All in the Chemistry [The Royal Wolves 4] (Siren Publishing Allure) (7 page)

Pulling to a stop she brought his hand up to her hair. “Why did you apologize for touching my hair, Kris? I liked it.” She smiled up at him. “You are welcome to touch me in any way, how, shape and form, Kris, I like having you touching my hair.” She smiled softly. “No one ever touches it, I would like it if you would?”

Stroking his fingers through her hair, he enjoyed the silky texture as he stared at it for a moment before lowering his eyes to hers. “I love your hair, I just wasn’t sure if you’d appreciate my fascination with the color of it. It’s perfect, soft and warm like sunshine in the early dawn hours.”

“I use a lot of gel in my hair at work and it looks more of a ruddy brown. I keep it slicked back and in a bun.” She shrugged and smiled. “But I have a feeling that will be changing if I have the chance to be able to have lunches with you, be able to feel your hands in my hair during our lunches.”

“You can have any time you want with me,” he said softly to her, rubbing her hair gently with his fingertips. “I want as much as you’ll allow me to have,” he smiled gently stepping in closer to her. “And no more gel in your hair, I like it natural and soft.”

“For you I will do anything. I want lunch with you at least once a day, if I don’t forget while working,” she amended and chewed her lip. “I do that a lot, I don’t know about you but I will be on the trail of something and everything else is completely gone to me.”

Grimacing, he nodded and let his hand fall to the small of her back to guide her down the hall once more. “I get into a mode and end up forgetting for days where I am or that I should eat or sleep,” he admitted. “But now,” he said looking to her. “I think I may just start to remember some of those pesky details as long as you’re around to make them worthwhile, that is.”

“I will always be around, Kristof,” she said simply and with complete honesty. “I am here forever, but I have to warn you there are times I forget these pesky little things, too, I do it when I’m working in the lab. Or when I am painting, I completely forget everything.”

Smiling at the reminder of her other job, he shrugged. “Depends on the model you have I suppose,” he pointed out with a wicked look to her. Kissing her temple lightly he stepped into the kitchen with her and hit the lights. “Do you have any preferences for a snack or a full meal?” he asked her going to the fridge and pulling open the door for her to see the rather stuffed contents of it.

“I’m starving, I skipped lunch today because I was browbeating Bill Sweets because somehow my newest project data was ‘moved’ and I need to know where it went and what they did with it. I am not even out of the computerized testing yet, and it’s gone.” She let out a frustrated sounding sigh. “I am slow to believe a person when someone tells me that I am being wronged, I want to believe the best in people but I have a feeling that Aegis is screwing me over somehow.”

Wincing he sighed and hugged her for a moment. “I’m sorry, love, but I think you may be right.” In fact he knew she was, her company was fucking her around. “I wish I could say otherwise but I don’t think they have anything but the bottom dollar in their minds. To hell with the employees and to hell with a good work code and ethics of the business, they just want money.” 

“Well damn me,” she grumbled and shook her head. “Thank you for telling me.” Now she just had to figure out what they were doing so that she could get them to admit they were fucking her over. “Looks like I will soon be looking for a new job.” Not the greatest of prospects considering that Aegis had all but ruined her reputation.

“Hey,” he said with a frown, touching her chin. “I didn’t mean to upset you, honey,” he told her gently. “I just figured you’d want it straight and not glossed over with half-truths. Maybe I was wrong,” he murmured looking at her face. She knew he’d see the very real and clear upset written there. 

“No you’re not,” she said with a smile and nodded. “You were right, I don’t want half-truths, I would rather have the full out honesty. I was actually just thinking of how unhirable I have allowed them to turn me. I have turned a blind eye because they were like my family, so yeah, it’s all on me but it’s all right, it will be fine.” She nodded and looked up at him with a smile. “I will worry on that later though, all right? For now I think you were going to make us some dinner?”

Worried now, Kris stroked her back gently. “Why don’t you grab a seat while I figure out what we can do that’s relatively quick,” he offered softly. Pressing his lips to her forehead he turned to hug her. “If you need anything, love, you just have to ask all right?” he asked, pulling back to look at her.

She nodded and smiled as she took the seat he offered, “I know Kris, it’s all right, I promise it will all work out just fine.” It simply had to. She moved aside the fruit bowl but snagged a banana to peel as she watched him moving. “Remember, I’m very hungry. And believe me, I do not eat like a bird. I like food, lots of it.”

“You’d better,” he said, throwing her a look. “As a Wolf’s mate you’re expected to put away a lot of food,” he told her as he pulled out the steaks and a potato salad he’d made the day before. “Steaks and salad good?” he asked setting the bowl of salad on the counter before her.

“God that sounds heavenly, Kristof.” She paused and then laughed. “Wait, if a werewolf is supposed to put away a lot of food how can you go for so long without eating, honey, while working?” She watched him as he moved, grinned as he turned and moved around.

Shrugging as he lit the indoor grill he gave her a sheepish look. “I have an assistant that occasionally puts food under my elbow that I eat without realizing. But we really shouldn’t go too long without eating. It’s actually a bad thing since we burn so many more calories per hour than a human. Our bodies are much like furnaces on high, we go through a lot,” he said with emphasis. Dropping the steaks on the hot grill he quickly spiced them and then turned to look at her.

“Right, which I can understand because a wolf’s blood is so much more active and efficient than a human’s,” she muttered to herself.

“If we go for too long without eating we can slip into what’s commonly known as the Blood Haze. It’s where we start to lose our humanity, what we have of it”—he grinned—“and we crave flesh badly. It’s what’s led to a lot of the lore and myths surrounding my people. If a Wolf slips into the Haze, we can’t tell friend from foe and don’t frankly care. We will just tear out a throat as long as it provides us with the nourishment our bodies demand and, only as we come out of the Haze do we realize what we’ve done and regret.”

She knew her eyes went wide and her hand touched her neck, but she nodded for him to continue.

Folding his arms over his chest he eyed her. “Or there’s the other side of the coin to the Haze. Some Wolf’s decide that they love the feeling, the rush of the sudden influx of blood and push themselves into a constant state of the Haze known as, funnily enough, the Craving. They lose all humanity and become the beast, totally and completely. They randomly kill without prejudice or care for who they hurt, but they usually go after loved ones first, those that would recognize the state they are in and call out the hunters.”

“Oh god.” She breathed and gulped. “And I take it that the hunters are the big bad of the wolf world? They hunt down and kill these mad wolves? They ensure that the blood lust doesn’t spill over and wipe out more of the wolves and humans than the one mad with the need to kill already has? They are kind of like the bounty hunters, or cops of the wolf world?” So why did the human populace not know about the blood haze or the hunters?

“More or less,” he told her softly as he turned briefly to flip the steaks and season the second side before moving toward her. Leaning on the counter he took her hand in his. “They, at the time of my great-grandfather, were the Royal guards. They were the elite, the most highly trained, the quickest, the most vicious and the coldest of warriors. Over time they became more, earning the right to be separate from the Crown and governed by their own laws. While they remained under Royal rule for the most part they were indeed separate, acting as the police of our people. They were honorable, fierce and brave.” He smiled.

“When I was a boy, I met one of them and sat for a time with my father watching them train. They used weapons of the human world and I was shocked when they were drawing blood. My father told me that if they ever were to fight the humans they had to be prepared to defend against human weapons. To not train with them and learn what they can do to the body is just foolish and stupid. Then,” he stopped for a moment and straightening when to the grill to check the steaks. “Then something changed,” he murmured keeping his back to her as he continued. “They broke their vows of allegiance and fealty to the Crown and they helped the Rebels kill the Royal family and all their supporters. They went from noble warriors to assassins in one night.”

She gasped and shook her head He was giving her so much information and, while she knew a bit of what it was to be wolf from others she’d met briefly or conversations she’d overheard, this was insider information. This was stuff that only wolves would know, stuff that no human would ever know or hear about. It was heavy stuff but she’d think on it all in more detail later, for now she needed to focus on the conversation at hand. “There had to be a reason, Kris. No one with the honor of a wolf would give up that vow easily. There is a reason, Kris, and I really think that it is far past time for that reason to be found, honey. I really think that we need to look for it. Could it be that possibly there is something at a genetic level that caused their madness, because that is the only think I can think of that would cause them to become rapid killers, honey.” She didn’t know a lot of wolves, but from what she knew they were honorable to their very souls.

“They were lied to,” Kris told her quietly as he shot her a look and shrugged. “They were lied to in such a way that the evidence they were given came across as truth. Nothing anyone has now can counteract what the Rebels had then and still have in their procession now. Even if we could get a hunter to listen to us we’d have to find a way to dispute what the Rebels told them all those years ago. There’s nothing and no one alive but for the five sons of the Crown who all have a death warrant on their heads. And by death warrant I mean the Rebels want the bloody and dismembered remains for genetic verification, not a living breathing Wolf.”

“Oh god.” She knew she kept saying that but sometimes even the most intelligent of people forgot their most basic of languages. “Kris, that is…” What could she say? Nothing. Not a damn thing. “Which is why you have all been living under the radar so to speak for most part, yes?”

Nodding he pulled one of the steaks off the grill and cooked the other, hers most likely, a little longer. “Yeah. We have no real desire to be dead so we’ve been careful to keep ourselves out of the limelight.” Pulling her steak off onto a plate, he carried them both over to her and set hers before her and put his down. Going back to the grill, he turned the flames up briefly and then scraped the grill down. “Start eating,” he told her as he ensured the grill was clean and then finally turned it off and moved back to her.

She toyed with her fork for a moment before, “Until tonight.” She reminded softly with a whisper, “You are going to be on the front of every paper in the general New York area and then after that you will likely end up in several tabloids, or rather, we both will. The JD Foundation is big on publicity and something like the two of us leaving together, bitter rivals, it’s news.” If not for Aegis putting the two of them head to head with that falsified news article, they’d most likely be left alone. But, with that out there, the vultures would be circling and looking for more blood. Not that they had gotten it from their evening out, not in the least from the pair of lovers that had left the event. She did have to wonder how they’d twist it around, or if they’d even bother publishing anything at all. If it wasn’t good and juicy, they might not.

He’d actually forgotten about that and looked to her with a slow nod. “Well, even I screw up royally on occasion,” he said with a quick grin. “Don’t worry about it, I may have loads of brains but I’ve also got enough brawn to discourage them from doing anything as foolish as trying to kill me now.” Reaching out he touched her hand gently stroking his fingers over her skin. “I’m not going to let anything happen to either of us, Courtney, I plan to have a very long and enjoyable life with you.”

“That’s a very good thing, Kristof, because we need to have a very long life together to even come close to scraping the edge of what I need and want from you, from us being together.”

Smiling slowly he picked her hand up and led it to his lips and nibbled on her fingers. “I like the sound of that. But”—he let her hand go gently, settling it on the table—“eat for now. I need to give you the rest of the tour and then I think we should settle down and talk for a while. I want to know all about you, Courtney, and not just the stuff that’s on the rumor mill.”

She would give him anything he asked for so she nodded and smiled. “I would like that, Kris, to learn about my new home even while I tell you the boring bits about me.” She looked up. “And believe me, I am very, very boring.”

Shaking his head at her as he cut his steak he snorted. “I somehow doubt that there is anything boring about you, Courtney. Besides, it doesn’t matter to me what it is, whether mundane or exciting, I just want to know about you, love,” he told her with a smile as he took a bite of his steak and chewed, watching her.

She began to eat as well, slowly moving through the food and grinned. “All right, well when I have to wake you because you fell asleep.” She shrugged. “This is good.” Another piece of steak on her fork she put into her mouth. “Very good.”