Following Fabian (3 page)

Dumbstruck.

Yes, that was a good word for what Astrid felt as Fabian laid whisper-light kisses up her forearm. He swirled his lips over the delicate crook at her elbow, and stopped there as he could roll her sleeve up no more.

She shouldn’t let him get so close, to touch her when a matter of necessity wasn’t in play, but she found herself curiously spellbound by his proximity.

It wasn’t magic. It was chemistry, which to Astrid was an equally unpredictable thing. She couldn’t predict what sort of reaction would develop as a result of their commingling—whether it’d yield a discovery worth the risk of experimentation, or if it’d be yet another profound social failure for her.

She was like some rare earth element that needed something equally uncommon and unstable to bind with. She always had been.

As a child, she’d been a girl with few close friends because she burned through them so quickly. Her grandmother had always tried to set her up with prim and proper girls from their church, but they’d all found Astrid to be unusual, and not in a good way.

“You’re weird,” they’d say when she suggested they go out behind her grandparents’ lodge and shoot cans.

“What’s wrong with shooting cans?” she’d ask.

“I’d rather play dolls,” they’d say, and they’d hold up the case of Barbie dolls they all seemed to travel with as a matter of course.

The play dates were usually cut short, and when Nan cornered her and asked, “What happened this time?” Astrid always had the same response: “They’re boring.”

It wasn’t that she had any particular aversion to playing dolls. She really didn’t. She even kept a few favorites on her dresser back then. She’d just learned early on to test her prospective peers—to vet them carefully. She didn’t want to be friends with people who did only what they thought they
should
do. She wanted to be friends with people open-minded enough to at least ask her questions. “Why do you like shooting?” they could ask, and she could answer, “I like a lot of things.”

The shooting was just one sliver of her whole personality, she put it out there up front because she’d rather people judge her superficially so she could clear them off her slate.

She liked show tunes and was a classically trained pianist. No one ever asked about that back then.

She liked watching documentaries about Austria and Germany, because she was an expert genealogist and all of her family hailed from there. No one ever asked her about her family tree when she was young, beyond wondering why she and Eric lived with their grandparents at the lodge.

She collected fun socks and scoured discount store bargain bins looking for knee socks with holiday motifs or quirky sayings.

She loved reading funny novels with happy endings, and hated women’s fiction that made her cry.

She still sent people paper cards for birthdays and holidays, even though e-mailing was easier.

She loved to eat more than she liked cooking.

She found needlepoint cathartic, and often embroidered wall hangings with such aphorisms as “You’re a bad bitch.”

No one ever asked about those things…not until she’d become a Shrew.

The very first thing Dana had said to her when she sprang Astrid from the rehab center after her mutations settled in was, “Girl, what’s up with those funky socks?”

They’d had cartoon muzzleloaders on them. Astrid’s brother Eric had bought them online to cheer his little sister up. They had.

Astrid had shrugged, and said, “I do silly socks the way some women do pretty underwear. They make me feel good.” She’d signed the forms Dana dropped on her lap.

“That’s good,” Dana said. She leaned on her cane and cocked her head to the side. “You have to find your own silver lining sometimes. You’re sort of wearing yours.”

She’d liked Dana from that moment, because she’d understood. She’d
asked
. The ones that stuck around always asked.

Astrid shook free of her reverie as Fabian wove his fingers through her hair and tipped her face toward his. His thumbs traced the hollows of her cheeks, and skimmed her jaw line.

When she met his silvery gaze, he seemed genuinely curious about her, not anticipatory, so when he brought his lips down to hers, she didn’t expect it.

Didn’t move a muscle, beyond her eyes.

They widened as his tongue searched the seam of her lips for an opening.

She parted her lips for him…or rather, her lips parted themselves, and her brain caught up to the activity a moment too late to refuse him.

He was careful, mindful of his facial hair that could abrade her skin, and kissed her like she was his treasure. Gentle, but probing, and she closed her eyes and reflexively drew up onto her tiptoes to deepen his kiss.

His lips tasted like the honey lip balm she’d loaned him in the SUV during the drive to the motel, and suddenly, she remembered what she must taste like.

She drew back, mortified, but he grabbed her forearms.

“What’s wrong?”

“Onions.”

His forehead furrowed, then smoothed. “Oh. Is that all?” He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her against his front, and she drew in a startled breath at his unabashed arousal against her belly.

Oh, my God.

She pushed him back, swatting at his chest like the prissy lady she most certainly wasn’t. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but this guy was seriously fucking with her control.

He put his hand on her cheek and smiled his lopsided grin. “What’s wrong, little dragon?”

Dragon
? She groaned, and put her hands up in a gesture of defeat. “Nothing’s wrong. Let’s just not get carried away here. I’m sort of on the clock, and I don’t want this situation to get complicated.”

“I appreciate you being upfront, but what’s wrong with complicated?”

She blinked. Was he kidding her? “You don’t hash your words, do you?”

He shrugged. “Why waste time? To me, it makes sense that if I’m interested in a person, I would behave as such.”

“I think you’re probably just happy to be rescued and want to repay me for it. No need.”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Sex isn’t a commodity for me. I kissed you because you looked like you were thinking too hard. I want to make love to you because I’m attracted to you. That’s all.”

Make
love
to me? Is this guy serious?

“Right. Nice story. And then what?” She pushed his hand down and backed up before he could reach for her again.

His mouth opened, then closed without words coming out. He shook his head. He’d understood the question, but probably didn’t have the words to answer her.

Good. Maybe that’d give him some time to think about it—to give her an answer that wasn’t pure bullshit.

“You stay,” she said, pointing to him, and then the floor. She kept backing toward the door. “Me go.” She pointed to herself, and then the exit.

He rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be back later.”

He gave his head a small shake, and settled back into the desk chair, reaching for his sandwich.

“Stay,” she admonished. “Don’t leave.”

“Goodbye,
dragón
,” he said, waving her off.

She didn’t need a translation for that.

* * *

Astrid pushed her shopping cart through the aisles of the big box store with a motivated efficiency, tossing in this and that while participating in a typically frenetic Shrew conference call.

“Have you gotten in contact with that agent yet?” Dana asked her.

“No, it’s on my to-do list.” Astrid held up two packs of men’s underwear, one of briefs and one of boxers, not knowing which Fabian preferred, if he wore any at all. She shrugged. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. She tossed one of each in size large into the cart.

“Do it today,” Dana said. “She’s waiting on your contact.”

“Fine.”

“How’s he doing?” Sarah asked. “Felipe wants to know.”

“As well as could be expected. Seems cheerful enough for a man who’s been intermittently drugged for the past six or seven months. On the thin side. And scruffy. I don’t like scruffy.” She angled the cart toward the personal care aisles. Dude needed to shave.

The deep-throated chuckle she heard next could only belong to Maria. Maria was the closest thing Astrid had to a partner as the two of them were most frequently paired up. They played off of each other well, and made each other bolder when situations required it. The other Shrews—Dana, Sarah, and Tamara—were naturally more aggressive in fights, perhaps because they’d had more training at it. Maria and Astrid tended to be more conservative, which meant sometimes they were on the defense squad instead of offense. They knew their weaknesses and were working on strengthening them.

Astrid sighed and scanned the display of disposable razors. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing, it just…why would you care whether or not he’s shaven?”

Would he care about refillable blades? Cooling aloe strips? Ergonomic grip?
She squinted at the razors and did a mental eenie-meenie-miney-moe. “Who said I cared?”

“You did. You said you didn’t like it. Having an opinion is caring.”

Cooling aloe strips won. She picked up a five-pack along with a can of shaving gel.

Now what
?

She stood on tiptoes and looked over the shelf top at the nearby aisles. “Maybe facial scruff is a triggering event for me,” she said.

“Or maybe Fabian is really good-looking and he flirted with you,” Maria chided.

“Isn’t that how it always starts?” Dana asked, and her voice went soft, almost sweet at the end. Unusual for her. Astrid imagined the lead Shrew was even smiling a bit way back in North Carolina, probably thinking about her beloved “dirty cat.”

“No. It doesn’t,” Tamara muttered.

Astrid hadn’t known Tamara was on the line. She’d been so enmeshed in the Were-bear drama raging in the Smokies, she’d been scarce lately. She’d only known she was a Bear herself for a couple of weeks, and her recent partnership of the Bear who would become her mate had been a situation that fell squarely into the category of
Big-ass Coincidence
.

“Sometimes, it starts with butting heads, thinly-veiled threats of physical violence, and some idiot with a fabulous ass strutting around naked,” Tamara said.

Naked? Astrid’s faced burned at even the thought of Fabian peeling off his clothes. Was he showering right now in her absence? Lounging on her bed in only his towel and beard?

She might even learn to like beards if that were the case.

Nope. Not going there
. “Okay, well, none of those things are happening here. No one’s getting naked.”

Astrid paused in front of the very small book section and grabbed an English-Spanish dictionary off the shelf. It probably wouldn’t contain the complete vocabulary typical of a Shrew—phrases like “light his ass up and don’t stop hitting until his face hits the mud”—but at least she’d be able to look up words like “shower” and “smug” and…

She turned to the back half, and scanned the Spanish-to-English
D
section.

Yep.
Dragón
meant exactly what it sounded like.

“Ass,” she mumbled.

“Who are you calling an ass?” Sarah asked.

“Sorry. I’m shopping. Some guy just cut me off with his cart.”

“Careful, now,” Tamara said. “You know how you get when your road rage kicks in.”

“Look, that happened
one
time
in the heat of passion. That was years ago.”

“It was last Christmas.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Maybe it was. Shit blurred together.

“All right, girls, let’s rein it in,” Dana piped up. “Astrid, has Fabian been able to share any information about Jacques’s movements? If we can’t finish the job in the next week, we’re going to have to turn this over to the Feds and let them handle it.”

“He hasn’t yet, but we haven’t really had a chance to hash it out. He’s…”

He’s what? Gorgeous and distracting?

She groaned, thinking back to how her body had tingled with need when he’d touched her, and how her panties had drenched with his brazen claiming of her. She’d forgotten everything that mattered when he’d put his lips on her skin. When he’d pressed his hard cock against her belly, she couldn’t think of anything beyond how good he’d feel stretching her, and she’d never been a casual woman when it came to sharing her body. In fact, since becoming a Shrew, she was even less inclined to let a man touch her. She even avoided handshakes.

Perhaps it wasn’t so much Fabian revving up her engine, but the fact she’d denied herself a basic human need for so long.

She idled her cart in the checkout line and plucked up a three-pack of orange Tic-Tacs. She wasn’t giving up onions anytime soon, but she could at least be conscientious about her consumption of them.

She rolled her eyes. When had she ever cared? She’d never been so careful around her brother or the Shrews.

“Hello? Astrid?” Maria said by way of nudging.

Shit
. “Distracting,” she said to finish her earlier thought.

“Mm-hmm. Felipe says Fabian has a masochistic streak that includes attraction to cranky brunettes, so I just bet he is,” Sarah said.

Astrid’s cheeks burned again, and that almost never happened, and certainly not twice in five minutes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who got embarrassed. Shame was something she didn’t like wasting energy on, but the Shrews knew her too fucking well, and they weren’t going to let her tiptoe away from hard truths.

She piled the contents of her cart onto the conveyor belt with an indignant huff. “You know what? Felipe can come get his own brother, and I’ll fly home. Maybe I’ll be back in time to help Eric with spring WienerFest.”

“WienerFest is cancelled,” Maria said, and her voice was unusually solemn. She was the most upbeat of all the Shrews, which maybe wasn’t saying much. They didn’t do enthusiasm well, but they were usually happy on the inside.

Kinda.

“What do you mean, cancelled? I just talked to him three days ago, and he was complaining about vendors having raised their rates for this year. It’s not about that, is it?”

“No, it’s…not that. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure he’ll fill you in when you get back. He’s been busy with all the freaks coming and going at the lodge. Probably hasn’t had time to tell you.”