Last Wolf Standing

Chapter 2

Clutching her book to her chest to keep it dry, Torrance Kimberly Watson all but stumbled into the softly lit, subtly incensed interior of Michaela’s Muse. Her heart pumped a chaotic beat, while her mind carried on a fierce debate with her grumbling libido—and despite her common sense, it looked as if her sex-deprived inner wild woman was winning.

“Like that should come as a shock,” she quietly snickered, groaning at her body’s continued reaction to the man she’d left behind in the restaurant. He was certainly a fine specimen of maleness, even if he had been off his rocker. “And not even those last few minutes of rain managed to cool you down, you slut,” she jokingly muttered under her breath, slipping out of her damp jacket and tossing it over her arm.

It was a depressing thought, but there was no denying that she’d been a long time without a boyfriend. Heck, she’d been a long time without a simple date. She was in her mid-twenties, meant to be living life to its fullest…and instead she’d practically become a nun. Not that a few short-lived relationships counted for much in the way of past experience, but then she knew she had high expectations when it came to that sort of thing. Expectations she doubted any man could ever meet.

No, Torrance understood the male species for what they were—and, more important, for what they weren’t. After dating one too many jerks who were as faithless as they were self-centered and shallow, she’d decided that being alone was better than being used—than settling for something she didn’t want—and she still stood by her decision. But, God, it wasn’t easy when dealing with the kind of temptation she’d had to endure today.

The guy at lunch had been like something out of her dreams. The really, really naughty ones, she thought with a small, crooked smile.

“Hey, Torry,” Michaela called out from the front of the store without looking up, absorbed in her current project.

“Oh, uh…hey, Mic,” she called back, suddenly realizing she’d been standing in the doorway, lost in her own little world. With a quick look around the store, Torrance saw that Mic had been busy digging into their latest delivery of new merchandise. A box containing paranormal titles and Tarot decks sat on the floor beside an ornate wooden bookshelf, while another that probably contained scented candles had been placed beside an antique display case.

Torrance had met Michaela Doucet five years ago, at a Tarot demonstration the Cajun was holding at a local bookstore, and they’d become instant, inseparable friends. Two years later, when Mic had opened the specialty shop, Torrance had been right by her side, and together they had made Michaela’s Muse an area favorite, with business growing every year.

She loved her job, and felt at home in the warm, soothing atmosphere, surrounded by friends who had become like family to her.

“Torry!” Michaela suddenly gasped in that slow Southern drawl of hers, making Torrance jump. She looked over to see Mic’s big, dark blue eyes blinking with surprise as she glanced up from the new Tarot decks she was organizing, getting her first good look at Torrance’s ruined shirt. “What happened? You look like you just came from an orgy with one of the undead!”

“Hah!” Torrance laughed out loud, causing Mic to give her a more critical look. “I told them you were going to say something like that when you saw my shirt,” she mumbled, feeling strange, as if her body were hot and cold all at once, her skin suddenly too tight for all the chaos going on inside of it. Man, that gorgeous freak-case at the café had really messed with her mind.

“And it wasn’t a what,” she added with a resigned sigh, suddenly giving a wry grin as she tossed her book and jacket on the beautiful bar that served as the store’s checkout counter, then stepped around its corner, moving to her customary place behind the gleaming antique. Knowing her tenacious best friend would pry the lunchtime fiasco out of her one way or another, the sanest course of action was to give in gracefully and save what little of her sanity she still had left. “It was a who.”

Michaela’s delicately sloped brows arched high on the smooth perfection of her brow as she moved around the display table draped with sapphire velvet. “Now that,” she mused, the black mass of her softly curling hair gleaming a deep, dark, midnight-blue, “sounds like something more than just another boring lunch at that corporate zombiefest you can’t get enough of.”

A steady drizzle of rain began pattering gently upon the roof as the latest storm moved overhead, its pattern soft and fleeting, like the featherlight dance of water fairies. Torrance normally found the sound of early-autumn showers soothing, but today the lilting chorus of raindrops only added to the prickling restlessness shivering beneath the surface of her skin. And it didn’t help that she was still reeling from the gorgeous stranger’s bizarre effect on her.

Hell, maybe she was coming down with something. Or maybe she was just so desperate for something more out of life, that she was becoming delusional. Had it gotten to the point where she was creating imaginary connections with mouthwatering hunks to make her feel less lonely? How…pathetic.

“Yoohoo, earth to Torry…” Michaela laughed, waving one slim palm in front of her face to get her attention.

“Oh, sorry. Um, I didn’t catch that last part.”

Mic gave her a quizzical look. “I just said that it sounds like you had an interesting lunch.”

“Yeah, it was interesting all right,” Torrance softly agreed.

Crossing her slim arms across her bountiful chest, Mic leaned one elbow against the edge of the intricately carved bar. The exquisite piece looked more like it belonged in a high-end antique shop, rather than a mystical haven for lovers of the paranormal. Like several of the store’s unusual antiques, the cherrywood bar had come from Mic’s grandmother’s mysterious Southern estate, buried somewhere deep in the bayou.

It was that bayou upbringing that had given Michaela her comfortable acceptance of the paranormal—an acceptance that Torrance envied. Truth be told, working at the shop had been a test of sorts for her, to see if she could get past her childhood phobias and embrace the paranormal community. And Torrance had done it, kind of like a person with a fear of sharks learning to enjoy the ocean. She loved her job, had a great rapport with their customers, and though it had taken some time, she’d eventually learned not to fear the unknown.

Well, most of the unknown. She still had a few phobias, brought on by her nightmares, but she was working to get over them. And Mic and her younger brother, Max, were helping.

“So what was he like?” the grinning brunette asked in a deliberately low whisper, probably meant to keep Max from overhearing.

A dreamy sigh escaped her lips before she could stop it, and Torrance suddenly heard herself saying, “Sex.”

Mic’s blue eyes went wide, and a throaty chuckle slipped smoothly past the Southerner’s rouged mouth. “That hot, huh?”

Torrance didn’t think her face could get any redder. Sex! Had she really just said that? Plopping down on her padded stool, she shook her head at the memory of the man who had turned her into a blathering idiot. Though she’d read the phrase a thousand times in romance novels, it had never actually happened to her—but he’d literally knocked her off her feet…and apparently knocked her brains out while he was at it. “Let’s just say that there should be a freaking law against men looking that good,” she groaned.

Mic’s mouth twisted into a sly smile. “Oh, honey, they can never look too good.”

“Well, he looked too good to me.” She sighed, remembering that dizzying moment of shock when their eyes had first connected. God, she was still feeling the vibrations from the jolt that had zapped her. Instant lust, something so warm and primitive, she’d barely been able to breathe through it. Heck, she could barely breathe now, just thinking about him. All she’d wanted was to slide up closer to him, then just a little closer, until they were pressed up against each other and she was surrounded by his animal heat—the dangerous, predatory wildness that had pulsed around him like a fiery glow while his deep, chocolate-brown gaze had promised things too tender and intimate to accept from any man, much less from a perfect stranger. Only…he hadn’t felt like a stranger, and that provocative combination of danger and shelter had been too devastating.

So devastating that it’d scared the hell out of her, sending her running faster than all that crazy talk of his could have ever done.

Michaela laughed softly into the charged silence. “That good, eh?”

Torrance nodded her head distractedly, then gave it a quick shake, determined to stop daydreaming about the tall, dark, wickedly handsome stranger. What had his friend called him? Mase? Mason? That was it! A strong, purely male name that fit him to perfection, just like those well-worn jeans that had so easily hugged his powerful thighs and the faded T-shirt deliciously molded to his muscular chest beneath the darker flannel.

Even his hair had been gorgeous. Not black, but a rich, lustrous brown with reddish streaks that turned auburn in the light. It had fallen somewhat shaggy around the strong, rugged angles of his arresting face, as if he didn’t get it cut often enough, but hadn’t decided to just let it grow. There was the slightest hint of a curl to it, the kind that meant you would snag your fingers a bit when you ran them through the silky mass. With a fierce compulsion, Torrance had wanted to bury her face in those windblown strands and breathe the scent of him into her lungs. It was hot and heady…and animallike. Full of mystery and the wild outdoors, natural and addictive.

Damn it, she was starting to drool just thinking about him, but then, she’d never been affected by a man like that before. In those first moments, she’d thought he was the most beautiful, mesmerizing thing she’d ever seen. Something hot and thick and deliciously wicked had passed between them—something Mic would have called a mystical connection—before his friend rained on the parade. She’d wanted to believe it’d been an accident, but something in his eyes had warned her that he wasn’t being totally honest about tripping her. Then he’d gone over the top, and she’d hightailed it outta there so fast she’d never even looked back.

Well, okay, so that wasn’t totally honest, either. On her way back to work, she’d argued with herself about her decision, uneasy over what felt uncomfortably like an irrevocable loss, as if she’d let something indelibly precious and infinitely significant just slip through her fingers. If things hadn’t gone so weird there at the end, she strongly suspected she would have followed the stud to the ends of the earth just to investigate that thing between them—to find out what it was really all about.

“Yeah, he was that good,” she finally said, “which means he was definitely too good to be true.”

Dropping her gaze to Torrance’s stained polo, Mic grinned. “So what happened?”

A soft laugh fell past her lips, surprising her, but then it had been funny as hell when the blond one had blurted it out. Well, maybe not funny at the time, but looking back on it, Torrance couldn’t help but see the humor in the situation. “He…uh, tripped me.”

Her best friend’s jaw dropped in shock. “He what?”

“He tripped me,” she explained with a shrug, knowing it sounded crazy. “I, uh, guess to get my attention.”

“Well, I’ve never heard that one before,” Mic admitted dryly, “but I’ll give him credit for an original approach.”

Feeling the raindrops beaded on her cheeks, Torrance swiped her cool hands over her face, pushing the wayward strands of damp hair back from her forehead. “I didn’t know he’d tripped me on purpose until his friend ratted him out. I thought I’d just been clumsy.”

“Some friend,” Mic snorted, raising her brows.

“Oh, you’d have liked him.” Torrance sent the other woman a teasing smile. “He was a total smart-ass.”

“Just my kind of guy,” the brunette drawled, rolling her eyes.

“Anyway, I swear, Mic, I almost swallowed my tongue when I first set eyes on him. He was…”

Her voice trailed off, and Mic prompted her with an interested, “Yeah?”

She struggled to find the right word, but in the end there was only one that would do. “Beautiful,” she said simply.

“As sweet as that is, I need more info,” Mic complained with a throaty laugh. “Come on, Shakespeare, and describe him for me. I’ve got to have a mental picture.”

Torrance sent the grinning brunette her best “as if” look. “So you can try to make love dolls of us? Don’t think I’m not on to you, Doucet?” she snorted. “I saw you looking through those new voodoo books that came in last week.”

Michaela’s eyes went wide with a feigned look of innocence. “I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. I’m shocked you could even think it,” she muttered, just before she busted up giggling, and Torrance couldn’t help but join in with the Cajun’s infectious laughter.

“What’s all the giggling about?” a deep voice called out. “Did I miss something good?”

Both women looked over to see Max sticking his dark head around the corner of the employees’ door, his deep blue eyes dark and hazy, as if they’d disturbed one of his little catnaps. At nineteen, he was determined to pull his weight and help his sister get her fledgling business off the ground. Hurrying back to the shop after morning classes at the nearby community college, he managed the stockroom and updated the accounts in the afternoons, all before working the night shift as a security guard at the local hospital. Torrance got tired just thinking about the poor kid’s schedule.

“Hey, Max,” she called out over her shoulder, careful to keep her body turned to avoid another round of twenty questions about her clothing. Max took his man-of-the-shop duties seriously, treating Torrance with the same brotherly concern that he showed his sister. “Sorry we woke you up.”

“No big.” He smiled, running one hand through the rumpled black silk of his hair, his coloring nearly identical to his older sister. “I can catch up on my sleep later. One of the guards at the hospital needed to switch shifts with me, so I’ve got the night off.” He gave them a knowing look, his smile widening. “Guess I’ll let you two get back to your gossiping. Later.”

“Enjoy your night off,” she called back.

Mic waited the five seconds it would take Max to reach the back office, then leaned forward and whispered, “Now back to the gorgeous stud who swept you off your feet.” Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief as she waggled her brows. “Any plans for a hot date tonight?”