by Amy Faye
"God I needed this."
He moved his hips to meet hers; his clothes were rough against her naked skin, but it only added to the anticipation of what was to come. His thumb teased her as she waited, as she hoped, as she needed him to continue.
"Yeah?"
"You don't even know."
"I missed you, too."
"Shut up and kiss me, you giant ape."
He shut up and he kissed her roughly. His teeth found her lips and pulled, pinching her clit at the same time between two fingers. Her body tightened up, and when she relaxed it wasn't as much as she had before.
She could feel him working the buckle on his belt, loosening it and undoing the fly on his jeans. She could feel his hardness press up against her. She needed it, but she wasn't going to beg. She wasn't going to let herself beg. Not any more than she already had.
Nick entered her swiftly and the world lit up around her and went dark all at the same time. Her eyes couldn't focus on anything, but she tried to keep them open anyways, in a vain hope that something would change and she'd be able to see him clearly.
He moved hard against her, the tightness in her belly building up and twisting and threatening to send her over the edge without ever actually letting her reach it. His fingers danced across her skin, roughly grabbing her where she wanted to be grabbed, pinching where she wanted to be pinched.
A fantasy welled up inside her until she was afraid she was going crazy. It was a crazy idea, too. One that she shouldn't have even said. Maybe she was a crazy whore, but she just… needed it, even if it was just once.
"Hit me," she said. Her voice was hoarse, thick with need and with nerves over him doing it. He didn't need to be told twice. A powerful hand slapped across her face, hard. Her legs squeezed against her will and pulled him in tighter as the tightness in her belly spread through her whole body. She let out a yell. "God! Fuck!"
He moved harder against her. Taking her. Enjoying her body. "You like that, huh?"
She did. She wanted it. Wanted it again. Wanted something else, too. "Bite me. Hit me. Fucking hurt me, Nick. God I'm so fucking close."
He moved harder, then, his cock seeming to stiffen inside her as she said the words. The feeling of his teeth, sinking into her shoulder, hard. Hard enough to leave a mark. She felt something hot and wet move down her back and realized dimly that it was blood, but she was floating on a cloud. Jesus Christ she'd been missing out on so much. Her mind was completely blank, except for the punctuation of his cock moving inside her and the feeling that she didn't ever want to stop.
Somewhere far away, down below, he came into her pussy again, and she felt complete. She could only imagine what could come after that.
"God damn," she breathed. "How long until we do that again?"
Thirty-Five
The last hour in Brianna's mind was a haze. At some point they'd come to a bed. It wasn't big enough for Nick, either. Then again, she guessed that nothing ever was. He was a big guy.
"So what's the plan?" She looked up at the ceiling and traced a line with her finger along the seam between two thick, meaty muscles. If he answered, she'd almost be surprised.
"No plan," he said. She looked over at him. He had his eyes closed and his fingers laced behind his head. He really did look better, she thought. He didn't look much like he'd gotten ripped to shreds at all, and certainly not like it had happened barely three hours ago.
"No plan?"
"It's the plan I'm used to. Play by ear, and when things start looking bad, you walk away so you don't get fucking killed."
"How's that worked out so far?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Not necessarily well."
"Not necessarily, huh?"
"Well, you know. It could have been worse."
"How could it possibly have been worse, pray tell?"
He rolled onto his side–the side where she'd been sure that his ribs were at least cracked in the car, and she noticed that he certainly wasn't wincing in the sort of pain that he should have been in.
"Okay, you got me there."
"You never answered me," she said. The thought had been one that she never quite managed to get out of her head, but at the same time, it wasn't a good time. There weren't any good times for conversations like this one.
"What do you mean? Answered you about what?"
"Jeff. What happened to him? Did you do that? Could you?"
He let out a breath and rolled onto his back. "I guess that's a fair question. I'll answer them as best I can, since tomorrow's pretty up in the air."
"How terribly charitable of you."
"Could I have done it? Of course I could have. I'd have to want it pretty bad, but I wanted a lot from him. And yes, I wanted it pretty bad."
"Is he a White Eye?"
"No, he's not. Shaggy Dog."
"Sounds friendly."
"They're not. But they're not as rough as White Eyes, so I guess as far as you know, they're friendly as can be."
"So you killed him?"
"No, I didn't. Not directly, anyways. I wasn't there, and I didn't have it done."
"One of your men, then?"
"They weren't my men," Nick answered. He pushed himself out of the bed and walked over to a mirror. He looked better than he had, but he looked tired. "They were Ryan's."
"Your brother?"
"My elder brother," he said. As if it needed specifying.
"You have others?"
"Of the twelve of us, six were brothers. The other six were… strays, so to speak."
"Is this dog talk, like… standard?"
He had a glint of amusement in his eye when he turned to her. "Go to hell. I talk how I talk."
"Sure. You do you."
"Ryan's the one you, uh… met. I don't know why he's alive, but I know I'm going to do my best to find out."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yep. Best I can. But it's going to take time, and time is something I don't have. I'm close, now, but that means they're close, too. We pissed him off. Grant. Maybe it was his pride more than anything, but we did piss him off."
"So what happened to him, then? Jeff? You didn't kill him, so what do you know? Why the cryptic act with him, too?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I thought you liked the cryptic act. You seemed to find it awfully sexy."
"I found the rest of it sexy. The cryptic act was baggage that I was dealing with."
"Damn, I always thought it was one of my most charming traits. Cryptic and distant."
"Yeah, you're prince charming. You going to answer me, or are we playing Prince Cryptic some more?"
"I don't know. I went around his place, asking questions. The sort of questions that tip people off."
"So you think that word got out?"
"You'd know a lot about asking those kinds of questions, and about the kind of people it can piss off. Imagine if you hadn't come to me with your worries. Imagine if you didn't have that thick ass of yours."
"Oh, so that was my mistake, that first time. I went in with the front, should've come around back. That right?"
He smiled. "You know, it would have been a start. But you've got great tits, nothing to be ashamed of there, either."
"Thanks." Brianna rolled her eyes at him.
"But what happens tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Or the next day, or the day after that. They'll find you here. You said that. They'll find you, and the only reason they hadn't found you yet was because you have a track record of avoiding the clubhouse."
"That's about the long and short of it."
"And when they find you, what happens?"
"We fight, I guess. Until it's time to run."
"And if they send Ryan in? You fight him?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"You didn't seem keen on fighting him before. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you might have been letting him kick your ass. Unless he's just that much tougher and stronger than you are."
His eyes flashed. "Nobody's to
ugher than me."
"You sure know how to impress a lady, I'll tell you that."
"I do my best." He flexed a muscle with a smile. I smiled back and raised my eyes to show that I was very impressed.
"I can definitely tell. So when your tougher, stronger brother shows up and fights, what are you going to do about it?"
The amused expression slipped from his face. His eyebrows pressed together and he scratched his hair-covered chest. "Yeah. I don't… I'll do what I have to do."
She wasn't convinced that he was sure what he was going to do. He didn't look like he was doing any better convincing himself, either.
Thirty-Six
Brianna's wake-up call was short and swift and she sat bolt upright without really knowing why she'd done it. Her body moved before she knew what was upsetting her so much. After the past three days, though, she wasn't taking any risks. The noise came again. Distant. Quiet. And yet, it seemed to hit her as if it were blaring, right in her ear. Something wrong. Something moving. Not far away.
"Nick."
He blinked his eyes and sat up. "What's up?"
"There's something outside?"
He laid down. "It's probably a deer or something–"
The noise came again. She heard it more clearly this time. Crunch. The sound of something moving in the fallen leaves. His face straightened.
"Not a deer, huh?"
"Not a deer," he agreed, getting up and dressing himself quickly. Her body was sore, from the sex and from the rush of the past week.
But she didn't have the option of putting herself away for now. If she was here, and the people outside were the people that she thought they were, then she wasn't exactly in a position to change her mind now. Do or die was coming up fast, and uncomfortably literal in this case.
She jerked her jeans and they pulled past her hips, buttoned without any trouble. Her shirt came on easily. Nick's jaw worked as he tried to figure out what they were going to do. Brianna didn't have that problem.
"We can run, we ought to run. When we've got a lay of the situation, maybe we decide that you've got enough of an advantage to start fighting back. But right now, we're on their terms. Just leave."
He turned on her, snarling, and then seemed to relax all at once. "Yeah, you're right. Let's go. There's a back door this way."
He started moving very quietly, but very quickly. She followed behind, and an instant later a monster was standing in front of her. It explained why he hadn't bothered to dress, at least.
"Following you," she said. He didn't make any indication of having heard her, and Brianna wondered dimly if maybe he really couldn't. She hadn't seen any proof yet that he could hear anything she was saying, but she wasn't going to just assume that he couldn't, either. He wouldn't leave her without any way to communicate. At least, that was what she hoped.
He paused at a door toward the back of the building. She'd just assumed it was the master bed when she'd seen it first, but apparently not. The great big wolf-man in front of her held a finger out and Brianna stilled. She held her breath and listened.
Twenty seconds passed. Thirty. A minute. There was nothing to hear, but the steps outside were getting louder by the minute and soon they were going to be in real trouble, if they didn't move fast.
Then Nick started moving, turning the handle slow and quiet. When he had it turned all the way he signaled with his other hand. It wasn't hard to figure out what the signal meant, in spite of the lack of planning for any absurdly military hand-signs. They were about to go in 3… 2… 1…
They moved fast. Brianna had a vague understanding that she could move much faster than what she'd believed to be 'fast' before. Like, if she put her back into it, probably more 'moped' fast than 'Jamaican sprinter' fast. But she didn't really think about how much of a cost that put on her body until she tried to ignore the soreness in her hips and run full-out.
She also didn't realize what kind of difference there would be between her human body, however improved by the unrealized transformation that her body was getting ready for, and the fully-transformed werewolf that Nick had become.
He streaked off ahead of her like he was sprinting and she only just jogging. He turned after a hundred yards and circled around, grabbing her roughly and throwing her over his shoulder. Brianna wanted to tell him she could run on her own. She couldn't afford to make the noise, though.
At least, that was what she had thought, until she saw him behind them. Ryan, Nick had called him. The big black-furred werewolf. They were bigger, when they were transformed, she knew that. They all were. But he seemed to be much bigger than Nick. Ten, twelve feet tall, and he couldn't have been less than four or five hundred pounds. In spite of his extreme size–how much would something like that have to eat, she wondered dimly, even if she couldn't afford the time to ask, not even to herself–he moved like she couldn't believe. Every muscle in his body seemed to be working in concert, and every bit of him was working to catch them.
Brianna, still hanging over wolf-Nick's shoulder, reached for her pocket and fired a shot. That left eight more, she thought sourly. The tiniest fraction of a second later, the werewolf behind them stopped for an instant, like he'd been caught with a stiff left hand in his jaw. When he resumed running, it wasn't the same speed. And, she noted with satisfaction, he seemed to have a very pronounced limp.
With their recovery speed, she didn't have high hopes that it would last. But she had eight more, and if she was careful with them, she might actually be able to turn those into something.
That was what she had to hope for, because otherwise Nick was right–she was just going to be trouble. That wasn't going to happen. She wasn't going to let it happen, no matter what. And she wasn't going to let Nick get killed to avoid it, either.
Brianna watched over her lover's shoulder as he streaked away, easing around trees. She'd expected it to be jerkier, to be yanked left and right, but mostly they just… swayed. One way, then the other. She swayed and the wind howled in her ears, and suddenly two days in a car with no windshield felt like it had been practice for what was going to come.
Thirty-Seven
Brianna looked over at Nick. He must have been cold, but he didn't look it for a minute. Was there some kind of time limit on the transformation? Was it uncomfortable to maintain? Was there a physical strain?
Whatever the reason was, he had turned back. He pressed his back against a smooth-barked tree, breathing hard. She assumed that it was probably fairly difficult to carry a fully-grown adult, even if she wasn't large, while running flat-out. But he'd done it, and he'd done it for the better part of four or five miles.
She opened her mouth to speak and he shot her a look. But there was a lot that needed to be talked about. Too much for her to just ignore it because they needed to hide. Nobody was within eye shot, anyways. Maybe they wouldn't be able to hear them, either.
"What now?"
He clenched his jaw together. "I guess–look at me." Brianna's eyes flicked to his face as if he'd forced her to look. "This is important, okay?"
"I'm listening."
"Don't do it. If you're going to run into your 'choice,' it's going to come up fast and soon. Don't do it."
"Why not?"
He frowned. "I don't want you to turn. It's just… it changes you. Changes who you are. You're already good enough as it is, okay? Just stay you. You don't need it."
Brianna looked at him flatly, trying to judge how serious he was by his expression. The problem was, if she did that, then she had to guess that he was dead serious, because he was giving her the most serious expression she'd ever seen on his face.
"We'll see what happens," she said. She wasn't going to make promises that she couldn't keep. If he wanted her to stay true to who she was, not to be changed by the experiences of the past few days, or the days to come, then that was going to be the first thing that stayed.
He took a breath and let his eyes drop shut for a minute. "It'll have to be good enough. Alright. W
hat's next is, you follow me. I'll go slow for you."
"Oh, thanks, Romeo. You're always so sweet to me."
"Yeah, I know. It's a personal weakness."
"Alright, we going to do this or what?"
He pursed his lips in frustration, even though she could see that there was more to it than that. He liked it, but he wasn't about to admit that to her. That was Brianna's guess, anyway.
He started moving, then. Nick was sexy when he was standing still, when he was moving, when he was doing most things. But now he looked less like a statue. Much less, she thought. He looked like a machine, his muscles doing exactly what was needed and nothing more or less. She followed behind. She had to push herself to keep up, but she did keep up. He skidded to a stop just short of the crest of a hill.
How far away from the cabin were they at this point? Would they see it, even overlooking the whole area like they were? Or was it too far? The trees might block it, but she suspected that it might have been too far even still. Nick slipped to the ground so quickly and smoothly that she thought it might have been an accident that he played off as purposeful.
If that were the case, though, then he was playing it off masterfully. His hip caught the ground and he pressed the full length of his body to slow himself, like a baseball player sliding into home plate. It looked like it probably hurt. Brianna settled for slowing down over a distance, letting her steps sow until she was standing over him, breathing hard.
"Get down," he whispered, his voice so low that she could barely hear it over the sound of her own breathing. She did what she was told. They were silent a long, long time. If this was how Nick hunted–she hoped it wasn't, because he wasn't a very good hunter. All that noise would scare away the animals.
But as someone being hunted, things were a little different, she guessed. There wasn't much that they could do but get away. Once the board was reset, they could start to think about attacking, but until then she had to admit that maybe moving slowly wasn't a good option.
And yet, moving slowly was exactly what he was doing now. As if he hadn't just caused a racket when he'd run up. Still, the way he crept up to the apex, to being able to look off the edge, Brianna found herself forcing her breath to slow, to still as much as possible. Her breath came out unsteadily, sounding harsh in her ears, but the truth was that it was as quiet as she could get it.