How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf 1)

Eli’s eyes were now completely yellow, his cheekbones protruding sharply. He was starting to change, a shadow creeping over his skin instead of the light of transformation I was used to from Cooper. This was something primal and scary. And as I finally processed what Eli was saying, I realized I was in deep, deep shit.

Eli drew back and slapped me with an increasingly pawlike hand, sending me flying across the room and into a tool chest.

Jennifer Garner totally would have seen that coming.

I sat up carefully, my hand curving protectively around my belly. “Why, Eli? Why are you doing this?”

Eli rolled his neck, stretching his body in a long, lean line, willing the change to withdraw as he shrugged out of his clothes—which was, I will admit, disturbing. He was fully human again, his eyes a bitter chocolate color. He smirked. “Would you believe . . . I just enjoy screwing around with short-order cooks?”

He sat down in front of me. My only comfort at this point was that the concrete had to be extremely rough on his bare ass cheeks.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” he demanded. I tried to look away, because of the nudity issue, but he grabbed my jaw and forced me to keep eye contact. “I’ve worked for years to get where I am today. Cooper was weak. He was too worried about being fair and equal when what we needed was strength. I’m a leader, Mo. I was born to lead my pack. And they’re too damn stubborn, too stuck in the Dark Ages to realize it. Do you know what it’s like to know your potential and have no one else recognize it? Because of Cooper. As long as Cooper was around, I would only be the second best, the substitute.”

Just over Eli’s shoulder, on the opposite wall, I spotted a tranquilizer gun. There was no way to make a direct grab for it. My only hope was that Eli would keep talking, allowing me to shift positions and get to it.

“That rival pack was strong, though, as it turned out, not especially subtle,” he said, looking annoyed. “They bungled the whole thing, after I’d been sending them information for months! I mean, really, if you can’t trust the people you’re staging a coup with, who can you trust? That turned into a total fiasco, and I had to act just as surprised and shocked as everybody else.>I grew more and more fidgety. I tried to distract myself, keep my head down, and throw myself into getting plates out the pass. I tried to tell myself I was being silly, overreacting. There was no reason to think Cooper was in trouble. For all I knew, his hunting party was doing well and he was being paid overtime. But I couldn’t get rid of nagging little flares of worry in back of my head as I rounded the counter, preparing to take Alan’s lunch order.

“Hey, Mo,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m OK. I’ve stopped throwing up every time I crack an egg, which is an occupational plus.”

He started to laugh and looked down at his belt when his cell phone rang. “Sorry. Give me a minute. Hey, Walt, what can I—Slow down, Walt. Tell them to stop yelling, I can’t hear you.”

I tilted my head, sending him a questioning look. He rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“You shot what, now?” he exclaimed, standing, knocking his stool to the floor behind him. “No, don’t bring it here! Take it to my barn. Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

Alan snapped his phone shut. “Walt and a couple of his friends shot a wolf outside of town. They said it’s a big sonofabitch and want me to come see if it could be the wolf that attacked Susie and Abner.”

I stopped in my tracks, blood roaring through my ears. The pad slipped from my hands, clattering to the floor.

Alan looked up and grimaced. “You OK? You look pretty pale. Why don’t you sit down?”

“What about the wolf?” I heard myself ask.

“They’re driving it out to my place now, so I can take a look at it. I need to take some measurements, some pictures, call a vet to do a necropsy . . .”

My head spun as my stomach did an unpleasant slide. I turned on my heel, pulling my keys out of my apron as Alan called, “Mo? You OK?”

Lynette strolled through the door, preparing to flirt with Alan. I caught her arm and pulled her with me as I headed for the door. “Lynette, I need you to take over bar duty. The lunch rush is over. Pete’s taking care of the dishes. I just need you to keep an eye on things for a little bit.”

“It’s my day off.” Lynette scowled, jerking her arm out of my hand.

I snarled, backing her into the wall. “Now, you listen to me. I’ve put up with your bullshit for almost a year. Your lousy attitude, your piss-poor work ethic, and the fact that you take more than your fair share of the tip jar on more nights than I can count. And despite the fact that I’ve had to cover for you, I’ve never said anything. But so help me God, if you don’t step up to the plate this once, I am going to tell Buzz about those butt prints I found on the shelf in the walk-in freezer.”

Lynette blanched. “You can’t know that was me.”

“Well, I didn’t, but I do now,” I said, throwing an apron at her. “Take drink orders, collect on tabs, do your damn job.”

Lynette nodded, mute, as I stalked out the door.

Just because Walt shot a wolf didn’t mean it was Cooper, right? There were dozens of wolves in the area. Walt could have killed any one of them. That’s what I kept telling myself as I pulled away from the saloon.

In the rearview mirror, I caught sight of my neighbors through the saloon window—normal people, eating burgers and living normal lives. I used to be one of them, totally unaware of the world beyond ours. And for a split second, I felt sorry enough for myself to want that ignorance back.

On the drive to our house, I prayed to Jesus, Buddha, Gaia, the Great Spirit, and every other deity I could think of to let me drive home and find Cooper climbing out of his truck, with some story about a flat tire and a dead cell-phone battery. When I got home and found the driveway empty, I realized how asinine that hope was. I climbed out of the truck and dialed Cooper’s cell phone again while I opened the front door. I was sent to voice mail as I did a cursory sweep of the house. “Cooper, if you get this, please, please call me so I know you’re all right.” I snapped the phone shut.

I paced on the porch and tried to work through all of the scenarios in my head. I could rush over to Alan’s, throw myself into the group of triumphant hunters, and . . . what? What would I do if it was Cooper in wolf form? I would collapse, possibly start screaming and beating the men in the hunting party, and get hauled away to jail. It would be awfully tough to raise my baby in a prison mental ward. And what if the wolf wasn’t Cooper? I swiped at the tears flowing steadily down my cheeks now. What if it was one of Cooper’s relatives? How would I handle that? What if it was just a plain, everyday wolf? How would I explain my sudden overwhelming desire to see a carcass?