What's New, Pussycat? (Wolf Mates Book 2) Read online

  JC tapped her coffee mug with a fingernail and gave him the same frowny face he’d often seen his sisters give him. That meant bad Derrick. “Decidedly not delicate. No finger pointing,” she said, sending him fiery signals with her eyes he didn’t understand.

  Christ. He’d apologized more in two hours than he had in a lifetime. “Sorry—again. So, like I said, the curse dictates our life-mate journeys are next to impossible. As an example, we’ll use Dr. Phil here on the couch.” He gave JC a pointed look. “And my brother Max, who’s also the alpha of our pack. Max’s prophecy was read last month. He had to find his life mate, and when he did, he found JC. JC is a human.” He waited for a reaction, maybe a flick of her tail, a tuft of hair out of place.

  Nothing. Cool as a cucumber.

  “Are we still on board? Or do you want me to stop?” he asked her, trying to keep his wealth of indelicate to himself.

  Her gaze was solemn, unblinking, maybe even snooty. So be it.

  “Anyway, JC is a human. So you can imagine the kind of trouble Max, a werewolf, would have convincing her that werewolves really exist. You being a shifter, you obviously understand we have to hide and be very careful who we reveal ourselves to, right?”

  She began to groom her paw, running her tongue over the shiny fur, utterly unaffected by his words.

  “So that was the impossible part. And let me make something clear. I’m not sure who put you in the Dumpster at the 7-Eleven or where you came from before this. That wasn’t me. After Eva gave me the clue about where you were, instinct told me to look inside the bin. I can’t explain it. I just knew you’d be there.”

  She rolled on her back, arching her spine, pushing her belly upward toward the sun streaming into the living room from the massive windows.

  Derrick took another deep breath, fighting to stay unruffled. “Like I said, the curse was designed to set us up to fail, as was the case with Max and JC.” He still had major admiration that his brother had pulled that off.

  Max had not only managed to find his life mate, but she’d actually fallen in love with him and come to terms with him being a werewolf all in one fell swoop.

  It had to be the pretty words Max was so good at, which could mean Derrick was already on the road to failure.

  “But!” JC chimed in, squeezing Max’s hand. “Max didn’t fail. Sure, I was probably more freaked out than I’ve ever been in my life. When he told me he was a werewolf, that topped even Pennywise in a Stephen King novel on the fear-factor scale. But you’re one up on me anyway. You already know all this paranormal stuff exists. Plus, it did all work out in the end. We’re together and in the process of getting to know each other better.” She smiled adoringly up at Max, snuggling against him.

  “You’re forgetting the mating part of this,” Derrick reminded her. How could she possibly gloss over the worst part of it all?

  JC’s sigh was ragged as she rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe. “I was going for easy entry, not a crash landing. I wanted her to have a glass half full before you sucked it dry.”

  Max chuckled, pulling JC closer, but he remained unhelpful, meaning this was Derrick’s to handle.

  Derrick clenched his jaw. This was ridiculous. He was sitting in the middle of his brother’s living room, talking to a cat, gearing up to tell her she had to mate with him or he’d die. “Is there a delicate way to tell her the rest, JC?”

  Max looked at JC and winced. “That’s a fair question.”

  He took another deep breath and fixed his eyes on the cat’s—so green and round like colored glass, they were mesmerizing. “Let me preface this by saying, I still don’t know the impossible part of this prophecy, because as JC said, you’re a shifter, too. So you won’t find that information out of the ordinary. And I don’t think when you hear the rest of this you’ll find the idea so unappealing you’d rather be skinned alive.”

  Smooth, Adams.

  “Derrick!” JC warned, glancing down at the cat, now busy rubbing her cheek on her paw without missing a beat. “Skinned alive? Could you be any more insensitive? Save the analogies, Cyrano.”

  Max nodded, trying to keep his face serious but for the twitch of his lower lip. “Wow. You really suck on every level at this, brother.”

  He did suck. He wasn’t into sweet words or beating around the bush. He was very unlike Max. Max was patient and a good listener, always had sage advice, making him the perfect alpha for their crazy pack. Derrick, on the other hand, was impatient, struggled with flowery words, and was direct as all hell.

  But he was trying.

  So Derrick nodded his agreement. “Max is right. I do suck at this, and I’m leaving a blanket apology on the table from this point on for any foolish mistakes I make that offend your sensibilities. So, I’m just going to give it to you straight because I’m not any good at pretty speeches. Here’s the clincher to the curse. You, according to my aunt’s prophecy, are my life mate. As my life mate, you have to mate with me on the next full moon or I die.”

  There it was in all its un-pretty-ness.

  Boom. Life-mate speech complete.

  * * *

  Martine fell forward, losing her balance on the coffee table and cracking her kitty skull on the hard surface.

  Mate? As in, do the do? Make the woot-woot?

  Or die?

  That couldn’t mean the kind of mating they meant. Could it? Martine tried to remember what she knew about werewolves and their mating rituals. When you mated, you mated for life with a werewolf, didn’t you? Very unlike the feline family.

  And didn’t they want you to make more werewolves? Wasn’t that important to their packs for longevity?

  She was absolutely not in the market to make little anythings—especially not with a werewolf. He was, if you looked at it from a very basic evolutionary aspect, essentially a dog. She was a cat. Cats and dogs didn’t mate. What would they produce if they mated anyway?

  Catdog?

  No-no to the mate. She liked single. She didn’t want to mate for life with anything but a copy of Vogue, and even then, she cheated religiously with Cosmo. What she wanted was her freedom.

  And really, what kind of line was he spewing? I’ll die if you don’t mate with me on the full moon.

  It certainly had more impact than “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together” followed by a yuck-yuck-yuck, she’d give him that. But the curse of death? Not that she wasn’t privy to plenty of curses. She knew all about them.

  Just ask Escobar the warlock.

  JC had a sympathetic look on her face when she peered at her. “We’re not inspiring you to shift, are we? It was the death thing, right?”

  Why would something as dire as death-sex keep her in shift atrophy? Silly.

  Martine walked to the edge of the coffee table and looked at JC. Her instincts told her there was no malice here. If there were a way to tell JC how thankful she was that she’d at least been kind enough to address her, she’d do it.

  Instead, she stuck a paw out, placing it on JC’s arm, hoping that was enough to show her she understood.

  JC patted it, smiling at her. “It’s a little like the paranormal Hunger Games, huh?”

  This was a little like the paranormal Crazy Games, was what this was like. Even in her world, this was crazy. How could she, out of all the shifters in the world, have been picked to be this man’s life mate?

  Ah, but you’re forgetting the big picture here, Martine. While you’re here, you’re free. Sort of.

  But for how long before someone came looking? Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe she could just hide here for the rest of her life?

  And in order to do that you have to have death-sex and mate for life.

  A lottery of choices, if you will, Martine.

  JC nodded her head, tucking her curls behind her ear. “I know exactly what you’re thinking right now. ‘Who’s in charge of this life mate thing and how did I end up like this?’ I’m still not sure how I, out of all the people in the
world, was chosen for Max,” she said, poking him in the shoulder playfully. “It was a little like, ‘here, take that. Have a human who’s going to drive you out of your mind because she doesn’t believe in werewolves. Then, for your troubles, go on and try to make her fall in love with you and convince her to mate so you won’t die. Ha-ha-ha.’”

  Max wound an arm around her shoulders, a definitive possessive gesture, making Martine shiver. It was clear this man Max loved this woman, and JC loved him back. It was in the way he looked at her, in the way he touched her, in the way her eyes scoured his face with unadulterated worship.

  The mate-or die-thing had clearly worked for them. Squee, love.

  Martine looked to Derrick and waited. He had a jaw that possessed a delicious tic she’d take a nip of if circumstances were different. There’d been a time when she’d enjoyed a man just for the pure enjoyment of him. If she’d run across Derrick during that time, she’d have definitely chosen to enjoy him.

  Like if they’d met in a club—or at one of her office parties. Not in the backwoods of Cedar Glen, New Jersey, where distant banjos plucked the tune from Deliverance.

  JC cocked her head. “Maybe you should explain the details of the curse, Derrick? Tell her why the need to mate is truly so dire?”

  He was clearly running out of patience. Martine smelled it, saw it in his rigid posture. “A long time ago, several scientists kidnapped a group of werewolves to perform experiments on. We’re still not sure what those experiments entailed. We only know the results. Anyway, the experimental weres managed to break free, but they were scarred from years of abuse, and their DNA altered somehow.

  “When they returned to their packs, our elders shunned them, didn’t want them to reproduce for fear they’d weaken their packs. They were due for extermination until my grandparents stepped in and spoke out. When they chose to defy the elders by taking in those pack members and their families and coming here to Cedar Glen, the elders cursed all Adams males. Sort of retribution for disobeying their wishes.”

  Shunned? She was somewhere in the country with a bunch of redneck werewolves who’d been shunned? That really was a banjo she heard playing in the distance.

  So maybe the person who’d dumped her in the cat carrier thought she could help them? Maybe her kidnapper thought she could break this curse they were fretting over?

  Hah.

  Fat lot of good she’d do them.

  “Buuut…” JC said, looking like she was going to attempt to inject sunshine into a very dismal story. “The story has a happy ending. Max’s grandparents saved the day, and now everyone who was shunned lives here in Cedar Glen. Okay, there are some kinks in that happy ending, if I’m being fair, but so far, everyone’s been pretty great.”

  Aha. Kinks. That was likely the key word here.

  As everyone grew silent, Martine’s stomach began to roll. She hadn’t eaten in hours and there was so much to digest she felt dizzy from it. Curses and kinks and dogs and humans and death-sex.

  Derrick finally rose, giving her a brief glance with those hard eyes before he said, “So where do we go from here? Maybe we should call Aunt Eva for advice?”

  Max reached for his cellphone on the coffee table and held it up. “Nat just texted me. She’s gone again. You know her, she rolls on in here on chicken noodle soup night, whips up her crazy, and then she’s out until the next mate call.”

  JC looked at Martine again and winked. “Nat is Derrick and Max’s younger sister. They have two. And a mother who’s an amazing cook. You’ll like them.”

  The mention of food was her tipping point. Martine couldn’t stop the turning roll of her stomach. She heaved a long moment and then coughed, opening her mouth wide.

  Martine gagged and finally relieved her throat of the ball lodged in it since some lunatic had stuffed her into that cage.

  A round hairball lay at her feet.

  Ick.

  But phew, that was better.

  Chapter Three

  Derrick deposited her, cat carrier and all, on his kitchen counter, popping the grate door open with a lean finger. “So here’s the deal. I’m thinking you might be stuck in shift due to nerves. I don’t want you to be upset or feel pressured in any way. Take your time to adjust, and then we’ll start figuring this out. While you catch your breath, I’ll find you some water and maybe once your stomach’s settled, you’ll feel better.”

  If nothing else, at least he was trying to work this out. After his explanation, and if what he said were true, he was in as much of a jam as she was.

  Poking her head out of the cage, she sniffed the air and assessed the lay of Derrick’s land. It wasn’t an apartment in Manhattan; there were no sirens blaring, no horns squawking. In fact, it was pretty damn quiet.

  Too quiet.

  But in Derrick’s favor, the house was really tastefully decorated--for a man. Lots of big, overstuffed furniture in sedate beige hues with touches of lemon and green for accents. The walls were taupe and gray with splashes of color in the way of framed art; the appliances shiny; the kitchen cabinets whitewashed and clean, with a wire basket of fake lemons and green pears in the middle of the large island.

  An entire wall was devoted to what she suspected were family pictures framed in black. Derrick laughing with his arm around another man holding a rabbit. Derrick with his arms around two beautiful girls who vaguely resembled him. Derrick and Max, their shirts off, throwing a football.

  To his credit, there were no deer heads hanging from the walls or crushed beer cans strewn across the floor in a puddle of chew, and not one dead squirrel freeze-dried in its “natural” repose, nibbling on an acorn and mounted to a slab of wood.

  As Derrick filled a bowl full of water for her, Martine decided to explore. Hopping from the cage, she stretched from neck to toe before jumping off the counter and onto the hardwood floor. The sunlight streaming in from all corners of the breakfast nook was divine. She made a mental note to nap there as soon as possible.

  She liked the smell here in Derrick’s house. It smelled of pine and the outdoors, brawny man and the woods. Making her way down a long hall, she found several bedrooms, all as well decorated as his living room and kitchen.

  She stopped at what she decided was his bedroom, filled with an enormous bed big enough to fit a man of his size, covered in a dark green comforter with plump red pillows and a window with a view of the pine trees surrounding his house.

  Slipping inside Derrick’s bedroom felt a little intimate at this point, but if he was talking mercy mating, surely he wouldn’t mind if she took a peek at where the death-sex was supposed to happen.

  His bathroom was what dreams were made of, an enormous white tub with jets and a big-screen TV, a mocha and gray tiled shower with two showerheads, and a bench seat where you could sit under the spray fo the water.

  She’d missed taking showers—long, hot showers full of sweetly scented shower gel to wash away a long hard day.

  Derrick stuck his head around the corner, interrupting her thoughts, his dark hair gleaming in the sunlight-bathed room, a question on his face.

  A ripple of pure awareness skittered along her spine. Wow. He was really beautiful to look at—tight, tan skin, thick thighs, lean waist.

  He drove his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, his expression tentative. “I’m a little at a loss right now. I don’t know what to offer you in terms of nourishment, and I don’t know how to ask without offending you.”

  Please, for my dignity, don’t offer me tuna in a can.

  “Tuna maybe? I have a couple of cans.”

  Oh, heaven.

  Rather than offend him, she decided tuna from a can was better than nothing from a can. To communicate her willingness, she skirted past his legs to head toward the kitchen, her tail brushing his calf as she did.

  And there was that tingle again, a small beat of electricity, beginning in her stomach and spiking along her spine in a whisper of heat.

  She shook it off, c
halked it up to her new surroundings and lack of male companionship for so many months and sauntered down the long hallway again, heading toward the kitchen, where she sat in the middle of the floor, waiting.

  As Derrick made his way into the large space, she stopped breathing momentarily.

  She’d have to attribute that to nerves, too, but while she watched him open the can of tuna and put it in a bowl, watched the muscles in his arms flex and move beneath his skin, she had to wonder if admiring him the way she was had less to do with nerves and more to do with pure physical attraction.

  Derrick set the tuna in front of her along with a bowl of water. “I have to head out to get some work done. Will you be okay here alone for a little while?”

  Martine looked up at him, pausing before gobbling down the tuna she’d wanted little to do with moments ago.

  He dropped to his haunches, tipping her chin up. “Maybe we can work out a sign? Meow for yes, it’s okay to leave you alone for a little while, don’t meow if not?”

  Derrick’s hand on her chin was sort of nice. She found she had to fight to keep from rubbing her head against it.

  Instead, she meowed her consent.

  Satisfied, he rose, grabbing his keys from the countertop and glancing at her one last time. “I’ll be back soon. Feel free to make yourself at home.”

  With that he was gone and she was left alone with her tuna and her thoughts.

  Bleh, tuna.

  At least it was albacore packed in water.

  * * *

  He caught sight of Hector just as he was crossing over the pathway connecting their houses.

  “Look, Derrick!” Hector yelled from the doorway of his barn, his voice full of excitement. He held up a small brown bunny from the hut he’d had built for them right next to his house in order to keep them close.

  Derrick let his head hang low, hiding his groan as he strode into the barn. Another bunny. “Hector, you’re going to need another hut the way you’re going. You can’t save them all, buddy.”

  Hector rolled his dark eyes and made a face. “I could if you’d all stop eating them. You’re heathens, you filthy carnivores.”