The Better to Hold You - By Alisa Sheckley Page 0,15

a conspirator's grin.

“Let me check whether the hallway's clear.” I left the stall and opened the bathroom door a crack. “It's okay,” I said. “You're good to go.”

Red paused by the door. “Now listen, Doc, you ever have some critter getting into your basement, go on and give me a call.”

I glanced down at the card in my hand. There was an e-mail address and a toll-free phone number. “I live in an apartment.”

Red whistled for Pia and she came to heel by his side. The dog—if that's what she was—seemed calmer than I'd ever seen her. She even wagged her tail again as she looked back at me. “See?” Red pointed with his thumb. “She's thanking you, too.”

“Go on,” I said with a smile.

His hand on the handle, Red turned around. “Sorry about your purse, Doc. I was just about to say something when you turned and froze me out.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, on the train. You gave me one of those ‘Don't even think about talking to me' looks and then cold-shouldered me. So I didn't warn you.”

I thought about how it might have seemed from his point of view. “I'm always reading people wrong,” I said. “If you'd been a dog, I would have known you were all right the moment I met you.”

Red's eyes lit with amusement. “Smart about animals and stupid about people. That's what my grandfather always said about me.”

“Sounds like my mother talking about me.”

“Well.”

“Well.” We stood there, uncomfortable with the moment. And then Red lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed my knuckles, and left.

I stood there, stunned at the very physical reaction I'd had to his touch. That was a flirtation. I had committed flirtation.

And then I realized that the slight dampness between my legs might not all be arousal. I darted into a stall to check whether I needed a sanitary pad just as I heard someone come into the bathroom.

As I emerged to wash my hands, I saw that Lilliana was tucking her silky blouse into her gray wool slacks. “Hey, Abra. Any luck finding Pia?”

My mouth felt dry. “None.”

“Damn. Well, I hope it was her real owner breaking her out, and not some animal control hotshot.” She looked at me in the mirror. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said, not completely sure why I was lying to my friend, but doing it all the same. “It's just that time of the month.”

FIVE

I have always been the kind of person who wonders what things mean. You would think, as a writer, that Hunter would also tend to analyze life, but the truth is, Hunter reports on things. The moral ambiguity of his stories, which allows readers to draw their own conclusions, is what reviewers love about him. Perhaps the readers of Outside are tired of the old “hubris in the face of nature” chestnut, which is the point of most of the magazine's articles. With Hunter, you get an art school ending—the pattern of blood on the windshield as the deer limps away, the intricate whorls of the tribal tattoo on the face of a young Maori prostitute.

So there was no point in my asking Hunter what had precipitated the sudden change in our sex life. For several weeks after Hunter's return, we made love every day, and this unexpected second honeymoon chased every other thought from my mind. I didn't spare another thought for my strange encounter with the scruffy, auburn-haired wildlife operator. I went to work on autopilot, not even noticing that Malachy had become paler and weaker until Lilliana pointed it out. There was no more talk of Unwolves and no mention of Hunter's research. Like me, Malachy seemed to be sleepwalking through his days, and Ofer was openly lobbying for a transfer.

But while Malachy was in the grip of some nameless illness, I was drifting in a fugue state of reciprocal lust. Literally and figuratively, I was Hunter's slave girl, in thrall to his attention and his touch. As for my husband, he was autocratic and imaginative and more passionate than I recalled him ever being before, even in the beginning.

I met Hunter eight years ago, during my junior year of college. He was a senior. We were both in the Science Library, cramming for midterms. It was a late afternoon in early November and the sky outside was the kind of pale dark that always makes me feel cold and a little despondent.

I was feeling low for a variety of reasons. I was sleep-deprived, I