Mate of the Wolf

by Karen Whiddon

  His drink, in a tall glass without ice, was red. A Bloody Mary, she guessed.

  “Are you in town long?” she asked, trying not to appear to care overly about his answer.

  “I’d planned an overnight stay.” His clipped voice sounded regretful. “But since I didn’t actually hear the band, I’ll be here a bit longer, perhaps another night.”

  Another night. Oddly enough, having a time limit in which to seduce him turned her on even more.

  She’d better move fast. Already awake inside her, her wolf paced, ready for the hunt.

  Her only problem was, never having actually seduced a man before, she wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it.

  Chapter Four

  Watching Allison and sipping on his blood cocktail—it helped to have vampiric connections, even in a small town like this—Kane knew he’d have to move fast. Having a time limit disconcerted him—if he’d had a choice, he’d have liked a long, slow seduction, thereby building both their desires to a fever pitch, but the sun would rise in six hours or so. He’d be out of commission until the sun went down, safely tucked away in his friend Malcolm’s basement coffin. Again, vampiric connections. When he’d first been turned, in the sixteen-hundreds, neither communication nor travel had been so simple. He’d been on his own, roaming the streets of London at night, learning often brutal lessons the hard way. As soon as he could, he’d left the crowded streets of London for the countryside, where he’d hooked up with a band of other vampires who’d taught him most everything he’d needed to know. Some of them, like Malcolm, he remained friends with to this day.

  As soon as he woke, he wanted to see her. Tomorrow night, he had to see the band, true, but he selfishly planned to spend the rest of his time in Anniversary, Texas with Allison. Unfortunately, the longest he could extend his stay here in town would be a few days. His record label had a big meeting scheduled and Kane had to be there. At least, he did if he wanted to keep this job. And he liked this particular job more than any other he’d had over the centuries.

  Which meant he had, at best, two or three nights in which to make her his. This might be more difficult than he’d first thought, especially since she still didn’t seem to realize he wasn’t human. He debated showing his fangs, though he didn’t want to scare her off. Normally he would welcome the thrill of the hunt, but right now Kane wanted to make every second count.

  Reaching across the scarred wooden table, he took her hand, caressing her index finger with his thumb.

  “Tell me about yourself, Allison.”

  Her full lips curved. “For starters, you can call me Allie.”

  Bloody hell. His already engorged body hardened even more. To cover his discomfort, he took a gulp of his drink, knowing he’d need the blood to give him enough energy for what he planned to do with her.

  He wanted to give her a night of lovemaking unlike anything she’d ever had. Judging from the size of his arousal, he’d have to use every bit of willpower he possessed to keep from losing his own self-control.

  “I’m more interested in hearing about you,” she said, then rolled her eyes and laughed. The husky sound of her laugh sent another jolt straight to his groin.

  “What?” he managed to ask, puzzled.

  “I can’t believe I just said that.” Tugging her hand from his, she lifted her glass and drank the rest of her wine down in one fluid swallow, then set the glass back on the table. “It sounded like a bad pickup line from some cheesy movie.”

  “Pickup line? Are you trying to pick me up?” He couldn’t resist teasing her. Just talking to this woman made him feel startlingly alive. He’d actually forgotten how good such a thing could feel.

  With an uncertain look on her face, she pushed to her feet.

  “Please excuse me. I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room. I guess I’m not very good at this after all.”

  That said, she fled.

  Moving across the wooden floor as fast as her high heels would allow and ignoring her inner wolf’s howl of protest, Allie rushed to the ladies’ room. She wanted Kane so badly she couldn’t think, yet she couldn’t bring herself to blatantly say what was on her mind.

  Fear of rejection? Or was it the fact that she didn’t want him to think she was…fast?

  “Allie, wait.” His voice, directly behind her. One hand on the restroom door, about to push it open, she hesitated.

  He touched her shoulder, a light touch, but it still made her shudder.

  She turned to face him, then lost all rational thought when she found him much closer than she’d expected.

  Belly-rubbing close. Her heart rate shot into overtime.

  “Allie,” he groaned, and then his lips covered hers.

  His kiss struck a match inside her. Hot. So hot.

  When he pulled her close, almost roughly, and she felt the force of his arousal, she burned inside.

  Everywhere her body touched his, she tingled.

  Locked together in the most sensual kiss she’d ever experienced, they stumbled backward into the single-stall ladies’ room. Somehow she saw he had the presence of mind to kick the door closed and push in the lock.

  He slid his hand from her neck and shoulder down the curve of her hip to her belly. His touch felt electric, making her body ache for him to continue his downward path.

  “I want you,” he growled, pushing against her.

  “I want you, too,” she managed to gasp, already wet, craving the feel of his fingers there, as a prelude to what his hugely aroused body promised.

  “Excuse me?” A series of swift knocks against the bathroom door made them freeze. “Are you going to be much longer?”

  “A little bit,” Allie managed to croak. “A few more minutes.”

  “I’ll check back in five minutes.” The woman sounded huffy.

  Five minutes. Not nearly enough time.

  “Allie…” Kane’s mouth against her ear.

  “We can’t do this here,” she managed to gasp, even as her body arched of its own accord, still yearning for his touch. Her wolf had gone strangely silent, as though she approved.

  She felt rather than saw him nod. “You’re absolutely right. This is not the right place for this. Our first time together should be in a bed, unhurried, not rushed.”

  If he only knew how badly she wanted to feel his body pounding inside hers…Even thinking about it made her hot all over.

  “My place,” she told him, stepping away and attempting to adjust her clothing. “It’s not far.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Manners were the last thing she wanted from him right then. She gritted her teeth and attempted to quiet her newly agitated inner wolf.

  “Absolutely positive.” Taking his hand, she led him from the room.

  The woman who’d interrupted them was waiting outside. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened when the two of them emerged, but one dark look from Allie quelled anything she’d been about to say.

  They rushed through the bar and outside to his car. As Allie slid inside, the cool leather like balm to her overheated skin, she thought she might be about to experience the best sex she’d ever have—sex any other encounter would always be measured by.

  Oddly quiet, Kane started the car. “You’ll have to direct me. I’m not familiar with your town.”

  At his dispassionate tone, she felt as if the air had been taken from her lungs. Had the interruption given him second thoughts? Had he changed his mind about wanting to be with her?

  Chapter Five

  As a centuries-old vampire, Kane had grown used to many things. Like never seeing the sunlight and sleeping in coffins and other odd, airless apparatuses. It had taken him decades to get over the sensation of not having a heartbeat, and the fact that a cut didn’t make him bleed still sent shudders of disgust through him.

  Meeting this gorgeous little shape-shifter rocked his world. Allie’s affect on him surpassed anything and everything that had come before. She made him feel as if he was starving, as if h
e hadn’t had sustenance in weeks. He wasn’t quite certain he liked the way she made him feel. He didn’t let anyone or anything have that much power over him.

  Now, for the first time in decades, he missed his former group of vampire friends. Maybe he should talk to Malcolm about this situation with Allie. Kane didn’t know what to think. He worried—him, the master of willpower—that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his self-control around her. Every second with her, he felt it eroding fast. Too fast.

  Allie both intrigued and frightened the hell out of him.

  For one thing, he couldn’t stop touching her. He felt compelled to touch her. Even now, driving his powerful sports car, he kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other around her slender shoulders.

  Technically he’d been dead for centuries, yet when he wasn’t touching her, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if all the air had been sucked out of the world, the way a vampire drained blood from a corpse. It was the damndest thing.

  Worse, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain he affected Allie the same way. That frightened him even more.

  The glowing numbers on the car’s dashboard clock showed 1:01 a.m. Time was slipping past far too quickly. He felt a fierce desire to stop the clock, stop the earth from turning, the sun from rising, just so he could spend more time with Allie.

  And he didn’t even know how she felt about vampires.

  A few minutes later, following her directions, they pulled into a driveway in front of a small brick bungalow. A single spotlight illuminated the front yard.

  “My house,” she said, sounding unaccountably nervous. “Everything’s really close on this side of town.” Breathless, she wouldn’t look at him.

  Bloody Hades.

  He didn’t know how he’d feel if she announced she’d had second thoughts. Akin to burning eternally in the fires of hell, he suspected. What was with his reaction to her?

  “Are you coming?” Allie asked, opening the passenger door.

  Moving with vampire speed, he got out, went around the car and made it to her side in time to take her arm and close her door after her. Just those brief seconds without contact had made him feel lost, like a bat without a cave.

  Terrifying. Yet exhilarating, too.

  Then she reached for him and he forgot all his fears. Standing on tiptoe, she breathed a kiss onto his mouth and he was lost.

  She broke away and, still clutching his arm, led him up the walkway. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, they made it to the front door. He waited while she fumbled with the key, wondering how to let her know he couldn’t enter unless she invited him in.

  Door unlocked, she went inside. Feeling like an untried youth, tongue-tied and anxious, Kane hovered on the doorstep, hoping against hope he wouldn’t have to tell her the truth right this instant.

  “Are you coming?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, she gave him a puzzled frown. “Come on in, Kane.”

  That was all the invitation he needed. Inside in a flash, he kicked the door closed and kissed her again. Bodies bumping, lips locked together, they fell onto the couch, shedding their clothing as best they could.

  Sensations flooded him—sensations! Sensations were, to a vampire, akin to strolling in the sunlight unburned and unharmed. He hadn’t felt sensations since he’d been human, before he’d been turned, so many centuries ago.

  He wanted to stay locked in her arms forever, to let these sensations—velvet and cream and musk and heat—overwhelm him. He wanted to drown in feeling, bury himself in it, until he felt like a quivering mass of raw nerve endings.

  Instead of rushing straight to intercourse, he wanted to prolong the foreplay, savor the appetizers, so to speak. Minutes stretched into an hour, then another, yet time seemed to fly past. They touched, they kissed, they tasted, they sampled, skin and tongue and teeth. He brought her to climax with his fingers and then with his mouth, refusing to allow her to touch him more than briefly.

  Each time her hand closed over his rigid arousal, he groaned out loud, savoring her touch, before he found another way to distract her. He knew if he let her continue to stroke him, he’d lose the last of his control and bury himself deep within her.

  “This is the best foreplay I’ve ever had in my life,” she murmured, going limp against him after climaxing yet another time. Yet a few more kisses, a caress of her breast and a stroke of her inner thigh, and she was ready and eager for more.

  Meanwhile, managing to keep himself from exploding, from yanking her moist, hot and ready body up to straddle him, knowing he could impale her on his arousal, was akin to the worst torture he’d ever endured.

  Yet worth it, for her. Only for her. Again he felt a prickle of alarm at his thoughts—what was so special about this particular woman?

  Occasionally, he eyed the clock, knowing he’d have to time things carefully. He wanted to make love to her with enough time remaining before the sun rose. After that, instead of allowing himself to go to sleep in her arms as he longed to do, he had to drive over to Malcolm’s on the other side of the lake and descend into the basement while darkness still colored the sky the shade of jet.

  Finally, when the clock on her mantle chimed three, he knew the time had come to let himself go.

  Then her cell phone rang. Or rather, sang. Allie froze in his arms.

  “That’s Em’s ring tone,” she said, almost to herself. “Emily wouldn’t call now unless something was wrong.”

  Pushing him away, Allie scrambled up from the couch, snatching the phone from her purse. “I’m sorry, I have to take this.” She flipped open the cell phone, said hello, and listened.

  The rosy flush drained from her face, leaving her as pale as one of his own kind. She swayed on her feet, then took a deep breath. Closing her phone, she turned to him, her sapphire gaze dazed and afraid.

  “That was my best friend, Emily. She’s at the hospital and they’re going to admit her. She needs me right now. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

  Chapter Six

  Disbelieving, Kane watched as Allie glanced about wildly and began scooping up her clothes and pulling them on. Once she was dressed, she picked up her purse and got out her car keys. A look of utter dismay came over her expressive face.

  “Um, could you drive me back to Shorelines so I can get my car?”

  Body still throbbing and fully aroused, he had to hold back a laugh. Fate, always fond of finding some backhanded way of getting him when he least expected it, was probably laughing her black-hearted ass off. “Of course.” He sounded as though he’d swallowed a mouthful of rusty nails. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”

  As he started to dress, her cell rang again, the same musical tone. She answered, said hello, and then not another word. After she’d finished listening, she snapped the phone closed.

  Chest heaving, she faced him, her huge blue eyes full of tears. “That was Emily’s mother. Em’s gone into shock.”

  Clearly on the verge of going into shock herself, Allie began shaking. “They think this might be the end. I’ve got to get to the hospital right now if I want to see her before she dies.”

  He felt a fierce urge to hold her, to offer comfort. Yet somehow he knew she wouldn’t want that, not now. He would help her the only way she’d allow.

  “Let me drive you,” he said, using vampiric speed to get into the rest of his clothes, guessing Allie was so distraught that she wouldn’t notice how fast he moved.

  As they headed for the door, the clock on the mantle chimed three-thirty. The sun would be rising in a few hours. If Allie had been anyone else, he’d have dropped her off at the hospital and continued directly to Malcolm’s.

  But he couldn’t leave this woman while her best friend lay dying. No way, no how. No matter how much risk staying with her might put him in, he’d wait until the last possible moment before leaving her side.

  What in the name of Hades was going on with him?

  Though she barely knew him, Allie was glad that Kane hadn’t bailed
on her. Emily’s mother, Cora Ralston, had revealed that the Ralstons were completely out of funds. They’d taken a second mortgage on their house, and now they were tapped dry. Since Em didn’t have health insurance, they were paying for everything themselves. Mrs. Ralston had sobbed when she’d told Allie they were going to lose their daughter because they couldn’t pay for more treatment.

  As Kane drove to the hospital, Allie put her head on his shoulder and worked on not weeping. With her local office job, she herself was far from rich. She’d already organized several fund-raisers to help her friend. The treatments had sucked up that money like water.

  Still, she couldn’t cry. Em wouldn’t want her to cry—Em would be positively appalled to see tears. For Em, Allie would have to be strong.

  They parked near the hospital’s emergency entrance. With the lateness of the hour, there were plenty of spots. Kane put his arm around her shoulders as they headed inside, and she let him, glad to have his strength to draw from.

  That was odd. Supposedly only a mate—as in, another shape-shifter meant to be her one and only man—would be able to share his strength with her this way. She must be imagining things.

  Inside the E.R. waiting room, which was more crowded than she’d expected, Allie asked about her friend. The nurse directed her to a chair, instructing her to be patient. Emily’s mother was with Emily now and they couldn’t allow anyone else back just yet. All Allie could do was wait. They’d let her know if anything changed.

  They took two chairs in an alcove near a thin woman holding ice to her sallow face. Kane continued to massage Allie’s shoulder, and she was glad. Through her fear, she felt such a rush of rightness that she almost turned to ask if he felt it, too. But Allie had never been a fool, or rash, so she said nothing, leaning into his touch instead and waiting for news of her friend.

  She must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, Kane was gently shaking her. Groggy, she opened her eyes to find Mrs. Ralston standing over her and holding out her arms. Since Emily and Allie had become best friends back in elementary school, when Allie’s parents had gotten divorced and her mother had moved away, Mrs. Ralston had joyfully become Allie’s surrogate mother. Being without her own mother had been extremely painful, and her mother’s excuse—that she’d spent years with the wrong person and needed to find her true mate—didn’t help ease the pain. Mrs. Ralston did.