The mere recollection of what followed made him ache with wanting. She hadn’t pushed him away. She’d responded. God, how she’d responded. And he might have pursued the encounter to its inevitable conclusion if his sense, and hers, hadn’t returned just in time.
So he’d grabbed the way out she offered, pretending to be unaware of what he’d done. And she’d acted the same… except for the flush in her cheeks, the hesitation in her speech. And the ambrosial scent of a woman aroused.
Quentin pulled his hand through his hair. He’d never been one for celibacy, but getting close to a woman—to anyone—was dangerous the way his life was now. He felt it; he knew it, with all the instincts nature had provided his kind.
He’d gotten himself hopelessly tangled up in Johanna’s world. No matter how readily she responded to him, she wouldn’t take physical involvement lightly, even if her morals permitted it. She’d buried her own desires so that she could cater, undistracted, to the needs of others. For all her intellect, she was half-blind to the power of her femininity.
And that made her vulnerable.
He knew he could seduce her, awaken the sensual woman under the Valkyrie’s armor. He was very good at seduction. She didn’t have werewolf senses to give her a fighting chance—only the frank, unwavering gaze that so clearly saw everyone but herself.
But these fantasies that passed through his mind were constructions of air. He still clung to the shredded facade of a gentleman. There could be no passing relationship with Doctor Johanna Schell: Either she remained his doctor, or she became something more. Something no one, human or werewolf, had ever been to him. Could never be, as long as he didn’t remember.
You got yourself into this, he thought. You chose to stay and accept her help. You can just as easily get yourself out again.
By moving on.
He closed his eyes and fought for a sliver of fortitude. He hadn’t Changed in many months, at least not that he remembered. Even the thought of Changing awakened vague fears of those blank periods that sent him scurrying from one saloon to another, one town to the next. Always wondering what he might have done. Carrying with him only a foul taste of menace, and violence, and darkness.
He’d told Johanna, under hypnosis, that he was a werewolf. She, logical creature that she was, would safely assume that the outlandish claim was just another symptom of his illness.
She wouldn’t believe that he was more than human.
Had he ceased to believe it himself?
Time to find out.
He unbuttoned his borrowed shirt and stripped it off, placing it neatly on a flat rock where it would remain unsoiled. A warm summer breeze caressed his skin, teasing the short hairs on his chest. Already he felt the old sense of blessed freedom that came with the Change.
His trousers were next, folded and laid atop the shirt, and then his drawers. Naked, he stretched until his spine cracked and his hands extended toward the sun as if to borrow its vast energy.
But a different kind of energy filled him, and he imagined Johanna there on the hill. Watching him. Waiting for evidence that he was not entirely mad.
His manhood leapt to life again, stirring with sexual hunger. It was all too easy to picture Johanna naked beside him, under him, her full breasts pushing against his chest, round hips cradling him, strong thighs clasped about his waist as he entered her.
Aching with unrequited lust, he forced physical longing into a more useful channel. He gave himself up to the Change.
It took no more than a few moments for his body to remember its other shape. He melted into an ether of formlessness, floating between two realities, and when his feet touched ground again they were four instead of two.
He shook his coat to test its weight, sucked in a deep lungful of air that was sharper and richer than any human could conceive. A mouse had passed this way an hour ago, leaving tiny droppings. He could hear the distant cry of a hawk in search of the mouse’s unfortunate cousin. Wind soughed in the tops of the pines, carrying the scent of a bird’s nest and a pair of quarreling squirrels.