Carly kept her mind carefully blank until Gideon meandered back around the corner. It struck her again, the grace and ease with which he moved despite his size. Except some of that effortless animal grace with which he’d hunted her down in the hallway seemed to have slipped. Gideon was obviously favoring his left side a little and now, funny as it seemed to Carly after the way he’d moved to catch her, looking very, very sore.
He also looked very, very uncomfortable in a snug-fitting tee-shirt of Mario’s that advertised Torre’s Auto Mall, and an old pair of Luigi’s sweats that, on Gideon, looked more like extremely unfashionable capri pants. And God help her, she was going to giggle. Could she be any more inappropriate? Then again, Carly reminded herself, she was going nuts anyway. She should probably just enjoy this part before she was compelled to run naked through the streets singing show tunes. Carly pursed her lips, trying to stop them from twisting into a smile, but Gideon looked down at himself, shrugged, and then gave her an adorably lopsided grin.
“Short must run in your family, eh?”
Great, she thought. A hot Scottish werewolf with a sense of humor, and he was all hers. In her wilder fantasies, this sort of thing had always been a lot less complicated. Then again, in her wilder fantasies, he wouldn’t have been wearing the world’s highest high-waters, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have been standing here in comfy old flannel pajamas with her hair sticking up in various directions.
Reality, she decided, could be extremely overrated.
Carly curved one corner of her mouth up at him; she was willing to consent to a friendly conversation before figuring out what exactly he was doing here, but she did arch one pale brow at him before heading for the kitchen. “Lots of things run in my family. Be happy I only got short.” His grin didn’t fade, but Carly could have sworn she heard a faint snort of amusement. “Hey,” she informed him, “never underestimate the vertically challenged. Remember Napoleon? Now come on,” she sighed with a resigned shake of her head and one final, disbelieving glance at him. “I need coffee.”
t t t
Ten minutes later, they faced one another across the small table in Carly’s kitchen, each with a steaming mug of freshly brewed coffee in hand, sizing one another up.
She was dealing with the situation remarkably well, Gideon thought, enjoying the way she sat in her oversized pajama pants and shirt, her knees tucked up in front of her to keep her feet off the cold ceramic tile floor. She gripped her coffee cup with both small, graceful hands, sipping occasionally while she looked at him with a mixture of curiosity, apprehension, and a sort of charming embarrassment. For which of them, he wasn’t sure, but he was eternally grateful he was at least now wearing pants, even if the woman did appear to come from a family of midgets.
No rings, he saw. Thank God for that. He’d nearly kissed her, and it wasn’t like him to move in on another man’s woman, or even, if he was being honest, to move so quickly on an available one, no matter how beautiful she was. Or desirable. Or completely delicious. Not that his relief went any deeper than that, Gideon told himself, even as he quickly buried the memory of his body’s unsettling reaction to her. He had only meant to calm her, as his kind were capable of inducing what amounted to a light hypnosis when need be. He hadn’t meant for the kind of physical connection that had occurred to enter into it, and yet he’d been unable to ignore her body’s heated response to him … or, he thought with no small amount of shame as he remembered how close he’d come to taking complete advantage of the situation, to control his own.
Your mate, his instincts insisted.
Over his dead body. Silver bullets wouldn’t kill him any more than real ones, but her last name was an omen if Gideon had ever seen one. Carly Silver could end up being delightful in every other respect, but as a werewolf … Gideon thought of the way she’d trembled against him, the way her wrists felt like fine porcelain with his hands wrapped around them. Her inherent human frailty, her incontrovertible weakness.
Breakable, he’d sensed, even as he’d leaned in for just a small taste. He had learned about breakable women. They were better left alone.
Unfortunately, this one and he were going to have to work out a way to coexist for just a bit longer.
Gideon nodded his head to indicate the window behind Carly, the glass providing a view of nothing in the outside world but a thick, almost solid curtain of snow. “I think it’s worse than last night, really.”
She turned, looked for a moment, then turned back to him, apparently unimpressed. She shrugged, a delicate lift of the shoulders. “You live up here long enough, snow all starts to look the same. Still, a snow day is a snow day.” She sipped, considered him. “So. You said you needed my help. Assuming I can overlook the fact that you crawled into my bed last night as a dog, that is.”
“Wolf,” he corrected her, frowning. Was the woman ever going to quit talking about him as though he shifted into a pet?
“Whatever.” She waved her hand dismissively, and Gideon could appreciate the fact that she was trying to be businesslike about all this, bizarre though the situation was, especially for her. Carly Silver was already revealing herself to be a woman of contradictions, though Gideon doubted she knew it. Calm and capable, but a bit shy and unsure all the same. He could see it in the way her eyes kept dropping away from him onto the table, in the faint pink flush that crept into her cheeks whenever he spoke or looked at her for too long.
“Assuming I can overlook that, and that you were a naked guy when I woke up this morning, and scared the bejeezus out of me, chased me down the hall, and let me think you were going to kill me.”
Gideon arched a brow. “Not to mention had the audacity to apologize at least three times for all of that already.”
Carly stopped, looked at him, seemingly nonplussed, at least for the moment. “Well. Fine.” She frowned into her coffee cup, then sipped, lapsing into thoughtful silence. Regrouping, he decided, and that was fine. As long as it led to him getting the rest and shelter he, at present, desperately needed, she could take all the time she wanted. Meanwhile, Gideon, who felt fortunate in that he didn’t tend to find silence uncomfortable, relaxed in the honey-colored pressback chair he was occupying and looked around as he enjoyed the coffee Carly had brewed.
It was a bit more frilly than the way he usually took his—vanilla-flavored, but still good. Just feminine. Much like the little house she lived in, he thought as he took in the cozy kitchen with the copper fixtures and the warm-toned granite countertops, the interesting mix of teapots she obviously collected and had placed atop her cabinets. There didn’t seem to be much space to spare, from what he’d seen in his short time there, but she’d somehow managed to make her home cozy without being cluttered.
In the kitchen, just as in the living room it opened up into, the colors were earthy and warm, the furniture plump, the fabrics sink-into-me soft. The things Carly had chosen to decorate with were a mixed bag of styles that nonetheless, at least to his eyes, worked together, from a bright Van Gogh print above the fireplace to the apothecary chest she used as a coffee table. And then there were the books.
Gideon wondered if they could be considered an addiction, because if so, Carly Silver was in need of at least one twelve-step program, and probably two or three. The small bookcase Gideon could see from the table had apparently long ago reached capacity, and its refugees were scattered about, from a small stack on the counter to one or two on end tables, with what looked like at least two more tucked beneath the corner of the richly colored blanket she’d draped over the edge of her couch.
They may, in fact, have counted as clutter. But even her books seemed to fit seamlessly into this little universe she’d created, Gideon thought, surprised to find himself suddenly fighting off a wave of homesickness. He liked to think his place, his own small cottage of wood and stone, not really much bigger than this, suited him as well as he imagined this place suited her.
It was the mark of naturally solitary creatures, he thought, that they crafted their caves so carefully and well, and made them the kind of places that silently entreated you to stay, sit a while, abandon your plans, and simply relax. Was his erstwhile savior a bit like him, then? He shouldn’t want to know. Of course, Gideon thought with a touch of resignation, he shouldn’t want to finish that little moment they’d had in the hallway, either, but damned if he didn’t. He looked out the window again, and then back at the woman who sat opposite him, considering him once more with her fathomless blue eyes.
Then he made the mistake of looking at her mouth, and Gideon could actually feel his common sense deserting him, like a rat leaping off a sinking ship. If Carly hadn’t been so definitely all-human, he would have wondered if she didn’t have a heritage that gave her some hypnotic ability of her own. Such plump, inviting lips, he thought, imagining how they might taste, perhaps a bit like how she smelled to him if there was any justice in the world. He watched them move, mesmerized. There was a pause, and then they moved again. He was so sure she’d be delicious. If only he could have one small taste and be done with it, he knew he could be satisfied.
“Gideon.”
“Mmm.” He liked seeing the shape of his name on her lips. He wondered how it would be to nip at them, to run his tongue along them …
“Gideon!”
His head snapped up, and he found himself looking into a face that had taken on a great deal more irritation and suspicion in the minutes (and suddenly he knew, with a sinking certainty, that it had indeed been minutes) he’d been daydreaming. She folded her hands deliberately in front of her, although, with her knees still tucked up, the gesture didn’t even come close to being intimidating. Still, it was a sign that she meant business.
He wondered if she was aware that the top buttons of her pajama shirt had come unbuttoned. At the sight of the barest hint of what Gideon was maddeningly certain were two perfect breasts now peeking out at him from her gaping neckline, Gideon bit back a groan of frustration. Christ, this was shaping up to be one hell of a vacation.