Page 6 of Midnight Mate
The only possible explanation was that he saw an injured animal and instinct kicked in, not his self-preservation or sanity.
Just the weight of Mabel on his feet and the sound of the wolf’s breathing filling the silence.
“I’ll just rest here a minute,” he told himself, though his eyelids were already drooping. “Make sure you’re stable.”
The house settled into quiet around them. Just the tick of the clock in the hallway, Mabel’s occasional shift against his feet, the wolf’s steadier breathing. Normal sounds made strange by the context.
Outside, wind moved through trees, carrying the scent of pine and approaching rain. The world went on, unaware that Clint’s living room had become a trauma unit for the supernatural.
He really should’ve gotten that doctorate in cryptozoology instead.
Would’ve been more practical, apparently.
The last thing he registered was his own heartbeat, Mabel’s purring, and the quiet certainty that his life had just veered onto a road he couldn’t yet see the end of.
Chapter Two
Waking happened all at once. No gentle easing into consciousness, no soft cocoon of dreams cushioning the landing. Clint just jerked awake on the couch, one arm flailing for a blanket that had apparently abandoned him during the night. He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a baby cow in distress. Not pretty.
Mabel, possessing all the compassion of a wet sock, pressed her backside firmly onto his chest and looked him in the eye, purring with the intensity of a diesel engine.
“Morning,” he muttered. She didn’t dignify him with a meow. Instead, she pressed her paws deeper into his sternum.
His lower back felt like someone had replaced his spine with rusted rebar. Every attempt to turn his head sent lightning down his shoulder.
Morning meant the wolf would need checking. Probably needed water, maybe food if it could manage solids. Clint pushed himself upright, knees popping like bubble wrap, and turned toward where he’d left his patient.
But the wolf was gone.
Clint blinked twice, still groggy, before his brain connected the dots. Where the wolf had been, sprawled out in a mess of blood and shredded towels, a man lay instead.
Completely naked.
Not even a decorative throw pillow for modesty.
Clint’s brain stuttered to a complete stop. He sat up, ignoring Mabel’s protest. His feet hit the rug. Knees protested, loudly. Apparently, wrestling wolves in the middle of the night didn’t count as cardio and absolutely counted against his warranty.
One slow, careful step at a time, he approached the stranger on his floor. Very Naked man on his floor. So much for hoping last night was a weird stress dream.
Morning light played across skin that ranged from pale gold to deeper bronze where the sun had touched it. Dark hair fell across his face, longer than current fashion but somehow exactly right for the sharp angles of his jaw. Stubble shadowed his cheeks, not quite a beard but enough to make Clint wonder how it would feel against his palm.
The guy looked…solid, his shoulders and back cut in lines and curves, like maybe he spent his free time wrestling trees for fun.
Built didn’t even cover it. That chest had to be at least fifty percent pectoral muscle, and the rest was evenly distributed between arms that could break a person in half and thighs that should be illegal.
He wasn’t even going to look farther down. No need to embarrass himself by ogling a man who probably had better things to do than wake up to find himself being stared at like a prize-winning bull.
Still, Clint hovered.
The body on the floor was breathing, chest rising steadily. No gashes, no broken limbs, nothing left of the mess Clint had fixed up last night. Strips of bandages lay scattered like party confetti, and the splint now looked as useful as a wet napkin.
Maybe the shifting did most of the heavy lifting. Maybe it needed a jump start, a little human ingenuity to get the ball rolling before nature took over. Either way, if he’d left the guy out there bleeding, it would’ve been a different body in his yard this morning.
He nudged a towel aside with his foot. The man’s face was turned toward him now, one cheek pressed against the hardwood. Lips parted. Clint could now see the angles of his jaw and the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks.
Beautiful was the word. Not that he’d say that out loud.
A low exhale betrayed consciousness. The eyelids fluttered open, revealing amber eyes with the same focus as last night, that unsettling, intelligent awareness that made Clint feel like he was being sized up, even now. No aggression. No panic. Just the calm assessment of someone who’d been through this before and was already wondering how much worse it’d get.
