Another slash of pain ricocheted across his face and tore at his neck muscles, making him reach for the tree trunk to keep from screaming and humiliating himself in front of two women who did this like they were changing their clothes.
He gripped the trunk of the tree, his fingers clenching a branch, shredding it, the pine needles stinging his hands.
Marty bent down low, her perfume, floral and light, mingling with her unique scent. “You’re fighting it, Harry. It’s because you’re angry you’re a werewolf. You don’t want this. You want everything to be the way it was. I get it, but the harder you fight, the harder getting to the end result will be.”
Yes. By fuck. That’s exactly what he wanted. He wanted to go back to his average, if not boring and predictable, life.
The tearing of his biceps followed that thought and more slashes of white-hot agony, ripping at his flesh. It was like being stabbed with a poker freshly pulled from the fire over and over again.
“Too bad, Harry!” Marty’s whisper came from some far-off place. “You’re a werewolf now. There’s no going back. Own it, Harry,” she sang in his ear.
He fell to his knees hard, snow and leaves swirling around him, his body twisted and misshapen. One glance at his hand, almost entirely covered in fur, gnarled and forming the shape of a paw, made him growl, low and fierce.
“Harry?” Mara called. Kneeling down beside him, she bracketed what was left of his human face. “Shhhh. Listen to me,” she soothed, stroking his hair, her lips moving slow and precise. “Listen and watch. Listen to me, hear my voice.”
He stopped struggling quite so hard, the tight pull of his tendons easing ever so slightly, his spine no longer like the stretch of a tight bow.
“Did you know that you have a third eyelid? It’s called plica semilunaris. It’s a tiny fold of tissue at the inside corner of your eye. I read that it’s the remnants of a nictitating membrane, most commonly found in birds, fish, and reptiles. Crazy, right?”
That caught his attention. Really? Shut the front door. He had no idea. Harry moaned, more because she was red-hot when she was spouting obscure data than the fact that he was in pain.
Mara’s hands continued stroking him, soothing, calming as she spoke. Her hair brushed against his face, soft and smelling of rosemary and mint. Her breath made clouds of condensation in the almost-below-freezing temperatures. “And, ohhh, just the other day I was on Twitter. I follow UberFacts, and I read the first couple to ever be shown in bed together on prime-time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Yabba-dabba-do,” she said on a laugh seconds before she let go of him with a gasp.
Just like that, Harry rolled away from her and rose on all fours, stretching his neck, testing his new body, sniffing at the air, taking in the delicious scents of the world around him.
“Well, Harry Emmerson,” Mara murmured, husky and deep into the lush velvet of the night, her hair merely an outline of shiny folds against the backdrop of darkness. “Look at you.”
Striding toward him, she rolled her shoulders and her flesh began to melt away until she, too, was in her were-form.
He hadn’t been able to appreciate the beauty of it the other night in his kitchen when she’d become so angry with him. He’d been too caught off guard. Too freaked out.
But tonight? Jesus. She was beautiful. Sleek, her coat thick and shiny just like her hair, her eyes glowing and elongated, her stride confident and lithe.
Turning her head, she lifted her muzzle and howled into the rising wind, the majestic tilt to her ears, the sweet caress of her tone, all mesmerizing him.
She called to him, trotting off into a light jog, encouraging him to follow.
And he damn well would.
But he forgot he now had four legs.
So of course he did what he always did when Mara had him transfixed.
He fell.
Over a rock, cracking his jaw on the sharp edge.
Yeah, you got this, right? Such a stud, Emmerson.
CHAPTER
11
Mara burst through her cottage door, invigorated from her shift and Harry’s triumphant foray into his transformation. Harry burst in behind her, almost knocking her down, his laughter rich and hearty.
He grabbed her at the waist to steady her so she wouldn’t fall into Nina, and she found herself leaning back into her pretend boyfriend’s embrace.
Nina stood waiting for them in the middle of the living room, her eyes marred with worry. “When you two ass sniffers were out in that frozen tundra of the great beyond, all runnin’ around like you were auditioning for Wild Kingdom, did you see my Carl?”
“Wasn’t he with Darnell?” Harry asked, pulling his gloves from his hands and laying them on the bleached brick of her hearth.