Something About Harry(49)
He had a strange rush of confidence he hadn’t possessed before this “accident,” and he liked it. He had definitely been guilty of missing some very overt signs when it came to a woman, but he knew how to treat one once he had her.
While they were just pretending, he’d pretend they weren’t pretending. He sure didn’t hate the idea. In fact, this morning he’d awakened ready to get his pretend on.
Still, he heard his sister Donna’s warning in his head about what a sorry judge of character he was, and promptly ignored it. This is all a game, Harry. Remember why you’re playing it.
He was taking one for the team—yeah, yeah. But not a chance in hell was he going to let an opportunity like this pass him by. He didn’t want to be a werewolf, and he’d continue to look for ways to reverse that, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to explore Mara.
It had hit him like a punch to the kidneys last night, when he’d sworn she wasn’t going to jail on his watch. He’d toyed with why he’d developed this sudden protective instinct, put the notion away, then toyed with it again until he had to chalk it up to the unexplainable. He didn’t like anything there wasn’t a solution to, a logical explanation for—yet, here he was behaving illogically.
And liking it. He was liking it. Rolling around in it like a pig in mud.
Reaching across the white Formica, Harry grabbed her hand and smiled, rubbing his thumb over her silky, porcelain skin, savoring the texture of it. “You look really pretty today.”
Mara rolled her eyes. “Really? I’m glad terrified looks good on me. Because that’s what made up my entire color wheel this morning.”
Her reference to color wheels reminded him of the upcoming merge between Pack and Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics. “Okay, other than your color wheel issues, how’s it going?”
“Which part? The big, fat teller of tales part, or the part where I expect my brother to knock down the lab door at any moment and handcuff me with his infamous ‘I’m so disappointed in you, Mara’ frown?”
He grinned rather than buy into her panic, hoping it would soothe her frazzled nerves. “Both.”
“They both suck.”
“Your brother Keegan? He raised you and your other brother Sloan, right?”
She nodded her dark head, a strand of her hair slipping from the thick clip she held it up with—one he wanted to brush from her face. “Mostly, and don’t change the subject. We need to plan for a knotted-sheet escape, and in the event we can’t figure that out, toilet paper rations. I can’t skimp on the TP. Not even in prison.”
Nothing about her fear was okay with him. You’d think what she did was on par with murder in her culture. So he had to ask. “Do they really have—” he leaned into her, “a place they keep people who commit crimes in your world?”
Mara’s finger slipped to his arm and tapped it. “It’s your world now, too, lest you forget. And yep. They really do. We have to. One bad apple could spoil the whole damn thing. We want to live peacefully with humans, not create widespread panic. If someone found out about us, just one cruel or even nutty someone, imagine what they could do. What the government would do. So we have our own secret government. One you’ll have to learn the laws of. One of those laws is don’t turn someone into a werewolf. Period.”
Harry bristled. She hadn’t done it maliciously. “But you were trying to create a life. There was no malice in what you did.”
His defense reawakened Donna’s voice in his head. Ahem. Excuse me, Mr. I Don’t Want To Be A Werewolf, aren’t you consorting with the enemy? Wasn’t it you, just two nights ago, thinking all sorts of horrible things about the very woman you’ve claimed today is not only hot, but you’ve now complimented and admitted a wish to conduct carnality with? Wasn’t it you who was blaming her, et cetera, for doing this to you? Now it’s okay because her excuse was she wanted a baby? Oh, Harry.
Shut. Up. Donna. Mara’s talking.
He returned his attention to Mara, focusing completely on her and her dimples.
She wrinkled her cute nose and actually smiled, making his gut twist. “Is that you sticking up for me, Harry of the ‘You suck so hard for doing this to me, Mara’?”
Though he was pleased she was smiling, and he didn’t even know why, he kept his response honest. “I won’t lie and tell you I’m not still going to try and figure out how to change this, but I don’t think you should go to jail for it. And before you ask, I don’t know why I don’t. I just don’t.”
The wheels of her razor-sharp mind turned. He saw it—was suddenly living for it. “It doesn’t matter. Or it won’t. I don’t know if there’s a law against what I did yet. I do know the pack wants to keep our bloodlines strong. They want us to mate—with each other preferably. That’s how we keep most of the crazy out. By keeping our core pure.”