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“Hey.”
Blyss startled. She hadn’t heard Stryke’s return and now he stood in the doorway, filling the space with an easy confidence, shoulders set back and head tilted. He’d put on a pair of jeans that hung low, revealing the hard cuts of muscle that veered toward his groin like some kind of traffic alert that screamed “Go this way!”
“What are you doing?” He held a boxed toothbrush in his hand.
“Uh, just...looking.” She spread her palm down the front of one of the T-shirts. Shit. What to say? “I’m a bit of a snoop.” Weren’t all women? “A girl can learn a lot about a man by standing in his closet.”
Oh, bad save, Blyss. Very bad save.
“Is that so? Tell me what you’ve learned about me?”
“That you’re a terrible traveler. Didn’t you say you were in town for a wedding? Where’s the suit you wore last night?”
“It was a loaner. I dropped it off at Vail’s earlier today. I’ve been doing a lot of running around for my family, picking up things they need for the wedding.”
“Vail?”
“A vampire. He’s the father of the groom. I borrowed the suit for the night. I’ve been informed by the female faction of all this wedding madness that I’ll have a rental for the wedding. Although...I imagine Vail will probably wear the suit for the wedding.”
“Vail,” she muttered. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”
“You probably haven’t. Vamps tend to stay off the radar.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
He discussed vampires with her so casually. As if it was something she was familiar with and engaged in discussion every day. The paranormal breeds were something she avoided with a passion. And talking about them made her uncomfortable.
“But since you don’t want to discuss the werewolf thing, I’ll assume vampires are off the table, too?”
She nodded and dropped her hand from the front of the dress shirt.
“So, do you want to go to a wedding?” Stryke offered as he waggled the toothbrush before her.
Blyss accepted the packaged offering and tapped it against her lower lip. A wedding with vampires? Oh, mercy no. But if the suit was going to be there? Had she any other choice?
The last thing she wanted to do was associate with werewolves and vampires.
“Weddings are always fun,” she managed to say brightly. “When is it?”
“Saturday. It’s an evening wedding. I’ll pick you up around six?”
She nodded. “It’s a date.”
Step three of the plan had failed miserably. On to step four. Emergency procedures.
“I’ll need your address.”
Blyss strolled out into the bedroom, stepped into her heels and spied his mobile phone on the nightstand beside the bed.
“I’ll enter it for you.”
She typed in her address on the contacts app, but she didn’t enter her number. She never gave any man her number.
When Stryke took the phone he leaned in to kiss her, but she performed a twist and managed to avoid the contact as his lips brushed her cheek. She clicked toward the bedroom door, abandoning the toothbrush with a toss toward the bed.
“I’m so sorry to rush off, but I have to get back to the gallery!”
She didn’t listen for his reply, but suspected he was probably kicking himself for inviting her to the wedding after that cold brush-off. Of course, now the man would have another day to think and wonder over her. Not a good thing.
Grabbing her scarf and purse as she breezed through the kitchen, she hastened through the front door and skipped toward the elevator.
A vampire wedding would prove a challenge. But if she did not find the suit, she would not be able to pay off Edamite Thrash. And life as she knew it would never again be the same.
* * *
“It freaked me out,” Stryke said to his brother Kelyn as they strolled down a narrow cobbled street somewhere in the 5th arrondissement. Trouble walked ahead of them. “I had no idea she was werewolf.”
“Something must be wrong with her,” Kelyn offered in his usual quiet tone.
Of the four Saint-Pierre boys, Kelyn had no wolf in him and was 100 percent faery, thanks to their mother’s genes. Physically he looked like no one in the family—save their mother—and was tall, lithe and pale. He usually covered the faint white markings that traced his arms, chest and back of his neck. Faery markings even he wasn’t sure about. His violet eyes had a tendency to make women swoon. And Stryke had heard more than a few whispers about Kelyn’s prowess between the sheets that made the ladies collapse in delighted exhaustion.
His sidhe brother seemed to navigate Paris as if he knew the city, yet used the ley-line excuse when Stryke asked about it. Faeries were inexplicably connected to the ley lines that crissed and crossed across the planet.
Trouble, who strode in front of them, his shoulders swaying with each sure stride, eyed a pair of women in stilettos and brandishing patent leather purses as they sat sipping café au lait before a chic café. The dark-haired Trouble winked and nodded to them. The women ignored his blatant flirtations with a chill Stryke was all too recently familiar with. Blyss’s quick escape earlier had made him want to check if icicles had formed on the doorknob.
There was something up with her. Beyond the weird aversion to discussing the fact they were both wolves. That was why he’d asked her to the wedding. He needed to know more. And—to have one huge question answered.
“The city girls are snobs,” Trouble said as he slowed and parted Stryke and Kelyn to walk between them. “I can’t get a rise out of any of them. I’m ready to go home.”
“I like Paris,” Kelyn commented. “It feels familiar. And Stryke found himself a werewolf without even trying.”
“Dude, really? How’d you score that?” Trouble wrapped an arm about Stryke’s neck and gave him a noogie. “Thought you were at some fancy-schmancy gallery last night with Blade? Did you hear about Blade?”
“What?” Kelyn asked.
“Scored twins,” Stryke confirmed.
“That man is a master,” Trouble said in awe. “But a werewolf, eh? ’Bout time my little bro hooked up with his own kind. Dad will be happy to hear you are serious about starting a pack. Where’d you find her? Vail hook you up?”
“I met her at the gallery. I think she’s the owner, but we didn’t talk about much. Mostly I pushed her up against the wall and had a quickie.” Because brothers shared everything. And he had to tell someone about the insane but amazing encounter.
“Nice.” Trouble wasn’t the most discerning when it came to women. He liked them fast, sexy and amiable. And they couldn’t be too fancy or prissy. Trouble was a man’s man, and he liked a woman who did all the kinds of things he liked to do.
Same with Stryke. If she couldn’t handle a fishing rod or ride behind him on the four-wheeler while careening through a muddy field, well then, that was it.
Blyss was none of the above. But hell, she was his Paris fling. And what happened in Paris stayed in Paris. Right?
“She stopped by my place earlier for more sex,” Stryke explained, “and it was the first time I realized she was wolf. When she came, I scented her. How the hell could I have not known before then?”
“Weird.” Trouble pounded his fists together, a sort of tic. “What did she say about it?”
“She didn’t want to talk about it. I had sex with a werewolf. You know how rare that is? Back in Minnesota the packs guard their females so well, if you can manage a date it’s like breaking into Fort Knox. I don’t have a clue why she didn’t want to talk about it when she learned I was wolf. But I’m seeing her again. Taking her with me to the wedding.”
“I’ll sniff her out,” Trouble offered. “See what’s up.”
“Keep your nose away from my woman,” Stryke said with a less-than-gentle nudge to his brother’s ribs. “I’ll figure it out. She’s...complicated.”
“Ah, hell, complicated women are not for me.” Trouble wandered ahead again at sight of a gaggle of tourist girls who couldn’t be a day over the age of sixteen.
“This way,” Kelyn called, and they veered to the right to distract their brother’s wandering attention. “Let’s get something to eat at that gyro place we ate at last night.”
“I’m going to head across the river,” Stryke said. “I want to walk through the Tuileries and check it out.”
“The what?” Trouble asked.
“It used to be the royal gardens a few centuries ago.”
“Dude, I don’t care about flowers.”
“I know. That’s why I’ll head there by myself.” And he didn’t need the harassment of his brothers should he manage to find Blyss’s place while pretending to be interested in some stupid flowers. “I’ll see you two later.”
The brothers exchanged fist bumps, and Stryke headed across a bridge laden with padlocks and toward the garden. He’d eaten a sandwich after Blyss left and wasn’t hungry yet, so he didn’t miss the food break. Trouble could eat all the time. And Kelyn, well... That kid rarely ate. So he was odd. Stryke worried about him at times. This world was not the place for Kelyn, but he wasn’t sure Faery would welcome him either.
The Tuileries was a disappointment. Where were the flowers? It was mostly espaliered trees and trimmed shrubs and some marble statues. The French had strange ideas about gardens, that was for sure.
Crossing a wildly busy roundabout intersection, Stryke then wandered down the Champs-Élysées, taking in the elegant storefronts and dodging tourists who wielded armloads of shopping bags. He pulled out his phone and clicked on Blyss’s address. The GPS located her immediately. About two blocks from where he stood.
Spying a stand selling flowers, he detoured.
“Can’t show up uninvited and empty-handed.”
He purchased some flowers then wandered deeper down the narrow streets that hugged three-and four-story buildings that he guessed must be centuries old. He knew Paris had been drastically redesigned sometime in the nineteenth century by Haussmann, and Napoleon had also torn down many structures, but the ancient history remained. Everything was elaborate, the building fronts featuring carved stone edifices and mascarons and even gilding on some of the stone and ironwork. Locked gates and digital entry systems clued him he had entered a ritzy neighborhood.
Stryke suddenly felt very underdressed in his Boundary Waters T-shirt and jeans with the worn hems dusting his scuffed Doc Martens. Maybe this was a bad idea? Showing up at a socialite’s pied-à-terre looking like a tourist? He wasn’t even sure what pied-à-terre meant, but it sounded cool.
He paused on a street corner paved in cobblestones. A red Vespa scooted by, and an elderly woman with gray hair bound behind her head and a pair of leather chaps nodded at him. The image made Stryke smile and he decided to go for it.
But as he stepped off the curb he heard the click of high heels.
“Are you stalking me, Monsieur Saint-Pierre?”
He turned to find Blyss looking like some kind of magazine model in a tailored pink dress and matching high heels. One hand clutched a slim purse and in the other dangled a dainty bag sporting the store name Pierre Hermé. She’d changed since seeing him only a few hours earlier.
“Uh, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d see if I could find your place.” He held out the red roses, bound with twine. “These made me think of your lips.”
She strolled slowly across the street, her eyes never leaving his, and the sexy tilt of her head pretty much went straight for his loins. She traced a delicate fingernail along a rose petal. Stryke could smell her perfume and the sweetness inside the bag she carried. Must be pastries. Yet he couldn’t scent her wolf now.
“So you’ve found me.” She walked across the street, away from him.
That was it? She hadn’t taken the roses. “Uh, maybe you want to invite me up?”
She paused before a steel door, her fingers perched upon the digital entry pad. Did she have to think about it? Yep, he should have tried more for suave instead of tourist with his look today.
She punched in the code, pushed the door open and strode inside. She didn’t close the door, so Stryke took that as an invite to follow. The woman had a way with leading him places. And he liked what happened once he arrived.
Closing the door behind him, he saw she walked through a small open courtyard lined with militantly trimmed green shrubs and simple flowers. It was amazing how Paris had all these hidden gems of greenery tucked in private courtyards. Reminded him of being home in the country.
Well, not really, but he’d use his imagination. It was necessity when surrounded by tarmac, buildings, and nothing but humans for miles and miles.
Blyss veered right and disappeared into the cool shadows.
He hastened his steps to keep up with her. Normally, Stryke could follow another werewolf by scent alone. Why was it that he had only sensed her innate wolf when they were having sex? It was as if the adrenaline had to be rushing through her system to stir whatever pheromones his wolf could react to.
And he understood the subject of their breed was off-limits. It shouldn’t bother him, but he couldn’t help being curious. How often did Blyss happen upon another werewolf? Was it so common to her that she’d grown bored of the discussion? Couldn’t be.
He’d lucked out. And as little as he knew about her, he did like her. Could something come of this? He daren’t hope, but at the same time, his inner wolf howled with joy.
* * *
Blyss opened her front door. Stryke looked so innocently hungry staring at her with that adoring expression and underlined by the gorgeous bouquet of roses. The wedding wasn’t until tomorrow but she believed his excuse that he had been walking in the area.
She never invited men into her home. It wasn’t wise. Once invited in, it was often difficult to make them leave after she tired of them. And they sometimes returned. It was a sticky business to have to deal with.
And this particular man was more than man. He was werewolf. The last creature in this world with whom she wished to be intimate.
Alas, she had ignored any intuition that would have kept her safe from that emotional danger. And even as she vacillated with grabbing the roses and slamming the door in his face, the compulsion to pull him in by that awful T-shirt and let him have his way with her was even stronger.
She couldn’t resist his wild allure. It was an accidental allure, she felt sure. The man wasn’t a master seducer. Though he was an amazing lover. And he wasn’t suave or polished, as she preferred her men. He was a rough and awkward man from the United States, of all places, who had happened to fall into her scheme, and now he was milking it for all he could. Because he knew something about her that others did not.
Would he use that information to blackmail her such as Edamite Thrash had?
He thrust the roses forward. Sweet blackmail, if there was such a thing. And that smile. She wanted him to teach her all the things that smile promised.
Blyss took the bouquet by the ribbon-wrapped stems, and then she grabbed her suitor by the shirtfront and pulled him inside. Turning, she walked down the long hallway, roses dangling at one side, man clutched at her other side.
If she was going down the wrong path, she might as well do it big. At least, until the wedding was over and she held the key to her future safe in hand.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_c2c8a3f6-c9f4-52a2-b3dc-717cf58c73c1)
Stryke followed Blyss down a long white hallway and into a kitchen that gleamed white and silver. It looked like something out of a minimalist designer’s dream. White marble countertops, not an appliance on the counter, no signs it was a kitchen if not for the sink and sleek, glass-fronted fridge that sported wine bottles down one side.
Placing the roses on the counter, Blyss veered left into a living area that featured a white furniture set beneath a ceiling that was entirely glass. It was like standing in a conservatory without the plants. Everything was white. He didn’t dare sit down because he’d been walking through Paris. His shoes must be dirty.
How could a person relax in a place so white?
The gorgeous contrast of pink silk and blackest hair and eyebrows turned and tilted a brilliant red smile at him. “I didn’t think I’d see you until Saturday. But now that you’re here...”
She pushed her hand up under his T-shirt, her glossy nails gliding over his abs. At the erotic touch Stryke sucked in a breath. The intention in her eyes was apparent. This woman went from cool to boiling faster than a rocket ship.
