Fighting Furry

by Katharine Sadler

  “I've watched a shit-ton of UFC fights.”

  “Good enough for me,” I said. “But only twenty minutes, and then you tell me everything you know about the valley pack.”

  She leapt off the couch and ran for the back of the house, hollering about changing her clothes. She was back in less than two minutes in work-out shorts and a sports bra. The woman had been training, unless wolves were just naturally fit, because she had some serious guns and defined ab muscles. “Let's go out back,” she said.

  I followed her to a small back yard, similar to the one behind Krista's house. The sun was high and warm, though a nice breeze would keep us from being too hot. “Aren't you going to change?” she asked.

  I looked down at my jeans and t-shirt. I really didn't expect to have to work up a sweat. “Nah, I'm good.”

  She grinned like she'd already won.

  She got into a pretty decent fighting stance and I matched it. She feinted with a punch that she telegraphed and I easily dodged, but a surprise kick clipped my hip and knocked me off balance. As she leaped on top of me, it occurred to me I may have been a bit overconfident.

  She got me face down and wrapped an arm around my neck, but her hold was all wrong and I easily slipped free and got her on the ground, her pretty workout shorts getting covered in mud. She struggled but couldn’t break free of my hold. “Match to me,” I said.

  I let her go and we both stood. She bounced on her toes, only a little winded. “Why couldn't I hold you? I should have won when I got my arm around your neck.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You should have. Want me to teach you how to do it properly? Or do you want to fight for the next eighteen minutes?”

  She opted for me to teach her and I spent the next half hour showing her how to do proper holds and how not to telegraph her punches. “Shit,” I said, when I stopped for a water break and saw the time. “You need to tell me what you know about the valley pack now or I'm going to be late.”

  She shrugged. I doubted I could ever call her a pleasant person, she was all hard edges and blunt statements, but I'd had fun teaching her. She was a good student, and she didn't seem to hate my guts anymore.

  She sank into a seat at the kitchen table. “I'm not sure how much I can help,” she said. “I lived with them for a couple years, but the pack members have changed since then.”

  “How long ago were you with them?”

  “More than four years ago,” she said.

  “Do you think they'd invite you in and show you around if you showed up? Is there anyone there who might remember you?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But they'd also know I'm part of Axel's pack and they'd be suspicious.”

  That would be a problem, but maybe…“I'll think about it,” I said. “Maybe we can talk some more tonight?”

  “If we can practice fighting some more.”

  I bit back a sigh. It looked like I was going to be busier than I'd anticipated.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I walked all the way to the barn where the meeting was supposed to happen, but no one was there. I pulled out my phone, only to realize I didn't have Axel's number. How could I not have his number?

  I paced in front of the barn for twenty minutes, but no one showed. What the hell was going on? Had I misunderstood the time or the location of the meeting? I was annoyed with myself and with Axel, so I marched my ass back through town to Axel's house. I banged on the door for a full two minutes, but there was no sound from inside. Annoyance shifted to worry at that point, and I marched around back and through the woods to the gym/studio. There were no sounds coming from there, but I barged in anyway, only to find it empty, too. What the hell? Completely out of ideas of where to find Axel, I decided to take it out on the punching bag. I punched and kicked, working out my worry, both that something had happened to Axel and that he'd deliberately misled me for some reason, until I started to enjoy myself. I enjoyed myself so much, I forget to pull back on my punches and punched the bag right off the hook. It flew across the warehouse and knocked over a stack of rusted metal on the far side. Huh, guess that explained the three extra punching bags lined up along the wall. I considered lugging the thing back over and hanging it up, but decided against it. It was the least Axel deserved for not being where he said he'd be and making me worry.

  With nothing better to do, I got into my weight-lifting routine. I'd always loved lifting, because it was a constant challenge. If I could do too many reps, I just added weight and, boom, challenge. It helped that I had a mesomorph-style body and built muscle pretty quickly and easily. Now that I was a werewolf, I could lift three times what I'd been able to lift before. I felt like superwoman.

  I was doing Smith squats, facing an exterior window, when I saw Axel walking toward the warehouse. I paused mid-rep, ignoring the screaming of my quads, and watched him. His shoulders were slumped, his steps dragging. His mouth was pinched in a tight line, his expression dark and weary. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about Axel and my reaction to him, but I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about what it took to do Axel's job, what stress he must experience being responsible for the entire pack, being the one they looked to for everything they needed.

  He'd been so good to me, so protective, even before he knew me at all. Who took care of him? Who did he talk to when he needed to vent or just forget the pressure for a while? All my earlier annoyance and worry was forgotten as it occurred to me that I wanted to be that person for him. I wanted to make him smile and ease his stress and be there for him when no one else was. I wanted to be a help to him, not the girlfriend who didn't know how she felt about him, not the friend who pressured him to get physical when he wanted more. It wasn't fair to him for me to ask him for anything until I was sure, absolutely positive that I was one hundred percent in it with him. I needed to be the girlfriend capable of standing on her own two feet, capable of supporting myself and him. I would not be just another burden to him.

  He paused and looked back toward the house, like he'd heard something, his whole body tense. Did he ever relax? Was he ever not on guard?

  He turned back to the warehouse and I finished my reps as he walked in the door. His expression lightened when he saw me, his mouth turning up, his shoulders going back, his steps becoming lighter and quicker. He was by my side in an instant, his arms tight around me, and I could have cried for how good it felt. “There you are,” he said. “I got worried when you weren't at Lucinda's.”

  “I came here looking for you,” I said. “I was worried about you.”

  He grimaced. “Shit. I forgot to let you know the meeting was canceled.”

  I stepped back and got under the bar, using my shoulders to lift it and drop down into another squat. I was happy to see him, but I didn't need to screw up my workout. “Why don't I have your phone number?”

  He paused. “You don't?”

  I shook my head, the squats making it impossible to speak.

  He looked around, spotted my phone on a weight bench near the door, and headed that way. He tapped the screen for several moments and set it back down. “Now you have it.”

  I finished my set and walked over to him. “Why was the meeting canceled?”

  He rolled his shoulders, the tension returning to his expression. “There was a fight at one of the outlying homesteads. Clarissa and I had to head out and break it up.”

  “A fight? I thought we were all pacifists here.”

  A bit of the tension left his face, but I didn't get a smile from him. “That's the idea, but living in a small town, seeing the same people day in and day out, tensions can run high. This fight was two families feuding over a hill.”

  “A hill?”

  He nodded. “One family loves to ski in the winter and they want to build a lift to make the hill more accessible. The other family hates skiing and they want to use the hill for sledding.”

  I stared at him. “Couldn't the lift be used for both?”

  He sat on the bench, grabbed my waist, and
pulled me into his lap. I could have complained, since he'd said he'd keep things platonic until I asked him for more, but I was happy there in his lap and didn't want to change anything. “That's what I suggested, but they said the sleds would ruin the snow and get in the way, so it needed to be zoned as a ski-only hill.”

  “Seems like an idiotic argument.”

  Axel nodded, his nose brushing my neck. He caressed my side from hipbone to ribs, making it hard for me to focus on the conversation. “It is,” he said. “I think there's something else going on, but they weren't interested in mediation or discussing anything reasonably. For now, none of them are allowed to use the hill for anything. If they can't work it out, I'm letting the teens build another zip line there.”

  “The teens build the zip lines?”

  He lifted his head, his brow crinkled in confusion. “Sure.”

  “Don't you think adults should be involved? Make sure everything is built safely?”

  “Herbert checks them over during the build and at the end. It's a good way to keep the teens busy.”

  He brushed my hair out of my face, just as the music flipped over to a rock ballad. I've never understood the point of rock ballads. If I wanted to listen to a ballad I'd step into an elevator somewhere. When I listened to rock, I expected to get rock. It was the sort of song I'd usually skip, but staring into Axel's eyes, his hand on my cheek, it felt like the perfect background music. And, yes, I was fully aware I was as cheesy as the characters on Lucinda's favorite soap. I just didn't care.

  I leaned in and Axel didn't lean away. It started as a tender kiss, a sort of tentative kiss, that exploded with heat and passion. I knew I should be thinking about this, probably talking about this with Axel, so I pulled back a moment. “Okay?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes,” he said.

  I should have just accepted that and kept going, but he'd put up the boundary and I felt I should respect it. “But I thought we were just being friends until I came to you and asked for more.”

  “We'll be friends tomorrow.”

  And that was enough for me. I spun and straddled him, kissing his lips and his chin and his neck. I kissed every part of him I could reach and then started pawing at his shirt, needing to get to his skin. He gripped my waist, put me on my feet, and stood with me. He pulled off my shirt and then got me naked faster than I'd ever managed to get myself naked.

  “Let's use the equipment in here for some fun,” he said, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Go over and put your hands on the bar you were just squatting. I walked back over to the smith machine, bent at the waist and put my hands on the bar. I wasn't sure that's what he'd intended, but I was happy to give him a show. Behind me he swore. “You are the sexiest fucking thing I've ever seen. “

  I looked back over my shoulder to see him standing about three feet behind me. He was shirt-less and his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped, revealing the flat plane of his abdomen leading down to the goods. He removed some plates from the smith machine and lay them next to my feet. He helped me to step up onto the plates, making me a bit taller, putting me right where he needed me.

  He gripped my hips and drove into me in one hard thrust. I was more than ready for him and it felt so good I thought the top of my head might fly off with the pleasure. It felt like it had been weeks instead of a day since I'd felt him inside me. He paused for just a moment and I tried to jerk my hips back, to get some movement, some friction, but he tsked and gripped my hips harder.

  “Axel, please.” I needed to move, I needed to feel I was in control.

  “Trust me,” he said. “Keep your hands on the bar and trust me to give you what you need.”

  I was getting closer to trusting him, and I knew he knew exactly how to give me what I needed. “Okay.”

  He sighed, like I'd removed one of those burdens he carried, and pulled out of me slow. He pumped in and out, holding my hips in place, and it felt so good, but I needed more. I pulled one hand from the bar to touch myself, to get the extra friction I needed, but he stopped mid-thrust. “Hand back on that bar,” he said, his voice a husky growl. He wasn't using his alpha voice. If he had, I would have fought his order. Instead, I put my hand back on the bar and lost myself to the motion and the feel of him, the sounds our flesh made, the feel of his fingers digging into my hips, the moans we both made.

  Finally, he touched me in that magic spot. He was rougher than I would have been, but it was just what I needed in that moment. I exploded, screaming his name with the pleasure. He followed and collapsed over my back, breathing heavy. “Stay with me tonight?” he asked, once he'd caught his breath.

  “Okay,” I said. “But just tonight and only because I want sex.”

  His face was against my neck so I could feel his smile. Which was dumb. Why was he smiling about that? “Of course.”

  “Axel?” Clarissa's voice carried through the door. Before I could look over, I heard her footsteps on the concrete floor. “Oh, shit. Sorry. I'll come back later.”

  By the time we'd both stood, she was gone. Axel didn't even put on clothes. He picked me up and carried me inside. He took me straight upstairs to his bed. “What if Clarissa needed something?”

  “If it was important, she would have told me before she left.”

  He laid me down on the bed and dropped to his knees. He spread my legs wide, enjoying the view for just a moment before he dove in and feasted. I forgot about Clarissa and the valley pack and Axel's burdens. I forgot my own damn name.

  ***

  I woke up in Axel's bed alone. I could hear his welding tools from the warehouse, so I took my time getting out of bed and putting yesterday's clothes back on. I made coffee for both of us and carried it out to the warehouse, but Axel didn't look up from his work. He was shirtless, sweatpants hanging low on his lean hips, his damp skin flexing and tightening over his firm muscles as he worked. It was a sight to behold and I couldn't resist grabbing my phone from the bench where I'd left it the day before and filming him in action.

  I got about ten minutes of video, zooming in on my particular areas of interest as much as on his work, before he looked up and noticed me there. He grinned when he saw me and put down his tools. He took off his face shield and walked lazily over to me, his gaze scanning my body as though he was ready to go again, even though we'd been up most of the night. “Thanks, sweetheart.” He picked up the coffee mug I'd brought out for him and lifted it to his lips. Damn, his lips. I needed to leave before I climbed all over him and forgot that I needed to be making my own way, not spending every moment of every day in bed with him.

  “I need to get home,” I said. “Has yesterday's meeting been rescheduled?”

  He smirked like he knew why I was in such a hurry to leave. “It's this afternoon. Same time, same place.”

  I nodded and left. I walked back to Lucinda's, taking my time and enjoying the sunny, warm morning. I'd taken my mug with me and I sipped coffee as I walked. I stopped at the diner, which was much less busy that morning, though the menu offerings were the same, and had a quick breakfast. By the time I got back to Lucinda's, I was feeling relaxed and pretty darn good about everything.

  Lucinda was seated on her couch, scowling at me. Several other women, including Lara, were seated around the room, not scowling at me. “Good morning,” I said.

  Lucinda grunted. “It would have been better if I hadn't been up all night worrying about you.”

  “I'm…sorry,” I said. “I didn't realize you would expect me back. I just…” They didn't need to know I'd been with Axel. “I got busy and lost track of time.”

  “Busy with Axel,” one of the women said. “Didn't you hear, Luce? Clarissa walked in on the two of them getting it on in the middle of the gym.”

  Lucinda's scowl deepened as I made a mental note to kick Clarissa's big-mouthed ass. “Sounds exceedingly unsanitary to me,” Lucinda said. “Do you know how many germs live on publicly used gym equipment?”

  “Don't really want to know,” I said. I looke
d around at the women. Since all the seats were taken, I sat on the coffee table. “I'm Julie. I know Lara and Lucinda, I don't think I've met the rest of you.” A couple of them looked familiar, but we hadn't been officially introduced.

  “I'm Betsy,” said a woman with curly red hair. “That's Millie and Clara. Lucinda invited us over so you could teach us how to fight.”

  I studied the women. They were all lean and fit, probably because they could shift into wolves and run for miles and miles through the woods.

  “I'd love to train you,” I said. “I'd like to offer training to everyone in town. Maybe you all could help me decide how much to charge.”

  “Charge?” Lucinda asked. “You can't charge pack members for services.”

  “I paid for my meal at the diner today,” I said. “Why can't I charge for training?”

  “The diner charges you for the cost of the food, that's it.”

  “How does anyone make money in this town?” I asked.

  “We don't,” Betsy said. “That's the problem.”

  Lucinda glared at Betty like she could melt her with her eyes. “We all have a role in the pack and jobs to help sustain the pack. We sell goods and services to outsiders, and the money we make is shared.”

  Okay, I could see that. Maybe I could make training videos for YouTube and make some money that way. “What do you do for money?”

  Lucinda crinkled her nose and pursed her lips. “I blog and write dark erotic romance.”

  Huh, Lucinda was just chock-full of surprises. “Wow. I'd love to read your stuff.”

  “Not today,” she said. “Today, you'll train us.”

  It's not like I had anything better to do. “Sure,” I said. “Would one of you mind filming the training session?”

  “I'll do it,” Millie said. She was tall and had smooth brown skin, big brown eyes, and thick brown hair. She was so pretty I'd probably assume she was a model or an actress if we were in LA. “I film the yoga videos.”

  “Yoga videos?”