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She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and drew in a deep breath, causing the lovely slopes of her full breasts to rise, then fall.
If he could say nothing else about Fallon, he could admit that he enjoyed the weather and how the mild temperatures facilitated the wearing of certain delicate articles of ladies’ apparel. He may have been a recluse, but he wasn’t dead. The way her sleeveless shirt made of thin, pearl-colored silk cut into a low V at the neck and swaddled her breasts made a certain part of his anatomy feel very much alive.
His hand was in front of him, reaching, and her eyes followed.
Perhaps she understood what he was reaching for even before he did.
He pulled his hand back before she could smack him. She seemed to be the kind of woman who would smack, and maybe he’d deserve the blow.
He might even have liked it.
“You’re…you’re growling,” she said. She tucked her long legs beneath her bottom and made herself smaller, or at least tried do.
He must have been frightening her.
He’d wanted to scare her—he’d wanted to make her leave him alone, but not like that. He hadn’t wanted to show anyone that part of him, and had been hoping to find some way to manage his affliction. Certainly, his ancestors had been able to control the beasts, or else the Vikings in their company would have killed them all before they could breed.
He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes and sucked in a breath.
“What are you?” she asked.
“Same as you,” he said tiredly.
“I don’t believe you. I don’t sense you the same way I sense the others. Psychically, I can’t get any reading at all on what you’re feeling, or whether you’re telling the truth or a lie.”
He shrugged. “Not everyone here can do that.”
“I can. I have that ability, and always have.”
“Must make your job so much easier.”
“What do you know about my job?”
“You’re Mary Nissen, aren’t you? Isn’t that your dulcet voice in so many messages in my voicemail?”
She swallowed and passed a hand over the swatch of hair that had become dislodged during his relocation of her. “So you are Andreas Toft.”
He turned his hands over in concession, but didn’t offer her one to shake. He didn’t trust touching people. There had to be certain triggers to make the beast in him come out, beyond the pull of the full moon, and he hadn’t made the connections yet. One minute he’d be standing on two legs, and then he’d wake up hours later across town, cold and nude, and cowering behind a tree or dumpster.
“Mary,” he murmured, rubbing his chin and eying her from crown to toes.
“Go ahead and tell the joke.”
“Is there one?”
“There always is. Everyone has opinions about whether or not my name fits me.”
“Do you feel your name does?”
Her shrug was graceful. Practiced, maybe. “Doesn’t matter what I feel. It was given to me, and I choose to keep it.”
“Most Marys I know go by their middle names.”
She rolled her sky blue eyes to the ceiling and breathed out the most feminine scoff. “I have more than one. Which would I pick?”
“How would I know if you don’t tell me what they are?”
“I don’t tell anyone what they are. Not even the lady who does the human resources paperwork at the office knows all of them.” Mary pulled her gaze down and fixed it on him yet again. “I want you to tell me something, though. I want you to tell me why you drugged me.”
