Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(3)

He growled something more, but neither of us was listening. He turned his head and tilted it. I expected serious and got playful as he nipped at my lower lip. The roughness of his teeth sent tingles to my fingertips, zings past my knees and down to my toes. Potent things, Adam's teeth.

I brought my suddenly shaking hands around to worry at the button on his jeans, and Adam jerked his head up and put a staying hand on mine.

Then I heard it, too.

"German car," he said.

I sighed, slumping against him. "Swedish," I corrected him. "Four-year-old Volvo station wagon. Gray."

He looked at me in surprise that quickly turned to comprehension. "You know the car."

I moaned and tried to hide in his shoulder. "Damn, damn. It was the newspapers."

"Who is it, Mercy?"

Gravel shooshed, and headlights flashed on my window as the car turned into the driveway. "My mom," I told him. "Her sense of timing is unreal. I should have realized she would read about... about it." I didn't want to name what had happened to me, what I'd done to Tim, out loud. Not while I was mostly naked with Adam, anyway.

"You didn't call her."

I shook my head. I should have, I knew it. But it had been one of those things I just couldn't face.

He was smiling now. "You get dressed. I'll go stall her until you're ready to come out."

"There is no way I'll ever be ready for this," I told him.

He sobered, put his face next to mine, and rested his forehead against me. "Mercy. It will be all right."

Then he left, shutting the door to my bedroom as my doorbell rang the first time. It rang twice more before he opened the outside door, and he wasn't being slow.

I grabbed clothes and desperately tried to remember if we'd done the dishes from dinner. It was my turn. If it had been Samuel's turn, I wouldn't have had to worry. It was stupid. I knew that she could care less about the dishes - but it gave me something to do other than panic.

I'd never even considered calling her. Maybe in ten years I might feel ready.

I pulled on my pants and left my feet bare while I searched frantically for a bra.

"She knows you're here," Adam said on the other side of the door - as if he were leaning against it.

"She'll be out in a minute."

"I don't know who you think you are"  -  my mother's voice was low and dangerous - "but if you don't get out of my way right this instant, it won't matter."

Adam was the Alpha werewolf in charge of the local pack. He was tough. He could be mean when he had to - and he wouldn't stand a chance against my mom.

"Bra, bra, bra," I chanted as I pulled one out of the dirty-clothes basket and hooked it. I pulled the thing around so fast I wouldn't be surprised to discover I'd given myself a rug burn. "Shirt. Shirt." I ransacked my drawers and found and discarded two shirts. "Clean shirt, clean shirt."

"Mercy?" called Adam, sounding a little desperate - how well I knew that feeling.

"Mom, leave him alone!" I said. "I'll be right out."

Frustrated, I stared at my room. I had to have a clean shirt somewhere. I had just been wearing one - but it had disappeared in my search for a bra. Finally, I pulled on a shirt that said 1984:GOVERNMENT FOR DUMMIES on the back. It was clean, or at least it didn't stink too badly. The oil smudge on the shoulder looked permanent.

I took a deep breath and opened the door. I had to duck around Adam, who was leaning against the door frame.

"Hey, Mom," I said breezily. "I see you've met my - " What? Mate? I didn't think that was something my mother needed to hear. "I see you've met Adam."

"Mercedes Athena Thompson," snapped my mother. "Explain to me why I had to learn about what happened to you from a newspaper?"

I'd been avoiding meeting her gaze, but once she three-named me, I had no choice.

My mother is five-foot-nothing. She's only seventeen years older than me, which means she's not yet fifty and looks thirty. She can still wear the belt buckles she won barrel racing on their original belts. She's usually blond - I'm pretty sure it's her natural color - but the shade changes from year to year. This year it was strawberry gold. Her eyes are big and blue and innocent-looking, her nose slightly tip-tilted, and her mouth full and round.

With strangers, she sometimes plays a dumb blonde, batting her eyelashes and speaking in a breathy voice that anyone who watched old movies would recognize from Some Like It Hot or Bus Stop. My mother has never, to my knowledge, changed her own flat tire.

If the sharp anger in her voice hadn't been a cover for the bruised look in her eyes, I could have responded in kind. Instead, I shrugged.

"I don't know, Mom. After it happened... I stayed coyote for a couple of days." I had a half-hysterical vision of calling her, and saying, "By the way, Mom, guess what happened to me today..."

She looked me in the eyes, and I thought she saw more than I wanted her to. "Are you all right?"

I started to say yes, but a lifetime of living with creatures who could smell a lie had left me with a habit of honesty. "Mostly," I said, compromising. "It helps that he's dead." It was humiliating that my chest was getting tight. I'd given myself all the self-pity time I would allow.