“Fuck you,” he said, wiggling into a pair of tight jeans, but hey, I wore my jeans tight, too.
“What, if it’s not a Glock you don’t know what the fuck it is?” I asked.
“Fuck you.”
“Dumbass it is,” I said, putting the Sig in with the Browning.
He turned and glared down at me, trying to use his height to intimidate. The first trickle of energy eased out from him, his beast peeking out with his anger.
I sniffed the air near his chest, invading his personal space, but he didn’t tease me about it now. He’d decided not to like me. I was okay with that.
He smelled like wolf, but out loud I said, “You smell like puppy.”
He leaned over me again, but this time it was supposed to be menacing, not seductive. It managed to be neither. “Werewolf, I’m a werewolf.”
“Great, since you obviously don’t know guns, let’s try something that werewolves are supposed to be really good at. What am I?”
He drew back from me, forgetting he was trying to loom menacingly. “What?”
“I could smell that you were a puppy; tell me what I am.”
“I’m not a puppy, I’m a wolf,” he said between gritted teeth.
“Prove it, what am I?”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you, chickie.” He pulled his T-shirt on without spreading the neck open, so his carefully styled hair was mussed. He was mad.
“I’ll make it easy for you.” I raised my arm up toward his face.
He turned away and tried to ignore me.
“So much for the famous nose of the werewolves; I guess that reputation is all talk, too,” I said, and unthreaded the extra magazine holders from my belt and laid the extra ammo in with the guns.
“What’s that supposed to mean, too? You don’t know me, or my reputation.”
“You are an arrogant, bragging blowhard, who refused to take the sniff challenge. What kind of weak-ass wereanimal can’t tell another person’s flavor of beast by scent?”
“Wolf!” He snarled it into my face.
I laughed at him as the energy prickled along my skin. My wolf stood up, shaking her pale fur inside me. “A big bad wolf would know what I am; you don’t, so you aren’t a big bad wolf.”
“You’re a rat like all the other short Hispanic chickies from L.A.”
I gave the unpleasant smile again. “Since chickie can be slang for prostitute, don’t ever call any of the female guards that again.”
“Or what? What will you do if I call you all chickie?”
“You didn’t really listen to what I said, did you, puppy?”
“Don’t call me that.” He snarled it in my face, and it got him close enough to smell me. He stopped and the anger began to fade a little. “The gunk is tigers, more than one kind, but you”—he sniffed along my hair and face—“you smell like wolf, but you can’t be.”
“Why can’t I be?” I asked.
“I’ve been here almost two months, and I’ve never seen you at any of the get-togethers.”
“My schedule’s a little full, makes it hard to be everywhere.”
The room had gone quiet a while ago, but Ricky hadn’t noticed. His powers of observation sucked. I hoped he fought well, because if he didn’t he was just good-looking muscle that at best was cannon fodder, and at worst was going to get someone else hurt, because he wouldn’t be up to the job. Had Richard picked him? If so, I was going to ask Rafael if he could help the wolves pick their new recruits from now on, because this one looked good, but he wasn’t.
Micah reached out to me, just a barest brush of energy, and my leopard raised its head and sniffed the air. “Now you smell like leopard, but that’s not possible,” Ricky said.
“What’s not possible, puppy?”
“Stop calling me that!” His anger was so ready to spill up and over him, and his wolf came right with it.
“Make me, puppy,” I said.
“What?”
“Ricky . . .” someone said, taking pity on him at last.
“Make me stop calling you puppy; prove to me that you’re the big bad wolf.”
“Bitch!”
“Sticks and stones, puppy, sticks and stones.”
“What are you fucking talking about?”
I moved closer to him, drawn by the heat of his anger and the musk of his wolf, but it was the anger I wanted. I was hungry, and his anger sat on my tongue bittersweet like super-dark chocolate; it’s sweet, but there’s that undertone of bitterness that can become its own addiction.
“Here puppy, puppy, puppy,” I whispered from inches away. I was too close for him to swing at me, sex close. He was so angry it was like a fire that I could warm my hands over, such rage, just because I’d pricked his ego. I was provoking him, because I needed to feed and I had other options besides sex now.
I caught movement, as some of the others, including Peppy, started to move forward to intercede as the big man menaced me. I said, “Everyone back off, this is just puppy and me, isn’t it, puppy?”
He yelled, “STOP CALLING ME THAT!” And he moved, too fast for even me to follow. His hands were around my upper arms, picking me up, feet dangling, as he slammed me against the lockers. But I was ready for it, and my head didn’t slam back into them, which would have stunned me, and my back had had worse done to it. I wrapped as much of my small hands around his arms as I could, but it wasn’t to keep him from slamming me again; it was to get skin-to-skin contact. The moment I touched him, I fed. All that anger, all that rage, that red haze that could have pounded me against the lockers until I broke, was mine to drink down from his skin to mine.