Bad Wolf Read online

With that thought, I manage to steady myself enough to undress, get dry and pull on the borrowed clothes. The sweats are fine, with pockets where I shove my keys and my wallet. The T-shirt and sweater are kind of narrow at the shoulders and chest, but I can breathe, so it’s fine.

  I can fucking breathe. It’s easier when she’s around, and the memory of her arms around me is a hot sear of pleasure straight to my chest. Like a hot blade cutting through me, but sweet. Far too sweet for the mess I’m in.

  Toweling my wet hair one last time, I try to marshal my scattered thoughts, and then I hear her calling my name.

  And I get out, towel in hand, heading to her, before my brain catches up.

  I can’t fucking help myself when it comes to her. That’s the one truth in my life, the one true thing in all the lies I keep telling myself to keep sane.

  I limp out into the living room, my knee aching like a bitch from the cold, but I forget all about it cuz it’s warm inside, and Gigi’s curled up on the sofa, changing channels on the TV.

  With her pale hair in a long braid falling over one shoulder, her socked feet folded under her, her short skirt riding up, she’s… hot. This girl is so damn hot. She’s holding her mug in her other hand, and she licks her lips absently as I pad quietly into the room.

  Fuck. Me. A hot wave of arousal hits me, and I swallow hard, my borrowed sweats suddenly tightening at the crotch.

  She glances at me and smiles, her gaze zeroing in between my legs, and shit, I want her so fucking bad I’m ready to push her down on the sofa and fuck her right here, consequences be damned.

  “Sit with me,” she says, and her voice sounds a bit uneven, like she’s out of breath.

  “Why don’t you sit on me instead?” My voice is rough like I’ve been smoking too many cigarettes.

  “Rett…” She licks her lips again, and I want to push her sweater up and lick her nipples, then make my way down to her pussy, fuck her with my tongue and fingers until she comes. I remember her taste, and the memory only serves to make me harder, until my dick’s trying to drill a hole through the sweats.

  Then Merc walks in and fuck, I’d almost forgotten about him, lost in the haze of this damn lust. I drop down quickly beside her, drawing a cushion with golden tassels over my lap to hide my hard-on.

  This clusterfuck just goes to show how much control I have over myself tonight: exactly nothing. A big fucking zero. My mind’s in this damn tailspin and won’t focus on one thing, on what I should be doing.

  Like getting out of here. Not coming here in the first place. Checking on Sebastian, on the gang. Doing what I’m supposed to do.

  “Where’s Mom?” Gigi ask, and licks the rim of her mug.

  Okay, it’s fucking clear. This girl’s trying to kill me.

  “Just out visiting one of her friends. She’ll be back soon.”

  Yeah, this is an alternate universe like the one I’ve dreamed of all my life, where moms do normal stuff like visit each other for tea and gossip, bake cakes and keep pretty houses, not live in nursing homes and start to forget how to speak, or—

  “Here.” She passes me a mug with a smile, and I automatically take a sip, burning my tongue.

  I gasp, but I take another sip, my eyes closing. It’s a sugar orgasm. Melty marshmallows, thick chocolate and heat slipping down my throat to my chest. A different kind of heat, one that unclenches my tightly wound muscles and spreads to my limbs until I lean back on the sofa with a sigh, warmed from the inside out.

  “Good, huh?” Merc says, a note of smugness in his voice. “I make the best hot chocolate this side of town.”

  “My little brother is so humble,” Gigi mutters, laughter in her voice.

  Yeah, I can’t begrudge her a brother like that. A family like that. She was always kind to me. She deserves this. She deserves the best.

  Even if I want her to choose me, the worst choice, even—

  “You’re thinking too hard.” Gigi arches her back slowly, like a cat, and my eyes instantly go to her tits.

  My fucking mouth goes dry.

  So I take another sip of hot chocolate, glad for the burn, and settle back against the cushions.

  Two seconds later, she turns and curls up against me, her knees pressed to my side, her eyes looking up at me, a teasing flicker at their centers. “You haven’t tried the cake.”

  As if I can swallow with her so close to me, her scent everywhere, and fuck, I’m getting hard again. My body’s getting so tuned to hers, just looking at her stretching on the sofa, still fully dressed, gets me raring to go.

  “Get a room you two,” Merc says, but when I look up he’s smirking and toasting us with his mug, so I just shake my head.

  She flips some more channels and settles on music vids. “You like rock?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “Really? Favorite groups?” Merc’s eyes go all bright, and he looks like an excited eight-year-old talking about his toys—if eight-year-olds were as tall and almost as wide as me, with some damn impressive biceps. He must be, what, eighteen? He was quite younger than me in school, I remember that.

  “Uh, Guns and Roses? Metallica…” I try to remember. Haven’t listened to much music since Connor died. “Queen, The Who…”

  “Classic rock, then? Or are you just listing all the groups you remember?”

  “Hey, I love the Who. Tommy is my favorite.”

  “Tommy’s great.” Merc nods, appearing mollified. “Your dad’s influence?”

  “Merc,” Gigi says sharply, sitting up.

  “Adopted dad’s,” I say, and put a hand on her to keep her down. I like her curled beside me, our bodies touching. It keeps me centered even as it pushes me off balance.

  Merc gives me a long look, putting his mug down on the table. His eyes, so similar to Gigi’s, narrow, then look away. “I see. Well, you’ll learn a thing or two about music in this house.”

  It sounds like a threat.

  Or a promise. Like I’ll be coming back a lot to this house, and it makes me wanna smile, but it’s dangerous. Everything, from the warm, comfortable room, to the sweets, the pretty girl sitting by my side and her nice brother offering to teach me about music, is fucking dangerous.

  It makes me wanna stay.

  Merc’s rambling about Massive Attack and trip hop music some time later, Gigi replying to him or laughing at something he said, and I’m dozing on and off, my head propped on the backrest, my bad leg stretched out under the coffee table.

  I’m as cozy as I’ll ever be, toasty warm. Comfortable. It’s peaceful, safe, and being next to Gigi is twisting up all my thoughts into a maze until I can’t find a way out, lost in a jumble of dreams and strange feelings.

  Then a new voice sounds from behind me, and I jerk upright on the sofa, trying to remember where I am, my heart pounding its way out of my fucking chest.

  Fuck, fuck.

  “Hey, Mom,” Merc says, and it takes me a few long seconds to process the words.

  Gigi stirs beside me, but instead of getting up, she lays an arm over my stomach, as if to keep me down. “Just my mom,” she whispers.

  Not sure who I thought it was.

  Sebastian, in one of his moods.

  Angel or Mav or Declan or Jorge.

  The kids from the halfway houses.

  The blood and darkness and screams from my dreams.

  Merc gets up and kisses a slender woman on the cheek. Her hair is caught in a ponytail and if not for the deep laugh lines of her eyes and mouth she’d look like her son’s older sister.

  I remember Mrs. Watson. Haven’t seen her in so many years. Time hasn’t touched her, unlike my mom. Since they moved away from our neighborhood, everything changed for me.

  I rub at my chest.

  Merc goes away, to get her a hot chocolate, or to go off to party, no fucking clue. If he said, I didn’t hear, my blood rushing in my ears.

  Last time I saw Merc and Mrs. Watson was before it all went to hell, and here they are, same as ever.

>   It’s reassuring. For sure. The world is still turning like before.

  It’s also a mindfuck and a half. Maybe that’s why it takes me a long moment to realize she has sat across from me, in Merc’s vacated seat, and is reaching out a hand to me.

  I meet her warm gaze and sit up once more, catching her hand. It’s small like her daughter’s, a bit rougher, and feels dry and brittle like a fallen leaf. “Mrs. Watson.”

  “Please call me Maggie.” She smiles, tugs on my hand and my sleeve rides up, baring lines of my ink. “So you’re the boy my Gigi likes so much.”

  “Mom!” Gigi sits up, too, and from the corner of my eye, I see her cheeks flush and eyes shine.

  “What, you don’t like him?” Mrs. Watson—Maggie—asks, still looking at me. “And look at what a handsome young man you’ve turned into. Gosh. A fine wolf. Those cheekbones, those eyes, that face. My daughter sure has good taste.”

  Unfamiliar warmth seeps into my face. But there’s something soothing about the way she’s looking at me, studying me, something like approval. She’s still smiling, and fuck if I’m not smiling back at her, caught in a spell.

  Girls have to be witches where they come from. Beautiful, sweet-talking, kind. I mean, where do you find girls like that in real life? Real life sucks you in, chews on you and spits you out.

  But Gigi presses herself to me again, and her arm is still wrapped around me, her mom is still holding my hand, and time seems to have stopped once more.

  It keeps happening lately.

  Then Maggie pulls back her hand and smooths down her skirt, settling it primly over her knees, and she looks like Gigi in a tarnished mirror, an older version of her, and that sense of déjà vu, of traveling back in time makes another appearance.

  And I think, I’d still like her that way. I’d still want her.

  I’d still love her.

  “Mom, I think Jarett is tired,” Gigi says, and I jerk my gaze back to her. “He’s had a rough day. I thought we’ll just watch some TV and relax, you know?”

  “I know, honey.” If anything, Maggie’s smile turns warmer when she directs it at her daughter. “I just wanted to ask Jarett about Becky.”

  Of course. They were friends back then. I draw a bracing breath. “Mrs. Lowe—”

  “You can call her mom, sweetie.”

  I meet Maggie’s kind gaze, and have to drop mine, my heart hammering again. “I… I can’t.”

  “Nonsense. Why not?”

  “I’m not her son.” There, simple.

  “She adopted you.”

  “She was going to adopt me,” I correct her. “Then Dad—Mr. Lowe died, and Sebastian dropped out of school, and she got sick, and…” I shrug. “She didn’t finish it. But it’s okay,” I hurry to say, before they think I’m complaining. Because, shit. “Totally fine. Hell, she took me in at an age nobody else wanted me. I could never ask for anything more.”

  Now she looks concerned. Dammit. “Jarett, sweetheart—”

  “No, really. I’m so damn grateful to her. Excuse my language, Mrs. Watson—”

  “Maggie.”

  “Maggie, okay. I’ll never forget that they took in someone like me, when they already had a son—”

  “Someone like you?” Gigi frowns. “What do you mean? You’re a great guy. There’s nothing wrong with you, Rett.”

  “You don’t know,” I choke out.

  “Know what?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that I was too old. Had a record. They didn’t have to—”

  “Rett. Know what?”

  “That everyone who takes me in dies.”

  Godfuck. And why am I telling Gigi’s mom all this? And Gigi. My heart won’t stop racing, and bile rises in my throat. Stupid, Jarett. I bet they’re already regretting inviting you in. Get out. My heartbeat thumps in my ears. Sweat rolls down my back.

  But Gigi somehow holds me down, keeps me from getting up and leaving. “Mom, enough,” she says, her words coming in weird echoes, and that’s when I realize she’s sort of wrapped herself around me, not just one arm anymore but both, her chin resting on my shoulder, one leg thrown over mine. “We’re going to bed.”

  What?

  Maggie leans over and pats my knee. “Becky loves you like her own, Jarett. Remember that. Ah, I’ll go make myself some tea and watch my favorite show. Off you go, kids. Sleep well.”

  I blink at her as the buzzing in my ears subsides and the pressure in my chest starts to ease. Wait a sec. I’m staying the night?

  Not sure when that was decided. Did Gigi ask me to stay?

  Not that I’d object, but her mom doesn’t, either?

  “Come on, let’s go.” Gigi untangles herself from me, and I shiver. She gets up and holds out her hand to me, smiling. “Unless you don’t want to stay?”

  There’s nothing I want more in the world right now. Stay in this house.

  Stay with her.

  So I take her hand and heave myself to my feet, then stagger after her upstairs.

  “You have a guest room?” I ask, buying time between climbing steps for my creaking knee to bend and unbend.

  “No.”

  I’m so stunned by this new turn that I climb the rest of the stairs not feeling my knee at all. “Gigi…”

  “Don’t worry,” she says as she pulls me into a room—her room, I realize, with posters on the walls and a hot pink comforter. “Mom is relaxed. She trusts me. And she likes you.”

  “Yeah.” I look around as she tugs me determinedly toward her bed. “That’s cuz she doesn’t really know me.”

  “It doesn’t take much to realize you like someone,” she says, turning to face me, her eyes very bright. “Just a few clues. And I have mine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gigi

  I can’t believe Jarett’s in my room, sitting on my bed. Can’t believe I brought him here, that he agreed to stay, that I went out to take those cakes in the first place with barely any hopes at all, and now here we are.

  Side by side.

  His words replay in my ears, and I keep seeing the way he looked at me, and at my mom while he explained why nobody could ever want him. How determined he was to protect his foster mom, not adopted after all, from even the possibility of an idea she might have done something wrong, or that he isn’t grateful.

  Or that he doesn’t love her. He does love Becky Lowe, I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He thinks of her as his mom, but won’t allow himself to believe it. Correction—to believe he deserves it.

  He’s totally breaking my heart, and whoa, slow down, Gigi. You were only out hunting for information on him, not forgiving him and throwing yourself into his arms.

  Okay, okay. Deep breaths.

  And that’s another mistake, because underneath the scent of my rose candles and that of clean soap coming from his borrowed clothes, I can smell him.

  I can always smell him, that indefinable spice of his sweat that is so… Jarett, and it makes my heart pound with anticipation and my belly clench with desire.

  Time to put some distance between us, but before I do, his hand darts out and grabs mine.

  His thick lashes lift, and his eyes meet mine. “Thank you. For bringing me here. For the chocolate and cake. For…” He looks down at my hand, turning it over on his big palm, as if thinking to find the words there. “For everything.”

  “You’re always welcome in my home, Rett.”

  And crap, that’s not what I’d meant to say. It’d should have been rather something along the lines of “You’re welcome.” Something neutral.

  Tonight I keep saying things I’m not supposed to. But who am I kidding? That’s what always happens when he’s around.

  His eyes widen a little.

  “Are things bad?” I blurt out, shivering when his thumb strokes over my knuckles. “With your mom?”

  “I told you, she’s not my mom.”

  “But I’m sure she’d want you to call her that.”

  There. You see? No
control over my mouth. Crap. I’d promised myself not to push him, especially not tonight, when he looks so sad, even less about something I can’t be sure about.

  But he chews on the inside of his cheek, and nods. “She did. I mean, she told me many times to call her that, but I never did.”

  “Why not?” I shift closer to him, until his muscled thigh is pressed to mine.

  “Dunno. Never felt right. And she only took me in for the sake of Sebastian.”

  I frown at him. “What do you mean?”

  He’s still staring down at our entwined hands. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Rett…”

  “Life is what it is. That’s what Connor would say.”

  “Who is Connor?”

  He jerks, those expressive eyes going round. “Fuck, forget I said that. All of it.” He’s panting, his face pale, and he’s scaring me a little. “What’s wrong with me today? I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” A strained laugh escapes him. “You got nothing to be sorry for. If anything, I’m the one who should be sorry. I know I should keep away from you, that it’s dangerous, but I can’t, and I…”

  He doesn’t finish.

  God, so many questions I want to ask him. With every word he says, I have ten questions more. Who is this Connor and why does he sound so important? Why does he think Becky Lowe took him in because of Sebastian, and is that linked to the promise he made her to look after him? Why does he think that everybody who takes him in dies?

  And above all, why did he just say he can’t keep away from me?

  He’s shivering harder now, gaze going distant again, and I push away my questions for another time. After all, I invited him here because I was worried about him, and he does look tired. Exhausted.

  Though inviting him into my bed hadn’t been in the plans.

  Still.

  “You’ll be fine, Rett.”

  He sort of shakes his head while nodding. “Yeah,” he says wheezing, and whatever happened today at the nursing home had to be bad.

  I make a note to ask Mom if she knows anything about it, and realize I know next to nothing about Alzheimer’s. One more thing to investigate.