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“You’re right,” Rhys said, forcefully calming his tone. “I was a kid when you disappeared. I might’ve been ten. And while we played together when we could, we weren’t always allowed to because my parents were too stuck in their roots.”
She gave him a look of confusion, both of her eyebrows disappearing beneath her low-swooping brown bangs. Whatever feeling went with that expression, though, seemed to have taken the edge off the irritation he’d sparked.
He wished he could leave it at that. Instead, Rhys straightened enough to plant his feet on the floor and turn a littletoward her, not releasing her hand. It might have been awkward, but he needed her to hear him. The simple fact was, he’d always known he needed to take his first decent opportunity to explain the truth of the situation—or at least the first part of it—and it was already in front of him. Though he might have liked just one afternoon with her.
Rhys shoved that train of thought aside, piling it on top of the bubbling anger from her tale, and locked his focus on the moment. On the goal. On not scaring the crap out of this woman. “Youare all that remains of your father’s family, Amaia,” he said. “I spoke to an old friend of your dad’s before leaving Marlow. Your father and uncle both died that day, and your uncle didn’t have any children. Your mother dissuaded you from returning because she was afraid you’d never leave.”
Amaia pulled her hand from his grip, shaking her head, and pushed herself to the opposite side of the two-seater sofa. The movement only created a few inches of distance between them, but he hated each one vehemently.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. She curled her arms around her middle. The motion created a strange sort of additional barrier between them. “Why would she lie? Why would she never tell me the truth, even when she was dying?” Her fingers dug into the undersides of her elbows. “And why are you making it sound like you’ve been looking for me?”
Rhys resisted the urge, however barely, to reach for her. His brain understood he was the one freaking her out, but his instincts only understood that she was becoming distraught. With nothing to kill to offer appeasement, the next best solution was to offer physical comfort. It was hard not to give in to that compulsion. He hooked his arm over the back of the sofa, careful not to stretch it out for fear she’d think he was reaching for her anyway, and gripped the cushiony backrest just to keep his hand occupied. “Do you at least know what your dad was? And whatthat makes you?”
She gaped at him. “I … don’t understand the question,” she said finally. Her face contorted a little, matching a spike in her scent he could best describe as shock. “Are you asking myrace?”
Rhys snorted before he could stop himself. “No.” He pushed to his feet. Either she’d taken his question that way because she’d been kept in the dark about her heritage or because she’d been taught to keep that heritage secret. He sincerely hoped it was the latter, but he doubted that was the case.
“What the hell’s going on, Rhys?” Her heart rate spiked when he sharply tugged up his shirt, and her voice rose in response. “What are you doing?”
He moved toward the more open space between her living room and kitchen area, letting the shirt fall onto her coffee table. He toed off his boots with practiced ease, deliberately ignoring her rising discomfort, and faced her. “Since you don’t seem to know,” he said, “and I figure you won’t believe me if I just try to tell you, I’mshowingyou.”
She swallowed audibly. “Sh-showing me … what?” His hands went to work on his belt and she stopped breathing for three solid seconds before shooting to her feet. “No, no, no! What thehelldo you think you’re—”
“Relax,” Rhys said. “I won’t touch you. But you need to watch, so don’t look away.” He shoved his pants to the ground as he spoke. It wouldn’t serve his purpose to express regret at this moment, but a part of him did wish he could go about this another way. Instead, all he could do was not drag out the most awkward part. First, he had to get her to look at him again. “Amaia.”
Chapter Four
Holy shit. Holy shit.Amaia had been mildly aghast with herself when she’d spontaneously invited Rhys back to her apartment when he’d asked if they could go somewhere to talk, but even so,thiswas not what she’d expected. Even the scandalous part of her brain that spent too much time in the books she read hadn’t really thought Rhys Adler would strip himself naked. At all, let alone within an hour.In my living room!
Was that better or worse than in her bedroom?No!No. This was bad. This was terrible-mistake level bad. She needed to stop being an idiot and call the police before the guy she may or may not have actually known as a child went from a potential pervert to something much, much worse. She knew all of that, but when he called her name again in a low, vibrating timbre, the sound of it rolled across her skin and compelled her to drag her gaze back toward him. Despite that he was naked. Despite that if she got even one good look at that body, the image would sear itself into her brain, and her already abysmal love life would sink to new lows.
Amaia clenched her hands into fists in an effort to hide the way her body trembled at the sight of him. He was broad and muscular, the picture of strength. Dark wisps of hair stretched across his chest, and she snapped her gaze upward before she could catch more than a fleeting peripheral glance of what lay between his firm-looking thighs. Even that glance was too much.
“Keep your eyes on me, Amaia.”
She didn’t want him to know how hard she was struggling just to breathe normally. What was wrong with her, reacting this way? She should be scared or furious, not flustered and aroused! She swallowed her confusion and managed to wet her mouth. “Stop talking nonsense and give me one good reason not to callthe police.”
His expression was entirely unapologetic. “If I’d kept my clothes on for this, I would’ve just had to go naked for the rest of the day after. Which is fine for me, but I figured this would be easier on you.”
The statement startled her out of her daze, just a little, and Amaia sucked in a breath. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just watch, and don’t scream.”
Confusion further doused her lust, but before Amaia could ask more, Rhys tipped forward. The movement resembled an involuntary lurch, drawing his shoulders closer together and stretching his spine. His arms hung toward the floor, fingers curling in on his palms. It wasn’t until the nearly-silent room echoed with the unmistakable pop of snapping bone that Amaia registered the rest of what her eyes were seeing. His body wasn’t just hunched forward strangely, it waschanging.
Her eyes widened as a visible ripple washed over his skin, and her breath caught in her lungs when something resembling fur sprang up from beneath the skin as the ripple receded.No…He wasn’t changing, he was shifting. Right before her eyes. In a matter of seconds, the man was gone, replaced with a large, furry, golden-eyed wolf.
The wolf Rhys had become stared back at her in absolute silence. Watching her reaction.
Amaia took him in with bated breath, her heart hammering in her ears. She’d never seen a wolf in person before, and certainly never a werewolf, so she had no idea how his size compared. But he was startlingly big.This … is this real?She swallowed hard as one of his ears cocked to the side, as if listening to something else. The movement drew her attention past his face, to the dark, furry, pointed ears. Then beyond the ears, to the rest of him.
Wolf-Rhys was mostly dark furred, though it fadedtoward a light sort of ivory color near his belly and down his legs. The fur looked soft, and as his tail swished slowly behind him, she was struck with the urge to run her fingers through it. As if he were a dog in a shelter and she was looking to adopt. She felt her fingers twitch and curled them back into fists in an effort to resist. Truthfully, Wolf-Rhys was beautiful. But he was also terrifying. Or the prospect of having awolfin her living room was terrifying, at least.
Or maybe it was just the fear of the thoughts that immediately followed.
Werewolves were real. Which was shocking, maybe kind of exciting, and horrifying all at once. If werewolves were real, what else was? Werewolves were often associated with vampires in fiction, so was there a reason for that? Were vampires real, too? Was Rhys asking questions about her past because she was connected to some vampire family that his werewolf family was at odds with? And would that be better or worse than her just being some random woman who suddenly knew an obviously well-kept secret? In this world, pretty much everyone had at least one camera on their person at all times, as well as access to the internet. If the existence of werewolves continued to remain a secret, there was a reason, and they were willing to fight for it. All of which meant she’d just been let in on something probably more valuable than her own meager life.
Amaia dropped onto the sofa with a gasping exhale. “You’re a werewolf,” she said. Hearing the words out loud made them no less outrageous.
