A Midnight Rose Ch. 06

Slowly he turned his upper torso so that he met her eyes; and fought the urge to flinch. The crimson rings were still very much present. In fact, in the light of the library he was able to notice a faint ethereal glow emanating from them.

A quick glance in Philippe's direction affirmed to Luke that his friend too had noticed the less than subtle additions to Rowan's irises. His friend was looking distinctly bemused and Luke was sure that he detected a hint of concern on the man's face.

Fortunately for him, Rowan seemed to have detected it too and she instantly looked contrite. Pursing her lips gently she took Philippe's blatant confusion bravely and simply waited for him to speak.

"Well that's... new," the vampire said with a faint grin which broadened as he took in the raised eyebrows and rolling eyes of his companions. "Admittedly, I have never seen the likes of it before and you will probably need to wear sunglasses for the rest of your life," he continued with a pondering look on his face, "but nonetheless, it's very... you."

The corners of Rowan's mouth twitched again. Philippe's unfailing ability to take something completely out of his comfort zone and make it appear mundane was truly a skill that he uniquely had acquired. It was refreshing however, to not feel like a bit of a freak and to be able to smile a bit at the situation.

"Why thank you Philippe, that is very kind of you to say," she replied graciously, a ghost of a smile playing at her lips, belying her underlying mirth. "You have managed to successfully divert my attention from Luke here, much to his relief I'm sure." She swung to fix her stare on her mate again who had gone shock still.

Fuck. Philippe stifled a smile at the faint curse that clearly summed up all the feelings running across Luke's face.

Rowan raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms, struggling not to burst into a fit of laughter at Luke's reaction. He seemed almost scared of her! For a human woman, it seemed just preposterous that a centuries old male vampire could fear her. She knew that there was no way Luke was going to let on what he was really thinking whilst she was here but there was no harm in making him sweat.

"Urm, I was just saying to Philippe here," he began haltingly, "That it wasn't possible for... um... you to be a vampire... yet," Luke seemed incredibly uncomfortable; if the fidgeting wasn't enough to go by then the shifty eyes definitely were.

Rowan couldn't keep it up any longer. Biting her lip and ignoring the millions of questions she had at the forefront of her mind, she clambered into Luke's lap and wrapped her arms his defined shoulders.

"Chill out a bit," she said softly, "You look as though I'm about to bite your head off." Luke grumbled slightly.

"You could have had me fooled," he said with a glare at the Frenchman opposite him who was currently quivering with contained mirth.

"Please," the latter gasped, "I can't stay composed for much longer." A flashing smile from Rowan seemed all the permission that was needed and he promptly erupted into peals of raucous laughter that echoed around the grandiose mansion for hours.

***

Mina was still in a foul mood. Despite being put up in a gorgeous set of chambers that looked like they belonged in Buckingham Palace, gilded bedposts and all, she somehow found herself wanting the tiny, cramped bedroom in her apartment.

And try as she could she couldn't find it in herself to blame Rowan for this either. She was secretly ecstatic that her friend had finally found someone which whom she could spend the rest of her life and that her wanting to spend time with him was no crime. But at the same time she seriously needed an outlet for her anger.

It was irrational she knew, but everywhere she looked she was seeing blue eyes and blonde hair, everything she heard sounded like it had a French accent and every she tasted seemed to have a faint taste of Jack Daniels. It was enough to make a girl go mad.

Picking up one of the silken pillows from the enormous bed that completely dwarfed her, she screamed into its depths, the plush fabric muffling the noise to a murmur. She felt her teeth elongate, her incisors growing razor sharp and long, slicing through the fabric like butter.

And then she lost it. With a roar and a sharp crack of moving bones, she shifted seamlessly into her were-form. In the place of the tiny blonde woman screaming into the pillows in a huge bed, there was a majestic white tiger, at least 8 feet long and the height of a full grown man.

With an almost playful rage, the tiger ripped through the fragile bed sheets, swiping at anything and everything that met her lethal claws.

***

"You can't tell her you know," Philippe had managed to recover from his earlier relapse in composure and now he and Luke were sat alone in the library, Rowan having left to find and recover Mina from Tanji's liquor cupboard.

It had taken Rowan a while in fact to convince the Frenchman that his services were not required, so adamant was he that he was just the sort of person Mina needed to help her out of the funk that she seemed to have slipped into.

Convinced that his services were better put to use continuing his research with Luke, Philippe had remained; but now he was clasping a crystal glass of dark, clear liquid as a form of consolation.

"You know it's the morning right?" Luke asked, clearly avoiding Philippe's first question. The Frenchman nodded cheerfully before taking a healthy swig from the glass. Not for the first time, Luke was glad that vampires had unnaturally strong constitutions.

"Besides, there is nothing to tell her," he continued, suddenly paying attention to the matter at hand. "She knows something unnatural is in her, it's not like I have to go around telling her she is possessed by a millennia-year-old vampire queen." Now that he had said it out loud, Luke thought the idea sounded even more far fetched than it had first done.

He suddenly felt the urge to laugh, but the sound was more barking and harsh than it was joyous. Standing restlessly, he began to pace the carpet in front of the empty, cold fireplace. "The idea is ridiculous- you realise that don't you?" he asked absent-mindedly.

Philippe just looked sad. The vampire's face was neutral, betraying nothing else, but Luke didn't need a verbal answer to know what he was thinking. Standing to his full height, Philippe came to join Luke in front of the huge, stone grate.

"The sooner you start considering the ridiculous as possible, the sooner you will realise how sensible it is," he said cryptically, clapping a huge hand on the other man's shoulder before vanishing from sight.

He managed not to spill a single drop of Tennessee whisky in the process.

Luke gazed at the spot where his friend had been not a moment before. A thousand trains of thought flooded his mind, clouding all his senses in one conglomeration of ideas.

And for the second time that day, he didn't sense the shadow behind the door.

***

Rowan remained rooted to the spot just behind the door. All her muscles had frozen up, tense as stretched elastic. She had hidden the instant that she had left the room, knowing that the two men would only speak frankly once she was gone.

What she had heard was not what she had expected.

She knew that there was something wrong with her; that much had been made very clear. Unbeknown to Luke, she had been suffering an internal battle ever since that first piercing scream. She felt like she was constantly being split in two; like two sides of her mind were fighting, with no clear sight of a winner.

It was excruciating at times.

But for all that Luke was a powerful vampire; there was nothing that he could do to get into her head before they were fully mated. Rowan had learnt this from a little private reading she had done whenever he disappeared off to his study or to the gym. She had done some background reading on vampires and had even read the story of their creation. She had not realised vampires and weres were so closely related; it was something worth mentioning to Mina, she had thought with a chuckle.

Grasping her forehead, Rowan felt a wave of darkness roll over her. It felt like it tried to grasp her mind and shove it into the recesses of her skull so that it could take over, but Rowan was by no means a push over.

She reacted instantly, having recognised the feeling now threatening to overcome her. Throwing up mental barriers she focused on forcing the wave back, using all her strength and concentration on staying in her own mind. Slowly but surely it receded leaving only a splitting headache and a foul mood in its wake.

Rowan sank to the floor, almost panting in exertion. Her muscles had begun to tremble and spasm with the effort and she found herself with overwhelming sense of wanting to cry.

"No, no, no," she chanted angrily to herself, "Did you survive all these years just to cry over a silly headache and the fact you might be possessed by some dead vampire woman? Get a grip,"

It too more effort than she thought it should to force herself upright again. Her hands grasped frantically at the wooden panelling behind her, as if trying to find stability, until at last she stood tall again.

Rowan gave herself a mental shake and glanced at the two Chinese symbols she had tattooed on her inner wrists. Strength and determination, she thought. Just remember that.

***

It had taken Mina a long time and the destruction of all the bed linen to calm down. She lay curled, quivering, in her nude human form on the remains of the mattress, breathing slowly and erratically. Her pale eyes, no longer the vivid gold of her beast's, took in the tatters that had once been pillows of the finest quality. It was a shame.

Mina felt a little contrite that she had managed to destroy her room given that it was only hers on loan and would probably cost a good amount to refurbish but her now simmering feelings of anger strongly overcame any regret that she had. Serves Philippe right for making me so riled up, she thought spitefully.

Rolling off the bed with the grace of the gymnast she stalked towards the large, imposing wardrobe that Luke had so kindly thought to stock with a range of clothing in her size.

She had been here four days now and was deeply beginning to suspect that the new living arrangements were going to be permanent. Rowan certainly hadn't mentioned anything about leaving and the two women now only ever left the mansion to go to work; which in itself had taken a great deal of persuasion.

It seemed to Mina that Luke worried unnecessarily for Rowan, wanting to keep her within sight at all times. Mina thought it completely superfluous but apparently there were dangers to her friend's safety that she had not anticipated. And so, the woman only ever left for work and even then they were accompanied by heavily armed bodyguards.

Needless to say the women had not been impressed.

Standing before the rails of expensive clothing, Mina remembered the fuss that they had kicked up. Rowan had been explosive and magnificent in her rage but Luke's stubbornness and Philippe's maddening reason had eventually worn them down. Mina strongly suspected that her best friend still didn't truly understand the logic behind the men's protectiveness but clearly what happened behind closed doors in her shared suite was enough to make Rowan forget her worries.

A harsh knock at the door startled the little woman out of her reverie. For a moment she simply stared at the imposing oak door in the corner of the ornate room, almost wishing that her visitor would go away but the knocking persisted.

As a were, Mina was comfortable and more at ease in her naked form and so didn't think twice about going to the door without clothes. She knew that all the people in the mansion spent a lot of time around weres, given their proximity to the Renshaw pack, and so were used to the weres brazen attitude towards nudity.

However, upon opening the door, she soon regretted her decision to forgo dressing.

***

It took a lot to surprise Philippe, or a vampire for that matter, but being greeted at the door by a naked woman ranked quite highly on his list of extraordinary encounters.

Having argued with himself for a good ten minutes and scaring Seth, Ryan Renshaw's visiting second in command, with his violent muttering, Philippe had made the fateful decision to visit Mina. Try as he might, he had not been able to escape her image all day, or any day since he met her for that matter. The Frenchman had decided it was better to confront the problem head on rather than letting it fester.

But when he had knocked on the door, a very naked Mina was the last thing he had expected to see.

Yet there she was, in all her small but radiant glory, naked as the day she was born, sporting a similarly stunned expression.

For a moment the two just stared at each other; eyes locked, muscles frozen.

Then all hell broke loose.

Several things happened at once: Mina started yelling profanities in colourful language that belonged in a men's rugby changing room, trying to shut the door whilst simultaneously trying to recover a shred of dignity. At the same time, Philippe tried to explain himself, not knowing where to look, trying to force the door open and also trying to cover the fact that he had become painfully hard in his dark jeans.

The result would have been incredibly comical had there have been any bystanders. As it was, Philippe and Mina were alone, given the isolation of her suite in relation to the house as a whole. And so it became a battle of strength, all focused at one, thankfully stout, oak door.

But nothing lasts forever. With one last groan of protest, the aged wood split and crumpled under Philippe's iron fists, spraying splinters everywhere. Unfortunately for Philippe however, Mina had discovered another defence mechanism.

Instead of being faced by a naked, angry woman, something he could easily (and happily) deal with, he was now nose to nose with a severely pissed-off white Bengal tiger.

"Ah, teeth," Philippe mused, trying to keep the note of nervousness from his voice, "Those are pretty big incisors you've got there!"

This earned him a deep, menacing growl from the snarling creature before him. Not a good sign I feel, he thought to himself.

Mina though, was struggling. Shifting had saved her from the all-seeing eyes of the vampire before her but it had also brought the animal side of her nature forward: the side that loved Philippe and wanted to jump his bones at any moment.

Even as she growled at him and bared her teeth she knew that she would never be able to attack him. The tiger in her mind berated her over and over, more than once trying to force her to shift back to human form; but she clung on desperately.

Philippe looked deep into the beast's eyes and he saw the confusion there. He saw that Mina didn't mean him any harm and that gave him a ridiculous flutter of hope.

"Please, belle, I mean you no harm. How about I turn around and close my eyes whilst you get things in order hmm?" He could see that his words were working to a certain extent. The tigress still growled at him but the look in its eye was more playful than it was murderous.

Dutifully turning around, Philippe heard the pop of bones and ligaments as Mina shifted back to human form. He resisted the overwhelming urge to face her immediately, instead focusing on his breathing... and trying to rid himself of a potentially embarrassing bulge in the front of his jeans.

Mina stood for a moment, torn half way between fleeing to the safety of her decadent bathroom and wanting to trace the defined lines of muscles that rippled under Philippe's shirt with her fingertips.

It wasn't until she noticed her hand had risen almost to his shoulder that she was about to do something she would really regret. Her hand stilled (with some effort) and she slowly dropped it to her side again. In her mind, her tigress roamed restlessly from side to side, pausing occasionally to growl with discontent.

Philippe remained with his back to Mina despite sensing that she had not moved from behind him. He coughed awkwardly, wanting so desperately to turn around but also wanting to keep his face intact. Her were claws might not be able to pierce his skin, only silver could do that, but they would certainly leave some painful bruises.

At last, Mina seemed to have shaken herself from her stupor. Hesitating for just a moment more, a wicked idea started to form. She smiled sinfully. She might be unwilling to accept Philippe as a mate but at least she could have some fun with the notion.

Reaching her immaculately organised, Mina completely ignored the rails of sumptuous clothing and stacks of enviable heels, and she instead started rifling through the inner drawers of her fashionista's paradise. She gave a firm nod of approval when she at last had found what she needed.

Yes, she thought, staring at her reflection in the built-in, floor-length mirror: that would do perfectly.

Philippe had coughed uncomfortably again. He had been standing in the doorway for at least 5 minutes now. His palms had started to sweat a little and he was shifting his weight way more than he really needed to. This woman was certainly going to be a trial and a half for the vampire.

"Oh you can turn around now, I'm decent," he heard at last. Releasing a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding, Philippe faced Mina again.

He got his second ball-busting surprise of the hour.

Decent was completely the wrong word to use. In fact, completely indecent would have been far closer to the truth.

You see, Mina Sunshine had taken it upon herself to dress up; or rather, down. Dressed in nothing but matching red satin underwear set, a suspender belt and sheer stockings and a shimmering short black robe to top it off, she was a sight to behold.

Philippe forgot to breathe.

His gaze swept her body, taking in the lace and the suspenders, the soft swell of her breasts as they threatened to escape from their satin encasing. They took in the smooth lines of her legs underneath the sheer stockings and the glimmer in her cerulean eyes. His mind was completely blank; for once devoid of things to say.

He hadn't realised he had been growling until the newly brazen woman before him coughed delicately, in a manner so feminine, he almost lost it right then and there.

"You need to be very careful who you push, little tiger," his words coming out as an ominous hiss with a huskiness that was the only indication of the internal struggle he was now suffering. Advancing slowly, he noticed her start to take hesitant steps back, as if to distance herself. Philippe saw uncertainty there in her clear eyes, he saw a glimmer of fear but also the faintest spark of something he couldn't quite recognise. It was almost like... need.

Mina had detected the shift in the room the instant that Philippe's eyes had lit upon her and she instantly regretted ever believing that she could take this man head on and win. It had been sheer naivety to think that her little game of tease would be able to withstand the raw masculinity and passion that the fiery-blooded Frenchman was now radiating.

This was almost certainly a situation from which she would not escape unscathed.

Her own body started to betray her. Mina only became aware that she was retreating when the edge of the four-poster bed brushed her hip. She jumped violently, almost as if the inanimate, ancient wood had given her an electric shock.

All it took was that one lapse of concentration for the vampire to pounce.

With what could only be described as a feral snarl, he surged forwarded, muscles straining and flexing beneath his shirt. His huge palms encircled her minute waist roughly and Mina felt the air whoosh out of her lungs as the vampire used their combined momentum to slam her against the nearest wall.