Читать книгу The Billionaire Werewolf's Princess - Michele Hauf - Страница 9

Chapter 1

Paris

Indigo DuCharme’s chin wobbled as she held up her head and bravely looked over the busy ballroom. She stood at the top of a stairway that curled down to the marble dance floor. Her heart pounded so loudly she couldn’t focus on the waltz played by the orchestra. Her eyes threatened to tear up, but she blamed this on the brilliant glints from half a dozen chandeliers suspended above the dancers.

Clutching her pink tulle skirt with both hands, she toyed with the embroidered red poppies she’d added days ago. She’d also sewn a pocket in the skirt to keep her cell phone. She forced herself not to check her text messages again. For the sixth time. Or maybe the thirteenth time. Because...

He had jilted her.

The last text she’d read from him, ten minutes earlier, had the audacity to state: Sorry, hooked up with Melanie this evening. You and me? Sex was great. But never connected beyond the sheets, yeah?

Fingers curling into her palms, Indi winced as her perfectly manicured fingernails dug into her skin. Never connected? Beyond the sheets? She’d been dating Todd for over a month. They’d seen each other practically every day. She’d cooked for him. Shopped for him. Had sex with him and made sure he was a happy camper, meaning that she didn’t always orgasm but he did. All week she’d been planning her dress and hair for tonight’s date. The Summer Soiree charity ball was one of her favorites. And she looked...

...so pretty.

Indi had felt like a star when she arrived by limo two hours earlier. Todd always met her for dates; his work as a stock trader kept him at the office at all hours. Indi had glided out of the limo, her long, lush, poppy-red-and-pink tulle skirts floating about her legs. The beaded bodice hugged her like a dream and she had dusted her décolletage with fine glitter. Her blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun with tendrils framing her face. She wore a pink, cat-ears tiara, which she sold through her online business, Goddess Goodies. Her makeup was dramatic and sexy. Todd loved the smoky eye shadow and her dark matte red lipstick. Or so he’d said.

Had it all been a lie? Had she merely been a prolonged hookup? Who the hell was Melanie? And just how long could Indi hold off tears before she risked mascara running down her cheeks?

A waiter, wielding a tray of goblets shimmering with bubbles, appeared before her. “Champagne?”

Indi shook her head and forced a smile. She felt no mirth whatsoever. Reaching up to adjust the cat ears, she remembered how putting them on tonight had reminded her of the joy she’d felt as a kid. She’d worn cat ears for fun as a child, and then, after a few bad romances in high school, as a sort of confidence boost.

The cat ears had been the first of many luxury accessories she now offered at her online store. Goddess Goodies bought out-of-season and damaged designer gowns—sometimes they were donated directly from the designers. Indi refurbished them, and then rented them for the price of shipping and cleaning. As well, she sold some gowns outright for a pretty penny. Indi’s business was designed to boost confidence and empower women, and to give the opportunity to those who might not be able to afford a pretty dress for prom or an important event. Goddess Goodies was treading toward its first million-dollar year. And that should make her feel on top of the world.

It was difficult to celebrate her feminine power when her goddess had just been trampled on by an asshole. Would her love life ever catch up to the success she was experiencing in her business life?

“Doubt it,” she whispered, and sniffed back a tear.

Screw it. She grabbed a champagne goblet from another passing waiter’s tray and tilted it back. It was number five, or six, that she’d consumed since realizing Todd had dumped her.

“One more,” she muttered, and veered toward another waiter, her footsteps a bit unsure. “And then I’m going to blow this Popsicle stand.”

“Indigo!”

Dread climbed Indi’s neck at the sound of a familiar and falsely friendly voice. Sabrina Moreau, who hosted this ball, had never met a strand of pearls she didn’t like, or, for that matter, an older married man. She tended to wear both as if battle prizes strung about her neck.

“Bree,” Indi said, while sweeping another goblet of champagne off a passing tray. Her world wobbled, but she ignored the easy drunk that was riding her spine and up the back of her neck.

“That is the most gorgeous dress I’ve seen,” Bree cooed. “One of your creations?”

“Of course. It’s Gucci restyled. Mint green certainly is your color.”

Bree blushed, which only emphasized how terrible the pale green did look on her artificially tanned skin. “Jean-Paul likes me in green. Where’s your date? For as lovely as you look this evening, it can’t be solo. You always have a handsome stunner on your arm.”

“Todd is...” An asshole. And her heart split to even think that she’d thought she could love the guy. Had she thought that? No, not love. Certainly not so fast. But she’d invested a lot of time in him over the past month. “We broke up. And you know me, I’d never miss a ball, especially when I’ve got the dress.”

“Oh, sweetie. That’s so sad.”

Tell her about it. Tightening her lips seemed to keep the tears at bay. Why had she stopped to talk to Bree? She needed to be out of here. Away from the too-happy glow of crystal chandeliers and laughing couples. Now. Someplace dark and quiet so she could lick her wounds.

“How old are you, Indi?”

Indi quirked an eyebrow at that delving question.

“Well, you know what I mean. We’re not getting any younger, are we? Time to wrangle one and get him to put a ring on it. Am I right?” Bree rubbed Indi’s forearm and patted her on the shoulder. “Do you want me to fix you up?”

“No.” Because she was no longer in the market for rich assholes who liked to spend weekends on their yachts while working all hours and making business calls between kisses and—oh, yeah—between orgasms that never quite pleased her. “I’m good, Bree. Really.”

Not really.

Where the hell was the exit?

“Well, if you need—”

Indi’s tolerance level dropped out the bottom of her Swarovski crystal strappy heels. She turned and fled from Bree’s prying questions, suspecting she might look like Cinderella fleeing the ball. It was near midnight. But she couldn’t wear the false smile anymore.

And tears had started to spill without volition.

Aiming down the hallway toward the front doors, she suddenly stopped and spun, thinking an escape out the back would be much easier. The paparazzi always lurked out front. And while she was no A-list celebrity, she didn’t want to risk photobombing any shots with her distraught tear-streaked mug. She could walk down the street and hail a cab.

Weaving through the coat-check area and then down a darkened hallway, she passed a few waiters who informed her she wasn’t authorized to be in this area of the building. Flipping them off, Indi mumbled something about not feeling well and needing to be away from the crowd. Finally, escape loomed ahead.

Pushing the back doors open, she wandered through what must be the loading area. Filing around a parked truck that smelled of diesel fuel, she clutched her skirt so it wouldn’t skim the ground. She’d spent last Saturday afternoon adding the red chiffon poppies to this dress to give color and interest to what had been a crop of beaded green leaves growing up from the hem.

Finally making the cobblestone street, she looked both ways. La rue Joséphine was to the left; that’s where all the cabs would be parked. Yet the promise of bright streetlights and neon revealing her tears to all made her turn to the right.

She’d walk a bit. Even if her heels were much too high for a comfortable stroll and the uneven cobblestones made walking with some decorum a joke. She inhaled deeply, as she thought it would help, but instead, the sudden influx of stale air only increased her tears. And she started to sob. The champagne made her head swim.

Who was she kidding? She was drunk. Which was probably why she hadn’t toppled over yet. The drunkeness was counterbalancing the wobbly-heels-to-ground ratio. Ha!

She wandered by a homeless man sitting on a piece of cardboard. He cast her a wide-eyed look.

“What?” she said testily. “This is Paris. Haven’t you ever seen a woman in a ball gown wandering the streets in the middle of the night?”

She just needed to find a quiet place to break down and bawl. Loud and long. To let the goddess who had been standing at the top of the steps feeling so pretty and special exude the pain of such a sharp and cruel rejection. And then she’d find her way home to curl in on herself.

At the very least, Todd could have texted her before she’d left for the soiree tonight. The bastard!

“Melanie,” she muttered, and wandered forward. The woman sounded high-maintenance. And like she’d go down on a man on the first date.

What was wrong with her? She was a nice person. Reasonably pretty. Not too big and not too thin. She had always agreed to whatever Todd wanted to do. She ate at the restaurants he’d chosen, and she even wore the tight red dress that pushed up her tits to her throat when he’d asked her to. What had she done wrong?

“Wasn’t I good enough for him?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. Indi pushed forward, wandering mindlessly, then turned down another, narrower street. She knew this neighborhood from girls’ nights out with her BFF. Maybe?

Pausing, she thrust out her arms to balance as her heel wobbled in a crack between cobblestones. Where in Paris was she?

“Who cares?”

Unable to fight the call to release her hurt, Indi released her tears, loudly.

* * *

Ryland James stood in the center of a dark, quiet street in FaeryTown. The sword he held in his right hand curved like a scimitar, and was bespelled to kill faeries. He’d found it in a tree years ago, guarded by a dryad, and had claimed it as his own. Of late, Sidhe Slayer was the whispered title he’d been hearing about himself.

He didn’t need a label. Someone had to stop the collectors who snuck in at midnight from Faery through this, a thin place insinuating FaeryTown. It was smack-dab in the middle of the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris. The collectors arrived in pairs and, if they could get past him, would seek the first human they could find and assume control of that person’s body, then steal a human baby and take it back to Faery.

Not on his guard.

Checking his watch, he noted four minutes until midnight. FaeryTown was normally bustling this late at night, but when Ry walked onto the scene the residents scattered, shuffling behind doors and peering out windows to witness the slaughter.

Lifting his chin, he sniffed the air. His werewolf senses were attuned and he picked up the usual odors of faery presence and very little from humans. FaeryTown overlay this part of Paris. Humans could walk through and would never know faeries occupied the same space only on a different dimension. Humans hadn’t the ability to see faeries, such as he did.

The sudden sound of a human voice—crying—alerted Ry. He swung about to spy a woman in a fancy pink gown wandering along the brick wall that fronted a human-owned bakery, yet the faeries, in their altered dimension, used it as a dust den that lured in vampires addicted to their ichor. Hair pulled up and looking like a princess, the woman choked out tears and sobs. He noted the sparkly ears on her head. And the streaks of mascara running down her cheeks.

Why was he seeing her now? When he focused on the FaeryTown layer of this area, he saw only the sidhe and their ilk. Any humans present slipped away into the background. She was so vivid. Almost as if she treaded FaeryTown herself. But she wasn’t faery. Even though her gorgeous breasts sparkled above the pink fabric. That wasn’t faery dust, just glitter that women loved to dust all over themselves. No, she smelled human—coppery and tinged with the earthy presence of skin and bone and yet also a delicious overlayer of perfume and soft woman.

Ry shook his head. He shouted at her. “Hey! Get out of here! You can’t be here right now.”

She dismissed his worry with a swinging gesture of her hand and plopped down to sit on the curb. Her skirts fluffed around her, the hem edged with dirt, and...she was missing a shoe.

She should not be able to see him.

She sniffed loudly, then muttered, “Can you call me a cab? I seem to have gotten lost. My phone is here—” she patted her fluffy skirt “—somewhere...”

“I don’t have time for that.” Two minutes until midnight. Gripping the enchanted sword firmly, Ry swung it behind him, pointing toward the main street that edged the border of FaeryTown. “Get out of this area. It’s not safe. I’ll call you a cab later.”

“He dumped me!” she announced.

Ry winced at the woman’s utter lack of recognition for the imminent danger. There was no way she could be in FaeryTown unless she also had the sight or had somehow gained admittance. Humans couldn’t simply enter FaeryTown unless they could see it. And it appeared that she was merely wandering the streets...

Why was this gorgeous princess wandering about alone?

“Listen, Princess Pussycat,” he hissed. “Bad things are going to happen. Right now. So run!”

As he spoke the final word, the fabric between Faery and the mortal realm glimmered. The gray night sky above a two-story building tore and shimmered along the edges of that tear.

Ry swore. The woman on the curb still sobbed, her head caught against her open palms. He felt a moment of compassion for her. What asshole would be so cruel to such a pretty woman?

But really? Things were about to get rough.

Swinging his sword arm, Ry prepared as the first of the collectors entered this realm. The creature’s body was long and wispy, barely holding the form of a human. It was black, so black it was like peering into a void in the shape of the creature. And yet it sparkled with so much faery dust it was as though that void formed a black hole speckled with stardust.

Not about to become enchanted by the sight, Ry swung toward the approaching collector. It floated nearer, and when it spied him, it stretched its maw wide to reveal a piranha row of vicious teeth.

“What the hell is that?” the woman called.

“I don’t know how you can see this, but you need to listen to me and run!”

“I lost my shoe.”

“Mademoiselle! I’m serious!” He swung the sword but missed the collector.

It soared high, the wispy tail of its form spilling black, oily fog over Ry’s head. He swept the substance aside to keep an eye on the creature. Out the corner of his eye he again saw the fabric between realms glimmer. Always, they arrived in pairs.

“This is crazy,” the woman said. She stood and wobbled. Drunk? Had to be. “I need a cab. I can’t find my pocket. My skirts are tangled... Hey, that thing is swooping toward you!”

Ry averted his attention from the crazy lush sight of the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen to the sparkling black void that aimed for his throat. Its curved, sharp talons wrapped about his throat. Gagging, Ry stumbled backward. Slipping his sword arm back and thrusting the tip up, he managed to stab the thing, but not in the substantial main body, instead only in the wispy tail. It released him and, with a twist of its misty shape, soared toward its approaching partner.

“That way!” Ry pointed down the street. “Go!”

“What are those things? And why are you so angry with me? Can a girl get a break?” She now stood in the street not ten feet from him. “I have only ever tried to please people. And what do I get? Dumped at the ball. Todd is such an asshole.”

“Fuck Todd!” Ry said hastily.

“Right?”

One of the collectors took note of the woman. She wouldn’t have time to get to the street and out of FaeryTown.

Ry raced for her, grabbed her by the arm and shoved her between the dust den and another brick wall. She screamed and landed on her hands and knees, which he regretted, but only so long as it took for him to turn and dodge the lunging collector.

Now he was angry. And the twinge of a shift crawled across his scalp. His werewolf did not like these nasty things from Faery. Ry’s upper body, of its own volition, shifted. T-shirt tearing at the seams, his shoulders grew wider and his head assumed wolf shape.

Growling, Ry marched toward the collector and led it back to the center of the street. He swung his sword repeatedly. When it shot upward into the sky, hovering above him, Ry positioned himself below, waiting. In his peripheral vision he could see the other collector approaching the alley where he’d shoved the woman.

The creature above him dropped like a rock. He thrust up the sword, and it pierced the collector’s heart. Ichor spilled over Ry’s fur and wolf-shaped head and down his arms and paws. Without a death scream, the thing dissipated into black faery dust.

But the next sound sent a chill up his spine. The scream was not that of annoyance, drunkenness or a jilted woman. It was of fear—and pain.

The collector slashed a razor talon across the woman’s décolletage. She fainted. And the thing turned to gnash its teeth at Ry as he approached. Sword thrusting as he ran, Ry caught the creature as it lunged toward him. More black dust and the eerie, quiet dissipation of the collector in the air before him.

On the ground was a scatter of pink fabric. A sparkly rhinestone shoe peeked out from the fluff. The woman’s chest bled where the collector had scratched her.

Shaking off his werewolf with a seamless shift back to human shape, Ry bent over her. “Damn it, how did you manage this?” He touched two fingers to the side of her neck. The collectors’ bite was deadly to humans, but he wasn’t sure about their talons. The things were literally bags of floating poison.

He felt a heartbeat, but it pulsed and then slowed. Quickly.

Instinctually, he knew. “She’s going to die.”

And that did not sit well with him. This was his beat. He was responsible for any and all who got in the way of his efforts to keep the collectors off the streets. And she was an innocent. Just like those he was trying to protect.

Lifting her into his arms, Ry rushed down the street, deeper into FaeryTown. He knew no more collectors would arrive tonight. There were never more than two nightly.

“Sorry to make your night worse, Princess,” he said as he turned, heading toward the faery healer he had once or twice used for his own injuries. “We’re going to have to talk about how you were able to breach FaeryTown.”

She moaned in his arms and muttered something about Todd not deserving her.

“Todd’s a jerk,” he said. “Any man should be proud and honored to have your company.”

Unless she was a pill. Hell, even the pretty ones could be tough to deal with. But damn, she smelled great. Sweet and soft, like something he wanted to taste.

Giving his head a shake to chase away that random thought, Ry kicked the door to the faery healer’s home. This was not a situation he wanted to be in right now. Standing on Hestia’s doorstep? She wasn’t going to be happy.

“To the devil with you!” a voice hollered from behind the door.

To be expected. They had a history.

But the woman in his arms would soon be history if he didn’t hurry. Ry kicked the door again, and the chains on the other side broke, the door slamming inside against the wall. He rushed across the threshold and down the tight, narrow hallway to the healing room where Hestia helped so many of her afflicted species. He laid the woman on the bed of leaves and vines that immediately coiled and twisted to embrace her arms and one exposed shoeless foot.

Ry turned to the fuming faery behind him. Her skin tone was a shade of cotton-candy pink, which she accented with a green slip of a dress. She was tiny, compared to his hulking height, and yet her annoyance hit him like a punch to the gut. If violet eyes could ever burn with the flames of hatred, hers did.

“I know, I don’t deserve your help after the last time,” he began. “Please, Hestia, she’s an innocent. Got caught between me and a collector. See that scratch on her collarbone?”

The healer bent to inspect the woman. She then licked the wound with a snake-long tongue. Shaking her head, she announced, “She will die.”

“No. You can heal her. I know you can. Do this, and I promise I’ll never ask for another healing from you again.”

Hestia looked him up and down. Lately, with his battles against the collectors, he took on a lot of injuries that challenged his innate ability to quickly heal. And she knew it. And the last time they’d spoken? She had nearly died to save him from a fatal wound. And she might have thought he cared for her more than he really had. It had been a fling. Apparently, though, she had thought differently.

“You willing to pay for this?” she asked. “Lots of mortal realm euros?”

Money meant nothing to him. And he had far too much of it. She could ask for untold riches and it would be like handing over a few bills to her.

“One million,” she said.

He nodded eagerly. “I’ll send a courier with the cash as soon as the banks open tomorrow.”

She eyed him cautiously. For as much as she hated him—and had every right to—she had to know he was good on his word. But she tilted her head and asked, “What does this one mean to you?”

“Her? I hadn’t met her until five minutes ago. I don’t want an innocent to die because she got in my way.”

The healer nodded, then pointed over his shoulder. “Very well. Go stand out in the hallway. It will take some time.”