Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5)

by W. D. Gagliani

  She stroked him down below, playfully.

  “And that.”

  They laughed. They’d been laughing more lately. Things were good. Or getting better, anyway.

  “How soon?” she asked. Her hand was now nestled under his chin. His stubble tickled her.

  “I think I’ll go for one more run. The wolf’s already feeling the confinement of being down in the city.” He kissed the top of her head and they let the moment linger.

  Then he was gone and she heard the door closing.

  She remembered it all too well. Now that he’d left her, it replayed in her mind.

  Long runs of light-colored fur started to sprout along Heather’s back and shoulders and on her belly. Her manicured nails turned to claws. Her teeth became fangs. A growl erupted from her throat, and then another. Her eyes swirled and changed colors like a kaleidoscope.

  Jessie was mesmerized, briefly.

  But then she showed her other hand. It held one of the Longinus daggers from the wooden case taken from Mordred’s car. Its blade seemed to glow as she slowly unsheathed it from the magically shielding wooden scabbard.

  Heather’s body blurred and she was now on four paws, a sleek giant gray wolf poised to pounce on the intruder and maul her.

  The dagger’s point cleared the end of the protecting scabbard. Jessie held it more expertly than Heather probably expected and approached the threatening wolf.

  The wolf lunged.

  Jessie’s hand became a blur in motion, the bluish glow of the blade marking the arc of her attack.

  They met in the middle of the room, human and wolf, both of them growling, protecting their territory.

  Lupo

  He felt Her call even though she was neither full, nor visible.

  He had never understood the moon’s influence. Heather accepted it without question, abandoned herself to it and made it sexual. Heather made everything sexual. Although there truly was a sexual angle because the werewolf gene amplified one’s libido. It was just that Heather’s was so highly charged to begin with, that the wolf had taken her over the edge.

  And he’d never had a chance to ask, because every other werewolf he’d met was trying to kill him. Perhaps the late Geoff Simonson might have shared his knowledge, except his mind had essentially split into two halves and he had no idea he was also a wolf such as those he hunted so fervently.

  Now it didn’t matter; he was only interested in running.

  And hunting.

  Nick Lupo ran on four oversize paws, his black muscular body flitting through the forest’s shadowy pockets. The carpet of needles and drying leaves crackled under him at first, until he began to stalk.

  His nostrils were wide open and receptive to all the scents of the living forest. The wolf enjoyed the blast of stimulus, and Lupo himself had learned to enjoy it from the place his human side inhabited the Creature. It had taken years, but now he considered himself almost One with the wolf.

  Slowing his racing pace, he began to search the air around him for dinner. The pine trunks were set farther apart in this area, making his stalking more difficult. His snout felt the cold breeze and tested the air. Finally there was less of the human element. But still too much for a hungry wolf.

  He was ranging farther from home than usual because the tree zones were thinning. Or disappearing altogether.

  More and more buildings—condos and small mansions and strip malls and professional centers—were going up in Eagle River’s expanding outskirts. His territory was shrinking. Looking through the eyes of the Creature, Lupo saw only the beauty and majesty of the forest that was left. He directed the wolf’s paws toward the rez, where he could count on finding both more trees and denser wooded areas, and therefore more wildlife. Tonight the wolf felt the hunger deep in its gut. Sex had that effect, cyclically, and he was on the prowl for an easy meal under the pine canopy.

  After expelling a stream of steamy breath, his nose picked up the first promising scent, a plump rabbit who sensed he was being stalked and managed to evade the wolf’s playful chase through the pines and firs. The exercise worked up the wolf’s appetite even more, so when his nose caught the trace of deer, he went into serious stalking mode and was soon on the trail of a couple of very young does.

  When the unsuspecting prey paused to drink from a narrow creek, the Creature crept ever closer from upwind. The does sensed danger, their fur bristling as they scanned their surroundings, but they seemed to miss the dark predator who was almost atop them but still hidden by the low shadows.

  A leap, a brief scuffle, a flash of fangs and jaws, helpless squealing, and suddenly the Creature once again tasted hot blood on its tongue. One lucky survivor disappeared into the trees as the Creature took its time butchering the companion, ripping and tearing, then nosing into the hot carcass to feast on the delicacies within.

  The wolf paused its buffet and sent up a self-satisfied howl.

  Stay away, it said. I’m still hungry.

  He fed leisurely, then bathed his bloody snout in the cold creek.

  Then he shook off the cold droplets and ran. He ran as if the Wolfpaw mercenaries were chewing up the ground behind him. He ran as if he could escape everything that had happened to him since that terrible day when, as a teenager, he’d been cursed by the bite.

  But then his human mind coughed up more recent events, more recent heartaches. He let the wolf run, tasting the chill night air, and let the memories wash over him even as his paws dug deep into the rich darkness of the forest floor.

  He remembered.

  The terrible stench of sizzling blood entered his nostrils as soon as he kicked down the door to Heather’s condo.

  He’d heard the grunts and growls from outside, and he knew what was happening. Jessie had intimated she would confront Heather soon, though he had no idea she’d taken one of the Vatican blades. Seeing the empty cradle in the ancient wooden box had sent him here, all the while praying to a god he didn’t believe existed to let her be all right.

  Jessie…

  When he cleared the doorway, he saw he was too late. They’d danced around each other and now Heather’s gray wolf had pounced, but Jessie had surprised her by unsheathing the magical blade and somehow she’d dragged its edge across the wolf’s muscular chest, drawing black blood as her skin and flesh parted like roasted meat, the cloying smell of singed fur adding to the sickening blend of scents in the air.

  Lupo instinctively tore off his clothes and kicked off his shoes, immediately visualizing himself going over. The transformation was quick as always, but seemed incredibly slow to him as he waited to be able to get his body between the two women. If Heather managed to bite Jessie, well…then he suspected Jessie would rather die than become a werewolf. Like another friend of theirs… If Jessie managed to kill Heather, she would be scarred for life—and she would either go to prison or cause Lupo’s fall because there was only so much he could cover up. If he went down, then DiSanto would, too. They were inextricably bound.

  The black wolf that had been Lupo snarled and leaped into the fray, his jaws reaching for and closing on one of Heather’s front paws and yanking her body off balance, spraying her blood in the meantime.

  Instead of backing off under Lupo’s covering action, Jessie pressed her attack with the Vatican blade that might have been glowing, drawing it through Heather’s lupine chest once again until the wolf’s screeching yelp echoed through the high-ceilinged apartment. Once again a deep laceration opened in the gray wolf’s chest and could not close due to the dagger’s supernatural qualities. If Jessie had managed to hit Heather’s belly with the same slicing motion, then her guts would have come tumbling out and it would have been over because wounds made with the daggers did not heal as quickly as those made with a normal blade. The silver blade was raised for another lunge, but this time Lupo’s body managed to block Jessie’s attack.

  Forcing himself to keep his jaws away from her limbs, Lupo simply rolled over her.

  Jessie’s fru
strated scream filled the space between them. Her lovely face was a mask of rage: teeth bared, her nostrils flared, and her eyes crazed with hate. In her hand, the dagger endangered Lupo’s wolf as well as Heather’s, but she seemed to have shed her own humanity. Right then she had become as much pure animal as they were…

  It had seemed hopeless.

  With Heather’s wolf half-dead on the carpeting, and a crazed Jessie trying to get around Lupo’s interfering body so she could deal the whimpering beast a final, killing blow, Lupo had willed himself back to human form, grasping for Jessie’s hands while evading the blade. Finally he’d managed to trap Jessie by wrapping his muscular arms around her struggling body, eventually forcing the killing dagger from her grasp.

  She’d collapsed, crying, into his arms.

  He had checked her wounded hand then snatched her up—regretfully—and dragged her onto the balcony, where he had trapped her by locking the door.

  Then he’d attended to Heather, whose wolf’s body was a mess of scorched flesh lining long slices, many of which he hadn’t even seen strike so accurately.

  He’d tended to both of them. Jessie had wordlessly helped him with her own wounds.

  Finally clothed again, with a dangerously wounded but slowly healing Heather tucked in her bed, Lupo had unlocked the balcony and taken Jessie home to his apartment. He had stood sentry over her as she worked the rage and shivering adrenaline spike out of her system, nearly reducing her to a comatose state.

  Then the tears had begun.

  Jessie

  She waited for him to return from the forest.

  She was wet, her juices running from the expectation. Going out to run and hunt as the wolf made Nick incredibly horny. Thirsty, too, but he’d put off drinking until after he’d crawled into bed with her and tamed the wild.

  Jessie lay on the comforter, naked, her body glowing in the firelight. She stretched languidly. They’d already made slow, passionate love and she was sated. He was a romantic, attentive lover and their sex had always featured the kind of bond that transcended pure lust. But she knew his needs increased under the moon’s influence, especially when it was full, and that sex with him after giving the wolf control for a while would be raw, almost desperate. It would be more physical, and she watched goose bumps grow along her arms.

  Right from the first, she’d lusted for the dangerous side of Nick. Even before she’d known about the werewolf side of him, there had always been an air of danger about him—a sense that he was on the edge, not always quite in control. Now she knew why, and she understood how the wolf DNA or whatever it really was affected Nick the human.

  She hadn’t realized it until later but when she did, it surprised her that she wasn’t afraid of this side of Nick anymore. And in fact that she enjoyed the nastier sex. They’d had the romantic, the sensitive, but soon it would be time for the forbidden lusts to be unleashed.

  Jessie wished she could convince Nick that she no longer kept a stockpile of silver ammunition for him. Maybe she had, at first. Now she kept it because of the other werewolves.

  She heard him at the door. Cool outside air muscled its way in with him, bringing with it the strong scent of musk that marked the wolf’s passage through his body.

  A shiver ran rippled along her muscles and nerves…never tired of seeing him come to her, his muscled, scarred body flushed from the hunt, his eyes still swirling like kaleidoscopes, his erection raging.

  He approached the bed with the hunger and need flowing off his hot skin in waves.

  Jessie understood that for some werewolves, this was the part they lived for. This and the killing and butchering of live meat. But Nick had conquered his needs in those areas. His problems he sometimes laid at the door of his heritage and his family history, some of which he had shared.

  She saw him, stripes across his flesh from the open blinds. She’d left them open so the woods that stretched out from both walls of the corner room seemed to hover over them. She knew that right now, for a little while, Nick was straddling both worlds.

  Silently he climbed into bed and her good hand reached out for his flesh again, fingers encircling its girth, feeling his excitement and the need. Her touch fed his need and then their bodies touched and they were kissing. He tasted of the wild in him, of the woods, and their tongues swirled around and then he licked her face and she shuddered.

  She reached up and traced the long, straight scar in his scalp made by the Vatican blade when he’d fought Simonson.

  Their breathing rate increased and fell into rhythm. His hands roved over her body’s hot spots, knowing what to touch and how, working her up. First her neck, then nipples, then her smooth stomach, then her buttocks and thighs. She moved from the scar on his head downward, finding and caressing some of his other scars—his wounds healed quickly thanks to the werewolf DNA, but the worst injuries left scars that would never heal—and then she found his engorged penis again and drew him nearer. She rotated onto her belly and drew her knees up, offering herself, her own need now strumming her nerve-endings like taut piano strings.

  He rose up behind her, his body between her thighs, and she felt him seeking out what she offered.

  “Nick,” she gasped, breathing hard, as he found her and slowly opened the passage and she helped him, her own flesh screaming with lust. She laid her face sideways and pleaded with him. “Fuck me, Nick, fuck me there.”

  She was well aware that she had begun to talk dirty only after he had stopped her from killing Heather and she had recovered from the murderous haze that had overtaken her at the condo, perhaps to give him something of Heather’s to conquer, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps because she had come to the realization that she liked it.

  Their skin scalding where they met, the tip of his engorged penis gently prying her open, his right hand snaked around beneath her and located the other center of her pleasure. His fingers sought her out and sent deep vibrations to her nipples and to her already stimulated brain. She hissed as he coordinated his two actions, encouraging him with the heat of her lust.

  He entered her slowly, not letting the wolf’s lusts override his own human ones, giving her time to adjust. She gasped as the invasive pain she first felt turned to pleasure when combined with his caress of her sensitive clitoris, and then he was in and thrusting and they were together for the rest of the ride, each feeding the lust they shared.

  She lost track of time, feeling his body hunched over her back as his flesh reached deep within her, sweat pouring from him and landing on her skin where it seemed to sizzle…or so she could almost swear.

  She wondered for the thousandth time what would happen if he lost control during this lustful act and went over. Hadn’t that happened to Heather? She thought that’s what Nick had told her. She wondered what would happen if Nick were to bite her. She knew he worried about it, too.

  But then the orgasm rose up from twin directions and took her from inside out, wiping away the thoughts of danger and leaving only the swelling bliss as it shot like lightning fire through her veins and muscles, and she screamed out as he also reached his peak and pulsed his seed deep into her.

  When the last vibrations were over she slipped forward onto her stomach and sighed contentedly as he collapsed onto her back. They lay like that seemingly forever, their bodies still linked. And, she hoped, their souls.

  She fell asleep shortly afterwards, and when she awoke he had quietly dressed and slipped out of the cottage, but not before leaving a late wildflower on the pillow beside her.

  She smiled, stretched. Curled up and squinted out the window into the woods. She forced the thoughts of danger from her mind and sought out the comfort of sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Jessie

  When she awoke, the weather had turned gray and foggy, and the sky seemed ready to discharge a pelting rain. She really needed to get back to the hospital, but she was feeling lazy.

  Well-screwed, m’lady, her mind provided for her.

  She chuckle
d.

  In the shower, where she indulged in a longer session of steaming-hot water than usual, her mind wandered again. She’d given Heather an ultimatum, and even now, having been claimed by Nick once again and knowing that he had chosen her, she felt a shiver down her spine that reminded her that none of this business was truly finished.

  Besides almost killing Heather Wilson with one of Nick’s Vatican blades, she had also threatened her with all the files she’d found on Heather’s computer. The nosy, nasty reporter bitch had compiled files on them all and their activities, some of which were at the very least questionable if not actually crimes.

  But many of them were crimes, and there was murder in there too, because fat chance a jury in a court of law would agree that killing people for lycanthropy was acceptable. They’d never see the outside of the insane asylum ever again.

  No, Jessie had threatened Heather with exposing her to Nick. If the bitch wanted to turn them in, that was her problem—and she’d go down with them. But What Jessie wanted was to keep her away from Nick. The reporter had made little secret of the fact that she could take Nick from Jessie, and in fact she had bewitched him already and much too well.

  First Jessie had copied all the files onto a flash drive, then she had deleted them all from the computer. But she was sure Heather was careful enough to have backups. She’d deleted the originals out of spite, just to make her point. In fact, she’d expected to drive that point home with the silver blade…but that hadn’t happened thanks to Nick. However, he hadn’t been able to stop Jessie from hurting the Amazon-like sex-starved bitch. The blade had made horrific wounds. Only Nick’s intervention had given Heather the chance to survive them and, presumably, heal once again.

  Jessie hoped the cunt had suffered plenty throughout the healing. She hoped it hurt enough to make Heather wish Jessie had killed her.

  She hoped Heather felt the fires of hell melting her insides.

  It was small enough consolation for being unable to finish the job she’d started.