A pleased whine issues from deep in the beast's throat, showing your tactic is working. Your vision is clearing and you realize it’s a large wolf.
A husky male voice behind you says, "Dr. Fang likes you."
You whirl around and are confronted with another kind of creature entirely--one that stops your blood, this time with wonder rather than fear.
Magnificent dark eyes hold all the fire's light and power as he regards you calmly. Here, in the middle of some apparent cave in the mountain you were climbing on, is an almost painful beauty. His height and broad shoulders make the cave seem much smaller than you'd first thought. His long dark hair makes him savage-looking. The shadows almost, but not quite, hide the long scar along one cheek--but it's his eyes that hold you.
"What, nothing to say to the one who saved you from certain death?" he said mockingly.
"Thank you," you reply with effort. His brow arches tauntingly and you're stung and unsettled. Trying to gain back your equilibrium, you spill questions out at him: "Where am I? Who are you? Why do you call him Dr. Fang?" The friendly wolf snuggles with you, whining happily.
The man almost smiles, and the scar shows more clearly. You thought he looked dangerous before? The cruel tilt to his lips testify there is a darker side to this man. "Long, long ago, this and more was done to me." He lifted one exquisitely shaped hand and traced his scar. "When I was younger and weaker." That white hand seemed to almost glow in the firelight.
When he was younger? He speaks of it as if it was long enough ago to be from another life. He isn’t that old, only thirty or so. But there is something unearthly about him. He doesn’t move, just stands like a beautiful white marble statue. He speaks slowly, with an accent you can't place.
"Dr. Fang hasn't always been...tame. The wolf discovered me, my bones broken and near death, and the rasp of his tongue against this wound revived me. Like a physician. Hence, Dr. Fang."
He moves like a wolf, himself, suddenly. He glides, his large masculine physique betraying no sound at all. Closer and closer.
He closes on you, stalking, until his musky, earthy scent and the marble white perfection of him makes you almost embarrassingly aroused.
And yet...you are in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger. A stranger who seems perfectly at home in a cave, with a wolf, at night. More than a little weird. He is affecting you, undeniably. He saved your life at least.
What should you do?
Choose
