Beauty Dates the Beast Read online

  I signed it and handed the note to the maid. “Look, I’m going to take full responsibility for the wine, all right? I was reaching for the bottle and knocked it over—that’s the story we’re going to use.” I gave her a friendly smile.

  Her tears dried a little, and her breathing calmed from those awful, gasping sobs. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Something really weird was going on, and I wasn’t going to stick around to find out what. I gave her an encouraging smile and grabbed my things, then headed out of the house. Jason was creeping me out big time.

  The mansion’s driveway was long and cobbled, and it snaked through the woodsy area surrounding his estate. Given that it was rather dark outside and my nerves were shot, it wasn’t the most relaxing walk. I kept hearing noises in the woods, and I walked even faster.

  I punched the release for the gate and slipped out before it had even finished opening, then trotted down the street a ways so I could watch the oncoming cars.

  Of all fortuitous, lucky things, a large truck slowed next to me. Ryder. Thank God.

  I peeked inside to double-check that it was her, but the door opened and Beau slid out of the passenger seat. A squeak of protest erupted from my throat, and I stared inside the cab. Ramsey was driving.

  “Where’s Ryder?”

  “We were at the office and I told her I’d take care of this. Hop in.”

  “How do I know this isn’t all some hilarious plan to kidnap me again and take me back to the Love Lodge?”

  Beau’s grin was feral. “You don’t.”

  I scowled and glanced back at Jason’s mansion on the hill. Creepy overbearing cougar in the mansion? Or too-sexy-for-my-own-good cougar I was trying to break up with? There was really no question, but I pulled my phone out to text Ryder and noticed that she’d sent a message a few minutes ago.

  Don’t be mad. Beau is very determined to see you.

  No shit, Sherlock.

  “Why were you at Midnight Liaisons?” I asked.

  “Marie had promised to pull some records on the Anderson wolves for me, to see if we could match up all their addresses.”

  I softened, seeing the worry on his brow. “Still can’t find Savannah?”

  He shook his head, then gestured at the truck. “You going to get in?”

  I slid inside the cab. Beau got in beside me, shut the door, then pulled me into his lap.

  While this was slightly better than being squeezed against Ramsey’s glowering hulk, it was still awkward. “Beau,” I said, trying to slide off, “I can’t sit in your lap.”

  He gave me a teasing look but refused to let me go. “Remember that last conversation we had, where you said you didn’t want me in your life?”

  “I remember,” I said, trying not to look him straight in the eye so I could hold onto my resolve.

  He shrugged, and my eyes were drawn back to those wide shoulders like some starving nympho. I couldn’t have him in my life. I couldn’t.

  “I don’t accept that,” he said.

  I shook my head to clear it. “Accept what?”

  “Your rejection of me,” he said, taking my hand. His hand was so warm and comforting. “I’ve decided not to take no for an answer.”

  I shivered at the thrill his words gave me. I forced sarcasm to my voice. “Do you think I can just give you a nice little kiss and pretend that I haven’t dumped you twice?”

  “That sounds real good to me.” Then his mouth was on mine, his hand moving around behind my neck to hold me against him.

  Me and my big mouth.

  Him and his delicious, sinful mouth. His lips were soft, warm, delicious. He knew what he was after, and like a single-minded general, he came, he saw, and he conquered. After the first stroke of his tongue into my mouth, I was lost. His tongue swept through my mouth, possessing and playful, and I met it with my own. No one tasted as good as Beau.

  I was so not over him; I wanted him despite everything. My hand curled into his shirt, and I slid my thigh over his.

  Ramsey cleared his throat, and I crash-landed back down to earth. Beau’s mouth stretched into a faint smile.

  I punched him in the shoulder. “Stop doing that to me.”

  He put his hands up as if surrendering, and his eyes locked on me. “Who were you with?”

  I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “None of your damn business.”

  His eyes flashed in the darkness, the were-cougar version of having a temper tantrum. “You reek of cologne.”

  Yeah, well, so did my date. “Beau, stop it.”

  “Did he kiss you?” Was that a note of strain in Beau’s voice?

  I shot him an angry look to cover my lie. “Some guys are polite enough to not maul a girl on a date.”

  Not Jason, but I’m sure there were some guys out there like that.

  Silence. Then a smug “Good.”

  It irritated and thrilled me at the same time. Thrilled that he was being possessive when it came to me … irritated that he was being such an ass about it. Damn it. My heart broke a little. I couldn’t have this. I couldn’t have him. “I can’t do this, Beau.”

  “Don’t,” he said softly.

  “I can’t be with you. I’m sorry.” My eyes burned with tears.

  A few minutes passed in awkward silence, then Beau spoke again. “I need your help, Bathsheba. You’ve met a lot of Alliance members at your job, right?”

  It seemed an odd question. “I guess so.”

  “And all applications are done in person, correct?”

  “Giselle uses in-person interviews, yes. Some of the customers are several hundred years old and slow to catch on to new technology.” Vampires were notoriously bad with computers and couldn’t type worth beans. “Why?”

  “Because I need help identifying a few bodies.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I must not have heard him correctly. “What?”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but I need your help.”

  My virginity was a lot to ask of me. This was just weird.

  We rode in silence until the car pulled up at the medical examiner’s office. The parking lot was nearly deserted at this time of night. We went to the door, then rang the bell. After a few moments, the door buzzed and the three of us went in.

  The technician who met us at the door looked rather familiar. He had Beau sign in. “Think she can do it?”

  “Worth a shot,” Beau said calmly.

  The lab tech led us down a long corridor to a door that said Morgue. “Give me just a moment to get clearance.”

  The door shut and through it I heard “ … Bjorn … to see the dead girl …”

  “… relation to the deceased?” another voice asked.

  That made me nervous.

  The door opened and the tech smiled, and I remembered where I’d seen him before—he was one of Beau’s men who had come to secure my house.

  “Follow me,” he said, and Beau and I stepped inside. Ramsey stayed in the hallway.

  The room was large and sterile-looking, with small white ceramic tiles covering the floor and a row of metal drawers lining the back wall. Our escort pulled out one drawer in a puff of refrigerated air. On the slab was a sheet-covered object just about the right size for a body.

  Oh God. Even though I’d expected this, my knees felt a little weak.

  “Steady,” Beau said, and his arm went around my waist.

  The lab tech pulled back the sheet and exposed the face of the victim.

  It could have been a wax Barbie doll; whatever was human about her had long fled. Her face was cold and gray, her features refined and pretty. Beautiful, even, but that wasn’t a surprise if she was in the Alliance. Her ears weren’t pointed, so that eliminated the chance of any sort of fey creature. Her blond hair was brushed back from her head, almost as pale and colorless as her skin.

  Could I identify her? She looked vaguely familiar. I leaned in to Beau and whispered, “What is she?”

  He whispered back, “Shifter.
Don’t know what kind. She’s not from around here.”

  That definitely narrowed down the field. Female shifters of any kind were rare, so most were snapped up right away. Which made Giselle’s business very difficult at times. “Any markings?”

  The tech pulled the sheet down a little, revealing a tiny paw tattooed over the right breast. At the sight of that paw, I remembered. It was too tiny to be a wolf, the five small toes tipped with dainty claws.

  “Mink,” I said. “Regina St. James was one of the few were-minks in the database. She showed me her tattoo once.” I stared down at the body. Lord, it didn’t look like Regina. She’d been so pretty, with a zesty, bubbly personality. This cold stranger wasn’t her. “She liked to date a lot. Giselle loved her.”

  Our tech nodded and made some notes. “We’ll check with her family and see if she’s been reported missing.”

  “Do you want to see the other body?” the other tech asked from the other side of the room.

  Our small party headed over as she pulled out the slab. When she uncovered the face of this woman, I couldn’t tell who it was again. The face was rounder, sweeter than the last. Younger. The hair was a bright yellow-blond that made the pallor of her skin seem unnatural. Her figure was slightly fuller than the were-mink’s.

  She had no identifying tattoos and she’d been found in the river, her scent long gone. They didn’t know what sort of shifter she was, or if she was one at all.

  “I’m sorry,” I told them after a few minutes. “I don’t recognize her. I can check the records at work tomorrow, if that’ll help.” I glanced over at Beau, who was eyeing the corpse with a grim expression.

  He glanced at me, then back down at the corpse. He looked murderous, intense, his eyes changing from normal to feline. “Both women are blondes. How long is the hair?” he asked the shifter tech.

  The man checked a chart. “Mid-back on both.”

  “How tall?” he rasped.

  Again, the guy checked his chart. “One was five foot eight. The other was five nine.”

  Beau’s mouth thinned into a line. “Both tall with long blond hair.” His gaze focused on me. “They look like you.”

  I frowned. And as I stared at the second corpse, I felt pricklings of alarm.

  “How did they die?” I asked.

  The tech shook his head. “We don’t need to get into that at the moment—”

  I’d suspected something like that. I grabbed the sheet so I could see the rest of the body, not just the face, which looked a little too similar to mine with every moment.

  Beau put a hand over mine, halting me. “Bathsheba,” he said in a low voice. “You don’t want to see. She’s … parts of her have been eaten.”

  Beau refused to let me go home that night. I protested all the way to the Worthington Hotel, but Beau got his way.

  “Leave Giselle a message,” he said calmly. “It’s not safe there for you right now. Not with someone hunting tall blondes.”

  I was a little scared, too. After all, whoever had been in my house a few days ago was hunting me, too, as well as that scary creature.

  And I felt safe with Beau.

  My panties weren’t safe, but the rest of me was, at least.

  “You should take me to where Sara is. This isn’t safer than that,” I complained as we went through the massive lobby.

  I vividly remembered the last time I’d stayed here. He’d wrapped his body around mine, and I’d snuggled into the musky scent of him. My nipples grew hard with longing just thinking about it, and Beau gave me a hot look as we reached the room door.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” I whispered, jamming the key-card into the electronic lock. It gave a silent click and the light flicked to green. I shoved the door open.

  “Doing what?” His voice had a tense edge to it.

  “Look at me that way … sometimes.” I couldn’t explain that it happened when I thought dirty things about him. “It’s almost like you can read my mind.”

  “I can’t read your mind,” he said, his tone mild.

  The door clicked shut behind us and he pulled me against the wall, his hard body pressing against mine.

  “But I can smell you,” he said softly, and his lips brushed mine. My body thrilled at the contact, and my breath left me. His finger slid down my cheek, caressing me. “Ever since we made love in the cabin, I can smell the softest things about you—what kind of perfume you wear, the shampoo you use, the detergent you use to clean your underthings.” His nostrils flared and I realized he was smelling me right now. “I can smell when you get turned on. I’m attuned to your scent. I could pick you out across a room.”

  A hot blush covered my face. Oh my God. “You can smell that?” Was that what he was sensing every time he gave me that odd look?

  He pressed against me, demonstrating the thick erection in his pants. “I’m half-wild with wanting you.” His mouth captured mine. “I catch whiffs of your arousal and it drives me crazy with desire. I hunger to taste it on the air again, to know that you’re thinking of me.” His hands dropped from me suddenly. Then, slow, and almost unsure, “Are you thinking of me? Or someone else?”

  “I’m thinking of you,” I said softly.

  He crushed me against his chest and our mouths melded once more. We fell into bed together, all hands and hot, needing lips. I was all over him, and he reciprocated with hot bites of pleasure. His hand pulled my ponytail free, and my hair poured over both of us. He groaned hard, and I rubbed his erection through his slacks.

  He ran his fingernails down the leg of my tights, and they split open.

  “Claws.” He grinned and stroked my now-bare leg.

  “I can smell you,” he growled against my neck, ripping the last of my tights off. His hand slid between them and he pressed over me, his weight exciting and heavy.

  I unzipped his pants and pulled them down, my breath mingling with his in a hot melody. His hand slid under my knee, spreading my leg wide, then his weight settled between my legs, the head of his cock sliding along the wet heat of my apex.

  I inhaled sharply, my nails digging into his buttocks.

  He froze. “Bathsheba?”

  I squirmed underneath him, bucking my hips against his erection. “If you stop now, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”

  He chuckled as the head of his cock teased my entrance. “Can’t have that happen,” he whispered, and his cock slid home.

  That delicious stretching feeling of him inside me filled my whole body. I gasped as he stroked into me again, and my hands pressed against the sides of his face, drawing him down for another kiss.

  I raised my hips to meet his, and his chest brushed against mine, my nipples skimming his flesh as he pumped again, over and over. Faster and faster we collided, his body stroking against mine at just the right spot until I cried his name, and he exploded just after I did.

  We collapsed together, my legs. still wrapped around his waist, quivering with aftershocks.

  “Hell,” I muttered. So much for turning him away.

  A smile curved his mouth. “Is this a breakup? Because if so, I think we’ve already kissed and made up.”

  I punched his arm and tried to get up, but I was trapped under him. “Let me go.”

  “Do you promise to stay here with me tonight?”

  Grudgingly, I nodded, and he released me. I scooted over a few feet on the bed. “Where else would I go tonight?” The obvious answer was back to work, but I didn’t want to hear the third degree on my date with Jason. And if Giselle knew I’d seen Beau again, she’d flip out on me.

  “Where else?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. You keep a lot of secrets.”

  I ignored him and stared at the blank TV. In the reflection I could see my pale legs sprawled on the bed, and it reminded me of the corpses at the morgue. I shuddered, feeling chills skitter across my skin. “Who would want to eat those girls?”

  Who would want to eat me?

  “I think it’s a Wendigo. Or a p
ack of Wendigo.”

  “A what?” I slid forward, and the sheets brushed against my sensitive spots. I blushed hard, a quiver rocketing through me again.

  Beau turned to stare at me with hot, gold-green eyes and I blushed even harder, knowing what was going through his head. “Sorry, I slid wrong. You were saying? …”

  “Wendigo,” he sat up on the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees, as if he was exhausted from the day.

  I watched him with concern. In my mind, Beau was strong and tireless. Seeing the weariness settle around his eyes and mouth made me feel horrible for giving him so much trouble. I knelt behind him, placing my hands at the base of his neck and kneading the tight knot of muscles there.

  Beau groaned with pleasure, tilting his head back and leaning into my hands.

  It was a pleasure to stroke his neck and feel the fine hairs there, the soft skin behind his ears, the hard muscles below his collar. His shirt was in my way, so I leaned forward and unbuttoned it. “So tell me about the Wendigo.”

  He sighed heavily. “They’re … cannibals.”

  My hands paused, then pushed his shirt down his arms.

  “Have you heard the Native American legends of the Wendigo?”

  I kneaded his shoulders, soothing him. “No. What are they?”

  “Some of the tribes believed that a man who ate the flesh of another man could steal his power. But if you did so, you became a Wendigo—a terrible creature that needs another creature’s flesh to survive. They smell foul, like the grave. They’re stronger than any other living creature, and thirst for blood.” He paused. “Those legends were mostly wrong. Only a shifter can turn Wendigo.”

  “Oh.” I removed my hands so I could wring them in silence. “And of course, everyone we know is a shifter.”

  He said nothing.

  “Both of those girls at the morgue looked like me. So does this mean that someone’s going to try and eat … me?”

  “They shouldn’t. You’re not a shifter.”

  “So why are they going after me?”