Michele Hauf - Moonlight and Diamonds

With a few adjustments to her hair and a pat of a towel to dry her face, Blyss wandered back into the bedroom. Her lover stood by the window, naked, with an erection. The sun beamed across his face and shadowed his body, silhouetting that proud jut of manhood before the glass. Gorgeous. Something she would miss. She already missed him. The whole man. His kisses. His firm yet loving touch. His sexy smile...

Hell, what was she thinking? Get your head on course.

Blyss sat on the end of the bed. She picked up the red velvet dress from the floor. Where was her purse? Must have left it in the kitchen when she’d entered. “Your water is nice and hot here.”

“Is that a good thing? I mean, isn’t it all over the city?” He strode over to her and stroked his fingers over her hair. A shiver trickled down her neck and tightened her nipples. He smelled like fire and strength and sex. It was annoyingly distracting.

“Usually takes mine five minutes to warm nicely in the winter,” she provided in an attempt to stick to the plan. “I may live off the Champs-Élysées, but the plumbing doesn’t care that it is the ritzy section of town.”

“Is that the street with all the fancy shops on it? The one that leads up to Napoleon’s statue?”

Blyss smiled and stood to face him. She trailed a finger down his chest that was dusted with brown hair. His muscles gleamed in the sunlight.

“It’s not a statue. It’s a monument. The Arc de Triomphe was erected by Napoleon to commemorate his military victories.” She kissed his jaw. Avoided touching his hard-on. Not an easy task. “Wish I had a toothbrush.”

“I might have seen an extra in the drawer. Give me a few minutes to brush my teeth. Then I’ll set one out for you. Okay?”

“Perfect.”

He kissed her on the mouth and she pushed away from him. “I just said—”

“Are we going to discuss the werewolf thing?”

Heartbeats rammed against her rib cage. “I don’t want to. I... No. Please let it go, Stryke.”

He sighed and nodded. But for a few seconds he studied her. Trying to look inside her? Figure how he had missed that she was a werewolf?

If only she had known the same about him.

Finally, Stryke strolled toward the bathroom.

Tearing her gaze from his sexy backside, Blyss sighed. The life she led was a difficult achievement. And she did strive for it. But it was to be her undoing.

When the bathroom door closed, she slipped the dress over her head as she made a beeline for the closet door. Inside, the walk-in closet was vast and empty. Only the first rack held a few items. Two pairs of men’s shoes sat on the floor beside a large empty suitcase.

She touched the hung items. A few T-shirts. Some jeans and a pair of dressier slacks. One white dress shirt. Nothing designer. And one black tie that wasn’t silk but rather something like polyester.

Blyss shuddered. The man’s wardrobe was hideous. Not a natural fiber in the lot, and yet the suit last night had been Zegna, if she was not mistaken. And she rarely misjudged couture. Though it had been poorly tailored to fit him, it had been expensive. She was sure of it.

Where was the suit?

“Hey.”

Blyss startled. She hadn’t heard Stryke’s return and now he stood in the doorway, filling the space with an easy confidence, shoulders set back and head tilted. He’d put on a pair of jeans that hung low, revealing the hard cuts of muscle that veered toward his groin like some kind of traffic alert that screamed “Go this way!”

“What are you doing?” He held a boxed toothbrush in his hand.

“Uh, just...looking.” She spread her palm down the front of one of the T-shirts. Shit. What to say? “I’m a bit of a snoop.” Weren’t all women? “A girl can learn a lot about a man by standing in his closet.”

Oh, bad save, Blyss. Very bad save.

“Is that so? Tell me what you’ve learned about me?”

“That you’re a terrible traveler. Didn’t you say you were in town for a wedding? Where’s the suit you wore last night?”

“It was a loaner. I dropped it off at Vail’s earlier today. I’ve been doing a lot of running around for my family, picking up things they need for the wedding.”

“Vail?”

“A vampire. He’s the father of the groom. I borrowed the suit for the night. I’ve been informed by the female faction of all this wedding madness that I’ll have a rental for the wedding. Although...I imagine Vail will probably wear the suit for the wedding.”

“Vail,” she muttered. “I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

“You probably haven’t. Vamps tend to stay off the radar.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

He discussed vampires with her so casually. As if it was something she was familiar with and engaged in discussion every day. The paranormal breeds were something she avoided with a passion. And talking about them made her uncomfortable.

“But since you don’t want to discuss the werewolf thing, I’ll assume vampires are off the table, too?”

She nodded and dropped her hand from the front of the dress shirt.

“So, do you want to go to a wedding?” Stryke offered as he waggled the toothbrush before her.

Blyss accepted the packaged offering and tapped it against her lower lip. A wedding with vampires? Oh, mercy no. But if the suit was going to be there? Had she any other choice?

The last thing she wanted to do was associate with werewolves and vampires.

“Weddings are always fun,” she managed to say brightly. “When is it?”

“Saturday. It’s an evening wedding. I’ll pick you up around six?”

She nodded. “It’s a date.”

Step three of the plan had failed miserably. On to step four. Emergency procedures.

“I’ll need your address.”

Blyss strolled out into the bedroom, stepped into her heels and spied his mobile phone on the nightstand beside the bed.

“I’ll enter it for you.”

She typed in her address on the contacts app, but she didn’t enter her number. She never gave any man her number.

When Stryke took the phone he leaned in to kiss her, but she performed a twist and managed to avoid the contact as his lips brushed her cheek. She clicked toward the bedroom door, abandoning the toothbrush with a toss toward the bed.

“I’m so sorry to rush off, but I have to get back to the gallery!”

She didn’t listen for his reply, but suspected he was probably kicking himself for inviting her to the wedding after that cold brush-off. Of course, now the man would have another day to think and wonder over her. Not a good thing.

Grabbing her scarf and purse as she breezed through the kitchen, she hastened through the front door and skipped toward the elevator.

A vampire wedding would prove a challenge. But if she did not find the suit, she would not be able to pay off Edamite Thrash. And life as she knew it would never again be the same.

* * *

“It freaked me out,” Stryke said to his brother Kelyn as they strolled down a narrow cobbled street somewhere in the 5th arrondissement. Trouble walked ahead of them. “I had no idea she was werewolf.”

“Something must be wrong with her,” Kelyn offered in his usual quiet tone.

Of the four Saint-Pierre boys, Kelyn had no wolf in him and was 100 percent faery, thanks to their mother’s genes. Physically he looked like no one in the family—save their mother—and was tall, lithe and pale. He usually covered the faint white markings that traced his arms, chest and back of his neck. Faery markings even he wasn’t sure about. His violet eyes had a tendency to make women swoon. And Stryke had heard more than a few whispers about Kelyn’s prowess between the sheets that made the ladies collapse in delighted exhaustion.

His sidhe brother seemed to navigate Paris as if he knew the city, yet used the ley-line excuse when Stryke asked about it. Faeries were inexplicably connected to the ley lines that crissed and crossed across the planet.