When He Was Bad
Page 1
Shelly
One
Where do you get those stockings from, doc? growled Niles Van Holtz, Van to his friends and family. Those stockings, with that one sexy line up the back of each leg, were like something out of a 1940s movie. He bet she wore garters too. Man, the woman drove him absolutely crazy and she didnt even notice.
Cold, brutally pale blue eyes turned and locked on Van. Ah, yes, she sighed out. Niles Van Holtz. My night at these charity functions wouldnt be complete without your biting wit and continual obsession with my underclothes.
Why else do you think Id drag myself to the science building, of all places, except to see you?
Van had known a lot of mean women in his time. Coming from a wealthy background filled with lethal predators, he was more surprised to find a nice female than a mean one. But Irene Conridge, PhD several times over and Rhodes Scholar by the time she was fifteen, made mincemeat of them all.
Irene Conridge was what one would call a child prodigy. At least she had been. But at a luscious twenty-five shed left her child anything long behind.
From the time Irene had walked onto the university campus, Van had locked onto her scent and had hunted her relentlessly ever since. Shed been eighteen at the time and Van twenty. Hed thought she was just another freshman. Or, as his buds had liked to call them, freshmeat. But hed found out quick enoughwhen shed coldly laid into him, leaving him standing speechless in the middle of the Squarethat she was actually a guest professor. And a big deal. Ivy League universities all over the country and Europe had fought for her. But, for some unknown reason, shed taken the job at this small but elite university on the border of Seattle, Washington. Shed turned down Harvard, Yale, MIT, Berkley, Oxford . . . all of them.
No one understood it, but Van did. Why go to a big university with a bunch of other former prodigies when you can go to a smaller one and be Head Shit in Charge? Because Irene had gone small, she ruled. They denied her nothing, gave her whatever she needed, and strove hard to keep her happy. In return, Irene kept the universitys name alive in academic circles, had students begging to get into the school so they could enroll in her classuntil they actually had to get through one of her classesand kept the money flowing in. The woman wasnt charming but somehow she dragged money from some of the richest families in the Northwest. His included.
Besides, Im only obsessed with your underclothes, doc. He knew she hated when he called her that. Tell me, do you wear garters under those clothes?
Yes, she replied plainly. I dont like pantyhose. I find them too binding.
Van couldnt help himself; he growled again. Enough that she turned and looked at himdirectly. Did you just growl at me?
It was much more of a purr.
Fascinating.
Am I?
No. Youre not. But the fact that a grown man would growl over garter belts is fascinating. Im sure the psychology department would find you a fascinating test study.
Sweet talker.
She frowned, and it wasnt a frown of annoyance or concern, but one of deep thought. Am I? Ive been told Im cold and quite removed.
Van had to try really hard not to laugh. To be honest, he didnt know a colder woman on the planet. Female cavewomen who had been frozen in blocks of ice for millions of years were warmer than Irene. And yet . . . he simply couldnt leave her alone.
His sister, who currently floated around the party avoiding anyone who annoyed her, didnt understand his obsession over that plain girl, as she often called Irene. Hed heard it before. Irene called plain or, his personal favorite, not hideous. But Van didnt know what they were talking about. The woman was absolutely adorable. Black shoulder-length hair that had an out-of-control curl thing going that made him, for some unknown reason, think constantly of sweaty, rough sex. Full lips hed seen in more than one wet dream over the years and a regal nose. A long, curvy body she constantly hid behind boring prim and proper power suits in the dullest colors, but she always wore those sexy stockings and killer shoes. It was the eyes that did him in though. He saw eyes like hers on arctic wolves. So pale blue he didnt really even think of them as blue at all. Hed heard more than a few people call her eyes freakish or disturbing, but he could stare into those eyes forever.
I bet youre not really cold, doc. Not underneath it all.
Actually, I am. Oh. And Jackie and I have a bet going. She motioned to her roommate, Jaqueline Jean-Louis, a former child music prodigy. The two women had known each other for years and Jean-Louis taught in the universitys prestigious music department. What Van found fascinating about the whole relationship was the fact that Jean-Louis was a shifter. A jackal, specifically. He always wondered if Irene knew. If she did, she absolutely never showed it. But it wouldnt be unusual for her not to know. Many shifters went through their entire lives successfully hiding who they really were from the full-humans close to them. It was important to their kind to hide who they were. In fact, hard choices were sometimes made in order to keep their secret.
Is that right? he asked, taking a glass of champagne from the tray passing by.
Yes. Im convinced you believe Im a virgin and all this time youve been hoping to defile me.
One
Where do you get those stockings from, doc? growled Niles Van Holtz, Van to his friends and family. Those stockings, with that one sexy line up the back of each leg, were like something out of a 1940s movie. He bet she wore garters too. Man, the woman drove him absolutely crazy and she didnt even notice.
Cold, brutally pale blue eyes turned and locked on Van. Ah, yes, she sighed out. Niles Van Holtz. My night at these charity functions wouldnt be complete without your biting wit and continual obsession with my underclothes.
Why else do you think Id drag myself to the science building, of all places, except to see you?
Van had known a lot of mean women in his time. Coming from a wealthy background filled with lethal predators, he was more surprised to find a nice female than a mean one. But Irene Conridge, PhD several times over and Rhodes Scholar by the time she was fifteen, made mincemeat of them all.
Irene Conridge was what one would call a child prodigy. At least she had been. But at a luscious twenty-five shed left her child anything long behind.
From the time Irene had walked onto the university campus, Van had locked onto her scent and had hunted her relentlessly ever since. Shed been eighteen at the time and Van twenty. Hed thought she was just another freshman. Or, as his buds had liked to call them, freshmeat. But hed found out quick enoughwhen shed coldly laid into him, leaving him standing speechless in the middle of the Squarethat she was actually a guest professor. And a big deal. Ivy League universities all over the country and Europe had fought for her. But, for some unknown reason, shed taken the job at this small but elite university on the border of Seattle, Washington. Shed turned down Harvard, Yale, MIT, Berkley, Oxford . . . all of them.
No one understood it, but Van did. Why go to a big university with a bunch of other former prodigies when you can go to a smaller one and be Head Shit in Charge? Because Irene had gone small, she ruled. They denied her nothing, gave her whatever she needed, and strove hard to keep her happy. In return, Irene kept the universitys name alive in academic circles, had students begging to get into the school so they could enroll in her classuntil they actually had to get through one of her classesand kept the money flowing in. The woman wasnt charming but somehow she dragged money from some of the richest families in the Northwest. His included.
Besides, Im only obsessed with your underclothes, doc. He knew she hated when he called her that. Tell me, do you wear garters under those clothes?
Yes, she replied plainly. I dont like pantyhose. I find them too binding.
Van couldnt help himself; he growled again. Enough that she turned and looked at himdirectly. Did you just growl at me?
It was much more of a purr.
Fascinating.
Am I?
No. Youre not. But the fact that a grown man would growl over garter belts is fascinating. Im sure the psychology department would find you a fascinating test study.
Sweet talker.
She frowned, and it wasnt a frown of annoyance or concern, but one of deep thought. Am I? Ive been told Im cold and quite removed.
Van had to try really hard not to laugh. To be honest, he didnt know a colder woman on the planet. Female cavewomen who had been frozen in blocks of ice for millions of years were warmer than Irene. And yet . . . he simply couldnt leave her alone.
His sister, who currently floated around the party avoiding anyone who annoyed her, didnt understand his obsession over that plain girl, as she often called Irene. Hed heard it before. Irene called plain or, his personal favorite, not hideous. But Van didnt know what they were talking about. The woman was absolutely adorable. Black shoulder-length hair that had an out-of-control curl thing going that made him, for some unknown reason, think constantly of sweaty, rough sex. Full lips hed seen in more than one wet dream over the years and a regal nose. A long, curvy body she constantly hid behind boring prim and proper power suits in the dullest colors, but she always wore those sexy stockings and killer shoes. It was the eyes that did him in though. He saw eyes like hers on arctic wolves. So pale blue he didnt really even think of them as blue at all. Hed heard more than a few people call her eyes freakish or disturbing, but he could stare into those eyes forever.
I bet youre not really cold, doc. Not underneath it all.
Actually, I am. Oh. And Jackie and I have a bet going. She motioned to her roommate, Jaqueline Jean-Louis, a former child music prodigy. The two women had known each other for years and Jean-Louis taught in the universitys prestigious music department. What Van found fascinating about the whole relationship was the fact that Jean-Louis was a shifter. A jackal, specifically. He always wondered if Irene knew. If she did, she absolutely never showed it. But it wouldnt be unusual for her not to know. Many shifters went through their entire lives successfully hiding who they really were from the full-humans close to them. It was important to their kind to hide who they were. In fact, hard choices were sometimes made in order to keep their secret.
Is that right? he asked, taking a glass of champagne from the tray passing by.
Yes. Im convinced you believe Im a virgin and all this time youve been hoping to defile me.
