P.C. Cast - Mysteria Nights

“Oh.” Weirdly (what the hell was going on?) she seemed pleased at the idea. “I guess you won’t believe me if I tell you I’ve got a diaphragm in the bathroom.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“But we haven’t had dessert!” she wailed, gesturing to the dishes of fresh pie.

And I plan on keeping it that way.

Annoyingly, she could drive as fast as he could run, or almost, because he had barely slammed and locked his front door when she was hammering on it.

“Cole! Come on, don’t be a baby. Let me in and we’ll talk about this!”

“No!” he yelled back, resting against his front door. If he let her in, they were going to mate. If you put your hand in the fire you got burned, if you jumped into mud you got dirty, and if an ovulating female got too close to a werewolf, he got laid. They both did.

“Why are you acting like this?”

“I don’t want a baby!”

“Then stop acting like one!”

Argh. Faulty human hearing. “I didn’t say I wasn’t acting like one, I said I didn’t want one.”

“But why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t even know you!” he lied. Of all the reasons not to mate with a healthy, gorgeous, sweetly rounded, helpful, intelligent female, not “knowing” her was the least of it. “Now get back into your car and go away!”

“You know, the full moon’s over seven days away,” she said. “I looked it up. It’s not like you’re going to burst into hair right this second.”

“It’s four days away,” he corrected her. “Get lost.”

“Are we really going to have a conversation like this through your door?”

“Not if you get lost.”

She was silent. Thank God! He slumped to the floor, still throbbing, still wanting her. But he could never do that to any woman—curse her with a half man/half beast, a child who didn’t know, and a father who couldn’t help—never mind someone like Charlene. He wouldn’t go near her while she was ovulating. In fact, he was starting to think it was a good idea to stay away from her altogether.

The thought made his heart hurt, actually cramp like when you swam too long and your legs burned. He ignored it; his personal feelings about someone he barely knew—

(yes, that’s right, you don’t even know her)

(is that the human in you, or the werewolf? maybe werewolves make up their minds a little quicker)

He slapped his hands over his eyes and shook his head. How would he know? Anyway, it was a perfect example of why he shouldn’t knock Charlene up. What if his son or daughter wanted to know these things in twenty years?

What the hell could he tell him or her? “Sorry, I was supposed to find out but I got your mom pregnant and settled in Mysteria instead, and never got around to finding my people. Well, good luck and all.”

Never.

He could hear Charlene rustling around the side of his house, doubtless looking for a way to get in. Silly bunny; she had no chance. He wished she would give up and break a window. Argh! He meant give up and go home, yeah, go home, that’s what he wanted.

He heard a double click, and instantly realized what had happened. As Char stepped through the back door, he howled, “Rae!”

“What?” the ghost asked petulantly. “Nobody’s gotten any in this place for decades. I think you should go for it.”

“I had no interest in it before—”

“So—what? That’s an electric drill in your pants?”

“—and I’m sure not doing it if you’re going to watch!”

“Oh, calm down, princess. After all these years, I’ve decided sex is fundamentally boring, at least from a voyeur’s point of view. I’ll be in the basement. Did you know the tap’s been leaking since last night?”

“Go fuck yourself, Rae!”

No answer. Just as well. Somewhere, Mama Zee could probably sense he had been swearing, not to mention rude to a lady. A dead lady, but still.

Charlene was stamping down the hall toward him, her breasts jiggling with every stamp. He tried to look at her face for about a second, immediately gave up the battle, and turned to scrabble at the locked door. His fingers were suddenly too big, the lock the size of a pin head.

If the neighborhood could see him now, the neighborhood enforcer scrambling to escape from a woman who barely came up to his chin . . .

Her arms were around him and she was raining kisses on the back of his neck. He groaned and fought the door as if it was a living thing, but it stubbornly resisted him.

“Come on,” she said, and there was a note of sad urgency in her voice. “I need you. In more ways than you can ever imagine.”

“We can’t,” he groaned. He stopped clawing at the door, and stood still in her arms, leaning his sweaty forehead on the (annoyingly closed) door.

“We have to. I have to.”

“I can’t do it to you.”

“I think,” she whispered, reaching around and cupping his jeans where the zipper came together, “you can.”

“You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“That’s okay,” she said, turning him around. He kissed her, sucked on her full lower lip, even nipped her lightly. She just wriggled closer. “Neither do you.”

“God, God . . .”

“That’s funny, that’s just what I was saying,” she teased. They were resting on the living room floor, clothes strewn everywhere, and she had slid a chubby thigh over his legs and was stroking his ribs. “Repeatedly. Loudly.”

It had been, to put it mildly, a hectic half hour. Kissing and sucking and stroking and sliding . . . and then they had really gotten down to business. She had been everything he imagined: athletic and indefatigable, with the lips of a devil and the hands of an angel. He wanted to go again. He would go again. Except . . .

“What if you’re pregnant?” he asked anxiously.

“Boy, you are really harshing my buzz. No afterglow at all, huh? No?” She saw he was leaning over her propped up on an elbow in a pose of tense waiting, and answered him, obviously quite puzzled. “Cole, what is the big deal? I told you I was on the Pill.”

“Yes, but that was a lie.”

She pressed her lips together. “And the pitiful remnants of the afterglow . . . gone. Yes, okay, it was a lie. I admit, I wanted to get you into bed. Forgot about that damn nose of yours for two seconds. But I still don’t understand what the big deal is. I wouldn’t tie you down—what year do you think this is? What town, for that matter?”

“But the baby—”

“Ah, the baby.” She said it with such admiration and longing, he was a little afraid of her.

“What if it’s—like me?”

She smiled. “What if it is?”

He got up, starting putting his clothes on. “You’re not getting this at all.”

“Obviously. So explain it to me.”

“I could never make you understand. Now get out.” He paused. “Please.”

“Okay, okay.” She slipped into her blouse, found her underpants wadded up in a corner, stepped into them. “Your postcoital grumpiness has been duly noted.”

“So has your total indifference toward the consequences of intimate relations.”

“What are you, a woman now? And nobody held a gun to your head, I might add. And I might not be pregnant, you know. Maybe you’re not the big ole stud you think you are. How about that ?”

“I am, though,” he said gloomily, holding the door open for her. She hopped out, half-dressed and trying to slip into her sneakers.

“Don’t call me!” she yelled as he shut the door.

“Don’t worry,” he muttered.

It was only after she left that he remembered she was supposed to take him around to other supernatural creatures, try to track down his herd.