The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf 2)

Clay looked very nice, if not uncomfortable, in a crisp white shirt and red tie. He’d obviously taken time to get his sandy hair in some order. Clay and Cooper eyed each other and gave each other a distant but not unfriendly nod, which I thought was pretty normal for brother-date interactions. At least, Cooper didn’t start cleaning a firearm in front of him.

“Hey, Mags.”

“Clay,” I said, waiting for some comment as he eyed me from head to toe.

“Wanna get a beer?” he asked, having to shout a little now that the band Evie and Buzz had brought in from Dearly had started a bad rendition of “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” People were moving toward the dance floor in twos, doing dance steps I knew I was in no way qualified to execute.

“Sure,” I said, a little taken aback that he hadn’t even mentioned that I wasn’t wearing jeans and flannel. Was he setting me up for some sort of joke? “So, uh, you don’t have anything to say, something smart-assy about my dress or the stuff on my eyelids?”

He shrugged. “You always look this good.”

“Oh, I like you,” I said, smiling at him as he put his arm around me and walked me to the bar.

Across the room, Nick was talking to Alan, Kara, and Darby Carmichael, a checker at Hannigan’s Grocery. Darby was a tall brunette with a heart-shaped face and big caramel-brown eyes. I’d never really paid much attention to her before, but now, given the way her fingers were curling around Nick’s arm, I sort of hated her. With the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

Nick saw me with Clay and frowned. He looked down at his beer, and I could see his hand flex around the bottle.

Ha, right back at you, Doc.

“Wanna get a table?” I asked. “I’ll grab the beers.”

Clay grinned and waved at Mo as he claimed one of the booths near the pool tables.

“Maggie, what are you doing?” Mo asked, smiling around the question and waving back at Clay.

“I’m here with Clay.”

The line of her mouth did this weird pretzel thing, which was pretty funny. “I thought you were going to meet Nick here.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Well, Cooper mentioned that you two were getting close. Or ‘got pretty close to something.’ I don’t know. He flushed beet-red and started to mumble about concussions. I love him, but I don’t always understand him,” she said, frowning.

“Well, he neglected to mention the part where I told Nick that us getting close was a hallucination brought on by head injury.”

“Yeah, he did leave that part out,” Mo said, chewing on her lip. “This is why we need to spend more time together. I need unfiltered information.”

“Well, I’m sorry your makeover efforts for Nick were in vain.”

“Oh, honey, that wasn’t for Nick. We’ve been itching to do that for a while. It had to be done, for the good of mankind,” Mo told me. I frowned. Mo made a gesture toward her upper lip. “Mustaches are for porn stars and Tom Selleck, not young ladies.”

“Fuck you very much, Mo.”

“Don’t kiss my daughter with that mouth. I’m afraid of what she’ll pick up.”

I made a sour face at her as I sauntered back toward the table. As I was walking past the restroom corridor, there was a yank on my arms. I was rather proud that I didn’t spill a drop of beer as Nick pulled me into the little hallway.

“Hands! Hands!” I exclaimed, shrugging out of the hold he had on my arms. He held up his hands in a defensive position but didn’t step away. He kept his voice low, quiet, as he murmured, “Sorry, I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”

“How about ‘Hey, Maggie, how about we have a conversation that doesn’t involve lurking near a men’s room?’ “

“That probably would have been better,” he agreed. “So, I wanted to tell you, I’m in.”

“I really don’t know how to respond to that.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean, I’m willing to give up the possibility of ever telling anyone about your family, if you let me study your pack. I want to know everything there is to know about you. It would be worth it, just to have my questions answered. I give you my word, it would be for my own personal enlightenment. I will never tell a soul.”

The intensity of his voice, the close proximity of his mouth to my ear, sent a shiver down my spine. I cleared my throat, backing away as much as the wall would allow.