by JC Holly
The Wolves of Shade County 3
Attraction
Jerry “Fitz” Fitzpatrick has a reputation for being the kind of shifter you don’t mess around with, so he’s the obvious choice to deal with a spate of seemingly random shifter attacks. When he spots Mica Heath one night, though, all other thoughts leave his mind. There’s something about the man. Something different that Jerry can’t quite put his finger on…
Mica Heath is new in town and looking for fun. His hometown had very few gay guys, and none of them could keep up with him. He wants a challenge, and finds it in Jerry. Not only does the man take the lead in the bedroom, but he also has more than enough stamina to tire Mica out.
But what will happen when Jerry figures out what makes Mica so damn irresistible? And how will Mica react when he finds out that there’s something more to his boyfriend than just good looks and personality?
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 31,103 words
ATTRACTION
The Wolves of Shade County 3
JC Holly
EROTIC ROMANCE
MANLOVE
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance ManLove
ATTRACTION
Copyright © 2014 by JC Holly
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-774-7
First E-book Publication: May 2014
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
ATTRACTION
The Wolves of Shade County 3
JC HOLLY
Copyright © 2014
Chapter One
Jerry “Fitz” Fitzpatrick leaned against the well-polished bar and eyed the pub’s occupants with a mixture of suspicion and promised violence. He called it his “business look,” and only used it during pack meetings, where he was required to keep the peace. The chances of anyone actually starting something were low, but it never hurt to remind his fellow shapeshifters that he would have no qualms about putting them through a table if they tried anything stupid.
The place was rapidly emptying, as they’d been told about the upcoming private function. Within five minutes there was only one group left, and Jerry could sense they were trouble. All four men were slouched in their seats, beers and booze in hand, and showing no sign of going anywhere.
Not one of them a looker, either. He sighed and forced his brain back into business mode, then turned to nod to the barman, a middle-aged gentleman with thinning hair named Stevie.
“You want me to clear those guys out?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah, that’d be great.” The barman glanced around. “But, uh, don’t start anything unless you have to.”
If the man had been a stranger, Jerry might have taken offense, but the pack had been using the pub as a meeting place for years, and more than once Stevie had had to clean up a broken table or chair after one of Jerry’s conversations with an unruly individual. Instead he smiled and agreed, then made his way across the room.
When he wasn’t playing the bouncer, or enforcer, as they were called in shifter circles, he liked to think he was pretty laid back. His boyfriends, though lamentably few in recent years, would have agreed, he was sure.
Really, he’d just fallen into the role of enforcer. When he’d joined his pack as a fresh-faced, two-week-old shifter, he’d been hoping to find a role as something less aggressive. Perhaps a mediator of sorts. Hell, even an accountant. But the alpha had taken one look at his six-foot-four, muscle-bound frame, and said, “Looks like we have a new bodyguard,” and you don’t disagree with the alpha. That had been ten years ago, and he’d been hitting things in the face ever since.
He got halfway across the bar before one of the men looked up, a frown on his face.
“Fuck you want?” His hand slipped under the table. “We ain’t finished.”
“I’m afraid you are, sir. It’s time to leave.”
As he neared, he took in a long breath through his nose, and his heightened sense of smell went to work. Of the four men, all were heavily intoxicated, three of them needed a shower, but only one was packing a weapon. The guy who had slipped his hand under the table had a pistol, freshly oiled.
As the drunk’s hand came back out, Jerry lunged forward, closing the distance between them faster than any human could. The man
raised the weapon, but far too slow, and Jerry grabbed his wrist and slammed it onto the table hard enough to break bones. The man screeched in pain and dropped the gun. Another of the group tried to grab it, but instead caught a fist to the face and slumped into his seat.
“Anyone else?” Jerry asked, barely keeping a feral snarl from his voice.
The other two men were smarter and instead raised their hands in surrender.
“Hey, we don’t want any trouble,” one said, followed by an agreement by the other.
“Then get out.” Jerry picked up the gun and slid it into the back of his jeans. “I see any of you again, I’ll snap you in half.”
To illustrate his threat he picked up an empty beer bottle and crushed it in his fist. Within seconds the men were up and headed to the exit.
As soon as they were out of the building, Jerry dropped into one of the booth’s seats and began to methodically pick the glass from his palm, dumping the pieces into an ashtray. Stevie appeared and handed him a cloth, but Jerry declined.
“It’ll heal soon enough.”
The barman had been around shifters long enough not to be surprised or ask questions, so instead just cleaned up the mess and headed back to the safety of his bar.
The adrenaline of the confrontation quickly began to drain, and within a few more minutes Jerry was back to thinking about what had been floating around his head earlier in the evening. He was horny. Damn horny, in fact. If he didn’t find someone to fuck soon he’d be baying at the moon.
His last relationship had gone badly, so there was no chance of a booty call, and the rest of his pack weren’t his type, so he’d have to do it the old-fashioned way and go and pick someone up. He flicked a piece of glass from his palm and sighed. That meant he’d have to flirt.
* * * *
The door of the bus opened with a hiss, letting in the first gasp of fresh air for three hours of driving. Mica was on his feet fast and darted past the driver and onto the sidewalk before most people had even stood up.
He stretched his arms out to his sides and took in a deep lungful of city air. It wasn’t as fragrant as the air in the town he’d left half a day ago, but it still beat the stench of the bus. After checking his one bag he left the terminal and, after asking a drunk for directions, started walking toward the one person he knew in a hundred-mile radius. There were plenty of cabs in the area, but he’d had his fill of sitting for a week. His legs cried out for the exercise, and he was happy to give it to them.
Leaving home had been hard to do, and it hadn’t helped that he’d had to do it on the cheap, but the small-town life was cramping his style. He’d already dated all five gay guys in town, and none of them were worth writing home about. In a place like Shade County, there would certainly be a lot more choice.
Not that sex was the only reason for the move. It was just the main motivator. Mica was proudly sexual, and didn’t see anything wrong with wanting a good time. It wasn’t like the other guy wouldn’t enjoy it too.
The night was cool, but temperature had never bothered him much. So much so that his mother had once persuaded him to be checked out by a doctor, in case it was a sign of something. Turned out he was as healthy as a horse, which surprised Mica, given that he was usually about as active as a stoned slug. He attributed it to good genes.
From up ahead, he caught a blast of music as the door to a bar opened and quickly closed again. Several men and one woman stepped out into the evening, all laughing and bumping against each other boisterously. Mica smiled and nodded as he passed by, and they greeted him in a similar manner.
All except the tall one, a man who had to be six and a half feet, and built like he was designed to break things. As Mica walked past, the man’s eyes locked onto his, and they shared a long look. It was clear they were both thinking about the same thing. Sex.
If he hadn’t had somewhere to be, he’d probably have surreptitiously followed the group in the hopes they were heading into another bar, and then tried to chat with the guy. As it was, though, he kept walking, hoping he wasn’t missing out on the sex of a lifetime.
Chapter Two
That man…
Jerry forced his alcohol-numbed brain into action. There was something about the guy he’d just passed on the street, and it was more than regular sexual attraction, that was for damn sure.
The sexual attraction was a big part, though, as a twitch of his cock reminded him.
“Hey, where to now?”
Jerry glanced over to the guy on his left, a shifter named Greg. “Huh?”
“Where are we going?”
“Oh.” He tried not to look back over his shoulder at the fleeting figure. “I was thinking of calling it a night, actually.”
Greg raised an eyebrow. “Really? You pussying out already? It’s barely midnight!”
“Got a long day tomorrow.”
Greg continued to argue, but Jerry wasn’t listening. With a smile and a wave, he turned and headed off in the direction of home. The urge to follow the man almost pulled him in the opposite direction, but he doubted stalking the guy would help much with any possible future attempts at getting to know him.
As he walked, hands plunged deep into the pockets of his jacket, he once again tried to place the scent. The guy was human, but there was a hint of something else. Perhaps a relation had been a witch? That could be it.
It would have to do for now, he decided. He wasn’t going to obsess over someone he’d seen once and hadn’t even spoken to. Even if he did meet him again at some point, it wasn’t the sort of thing you brought up in conversation. Especially when you had your own secrets.
While shapeshifters no longer hid in caves, shunned by man, they couldn’t exactly walk down the street chewing on a T-bone, either. People had a habit of choosing to ignore that which they didn’t understand, but that didn’t mean Jerry and his pack could flaunt their abilities, either. That would be asking for trouble. So instead the pack, and every other, went about their business in secret. On occasion some news story about a man walking away from a surely fatal accident would appear, but for the most part they were dismissed, and as long as such stories stayed rare, Jerry doubted there would ever be an issue.
The long stretch of clubs and businesses gave way to houses, and soon Jerry’s own home was in sight. It was nothing special from the outside, just a normal-looking house on a normal-looking street, but inside was another matter entirely. He pushed his key into the lock and turned, then closed the door behind him.
“Good evening, Jerry,” came a slightly robotic voice from a speaker mounted on the hallway wall. “You have three e-mails waiting, and a message on the answering machine.”
Jerry shucked off his jacket and hung it on a hook, then moved to the lounge. “Play the message.”
It had taken him months to get all his home automation set to his liking, but it had been worth every skinned knuckle and shouted expletive. From anywhere in the house he could control practically every piece of hardware solely by voice. He could set the shower running while he was still in bed, or tell the coffee maker to start warming up from the lounge, or have the computer tell him what the weather was in Guam while he was balls-deep in a guy he’d picked up at the bar. Though the last one would just be showing off.
While he may have looked every inch the bruiser, Jerry was happy to call himself a geek, and was more than willing to deck anyone who mocked geeks in front of him, too.
As he settled onto the couch and pulled his shoes off, the answering machine beeped and played a message about a delayed order from a local store. He asked his computer to remind him to call them back and also turn on the TV. With a contented sigh he thumped his feet onto the coffee table and got back to thinking about the man he’d passed in the street.
* * * *
Mica woke with a start to find himself in an unfamiliar bed. After a few moments of panic, he remembered where he was and allowed himself to relax once more.
He’d arrived at his friend�
��s house a little after midnight, and after a few pleasantries he had made his apologies and gone straight to bed. It hadn’t been a good night’s sleep, but that was always the case with strange surroundings. It was why he’d barely ever travelled before.
There was a light knock on the door, and before he could speak Molly came through, clad in a pink bathrobe and holding a tray with two plates and two steaming cups.
“Move over.”
Mica did as he was told, and she settled on the bed beside him, the tray on her lap.
“It’s been a while since we’ve been in the same house, but I’m guessing you still like bacon, soft-boiled eggs, and coffee with three sugars,” she said with a grin.
He laughed and nodded. “Ten years apart and you still remember how I like my coffee?”
She shrugged, the motion knocking her red curls from off her shoulder. She batted the hair aside. “It’s not like we haven’t talked in all that time. We e-mail every week.”
“True, but I don’t think we discussed coffee.”
“I must just be fabulous, then,” she said with a shrug.
“No arguments from me.”
They quickly demolished the breakfast, and Mica was pleased to find she was just as good at cooking as she had been last time they’d met. As they finished, she dumped the tray at the end of the bed and crawled under the covers.
“So, how’s the family?” she asked.
“Pretty good. Mom was a bit upset about the move, but she knew I wasn’t happy, so in the end she accepted it.”
“And your brothers?”