Page 55 of Blind Date with a Werewolf
But they aren’t wolves, his beast said.
Do you remember this vampire yet?Asil asked. He and the hapless concrete pillar had just had a lesson about trusting that his old comrade’s sanity had entirely returned along with his voice. Better to put him to work on something than let him dwell on the possible danger their driver represented.
No, the wolf said darkly.But I will.
Asil shut the door on the woman—onMariposa’s daughter—with gentle firmness. Then he allowed the driver to escort him to the other side of the car and do the same for Asil.
He settled in the car and put on the seat belt.
“It is not far, Mr.Moreno,” Mrs.Alvarez said. “Only about twenty minutes if the traffic permits.”
She sounded as though she were dreading those twenty minutes. Stress was not the reaction most women had around him. Shyness. Lust. Avarice. Appreciation. But not apprehension.
He could only assume that it was the circumstances that were making her so uneasy. The alternative—that she knewwho he was and was reacting to him—was absurd. She was not frightened enough.
He put Mariposa aside.
Then he reexamined the woman sitting beside him, who was doing her best not to look at him. Her body was stiff. The shoulder nearest him was a little farther forward than the opposite shoulder, as if she was using it to shield herself from his presence.
Thiswas a woman willing to sleep with a stranger at the end of the night? No. This woman was not a…What was the term? Swinger. That sounded dated to him, bringing back memories of the middle of the previous century, but it had been the one used by the website his Concerned Friend had utilized to plan this date.
He had been silent long enough to increase her discomfort.
“What is it you do for a living?” she asked.
There was a choked sound from the driver, and her face twisted in socially motivated horror as she obviously remembered Asil was being paid two thousand dollars for tonight. “I mean—”
“Finance,” he supplied smoothly, hiding an emotion that felt very strange here in this car with a hostile driver and Mariposa’s daughter. It felt like amusement. “I invest money.” He let the silence build and added, “And I grow roses.”
“My husband is also a financier,” she said.
She is afraid of him, said Asil’s wolf.
Am I here to rescue Mariposa’s daughter?Asil thought incredulously.
No. I will not.The wolf refused the very idea of it.
But Asil’s wolf was not in charge. Asil fell silent again. This time because he did not know what to say. That was not like him, but he’d never been in quite this situation, either.
He threw politeness aside.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” she said. Truth. “How old are you?”
“More than twice your age, child,” he replied.
“Like your husband,” muttered the driver in a voice he probably thought no one else would be able to hear. “God.”
“How is it that you are here, being paid to whore yourself out?” she asked.
The car jerked as their driver’s foot came down too hard on the gas pedal. Possibly, Asil thought, he should have kept the “child” address to himself.
He couldn’t help a quick grin, though she didn’t see it because she was staring at her clenched hands as if she couldn’t believe she’d asked that question. That might be for the best because he was still feeling a bit feral. Asil caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, saw the man tense, hands flexing on the wheel.
Allies or enemies? Did he continue to pretend and see where this led? Or did he shape the night himself? Passiveness was not in Asil’s nature.
“Some friends gifted me with five blind dates for Christmas,” Asil told her. “I survived the first four. I understand there is a betting pool.”
