Max stared at him as if he was a pig wearing a Rolex.
“Damn, you’re slow,” Remy growled. “Max, we’ve been together for four frigging days and Triana is already thinking long-term. While I didn’t exactly freak out, I definitely tensed when she said it, and I think she picked up on it.”
“Shit,” Max muttered. “You sure?”
Remy shrugged. “She didn’t say anything else to me the rest of the night and didn’t give me more than a quick kiss when I left the hotel room this morning. I didn’t do it to upset her, but when she said those words, they set off alarms.”
Not to mention made him want to run for the frigging hills. Even that might not be far enough to forget about Triana and the things she was making him feel.
Max didn’t say anything. Instead, he seemed to be considering that as he ate the rest of his fries and wolfed down what was left of his cheeseburger. When he finally finished chewing, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and shook his head.
“Okay, I thought about it and I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t get it. You have a beautiful woman who’s crazy attracted to you. She also happens to be an old friend, so she has that going for her too. Then there’s the whole sexual-chemistry thing, and apparently she’s already excited about the idea of a future with you. So, what the hell is the problem again?”
Remy cursed. “It’s not that simple.”
“It seems pretty simple to me,” Max said. “You’ve found The One for you, so what’s all the drama about? You’re like the sixth member of the Pack who’s found theirs in the past year. Seven, if you count Khaki. I’m not really sure if that counts as one or two since she fell for Xander, and I already took him into account. Now that I think about it, I’d count her in the total number, since she’s part of the Pack now.”
Remy ignored the rest of Max’s rambling babble. The One. Remy had avoided even thinking about that term over the past few days, telling himself there was nothing more going on between him and Triana than an old friendship and some epic sexual chemistry. There was a part of him that had known he was lying to himself, of course. But he did that a lot, and was completely okay with it.
Now, he couldn’t avoid the obvious anymore. The thought that Max was right and Triana was almost certainly the one-in-a-billion soul mate he was destined to be with for the rest of his life started a panic attack like nothing Remy had ever experienced. One second he was hyperventilating, and the next he was starting to shift.
They might have been in the backroom of the restaurant, but there were probably forty people twenty feet away, and there he was completely wolfing out. His fangs and claws extended, his facial bones reformed, his nose began to push out, and every muscle in his body started to twist and spasm as it attempted to assume a shape that sure as hell wasn’t appropriate for his current environment.
If he hadn’t been freaking out at that moment, Remy would have taken the time to wonder how it was possible for him to shift so fast. Unfortunately, he was freaking out, and all he could do was attempt to get a grip on himself, slow down his breathing, and shove the beast back inside its cage. But no matter how hard he fought, it wasn’t working. He was going to completely lose it. Right there. Right then.
Remy was about to get up and launch himself out the window, praying he could make it into the wooded area behind the restaurant without anyone seeing him, when he felt a stabbing pain in his hand.
He looked down at his hands stretched out on the table in front of him, inch-long claws extending from the tips of each finger. The ring finger on his left hand had been dislocated at the second knuckle and now lay twisted to the side at a weird angle. As he tried to make sense of that, Max grabbed the pinky finger beside it and twisted that one too.
Shit, that hurt.
When the pain of the ligaments starting to give way finally broke through the panic racing through his body, Remy’s control snapped back into place. His facial features returned to normal, then his fangs and claws retracted, and finally the long muscles of his legs and back calmed down and stopped spasming.
He popped his two fingers back into place as Max swiped a waffle fry off his plate. Remy resisted the urge to stab him with a fork.
“What the hell is up with you?” Max asked after all Remy’s parts were back in place. “I’ve never seen you lose control. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the Pack lose it as bad as you just did. Well, maybe Carter, but he’s always had issues.”
Remy grabbed his iced tea and downed the entire glass in a few swallows. Then he sat there a while trying to get his heart rate back to normal when all it wanted to do was start racing all over again at the knowledge that Triana was The One for him.
He had a sudden urge to ask the waitress to bring in a couple of bottles of the strongest whiskey they had behind the bar, but decided against it. Not only would it look bad as hell to have a cop in a Dallas PD uniform sucking down booze with his lunch, but Max wouldn’t have let him do it anyway. The idiot would probably sit there cheerfully breaking his fingers for the rest of the afternoon.
“I’ve been in love before,” he finally said. “Her name was Jess, and she was my partner in the U.S. Marshals, back before I became a werewolf.”
Max was so stunned he stopped, the waffle fries he’d stolen from Remy’s plate halfway to his mouth. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Remy confirmed. “I was naive enough to believe having a relationship with my partner wouldn’t lead to trouble at some point. It was against the rules, but I was young, cocky, and thought I knew it all. I figured I could have everything I wanted without having to pay the price. It turned out I was wrong.”
“What happened?” Max asked.
“We went after some assholes who’d broken out of the federal prison in Leavenworth and ended up trying to take them down without backup. My relationship with Jess made me lose focus at the wrong time. It got her killed and turned me into a werewolf.”
On the other side of the table, Max stared at him. “That’s it? You were in love, she died, and now you aren’t interested in women anymore? Wait a minute. What am I saying? I’ve seen you go out with lots of women. Hell, I’ve never known you to not be with a woman.”
Remy shrugged. “That’s different. Sure, I like women—I’m an alpha frigging werewolf. It’s just that I have no interest in anything serious with any of them. I let them know I’m in it for the fun and I only go out with women looking for the same thing. I rarely see any woman more than three or four times, except a select few. But those are special cases because both parties involved know it’s just a sexual thing. We’re both comfortable with the fact that we’re using each other for sex.”
Max shook his head as he pilfered more fries from Remy. “Damn. I’m a guy and even I think that’s messed up. You’ve committed your life to a series of meaningless fucks because a woman you were serious about died in the line of duty? You can’t really believe that Jess’s death is on your hands. I don’t know the particulars, but she probably would have died even if you hadn’t been sleeping with her.”
“But I was sleeping with her, and she did die.” Remy held up his hands so Max could see his palms. “See that?”
