Shadow of a Wolf

by Jez Morrow

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Shadow of a Wolf

  ISBN 9781419914652

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Shadow of a Wolf Copyright © 2008 Jez Morrow.

  Edited by Briana St. James.

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.

  Electronic book Publication February 2008

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/)

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Shadow of a Wolf

  Jez Morrow

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  BMW: Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft

  Volvo: Volvo Personvagnar AB Corporation

  X-Files: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  Chapter One

  It had been almost two years, and still Jack missed Martin.

  Saw him still.

  In shadows.

  In dreams.

  When the night wind moved the branches outside Jack’s cabin window and the moonlight threw shadows among the trees, black on the blackness, Jack saw him.

  Shadows of a wolf.

  But they were only shadows. Martin was gone. The only other of Jack’s kind. Not until Jack lost him did Jack know that he loved him. More than his own life.

  There was so much of the wolf in Martin, even when he was in the form of a man. Haunted, hungry, Martin used to snarl at Jack for being too cheerful.

  Martin had been lean, all muscle and bone. Sometimes he looked younger than his twenty-five years. But his eyes had seen too much. Martin’s large, wide topaz eyes took in everything, seemed to look right through you.

  Martin Winter had worked for the FBI, and would defend his country to the death.

  He may have done just that.

  The FBI was pretty sure Martin was dead. They had followed every lead to its dead end. But no one had taken that last step to declare it.

  Martin had been so damned suspicious that Jack had not believed him when Martin called him on his cell phone that night to say he was being tailed. Over the phone, Martin told Jack that he was going to ditch his car in Rock Creek Park, run through the woods as a wolf and meet Jack on the opposite parkway. The last thing Martin had ever said to him was, Please be there, Jack.

  It had been sleeting that night and Jack had not wanted to go out at all. But he always humored Martin’s moods. Jack drove his black BMW to the park, muttering at the prospect of having a soaking-wet, muddy-pawed wolf jump onto his tan leather seats.

  Jack had pulled over and parked where Martin said to meet him.

  Jack waited, watching the wipers smear ice on the windscreen on a night not fit for man or beast.

  Nor for those of us who are both.

  Then he saw lights bouncing deep in the woods.

  Flashlights?

  As a wolf, Martin for sure never carried a flashlight.

  Then Jack realized, for the love of God, someone really was chasing Martin.

  Jack threw open the car door in time to hear the double crack.

  Gunshots.

  A human cry.

  Jack plunged into the darkness. Brambles caught at his clothes, so he shed them, becoming a wolf. He tore through the trees on all fours, thorns snagging at his thick black fur.

  He had lost sight of the flashlights.

  Then he heard, at a distance, a van door slide open, slide shut. Car doors slammed.

  Tires peeled out, skidding on the icy parkway.

  Jack ran with all his strength. When he galloped clear of the woods, he found the skid marks on the parkway.

  There had been two vehicles here. Now there were none.

  In the brittle cold air, Jack could hardly smell anything. Still, a faint tang reached his nostrils. With the heightened senses of a wolf, he recognized the scent of blood.

  Jack, the black wolf, ran after the tire tracks until the ice turned to snow and covered the tracks completely.

  He stopped, panting raggedly, defeated.

  He threw his head back and howled into the bitter wind with raging grief as if he might howl his soul out.

  He retraced his steps, his paws stinging, lungs raw. He stumbled back into the forest, back through the broken underbrush following his own tracks.

  He collected up his scattered clothes as a naked man in the snow. His clothes were wet and icy by now. He’d lost a sock.

  He started to shake, not from the cold. He coughed. And he was overcome by racking sobs.

  Jack Reed hadn’t cried since his parents died. He knelt in the icy leaves and forest litter to cry as if his world were ending.

  It had taken a long time for Jack to smile again, for his life to return to some imitation of normal. He still felt a hole in his heart, an empty place Martin ought to be.

  Jack was twenty-eight years old and drop-dead handsome. He knew it, because he’d been told so too many times to ignore, but he didn’t place much store by it. He was friendly, funny and athletic, so there were always women. People immediately liked him and trusted him.

  Lieutenant Commander Jack Reed was a Navy officer with a clean record. He had been told he had a stellar future before him. There was only one thing missing—he needed a proper wife.

  Well, that and the fact that I turn into a wolf. But no one knew that latter part about Jack Reed.

  Except for Martin.

  And Jack now knew, too late, why he had never married. He had dated a string of very pretty, smart and charming women who were fun to be with. Sex was fun and felt really good but there had never been the earth-shaking soul-searing experience he thought it could be and he never met a woman he desperately needed to spend all the rest of his tomorrows with.

  He assumed it was just a matter of time before he met the right woman. He had never felt there was anything missing from his life—until the center of his life went missing on an icy December night nearly two years ago.

  And now Jack was seeing shadows again.

  He cursed, wondering if he would never be whole again.

  He had spied the shadow for the last five nights in a row, the silhouette of a wolf out of the corner of his eye.

  He saw it now.

  He slammed his fist into the wall.

  No! That’s ENOUGH!

  He was not going to turn and look. He was not going to open the window and chase a memory.

  Rain pattered at the log cabin’s cedar-shingled roof. Falling leaves stuck to the windowpane.

  He was not going to fall into that well of grief again.

  Without meaning to, he glanced out the window.

  At the slender silhouette of a man.

  Jack tore open the door and ran out into the rain.

  The shadow did not vanish this time.

  Martin Winter stood between the trees, real as life, naked as a wolf but he was in human form. Rain-drenched hair lay plastered to his head. His fine eyes blinked away droplets. Water traced his full lips that were slightly blue. Raindrops welled in the d
eep hollows of his collarbone, ran down his lean body, traced the contours of his hard muscles and got caught in the springy thatch of hair above his long cock.

  Jack stared, mouth open, too much to say and not a thought left in his head.

  Martin spoke, “I’ve been watching to see who you’re keeping company with these days.”

  Jack broke from his daze. “Martin!” He closed the space between them in two long bounds, threw his arms around Martin’s slender body, laughing. Jack’s warm hands pressed Martin’s chilled, slick, bare skin. Jack leaned his face against Martin’s cold ear. He stroked his wet hair. Martin was real, all real. Jack pulled back to look at Martin’s face, then crushed him back against him tight. He could feel both their hearts pounding.

  Jack’s lips accidentally—or maybe not accidentally—brushed Martin’s neck. Maybe Martin didn’t notice it for the rest of the smothering embrace.

  Terse, surly, as familiar as if they had never been apart, Martin said, “Get off me.”

  Jack let go of him, beamed at him. Laughed at him, “Come out of the rain, you idiot!”

  Martin turned away. Yellow light from the cabin windows bathed Martin’s wide shoulders, his sculpted back, his tight narrow buttocks, his long athletic legs. Martin bent down to pick up something from the underbrush.

  A gym bag.

  Jack laughed.

  “What?” Martin snapped.

  “I’m just picturing a wolf trotting through the woods carrying a gym bag between its teeth.”

  And there were indentations of sharp teeth in the gym bag’s handles.

  God knew where Martin had left his car this time.

  “What else was I going to do?” Martin said sourly. “You don’t have any clothes that fit.”

  Martin followed Jack up the wide wooden steps to the covered porch where Jack opened the door for him. Martin hesitated at the threshold.

  Jack couldn’t stop grinning. He said, “Get your ass inside.”

  Martin entered warily. Had he been in wolf form, his ears would have been flat back.

  Jack stared at him, marveling at how beautiful he was, bubbling with happiness. Then he saw it. The warm light inside the cabin illuminated a little puckered scar in Martin’s back, just below his rib cage, the kind of mark a bullet leaves behind.

  “You have another exit wound,” Jack spoke aloud as he recognized it.

  “I already noticed that, thank you, Jack,” Martin said, flatly.

  Martin’s beautiful topaz eyes took in the kitchen, the great room, the loft. Jack knew he was taking note of all the possible exits, the doors, the windows. Martin had a thing about feeling trapped.

  Seeming satisfied, Martin padded barefoot to the nearest bathroom with his gym bag to get dressed.

  Jack had a cup of hot coffee ready for Martin when he came out.

  Black coffee. Martin never let anyone put anything into his drink.

  Martin’s dark blond hair was still damp. His clothes were loose on him but they draped well—a crewneck sweater of rough knit, and gray corduroy jeans. He wore no belt and he was still barefoot. Martin never liked socks. He tended to trip over them if he needed suddenly to turn into a wolf.

  He moved with raw, wild elegance. He had lost weight, which only emphasized the width of his shoulders and his chest, the slenderness of his waist and narrowness of his hips.

  Jack blurted, “Where have you been!” And immediately he put up a hand as if he could stop the words in the air and take them back. “I wasn’t going to ask you that.”

  “Don’t,” said Martin.

  Jack pressed his mouth shut, nodded. He took it as a measure of faith that Martin accepted his coffee and actually drank it.

  Warming up, Martin pushed the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows.

  Claw scars, rather recent ones, showed on Martin’s sinewed forearms.

  “Now what was that?” said Jack, nodding at the scars.

  Martin answered wryly, “Dinner disagreed with me.”

  Jack never ate anything when he was in the form of a wolf. He had a repugnance of raw meat, and it made no difference which form he was in, man or beast. Apparently, Martin had no such loathing. Either that or he had been desperate and starving.

  Jack and Martin sat across from each other at the cozy breakfast table in a nook under a kitchen window, a sweet stillness between them.

  Jack’s gray cat lay on the window ledge, folded into a neat furry loaf with green eyes.

  Martin tilted his head sideways at the cat and asked Jack, “You gonna eat that?”

  Martin always had a dry sense of humor.

  Jack broke into a huge smile. “Can I make you some breakfast, Martin?”

  Jack got up, and set himself happily to cooking eggs—just as he had the very first time they had met.

  Martin got up from his chair and prowled the great room warily.

  There had been nothing but ladders and sawhorses in the great room last time Martin had been here. Jack had still been building the log cabin back then.

  It was all finished now.

  Martin looked ‘round, called into the kitchen, “You’ve been busy.”

  Back then, the great room had been unsanded, unfurnished and had smelled of new wood and sawdust.

  A polished glow from the stout log beams filled it now. The oversized fieldstone hearth that made up one wall rose up through the loft area above. The light fixtures were black iron mission style. Martin thought he really ought to be able to relax here. It was a rustic romantic space.

  And it was filled with things now. Martin looked at Jack’s belongings as if he could read Jack in them.

  There was a red Navajo rug—authentic. A leather sofa—how manly. A wrought iron fire screen with the figures of two wolves worked into it—how very Jack.

  Martin came to a framed photograph on the wall. There had been nothing on the walls the last time he was here, so Martin had never seen this. In the photo, fireworks lit up the night sky over a packed stadium. Crisscrossing spotlights lit three soaring flag poles—the U.S. flag top and center. The photographer had taken this shot from behind the Olympic podium, so you could not see faces. Three teams stood on the tiered platforms. The team on the topmost step wore red, white and blue.

  Martin would have assumed this was a tourist memento, except that also in the deep frame, mounted underneath the photo, was a real gold medal from the Summer Olympics seven years ago.

  Martin turned from the photo to Jack in the kitchen, “Are you somebody, Jack?”

  Jack gestured with a spatula. “We were somebody. Track-and-field team. Men’s four-by-one-hundred relay.”

  “Of course,” said Martin. “You always were a pack animal.”

  Just as Martin had always been a lone wolf.

  He looked again at the image of young Jack with his teammates, their arms around each other, on top of the world, so happy Martin could almost see their grins through the backs of their heads.

  Jack had never bragged about this past glory. Martin must have dismissed this as a different Jack Reed when he had dug into his background. Or it had just been irrelevant at the time.

  “I’m second from the left there,” Jack wagged the spatula toward the photograph.

  “Yeah, I see your ass,” said Martin.

  Martin moved away from the photograph to the hearth. He picked up a scented candle off the mantel and held it under his nose. It was bayberry, with flowers molded into it. The floral candle was a distinctly feminine touch in the masculine room. “Am I going to get in the way of anything?” Martin asked suddenly, a little alarmed, ready to run away.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked.

  “I mean a woman,” Martin snapped, replacing the candle on the hearth. “What do you think I mean?”

  “Oh. No,” said Jack. “I pissed off another one.”

  Jack went back to the kitchen. “I’m on my own again.”

  Martin followed him into the kitchen. “Why are you here?”

&nb
sp; Jack didn’t know how to answer that one. “Uh, because it’s my house?” he suggested. “I built it?”

  “It’s a weeknight,” Martin said, sounding like an accusation. “You never come out here during the week. You come here on weekends. But you’ve been here all week. Why?”

  Jack lifted the frying pan off the gas flame and looked straight at him. “You’ve been spying on me, Martin?”

  Martin pressed, “Why are you here?”

  “You’ve never been to my townhouse,” said Jack.

  “No,” said Martin. “Why?”

  That was the answer to your question, you beautiful moron, Jack thought loudly.

  Jack came to this log house in the woods because memories of Martin were strong here. Jack was here because Martin had been here and because Jack wanted to be near his memories of Martin in this season when the cold rains came and the autumn winds blew. This place was haunted. And Jack wanted to be haunted.

  Martin did not seem to have an earthly clue what Jack was telling him.

  Well, if the feeling was not returned, then the best Jack could do was not scare him off.

  Jack wanted him. Wanted him with a passionate hurt. Wanted so badly to kiss him. On the mouth. But Jack was afraid he would scare him if he said anything even remotely fond. Martin already looked ready to run at the brush of a tree branch against the window.

  If Jack could not have his body, then he might at least salvage what he could have. Just let him be here so Jack could breathe in his beauty and glory in the exotic warmth of his presence. Here. Really here, in his kitchen, alive. Where Jack could watch Martin’s pouting lips move, watch the prominent Adam’s apple in his long throat rise and fall when he swallowed. Relish the warm ache of wanting. God, Martin, just be here.

  Jack answered at last, ironically, “Would you rather I leave?”

  “Were you expecting me?” Martin asked, suspicious now.

  “Now how in the hell could I have done that? You do know you’re dead, don’t you?”

  Martin turned his face aside, eyes downcast, conferring with inner demons. Sharp cheekbones and a deep jawline gave him an androgynous beauty. He spoke softly, “Jack, you don’t know what I’ve seen.”