“Weres don’t go to hospitals.”
With that he rose and scooped the man into his arms. She blinked at Dillon’s raw power but simply nodded and followed him as he strode off the way she’d come.
“What were you thinkin’, Kyle?” he said as they rounded the bend to her apartment.
“What was he thinking?” she spat back. “What were you thinking? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
He flicked a glance at her. “I’m an immortal, darlin’. We’re a tough bunch to kill.”
Her eyes fell pointedly to the man in his arms. “But not tough to injure, apparently.” She opened the door and let him pass. “You can take him straight back to the bedroom and lay him on my bed. I have a first aid kit in the bathroom. It’s not going to be enough, though. That cut on his head needs stitches. And what if there are internal injuries?”
“Cowboys are tough, and werewolves are tougher. He’ll heal fast.” His breath came in forceful puffs while he made his way up the hall to her room. “There are only three things he’ll need to fix him up right.”
Once inside the bedroom, Dillon laid Kyle on the bed and sat down beside him. While her eyes made another tour of Kyle’s injuries, she couldn’t avoid noticing the cocks hanging between their thighs. The last thing she should be thinking about was having two naked men on her bed, let alone a far different scenario that involved stripping off her nightgown and climbing in between them. What a time for her libido to chip in two inappropriate cents.
Dillon slapped at his alpha’s cheek. “Come on, partner. Wake up. I don’t want to have to hold your entire weight up in the shower.”
“Shower?” She came up behind him, wringing her clammy hands together. “Isn’t hygiene the last thing he should be worried about?”
Dillon shot a look over his shoulder. “Darlin’, if you’re gonna be around wolves, then you’ll find that we have three pressin’ needs that help us when we’re sick, hurt, or under the sway of the full moon.”
“And those are?”
“A hot shower, a raw feed, and good, rough sex. Not always in that order, and sometimes combined.”
The third option rung loudly through her head, and she shook it off. “He’s hardly in any kind of shape for even one of those things to help.”
“You’d be surprised.”
A groan left Kyle’s throat, and Dillon turned to sit on the bed beside him. “That’s it, Kyle. Come on back.”
The man’s eyes fluttered open, though they appeared a bit unfocused. “You’re human,” he muttered weakly.
Dillon snorted. “Human? You must have hit your head harder than I thought.”
“Kyle?” Aimee rushed to the opposite side of the bed and leaned over him. “How do you feel?”
His head rolled slowly toward her. “Like I tried to shove some idiot out of the way of a truck.”
“Why the hell did you do it?” Dillon asked. “I wasn’t in danger.”
“Looked like you were up to your old tricks,” Kyle said.
Aimee frowned. “What old tricks?”
Dillon ignored the question. “Gettin’ hit by a truck wouldn’t exactly have served that purpose. It wasn’t even painted silver.”
“I know. I just reacted.” Kyle lifted his hand to the cut on his head, eyeing the blood that came away on his palm. He pressed this other hand flat against the side of his chest. “I think I cracked a damn rib.”
Dillon moved Kyle’s hand and replaced it with his own. “A couple, probably. You’re flarin’ a good amount of heat over this spot.” He sighed and lowered his hand. “That was quite a blow you took. Think we’ll be expectin’ a visit any time soon?”
Aimee frowned in confusion, but Kyle shook his head. “I shut it off as soon as it happened. Still blocking the pain as best as I can. The pack won’t realize I’m hurt.” Kyle eyed Dillon warily. “But next time, could you not sit in the middle of the damn street?”
“Why were you sitting in the middle of the street?” Aimee asked.
He shrugged. “Just a bit of wolf fun. I’d have moved before the truck got to me.”
Aimee gaped at him. “That’s your idea of fun? You’re a damn fool.”
His eyes flashed when he returned her glare. “Believe me, darlin’, my idea of full moon fun was a lot less tame when I was first made.”
“You’re still a damn fool,” Kyle said. “Why weren’t you up at the cave tonight?”
Dillon glanced at Aimee, then looked away. “What’s it matter anymore? I’m never gonna get better. I’m never gonna be enough.”
Aimee’s stomach fell at the way he said the last.
Kyle tried to scoot himself up in bed but stopped with a wince. “You obviously are gettin’ better if we’re havin’ this heartfelt little chat in the middle of your pity party. Or didn’t you notice that you shifted back human under a high full moon?”
Aimee’s eyes widened. The significance of his shift hadn’t even occurred to her.
Dillon blinked and glanced down at himself. “I didn’t have to think about it. It was just the only way I could help you.”
“He did it earlier today, too,” Aimee said. “When he was starting to change at the bar.”
“It wasn’t quite nightfall then,” he said, but she could hear the surprise in his voice.
“So stop feelin’ sorry for yourself,” Kyle said, “and get over this death wish.”
“Death wish?” Aimee asked.
Kyle glanced at her. “I told you when I first saw Dillon that I intended to kill him,” he said.
She nodded.
“This conversation is pointless,” Dillon said. “She don’t even want us. No need to bare our souls if we don’t got the coin to pay her to listen.”
Her chest flared with hot anger. “I happen to care about both of you, however badly you want to think of me, or how idiotic you can be sometimes.” She nodded to Kyle. “Go on.”
“I spotted Dillon trackin’ the huntress you came across in the woods. I assumed he was huntin’ her down to kill her, and I planned to take him out before he had a chance.”
She grunted. “So guns can kill you.”
Kyle shook his head. “Not just any gun. Silver is our weakness. A silver bullet, knife, or other weapon can kill our kind. It’s the only thing that can take down a werewolf, save for beheading.”
She shivered at the thought and cleared her throat. “So what happened?”
Kyle grunted. “I was crouched in a bush, gettin’ ready to spring. Then I realized Dillon wasn’t settin’ her up for a kill. He was trackin’ her to put himself right in her path. He jumped out in front of her and was gonna let her shoot him.”
Aimee’s heart stuttered. “Why?”
“I’ll admit I was in a bad place,” Dillon said, shifting his body on the bed to face her. “I’d lost my pack, and yet we were still bound to one another. We could feel each other’s despair, and it fed our own.” He glanced at her. “Plus Kade had claimed a mate that instinctively drew us all to her, but none of us could have her.”
She swallowed. “The woman you told me about in the parking lot.”
He nodded. “Lily was never mine. But in a were pack, when a mate is claimed by another, there is an automatic attraction for the others. Blaise’s obsession with her because of that was in part what got him killed.”
Her heart pounded in jealousy. The thought of him feeling the call of a different mate struck a distinctly unpleasant chord. How selfish was that, begrudging him when she herself was in possession of another man’s ring?
“I hated this curse and roamin’ the mountains alone,” he went on, “with no control over who I was and no place to go. I couldn’t go back to cowhand work because ranch animals don’t take to havin’ a predator around. I couldn’t hold down another kind of job for fear my nature might come out at the wrong moment. And I was sick of the memories of what Blaise had done, what the rest of us did under his orders. Other packs hated us for it, and the huntress haunts
us for it. I thought maybe she was right, that the evil in our pack hadn’t died out with Blaise. It infected every one of us down to our gut, and the only way to purge it would be to destroy us all.”
Her heart twisted in sympathy. “You’re not evil,” she said, her throat thick with emotion. “Or you wouldn’t have cared enough about who you were to let her end you.”
“That’s what I told him,” Kyle said. “Later.”
She looked at him. “If you were planning on killing him anyway, why didn’t you just let her finish him off?”
Kyle sighed. “Sheer impulse. I saw her raise the gun at him, and before I knew what I’d done, I jumped out from the bush and knocked the woman off her feet. I grabbed the pistol in my teeth and flung it over the edge of the cliff. Then she ran off.”
She smiled. “You wolves really have a thing about tossing women’s stuff off the mountain.”
“I was damn pissed, watching that gun plunge into the night,” Dillon said. “I saw that as my only way out. I faced off with Kyle and was prepared to give him his fight to the death, only with me on the victorious side.”
She eyed Kyle, who shrugged. “Dillon and I stood there, baring fangs and snarling at one another. When I looked him in the eye, though, I couldn’t deny why I had really saved him. I felt the bond forming, molecule by molecule. I shifted human right under the full moon, and Dillon froze in shock. Anyone who thinks wolves aren’t capable of facial expressions didn’t see the look on his muzzle that night.”
Dillon snorted. “Caught me off guard. I wasn’t too familiar with weres who shifted at will on a high full moon night. I’d only encountered one pack before that could do it, and that was Kade and his partner, back before Kade became our alpha. I knew right then and there that it was a power I wanted. I knew that Kyle was the alpha I wanted.”
Kyle pushed himself upright, his jaw clenched right. The growl that came out of him had a distinct feral tone to it, and Aimee saw that his eyes were beginning to glow.
“Let’s throw you in a hot shower,” Dillon said to Kyle. He turned to her. “His body’s tryin’ to shift back, but his bones and all reshapin’ for a phase won’t exactly be a big party in his condition.”
She nodded. “Okay, but how will a shower help?”
“The hot water relaxes the joints and muscles, and also helps accelerate healin’ by bringin’ on more blood flow. Got any fresh, raw meat?”
Her brow shot up. “For the shower?”
“For him to eat. I’d rather not have to leave him and go out huntin’ just now.”
“Oh. I brought home some hamburger meat from the store earlier tonight.”
Dillon shook his head. “No good. Ground meat is handled and processed too much.”
She thought for a moment. “I picked up a New York steak, too.”
He smiled. “Now you’re talkin’.”
“Shall I cook it while you get him showered?”
“No. Just bring it to the shower raw.”
She tried not to make a face at the idea while Dillon gingerly helped Kyle to his feet. Well, at least the woman who wound up with these men would have no worries about cooking for them.
When she realized she was staring at the tight, perfectly round asses before her, she jumped up. “Bathroom’s through there.” She nodded to a door next to her closet. “I’ll just go get the meat.” And try to forget the exquisitely packaged meat she’d just been ogling.
Although she had seen both men naked on numerous occasions during their brief acquaintance, she paused when she came back with the Styrofoam tray of marbled steak. Somehow it seemed more intrusive to bust in on them in the shower, even though she’d watched the two of them do far more personal things to one another.
Steam rose from the tub shower, flushing her cheeks with damp heat when she entered the white tile bathroom. Kyle’s moan echoed through the small space, and she couldn’t quite decide whether he was in pain or feeling something else.
Her feet scuffed along the tile floor as she approached the men whose forms were distorted but visible through the sliding glass doors. With a brief hesitation, she yanked open the door farthest from the shower head and stuck the tray of meat inside. “Dinner’s served,” she said.
“Perfect, darlin’,” Dillon said. “Can you toss that tray and come hold the steak for him? My hands are a mite busy at the moment.”
That piqued her interest, and she couldn’t help but poke her head inside to see what was going on. Nothing as untoward as what she’d pictured, though. Dillon held Kyle against his chest, almost the way Aimee had leaned back on him in the bar bathroom earlier that day. He was helping rinse blood from the man’s hair.
“He’s still a little woozy,” Dillon said. “Bring that meat on in here and we’ll get him fixed up.”
“In there? With you?”
He gave her an amused glance. “Unless you’re plannin’ to stick the meat on the end of a long pole and hold it over his face.”
She sighed and kicked off her slippers. Her short gown would get wet, but there was no way she would be stripping down to get in that shower naked with them.
When she climbed in and slid the door closed, she sucked in a deep breath and held it. Kyle’s eyes lit up—literally—as soon as he saw the cold steak she raised in front of him. What she hadn’t been expecting was for his jaw to lengthen and sharp teeth to promptly emerge.
“Oh, God, you’re changing,” she said. She jerked away, but he took hold of her hand and kept it in place, then tore off a chunk of meat with his fangs. She continued to hold her breath while she watched him chew, surprised to note that his face returned to normal proportions and the glow in his eyes subsided once he’d bitten off the steak. So he wasn’t losing control, after all. He just needed his sharper teeth to rip off hunks of the thick, raw meat.
“Thanks,” he said to her after swallowing the mouthful.
She finally whooshed out her held breath. “You’re welcome. Is it helping?”
A faint but dangerous smile breached his stone-cold expression. “It’s all helpin’.”
He leaned in slower this time, and she watched in utter fascination as his eyes and face underwent enough of a change for his fangs to reappear. Her hand shook slightly as he ripped off another bite of steak. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips when he finished chewing. Raw, bloody juices mingled with droplets of water to slide down the front of his magnificent chest. Feeding him this way felt so primal, so decadent. Her heartbeat began a steady, heavy drumming.
Her eyes followed the trickles of reddish fluid dripping from his chin to land on the medallion he wore around his neck. She squinted at the image of a man’s profile embossed on the front and lifted the pendant with her free hand. “Who is this?”
“Saint Francis of Assisi,” Kyle said. “Patron saint of animals and lost causes. Of which I am both.”
“Got that right,” Dillon said from behind him.
“A Catholic symbol?” she asked. “I thought you were Buddhist from the way you were chanting in the cave last night.”
His stare bored deeper into her until her stomach began to quiver. “I draw from a wide range of sources to keep what’s inside of me under control.”
She smoothed a shaky finger over the metal disk. “Is this silver?”
“Pewter. Silver wouldn’t be the best jewelry choice for a werewolf.”
“I suppose not. Still, it’s beautiful.” She laid it back on his chest, her fingertips grazing his skin lightly. Tingles surged up her arm at the feel of his skin before she pulled away.
“You’re beautiful.” He raised her other arm again to get at the meat she gripped tightly in her hand. He closed his eyes and wrapped his mouth around the next bite as though taking in the cock of a lover, and she felt her eyes practically glaze over at the sexuality inherent in his actions.
The muscles in his arms flexed as he held her hand in front of him, enticing her. Just as he turned sideways to put his hand under the shower stream
, Dillon bent down to grab a bar of soap. A spray of hot water struck Aimee full-on, drenching the front of her gown.
“Oh! Damn.” She blinked and rubbed water from her face. “Okay, look. Do you really need me in here to hold this steak for you? Because you seem strong enough to hold it by yourself.”
The knowing look he gave her sent tingles along her spine. “Dillon just wanted an excuse to get you in here with him,” Kyle said, and his eyes skimmed along the front of her. “Seems the boy knows what he’s doin’ after all, on rare occasion.”
A glance down at herself showed that the shower spray had turned her pale blue gown translucent and glued it to her body so that her dark nipples and the darker thatch of hair between her legs were outlined perfectly. His cock was thickening rapidly, rising toward her.
She pulled the vacuum-sealed fabric away from her skin and stepped back. “I better dry off and let you finish your shower.” Her voice shook as though she was chilled, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
When he grabbed her arm this time, it was with a tighter grip and a gleam in his eye that wasn’t related to an imminent shift. He pressed closer to her, pushing her back against the shower wall. “Stay. I still need some help healin’.”
“You mean you need help releasin’ some tension,” Dillon said, moving up behind him.
His hands moved around the other man’s back. Her nipples puckered with tingling need as she watched those soapy hands slide around the front of Kyle’s chest, leaving trails of white foam wherever he touched. Kyle’s head tipped back, his eyes shutting and jaw clenching while Dillon’s hands worked magic on his flesh. Dillon rubbed lower, smoothing suds over the rigid muscles of Kyle’s stomach. Aimee’s clit throbbed with an insistent demand to join in when his fingers slid down through Kyle’s black triangle of curls and over the cock that now stood straight out.
The growl Kyle let out pierced Aimee to the base of raw, animal want, and when he reached out to slide his hands along the wet silk clinging to her breasts, the steak slipped from her hand and fell to the shower floor. Pinching her nipples sent a shudder through her clit that peaked so sharply that she thought she would either die or scream, possibly both. She gripped his shoulders for support and leaned her head back on the shower wall, closing her eyes to allow passion to flood over her the way the water streams pounded the men in front of her. Shutting out her sight heightened other senses, electrifying his touch and turning the very sounds of their breaths and moans into instruments of erotic delight.
Allister, J. Rose - Disowned Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 11