But now that he was older, he realized that what he’d been told about the SF might not be as bad as he’d first thought.
They could severe family connections. Pack connections.
That was what Cole wanted. He wanted free of Jimmy. Forever.
All he needed to do was to get the SF to come and get him. There was a number on the screen in every PSA. All Cole needed to do was to call and tell them that he was a werewolf, and they’d come and pick him up.
It could all be over.
But he couldn’t call at either of his friends house, considering they had no idea he was a werewolf. It would make everything awkward. Besides, he wasn’t even sure how to ask for permission to use the phone. There weren’t any phones on the farm.
Some of the preps at school had cell phones, but they weren’t yet common enough that everyone had them.
Cole wasn’t sure how he was going to call the SF.
He went to school on Monday. Chase’s mom drove them both to school after she let them eat a breakfast of cereal with marshmallows in it. On the farm, Cole would never be given something so sugary or so expensive. Breakfast was often oatmeal on the farm, other times eggs. The chickens laid a lot, and eggs were plentiful.
He looked for opportunities to use a phone all day at school but didn’t find any.
By the end of the day, he’d determined that what he would do would be to go find a pay phone. He knew there were some outside the convenience store near the farm. He could go there when he got off the bus. It was less than a half-mile’s walk.
Generally, Cole stayed in the cafeteria to wait for his bus. It was the last bus to leave the school, and it didn’t show up until twenty minutes after the final bell rang. The administration wanted all the kids on that bus corralled in the cafeteria so that they could watch them.
But Julia was in the cafeteria, and Cole still didn’t want anything to do with Julia.
So, instead, he wandered around in the empty building, waiting for the bus to arrive.
He went into the band room, walked through, looking at the music stands and the scribblings on the board. He wondered what it would have been like if he’d managed to get into jazz band last year. Jimmy never would have allowed it. Cole knew that now. But he could have hidden it from Jimmy. He could have had something resembling a normal high school experience.
The band room was right behind the auditorium, and the lighting booth for the stage was directly above him. Cole knew how to get up there because he’d taken a theater class his sophomore year.
He imagined that the door up the stairs was probably locked, but he went and tried it anyway.
It was open.
He wandered up the steps, up into the booth. There were windows on all sides. One window looked down into the auditorium. The other looked down into the band room. And because the instrument room was only blocked off with a wall—it shared a ceiling with the band room and the auditorium—Cole could see into the instrument room as well.
There were people in there.
In amongst the black instrument cases, Kyle Lamar was standing. And Dana Gray was kneeling in front of him.
She was sucking Kyle off.
Cole turned away, embarrassed.
And then he looked back.
Her shirt was halfway unbuttoned and the left cup of her bra had been pushed out of the way, baring her breast.
Kyle’s hand ran over it, squeezing it. His eyes were closed.
So were Dana’s.
Cole was both turned on and disgusted. His jeans felt tight. But he wondered what the hell Dana was thinking. Kyle was an asshole. He’d been rude to her at the party. He was using her. He didn’t even think of her like a person, just like an object that he could use for his pleasure.
And yet Dana was putting her mouth on him.
Kyle’s hand moved away from her breast. Cole could see it, perfect and round, topped with a tightly-contracted nipple. Cole’s groin throbbed.
Unable to stop himself, he eased his hand inside his pants, gripping himself. He began to stroke.
Dana’s head bobbed up and down.
She pulled completely off of Kyle, and her eyes opened a little bit. She looked so sexy in that moment, lips parted, eyes hooded. She planted a kiss on the head of his shaft and then she took him back into her mouth.
Cole’s balls tightened. He’d never seen anything quite so erotic.
And it told him something else, something both abhorrent and alluring.
Dana Gray liked what she was doing. She was on her knees and she had her mouth crammed full of Kyle’s dick, but she was enjoying herself. It was degrading and humiliating, and she was being treated like an object. And she liked it.
The thought drove him over the edge. He came in his pants up in the lighting booth.
Luckily, his shirt was long enough in the front to cover up the spot.
But he almost missed his bus anyway.
* * *
“Hi,” said Dana brightly to the woman who was working the desk on the cell block. “I’m wondering if it would be possible for me to get in and see Cole Randall. I need to ask him some questions.”
The woman furrowed her brow. “Who are you?”
“I’m Dana Gray, from the northern branch.” Dana flashed her access badge.
“Oh, right, the one who was held prisoner at the loony farm.”
“That’s one way to put it,” said Dana.
“You all right? They do weird things to you down there? I heard that they slaughter animals and do rituals in the moonlight.”
“I didn’t see anything like that,” said Dana.
The woman shrugged. “Well, you never know about those types. You want to see Randall?”
She nodded.
“You need me to put him in a conference room?”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. I can interview him in his cell.”
“You sure?” The woman raised her eyebrows. “He’s not restrained in there, you know.”
“I know,” said Dana. “But trust me, it’ll be okay. I can handle myself around him.”
The woman shrugged. “All right. He’s three doors down. Once you get there, I’ll pop the lock for you.”
“Thanks.”
Dana made her way down to the door of Cole’s cell. She’d agreed with Avery that she shouldn’t see him, but somehow she hadn’t been able to stay away. Sitting alone up in that apartment had been unbearable. She’d tried to distract herself with television, but she didn’t seem to be able to find anything that caught her interest.
The harder she tried not to think about Cole, the more she thought about him.
It was inevitable, she supposed. When he was around, she had no self-control.
She placed her hand on the doorknob and looked back at the woman at the desk, who nodded.
The knob turned in her hands.
She entered the cell.
It was quite a bit different than the cell in the northern branch. That cell had been all white walls and bright lights. This cell was dingier, with a stainless steel sink and toilet hanging off the wall.
Cole was lying on his back on a cot against the far wall. He chuckled.
She shut the door behind her.
“When I made that crack about conjugal visits, I didn’t really think you’d take me up on it.”
“I didn’t come here to…”
“Sure, you did.” He sat up. He patted the space on the cot right next to him. “Come here.”
She shook her head. “No.”
He looked surprised. Also a little amused. “No? What’s happened to my little Dana? Don’t you remember that it’s better to do as I tell you?”
God, something about the way he talked. She felt a tingle beginning between her legs, just from the sound of his voice, from the words he was saying. The truth was that it did turn her on to think about following his orders.
She folded her arms over her chest. “There need to be some ground rules, Cole. You could have
really hurt me last time.” That was the part that had made her so violently aroused, but it had also terrified her.
“I don’t do rules,” he said. “Come here, Dana.”
She stood her ground. “I want you to explain to me about Kyle Lamar. Why did you say that?”
He looked down, as if he were actually embarrassed. “You know how the band room is underneath the light booth in Brockway High? Well, if you happen to be in the light booth and someone is in the instrument room, you can see that person. Or persons, as the case may be.”
She chewed on her lip. “You’re saying you watched that.”
He raised his gaze to hers. “He was a jackass to you, Dana. He treated you like crap.”
She laughed. “Well, I guess I know how to pick them, don’t I? Compared to you, Cole, he was a prince. Anyway, maybe you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” Kyle had been killed in the massacre, along with so many of her high school classmates. Whenever she thought of them, she thought of that night, about all the screams and blood.
“Don’t say that,” said Cole.
“Say what?”
“He used you,” said Cole.
“You used me,” she said. “Plus, in Kyle’s defense, he never actually attempted to kill me.”
Cole’s jaw twitched. He looked away again.
That was odd. She wasn’t used to Cole ever seeming the slightest bit vulnerable.
“I didn’t.” His voice was soft. “Maybe at first, maybe when I was still trying to hurt you in that basement, maybe then, but afterward…”
“You did use me. Not when you had me chained up, but afterward, when you’d been captured. You wanted to manipulate me into letting you go, and you managed that.”
“No.” He met her gaze. “What we did, what happened between us was not about manipulating you. Hell, you know that I am just as affected and destroyed by this thing we have as you are.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said. “It doesn’t destroy you. Like now, you’re locked up in a cell. If I come down here and we have some raw footage, it’s a win-win for you. But for me, it’s humiliating. And it could destroy my career.”
“Yeah, but that’s part of the allure, beautiful.” He stood up and began to approach her. “You’re so tightly wound in there. There’s something wild in you that’s begging to be released, but you’re afraid to release it on your own. So you come to me to release it. That way you can blame me for what you did instead of yourself.”
She wanted to back away from him, but she didn’t. She stood still and waited. “I do blame myself, Cole. I feel guilty every day about what I’ve allowed you to do to me.”
He closed the distance between them. He caressed her face. “That’s the problem. There shouldn’t be any blame. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Is that how you operate, Cole? You don’t blame yourself for anything?” She searched his dark eyes for the answer.
He trailed his fingers over her jaw, over the sensitive flesh of her neck.
She shut her eyes. “So, you’ve been stalking me since high school, huh? I bet you saved me—specifically me—in the massacre.”
“Yes.” His fingers brushed over her clavicle, moving lower to cup her breast.
She gasped. “You’re obsessed with me.”
He gently kneaded her flesh. “Try and say it’s not mutual, beautiful.”
She felt her nipple stiffen, his touch goading that familiar spark within her. “I don’t want it to be mutual. I don’t want any of this.”
“But you do.” His voice was seductive. “You want it very, very badly.”
She groaned, seeking his mouth with her own.
His lips closed over hers.
She melted into his arms.
“Dana,” he murmured against her mouth, “I never meant it for it to be like this.”
She put her hands inside his shirt, touched the firm flatness of his stomach. She hadn’t been able to touch him in what seemed like a very long time. “Like what?”
He rolled his head back, sighing, clearly affected by her fingers on him. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“Yes, you did.” She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt—nondescript, prison-issue blue—and yanked it up over his head. His chest bare, she ran her hands over him. He was sleek and smooth and hard, and she adored touching him. “It’s always been about hurting me. You tried to kill me.”
“I was confused.” His breath was labored. “You confuse me.”
She pressed her lips into his skin, kissing the ridges of his stomach muscles, running her tongue over his flesh. “So, I’m supposed to forgive you for it then? Forget about it?”
“I don’t know.”
She kept her mouth on him, kissing lower and lower. She placed her lips against his belly button, against the small, soft protrusion of his belly. She eased herself onto her knees. “I don’t forgive you, Cole.” She looked up at him. “And I can’t forget. You scarred me so I’d never forget.” Her hand went to her belly instinctively, and she fingered the scar.
He gazed down at her through half-lidded eyes. “What are you doing Dana?”
She moved her hand out of her shirt and reached up to undo the drawstring of his pants. “You marked me. You did it to possess me.”
He swallowed. “Do I possess you, Dana? Are you mine?”
She pulled his prison pants down. “Never.”
He laughed softly. “Well, you possess me. Utterly. I’m yours.”
“Don’t say that.” She yanked his shaft out from his boxers. He was rigid and huge. She ran her tongue from the root of it to the tip.
He moaned. “Completely yours.”
She realized that he was swollen in ways that didn’t have anything to do with his erection. At the base of him. She touched him there.
He winced.
“Did I do that to you?”
“You know you did.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little bit.”
“Good.” She slid him into her mouth then.
He let out a long, slow breath, closing his eyes. “Dana…”
She reached up for his hand and guided it to her head, tangling his fingers into her hair.
His eyes snapped open. He was surprised.
She held his gaze with her own, moving her mouth on his hardness, starting to build a rhythm.
He gave her hair an experimental tug, his expression unsure.
Immediately, she was flooded with white hot bliss, her sex clenching on itself. She moaned.
He grinned at her.
She shut her eyes.
His next tug was harder.
* * *
“Jimmy doesn’t know I’m talking to you,” Rusty whispered. “No one knows I’m talking to you.”
Avery was having a hard time concentrating on this conversation. His thoughts kept drifting back to Dana. He probably shouldn’t have run out on her like that. The truth was that he was pissed at her, and she deserved it. She didn’t have any rational excuses for what she’d done. Letting Cole go was inexcusable, not to mention the… other stuff. The thought of her and Cole together like that made Avery feel nauseous.
Rusty was still talking. “I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Who? Jimmy?”
“Of course, Jimmy,” said Rusty. “Who else would I be talking about?”
Get your head in the game, Brooks, Avery told himself. Worrying about whether or not Dana was ever going to be faithful to him if he did commit to a relationship with her wasn’t the most important issue at the moment. “Right. Jimmy. You’ve never seen him like this.”
“He’s losing it.” Rusty sounded afraid.
Losing it? Just now? Avery wanted to say that it was pretty obvious Jimmy had lost it a long time ago. Actually, maybe Jimmy had never had it to begin with. But he kept his mouth shut. “I guess that means he’s not interested in further negotiations.”
“He’s paranoid,” said Rusty. “He’s telling everyone on the fa
rm that it’s the end of the world. He says that he spoke to the moon, and the moon has told him that we have to make our final stand here and now.”
“Final stand?” That didn’t sound good. “What do you mean? Is he planning violence?”
“I don’t know. He’s not talking to me. He knows that I disobeyed orders and let Cole roam freely in the farmhouse. He’s angry with me. He says I betrayed him.”
Avery felt for Rusty. In spite of everything, Rusty seemed like an okay guy. “Look, Rusty, if it’s that bad, why don’t you come out? Bring whoever you can with you and come out. Get away from him.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave the farm. It’s my home.”
“I thought we were trying to get all of you to leave. Just this morning, that was the plan, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not sure now if Jimmy ever meant for us to leave.”
That was exactly what Avery had begun to think as well. “You realize that if there’s no hope for negotiations, then the SF is backed up against the wall.”
“You mean you’ll use force.”
“If necessary, I can assure you, that’s what will happen.”
Rusty made a soft sound, something like a moan.
“Hey, Rusty, you all right?”
“There are children in here,” said Rusty. “Little tiny kids. There was a little girl that got hit by a tranq the first night. She didn’t wake up for almost two days. And since then, she hasn’t been able to get out of bed. We think she might have been out for too long. We think something might be wrong… wrong with her brain.”
Avery felt a clutching stab of guilt. He’d been one of the men in there that first night, firing rounds of tranquilizers into that house. It could have been his gun that had hurt that little girl. He clutched the phone tighter.
“If you’re coming in here again, if it’s going to be another battle, then you have to hold off until we can get these kids out of here.”
“Can we do that?” Avery asked. “I didn’t think Jimmy would let anyone go.”
“Well, I’m not going to ask him, now am I?” said Rusty. “I’m going to find a way to get those kids out, and I’m going to do it as soon as I can.”
Bad Moon Rising (Cole and Dana) Page 20