Call of the Alpha - Part 1(8)

If she was being honest with herself, she was checking him out—and there was something very wrong about her doing that right now. He was her patient. She figured the best way to remedy her thoughts was to get him dressed. In her bedroom, she collected a pair of sweatpants her brother had left behind once and a man’s tee shirt that she used as a lazy pair of pajamas.

She went back into the living room and when she neared the couch, she saw that he had fallen asleep. She set the clothes down and then looked back to the phone.

Now’s your chance, she thought.

But looking at him, those miraculously healing scratches came back to her mind. She then looked away from the phone and back to the man on the couch. No, she wasn’t ready to call in anyone else, yet. She thought she’d maybe let him sleep for a while and then she’d try asking him a few more questions. Placing the clothes on a nearby chair, she left him to sleep, and to try to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do next.





Chapter 4




Jessica found it impossible to sleep that night. She locked herself in her room after moving the few things she had of value into the room with her. While she might be fascinated with the man, part of her brain—perhaps the still sane part, she thought blithely—reminded her that she shouldn’t be blindly trusting him. Not yet. So she locked her bedroom door and tried to get some sleep, but it was hard to come by. Her brain kept running through journal articles, as well as anything else she’d read, fact or fiction, trying to explain the accelerated healing she’d witnessed. Eventually, her eyes closed and she finally slept, despite her tumbling mind. All told, she only managed three-and-a-half hours sleep by the time the sun came up, peeking in through her bedroom window and waking her.

She dressed quickly and headed out into the living room where the man she had rescued the night before was still asleep on the couch. He was sprawled out comfortably, the blanket having slipped sometime during the night, and Jessica was frozen for a moment as she took in his naked form. He was beautiful…there was no other word for it. From his large shoulders to his sculpted abs, to the more-than-adequate length she saw between his legs, she wasn’t sure she had ever seen a man that had evoked such a strong attraction from her.

A spike of lust tore through her but she pushed it away. Helping her to ignore any passion she felt was her growing sense of incredulity, as she noticed that almost every single scratch on his body was gone. The bruises on his legs were all but erased now. The only evidence that he had been in any sort of accident last night was in the stray debris that was still littering his hair. She wondered about the deep scratches on his back. Were they nothing but a memory now, too?

Almost tiptoeing in her efforts not to wake her visitor, Jessica quietly made her way through the living room and into the kitchen. She rummaged in her cabinets as quietly as she could, finding a pot and a can of chicken broth. She opened the broth and started to heat it on the stove. As she took out a glass and started to fill it with water from the tap, she heard the man’s voice from behind her.

“Are these for me?”

His voice was unexpected, causing her to jump a bit. Her heart settled as she turned and saw him sitting up on the couch. He looked refreshed but confused, his eyes dazed. He was looking to the clothes she had selected for him last night. As he sat there, he seemed unfazed by his nakedness. He was not at all embarrassed.

Nor should he be, Jessica thought with a slight blush.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the best I could do.”

“Thanks,” he said.

He stood then, fully naked in front of her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She turned away quickly, taken aback by the surge of heat that swam through her body at the sight of him standing and fully exposed. Just before she turned back to the chicken broth on the stove, she was able to see one thing of note, though.

The three claw marks on his back were almost entirely gone now. Jessica rubbed at her head with one hand and stirred the broth with the other.

“Do you remember your name yet?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. And please…don’t think it’s amnesia. It’s…I don’t know how to explain it. I know the information is there. I can feel it. I just can’t grasp it. It’s happened before.”


“When?”

He chuckled nervously. “I don’t remember.”

She heard him moving slowly through the room so she chanced a peek over her shoulder. He was dressed in her brother’s sweatpants and shirt, coming slowly into the kitchen. “May I?” he asked, pointing to a chair at her kitchen table.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m making you some chicken broth, and there’s a glass of water there on the table for you.”

“Thank you,” he said genuinely.

“Once you’ve eaten, you’re also welcome to my shower. But after that, we need to have a talk, I think.”

“After that,” he said, “I will gladly be on my way.”

“To where?” she asked.

He gave a casual yet tired-looking smile and said, “I’ll figure it out.”

“Can you tell me one thing, at least?” Jessica asked.

“Certainly.”

“Am I harboring some sort of a criminal?”