Mellizo Wolves (2 page)

He gave a
wry grin. “I don’t like the sound of that, or that stubborn look in those sassy
green eyes of yours.”

She
forced firmness into her tone. “We have to discuss this. Even before we left
for Vegas I had concerns.”

His
searching eyes were guarded. “About marrying me?”

She held
his steady gaze. “About timing. Finally, I went to an appointment with Dr.
Lopez.” She held back that it was a positive pregnancy test that finally sent
her flying to his office. It wasn’t the possibility of pregnancy that concerned
her—it was the date of conception.

Damon
visibly stiffened, and his gaze bore into hers. “Why? Are you sick?”

“No, but
I missed a couple of menstrual periods,” she said, barely above a whisper. “After
we returned from our short honeymoon, my usual time for menstruation came and
went.” She had told herself the absence of her period was due to the changes in
her body when she morphed into a wolf. But if she told him that, he’d think
he’d married an idiot.

He raked
his hand through his hair, and his forehead wrinkled. “You’re complaining about
the short honeymoon or your lack of a period?”

She
wanted to just blurt it out, but— “Darn it, Damon, just listen. Fearing I might
be pregnant, I did the dumb thing and ignored it, as if it would magically
disappear.”

His gaze
burned hers with probing intensity. “Let me get this straight, you’re
pregnant—and you want the pregnancy to disappear?”

She
swallowed. Her throat was as dry as the vineyards below Mt. Baldy in a Santa
Ana wind. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Dr. Lopez gave me a complete workup
and I got the results today.” She gestured to the report and sonogram pictures with
a trembling hand. “I’m about three months pregnant with twin girls.”

Damon
leaned his head back and laughed with a deep, joyful tone. “Surely you weren’t
afraid I wouldn’t be pleased?” He picked her up by her waist and swung her
around. “It’s sensational news. Now we have everything we ever wanted—a solid
marriage and a family. Halleluiah. Twin girls. I’m delirious.”

When her
feet touched the floor again, she said, “You didn’t let me finish. Dr. Lopez
estimates my delivery date to be sometime in July.”

Damon
shook his head, his expression puzzled. “So? July’s a great month. And I’ll
have a fantastic reason to set off fireworks.”

Her
throat constricted. She swallowed, and with a tremor in her voice said, “Maybe
you don’t understand the ramifications of what I just told you.” She pulled
away and met his intense gaze with narrowed eyes. “
Three
months pregnant
means you could’ve discharged your werewolf sperm into me before Madam Nola
lifted the curse.”

“Werewolf
sperm?” Damon threw his hands in the air. “Sometimes your tendency to dramatize
drives me nuts. What if you
did
get pregnant before the ritual? It
doesn’t mean—”

“Can you
guarantee our twins won’t inherit one or both of our afflictions?” She felt her
frustration building again. “What if we’re the only ones free of the curse?”

“If the
curse passes to our girls, we’ll ask Madam Nola—our trusty li’l curse-chaser—to
shift any curses they might inherit onto me.”

Angela
went to the window and rested her forehead against the cool glass, feeling a
twinge of guilt. Madam Nola had lifted the Landau family curse onto Damon. But
it was the deep love she shared with him that actually banished the curses.
There was no guarantee it would work like that with their girls. Still, Damon’s
offer softened her heart. “That’s generous and loving of you, but I feel deep
in my bones the answer can’t be that easy.” She paced the den lit only by
shadow-inducing late afternoon lamplight. Thunder broke right over the mansion.
She clamped eyes closed to fight the edginess that gripped her. It had been a
stormy night when her birth mother committed suicide years ago. She paused at
the window and stared out through the pelting raindrops, still consumed by
negative thoughts and icy fear. “I want to talk to Madam Nola now—I need to
know if she can help us.”

Damon
came up behind Angela and wrapped his arms around her again. His clean, manly
scent floated around her. “Come on, Angela. Don’t brood about something that’ll
probably never happen—”

“But what
if it does?”

“If it’ll
make you feel better, we can talk to Madam Nola tomorrow.”

Angela
lifted her chin. “Let’s call her now!”

“Damn, Hot
Stuff, you’re always in such hurry.”

Damon
glanced out the window at the raging storm. He met her gaze with searching eyes
for several seconds, and then shrugged. “All right, if the phone still works.”
He put the receiver to his ear and smiled. “It’s okay. I got a dial tone. Don’t
worry. That pint-sized spiritualist came through for us before and, for her
usual hefty fee, she’ll do it again.” He exchanged pleasantries with the
psychic for a few seconds while Angela shifted from foot to foot, and then he
finally asked for an appointment. He hung up, grinning. “She can see us at two
tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why
didn’t you explain the problem?”

“We don’t
have a problem. And we may never have a problem. Let’s just feel her out on
generalities. You know how she is when she smells the scent of money.”

Angela
felt the warmth and strength of his hands as he massaged her back, then he
turned her to face him and kissed her forehead. “With that settled, have you
thought anymore about how you want to decorate this old mausoleum for the
holidays?”

This
would be their first Christmas together, a time of joy and celebration. She
jumped when a clap of thunder broke nearby. A bolt of lightning followed,
arcing and illuminating the den, with its sliding walls that concealed filing
cabinets. For all she knew it even hid entrances to secret tunnels. She thought
of her earlier sensation of evil hovering nearby when she entered the mansion,
and the creepy feeling she’d had in the past that the eyes in the master
bedroom portraits were moving, watching.

Damon
swept her from her feet and headed up to the master bedroom. “In case we lose
the electricity, we’ll be better off upstairs. I’ll build a couple of fires…one
in the fireplace…” He winked down at her. “…and one in our bed.”

She
laughed and felt her heart lighten. Everything was going to be all right.
Together, they would see to it.

Upstairs,
as they entered their suite-sized master bedroom with its window coverings and
bedspread fabrics woven into intricate patterns of redwoods and caves, she
relived her usual feeling of dropping into a forest. A large Indian rug
partially covered the smooth, flat, and polished deep-emerald terrazzo floor. A
tapestry of a hunting scene hung on the wall. The heavily-constructed dresser,
bureau, desk, headboard, and two chairs exhibited hand-carved wood with lupine
designs. The fierce open-mouthed carvings were much like those etched into the
entry doors. Nothing about the primitive decor alerted prickly survival senses.
But when Damon lowered her to the cushions still on the floor from their
morning lovemaking, the position placed her in a direct descending line below
his parents’ portrait. Their stern eyes seemed to shift down at her. The hairs
on her neck prickled.
It had to be merely the movement of shadows in the dim
lamplight. Still…
She glared up at the portrait, noticing that the woman
wore a pentagram necklace, a five pointed star. Was that to protect her from
her husband’s lupine demons? “Would you please put a towel over that thing?”

He tossed
a cloth over it. “I’m starting to think you don’t like my parents.”

She
thought of the bedroom terrace that overlooked a rose garden…and a cemetery
with at least a dozen gravestones. Probably his parents were buried among the
markers, names worn away by the Santa Ana winds—or by design. “Even though I
never had the pleasure of meeting your folks, I’m sure I’d adore them. But I
wonder if they’d like me.”

“Of
course they would. Angela, you lose all sense of reality in storms. But I think
I can give you a dose of some
hot reality
to fix that.”

She
couldn’t miss the glint of playful seduction in his eyes. “Oh yeah?” she said
throatily, laughing and forcing her worries to the back of her mind. “Pretty
sure of yourself, aren’t you, stud?”

She was
surprised at the quick rise of desire as she re-lit the two lilac-scented
candles, still nearby from their morning play, eagerly setting the stage for
another sizzling romp.

Damon
turned away as if he’d lost interest as well. But she knew better. He never
turned down sex. Neither of them did. That she could count on. Within minutes,
he had a low, crackling fire in the hearth. He put in a few CDs. “Classical
piano, okay?”

“Perfect,”
she said in a breathy voice, her mind definitely not on music.

He turned
to her, his eye glinting with mischief. He backed her against the wall and
thrust her hands over her head. His kisses were deep, his tongue promising. She
twisted out of his grip and trailed her hands down to his shirt and slowly
unbuttoned it, exposing his broad, glistening chest. He slid his hand up her
thigh, sending tingling to her moist core. On fire, they discarded one
another’s clothes wildly, the air aflutter with a rainbow of cloth. He lifted
her naked, throbbing body then froze as though he suddenly thought maybe
throwing a pregnant woman onto the bed wasn’t such a good idea. Instead he
lowered slowly and knelt beside her.

“It’s
okay,” she whispered. She drew him on top of her. His glinting gaze met hers.
The fiery gaze registered surprise, and then he looked deep into her eyes,
searching a moment. Finally, his lips descended to hers, his mouth open, moist
and faintly tasting of coffee. He sought her tongue. Heat surrounded her,
seeping into her bones, spreading waves of flames until every inch of flesh was
on fire and begging for release. The satanic tempo of the
Mephisto Waltz
speeded,
intensified, growing thunderous and igniting something highly-emotional and
wild within her. “Damon, I don’t want the slow seduction—I need you inside me,
thrusting fast and hard. Now! Send such ecstasy to my brain that I can’t
think…can’t worry…and can only feel.”

He
slipped inside her dewy canal, filling her with heat and driving power. Eyes
brimming with unshed tears, she writhed and moaned in pleasure as the hard
plane of his sculpted body rose again and again above her in thrusting arches
of urgency. She slipped her hand down his muscled length and dug her fingers
into his buttocks and drew him closer…harder.

Later, as
she softly floated down from soaring into the wilds of sexual and emotional
release, exhausted and spent, she kissed his glistening chest. The air smelled
of lilacs, bodies, and sex. He touched her forehead with his lips so tenderly
that his show of love overwhelmed her, and she could no longer restrain the
pool of unshed tears.

When they
overflowed and trickled down her flaming cheeks, he kissed them and said,
“Honey, are you all right?” His husky voice resonated with concern.

Her
throat constricted, and she could only nod.

He
lowered himself beside her and drew her close. It was then she realized that
was what she really wanted—simply to be held close by the love of her life, a
heroic, caring man—and nothing like the rumors claimed.

She
kissed his neck and whispered. “Have you ever thought of moving?”

He
stiffened for a moment, and then said, “No, no this place is part of me…of my
history. You knew that when we married.”

She
stoked his chest. “I know. It’s just that sometimes it spooks me out.”

He kissed
her hair. “The bad stuff is over. Together we’ll build only good memories.”

She
prayed it was true, but shivered, knowing it would take tremendous
determination to get past the dark history of the place. She had just entered
the third grade when she began hearing the horror stories about him and his
family.

“Did I
ever tell you that when I was a child I had this macabre fascination with the
mansion and its dark, jetting towers, especially around Halloween when
half-truths and titillating hysteria ran rampant?”

“People
fear what they don’t understand. It was best that you stayed away until you
were older. No one ever came trick-or-treating to our door. And my parent never
let me go to other people’s doors.”

She
sighed. “I never minded the stories. For me, it was titillating and made
Halloween even spookier. As curious as I was, I was too chicken to march up to
your door. But, believe me, I wished every year for the courage.”

Memories
flooded her brain: Few, if any, of the community had ever seen the original
owner or the grandson, Damon. But longtime residents claimed both were quite
mad. Some speculated the grandson had massacred his sister and grandfather and
now lived there alone with a gimpy, hunchback servant and a pack of wolves.

Little
did anyone know that the real evil in the mansion was Damon’s butler, who was
also his illegitimate half-brother Raymond Reeves, and similarly cursed with a
werewolf gene. But unlike Damon, he was evil through and through. The monster
had killed their sister, Damon’s maintenance man Hugo—also a werewolf and
another of Damon’s illegitimate half-brothers—and then Reeves slaughtered
dozens of the local women. He’d almost killed her and her best friend, Katrina.
But Damon had saved them and an untold number of community women from Reeves’s
reign of terror. He would be forever her hero and deserved her support.