by Kate Douglas
* * *
The moment Trak mentioned Rube’s scent, Chelo realized that was the reason she’d felt so unsettled. Trak wanted to make love, but she couldn’t let herself go with him. Crazy, after the way they’d been last night, but it must have been Rube’s disgusting stench. She wasn’t consciously aware of it, not with it covering her, but her subconscious knew. That explained the way she’d frozen when Trak wanted to take her clothes off.
Now, though, with his hands gently working the conditioner into her hair, she wanted him to touch her everywhere. The source of her fear was gone—Rube’s stench, washed down the drain with the suds.
She turned and rested her forehead against Trak’s chest so he could rinse her hair. It felt so good, his hands a gentle caress, the warm water beating against her sore muscles. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t been cut. When Rube jumped through that window, her body had caught the brunt of the blow. She felt it now, her muscles bruised, her body battered and tired.
But Trak? He’d been erect since they’d gotten inside the cabin. There was one thing she could do for him, and she wanted to try everything with Trak. She knew what it was like to take him in her mouth, already knew she loved the taste of the man she would love for all time.
But in the shower? With water streaming over the two of them? She shivered, merely thinking about it. Sinking slowly to her knees, she wrapped her arms around his thighs and laid her cheek against his groin.
“Chelo?”
The question in his voice had her raising her head, looking at him. “Hmmm?”
“Are you okay? What are . . . ?”
“I’m sleepy but very curious. We’ve never done this in the shower. And just think, if I miss any, I won’t make a mess.”
“Ah . . . I see. You’re a very practical woman. I like that.”
She heard the laughter in his voice. This man found humor in just about everything and he always seemed to understand her subtle attempts. She liked that. Wrapping her fingers around the thick base of his penis, she tilted him to her mouth. He was so much taller than her. So much larger . . .
“Uhmmm . . .” Her mouth fit around the silky tip perfectly and she slipped her lips over the tightly drawn cowl of his foreskin, caught in place behind the broad crown. He was hotter even than the hot shower, hot against her tongue, but the taste of him was nothing more than the taste of the flowing water that washed his scent away.
“I want to get out of the shower. I can’t taste you and I want that. If there’s a mess, you’ll just have to help me clean it up.”
“I dunno about that,” he said, but she heard the laughter behind the fierce declaration, and within minutes they were both dry and back on the bed.
“Here,” she said, pushing him back until he sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. “This is a good height.” Grabbing a pillow off the bed, she tucked it under her knees and knelt between his legs. Tugging him forward, she finally had him where she wanted him.
There was so much she wanted to do with Trak that she suddenly had all kinds of energy. She studied all those fascinating parts. His erection hadn’t subsided a bit and there was definitely more than a mouthful, so she started by merely licking the length of his shaft, teasing him with her tongue, then lifting his erection out of the way and running her open mouth over his testicles. She pulled first one and then the other into her mouth, stroking him with her tongue, tasting him, growing more aroused by his wonderful scent.
Fluid gathered at the slit on his crown, and she licked that off. He tasted wonderful, so she did it again, but she wanted more. Wrapping her fingers around his shaft, she ran her lips over the smooth tip until he was slick; then she took him into her mouth, using her tongue and lips until she sucked him as deep as she could.
She held on to the thick base of his cock and worked him with her mouth, taking in almost all of him. He’d grown quiet. She opened her eyes and glanced along his body. He lay back on the bed, hands grasping the bedspread, his mouth twisted in a grimace that possibly could have been interpreted as pain but pleased her no end.
He was close to coming. Because of her. She sucked him deep again, used her tongue and lips, and sped up the whole process. His body jerked. “Chelo? You’re gonna make me . . .”
She slipped free of him and said, “Good.” If he thought she was going to stop now, the man was absolutely clueless. She increased her efforts, lightly grasped his balls in one hand, and rolled them between her fingers.
She felt his muscles go stiff, heard his curse, and caught the first spurts of his seed as his body bucked beneath her hands. She swallowed as his cock seemed to flex within her mouth and she took everything he had to give. Swallowed every drop and licked her lips when he was finally finished.
Then she licked the length of his cock and around his sac, well aware that she was marking him in the only way she knew how. Marking him with her scent. Telling Trak and any other woman who might find him interesting that he was well and truly taken.
She crawled into bed beside him and turned out the light. He pulled her close against his chest and slipped his fingers between her legs. They were exhausted, but he gently brought her to climax before they both drifted off.
* * *
It was a quiet walk back to his cabin, but Evan was afraid to say anything. He had no idea what Darnell was thinking. Would she ever be his Nellie again? Did she still love him? Did she think he was a freak? Was she afraid of him?
She held his hand, but she hadn’t said a word.
He was terrified he was going to lose her. She’d seen the worst of him tonight. He’d changed before her eyes; he’d lied by omission, no matter that Trak took the blame. Nellie didn’t strike him as a woman who forgave easily. The worst thing of all? She’d watched him kill a man.
Granted, the bastard needed to die, but she would never be able to look at him again without realizing he had the power to hurt her badly if he wanted to. How did a powerful werewolf convince a human woman that the only way he’d use his strength around her was to protect her from harm?
They climbed the steps to his cabin and Nellie opened the door, but only because he held the big jar of Meg’s punch in his other hand. Nellie hadn’t turned him free, yet. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? He went ahead of her into the cabin and she closed the door behind him, but she turned loose of his hand when she turned to the door. When she turned around, her hands were behind her and she leaned against the door.
He set the jar of punch on the counter and walked back across the room, but before he could say anything she stepped away from the door and into his arms. He held her close and didn’t even try to hide his sigh of relief.
She hugged him just as tightly with her head pressed against his chest. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He chuckled softly. “Shouldn’t that be my question? I’m sorry, Nell . . .”
She leaned back and pressed her finger to his lips. “No. Don’t be sorry. Trak said you weren’t allowed to tell me anything, and I actually do understand that. Plus, it means I’m not crazy. Remember when you jumped from the road all the way up the hillside to me the first day I got here? And you had to jump over my car to reach me?” She shook her head. “It’s good to know I’m not crazy. What I’m worried about is how you feel about killing that man tonight. I could tell it really upset you, but I’m glad you did it. I’m just sorry that you had to be the one to do it, but someone had to. Zach certainly couldn’t have, and I was using a gun loaded with blanks, so you saved both of us, not to mention Chelo. There was no other way, not when he started to change.”
Damn, he loved her so fucking much. “Thank you. I accept the fact that Rube had to die. He was psychotic, to say the least. Even the men with him were afraid of him, and there wasn’t a bit of regret from them over his death. The thing that made it difficult to accept is that I’ve never done that before. Never taken a life. I’ve always wondered if, when the time came and I had no other choice, I would be able to do exa
ctly what I did, but I realized it wasn’t as difficult a decision to make as I’d expected.”
“Why do you think that was?”
He shook his head. “Because I didn’t kill him just to make a bad person go away. I killed him to protect you and Chelo, and Zach as well. I knew that if he fought us and won, Zach and I would both be dead, or too badly injured to protect you from his rage. I sensed his change, but I was caught up in my own fight, in worrying what you thought of me, if you were going to hate me for not telling you. For being something a lot of people would call a monster.”
He ran a finger over her silky cheek. “When you called out a warning that he was beginning to shift, I knew you weren’t afraid of me, that you didn’t hate me. You were warning me. I’m hoping that warning was because you might still love me. C’mon.” He took her hand and led her into the kitchen. Then he set the jar filled with punch on the counter, wrapped his hands around Nellie’s waist, and set her on the counter beside the jar. “Give me a minute.”
He walked to the cupboard, pulled out a couple of glasses and filled them with ice, then poured some of Meg’s punch into the two of them. Handing one to Nellie, he took the other for himself. “Will you toast to new beginnings, Nell? There is so much I need to tell you, but honestly, I don’t know where to start. I have to know, first. Can you still love me after what you know now? Or is this whole shape-shifting wolf thing a game changer?”
She took a sip of her drink and then studied him a moment, but her eyes were almost as bright as her smile. “Well, it’s definitely a game changer, but maybe not the way you think. I knew you were special from the beginning, but I fell in love with your wolf long before I knew how I felt about you, so knowing you two are a package deal is a plus. As far as loving you? Evan, that ship sailed before I left here last summer, but I never had the chance or the courage to say anything.” She slipped off the counter and headed into the front room, drink in hand.
Evan followed her. When she sat on the couch, he sat beside her, though not too close. She turned to him and rolled her eyes. Shrugging, he moved closer.
“Will you answer my questions?”
“I will.”
“Good. Okay, just how old are you guys, anyway? Cain’s a World War Two vet? That means he’s at least ninety, right?”
He shrugged. “More like a hundred and six or seven.” Her eyes got bigger. “He was born a little after the turn of the last century. I’m a little older, almost a hundred and fifteen. Trak’s brother Lawz is the oldest in the pack. He was born right around the start of the Civil War, in 1861. Trak’s three years younger.”
“Holy shit.” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.” She took a bigger swallow of her drink. “This flips that whole ‘but how old are you in dog years?’ thing on its butt! But you all look about the same age. How?”
He was still chuckling over the dog years comment. This was sounding better all the time. “Werewolves only father male children. Our sons are like normal human kids until their late twenties, early thirties, when they go through their first shift. However old they are when that happens, that’s how old they stay. We think the shifting is the reason—it replicates our cells so the cells don’t age whenever we shift. There are some weres alive who came across with the Pilgrims. The truly older weres have shifted regularly all their lives, so it appears that the shifting is what helps keep us young. We all appear to have started out in Europe, though I’m not certain if anyone’s ever figured out exactly where or when.”
“Then what about the women? Are Cherry and the others old, too?”
“No. they just met their guys this summer. That’s sort of why we built Feral Passions, to get to meet women, but it was really weird because all of the women had pretty much figured out what we were before they actually agreed to be mated. Mating means the guy bites his woman.”
When Nellie grimaced, he leaned close and kissed her. “Not a bad bite, just a little nip to infect you with your mate’s saliva, but then you’ll go through a change and come out of it able to shift. The thing is, the change will put you into a deep sleep for at least twenty-four hours, and with all the uncertainty over Rube and his guys, Trak and I were afraid you’d be too vulnerable, sleeping like that. What if Rube prevailed and killed me or Trak? You’d be entirely helpless, and we couldn’t risk that.
“Another thing is that there’s always been a law among our kind, that we couldn’t tell anyone what we were, even a woman we loved and wanted to mate. We had to bite her first so she wouldn’t be able to go back to her people, but the rest of the guys and I are totally against that. It’s an old custom that goes back to ancient times when women weren’t nearly as sophisticated as they are now. None of us were, but their lives were really hard, so life as a shifter actually gave women freedom they couldn’t have otherwise.
“Times have changed and women have more options. Now it feels wrong not to tell you. If a woman chose not to change after finding out about us, she was in a position to give us away, and you can only imagine what would happen if the media got wind of our existence. Essentially, we felt the risk was worth it, because it’s a pretty big deal to spring on a woman.” He stared at his moccasins. “I was planning to tell you as soon as we got through the wedding. Trak doesn’t know that.”
“So all the women here are shape-shifters now? Even Meg?”
“Meg and Zach are completely human. They found out about us purely by accident, but they accept what we are and have promised to keep our secret. They love each other, love their work, and want to continue living perfectly normal human lives. Not aging makes it tough to do that. We have to avoid contact with people sometimes for years on end; then we can come back and tell people who used to know us that we’re actually our own children. That’s why some of us rarely go into town.”
“How’s that going to work for Darian? I mean, she’s on the news every night. How’s she going to carry that off?”
“Good makeup? I have no idea. That’s a problem we haven’t faced before. The same goes for Lawz. He’s been working for the state as an engineer for a long time now. At some point, he’ll have to change jobs, manufacture a new identity. Or he might just retire and take consulting jobs. That way he’d not always be working with the same people who might notice he doesn’t age.”
“It sounds like a lot of work.” She took another sip of her drink and then set the glass aside. “Why don’t you take me to bed?” She winked. “Where we can discuss this in more depth.”
Evan felt as if someone had just lifted a ton of bricks off his chest. Smiling, he stood and offered his hand to Nell. She put her hand in his and he pulled her to her feet. Laughing, she grabbed her drink and took it with her as he tugged her toward the stairs.
Chapter 14
Friday morning
Chelo couldn’t remember a more beautiful morning, though she imagined the man sitting beside her driving the big SUV had a lot to do with it. This was what happiness felt like, this sense of freedom, of well-being. Excitement. She had never looked forward to her days before.
There’d been nothing to look forward to.
They opened the shop and she set out her displays. The truck arrived with the flowers for the wedding as well as for the displays ordered by local churches. One restaurant had left a phone order for a last-minute dinner that she’d have to do for tonight.
Trak took his laptop into her office and went to work on a list of things Cherry had asked him to handle, while Chelo got busy in the shop.
By the end of the day, she was absolutely exhausted and still smiling. The orders were done; she had quite a few of the wedding items completed and boxed—they’d go in the extra refrigerator at the lodge. It was all good.
Trak wandered out to the showroom. “Well? How’s it feel to work your tail off and know it’s just the beginning of a busy weekend?”
“Wonderful.” She stood on her toes and kissed him. “I’m ready to load everything in the back of the car. I’ve got a s
ign up saying that the shop is closed for the weekend due to a Feral Passions wedding, and I’ve got my tools all packed. I’ll spend tomorrow putting the displays together. Boutonnieres are done and so is the crown of flowers for Meg, along with an extra box of flowers for the bridesmaids’ hair. Darnell wanted those.
“I’ll put the bouquets for the bridesmaids together tomorrow along with the big flower arrangement for the wedding site. Brad told me I can use the laundry room behind the kitchen for my work. There’s a big table for folding clothes that will double as a worktable, and a really nice big country sink. It’s close to the walk-in refrigerator—Brad said there’s room in it to store the flowers. It should work perfectly.”
“Good.” He kissed her again, taking the lead this time and doing a thorough job of it.
She felt almost giddy driving back to the resort. This wasn’t just a wedding for Meg. It was the beginning of Chelo’s new life.
* * *
Evan and Nell went through each of the cabins. It was Nellie’s idea to put bouquets of wildflowers in each one. “Don’t they look wonderful?” Nell set the final one in the fifth cabin. Meg and Zach had the sixth, and they were having a quiet day together, before all the guests began arriving tomorrow.
Evan finished a final check in the bathroom and walked out to admire Nellie’s handiwork. She’d gotten the idea from Chelo, and the bouquets really did make a beautiful addition, each a burst of yellow lupine, pink checkerbloom, blue delphinium, and white valerian in a Mason jar wrapped in brown burlap and tied with a bright blue bow.
Evan knew he’d never forget picking flowers with Nellie. She’d tied her hair back and put on an old pair of jeans and hiking boots with one of his flannel shirts so they could pick the flowers in the early morning when they were fresh and covered in dew.