About Face (Wolf Within) Read Free

fluorescent lights completed the shabby decor.
    No bugs, just the cluttered detritus of a young bachelor.
    A half-open door with chipped paint to the left of the front door was either a bathroom or a closet.
    I didn’t have time to care so I bolted.
    It was a bathroom. Not filthy, but certainly grungy. I prayed to the porcelain goddess over and over but still couldn’t get that foul stench out of my nose.
    I’d slept with an Other.
    I even thought I remembered his name. Don. Or maybe Ron. Ron. Almost definitely Ron.
    To be fair, he didn’t stink because he was unwashed. He just wasn’t Pack. He wore Obsession cologne. I could smell it the bathroom cabinet and faint traces in the damp towels on the rack.
    Some Pack could sleep with Others and get over their strange, sour scents. I’d never been one of them. I could work with them, ride the subway with them, buy food and clothes from them, but I could not be intimate with them.
    Until the fourth or fifth Long Island Iced Tea, apparently.
    Just the thought of the sweet drink loaded with six different kinds of alcohol made me gag again until I was reduced to dry heaves that twisted my stomach and choked my throat and nose.
    Murphy had walked out on me four months ago and I’d painted my condo. Jason Allerton dropped me as his Advisor and I’d rushed out, gotten drunk, and fallen into bed with some young Other man.
    What the fuck was wrong with me?
    I needed to take a shower so I could rinse the stink off me, and wash away the hangover.
    Breath held, I twitched the grungy shower curtain aside to reveal a mildewed plastic shower stall. It was not exactly the Ritz, but whatever.
    The water pressure was for shit and the temperature fluctuated between icy cold with spurts of stinging hot. I endured it until I’d soaped my entire body and washed my hair with Ron-or-Don’s combination shampoo and body wash. Only men could be so lazy as to combine two such different products. The gel smelled like a guy, too.
    Once I was done, I realized I’d have to wrap one of his used, Obsession-scented towels around me to dry off. The entire point of the shower was undone.
    Curses spilled out of my mouth in a steady stream as I dried off with as little of the damn towel as I could manage and not stay dripping wet.
    When I walked out of the bathroom, Don or Ron was awake and hastily doing dishes as if I gave a shit what his hellhole apartment looked like.
    Last night in the bar, he’d been almost a dead ringer for Liam Murphy, except he was shorter and younger. This morning he didn’t even remotely resemble Murphy, except maybe a little around the eyes. He wasn’t fat, but he was loose in places Murphy was tight. And his hair wasn’t right. It was blond. It had looked darker under the black lights in the bar. Everything about him looked different under the lighting and the influence of those fucking evil Long Island Iced Teas.
    His voice was wrong too. It was deeper, with a Rhode Island accent, not an Irish one.
    “Hey, do you want breakfast? I can make eggs? I don’t have bacon, but I think I have toast?” Everything he said was a question. I remembered bits and pieces from the night before. At one point I’d told him to stop asking me so many questions and he’d said, “Am I asking you lots of questions?” I’d cried, “There’s another one right there!” Then I’d kissed him to shut him the fuck up.
    We’d still been in the bar then, but I guessed after it closed he’d brought me up to his apartment. Empty beer bottles littered the countertop, and I devoutly hoped they weren’t from last night. My stomach rolled again, so I looked away.
    “I need to go.” I was pretty close to panicky as I searched the room for my clothes. Aha. My dress was wadded up on the sofa. It seemed we’d had a very heavy make-out session there. My bra was under the coffee table, and I grimaced at the thought of wearing it after it had spent the night on the grubby, stained carpet.
    One sandal