by Anne Douglas
ACCIDENTALLY WERE?
Anne Douglas
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www.loose-id.com
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This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
Accidentally Were?
Anne Douglas
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by
Loose Id LLC
1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924
Carson City NV 89701-1215
www.loose-id.com
Copyright © November 2007 by Anne Douglas
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.
ISBN 978-1-59632-575-3
Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader
Printed in the United States of America
Editor: Barbara Marshall
Cover Artist: Anne Cain
Chapter One
“Come on, Shaun, let me in!” Pearl put some more elbow grease into it and banged harder on her girlfriend’s front door. “Wake up, you lazy cow, and let me in before they eat me” ‑‑ she turned around to look at the yard full of adoring canines ‑‑ “or something.”
She refused to look down to find out if she had something more than slobber on her shoe. Too many of the dogs looked too happy by far. La la la laaaa…don’t think about it, Pearl, just don’t think about it.
“Goddamn it, Shaun! Let. Me. In!”
“All right, all right already. Keep your pants on.” Locks clicked, and the door swung open. A petite, spritelike creature stood in the doorway. Her coal black hair was in disarray, and her eyes were rimmed like a raccoon’s from smearing last night’s eye makeup around with her fist as she tried to wake up.
“Too bloody late for that now, isn’t it?” Pearl muttered as she shouldered her way past her kooky best friend and into the hallway, shaking off an eager paw so she could cross the threshold. “Hurry up, shut the door!”
Shaun had managed to clear her vision enough to take in the pack of dogs on her front lawn. “Hey…what’s with all the dogs?” She took a closer look at Pearl’s disheveled state and gasped. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll change before I go anywhere else today.”
Usually primly proper and schoolmarmlike, Pearl preferred to dress in skirts, blouses, and her trademark pearls. But today she wore a ratty old pair of jeans, a T-shirt on backward, and her jacket turned inside out. Then Shaun spied the big hickey on Pearl’s neck and tried very hard not to giggle, going so far as to stuff her little fist in her little mouth, but she couldn’t contain her very big roar of laughter.
“Ohmigod!” Goth chicks shouldn’t be allowed to squeal; it was unseemly. “Miss Prissy got laid last night!”
Pearl wasn’t amused. “Shut up, will you!” She slapped her so-called best friend on the shoulder, emphasizing her request. “I don’t really remember much about last night. What the hell were you feeding me? You know I don’t drink much!”
It was much too uncouth for a member of the Gordon household to go out drinking. Gordons drank wine to complement a meal, or a polite brandy or port after dinner to round off an evening, but never, ever, would they consider going to a pub and getting smashed. This was precisely why Shaun and the rest of the girls from the office had dragged her to the club and plied her with alcohol.
“So…was it good? Which one did you take home in the end? The young, blond Adonis, or the sexy, dark-haired one that looked like the devil?” Shaun contemplated Pearl then clapped her hands gleefully as she spied another mark on the back of Pearl’s neck. “Wait…or was it both of them?”
“Shaun! What do you take me for?” Pearl was horrified that Shaun would think it of her. Two men? My God!
“A well-loved woman, with not one, but two hickeys on her neck is what I take you for.”
“Four, actually.”
“Four what?” Shaun dragged her down the hall and into her bedroom and pulled them both onto the bed, obviously getting settled in for a good gossip about the previous night’s happenings.
“Four hickeys. The two you can see…and, well, there are two you can’t see.” Shaun chortled, and Pearl knew she was about to ask where the others were. “And, no, I’m not going to show you!”
“Prissy Pearl got laaiid! Yeah! Go, Miss Priss!” Pearl watched her younger friend bounce up and down on the bed with glee. “I knew you had it in you, Pearl. See, I told you that you aren’t dowdy and over the hill at thirty-one!”
“Well, I may have gotten laid, as you so elegantly put it, but now I’ve got some big problems.” Pearl slumped back onto the black silk covers of Shaun’s bed. She hadn’t seen the bedroom before and looked around with wide eyes, taking it all in.
Wow, Shaun really does get into this gothic, paranormal, werewolf, vamp thing. The bed was draped in black satin, the canopy blood red silk. Leather and lace fought with chains instead of the usual girly knickknacks.
“Oh, come on, what could be so bad? Okay, you had a one-night stand. Welcome to hell with the rest of us, Pearl.” Shaun waved a hand, gesturing at the room. “It ain’t so bad, you know.”
“Yeah, well you’re not the one who can’t remember if he used a condom.” Shaun frowned down at her. “And you weren’t the one to wake up to an empty bed ‑‑ I don’t even remember his name!”
Shaun frowned more and bit her lip.
“And…you weren’t the one to wake up with big hickeys all over your body that, when you look closer, have these really weird puncture marks in them. Like he bit me.”
That had been the worst thing. Not the hickeys so much; it had been kind of liberating to know she’d let loose ‑‑ even if it was under the influence. But the strange teeth marks…she would swear they looked just like dog bites. Speaking of canines…
“And…you didn’t wake up to a canine chorus.” Said choir raised a howl outside Shaun’s window as if to punctuate Pearl’s statement. “I think every stray in town surrounded my house and was singing to me. It was enough to wake the dead!”
The pair of them winced as a particularly ear-piercing whine cut through the yowls of the rest. “They followed me here, Shaun, and they wouldn’t leave me alone!” Pearl lifted a leg up, so she could see it while lying on the bed. “I don’t think it’s all just slobber on my shoes…”
“Ewwwww, eww, eww! Get those shoes off my bed!” Shaun looked horrified at the thought of canine bodily fluids having made it past her front door.
Pearl toed off her shoes and kicked them away from the bed.
“What do you mean by ‘he bit you’?” Pearl extended her neck as Shaun leaned a little closer to get a better look at the bruise marks. Her cool fingers gently pushed at the skin, making Pearl hiss. “Wow, you know…it looks just like when Vlad bit you when you tried to rescue him, but bigger ‑‑ like real dog sized.”
“Don’t let Vlad hear you say that.”
Vlad the Impaler was a stray terrier mix that the pair of them had found in an industrial-sized trash bin. Pearl had sacrificed her favorite pai
r of heels jumping in the disgusting mess to save him. For her efforts, he had promptly turned around, bitten the hand that had rescued him, and dived straight back in the bin. He’d reappeared five minutes later with a day-old hunk of steak and a jaunty grin. Neither of them had the heart to turn him down when he followed them out of the alley and back to the car. He was also the one animal that refused to live with anyone but Pearl. He was top dog of all the stray animals Pearl bought home, rehabilitated, and found homes for.
“On every one there are these four extra-big tooth marks, just like you would get from a bite from an animal with large canines.” She pulled at the neck of her T-shirt. “See…”
Shaun gasped at the crystal clear bite mark on Pearl’s breast. “Ohmigod, Pearl…Who is this guy?”
“That’s what I want to know. You’re the Queen of Scream. What the hell is this, Shaun?” Pearl looked up at her friend. She was worried as hell, and she knew it showed.
Shaun was into all things freaky ‑‑ vampires, werewolves, and ghosts ‑‑ the works. As far as she was concerned, they existed; she just had to find one of them and prove it.
“Wow…maybe…” Pearl didn’t like the look of awe on Shaun’s face. “Maybe you got bitten by a werewolf?” Yup, more cuckoo than a clock, but that’s why I like her. Only Shaun could come up with that as an explanation.
“Come on, Shaun. A werewolf?” Okay, it was a valid suggestion ‑‑ if werewolves actually existed, that was.
“Well…it would explain all the dogs, right? Maybe now that you’ve been bitten by a wolf man, you’re the doggy version of catnip?” Shaun poked at the wound again, but harder.
“Ow!”
Shaun jerked her hand back at the exclamation. “Sorry! Sorry.” Shaun sat back on her haunches and visibly thought for a few minutes, while absently staring at the bruises.
“I know! My neighbor, Mr. Dixon, is a vet, and I think someone told me once he also qualified as a GP, though he doesn’t practice on humans. Maybe he can help.” She shrugged. “At least he can make sure the wounds will heal up nicely, if nothing else.”
Chapter Two
The Great Dane that Rex was treating was doing his damnedest to get off the exam table and back out the door to the front waiting room. Something, or someone, had him worked up a treat. Once he had him restrained, Rex opened the door to call in the dog's owner to help to calm the animal down, and got smacked upside the head with the sweetest, most potent aroma he’d ever smelled in his life. The spicy flavor curled around his dick and demanded that he take another deep sniff to commit the smell to memory. Then his cock sucked all the blood from his brain and dragged him forward to find the source of the delicacy, screaming at him that it needed to get some of that right now!
“It’s you! What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming here while you’re in heat?” The sweet and spicy smelling morsel sitting so primly in his waiting room stared back at him blankly.
“Pardon me?” Miss High Society had finally woken up to the fact that he was speaking to her, not just making noise for the hell of it.
“You should know better than to come here smelling like that. You’re going to drive all the animals crazy trying to get to you.” Rex grabbed the woman by the arm and started for the door. “Come on, I have to get you out of here.”
Rex called out over his shoulder as he stiff-armed the woman through the doorway, “Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day, Shelly. Something urgent has come up.” He wasn’t about to impart that his dick was part of the “up” problem.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let me go!” The delicious little piece tried to yank her arm out of his grip, but failed. Considering he was a Were-bear, it wasn’t surprising she didn’t get far. “Let go of me, you ass. I have an appointment with the vet.”
“Well, I’m the vet, so I guess you’re not missing your appointment now, are you?” Rex wrenched open the door of his truck, then picked up Miss Priss and stuffed her in the cab. After locking the seatbelt in place, he shoved her coordinating handbag under the seat, then slammed the door with a satisfying thud after flicking the kiddy lock so she couldn’t get out.
“You’re Rex Dixon? Shaun’s neighbor?” He paused as he climbed in the driver’s side. What was this bitch’s connection to Shaun? He almost had a full-time job keeping Shaun Inglstead out of all things Were and wonderful. “You’re not quite what I was expecting.”
“How do you know Shaun?” He growled out the demand. Rex let his anger get the best of him and angrily shoved the truck into gear as he roared out of the parking lot, directing the truck north, and out of town.
The only problem with being angry was that he breathed deeply, trying to keep a handle on his beast. But a deeper breath meant that more of that thick, spicy aroma of a bitch in heat went into his lungs and circled inside his head. It taunted him to take the woman and make her his, spend his seed inside her and procreate as he was born to do.
Great, just great. Nearly forty years of managing to keep his head out of the mate-and-family noose, and one prudish and proper schoolmarm was going to throw a spanner in the works. Rex could feel the beast inside rolling, like a feline in catnip, wallowing in the scent of an aroused woman.
What could it hurt? She knew the score…and he had condoms. Just because she was in heat didn’t mean he had to knock her up.
Rex cocked his head to the side and took a sideways glance at his Miss Priss. “Well, answer me, damn it. How do you know Shaun?” When she flinched, the lust subsided enough for him to take in that the woman was doing her best not to cower by sitting ramrod straight, eyes ahead and her hands clenched together ’til her knuckles showed white.
Shit, whoever the bitch was, she was scared shitless of him. He shook his head to try to clear it. Good one, Rex, way for those Alpha vibes to play out.
“I…” Little Miss Catnip swallowed, and his bear decided it was time to come out to play. Rex fought his beast back as his nails started to lengthen into claws. “I work with Shaun; she’s a good friend.”
“Huh,” he managed to grunt out through a semi-closed mouth while he forced his canines back. Damn, that hurt!
He hit the cabin turnoff in a rush, gravel spraying out behind the truck as he nailed the gas again. He had to get her out of his truck or he’d fuck her silly, she wouldn’t get a choice. Not that it’d be any great hardship; She looks as good as she smells. The woman stood around average height ‑‑ he could probably rest his chin on the top of her head ‑‑ and she was rather generously proportioned. Curvy as all get out, and more than likely, that glowing, creamy skin was smooth like the pearls she wore around her neck. Her golden hair would have been neatly back in a bun if he hadn’t manhandled her, pulling hunks loose to dangle around that eminently bitable neck.
Rex wondered what animal her beast was ‑‑ a golden wolf, maybe something feline? It would be too much to hope that she was Ursus. Looking at her face and that rounded body, he couldn’t help but think that she would make a beautiful golden blonde bear, a perfect juxtaposition to his rugged, deep black pelt.
“Where are we going?” The small voice from the other side of the cab broke Rex from his reverie. “And why are we going there?” He began to smell fear over the pervading scent of the woman’s heat.
“You are kidding me, aren’t you, little bitch? I’m taking you somewhere safe before the Pack descends on you, and you end up in the middle of a winner-take-all orgy.”
It didn’t take any special Were senses to feel, or see, her bristle with indignation.
“What did you just call me?” Her shoulders went back even farther, and a furious red flush blossomed across her cheeks. Rex found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the dirt road as it wound through the forest. “You need your eyes checked, mister! For one, I am obviously not little, and two, I am not a bitch! You can accuse me of being overly prim and proper, because I am; I can’t help it with my parents. But don’t you ever call me a bitch!”
“I let loose for one night, one bloody night in thirty-one years, and wake up alone ’cause my one-night stand obviously couldn’t get away fast enough, leaving me with four hickeys, complete with bite marks.” She ripped down the tall lace collar of her blouse to expose two of the aforementioned love bites. “Then every damned stray in town wants to hump my leg, and now? Now, I’ve been kidnapped by a huge, sexy bear of a man, who calls me a bitch instead of asking my actual name.” When Rex took his eyes off the road, he half expected her to be rabidly frothing at the mouth, with her hair standing on end and her nails ready to take a fresh strip from his hide.
A smile grew as he stared at the straitlaced she-devil beside him. She thinks I’m s-e-x-y. Obviously his cheesy, smarmy grin wasn’t appreciated, as she gritted her teeth, and a rumbling growl echoed across the cab.
Alpha male or not, no one messed with a bitch in heat ‑‑ not if they wanted to find their balls right where they left them. There was no way Rex was going to try staring her into submission, so he turned his eyes back to the road.
Then it hit him; he’d never seen her at a Pack meeting. She was Shaun’s friend, she’d had a first-in-her-lifetime one-night fling, and she had love bites with canine teeth marks in them. Holy shit! She wasn’t a Were ‑‑ yet.
“Oh fuck…” Rex slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop in front of the old wood hunting cabin he kept as a base for when he needed some time in his fur. His head came to rest with a thump on the leather-covered steering wheel. “One of those stupid, horny pups bit you! Fuck!”
Chapter Three