“I’m always prim and proper when conducting business. You’re not business right now.”
“What am I, then?”
“Pure pleasure.”
I shot him a glare, grabbed my purse with its precious contents of male lycanthrope containment, got out of my car, and slammed the door. “Well, just you remember you’re a very nice paycheck to me right now. That makes you business.”
He dared to smirk at me. “I have decided that this is a vacation, and I get to enjoy my vacation with a very lovely hybrid lady. If no one has told you this before, your fur is quite lovely.”
I huffed, and I twisted my ears back, unable to resist glaring at my pale, almost silvery fur covering my hands. “I’m a wolf, and I have wolf fur.”
“You’ve never checked a mirror while in your hybrid form, have you?”
I snarled at him. “What’s it to you, Barnes?”
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of what you are.” He took his phone out, took a few steps back, pointed it at me, and tapped at the screen. “Now, come over here and have a look at yourself. You’re lovely in your hybrid form.”
“No.”
“I am making it my goal to convince you to have a good look at yourself while wearing your fur coat, both as a wolf and in your hybrid form. I’m making this my latest mission in life, second only to getting you to sign the lease papers.”
“I’ll sign the lease papers under the condition you don’t try to show me my reflection in any damned mirror or make me look at pictures of myself.”
He scowled. “That’s playing dirty.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You’ll have to check your reflection to see if you like your clothes, so I’ll win. Very well. You sign the lease, and I won’t pressure you into looking at your reflection more than once a month.”
I groaned, shook my head, and sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Well, if I had my way, I’d find who infected you and beat the life right out of him while you watched. I’ll settle with coaxing you into admiring the wolf you’ve become. I think limiting my efforts to once a month is fair in exchange for signing the leasing papers.”
“We’ll talk about it after we deal with the clothes,” I growled.
“That’s better than a no.” Wayne put his phone away and bowed, gesturing for me to go into the store, which featured a sign showing a stylized hybrid lycanthrope.
“Dress me in what you want, I’ll try it on to make sure it fits, and I won’t look at my fucking reflection!”
He laughed, and when I didn’t move, he straightened, placed his hands on my shoulders, and pushed me in the direction of the shop. “I look forward to proving you’re a beautiful hybrid.”
“You’d say that to any single hybrid female,” I complained. “That’s what I was told. All lycanthrope males think all lycanthrope females are beautiful. They lose their minds because of their viruses.”
“I’m going to have to talk to the CDC about this. They’ve done a good job of convincing you that lycanthropes are dangerous to you,” he grumbled.
“It’s true.”
“It’s really not. Despite the CDC’s opinion, most lycanthropes are aware of what the word no means. We even know how to respect the word no. And while it is recommended for a single female who wishes to remain single stay away from males while her virus spikes, we’re not monsters. Most of us. Most of us aren’t monsters. The wolf who infected you? He’s a monster, and the only good monster is a dead monster. Have you requested the FBI look into your case?”
“I didn’t know that was an option,” I admitted, wondering how this would have changed for me if only I’d known the CDC’s failure to find my attacker wasn’t the end of that road. “It’s probably too late, and I don’t remember much.”
“You remember some, and that might be enough. We’ll talk about it tonight after you sign the leasing paperwork.”
“You just want to build your ivory tower,” I accused.
“Absolutely. Now, add some steel to that spine of yours. We’re clothing shopping. That doesn’t mean we’re attending your execution.”
“Are you sure?”
