Avery looked down at the linoleum. “You really think I don’t like you?”
“You don’t want to be in a relationship with me,” she said. “So, you might like me, but you don’t like me as much as you could.”
“Oh come on, you know it’s not like that.”
“I do?” She got the tortillas out of the fridge and slapped them on a plate.
“It’s that I don’t know what I want,” he said. “I feel very attracted to you, but how much of that is because you’re an alpha, and I’m a lone wolf?”
She put a paper towel over top of the tortillas and then sprinkled some water on top. She’d read that she was supposed to do that on the internet. Apparently it kept the tortillas from getting too dry or something. “According to you, all of it.”
“No,” he said. “Unless you can stop being an alpha, we’ll never know.”
She put the tortillas in the microwave. “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal, Brooks.”
He picked up her wooden spoon and poked at the vegetables. “Right. You want me to mate with you.”
“It would make it easier for me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have men sniffing around me all the time with no recourse for why they can’t claim me, you know? And you and I are… we’d be very good together. Everything between us, you know, works.”
He set down the wooden spoon. “And even if we weren’t good for each other, once we were mated, we’d be obsessed with each other, right?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I remember the way you were about Randall,” said Avery. “I don’t know if I want to be that way about anybody. Even you.”
Dana opened the package of cooked chicken strips. She emptied them into the skillet with the vegetables to get warmed through. Truthfully, she thought that most of the way she’d felt about Cole Randall had nothing to do with being mated to him. Because her feelings for Cole had not gone away after the bond between the two of them had been broken. They’d lessened a bit, sure. The sharp edges had been blunted a little bit. But she still felt things for Cole Randall. She still wanted him.
Maybe she was so keen on the idea of mating with Avery because she knew that if she and Avery were mated, it would lessen those feelings she had for Cole even more. Maybe it would wipe them out.
Because there was no rational reason for her to feel anything for Cole. He was a murderer. He was insane. He was not remotely boyfriend material.
The microwave beeped.
Dana swallowed. “Can you get the tortillas?”
“Sure.” He squeezed behind her and opened the microwave. He reached inside. “Ow. Geez, that’s hot.”
“Careful.” She turned to him.
Avery Brooks was a tall, powerful man. He had broad, hulking shoulders and smile lines around his eyes. He’d been her partner ever since she’d first started working for the SF. It was only recently that they’d tried being, er, sexual partners.
Right after Cole had gotten away—after Dana had let him get away, but Avery didn’t know that—she’d been a little too skittish for any kind of interaction with Avery. He’d been patient with her. He hadn’t pushed.
When it had happened the first time, it had been a month or so after the business with Cole Randall, and it had been natural enough. The two of them had gone after a rogue in New Hampshire. Because it was so far away from headquarters, they’d stayed in a hotel. Dana had been just about to get in the shower when Avery had popped over to ask if he needed to set a wake-up call, or if Dana would get him up the next day.
Wrapped only in a towel, she’d pulled him into her hotel room.
He’d kissed her.
Things had progressed naturally from there.
And, the thing was, it had been nice. Really, really nice.
Being with Avery wasn’t anything like being with Cole. Making love to Cole was intense and exciting and deviant. It was humiliating and somewhat painful. It was heady and blissful. It was everything at once, colliding opposites. It was an assault. An invasion. It was too much.
Making love to Avery was just… nice.
Everything about Avery was good. And they got along really well. They were best friends. Dana liked their relationship. She thought it was a smart one, and a sweet one. She wanted it to continue. But Avery was so hung up on the wolf stuff that she didn’t think it was going to happen.
He gingerly lifted the tortillas out of the microwave.
She turned off the stove. “What if it’s not like that, Avery? What if the things your wolf feels are the same things that you feel?”
He set down the tortillas. “Well, then that would mean that you were in love with Cole Randall, wouldn’t it?”
She bit her lip.
“And you clearly aren’t,” he said.
Right. She wasn’t. Was she? She pointed above his head. “There are plates up there. Get two down.”
He complied. “The wolf instinct does have the power to change a person, Gray. Maybe it’s making me into something I’m not.”
She peeled off a tortilla and set it on a plate. Then she moved over to the stove and began to pile veggies and chicken in the center. She topped the whole thing off with shredded cheese. “You were never attracted to me before I became an alpha? Never once?”
Avery took a tortilla as well. “I don’t think I was.”
She felt his words like a slap on the face. She hadn’t thought it would hurt so much. She took her fajita over to the breakfast bar, sat down on one of the stools, and busied herself with trying to wrap up the tortilla.
He dipped filling into his tortilla. “Be honest, Gray. Were you attracted to me before?”
She let go of the tortilla. It immediately came unfolded. She thought about it. She tried to remember the first time that Avery had looked good to her—the first time she’d thought of him as a virile man, not just her goofy partner. And then she remembered. After she’d mated with Cole. One night when she’d been afraid. “No. I guess not.”
“See?” He sat down next to her. “It’s all wolf mojo, and that’s all there is to it. We’ll figure out how to turn it off, and then we’ll see. If it’s off, and we still feel something, well, then, that means that we really feel something for each other.”
She refolded her tortilla. “I don’t know if it’s going to work that way.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because things are complicated now. Because we’ve already been together. So I don’t think anything’s going to simply turn off my feelings for you.”
Avery took a big bite. He chewed.
She waited.
He swallowed. “If it’s all wolf instinct, then it will turn off. Everything will go back to the way it was.”
“It won’t,” she said. “Things do not go back to the way they were after two people have seen each other naked.”
He shrugged. “Things could.”
She concentrated on her fajita. She didn’t say out loud the other thing that she was thinking, which was that it might not matter where feelings originated. Once they were around, maybe they didn’t go away. So, maybe it was true that some of her feelings for Cole had been caused by their mating. But once the mating was over, those feelings didn’t evaporate. And if the attraction she and Avery felt worked the same way…
Avery pointed at his fajita. “These are really good, Gray. You’re not a bad cook after all.”
* * *
Later on, she and Avery sat on the couch together, watching TV. They started off on opposite ends, neither touching. But as the evening wore on, they ended up sprawling in various positions. Soon they were touching. Then they were snuggling.
She was wrapped up in his arms, staring at the screen, his firm chest behind her back.
“See?” she whispered. “Confusing.”
He sighed. He planted a kiss on top of her head. “I should stay away, shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t want you to,” she said, wriggling in his arms, facing him.
&n
bsp; “But I should,” he said.
They gazed at each other.
Dana wasn’t sure if her mouth moved first or if his did, but the upshot of it was the same. They were kissing.
She slammed her eyes shut and surrendered to the feeling of Avery’s mouth on hers, of his arms tight around her, their bodies close.
It was so nice.
It was a feeling like settling into a place where she belonged, a niche that she perfectly fit.
She and Avery were good together.
He pulled away, letting air slide noisily between his teeth. “God damn it, Gray.”
She stroked his cheek, running her fingers against the tiny nubs of stubble on his chin. He’d shaved early that day, and his beard was coming back a little. “Tell me you don’t like it. Tell me it doesn’t feel good.”
He shut his eyes. “Not the point.”
“If it feels good, it is good,” she said. “We make sense together, Brooks. I don’t see why you have to fight it.”
He groaned. “Because… because maybe none of it’s real. Maybe I don’t really feel this.”
She let her hand trail down over his neck, onto his chest. He was warm and solid under her touch. She wanted him. “It feels real to me.”
Avery’s hands moved on her body, grasping her hips, tugging her tightly against him. He kissed her again.
She let out a contented sigh. She traced patterns on his chest with her forefinger. “You could stay here tonight, you know. We could take it nice and slow. It would be good. You know it would be.”
He sighed too. “I know.”
They kissed again. Kissed deeper, their tongues entwined, bodies pressed close.
Then he pushed her away. He got up off the couch. He started for the door.
“Wait.” She could still taste him. Why was he leaving? “Brooks, you don’t have to go.”
He kept moving. “I do, and you know it. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have come over. You’re the one who said it was confusing.”
“It doesn’t have to be confusing,” she said.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “How could it not be confusing?”
“You could go with it, you know?”
“I could surrender to my wolf? Is that what you called it? Is that what he called it?”
Dana looked away. She knew who Avery meant.
“When he had you tied up in that basement, and he forced you to shift over and over again, did he tell you to surrender to your wolf? Did he tell you that you and the animal were the same thing?”
“What if we are the same thing as our wolves, Avery?”
He shook his head. “What if he fucked you up worse than you know?”
Her jaw worked, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. It was the very thing that she worried about, that somehow Cole had wormed his way deep into her, and that she was irrevocably changed by whatever it was he’d done to her.
“I know I’m not an animal, Gray,” said Avery. “I know you’re not one either. We don’t have to do this just because some part of us wants it instinctively. We’re more than animal instinct.”
He swung the door open and disappeared into the hallway.
She went after him. She watched him walk down the hall, away from her apartment. She tried to think of something to call after him.
But eventually, he went around the corner.
She went back into her apartment and shut the door.
* * *
“You sure you want to talk to them?” Isaac Harrison was a big man with a full beard. There were streaks of gray in it. Streaks of gray around his temples. He was the head of the southern office—sort of the southern branch’s equivalent of Ursula King.
“Well, we did come all this way,” said Dana.
“We can handle it,” said Avery.
Isaac stroked his beard. “I only meant that it might be traumatizing. You haven’t seen these guys since they turned you, right?”
“Right,” said Dana. “But they were in wolf form at the time. They were barely recognizable. Honestly, I don’t have much of a memory of them as humans. They were people I occasionally saw in the halls. That’s it.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse,” said Isaac. “You’re talking about two guys who brutalized your community. Your friends. Your family—”
“That was a long time ago,” said Dana.
“Still,” said Isaac. “They did it on purpose. I know you worked as a tracker, and you dealt with rogues all the time, but there’s a big difference between a rogue who didn’t mean it, and one who did.”
Dana and Avery exchanged a glance. This guy didn’t know a thing about them, did he?
Avery cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you’re aware that Dana’s the tracker that brought down Cole Randall?”
“Oh, sure,” said Isaac. “But you guys are also the tracker office that let him escape, aren’t you?”
Dana glared at Isaac.
Avery folded his arms over his chest. “We want to see Klebold and White, please.”
“They asked for me by name, didn’t they?” said Dana.
Isaac shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He gestured with his head. “Follow me.”
* * *
Both Adam and Chase had been brought into a conference room. They were chained up behind a table. The setup was almost identical to the conference room where Dana had met with Cole when he was locked up at the SF. She thought of the first time she’d seen him and felt that familiar surge of attraction and revulsion.
But when she looked at Adam and Chase, she felt nothing.
The southern branch of the SF was the place that Dana had been brought as a teenager, after having been bitten at the massacre. She found the place familiar, but she’d never been down into the conference rooms. Still, both branches had been designed by the same people, and they were quite similar.
Adam and Chase both gave Dana surly, what-do-you-want looks when she and Avery walked into the room. Even though the they were grown men now, they still had the demeanor of rebellious teenagers.
Dana strode across the room, her shoes clacking against the floor. Avery flanked her. They sat down opposite the two men.
Adam and Chase looked the two of them over. They said nothing.
Dana raised her eyebrows. “Well. I’m here.”
“Who are you?” said Adam.
Dana looked at Avery. Were these two playing some kind of game?
Avery gave her a small shrug, letting her know that he was just as confused as she was. He addressed Avery. “She’s Dana Gray. Apparently you were yelling for her at the top of your lungs yesterday.”
Adam and Chase both shifted their gazes to Dana at the same time.
“You look different,” said Chase. “Older.”
“Yeah,” said Adam.
“Still hot, though,” said Chase.
“Yeah,” said Adam.
They both snickered.
Dana rolled her eyes. Wow. These two really hadn’t changed much since high school, had they?
“You going to explain to us why you were yelling Dana’s name?” said Avery.
Chase shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Dana glared at him. Was he being an asshole? He had to know, didn’t he?
Adam raised his chained hands to scratch his nose. “Way I remember it, it just came over me, you know. Suddenly, I felt really… drawn to Dana.”
“Yeah,” said Chase. “Like I had to get to her right away.”
Adam nodded. “Totally.”
“Totally,” said Chase.
“You felt this out of nowhere?” said Dana.
The two considered.
“Pretty much,” said Adam.
“Yeah, it was kind of weird,” said Chase. “I haven’t thought about Dana since, like, high school.”
“It’s cool you didn’t die,” said Adam.
“Yeah,” said Chase. “It would have been a waste to chomp
on someone so hot.”
Dana tightened her jaw. “You did chomp on me. That’s the reason I’m a werewolf, you dick.”
“Look, we really didn’t mean it,” said Adam.
“What?” The two had been so proud of themselves after it had happened. They’d explained to the SF how they’d planned everything out. They’d meant it, all right.
“We thought it was a big joke,” said Chase. “It was his idea.”
“Who’s idea?” said Dana.
“Cole’s,” said Adam.
Dana swallowed.
* * *
“Let me guess,” Avery said, shoving his hands in his pockets. They were standing outside Isaac Harrison’s office. Avery was pacing. “You don’t believe that your precious Cole was capable of doing something like that.”
“I’m not saying that,” Dana said. “I’m only saying that it doesn’t make sense.”
“Makes sense to me,” he said. “Randall’s a killer. He started killing young. We know he can manipulate other wolves into killing for him. Or had you forgotten Coraline Shirley’s husband? Or the supermarket that Beverly Martin gnawed to pieces?”
“But he did that after he was a werewolf,” she said. “The Brockway Massacre is what turned him. He and I both got bites.”
Avery considered this. “Well, maybe he wanted to be a werewolf. Maybe he engineered the entire thing to get bitten.”
“If he could convince someone to bite him, why didn’t he just convince Adam or Chase to do it? Why bother with killing everyone in the gym?”
“Because he likes killing people, Dana,” he said. “He’s crazy. He’s twisted. He’s not rational.”
She dragged her hands over her face. “No, it doesn’t add up. This is some ploy on their part. They know about the wolves in Cole’s pack. The ones that we detained and released when we found out that they were only tied to me. They’re trying to get released by claiming it wasn’t their idea. And Cole’s easy to blame.”
Avery was quiet for several seconds. “Maybe,” he said finally. “But I don’t think we should let this go.”
“Oh, what does it matter? He’s gone, anyway. We can’t find him.”
The door to Isaac’s office swung open. “Oh, hi there, you two,” said Isaac. “How’d it go with the two goons?”
“Well,” said Dana, entering the office, “they weren’t the least bit frightening or unnerving, even though you were worried about that.”
Bad Moon Rising (Cole and Dana) Page 3