Animal Attraction Read Online Free PDF Page B

He wanted me to run; I could see it in his face. He was almost smiling. If I had to describe his stance, I’d call it playfully competitive.
    It didn’t add up. They didn’t act like kidnappers or killers. They didn’t feel like a threat, either. That warning instinct that made my skin prickle from their proximity had shifted to a bubbling sense of eagerness to race between them.
    “Why did you bring me here?” I asked David.
    “You needed help.” He didn’t hesitate over the words, and his eyes met mine without blinking.
    “With the transition.” I repeated what he’d said in the solarium. He didn’t answer.
    I looked back at Zach. “Why did you say I should’ve expected you? Why did you think I’d know where to go when you told me to come to you?”
    “Well, for starters, we sent you a certified letter the day after your twenty-first birthday.” Zach frowned at me. “Somebody signed for it.”
    I blinked, thinking back over the past couple of weeks. I’d gotten a lot of mail, most of it thanking me for sending my résumé and promising to keep it on file should another opening come up. Bills. And the stuff that went straight into the trash, sweepstakes and free vacation offers that were anything but.
    A real, personal letter would’ve stood out. So it had gotten delivered to the wrong apartment, and that was probably what Michelle’s message was about.
    “I haven’t been myself since my birthday,” I said, figuring that was answer enough.
    “Oh, you’ve been yourself,” Zach said. “Just more yourself than you’re used to.”
    The two of them looked at each other over my head, and I hated the sense that they were on the same page when I didn’t even have the right book.
    “Then you weren’t refusing to come,” David said. “I thought you were being stubborn.”
    “It would be nice if somebody would just come out and say whatever you have to say. I take it this is about me being adopted?” I prompted.
    “Yes.” Zach reached out to touch my cheek. “The short version is, this is your family home. The longer version is that you have a rare genetic condition.”
    “Oh. Is that all.” I reeled inwardly. Good news: I might have visiting rights to that gorgeous solarium. Bad news: It meant my genes were plotting against me. “Am I dying?”
    “No.” Zach stepped closer, warm reassurance in his touch, concern in his eyes. “No, not at all. It’s just that the condition presents fully in adulthood.”
    “‘Presents,’ what the hell does that mean?” I heard the edge of panic in my voice, and didn’t care.
    “It means you’re like us.” David reached out to touch me, too, the three of us forming a circuit I could swear an electrical impulse flowed through. Touching them made me feel strong, connected, on the verge of some unknown potential. “Neuri.”
    “Werewolves.” I said it out loud and waited for one of them to laugh and tell me I’d been had.
    “Yes,” Zach said. “Would you like to race now?”
    I thought about my active night episodes I couldn’t remember the next day, my extreme sensitivity to sounds and smells in the past weeks, my roller-coaster metabolism. The allergy to silver I’d discovered on my first and last attempt at piercing. David’s claim that he’d heard me outside my apartment, impossible for human ears.
    “I would like you to prove it,” I said.
    Zach looked at David, who stepped away from us and started to strip silently. I decided there was no reason not to look if he insisted on showing off, so I watched as he discarded shirt, shoes, and then everything else. He wore boxer briefs and managed to make them look sexy. His chest and shoulders looked more powerful naked, muscles lean and sculpted, his belly hard, and flat, athletic legs. He had the kind of muscle development that came from use, not the kind built in the gym just for show.
    He would have kicked my ass in a race.
    I looked away when he peeled the briefs down his hips. I