Dire Wolves of London Box Set Page 4

  “You might be surprised, actually.”

  “I might indeed.”

  Chapter 3

  The two men—if Emma could even use such an inadequate word to describe them, given that they were so much more appealing than most of the blokes who hung about this very dull city—were sitting at a table on the other side of the pub.

  Occasionally one or the other would turn her way, his eyes scanning her face, her body, like they were sizing her up. If she hadn’t known better, she might even have surmised that they both—gasp—wanted her.

  But of course, that was a ridiculous thought. More likely they were playing with her; there was no way that such sexy beasts would ever pursue a plain Jane like her. Men like that didn’t go for her sort: ordinary, dull, workaday women with nothing interesting going for them. A nerd in tights, that was what she often called herself. A science geek with little to offer other than the capacity to ramble on about how a DNA strand was assembled, or how the genetic components of a banana differed from one’s own.

  But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be allowed to gawk at the two huge hotties just a little. Gorgeous, broad-shouldered, masculine behemoths, they looked like swarthy Vikings, ready to leap off a ship with iron claymores in hand and attack a rival band of brigands.

  Well, sort of.

  Emma had to admit to herself that brigands weren’t exactly a twenty-first century phenomenon. Neither were claymores, for that matter. These two were modern-day Vikings, if anything. Their weapons of choice were sexy eyes and amazing physiques. They probably had some rather impressive weapons in their trousers, as well.

  Not that she was thinking about it.

  At all.

  Both of the men had dark hair, their stubble well-tended yet manly. Their colouring was so similar that they could almost have been brothers, though something told her they weren’t related. Perhaps it was the stark difference in their clothing styles that made them seem too divergent to be blood relatives.

  One was wearing a worn leather jacket, his hair a delicious mess of randomness on top of his head. A look of permanent amusement was etched on his face, his eyes bright, inquisitive and intelligent.

  The other had his coat draped tidily over the back of his chair, as though he were about to head off to a business meeting. When he’d turned to look at her, she’d noticed that he wore a dark blue suit jacket that mostly covered a white shirt, its collar open just enough to reveal a neck that Emma wanted quite desperately to lick.

  She tried not to let her gaze pull itself over to them too often, but she couldn’t seem to get her sodding eyes to stay on her book for more than a millisecond at a time before they would veer back to the sexy pseudo-Vikings, like she was afraid that if she stopped looking, the men would cease to exist.

  Good lord, what was wrong with her? She wasn’t usually this superficial, damn it. She’d always told herself that looks didn’t matter in the least when it came to attraction to the opposite sex.

  Still, for the moment, looks had become everything. Somewhere deep in her core, in a place she’d never even realized existed, her body underwent a chemical reaction each time she took in their eyes, their smiles, their very size. The two divine creatures were inspiring a carnal response in her…blimey, what did one even call that place?

  Ah, yes. She had it.

  A carnal response in her loins.

  When the word popped into Emma’s head, she snorted out a laugh. She’d never used the bloody turn of phrase in her life. But the thing was, it actually made perfect sense. She was currently experiencing the sort of primal lust that people always talked about when they mentioned their damned aching loins. Some deep desire, pulsing, yearning for one or both of the men to walk over and ask her to strip naked so that they could take her right here, right now. It didn’t matter that she was in a public place, surrounded by strangers. Didn’t matter that it would be a completely uncharacteristic thing to invite two men she’d never met to put their mouths on her, their cocks inside her.

  She’d become an animal, and she was quietly loving every second of it. She almost wished she were wearing some sort of old-fashioned bodice so that one of them could rip it off with his teeth.

  I want them both, she thought, chewing on her lip as she stared at them for the seventieth time since her arrival. Even though I have no idea what their names are, where they’re from, what they do for a living.

  Why? Because I’m a sodding idiot, that’s why.

  This ridiculous reaction had to be her biological clock ticking away, demanding that she make babies with the hot bastards before old age claimed her reproductive system. After all, they were both big, strong, and handsome. Fine specimens. If there was one thing she knew, it was how to identify a highly evolved human.

  Anyhow, her womanly biology was the only reasonable scientific explanation for how she’d become so unrelentingly horny.

  In her defence, what woman wouldn’t react to two such gods like a drooling dog standing in front of a steak? They looked like something out of one of those fire-fighter calendars where the blokes are scantily clad, wearing little other than a pair of suspenders and a helmet, their muscles glistening under the heat of nearby flames, their fireproof trousers revealing a slight, enticing bulge…

  She wanted to see what was under those trousers, damn it.

  Bloody hell, really, woman? she asked herself silently, pulling her eyes away again, this time to focus on an old photograph of Baker Street from the late 19th century that hung on the wall in front of her. Can you really not stop fantasizing about two young bucks in a pub? You know perfectly well that they’re probably meat-headed rugby players who shag a different woman every night. Not exactly the sorts you’d take home to Mum and Dad in York.

  Even so, it only took a few seconds for her eyes to shift back to them. Something surged through her again, a chemical darting from her head straight to the place between her legs. She found herself chewing on the inside of her cheek as her fingers played with the rim of her wine glass, seeking out a drop of red liquid. Before she was even aware of it, she was drawing the finger to her mouth, touching her tongue to its tip.

  To her mortification, it was just then that one of the men chose to make his move; the one in leather, with the playful, hungry look in his eye.

  Oh, bollocks, Emma thought, yanking her finger away from her lips. Mr. Rugby-playing Fireman Demigod Number Two is staring at me.

  Oh, fuck me with a breadstick. He’s getting up.

  Why exactly is he getting up?

  Why is he walking this way?

  Mmm. His jeans are tight enough to show off his impressively muscular thighs, but not quite tight enough to show off his religion.

  Oh, God, now I’m staring at his crotch. Why doesn’t the floor open up in a gaping chasm and swallow me whole?

  WHY AM I STILL STARING AT HIM?

  He didn’t seem to mind, at least. As the man’s eyes locked on her own with the intensity of a firestorm, he made his way over to her table, an all-too-sexy smile drawing her eyes to his lips. She swallowed hard, grabbing her book and quickly leafing through its pages, pretending she was searching for a particular section.

  I licked my finger suggestively, like a total idiot. While. He. Was. Watching. Me. she snarled internally. That’s why he’s coming this way. He must think I want him.

  Well, I do. I want him so badly that I feel like my knickers have caught fire.

  But that’s not the point, is it?

  “Good evening,” the giant specimen of man-flesh said when he’d pulled up to the table. His voice was perfect, like fine scotch. His words hit her ears with a smoothness that made her clamp her thighs together before burning heat through her lungs.

  “Hullo,” she replied sheepishly. She flashed him a look then pulled her eyes away again, dipping them to focus on the pages of her book, which were utterly fuzzy and incomprehensible. Apparently her nervousness was rendering her eyes worse than useless.

  The man
gripped the edge of her table and leaned forward, staring at the novel’s cover before confronting her again with his gaze.

  “Did you know,” he began, “that I’ve been admiring you for ages?”

  “Have you?” she asked, daring a quick glance up at him before looking down again.

  “Yes. I’ve never watched a woman spend such a long time reading a novel upside down. It’s incredible, really. A rare talent.”

  Emma opened her mouth to protest, but when she finally managed to focus her eyes on the page in front of her, she realized that she didn’t have a leg to stand on. He was right. The fucking book had been upside down this whole time and she hadn’t even noticed.

  “Oh God,” she whimpered helplessly, laying it down on the table.

  “I also want you to know that I don’t usually speak to strange women in pubs,” the man said, luring her eyes to his once again.

  “Really? That seems…unlikely,” she replied as she smiled nervously at him. No, not just unlikely, she thought. I should have said that it’s utter bollocks. You probably take a different woman home every night, or worse, shag her in the alley behind pubs like this one.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “I’ve long avoided women, in fact, as has my friend over there.” He nodded over his shoulder towards the man at the other end of the pub, a gesture that made Emma’s body react viscerally. The bloke in the leather jacket seemed to be strongly implying that the two of them really were interested in her. It was a scenario too far-fetched to imagine, let alone to live out in reality.

  Still, it was quite fun to think about.

  Bloody hell, how on earth were two absolute strangers managing to make her knickers so wet?

  “I don’t usually come to pubs alone,” she replied abruptly. “I was supposed to meet a friend…” Lie. Total sodding lie. She came to this pub alone nearly every evening. But it would be idiocy to tell a man that. If he and his friend were predators of some sort, they could follow her home. They could...

  No. They couldn’t. Something told her they weren’t the sorts to put her in any kind of danger. She wasn’t afraid of them, for one thing. Every instinct in her body dictated, in fact, that she should take them home with her and fuck their brains out. If anything, she was the predator. She wanted to eat them alive.

  Both of them.

  As inappropriately erotic as the thought was, she really did want the two strangers at once. She could picture it already. The quiet, serious one in the elegant suit could lick her pussy while this one sucked her nipples. She’d purr like a cat, and then…

  Her jaw dropped open as the fantasy clawed its way through her mind. Oh, God. In the last half hour she’d turned into some sort of insane sex monster with a penchant for threesomes with beefy strangers in bars.

  “Would you like to join us at our table?” leather-jacket-man asked, pulling her out of one fantasy and into another.

  Well, this fantasy, at least, she could fulfill with her clothes on.

  Chapter 4

  When Emma hesitated, the man held out a hand. “I’m sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself properly. My name’s Laird,” he said. “That’s Roth.” Once again he nodded towards the table on the other side of the room. “And you are…?”

  “Emma Danforth,” she replied, shaking the extended hand. She rose to her feet, pulling her coat off the back of the chair. All right, then, she knew their names now. Therefore they were no longer strangers; they were proper acquaintances. Which meant that it would be perfectly appropriate to go have a drink with them both. “Sure, I suppose I could join you for a minute,” she said.

  Maybe it was a terrible idea, but by this point, curiosity had become too powerful a drug to override. There was no way she would ever sleep again if she knew she’d turned down such an opportunity. Besides, it was just a drink, right? Just a conversation with two…acquaintances.

  Laird led her over to the table where Roth was sitting. The well-dressed man rose to his feet as she approached—a very gentlemanly move—and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Emma,” he said politely when Laird had introduced them. Yes, he was definitely a gentleman, though his eyes might have spent just a little too long lingering on her chest, a small, almost invisible gesture that both flattered and aroused her. Much as the cynic inside her still insisted that they had to be toying with her emotions for their own amusement, something about the idea of these two men finding her enticing made her tingle in the most exquisite ways.

  As she sat down, she thought she noticed Roth sniffing the air, but she immediately told herself that she must have imagined it. It wasn’t as though she’d spritzed herself with perfume before leaving work. What on earth would he be smelling?

  “So, Emma, are you from around here?” Laird asked when they’d all settled into their seats.

  “Originally from York,” she replied. “I came to London for my job.”

  “Ah. What is it that you do?”

  “I’m a geneticist,” she said, “at Charing University.”

  “So, you work on cellular things and whatnot, then?” asked Laird.

  “Whatnot is my specialty,” she replied, smiling at his very vague terminology. Whatever he did for a living, clearly he wasn’t an academic.

  “Are you a specialist in human anatomy, then?” asked Roth. The question might have seemed like a come-on from any other man, but he looked earnestly interested.

  “Some, yes. It’s sort of a necessity to understand physical traits when working with genes.”

  “What about cloning?”

  Emma chuckled. It was the most common question that anyone asked her. Could you clone my dog? My child? My gerbil? Could you clone my ex-boyfriend, but make him nicer, and maybe give him a bigger knob?

  “I do…I mean, it’s a prevalent field at the moment, so yes. I’ve done some thorough research on cloning.” Emma sat back, letting her body relax into her chair. “But tell me, you two, where are you from?” she asked, hoping to shift the subject away from her dull work. “I can’t quite place your accents.”

  “Cornwall,” said Laird. “A small town called Trekilling, to be precise. You probably haven’t heard of it; the place is only a few hundred people, really.”

  A shiver of excitement made its way up Emma’s spine as her mind processed the name. Yes, of course she’d heard of it, just as she’d heard of King Arthur, Lady Guinevere and the Holy Grail. Trekilling was the stuff of legends, almost as famous in some corners of England as the Arthurian tales themselves.

  “Really?” she asked. “I remember hearing about that place when I was a child. Stories about men and women who turned into Dragons, and…” she shut her mouth. “You must think that sort of talk is mad, of course.”

  Roth shook his head. He was staring at her with an amazing intensity that made her feel as though he’d stripped her naked and was caressing her breasts with his eyes.

  “Not mad at all,” he replied. “All legend is based in fact, after all.”

  “But tell us, Emma, how do you feel about those tales?” Laird asked, pressing his elbows into the table and leaning towards her. A sudden urge surged through her to nip his stubbled cheek.

  First I wanted to lick Roth’s neck, she thought. Now I want to bite Laird. Right, then, I’m turning into a fucking beagle.

  “I…well, I’m not sure,” she said. “I mean, I always loved the stories when I was little. The idea of these creatures who were something more than human was so enticing. Creatures who loved fiercely, men who protected their lovers, women who were powerful and strong, and often didn’t even need that protection. Not to mention that from the sounds of it, they all had an amazing time in bed.” She felt her skin flush hot as the last words slipped out. “Oh, shite. Did I just say that out loud?”

  “Yes, you did,” Roth replied, the look in his eyes so full of a strange, distant understanding that it sent an extra pulse of pleasure rocketing through Emma’s nervous system. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve heard th
at they were amazing in bed as well.”

  “Yes, well, of course,” she added, “it’s all just a load of slightly naughty fairy tales, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps they are mere tales. Perhaps they’re real,” said Roth. Emma thought she saw a strange flash in his eyes, as though the light had hit them in a way that made them reflect like an animal’s. Another shiver traced its way up her spine.

  “But what if the stories weren’t mere fiction?” Laird interjected, drawing Emma’s gaze once again. “What if you discovered that such creatures existed? Would you be terrified of them, or interested in learning more? Purely speaking as a very sexy geneticist, I mean.”

  Emma chirped out a laugh, letting it ring out for a few seconds before cupping her hand over her mouth. “Oh, you’re serious,” she said, her smile fading. “In that case, I suppose I’d be interested. The creatures…what did they call them? Shape shifters? Anyhow, the creatures in the old stories seemed more good than bad. I never felt that they were out to hurt humans. It would be very interesting to study them. If they were real, that is.”

  “So if you learned that London was swarming with Dragons and Dire Wolves, you’d be okay with it, then?” Laird asked.

  Roth shot him a look that was all but impossible to read. Was it a reprimand? A warning? Perhaps he felt that his friend had had a little too much to drink.

  “I suppose I would be fine with it,” said Emma. “I mean, it would depend on why they were here.”

  “Suppose they were here to protect people like you. To watch over the city. And, of course, to find lovers among the human population.” With that, he raised his right eyebrow suggestively.

  Emma squeezed her legs together again at the way Laird uttered the word “lovers.” It rolled over his tongue like chocolate. She wanted to turn it over in her own mouth, to taste its syllables.

  “Lovers?” she asked softly.

  Laird nodded. “If you know the tales, you know that for every woman in those days, in Trekilling, there were two men. Those men—those shifters—took one female lover. Imagine the possibilities. Imagine, if you will, what two men such as that could do to—and for—a woman such as yourself, given the time.”