Chapter 7

"Oh, really? She said that?" Dimitri teased, knowing that her wolf was furious at recognizing that someone was warming his sheets. Well, he wouldn't mind her being jealous. After all, he would feel the same if anyone ever touched her.

"Yes, she actually... um-told me to tell you to call her or visit her. I quote "I would gladly enjoy spending nights with him alone in my bedroom, sugar.'" She grimaced at the thought, while Dimitri smirked. "Don't worry, she is not my type of gal. Don't be jealous." He teased her.

"Me? Jealous? Huh! Mr. Norton, you are full of yourself. I have no right to be jealous. I'm merely stating the fact that you are a walking sex toy amongst the town's female majority and the Sgt. was one of them."

"OUCH! But how about you, Miss Vergil?"

"None of my business." She said it too quickly for her liking.

"Really?" He had the guts to ask her that? She hardly knows him. Aside from him being a billionaire playboy? He was a walking sex machine.

"A playboy? I was never a playboy... sweetheart!" he smirked with his signature grin.

"Yes, you are!" She sighed. Wait. How did he know what was on her mind anyway? Could he read her mind like her? Blanca felt a jolt of outrage at the prospect of being spied on by anyone, including Dimitri, who probably would have done so more out of suspicion than as a means of annoying her. But as she stood beside Dimitri and walked towards the massive living room, the old female maid in tow with the folders and papers spread on the living room coffee table, some of that anger seeped out of her, replaced by a feeling of calm acceptance. of subtle, languid cooperation. Strange, she thought, but found herself fairly unfazed by the idea.

"Well, the good Sgt. stayed with me for a couple of nights because she was concerned about me after what happened this weekend."

"At the werewolf sighting?"

"Yes, and she's my friend. That's all."

Good.

Trust me, she is just a friend. He answered her in his mind.

Dimitri's mouth didn't move, but Blanca felt certain she had heard his reply. His unspoken voice, his pleasure at her overbearing jealousy of his supposed lover, seemed to echo from somewhere deep inside of her. Wishful thinking, maybe. It had been a long time since she'd had anything close to a boyfriend, and merely being in the presence of Dimitri Norton was doing strange things to her head. Or rather, her body.

As he stared at her, Blanca felt a pleasant knot of warmth begin to pool in her belly. His gaze penetrated like heat itself, physical and intimate. A picture suddenly formed in her mind: she and him, naked, making love and writhing together in the moonlight evening of his bedroom. An instant blast of heat and needs flooded her. She could feel his hard muscles beneath her fingertips, his firm body moving over her. His thick, hard shaft filled her, stretched her, exploding deep within her, making her moan! Oh, yes, she thought, practically squirming where she sat in front of him on the living room couch.

Her colleague was right. She really had been celibate for too long.

Dimitri, reading her mind and her needs, blinked slowly, his thick black lashes shuttering stormy ocean blue eyes. Like a cool breeze skating over flushed bare skin, Blanca felt some of the tightness in her limbs dissipate. Her heart was still pounding; the living room still seemed oddly warm. She felt like she was in a hot tub, she felt heated and so aroused that she could feel it under her skin.

He turned his head away from her, and her eyes were drawn to the base of his scalp, where his hair met the collar of his tailored white shirt. He had a set of fangs tattooed on his neck – at least, she thought it was a tattoo. Complicated reels and geometric-looking characters rendered in ink just a few shades darker than his skin came up the back of his neck and around the sides, and in the middle were deadly fangs disappearing beneath the thick growth of his dark golden hair.

She wondered what the rest of it looked like, and if there was some special meaning to the beautiful pattern. She noted to ask him about it someday.

However, there it was again. She had an almost irrepressible urge to trace the interesting markings with her finger. Perhaps her tongue, down to his chest, to his belly, into his... sh*t. 'I have to stop thinking weird.' She thought to herself. "OK, if you say so... anyway, um-tell me what your lady friend told you about the attack locals witnessed on the mountain?" She asked him as she swallowed with a dry throat, shaking her head to bring herself back to the conversation.

Hell, what the fuck was wrong with her? She dismissed the unusual race of her pulse and focused on the events of the previous night from what the Sgt. Who told her in detail about what happened in the phone conversation while Dimitri recounted the story to her.

He told her every horrific detail, and she listened carefully, letting him relay it all uninterrupted. Under the cool acknowledgment of her gaze, Blanca's memory of the slaying seemed more precise now, as if the lens of Dimitri's storytelling had been sharpened, the details heightened. Like she was there, watching it happen, and Dimitri knew this was one of her other abilities. She could see the past events in clear HD mode. To say that he was impressed was an understatement.

When he finished, he found Blanca clicking through the pictures on her cell phone once more, from the local newspaper reports, and his own man's reports as the line of her mouth had gone from grim to grave.

"So, Dimitri, let me ask you something. What exactly do you think these images show?"

She asked and glanced up, then met his look, those wise, piercing eyes of his boring into her. In that instant, a word skated through Blanca's head— extraordinary, ridiculous, terrifyingly clear.

"Werewolf," he answered in a grim tone.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"So do you believe they truly existed?"

"Why not?" He countered.

"Alien?" She asked again, this time with a teasing tone.

"What?"

"Do you believe in aliens?"

"NO!"

"Oh really? Yet you believe in werewolves?" She raised her eyebrows in the same manner as he did.

"You are mocking me, Miss Vergil."

"No, surely not! I-I don't know, maybe?" she said lamely, speaking over the rising whisper in her head. "I mean, I'm not sure what to think. Werewolves are… I-I don't know, they are just myths, fictions…"

"Are you sure you believe that?" he asked, with a mild teasing in his expression.

If Dimitri didn't suspect she was crazy yet, he would have if she blurted out the word that was now swimming through her mind, chilling her to the bone. She dreamt of werewolves. She dreamt about them. She dreamt about the war that happened in London, about her parents being the luna and her father the alpha. It was the only explanation she had for the gruesome slaying the locals witnessed that night in the mountain, and she could almost see it like she was there. However, she had to tell someone about it but couldn't. She couldn't trust him with her secret just yet.

Werewolves? Fuck. She really was crazy.

"I don't know, Dimitri. I'll need to take this research more seriously and avoid those false claims of werewolf sightings, etc. I need evidence, clear data, and information, I need facts! Mr. Norton." Not some rumor from your lover, she thought to herself, but her words felt awkward. "I think, being a woman in science, there must be an explanation to this report. I will make sure to tell you about this. I need to analyze this data. It would take me hours."

"OK, take your time." Dimitri sighed. The woman was clearly afraid of reality, afraid of the mystery, afraid of the fact that she was in fact someone special. "Do you think forensics, or whoever does that sort of thing, will be able to manipulate the images?" Dimitri added.

She gave him a slight incline of her head, not quite a nod, and took her own phone from her pockets, and messaged someone. "I have an IT friend. He could help. I'll send these images and wait for his expert computer expertise to figure out if they were photoshopped or edited."

"Hmmm, there is no need to shop for a photo, I have one here."

"I'm sorry, what?" Blanca paused.

"You said your friend needed to photoshop those photos?"

"Yes, what I mean is..." She halted, "You sure didn't know what Photoshop is?"

He furrowed his brows. "No!"

"Fine," Blanca added, surely amazed that a man like him didn't know anything about modern technology. It was merely a notion, but she was surprised nonetheless. After all, he had the latest iPhone in his pocket, but he knew he only used it to take photos and make calls.

"Who is this male IT friend of yours?" Dimitri later asked after she ignored him and busied herself with the pictures and newspaper reports. How was it that he could make a simple question sound more like an order?

"I appreciate your hospitality, Dimitri, but my personal life is private…"

"I don't think so," he mumbled, studying her for a moment. "You roast me with the Sgt, I'm doing the same."

A warm sizzle of emotions seemed to reach out to her from his eyes, along with a stoic awareness, as if this man had seen more atrocities than she could ever understand. She could not name the feeling that upheld through her at that minute, but it accelerated her pulse and made the room feel sapped of all its air. He kept looking at her as if he was waiting for her to answer right away.

"Fine, he is just a friend, OK? He was actually a gay nerd, and he hated people."

"Good. Nice to hear that, Blanca," he replied, and the sound of her name on his lips sent a quiver of awareness shooting through her veins.

Why was he looking at her like he was undressing her with his eyes?