of kidnapping, sexual torture, and cannibalism. “Yes.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Maybe I’m not as okay with it as I want to be. But I don’t want to keep them from each other.” Seeing Myong, well, it stung. I shouldn’t have cared that Crest clearly thought she was better than me, but it did bother me a little. She was without a doubt more beautiful, elegant, refined. But she was also so…so dying swan. The kind of woman who, if asked to make tea, would return from the kitchen to tell you the water was boiling and expect you to deal with that emergency while she waited demurely next to you.
“I think I’ve been rather reasonable about this whole situation,” Curran said.
“How do you figure?”
“They are still breathing, aren’t they?”
Maybe he truly loved her and losing her hurt. Maybe it was his ego talking: a proud alpha, left by a beautiful woman for a normal human, a wimp, pretty much disliked by every shapeshifter who met him. I wished I could make it better for him and for me. But the only way to do so lay through setting them free.
“Please let them go.”
He rose. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Curran…”
“What?”
“You’ll feel better if you cut them loose.”
“What makes you think it bothers me?” He almost said something else, but changed his mind and left the room.
I felt very alone sitting on the bed by myself. The last time I had felt so alone was when I found out that Greg was murdered.
I untied my robe and laid down. The expedition to the bathroom followed by a tense conversation wore me out. I wanted Curran to let them marry, so I could be done with all of it.
Something moved outside the window. I raised my head. Nothing. Just a rectangular view of the sky, barely brightening before the sunrise. We were on the second or third floor. No trees nearby. I put my head back on my pillow. Wonderful. I’m hallucinating now.
Knock-knock-knock.
A reeve? Couldn’t be—those gals didn’t knock. I slid off the bed and walked to the window. No bars. No alarm. I guess when you can smell a drop of blood in five quarts of water, you don’t bother with alarms. And only a total lunatic would risk breaking into a house full of monsters. I turned away.
Knock-knock-knock.
Alright, fine. I’ll play. The latch on the window was of the old variety, heavy and metal. I’d have to use both hands to get it open. I put Slayer on the windowsill.
Beyond the glass, an empty street stretched into gloom. I unlocked the latch and slid the window up. Below me lay a small ledge, barely more that an ornamental row of bricks protruding from the wall.