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The last laugh is on me, though. I’ve fallen in love with Jax and am forced to live under his roof in this “friends with absolutely no fucking benefits” arrangement.
I’ve made some inquiries about other lodgings, but the few remaining Sleepy Briar residents who outlasted the Silver Circle—the shifter version of my board—are loath to take a vamp into their homes. They reluctantly allow me to treat them when they exhaust other options. Me sleeping under one of their roofs? Yeah. No deal. With no temporary accommodations in Sleepy Briar until the inn is completed, Jax offered me his spare bedroom.
The cabin’s thick walls don’t quite block out the howling wind. Another Sleepy Briar winter storm. Being this far north means soul-freezing temperatures combined with lots of darkness.
For a vampire, the darkness is heaven but the cold is hell. Even thinking is difficult.
My cell phone buzzes like an angry beetle scuttling along the paper-laden table. Scooping it up, I answer it on the third ring.
The line goes dead.
Damn paranoid Sleepy Briar residents—all several hundred of them scattered around the valley. That doesn’t include the troll mining camp to the south and the bear shifters to the north. They have yet to call on me for my services, but Jax says they’ll come around.
Being the only doctor means I’ve given my cell phone number out freely. It was either that or die—again—from a combination of boredom and sexual frustration. That’s a miserable diagnosis.
Grabbing a thick throw off the couch, I wrap it around me. Whoever it was will call back. No sense freezing my ass off any more than I have to. Pacing is a heat waster. I might as well try and warm up, especially if I’ll be heading out for a house call.
When I came here from Las Vegas, the arctic temperature was one of many shocks. Vampires are cold-blooded, so I’m always trying to stay warm. I mean cold-blooded not as in heartless but as in similar to reptile physiology. Sexy, right? I’m like a tree gecko without the scales marooned on an iceberg. I snuggle deeper in the plush throw.
I spy a picture of Jax on his mantle. He’s a former hockey player sporting six foot two inches of Nordic hotness. Not only is he heart-stoppingly handsome, but he also radiates heat like a furnace. To a vampire, nothing is sexier than warm blood.
Vampires aren’t capable of love; they taught us that in school. What I feel for Jax must be some strange effect on my system from all this bone-chilling cold. I crave crawling into his arms, plastering myself against his chiseled physique and licking his abs and lower until he either pins me against the mattress and fucks me stupidor…really that is as far as I have gotten with that fantasy.
It doesn’t help that he runs around severely underdressed. Apparently, his wolf spirit runs at a high idle that fuels his body heat. Obviously, this is some kind of karmic torture designed for a sex-starved vampire physician.
My attention veers from my personal muddle to the shifters approaching outside. I buried the scrapbook under the paper chaos for now. I sense the shifters’ accelerated heart rates and increased blood volumes as easily as if I had stethoscopes pressed to their chests. They are agitated which means fangs, fur, and fighting.
Something is wrong. I push to my feet just as the cabin door swings open. Two men stomp into the cabin, their voices raised in a heated discussion.
No fur or fang to be seen.
“You okay?” Jax, the aforementioned alpha shifter, pauses in his rant at his cousin Brody to look at me, brows cranked way up his forehead. Jax towers over my five feet seven, and my body temperature inches up a few degrees thanks to his proximity. I tilt my head back to look up at him. His cousin, also a wolf shifter, kicks the door closed behind them.
I slowly nod while looking at the scene in front of me. “Yeah. All good here.”
“Thank God.” Jax squeezes my shoulder and presses his warm lips to my cool cheek in a quick kiss. The slight tip of his head drops flakes of snow on me. I’m not into all those Hallmark movies I tend to play as background noise while I work, but I swear to the gods that was like freaking magic shimmering around me right then.
I start to lean into Jax’s heat but stop myself. Instead, I pull the blanket tighter around me. Whatever it is, he’s concerned for his community which includes me. Nothing else.
I look between the men. “What’s up?”
Brody speaks beside Jax. “There’s an emergency. It’s Maddy.” He is more compact than Jax and about the same age. And also,verynaked.
“Riyah, tell Maddy to put some pressure on it and call again when the gale-force winds stop.” Jax passes farther into the cabin and grabs another blanket for his cousin like I’m going to follow his instruction to the letter just like that.
The blanket is shoved into Brody’s hands and I know it is a stab at modesty for my benefit. Wolf shifters are not shy. Honestly, if they could get away with running around naked in human form 24/7, they would. In a mixed paranormal community like Sleepy Briar, though, they need clothes. Not everyone is a fan of naked wolf ass like me. I’ve seen every kind of human and paranormal anatomy imaginable, plus some unimaginable.
It’s like Jax to be rather gentlemanly about the shifter nudity. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, because being on his good side is a sweet deal.
“Back up. Maddy is hurt? What happened?” I focus on Brody before narrowing my eyes at Jax’s retreating back. Sometimes his alphahole behavior can be high-handed. Like when he tries to screen my patients during a blizzard.
“Maddy got trapped.”
Shit.Maddy is my best friend. Well, as close to a best friend as a vampire can get in a place like this.
I want to run out the door, but I’m no good to Maddy unless I’m able to work. And I can only work when I’m warm enough. In this climate, that is rather an undertaking. Preparing for space travel would be only slightly less tiresome.
“We leave in five,” I say. Another wolf-trap injury. This will be the third I’ve treated. The others were shifters, too. In both cases, my experience and an infusion of my blood helped save the victims’ legs.
