“I’m only asking for a place to stay until the weather breaks and I can travel,” he said, figuring that he might as well be open about what he needed most badly. “I have a room at an inn about thirty miles from here, but I can’t ask you to drive me in this, if the roads are even open, and also,” hell, he hated to admit it, “I’m needing some rest after last night. As you might imagine, I’m not feeling exactly a hundred percent.”

She looked at him so thoroughly and thoughtfully that, oddly enough, Gideon felt he was going to start squirming under the scrutiny. For such a small bit of a thing, this Carly was almost intimidating, he noted with something like wonder. And, he thought as his skin burned in the places where it was still healing from last night’s assault, he badly needed her to give him sanctuary. She took her time considering, looking out the window onto a day that was nothing but frigid shades of gray and swirling white. Finally, she spoke. It was a funny thing, though. She seemed fairly amazed at herself as she fumbled out an answer, even shaking her head a bit in disbelief.

“Well, Gideon … I guess, all things considered … I mean, with the weather and all, I suppose I don’t actually have a problem with that.” Gideon started to smile, opened his mouth to thank her, but she held up her hand. “If, that is, you can give me satisfactory answers to a few questions I have.”

Relief flooded him anyway. Carly Silver knew nothing about him or his people. How difficult could her questions be to answer? Certainly, there were a great many things he wasn’t at liberty to tell most of his Pack, much less a woman he’d met only hours before, and a good number of other things he simply didn’t think she needed to know. Still, it shouldn’t be hard to keep his information general and simple. Of course, he was going to have to twist the facts just a little, Gideon rationalized as he considered just what he would tell her. It was safer for her, and it would make it easier for the both of them.

No matter how much his conscience was already stinging.

A Wolf will not keep secrets from his mate.

Except she wasn’t his mate, his conscious mind insisted, and never would be. His father had let his love make him selfish, and he’d paid for that mistake ever since. Duncan would be the last MacInnes man that tried to make a mate of one who he knew could not bear the gift, Gideon vowed. Then he gathered himself, pushing the dark and nonsensical thoughts from his mind as he straightened and tried to look as honest as possible.

“Ask away.”

“Great,” she said with some obvious relief of her own. “So,” Carly took a deep breath, charming Gideon inadvertently with her determination not to be intimidated by all of this, even though it must have gone against all her instincts, “here’s what I know so far. You’re a werewolf. You’re Scottish. You showed up on my doorstep last night mostly dead. This morning, not so dead, but definitely naked, not quite healed, and also snoring away in my bed.” She ticked off these items on slim, manicured fingers, a look of intense seriousness on her face. Gideon bit back a smile, again struck by the impression that Carly Silver, whatever else she was, appeared to be a businesswoman through and through. He idly wondered what she did for a living. The memories of her rescue of him the night before were fuzzy at best, but wherever he’d turned up had obviously been where she worked. It had, he reasoned, probably been an office of some sort. He could certainly see her in tailored little suits, bringing an incredibly sexy touch to a cold, clinical profession. An accountant, maybe? Lawyer? He had to be close.

Idly, Gideon wondered which of the myriad things Carly was sure to be curious about she’d decide to question him on first. The one she picked, however, startled him.

“So I guess what I really need to know is … is whoever or whatever tried to kill you last night going to be coming back?”

Gideon could only stare at her, surprised into silence. Finally he managed to get out words, although they weren’t much good to him. “I. Um. Well.” Genius, he thought with a mental slap to the forehead. He had assumed she’d start with something easy, something born out of curiosity. After all, how many bloody werewolves could she have met? He’d never thought she’d get to the heart of the matter so quickly. He’d thought she’d be intrigued, maybe even fawn over his wounds a bit with some of the gentleness she’d shown him when she’d thought he wasn’t human.

Obviously, he’d been wrong.

Carly gave him a hard look, frowning slightly. “Yeah. That’s about what I thought. Don’t know, do you?” She rose, moved to the counter to refill her cup. “More?” she asked without looking at him. Gideon fumbled through his thoughts, searching for an appropriate response.

“No, thanks. Why are you so sure someone was trying to kill me?” Ah, lovely. Defensive, not to mention stupid. Gideon gritted his teeth. Why couldn’t charm have been his strong suit, as it was for his brother? Gabriel never seemed to have a problem keeping his rotating harem completely enthralled with him, no matter what manner of asinine stunt he’d just pulled. At this rate, his effect on one woman was going to find him either arrested or camping nude in the nearest snow bank. Apparently, the silver tongue only hit once in a generation.

Carly turned, gave him a long-suffering look that plainly asked what sort of an idiot he took her for, and sat back down. She tucked one foot beneath her, and dumped what to Gideon appeared to be a small truckload of sugar into her steaming mug.

“Got enough coffee in your sugar?” he asked, indicating the dark liquid that she was now stirring furiously. She simply stared back, obviously troubled. Damn.

“Ha. Look, Gideon, you’ve been pretty straightforward so far, no matter how bizarre this all is, so I’ll return the favor. I found you ripped halfway open last night. You could barely move.” The pain Gideon saw reflected in her eyes both surprised and moved him. “I was going to do what I could, but I honestly figured you were just going to bleed out right there in the alley. And all I kept thinking was, what does this to an animal this big?” Her face was pale, her expression strained. She’d been really worried about him, Gideon realized with a strange jolt. Was, in fact, worried still. And damned if he knew what to do with that.

“Obviously, whatever you are heals pretty quickly, but I,” she spread her hands in front of her as though making a plea, “am just human. If I get torn up like that, I will, in all likelihood, stay torn up. I have a life I love, a family I need to protect. And if you want to stay, even for five minutes, you’d better tell me what exactly I’m getting myself into.”

He looked at her then, a small, delicate beauty in too-large pajamas worrying over a lot more than just whether the big, bad wolf was going to end up blowing her house down, and he knew what he was going to have to do. Quickly, Gideon calculated. Barring a complete natural disaster, he’d be here a day, two at the outside. While he knew his cousin would have made sure that none of this could be traced back to him, the fact was that one of his minions was dead, the other two wounded badly enough that they’d need to lay low for at least another full day to heal. Neither of them would be in the sort of shape required for trekking through a storm in Wolf form, any more than Gideon himself would in the immediate future. By the time they were able to try again, Gideon figured, he could and would be long gone. Back to the source, to settle this the way it ought to be settled: with Pack justice. This time, he would find a way to ensure Malachi got what he deserved, even if it meant the last resort of an Honor Battle, a fight to the death.

He might have underestimated Malachi, but Malachi had also underestimated him. It would be the last mistake, Gideon vowed, his cousin would ever be able to make. And as for other mistakes …

Gideon turned his attention back to Carly, pushed off the regret that wanted to creep in. He couldn’t have her. Lying to her to set her mind at ease was all for the good, and she’d never know any different. All that mattered was that she wasn’t going to get hurt, and that in a few days, she was going to be able to forget all about him.

And he, for his part, could try like hell to forget about her.

He looked her dead in the eye. “There was another Wolf in the woods last night,” he told her. “I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t provoke it. But I’m the only one who came out alive.”

She must have caught a flash of something in his face, because for just a moment, she hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” And something he couldn’t name twisted in his gut, even as he sealed it with words he was no longer certain were true. Just not in the way she might expect. “You’re in no danger from me. I promise.”

t t t

Carly faced some serious problems, not the least of which was that she seemed to have completely lost her mind in the past hour. Werewolf in the bed? Sure, why not! What, you need to stay awhile? Hey, make yourself comfortable! And while you’re at it, why don’t you get naked again so I can climb your hot body like a tree? No problem? Great!

“Oh, God,” Carly groaned, her head resting on the table. After his vehement reassurances that she wasn’t in any danger, her new houseguest had been nothing but a perfect gentleman. He’d gamely answered several of her random werewolf-related questions (yes, it was a hereditary issue; yes, there were more of them; no, he hadn’t ever had a blood lust/dismemberment problem), and while he didn’t strike her as the world’s biggest chatterbox, he’d done just fine making small talk, even offering to whip up something morning-appropriate on the stove. He’d done nothing since they’d properly introduced themselves to invite anything like the kind of animal lust she was now fixating on him with.

She peeked up, saw nothing but Gideon’s firm, completely grabbable ass sticking out of her fridge as he looked for the makings of the breakfast he was so insistent on making for both of them, and dropped her eyes back down. Actually, what she really wanted to do with her head was just to go soak it for a while. Of course, the steam rising from it afterwards would have been a dead giveaway.