by Rose, Aubrey
That almost raised a smile. But, before it could register, it was replaced with another groan. I felt it through my whole body as her control slipped, just a little. I felt it, I felt her change… just for a moment, just long enough to give my cock a wonderful little squeeze.
I wanted this. I more than wanted it. I was an alpha and I had a need to share my genetic payload with the most suitable vessel, just as much as she had a need to seek out the very same.
While his fame as a fighter was well known, Quinn had been found... lacking in other areas. He had produced no heirs and would leave no genetic legacy. The pack would pass to whoever took him down first. The pack would pass to me. She knew it and I knew it.
In the end she won the battle for control. Even as her delicious body rumbled through another orgasm, she dismounted me and I was left thrusting at nothing as I desperately searched for release.
“We can’t tell him. It would kill him.”
My complaints died in my throat as she descended on me, lips parted, mouth warm and welcoming. I could live with that. I lay back, mouthed a howl of pure pleasure as the woman who had been my childhood crush brought me to a mind-blowing climax with her talented mouth.
These were the days I lived for.
***
“You won’t beat him. You’re not ready.”
As amazing as I was in bed, it didn’t seem to take her long to get over it and back to business. She brushed her hair out, sitting on the side of the bed. Her ass was magnificent.
“He’s old. He’s slow. He’s holding us back.”
“Bullshit. It takes more than a big cock and the ability to get the crap kicked out of you in the ring to lead a pack. You’re not ready and you need to give all this loan business a rest.”
I sat up. Usually I’d be sniffing around her lap, working my way up to round two by now, but her lack of faith had taken the wind out of my sails.
“I’m sorry Hutch. You’re… incredible. One day you’ll—”
“One day doesn’t cut it. We’re talking about a lot of money here and it’s not an offer they’re going to leave on the table. These abandoned factories and mills are just sitting there and no one wants them. We could have a home for next to nothing. Somewhere big enough to set up a proper arena. Like the one out near Reno. That place rakes it in. Fights every night. Fat whales flying in on private jets from all over the place and dropping tips like nobody’s business.”
“But who gets the money, Hutch? You think their pack leader gets to fly around in a private jet? Do you even know his name?”
“I don’t give a fuck what his name is. They’d know my name. That’s all that matters.”
“You sound so sure about that.” She turned to look over her shoulder at me, her hair falling like water down her smooth back.
“I challenged Quinn. I’m going to win.”
“That’s what you said last time and he put you in a hospital. Save it for your cheer squad.”
“You’re not part of my cheer squad?”
“Shut up. Speaking of hospitals, how’s that sick cub? What’s her name, Kimberly?”
“She’s fine.”
“I thought the doctors said she needed a liver.”
“Nah,” I said, waving it off and bringing my hands back to Sabine’s hips. “Just, like, part of a liver. It’s cool. I got it.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, they said they have to take part of my liver. I’m the... uh, the match person. Whatever.”
Sabine raised her eyebrows. I could smell her arousal and it made me grin.
“Jeez, Sabine, if I knew you were gonna get this hot about helping some dumb kid, I’d be giving out livers left and right.”
“You really don’t care about anything but the pack, do you?” she asked, a strange look on her face.
“I care about this.”
I lunged forward and nipped her on the ass. She squealed and I pulled her back into bed, throwing her down under me. I would take her again, and this time she wouldn’t have any control. She placed one hand on my chest and a look of worry in her eyes made me pause.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just make sure you shower before the fight. If he smells me on you he’s going to make you regret it.”
***
The ring was a big circle of dirt about twenty feet in diameter. Or radius. Or whatever. I really had no idea how big it was, it was just a place we fought until one of us got knocked out of it, or pinned to the ground for a five count.
There was already a crowd. Not just what was left of our pack, but local folk too. People who lived off the grid and didn’t act surprised when you told them there were men and women who could turn into wolves. People who lived in the hills and liked a drink and a wager, who wanted to leave behind the shitpile they called home. People who would pay a couple of months’ earnings to spend one night with something exotic and strange.
We fought. We fucked. It was what we were good at. And if people were going to pay us to do it, so much the better.
Tyler Quinn was as impressive a man as he was a wolf. Six foot something and a broad barrel chest that was almost bear-like. But when he moved, all comparisons to our ursine cousins ceased. His movements were lean and fluid. He wasted no energy, conserving everything for the fight.
He needed to conserve it. He knew it and I knew it. The last time he fought me I left the ring bruised and bloody. But not before I had catalogued his weaknesses. I had discovered where he was coming apart at the seams. Years of pushing his body to the limits. Years of being the best. The years were taking their toll.
Apart from that, I had a secret weapon.
I had ignored Sabine’s advice to shower. To do so would wash away the true purpose of our frantic coupling. I wanted her scent on me.
It wasn’t just Quinn’s body that was failing him, but he was losing control as well. In his prime Quinn could have wiped the floor with me. One day I’d be as good, but not yet. Now, the match was closer to even and time wasn’t on my side. I had to take advantage of every opportunity that presented itself to swing things in my favor.
I didn’t feel guilty for using our lust for one another in this way. It wasn’t as if this was the only reason Sabine and I fucked around… or the first time. But I did feel a twinge of regret, as there was a good chance it would be our last. Sabine may have liked me, liked fucking me anyway, but she loved Quinn.
As I stepped into the ring I brought my hand across my chest to tap the bare flesh over my heart with two fingers. I scanned the crowd and my eyes landed on Gina. Fair enough. We’d grown up together and I guess she’d be a suitable mate, for tonight anyway. She’d have to settle down and give up the fighting if she wanted anything more. While I was a fan of her ferocity, in the ring and in the sack, a mother would need to be a protector, not an aggressor.
Still, tonight, we could just fuck. I pointed the two fingers directly at her and winked.
She rolled her eyes, but her grin told me she was on board. The gesture was kind of cheesy and the other shifters might have mocked me for it when I was younger. But, to date, no woman I’d pointed to had gone on to say no after I stepped out of the ring at the end of the night. Hell, they wanted to fuck me even if I lost, even if I was carried out of the ring.
“Hutch. Kid. Ready to get your ass kicked again?”
I nodded. Quinn wasn’t the only one who needed to conserve energy. He had me on strength, reach, weight and experience. Secret weapons or not, this wasn’t going to be easy. I had to beat him, though. For the good of our pack, I had to. He was old and it was long past time for him to go. It was the natural order and he knew it as well as I did.
Formalities over, it didn’t take long for the two of us to get down to business.
We circled at first. Exploratory jabs and low kicks, testing each other out even though we had fought half a dozen times before this and trained together since I was a pup. He wasn’t taking any chances.
His nost
rils flared as he caught a whiff of Sabine’s unmistakable scent. And then it was as if his body rippled. He embraced the animal inside him and drew on its essence. I had expected to catch him by surprise. Maybe throw him off guard. But it wasn’t as if he didn’t know Sabine had many other partners. He wasn’t exactly monogamous himself. Many wolves mate for life, but it’s rare they don’t stray from time to time, more often than not with the full blessing of their partner.
I hadn’t expected anything like this. The ferocity and speed with which he turned on me defied everything I had observed by watching him fight. He didn’t want to kick my ass. He wanted to kill me.
I didn’t react fast enough to dodge the first blow. A punch to the chest with the full force of both man and animal behind it. I was sent reeling to the dirt, struggling to draw breath. I desperately searched for the animal inside me. Drawing it out.
Even down on the dirt and short of breath, I had complete control. No one could control it like me. Even the greatest fighters, our mythological heroes, lost it now and then. Let the wolf take over and lose the man. But I never did. Not unless I wanted to.
Before I had a chance to fight back, he was on me again. But he was no longer a man, he was a solid mass of fur and muscle and snarling, snapping jaws. The crowd was stunned into silence. They knew that fully shifting during a fight was rare between experienced opponents. Rookies and pups did it all the time, but us? No way would we lose control so quickly.
While a wolf would rip a man to shreds more often than not, it was no match for a man with the strength and speed of a wolf. For Quinn to shift so early in the fight was as shocking to the crowd of onlookers as it was to me.
I glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of Sabine’s eyes. She knew as well as I did that this was all over. I allowed myself the luxury of wondering for a moment if she was aware of her part in it.
Quinn stood with his front paws on my chest. Specks of hot drool splashed against my face as he snarled and snapped in an attempt to exert some sort of dominance. I bared my teeth and snarled back, before throwing myself forwards and wrapping an arm around his neck, pulling him to the ground and pinning him there. His jaws rendered useless, he kicked against me, claws gouging the skin of my thighs and shredding my shorts.
I didn’t give in. I held him there as the crowd chanted to five. And I held him still as he shifted back, from wolf to man.
It was hard to take it all in. I hadn’t expected it to be easy. It was like he’d given up when he’d smelled Sabine on me. It was kind of tragic. I guess. For him anyway. I felt… I wasn’t sure how I felt.
The crowd had gone strangely quiet. That was odd. They were never quiet after he won. Or Gina. Or any of the fighters. Even me, the times I’d won against lesser opponents. They’d shout my name as I strutted around the ring, milking the moment for all it was worth.
Someone pulled me off him and Sabine ran to his side. She had tears in her eyes, but to be honest, he looked kind of happy. Like a weight had been lifted. He’d have to leave. They always did. I guess she’d be going with him. I’d miss her, but there were others.
“Holy shit Hutch. You did it.”
Gina was crouched beside me. She looked a little pale. Suddenly everything seemed like a big deal to everyone and it felt like I wasn’t in on it.
“Yeah sure. I won.”
“You know what this means?”
I shrugged. I did. But it hadn’t really sunk in.
“Are you kidding me Hutch? You won. You’re pack leader now.”
She was right. I knew, of course I knew. But I had just been focused on winning the fight. For the sake of winning. For the sake of being the best and showing everyone I was the best. The pack leader stuff, I’m sure it would come as naturally as everything else.
“Gina… you know what this means?”
“What?”
“You get to fuck the pack leader tonight.”
I expected a grin. At least a little smile. But I was met with a stony glare. She put her hands on her hips.
“Christ, Hutch, you’re such an asshole. This isn’t all about your cock, you know. This is serious. These are responsibilities you can’t fuck your way out of.”
“I can try. Ow!… ouch… shit… cut it out!”
Gina rained down a hail of blows on me. As much as Gina likes to think she can do playful… she can’t do playful. She just isn’t built for it. Her punches hurt.
“I’m serious, asshole. This is our life. This is a huge change. For those of us who choose to stay, at least. And not everyone will stay, you know? Believe it or not, there are people who don’t buy into your warrior poet ‘we fight we fuck’ bullshit.”
Gina was sounding a lot like Sabine now, and it was starting to annoy me. I loved them both. I loved them all. But none of them knew what it was like to be an alpha. To be born to lead. They needed to trust me. They all needed to trust me.
“So…”
“Look,” she said. She was calmer now, her voice almost tender. “I’m not saying I don’t want to fuck the pack leader tonight. Although, if you must know, it won’t be the first time I’ve fucked the pack leader, so it may not be as big a deal as you think it is.”
OK. That came as a bit of a surprise to me.
“I’m just reminding you that this,” she gestured wildly around us with her hands, “is a big deal.”
I nodded and grinned and told her exactly how we were going to celebrate how big a deal this was. Her eyes went wide, but she didn’t say no. They never did.
Turns out they were both right. Sabine and Gina.
I was too young. I wasn’t ready. But Sabine didn’t stick around long enough to say I told you so.
Gina was right, too. I was an asshole. For better or worse, I still am.
Chapter Three
Natalie
It was like I was driving through a photograph or a movie set. The whole neighborhood looked unreal, as though it had been taken down years ago, packed away, and then hastily resurrected for my homecoming.
The streets seemed narrower. A bush had been planted, a tree cut down. At the house on the corner, a gate swung rusty and crooked on one hinge. The lawns here stretched out brown and dusty, crabgrass clawing its way around the edges of the dirt.
Coming home made me ache in ways I hadn’t expected. My fingers squeezed tighter on the steering wheel as I pulled up to the single-story house and parked on the street. The house was smaller than I remembered, the paint yellowed and peeling off of the windowsills. As I got out, I heard the screen door slam and looked up to see my dad coming down the front steps.
“Nat! The prodigal daughter returns!”
“Hey, Pops!”
His arms wrapped around me, and I hugged him back carefully. He had always seemed like a mountain of a man, but every visit shocked me more as his age started to show. His hair had thinned out so that I could see patches of his scalp. The skin on his hands was wrinkled like tissue paper. And his arms, strong enough to pick me up and toss me in the air when I was a child, had dwindled to… respectably flabby, I think was how he called it.
I only hoped that he’d be strong enough to get through the surgery.
“How was the trip?” he asked.
“Great, great.”
“You want to pull up into the driveway?”
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “The darn thing’s leaking oil.”
“We’ll have to put it up and take a look this weekend,” he said.
I could see the spark of curiosity in my dad’s eyes as he glanced over at my old Passat. If anyone was a fixer-upper, it was my Pops. Never mind that it took him more time and money to fix the things himself.
“Where’s your truck?” I asked.
“Oh, that. Had to sell it.”
“Sell it? I thought you just refinanced.”
“Damn hospitals keep pushing me around with the bills. You know they charge you for having a five minute talk with a doctor now? At least she was pretty enough
, heh!” My dad reached for my suitcase but I picked it up, waving him off. For once, he didn’t argue.
“Let me talk to them about the money,” I said. Anger crept into the edges of my words. If he’d kept his old insurance, he would have been fine. Two missed payments, though, and he’d lost his coverage.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I’m doing fine by myself. Just this damn surgery coming up is all. At least it’s a good excuse for you to come visit, huh?”
“Everything looks different around here,” I said.
“You haven’t been back in a while! Why don’t you come visit more often? You don’t miss your old man?”
“You know I love you, Pops,” I say, dodging the question. He didn’t push it. I looked down the street one last time as I stepped up onto the porch. A newspaper blew into the gutter. Somewhere in the alley a dog was barking.
This was home again, at least until my dad recovered from the operation. I took a deep breath and walked through the door.
“Watch your step,” my dad said. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the dark interior of the house. “I haven’t—I haven’t had a chance to do much cleaning around here.”
I didn’t say anything, but my eyes must have said something for me.
Empty cans and fast food containers littered every available countertop and flat surface. Boxes piled up into every corner. I stepped forward and knocked into a stack of magazines. There was a half-eaten pizza sitting on what should have been the coffee table but instead consisted of two large cardboard boxes with a piece of plywood on top.
“Sorry—sorry about the mess. The Andersons down the street got foreclosed on,” my dad said, looking across the room with my eyes. He rubbed his temple with one hand. “I told them I’d keep their stuff for a while, until they found a bigger place. They’re all in a one bedroom now and... well, they just don’t have room.”
You don’t have room either, I thought to myself. Instead, I forced myself to smile.
“I’ll help clean up,” I said. I looked around. There was so much stuff piled on top of stuff that I couldn’t tell what was garbage and what wasn’t.