Beneath the Skin Read online

  “You’re not wearing your pendant,” Murphy commented. I put one guilty hand up to my throat and encountered only bare flesh. I’d taken it off the night before and put it carefully into its pewter box because I was going to shift. I never wore jewelry I wanted to keep when I shifted, because I always lost it.

  “I took it off last night and I guess I forgot to put it back on this morning. I’m not used to wearing it,” I confessed. “I never wore it much these past two years. The single setting, it was like a reproach somehow. I’ll put it on when we get back to the hotel.”

  “I thought you might be mad at me.”

  “Murphy, if I were mad at you, I’d tell you to your face. I wouldn’t be so passive

  aggressive as to not wear my pendant and leave it to you to figure out I was pissed. Besides, you know me. I can’t keep my anger contained. You’d know it. You’d know it in a second.” I laughed, wanting him to laugh too. He was so worried when he didn’t have to be.

  “I don’t want to change you, Constance.” He stared very hard at the back of the neck of the old man who sat in front of us. “Jaysus, you’re only one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. I don’t want to change you. I just want to help if I can. Which is a joke, because I can’t even help myself, can I? Buying you Louboutin shoes and telling myself that will make it up to you, the fact that I insulted you and, worse, hurt you, because you think I want to change you and the truth is I’d like to be more like you.”

  “They are very nice shoes, Murphy,” I said and the ghost of a smile quirked his lips.

  “Nicer than Councilor Ducharme’s. Mine were about two hundred dollars nicer than hers.”

  “You gonna wear them tonight when I take you out to a club?”

  We danced a lot at the nightclub. My Louboutins looked fabulous. I looked fabulous.

  Murphy looked fabulous. I had one of the best nights of my whole life.

  We got back to the hotel around three in the morning after a hilarious cab ride where I tried to speak French, and Murphy and the cab driver talked over themselves correcting me and we laughed when we all but fell through the door.

  I tripped over one of his feet and he had to catch me, because five cocktails and four-inch heels are not necessarily a very stable combination.

  His eyes darkened with desire the second before his mouth came down over mine. We

  hadn’t kissed at the club, or even really touched, but we were all over each other in the hotel.

  He took me to his room where I kept on the Louboutins but lost the rest of my clothes.

  I thought for sure he’d look at me this time. He’d initiated it, after all. But he didn’t.

  I wanted it to be real. I so desperately wanted it to be real, so I pretended I was her.

  Sorcha. I let myself do the things I thought she would do, and he still didn’t look at me, but it didn’t matter, because I’d found a way to make it work.

  And when he said her name just before he came, or mouthed it because I didn’t exactly hear his voice but I did read his lips--that worked too. Because I was her. At least for that moment.

  Afterward he rolled over, his back to me, but he kept his body in contact with mine.

  I rolled over too and after a moment I felt his arms steal around my waist and he

  burrowed closer. I kept my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was her, but it didn’t work. I was just me again.

  Chapter 9

  “I still feel it inside me,” Murphy declared. He was on his second cup of coffee and the middle section of Le Monde. I was still working my way through a plate of scrambled eggs liberally dosed with ketchup.

  I knew what he meant--he felt his wolf inside him. We hadn’t shifted last night, but we still could tonight if we wanted. Our wolves were still awake inside us but not for long. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours, usually.

  “You want to shift? Finish your breakfast and shift?” His dark eyes challenged me and I swallowed my mouthful of eggs, and asked, “In the daytime?” It wasn’t precisely an alien thought, because we could do it, but it was unusual.

  “Why not? We’ll drive out to the country again and do it.”

  “Are you going to mentor me?”

  He folded the newspaper and set it aside. “Only if you want me to.”

  “Shouldn’t we work, Murphy? We haven’t in two days.” I wasn’t precisely turning him down, but I wasn’t sure I was up for being mentored, and while he said it was up to me, he’d be disappointed if I said I didn’t want him to start teaching me how to behave in wolf form.

  “We’ll work tomorrow. Our flight leaves at ten thirty for Houston. We’ve got a whole day to do anything we want.”

  “Houston?” My eyebrows elevated. “Like in Texas? That Houston?”

  He nodded, grinning.

  “What’s in Houston?”

  The grin faded.

  “An accident. Allerton called me while you were in the shower. He wants us to

  investigate it.”

  Just the thought that I was going to shift was enough to wake my wolf inside me. She

  hadn’t been sleeping, she’d been dormant, waiting her turn, but she knew it was close and once again in the car I had to take off my shoes and my shirt and ride the cold fire inside me until Murphy finally pulled the car off the road.

  He let me run, get a head start, but I heard him behind me. I could also hear his voice in my head as I replayed his words during the drive.

  “I’m going to do things you probably won’t like, Constance, but please don’t shut down on me after we shift back. Please try to understand. You came from a small pack, and discipline doesn’t matter much in a small pack, but it matters like hell in a bigger one. You have to know how to follow. You have to know how to submit. Haven’t you ever been on a Great Hunt at a Gathering or a Regional?”

  “I only ever went to two Great Gatherings. One when I was eighteen and not old enough for the Great Hunt and then this past one. My pack couldn’t afford for us to go. And at Regionals I was always with Grey and Elena and Vaughn. The four of us would go off on our own.”

  “They’d follow you, you mean.”

  “Maybe. Probably. It’s never been an issue before.”

  “Just try not to take this too personally. You want to be Alpha someday. You’ve got to know how to follow before you’ll know how to really lead.”

  But I didn’t want to be Alpha, only I couldn’t tell him that. He was Alpha.

  The sunshine felt like melted gold dust on my skin. I could smell it. Tangy and fresh.

  Warm like butterscotch only not as sweet.

  I collapsed on a bed of pine needles and soft earth. The trees made a canopy above me and I heard a crow cawing and couldn’t understand what he was saying but I knew he didn’t like the fact I was there.

  My wolf strained inside me, clawing to get out, whining and yipping, wanting to play...

  Me play. Play. Me run. Me smell Friend. Run, Friend. Run...Friend growl. Me play.

  Friend growl. Friend snap, sharp teeth. No. Me scared. Me run. Me...

  I stared at the sun and it hurt me. I put an arm over my eyes to shield them and I smelled blood. There was blood on my arm. Blood under my nails.

  I sat up and I was alone in the middle of a field of golden grass. It was cold but the sun was warm and there were scratches on my legs and blood under my toe nails.

  “Murphy!” I shouted his name, because he wasn’t there.

  The sun went behind a cloud, making everything gray and obscured, and I shivered,

  wrapped my arms around myself, buried my face in my knees.

  The scratches on my leg and my arm itched. Throbbed.

  I got up, took a step and fell down. I lay face down in the golden grass and smelled rain in the clouds above and the gray sky tasted like wet newspaper in my mouth and nose. I didn’t like it. I wanted to go home.

  Murphy found me. I don’t know how much time had passed, but it seemed like forever.


  He had my clothes and a first aid kit, and before he let me get dressed, he wiped the scratches on my arm and leg with something that stung like hell and made me want to hit him, but I held still.

  He had an accusingly white bandage wrapped around his left bicep. Blood seeped

  through it.

  “I bit you,” I said, horribly ashamed of myself. It had gone worse than I’d ever imagined.

  I’d broken Pack rules. You didn’t bite. You play bit. You feigned. But you never really bit.

  He nodded, concentrating on the three long parallel scratches down my right thigh. They oozed blood but they were not very deep. Neither were the ones on my arm.

  “Your wolf made her so scared. So mad,” I whispered as he smeared some sort of topical gel on the scratches and they started to go numb.

  “My wolf just wanted yours to roll and show her throat, her belly. She wouldn’t do it,” he remarked, his gaze fixed on his work. “I didn’t expect she would the first time.”

  “Did you expect her to bite?” I felt like shit. Like a monster.

  He looked up and gave me a brief smile.

  “No,” he said, ripping off a piece of gauze bandage.

  “Why didn’t your wolf bite back?” I tried to help him, but he pushed my hands away. My nails were shredded, encrusted with blood and dirt.

  “She ran too fast to catch. Even on three legs.” He ruffled my sweaty hair and picked out some pine needles and leaves from the snarls.

  He offered me a steadying shoulder for support while I put on my jeans. I wanted to cry when he buttoned my shirt for me, because it was so oddly intimate but I didn’t.

  “Are you thinking coherently when you’re in wolf form?” he asked. We had to walk

  slowly because of my leg.

  “I think in broken thoughts. In simple words. I feel more than anything.”

  “Because you never tried to do anything different,” he said.

  No matter how high I pushed the heat in the rented Renault, I couldn’t get warm. The sun had vanished, taking with it all the autumn warmth and leaving behind only bitter November cold.

  Shivering, I pulled the zipper of my leather jacket up as high as it would go and craned my neck to look in the backseat for my scarf.

  Murphy had a wet sheen of sweat across his upper lip that he wiped away with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked at me and I wasn’t sure whether he would complain about the heat, or tell me how worried he was about me.

  “I don’t want to be tamed,” I raged. I wanted to shout, but my jaw shook too hard for me to raise my voice much. “I like running free and not thinking coherently. I like the purity and the simplicity. You want me to think and I don’t want to. I think enough in this form.”

  “If we join a large pack, Constance, they’ll make you change, or they’ll sever the ties.”

  Murphy tried to sound reasonable, but I sensed how impatient he was with me. His arm hurt and I smelled fresh blood.

  “I think you might need to go have your arm looked at,” I said. “Do you know anyone in a Paris pack? We need to find a grandmother.”

  “You and your grandmothers and grandfathers. You quote them to me, you rely on them to fix things, but why did none of them in your life ever teach you how to be a wolf?”

  “I don’t need to be taught something that comes naturally!”

  “We are not natural, Constance! We are not wolves. We are Pack. There is a difference.

  We have consciousness and we have control and we are not simply creatures of instinct and senses. We have an obligation to ourselves, to the Great Pack. It’s an honor and a privilege, not an escape. Not a place to play and forget yourself, but a place to work and find yourself. Why did the grandmothers and grandfathers never tell you this?”

  “Maybe because I’m supposed to work it out for myself?” I guessed shrewishly. “Maybe because I never shifted with a grandmother or grandfather before.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, because they would have made short work of you. I went easy on you, but I won’t again.” Murphy cast a dark look at the blood-soaked bandage on his arm.

  “I’m not going to shift with you again,” I decided and he made a sound very like a wolf’s growl.

  “I asked you not to take this personally, not to shut down on me, Constance.”

  “You’re not taking it away from me. The one thing I have left, my wolf. You’re not

  taking that too. I won’t let you.”

  “I haven’t taken anything from you. I’m trying to give you things.”

  “Things I don’t want.” I looked mutinously out the window. “And you have taken things away from me. My pride, Murphy. My self-esteem.”

  “Oh, bullshit!” Now he was really angry. “Don’t give me that crap. If you were any kind of a wolf, you wouldn’t lose your pride and self-esteem so goddamned easily. I didn’t take those things from you. You threw them away, because you have no idea who the hell you really are.

  You play a good game, but you can’t win it.”

  “Leave me alone!” If the car hadn’t been going seventy miles an hour, I would have

  jumped out. I didn’t want to be in a car. I didn’t want to be in France. I didn’t want to be with him.

  “Now I see why Allerton wanted us together. He wants me to fix you.”

  “I am not broken!” I screamed at him. “I’m not broken! Maybe he wanted me to fix you, you bastard, you ever think of that? Maybe he wants you to let go a little bit. Just a little tiny bit.

  You have to always be in control. You have to always analyze everything and intellectually understand it before you even halfway allow yourself to experience it emotionally. You let yourself love Sorcha and now she’s gone and that’s it for you. You went there once and you’re not going back again. Well, fine, don’t. Live in your climate-controlled prison, but don’t expect me to lock myself up too. I want to be free. I want to feel things!”

  His face was dead white and he gripped the steering wheel so tightly I thought his fingers might break.

  Every time he thought about her, every time he heard her name, he smelled the same

  way. Like grief and loss and complete annihilation. He did feel. For her, he felt. And all his intellect could not make the hurt any less that she was dead and lost to him.

  I had to bring her up. I had to rub his face in the fact she was dead. He tried to help me, and I knew I needed it, but I would always lash out in defense of my feelings, then think about what I’d done afterward.

  We were a match made in hell, Murphy and I. Damn Allerton. Damn him.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as we drove into the city. It was raining. Droplets of icy water dotted the windshield but Murphy didn’t turn on the wipers. He didn’t even acknowledge I’d said anything.

  He pulled up in front of the hotel and waved away the valet.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” I blinked at him stupidly and he shook his head.

  “Just get out and go up to the room. I’ll be back later.” He didn’t look at me.

  “I said I was sorry,” I whispered.

  “Go on,” he snarled.

  The bath water stung my scratches. I pulled off the bandages and soaked in the water until it turned a grungy brown. I took a shower and washed my hair three times, but I could not wash away my guilt.

  Four o’clock on a November afternoon in Paris is a dreary time. From one heartbeat to the next, there’s a strange tension. Nothing to do but think, and at four o’clock, your thoughts get all tangled and anxious. Even if you pace the room in your bathrobe, rolling the sash between your fingers, stopping to look out the window at the boulevard below your window then pace again, your thoughts never really calm down.

  I heard him come in around eleven. I was in bed but not sleeping. I’d ordered room

  service for two and it was still cold and uneaten on the table. I hadn’t touched anything, had in fact, been sickened by the smell of it, and had retreated to bed but sleep was elusiv
e.

  I heard him get into the shower, heard the water gurgle down the drain. I could smell the metal in the water, I could smell blood and dirt and sweat.

  My face to the wall, I waited to hear him go into his room and lock the door against me.

  My door wasn’t closed. It was open--a silent invitation, one I knew he wouldn’t accept but I had made it, anyway.

  What’s worse than being alone? Being alone with somebody else.

  I tried to evoke memories of Grey and Elena, of the three us snuggled together under the covers on a cold winter’s night, me in the middle, because Elena hated being boxed in and Grey liked to sleep with one leg on top of the covers. Safe. Warm. Loved.

  But for the first time Grey and Elena wouldn’t come to me. They crumbled to pieces in my head. Little bits of them fell off and faded away. Maybe someday I wouldn’t have anything left except a vague sense that they were ever there in the first place.

  The water shut off. The bathroom light went out. The mattress sank under his weight as he lay beside me. I couldn’t move. I was afraid to. Afraid if he knew I were awake he’d leave.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said into the darkness. His arm stole around my waist and he

  burrowed closer to my body. I still couldn’t move, but at least now I could sleep.

  Hands caressing me eased me out of the dark dream world. Lips on the back of my neck.

  Sleepily, I murmured his name and tried to roll over into his arms but he wouldn’t let me.

  His hands and his mouth roused me, a slow, delicious desire that became more and more intense.

  He slid into me from behind so I couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see mine. We moved together slowly but ended up on our knees, him behind me, me bracing myself against the fabric headboard of the bed.

  He had my hair pulled back tightly, I felt him breathing in my ear, panting. Maybe that was me.

  When I came, I screamed, I couldn’t help it, and he laughed in my ear--a sound of

  triumph. He bit my earlobe, making me shudder, and said, “This one, at least, you didn’t fake, did you now?”