“By the way,” I said without heat, “I also don’t like when I’m being talked about as if I’m not in the room, so don’t do that ever again.”
Remi laughed again, but Lucien remained quiet. In fact, his face turned inscrutable as his eyes searched mine, as if trying to figure something out.
Then he said—or rather, stated—“You don’t trust me.”
This was the really confusing part. The logical part of my mind knew I shouldn’t trust him. In fact, I rarely trusted anyone, so trusting a man, a supernatural creature, after a few days of knowing him, mostly in his wolf form? Yeah, not happening.
And yet the other part of my brain, the emotional part, the gut feeling, told me he was safe. That he wouldn’t hurt me. That I should give my trust to him, because unlike everyone else in my life, he wouldn’t break it. Wouldn’t throw it away. Wouldn’t dismiss it as a given, and would respect it, cherish it, instead.
He’d also proven he at least cared about my wishes when he didn’t leave me with Chase to get my memories erased. He knew I wouldn’t stand for it, and he cared enough to take me away from that danger.
But I feared leaning on that part of me that seemed to be led by the visceral attraction I was feeling toward the man. I wasn’t completely sure what his true motives were, and so I couldn’t trust him.
“Not yet,” I replied now. “But I do trust that you’re not a bad person.”
It wasn’t a lie. Despite everything else, an understanding, or even a certain kind of knowledge deep in the core of my being, knew that he was a good person. A good man.
That didn’t change the fact that even the best of men could abuse my trust or harm me unintentionally.
He said he wouldn’t, and I believed him. It didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of it. Besides, I had yet to know how he was in his wolf form when he wasn’t bleeding to death. What if his wolf form was dangerous?
Lucien seemed to understand what I did and didn’t say, and nodded with a somewhat sad look on his face. “Right,” he said quietly, before shifting his attention to Remi. “You have a way to go back?”
“Got my ride waiting a few blocks away,” Remi replied and stepped back. “I hope you have a fruitful hunt, cousin, and that you’ll come back home quickly.”
A few moments later, he was gone, leaving me alone with Lucien and the Rolls-Royce.
Lucien now opened the back seat door and put my bag inside. He then grabbed the neat folder Remi had left him and handed it to me. “Please hold on to this,” he told me.
He shut the door and was about to round the car for the driver’s seat when I asked, “Do you even have your driver’s license on you?”
Lucien paused, grinned, and said, “You want to drive the car, don’t you?”
I flushed.Busted.But still—“If the police stop us and you don’t have a license on you, it could hinder us.”
He chuckled, amused. “I promise to let you drive it later,” he said, pulling the driver’s seat door open. “And to ease your mind, look in the glove box.”
Frowning, I slid into the passenger seat and pulled open the glove box. There, on top of all the car files, rested a shiny new license, with an unfairly hot picture of Lucien’s head—how could he look so good in a damned ID picture?!—under the nameLucien Delterre.
I deflated. There went my excuse. “Damn.”
Lucien chuckled again. “I told you, I’ll let you drive later.” His amusement died down now as he pulled away from the park. “Now, it’s time I tell you what’s really going on.”
Chapter 9
On Wolves and Family
The moment we hit the road, Lucien said, “The first thing we need to do is find who tried to kill me.”
That was one way to start the conversation. “When I found you, I wondered who hurt you,” I told him, frowning. I’d been so busy caring for him, I had put that thought in the back of my mind. “It also begs the question why you were outside my apartment building in the first place.”
“Yeah,” Lucien said in a somewhat strained voice, and I looked up. He was facing the road, one hand leaning on the gearshift and the other grabbing the wheel. There was something so sexy about men driving. “That’s a long story, though, and for now, I’d rather we focus on the most pressing matters.”
My curiosity wasn’t curbed, but I let it go for now. “So we need to find the perpetrator of your attempted murder,” I said, studying him. “But why do you need me for that?”
I didn’t ask that out of malice or not wanting to help him find the culprit. It was just that helping me escape the fate of having my memories erased was one thing, but involving me in his affairs was a completely different matter.
Lucien grimaced, hand tightening on the wheel, flexing his biceps and making my thighs jerk involuntarily. “Because, if what I think is true, you might be in danger now too.”
