He didn’t say anything. He just crouched there, clutching the letter, staring at us.
I cleared my throat. “I guess we’ll—ah—we’ll just be going—”
“No.”
Ha, that was funny. For a second there, I thought he said no.
“Come inside. I want to talk to you.”
Oh. I hadn’t imagined it.
The Viking stood up, towering in the doorway, his towel slipping lower on his hips. Feeling a tad ill, I lifted my hands, not quite sure if it was meant to be a negative gesture or a please-don’t-hurt-me supplication. Sara and I stumbled back, fetching up against a big oak tree shading the yard and some of the street. He moved toward us, and the bark cracked under my fingertips as I clutched at the tree.
He stopped when he was close enough to touch, both of us gaping up at him like we were staring down Death come to claim us.
Then he engulfed us in a hug. I’m pretty sure I left a chunk of skin behind on that tree when he pulled us away. I didn’t start screaming and flailing because, much like Analie, he didn’t seem to have any concept of his own strength when he crushed us against him.
The only reason I knew I wasn’t about to die was because the six-foot-plus terrifying werewolf warrior wearing nothing but a towel was crying all over us.
Goddamn, my life was getting weirder by the day.
Chapter 14
Sara and I awkwardly patted him on the back, staring at each other with wide eyes across the expanse of his—I’m not going to lie—very impressive shoulders. His bare skin was hot and prickly with the crisp golden hairs covering his arms and chest. A few minutes later, his crying tapered off, and he straightened up, still clutching us against him.
“You’ll have to—have to excuse me,” he said, sniffling. “I haven’t seen Analie in so long. Come inside, please.”
It wasn’t a request. He probably could have picked us up and carried us, but he just half-pulled, half-dragged us along, marching us toward the house.
He finally let us go once we reached the door, giving us a not-so-gentle shove that sent us both stumbling inside as he bent at the waist to scoop up the box. We both turned our backs as soon as we saw the towel was slipping. I gave Sara the side-eye, and she was blushing just as furiously as I was sure I must have been.
“‘Scuse me a minute, you caught me just out of the shower. Go have a seat in the kitchen”—he gestured vaguely deeper inside the house—“and I’ll be right with you. Oh, would you mind taking this?”
I took the box as he handed it to me, making a heroic effort to keep my eyes above the level of his chest and not on where the towel had been a second ago but wasn’t anymore.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
Sara and I fled in the general direction he had indicated, and he disappeared around a corner. The house wasn’t terribly big. We passed an open archway that led into a living room. Jo-Jo was parked in front of the TV, but he was watching us over his shoulder with bright golden eyes. Just past where the kid was sitting was a big kitchen table, surrounded by enough chairs to seat a small army of hungry kids.
I set the box on the table, and Sara followed my lead and sat next to me. Jo-Jo crept in after us, peering from around the divider between the kitchen and the living room. Sara chewed her bottom lip and stared at the ceiling.
Gavin appeared a few minutes later, this time clad in a pair of jeans, padding into the room so quietly that his presence startled me. The guy was big, but he moved like a ghost. Sara and I mutely watched as he pulled out some mismatched glasses and small plates, setting them before us, with a setting for himself and another for Jo-Jo, who hadn’t yet decided to join us.
He then poured us each a glass of milk, and then pulled out one of the containers with some of Analie’s cookies inside, popping the lid and holding it out to me.
“Oh, no thank you, I—”
That earned me a capital “L” Look.
“—I would be delighted, thank you, um, yes.”
Yeah. I took the cookies. And so did Sara, though we both put them on our plates and didn’t start eating them until Gavin sat back and shoved one in his own mouth, watching us as he washed it down with half his glass of milk. We quickly followed suit, though I wonder if Sara, like me, didn’t so much as taste the confection thanks to the flood of fear swamping my body with adrenalin.
Gavin placed the glass down on the table with a heavy thump and leaned forward. “Tell me about Analie. How is she doing? Is the leech taking care of her?”
I swallowed. Hard. Then again to get the remaining crumbs out of my throat. My voice still came out in a croak. “She’s doing great. She’s taking cooking lessons from the guy who runs Royce’s fancy French restaurant, La Petite Boisson, and she’s getting tutored through her school lessons by one of the local Weres. She talked about you a lot.” At least, while I was listening. Don’t even think it—I already felt awful for not paying more attention to the kid and her troubles. “She misses you.”
Gavin finally looked down, breaking that fierce eye contact, and toyed with one of the cookies with now blunt, human fingernails. “I wish I could have been there for her. Could have taken her place so she wasn’t in the clutches of that . . . that monster.”
Though I had often thought as much of Royce, I didn’t think now was the time to contradict Gavin. He was clearly high-strung where vampires were concerned, so debating their merits when he had first addressed me as a vamp’s whore probably wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
And I’ll bet you thought I couldn’t be tactful when necessity dictated.
“She might be stuck for the time being, but she’s not suffering. He’s given her clothes, food, shelter, and schooling. I think she’ll be okay for now. Look, she even made these cookies we’re eating.”
I took another bite, this time dimly recognizing the taste of chocolate on my tongue. Gavin mechanically followed my lead, then shook his head and looked down at the confection in his hand. “Really? She made these?”
Nodding, I gestured for him to finish it off. He did so in silence, his brows moving around like he couldn’t decide whether he should have an expression of shock or scowl at the cookie. Most likely the idea that Royce might put Analie to work doing something productive had never occurred to him. Had I been in his place even a month or two ago, I might have thought the same.
The confusion eventually gave way to a scowl, but his eyes were misting up again. His manly-man persona was shattering under the weight of all that grief, I guess. “She was like a daughter to me. If I ever see Christoph or Ashi again, I’m going to kill them. When you go back to New York, you tell them that.”
Sara and I both nodded rapidly, leaning back in our chairs.
“Yeah. Tell them that. I’ll rip their throats out and eat their fucking soulless hearts.”
Cripes. His eyes were going gold, and his nails were starting to look distinctly talon-like again. Had to remember that I was here to redeem myself and not because I had a death wish.
“Gavin,” Sara said, her words coming out in a rush—anything to distract the werewolf who was barely holding control over his shapeshifting—“we’re really sorry about what happened to Analie but we’ll make sure she knows how much you miss her. Do you want us to bring anything back for her? A letter or something?”
That got him out of it. The hair bristling around his neck and jaw settled with an audible rustle, though his eyes remained a bright golden color. He muttered something I didn’t quite catch and pushed back from the table, then dug around in one of the kitchen drawers. Once he found a pen and notepad, he hunched over the counter, his back to us as he scribbled away.