Moonbound (Moonfate Serial Book 1) Page 5

  I turn around and see in her hands the entire wad of cash from the drawer. “Lola!”

  “Take it—consider it payment for your singing.”

  “I can’t,” I say, even as my fingers itch toward the cash. I could run a whole extra week on that much. “You need it.”

  She pushes it into my hands. “I can tell when someone’s in a rough way, Artemis.”

  Reluctantly, I take the money and slip it into the envelope alongside the check. “Thank you so much, Lola. I don’t know what to say.” My cheeks burn as I realize I still haven’t asked her for time off to run. How can I do that now that she just gave me a bonus? But it’s either that or leave her without saying anything at all.

  “You should take a couple days off, too, honey.” She pats me absently on the shoulder. “Peter owes me some extra hours, and you’ve never missed a day. Just sort out whatever’s going on, okay?”

  My eyes widen. “Thank you.”

  “And you’re going to be singing here every Friday.” Lola leans in and offers me a conspiratorial smile. “So you better learn some Elvis in your time off.”

  I laugh. “Elvis? Okay.” I frown when I realize I’m saying “okay” like I know that I’ll be here next Thursday.

  “Do you need a ride?” asks Lola.

  Outside, the rain strengthens from a drizzle into a downpour.

  I bite the inside of my mouth, puzzling. I certainly don’t want to ride in this rain, especially because it’s late and who knows what’s lurking out there waiting for me. Maybe just common criminals. Maybe Cooper’s crazy homophobic boss. Or, maybe, the most dangerous of all: Orion.

  But that’s the exact reason why I can’t take Lola up on her offer. I’ve had enough people in my life hurt by werebeasts and other strange things. I don’t know why, but danger always seems to follow me. And Lola doesn’t deserve to get hurt.

  “No, I’m good.”

  She shrugs and pats my shoulder. “Okay, honey, but you should be extra careful and make sure to take East Avenue all the way home. The side streets aren’t safe at night.”

  Chapter Ten

  The moment I open the bar’s door, I’m assaulted by warm water. On my skin, in my hair, cascading in waterfalls down my arms and into my pants. I’m drenched in seconds.

  To make matters worse, the street lamps’ anemic glow is losing the battle against the darkness and the oppressive rain. The visibility sucks. On my way to my bike, I almost trip into the gutter, already rushing with water. At least the rain keeps the street from feeling too empty.

  When I get to my bike, I unlock it quickly, even though my rusty lock protests. I stuff the lock my purse and am just about to get going when I catch something out of the corner of my eye. A shadow.

  I turn.

  It’s just a bush near a closed convenience store, rustling in the storm. My paranoia is out of control. I mount up, switch into a high gear, and speed down the slick road.

  By the time I’m halfway home, the rain stops, but I’m already soaked through and my black jeans and shirt are plastered onto my every curve. I’m the perfect prey. Weak, wet, alone.

  Shit!

  A shadow darts across my periphery, and it’s definitely not a bush this time. My finger twitches on the brake, but I pedal faster. I don’t see it again for another block, so I turn around to check if I’m safe.

  And there it is, low to the ground, four-legged, and sprinting right toward me. The darkness makes it seem even larger.

  I swerve into a nearby alleyway. An automatic light over a garage door flickers on with my movement, blinding me, and I almost crash right into the door.

  I can hear the thing behind me now. Water sloshing, claws scrabbling on the potholed road.

  It’s closer.

  Oh, God, what if it’s Orion? Or worse, what if it’s Cooper’s boss? What if he’s going to kill me like the werebeasts killed my parents?

  I hit a pothole and my teeth smash together with the force of it. I don’t fall off, but I do lose time. Enough so that now the creature is running next to me and then, suddenly, in front.

  I brake. My tires skid to a stop so fast I lurch off my bike and into the alley’s swelling river of runoff. My knees hit water first then the gravel. But that’s all. No teeth gnashing at my throat or velvety command warping my mind. Nothing.

  I open my eyes.

  A few feet away, nose buried in a trash bin, is a raccoon.

  I start to laugh. I was running away from what is basically a cute rat. God, how ridiculous I must’ve looked. How melodramatic.

  It turns. Well, it’s not a wereracoon, either. Its beady eyes are dull and entirely inhuman, and wide with fear.

  “You’re not so scary,” I say to it, standing next to my fallen bike.

  It snarls, back arching to a hideously sharp angle, bares its teeth, and then—before I even have a chance to feel afraid—it dives into a dumpster in a nearby alleyway.

  “That’s right, run, raccoon!” I shout, grinning, reveling in my somewhat deserved victory.

  “You’re very cute when you think you’ve won,” says an amused, gravelly voice. Right behind me.

  Slowly, so slowly, I turn. I don’t scream. I can’t. My lips are numb and my brain is caught in a monosyllabic loop of shock.

  No. No. No. No.

  But there’s no denying it. There, only a few feet away, cast in shadow, is a figure that feels achingly familiar, but that I know I’ve never seen before. Not in real life.

  When he steps forward, another motion-sensor garage light turns on. Like a stage light it illuminates him.

  Orion North.

  My mate.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Perhaps the most famous and most hotly debated weremate is Queen Elizabeth herself and her rumored “lion.” Some say that there is nothing to support that she was protected by a powerful werelion who stopped numerous assassination attempts, others say that it is a dangerous historical precedent to set that the only way a woman might gain strength is to submit to a man—or a werebeast.

  To the first point, I direct the reader to Her Majesty’s diaries. To the latter point I say this: not all strong women are weremates, but all women who are weremates are, in one way or another, strong.”

  Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and their Mates

  By Dr. Nina M. Strike

  Orion North is the only dream I’ve ever had that became more beautiful by coming true. Reality doesn’t taint him with its grime or complexity; he looks heartbreakingly striking and savage, even as he stands in a suburban alleyway. Water droplets shimmer as they drip from his starlight-colored hair, down his neck and finally around his deeply chiseled abs, but he doesn’t seem to care. If anything, he likes the way his soaking jeans cling to him in a way that seems more indecent than if he were wearing nothing at all.

  He smiles at me. The edges of his sharp canines peek out over his lips as his eyes skate over my form for a moment, but they don’t rest on my body long.

  Instead, he stares deep into my eyes, searching for something. And I know he doesn’t want just my body. He wants something else, too. That lost piece of me, the thing I had tapped while I sang in the bar and even a little bit while I dreamed.

  He wants my soul.

  I run.

  I don’t run gracefully. I tear through the drowned alley, not stopping for my bike, or the burning in my lungs, or to listen to the sound coming from just behind me. Steady, splashing, footsteps.

  He’s coming. Oh, God. And the most horrifying part? Some betraying part of me wants him to, relishes the hope that he’ll chase me and force me down onto my back and mark me as his.

  I push my way through the lingering fog and the heavy darkness. My foot catches on the same pothole I hit earlier, sending me falling. Behind me the splashing continues. I close my eyes, meaning only to take a second’s rest, but by the time I open them, it’s too late.

  He stops before me. All I can see of him are his powerful legs, twin lin
es leading upwards towards his crotch. I drop my gaze instantly, realizing that I’m almost eye level with his zipper.

  “Hello there, Artemis.” To my surprise, he crouches down in front of me, although even then I have to look up to see into his eyes. He’s so close that I can see a hint of stubble on his face. What would it feel like against my cheek? No. I should run. I should—

  “Look at me.” His large hand reaches out and gently brushes against the underside of my jaw. “You’re mine now.”

  Like the dream, his eyes sear into me, flickering with far more colors than they should, like windows into some other world. Looking into them feels like leaving and coming home all at once.

  “Don’t be afraid. I don’t hurt what’s mine,” he says.

  “I’m not…“

  “Yes?” His pupils dilate.

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Really?” In a movement that is surprisingly graceful for how large and well-muscled he is, he bends over to whisper in my ear. “Then why did you run?”

  His breath overwhelms me, sharp, cold, laced with mint and pine, and something darker, something almost alcoholic. If I had an answer to his question, it disappears with his nearness.

  “Answer me,” he commands softly, his voice ragged with primal hunger.

  My body shakes with an answering need, but I won’t give in. I won’t tell him about my parents. He has enough power over me already without knowing that. Instead, I retort, “Why did you chase me?”

  He pulls away from my neck, and, grasping my soft arms with both his hands, he brings me to arm’s length so he can look at me. As he does, a strange sadness fills his eyes, as if we are the only two people left at the end of the world. “Why do I choose to turn into a wolf on the full moon?” He lowers his chin, thinking, as if the question isn’t just a rhetorical one, then he says, with absolute firmness, “Because I am a hunter.”

  “I’m not your mate.”

  With a single fast but surprisingly gentle movement he folds me back into his embrace. He doesn’t have to push or force. Not when it’s taking every ounce of my willpower not to lick each inch of his muscle-wrought body.

  “If you’re not my mate, then why haven’t you screamed?” His hands cup my waist, standing us both up while not offering me a chance to break free. It’s like he’s molding my body to his, my flesh as malleable as clay. I still.

  Finally, he loosens his grip, confident that I’m captured, but he still doesn’t let me go. “Why haven’t you taken out your cell phone and called the police?” With one leg he parts my thighs. “Why does your body respond to me?” He presses his leg up against my vagina, and I know that he can feel how frictionless my jeans and underwear are against my crotch. The wetness there isn’t just from the rain.

  Against my own will, I give a needy moan.

  He pauses. “I think it’s because I own this soft, curvy body of yours, Artemis. Isn’t it?”

  I have no words that will deny him, so all I can do is push against his chest with my hand. I don’t care if it makes him grip me harder or if he likes the fight. I just have to do something.

  He lets me go.

  I stagger for a moment, the loss of sensation hitting me hard.

  He leaves his hands up, beckoning me back to his embrace.

  But I don’t go. Instead I hug my arms to my chest and search the surrounding alleyway for an escape route. I wonder if he will let me go if I run?

  He ignores me. He’s probably confident that he could catch me no matter which way I choose to run. “It’s been hard to track you, you know,” he says casually. “It’s almost like you didn’t want to be found.” He gives me a meaningful look, as though I’m a misbehaving child. “Imagine that.”

  “I didn’t. I mean I don’t.” Maybe if I dive behind the trash cans.

  “You sound a little confused.” So confident is Orion that he strolls over to a nearby telephone pole and lounges against it. It’s amazing that he could make something as simple as walking beautiful, like watching a Ferrari doing twenty on a city street. Every movement he makes holds the promise of speed and deadly force.

  “I’m really not.” I take a step back off of the graveled road and onto the dirt siding near someone’s alley garden.

  He doesn’t pursue me, but actually relaxes his posture, softening only slightly. “All right, I’ll play with you for a moment. Let’s say that you’re not confused. That you’re wearing your charming chili perfume not to arouse my curiosity, but to try and hide from me.” The arrogance is coming off of him in waves now, a force almost as thick and palpable as the mist left over from the rain. “That you’ve been running all this time, pretending to be a little fish, not because you’ve been trying to entertain me, but because you actually don’t want to be my mate. It’s a little far-fetched, but I’ll bite.” He flashes a glimpse of his canines. “If you tell me why.”

  “You’re not my type.” My hands tremble at my sides. I should run, but I’m afraid if he catches me a second time, he’ll never let go. I’m afraid I won’t want him to.

  “See, there’s the rub.” He pushes off from the telephone pole, stepping toward me. He walks so lightly for being so strong. “I know for a fact that I am.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “Oh, I’m right.” He waves away my disagreement with a single gesture of his hand, like removing a pawn from a chessboard. “That’s not up for debate.”

  “Is anything up for debate with you?” I hate how weak my protests sound in my ears.

  He grins. “Not much.”

  I remember my parents. Remember how they screamed. Remember how I never got to go to college because I couldn’t afford it. How I’ll never get to have my father walk me down the aisle, or my mother hear me sing. I remember how every night I wake up from the same nightmare. And it’s all because of werebeasts like him.

  “Let me phrase it in a way that you might be able to understand.” I stop backpedaling and look him straight in the eye, perfectly cold and still. “I hate you.”

  “Liar,” he growls. In a flash he’s right in front of me.

  Jesus, he’s fast. I stumble backward, but he doesn’t let me fall. His hands catch me at the small of my back and pull me against him, claiming me. Through the fabric of his jeans I can feel every inch of him, from his taut stomach to his hard thighs and his harder crotch.

  My core floods with a sticky heat. He dips his head to my neck and nips it lightly. My bones melt and I relax completely into his hold, a wave of submissive pleasure flickering over me.

  He could do anything to me now and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. My heart thuds in my chest, trying to pump blood that feels thick with lust.

  “I can smell your need.” His right hand begins to toy with the buttons of my shirt, almost undoing them, trailing around the hem, teasing my gently curved stomach.

  “Oh, God,” I whisper. It should be ticklish, but it’s not.

  I squirm and he cups me closer, his low voice ringing through me as if I’m a bell and he is the mallet. “You want me to take you right here, don’t you?” His fingers dance upward, rolling around my nipples through my shirt. “You crave my touch. The way you know I will make you tremble with pleasure until you can’t even remember to call out to God anymore.” He bites my neck three more times, until my knees give. “Just. To. Me.”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  He opens his mouth again and I know there’s only one way I’m going to stop him from talking me into submission. It goes against every rule I’ve ever learned about werebeasts, but then where has following the rules gotten me so far? It’s time to break them.

  I kiss him.

  Chapter Twelve

  The kiss is surprisingly soft. No matter how hard I dig my nails into his shoulders, he keeps it as gentle as the summer rain that coats our bodies. It’s strange, and so unlike every other part of him. Yet when we part for breath, his eyes are hungry, and I know that underneath that
sweet kiss there’s rolling thunder.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he says, all the teasing gone. A deep, pure blue fills his eyes, and despite the words sounding like a pick-up line they feel painfully sincere. He looks at me the way a prisoner would look at the sky. “I think you might be the strangest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  My chest aches looking at him. Never has any man looked at me like this. And then, of course, I remember.

  This is all a lie.

  Deceptive chemicals coursing through our systems from the matemark manufactured all of this. Maybe that should be a comfort, give me the strength to resist, to maintain my sense of self, but it just fills me with a deep sadness.

  “Now who’s the liar?” I ask.

  “Still you.” His mask of amusement slides back into place and he moves his hand from my shirt to tangle itself in my curls, lazily wrapping one around his fingertip. “Although you’re a very good kisser for a liar, but maybe that’s part of the appeal.” He frees the curl, watching it bounce as if it’s the most fascinating thing in the universe. “You’re strange and wicked.”

  “I’m the strange and wicked one?” I pull the rest of my hair behind me, keeping it from his wandering hands.

  “Oh, most definitely.” He looks surprised that I haven’t grasped the obviousness of this fact.

  “You’re a werewolf who says things like, ‘There’s the rub,’ like you’re some kind of Shakespearean actor.” I hold up my thumb, beginning to count his offenses against me.

  “‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.’” He grins roguishly.

  “You’re convinced that some girl you don’t even know is going to fall in love with you just because you stalk her in the dark at fucking midnight!” I tick off another finger.

  “Love has never been a part of the equation. That,” he spits, “is a human foible.” His grin falls until his face is as cold, hard, and dark as a moonless night.