Biting Oz: Biting Love, Book 5 (6 page)

Their eyes met and an understanding passed between them.

Clearly they were close. I felt a moment’s yearning. My father was the only person I had a link like that with, via sausage. Ha ha.

Then their heads turned in tandem to look at me, and I got a weird shiver. Close? Or unnaturally attuned?

“Junior,” Mishela said. “You don’t need to stay.”

I considered that. Though shows make for a feeling of family, I’d only met Mishela and Glynn tonight. I didn’t really know them, especially Mr. BDD—big, dark and dangerous being the very definition of mystery.

Rocky was my friend, she’d seen fighting, and I’d heard strange things. Not cute-funny strange, but the howling and clanging metal kind. From the way Mishela and Glynn were acting, they knew about it.

They probably meant Rocky no harm, but I couldn’t count on it. “I’ll stay. I want to hear the explanation too.”

Mishela opened her mouth to argue, but Glynn said, “Let’s get this over with.” He flipped out a phone, hit speaker, then a speed dial. The phone rang once before the line clicked open.

“Rhys-Jenkins.”

I took a physical step back. The voice was that deep, that powerful. Like hearing the color black speak. Whoever this Elias was, he had some serious testosterone going.

“We had an encounter, sir,” Glynn said. “Mishela’s fine, but there’s a young woman here who needs a bit of an explanation. Her name is Rocky.”

“Put her on. Without speaker, if you would.”

“As you wish, sir. Thank you.” Glynn clicked off the speaker, offered the phone to Rocky.

She took it gingerly, put it to her ear. “H…hello?” She blinked. “Yes. Yes, sir.” She blinked several more times and added in a low whisper, “Raquel.”

Then there was only Elias’s murmur. Rocky’s eyes slid shut. The tension drained from her slowly, as if she were a candle melting. A moment later, she blinked like she was wakening, and smiled. “It’s all right.” She closed the phone and handed it to Glynn. “It was just a stray dog.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “Dogs don’t roar.”

“That was a howl. Mr. Elias explained everything. The dog is a wolf-husky mix, raised by an old man for protection. When its owner died, the poor thing was dumped near here. Glynn used to be a forest ranger, so the park service asked him to catch it.”

“A ranger.” If anyone could be a woodsman, it was Glynn, but that didn’t mean I believed word one. “So the howl was a wolf-dog, and Glynn was deputized to shag it?”

Glynn raised a single black brow.

I blushed. What about the man made everything coming out of my mouth sound dirty? “I mean catch it. Shag, meaning fetch. Um, did you? Catch it, that is?”

The brow made an arrogant arch. “Of course.”

“And caged it?” I made a show of looking around. “Huh, no cage. So did you spear it with your trusty sword?”

Both Glynn’s sleek black brows winged up.

“I meant…” I winced. “I heard metal. Ka-
shing
,” I added, lamely.

“Oh, certainly.” The brows came back down. “That was the tranquilizer dart.”

“O-kay.” That singing metal had not been a mere dart. “And the wolf is now where?”

“Someplace safe. Which is where you should be.” Glynn seized my hand and dragged me to my front door, his heat searing me.

I jerked away. “No! My entrance is in back.” Yikes. “I mean…” What was it about the man that made me vomit these glorious freaking double entendres? “The front door is for the store. The family entrance is around the side, back between buildings.”

“I see.” He took my arm, steered me to the walkway. “So this is your…private entrance?”

“Uh, yeah.” My cheeks fired. A change of topic was prudent. “Thanks for the escort.”

We’d reached the door, small, unmarked and barely visible in the shadows between buildings. Glynn waited silently while I unlocked it (MC was safe, but we had neighbors who didn’t exactly appreciate us). He waited while I opened and entered, waited until I shut, even waited while I locked up. I didn’t see him, but I could practically feel his dark, hovering shadow.

I leaned against the closed door, caught my breath. Ordinarily after a rehearsal, I’d maybe have a beer with friends, then head home alone. I did not stay out late, I did not hear sword fights and animals howling, and I certainly did not kiss darkly sensual forest men. Ordinarily.

Tonight was seriously out of the ordinary orbit.

Yet according to Glynn, nothing had happened. Mr. Elias had “explained” things to Rocky. From my perspective, it had looked more like hypnosis. But hypnosis over the phone? None of this made sense.

I wanted to think. I pushed away from the door and ran up the stairs past my folks’ flat, straight to the small attic space that was my room.

My “room”. More of a crawl space really, its ceiling low even for my five-two. Some days it felt cozy, others it felt cramped. Rarely did it seem like the only safe place in a world gone insane.

When I was ten, I wanted to paint the walls dark purple. My parents had insisted on Realtor beige. To give the space color, I’d slapped up a poster of Times Square at night. Flowers blooming in the Mojave Desert came next. Then pictures of Paris, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. A map of Boston, and next to it a subway map. Eventually I had pictures, maps and posters from every corner of the world, covering every bit of beige. The latest addition was the colossal Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.

My room, a cubby in the family homestead, was me being a dutiful daughter. My pictures were me wanting more.

I ran into my room, slowed. Touched a picture at random and dreamed of going to that place, of seeing its color and life. This was part of my going-to-bed ritual, as important as brushing my teeth.

Tonight my fingers caressed a London evening. Lights cascaded off the Thames, blues and violets slashing through rows and rows of gold. I’d take that image to bed with me, dream rainbow dreams…

But I’d come up here to think. Instead of crawling into bed, I went to my window.

My single window faced south. It was a reverse dormer notched into the roof. I opened sash and shutters to the warm May night, heard Rocky and Mishela’s voices fading away to my right, heading west on Jefferson. And with them, though I didn’t hear him, was Glynn. Big, silent Glynn.

I shimmied outside, into the small box of roof space that encased the window. Small for me even when I was a child, I now fit only with my knees drawn to my chin. But that was the best position for staring at the stars and thinking. I’d meant to mull on the weirdness that had happened, but somehow it didn’t seem nearly as important as the fact that Glynn had kissed me.

Glynn
had kissed me, and I had responded to every big, dark, dangerous bit, lust igniting my very cells. I’d never known anything like it. Granted, I hadn’t experienced a lot because the store kept me sixty-hour busy, but I wondered if anything could have prepared me for the instant union I felt with him.

Glynn had
kissed
me. Was that normal, a guy going straight from “hi how are you” to locking lips? And then seem almost angry that he’d done it?

Glynn had kissed
me
. Why me, why not Rocky, who was a hundred and ten pounds of hot? Or one of the other pit or adult cast members? Hell, why not the flamboyant Director Dumbass, who was cute in a driven, psychotic sort of way?

A pounding came from below. My dad, hitting the ceiling with a broomstick. “Get to sleep! Work tomorrow.”

I sighed. What Pop lacked in subtlety, he made up for in volume.

But in this case, he was right. Worrying over Glynn’s inexplicable behavior wouldn’t make it into sense. The only way to deal was Business Truth #7, courtesy of Queen Elizabeth I. “Never decide today what you can put off until tomorrow.” It would either disappear or grow until the solution was obvious.

Tomorrow I’d work hard in the store, forget about
Glynn kissed me
—forget about
all
tonight’s crazy—by reminding myself where my duty really was. My parents, the store, my dreams.

Chapter Three

My alarm went off at five. I’d dreamed about Glynn kissing me and woke sweet and heavy and even more determined to lose the events of last night in my work.

Showered and dressed, I staggered downstairs at five twenty into the familial abode—not thinking about Glynn. The Wurstspeicher Haus didn’t open until eight, but I had tons to do before then. A big store has accountants and salespeople and a purchasing department and the IT guy. A small store still has to pay taxes and deal with customers and buy product and fix the things that buzz and blink. We had Mom and Pop to do all that—and me.

No lights, so I followed the lifeline scent of freshly brewed coffee and stumbled into the kitchen, then poured by feel alone. It was dark because Mom and Pop left for work before dawn. The kitchen smelled of bacon and eggs and buttered toast.

Mom’s opera music was blaring.
L’Orfeo
by Monteverdi, early music to start the day. She’d save Stravinsky for evening.

Not thinking about sweet, hot kisses, I grabbed a bagel, hoisted my coffee and hit the stairs down. I shivered, not lust, just simple chill. May mornings were still on the cool side and the stairwell was unheated. I gulped hot coffee as I trotted downstairs and through the door.

The office area was warmer. Our building was a storefront, literally. The store was the front half. The back was originally my grandparents’ flat, converted into offices and storage after Grandma and Grandpa Stieg went to the Happy Sausage Shop in the sky.

The stairwell opened into the dining room, now a general work area. To the right was the kitchen, now storage. Straight ahead were two bedrooms, Mom and Pop’s offices. Left was the store.

Time to forget Glynn and kisses, which I had
not
been thinking about anyway. I squared shoulders and headed left to work and duty.

My father looked up from his paperwork as I stumbled by. His face gleamed round and ruddy in the glow of his accountant’s lamp. “Junior,
gut
. Help me carry in the
wurst
.”
Gut
meant good.
Wurst
was what we called sausage. He heaved to his feet, which made him maybe an inch taller. At five-six, not only his face resembled a cookie elf.

“Where’s Mom?” Or actually I said “
Wo ist Mutti?
”, as he and I spoke German at home (I knew a bit of Italian too, courtesy of Mom). I took a quick bite of bagel, set it and my coffee on his scarred desk and trailed him to the kitchen.

“Your mother is on the phone with suppliers. They are asking why we need so much
blutwurst
.”

“Because people are buying it?” I snorted. “Why Mom? The only German she speaks is the stuff she learned to sing.”

“She has decided it’s time to get more fluent. She says to me, ‘Gunter, I wish to learn, to be better’. Your mother is a strong woman, Junior. You could do worse than to be like her.”

“Yes, Pop.” We’d had this conversation before. The problem was I
was
like her, too much. To me, learning meant not making the same mistakes she had. Time to change the subject. “It’s going to be a warm day. That’s going to stress the coolers in the store.”

“
Ach
, those coolers are practically brand-new.” He jerked the dolly into place and we hoisted boxes of product onto it. “Younger than me.”

“Pop, they’re fifty years old. The warranty expired before I was born. They clank like Marley’s ghost. If we could just get one new cooler with the fund—”

“That cash is for emergencies.” His tone said end of conversation.

Well, wonderful. Hold off thoughts of Glynn and kisses with the distraction of work? Silence to fret in was so helpful.

But work in silence we did. Pop threw heavy boxes on the stack like they were Styrofoam. He was strong enough to have loaded alone—for all his diminutive size, he was built like a mule. But I always helped, and not just because of duty. Pop made me, to “build up my strength”. He was big into the Protestant work ethic—but secretly I think he still wanted me to be a son.

Nixie Emerson has this thing about names having power. Her parents christened her Dietlinde in a subtle attempt to mold sassy-punker her into a normal German.

My dad naming me Gunter, nickname Junior? Not nearly so subtle.

One of the reasons I grew my hair down to my ass. Before I got the breasts, it was the only way people remembered I wasn’t a boy.

In silence, we rolled product into the store, like Glynn’s lips rolling over mine… Time to talk again. “So, um, Pop. Any problems with the shipment?”

“The usual tampering with the boxes. Mustaches drawn on the Usinger elf. ‘This side up’ pointing down. These
Käsegecken
. So petty.” My father sniffed.

The
Käsegecken
were the Cheese Dudes, our next-door neighbors. Lately they’d taken to stealing or defacing our shipments if we didn’t cart them inside right away. Sometimes they’d even go through our personal mail. I knew that because Lady Liberty stamps don’t generally sport beards. Messing with US mail is a federal offense, but magic markers aren’t exactly uncommon. And the Dudes managed to stick the mail back in our box within a day, so we couldn’t prove it wasn’t just slow delivery.