Page 28 of Brock’s Mate

“He shot me with a dart,” she said softly, rubbing the place on her arm. “I couldn’t move. And then I saw him coming into my room, and I must have passed out.”

“Yeah well. I got there just as he was throwing you in the back of his van.”

He waited—for what, Desi had no idea.

He sighed again. “You’re welcome?”

Seriously? “My bad. Thank you for saving me from my evil abductor, so you could abduct me yourself and lock me up in your own prison.”

“Well, if you’re going to put it like that…”

“And I’m still hazy on why you locked yourself in with me. Unless it’s a werewolf sex thing?” She arched her eyebrow at him.

He flushed slightly and looked away from her, his voice low. “I thought if you woke up alone in a cell, you’d be scared.”

That stopped her for a second. It was so unexpectedly… sweet. And it felt sincere, which gave Desi an odd feeling in her chest. But she couldn’t show feelings. Feelings were weakness.

“Scared? More like pissed off,” she said.

“Or that.” Brock gave a half-grin. Damn. He really was sinfully sexy. Maybe he wasn’t evil?

He went on, “So I figured if I was in here with you, maybe you’d be more likely to trust me.”

“Nope.”

“Or listen to me?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s too bad. Because I’m not going to open the door until you hear me out.”

Desi considered. She’d run last night, only to run into more trouble, which meant she needed more information. “Do I get coffee after?”

That little grin turned wicked. “If you’re good.”

She snorted. “Keep dreaming, Spanky Boy.”

Chapter 11

Desi sat down on the floor cross-legged, keeping her distance from Brock—not that the distance would help if he really wanted to attack her. But she figured if he hadn’t done it last night while she was asleep, he probably wasn’t going to do it now.

But she didn’t believe in his ‘I just want to help you’ story either. Because men always wanted to use you for their own reasons. And if they didn’t get what they wanted, they turned on you and took it.

Brock was just watching her, not saying anything.

Waiting.

Desi said, “You can start explaining any time you’re ready. Because we’re not getting any closer to coffee, here.”

That got a little smile. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stick with the short version, for now. First off, like I said before, you’re not a werewolf. You’re a shifter wolf—short for shapeshifter—and when you learn to cooperate with the wolf inside you, you can Change whenever you want. None of this full moon bullshit. Downside: until you learn to communicate with her, you’ll Change whenever she wants. Which is not good. In fact, it’s very, very bad.”

“Because of hunting cows?”

“That’s the least of it. Shifters are a secret. Humans can’t know, because they’ll hunt us down and kill us, exploit us, or experiment on us.”

Desi raised her eyebrows. “That’s pretty extreme.”

Brock said seriously, “It’s happened to people I know. It came this close to happening to me.” He held up his fingers a fraction of an inch apart.