The Dragon’s E-Mail Order Menage

Chapter 3

          Sh*t! Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t. He had been on edge, expecting a knock at the door all day, sh*t, all day? He had been expecting it all week. Part of him had been expecting this knock since before he even knew it was coming, or at least before he had any right to expect it. That didn’t appear to matter now. Now, his palms were slimy with sweat he couldn’t seem to control (and what the sh*t was that about? Sweating had never been a problem of his, maybe not sweating enough, but nothing like this) and his heart was racing like he had been on one hell of a cocaine binge he wasn’t recuperating very well from.

 Damn. And he was supposed to answer the door this way? This chick was going to think he was nuts! Or worse, some kind of a serial killer. Either way, he didn’t need to look in the mirror to know that the picture he painted wasn’t exactly the welcome, nice to meet you now please come inside so we can get started on our shifter internet ménage a trois relationship.

 Christ, and then there was that. He hadn’t even let himself get quite that far. Hadn’t really thought that part of the situation through. Hadn’t been time. Or else he didn’t know how, which seemed like a more likely explanation.

“Hudson! Hudson, you planning on getting the fu*king door or did you think you might just let the noise go on for a little longer?”

Christ, like that was going to help. Levi was a good guy, a good friend, and most of the time Hudson was glad to have him as a roommate, but other times, times like this one, he thought he was nothing more than a loud man with a temper and sh*t for brains. Like he needed someone to tell him to open the door. He knew what was supposed to happen when someone came knocking.

He was just trying to get himself in some kind of mental working order and that was really hard to do when his asshole roommate was yelling at him from the next room. Like he wasn’t one hundred percent capable of answering it himself. This whole thing had been Levi’s idea, after all. It had been Levi’s idea and yet somehow it was him, one Hudson Wright, who was getting more and more deeply involved with the situation. Get it together. He needed to get it the fu*k together.

“Right. Answer the door. All I gotta do. Just answer the door.”

He took a deep breath, hand on the knob, and turned. Just as simple as that and there she was. Good god, she was so much more beautiful than he had expected her to be. The grainy photograph that had been attached to her profile on the underground network for shifters had in no way done her justice.

He guessed she was like any truly great experience; you had to have it in person to get the full effect. And he found himself hoping that this was her full effect, because he was pretty sure anything more would give him a full-on heart attack. She looked like the kind of girl you would dream up but never actually get to breathe the same air with, in your real, waking life. She had thick, shocking red hair and eyes that made him feel strangely fuzzy.

 Or maybe it was just a hangover. That was always a distinct possibility. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how much he and Levi had to drink, but judging by the pounding in his head and the foul taste in his mouth, they had definitely tied one on. It had probably seemed like the right thing to do, like it was going to help give him courage for when their new friend arrived, but unfortunately it seemed to be having the opposite effect. Because now, instead of saying something charming like he would have hoped himself capable of, he was just standing in the doorway with his mouth hanging open like a moron, not a single word coming out. This was not the way he was hoping things would go. Not even close.

“Um, hi. I’m not sure I have the right place.”

Say something. Say anything, for Christ’s sake. If he didn’t open his mouth and spit something out soon she was going to think he was a freaking serial killer or something! He must look insane and the best way to put a stop to that (or at least to start to repair whatever awful impression he had already made in the very limited amount of time he had been around her) was to answer her the way any normal human being (or in his case, shifter) would. Any second now. Any second now he was going to stop gawking and speak.

“Are you all right? I can just go if you want. Or maybe get some help? Do you need help? Are you like, sick or something?”

“No! I mean no, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you. But no, I don’t need any help and yes, this is the right place.”

“How can you be so sure of that? I haven’t even told you who I am.”

“Maggie Wallace, right?”

“How did you know?”

She was starting to back away from him, her face having grown guarded and mistrustful, and Hudson held up his hands palms facing towards her, hoping to show her that he was safe, that he meant her no harm. The gesture seemed to work, at least a little bit, because she stopped actively trying to get away from him. That was good. He supposed. In the grand scheme of things, being happy because a chick wasn’t actually recoiling from you in horror wasn’t ideal, but it was going to have to be good enough, because, like it or not, it was where they were at. He had seen to that.

Now he just had to show her that he wasn’t completely nuts and then they would be good to go. He figured a good place to start on that front was to put her mind at ease as to how he knew who she was. That way at least the whole serial killer idea would be put to rest (oh god, he hoped so).