He sat down next to her. “Hey there.”
She gave him a small smile.
“Look, I’ve been on the phone, and your car’s been in the city impound back at your home. I’ve got enough money to pay for you to get it out, and to get you bus fare back to where you belong.” He dug it out of his pocket. “Jasper helped too. He’s sorry about capturing you like that.”
She took the money, riffling through it. “Well, I’m glad that you’re better, so tell Jasper that I’ll get over it. Probably the most exciting thing that’ll ever happen to me anyway.” She laughed a little.
Ryder watched her, looking at the tiny lines around her eyes that formed when she smiled, the way her hair fell around her shoulders. He tried to summon up what he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t know how. “Uh…”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You don’t have to go right away if you…” He cleared his throat. “That is, if you wanted, I wouldn’t mind the chance to get to know you a little better. You know, now that I’m myself again.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.” She sounded truly surprised. “I thought that you…” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t do that.”
He nodded. “You probably have a lot of people worrying about you. Your family.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t really have a family. I lost my parents when I was young. They were, um, killed by a werewolf.”
He swallowed.
She turned away, no longer looking at him. “My grandparents raised me, but they’re both gone. And I think I told you that my husband left me after we couldn’t have any children. So, there’s no one worrying about me, I don’t think. Not really. And I have to admit that after we… made love, I thought I felt… but then I saw you shift into that wolf. And it reminded me of the day that my parents…”
He hung his head. Man, that was rough.
“I saw it, you know,” she said. “I was right there. The wolf would have killed me too, but someone had heard the screams and called for help. I was rescued just in time. I’m afraid that you’re just too… brutal. I don’t think I want to get to know you better. I think I just want to go home and forget about all of this.”
He was quiet.
She twisted her hands together. She still didn’t look at him.
He stood up, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I guess I can see that.”
She did look up at him, then. “I know that Enoch wasn’t a good person. I know you had to fight him. But just knowing that inside you’re…” She let out a shuddering breath.
This woman had been terrorized. Jasper had kidnapped her and held her against her will. Leroy had frightened her. And he’d had sex with her. Hell, in her state of mind, it was a wonder she wasn’t pressing charges against all of them. Ryder had been stupid to think that there could be anything between him and her.
He nodded slowly. “We’ll get you home. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.”
He gazed into her eyes, and he wished things could be different. But he knew that they wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
* * *
The first full moon after leaving the carnival, Calla went into a panic. She felt like a complete idiot, especially remembering that conversation in the tent with Ryder.
Werewolves don’t get STDs, he’d said.
How could she possibly be so stupid? She’d had to give numerous presentations in the classroom, in which the dangers of the lupine virus were enumerated. One of the things that was always stressed was the fact that it was sexually transmittable!
She was terrified that she’d somehow caught it from Ryder, and that she was going to turn into a wolf that night.
She locked herself up in her house, totally afraid of the possibility. She didn’t want to be like the man who’d killed her parents, overtaken by instinct and violence. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.
But the night came and went, and nothing happened.
And then the days went by.
When she’d first gotten home, she’d felt the crush of relief at being away from all of that danger. It was good to have her life back, and she enjoyed sleeping in her own bed and taking hot showers and feeling like a human being again.
But after a few days, she got, well, bored.
She tried to go out and see some friends, but she had trouble scheduling anything. Most people were busy with their children or vacations or their jobs. So, she ventured out alone. At the beginning of the summer, she’d been terrified of going out to a bar alone, but she went out by herself more than once now.
It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it might be. Drunk people were easy enough to strike up conversations with. She had a nice time. But she still felt bored. She felt like something was missing.
She was beginning to wonder if it made any sense to associate Ryder with the werewolf who had killed her parents. She’d been doing a lot of research on werewolves after getting back. It was something to fill the boredom with. And she now knew that most werewolves weren’t the out-of-control monsters like the man on the street. That man had been newly changed, and he probably hadn’t known what was going to happen to him. That kind of thing only happened to werewolves that were bitten or changed. It didn’t happen to werewolves that were born that way, which was what Ryder was.
And Ryder hadn’t killed anyone.
He’d only wounded Enoch, which was better than he deserved.
She shouldn’t have been so harsh with him.
One night she was out at the bar, discussing werewolf rights with some kids in their twenties. The kids were in favor of abolishing the list of registered werewolves, because they said it wasn’t fair to mark and ostracize those people.
The bartender was flipping through channels on the TV, and one of the kids shouted out for him to stop.
The bartender obeyed, giving the kid a funny look. He’d settled on a news break on one of the networks.
…this senseless bloodbath at the western regional SF headquarters. Werewolf workers at the Sullivan Foundation have all been massacred by an unknown assailant. Some are speculating this act was perpetrated by an anti-werewolf group, but there is no evidence one way or the other at this point.
Calla was alarmed.
She knew exactly what this meant.
Enoch.
Hadn’t Leroy said they were going to attack the SF? Hadn’t he said that the cause couldn’t be stopped? He wanted to allow werewolves to kill regular people. He was horrible, and she couldn’t believe she’d ever faulted Ryder for wanting to hurt a man like that.
Hell, she wished he had killed him.
She left the bar without saying goodbye to anyone. She’d had about three beers, and she normally wouldn’t have driven much farther than simply back to her own house. But she was seized with a certainty that she’d made an enormous mistake, and so she got in her car, and she drove for quite some time.
She was glad she’d paid attention on the bus drive. She had noted that it was a straight shot up the interstate from that town to hers.
She was going back to find Ryder, back to the last place that she’d seen him. She just needed to take the highway, and she’d get back to the carnival. She thought of the lights and the sights and the smells. And then she thought of Ryder. She had to see him. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say when she did. She tried to think of ideas, but every time she practiced, it came out jumbled.
She tried, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, gazing out into the night. “Ryder, I think I might have been too hasty. I should never have blamed you—No, that’s stupid.”
She took a deep breath. “Listen, Ryder, I do want to get to know you. I want to be near you. Maybe it’s crazy, but I think there might be something really powerful between us, and I think it would be a big mistake not to try to… to… What? Damn it.”
Because this was crazy. How the hell was she supposed to get to know Ryder, anyway? He worked for a carnival, and she was
a high school teacher. He would traveling all the time. She had the summer, but she had to go back to work now in less than a month, and there was no way that…
She drove on anyway.
But when she got to the place where the carnival had been, it was already gone. There was nothing there but a bare lot, empty buildings standing in the darkness, a chain link fence enclosing all that nothingness. They’d already moved on.
Of course they had. Why would she have thought that he’d still be in one place?
* * *
The drive home took an interminable period of time, and she felt stupid and dejected. She was never going to see Ryder again, she realized. She’d had this chance to change her life, to do something crazy, and to find passion and maybe even love, and she’d thrown it all away because of some childhood trauma. She felt awful.
When she got home, she threw herself into bed, and only then did she start crying. She sobbed into her pillow for quite a long time. She kept hoping that she’d just cry herself to sleep, but apparently that only happened in books, because she stayed wide awake.
She rolled over onto her back, stared at the ceiling, and let the sobs subside. She hated her life. She didn’t want to go back to school and teach in a few months. There was nothing for her there anymore. She’d dreamed of a life that she couldn’t have—a husband and children. She was old now, old and fat, and it was all over. She was going to end up one of those bitter old teachers who wasn’t married. Those ladies who grumbled their way through all the faculty meetings, angry husks who hated everything—from their jobs to the students. She’d probably end up teaching forever—trapped in a miserable job, unable to find a way to get free. And she could only imagine that the students would get worse and worse and—
There was a knock on her door.
She sat straight up in bed.
No one ever knocked on her door.
She tossed aside the covers, got up, and pulled her robe on over her pajamas. Then she padded out to the front door.
Another knock.
She opened the door.
“Ryder?” she whispered.
He was standing in her doorway wearing a tight t-shirt and jeans. He looked at her with his big, dark eyes, and she felt like he was staring into her soul.
“How did you find me?” she said.
“I, um… the Internet?” He coughed. “Look, I know it’s really late, and you weren’t expecting me, but I found something out, and I thought of you, so I had to… I guess I could have called or something, I just—”
She snatched up a handful of his shirt and yanked him into the house. She tugged his face down to hers, and then they were kissing.
Ryder didn’t seem to need much more encouragement. He was on her immediately, mouth hot against her own, hands roaming over her body, cupping her ass and pulling her close to him, smashing their bodies together.
She ran her fingers over his shoulders, feeling his solid, wide strength. He felt wonderful.
They stumbled backwards, away from the door, into her kitchen.
Ryder shoved her into the refrigerator. He kissed her neck. He kissed her below her ear.
She gasped, her eyes rolling back in her head.
He turned her body. Now she was facing the refrigerator, her cheek pressed into its smooth surface. His hands roved over her curves. He caressed her back, her waist, her hips. He ran a finger down her spine, all the way down…
“You have got to be the sexiest woman on earth,” he said in a labored voice.
She clenched all over. “I want you,” she whispered. She had been wanting him for weeks, whether she’d admitted it to herself or not. Now that he was here, that he was touching her, she couldn’t help but feel overwhelming arousal.
He kissed the back of her neck. He peeled away her robe, tossing it on the floor.
She sighed. And then she helped him get her pajamas off, unbuttoning the top, shimmying out of the pants.
He caressed her bare back, her bare ass, her legs.
She knew that she should be self-conscious, naked in her kitchen. She should be worried about the imperfections of her body, should be worried that she was displaying something unpleasant to him. But she didn’t care about any of that. She felt free and happy and turned on, and he seemed to like her body, so what did she know, anyway?
He backed away. His voice was gruff. “Turn around.”
She shut her eyes.
“Show me,” he murmured.
She did. She turned against the refrigerator, head down, shy.
But then, it was almost as if she felt his gaze on her, and it gave her strength. Slowly, confidently, she lifted her face. She stared him down. She squared her shoulders, arched her back. She presented her nude body to him.
He was still dressed, but her nudity didn’t make her feel weak or vulnerable. She felt strong and sexy.
He was clearly affected by the sight of her. His gaze swept over her body, and his breath grew unsteady.
She smiled.
He lurched towards her. “You’re beautiful,” he rasped.
And she felt beautiful. For some reason, she felt as if she could see her body the way he saw it—high round breasts, a small waist, ample hips, luscious legs. She felt like a pin-up girl. She tugged him close, wrapping one leg up around his body.
He groaned, his hands seeking out her breasts, cupping them, teasing her nipples.
She groaned too. His touch felt good.
His other hand slid between their bodies to brush her thighs. Then his hand inched forward to touch her most sensitive place.
Her breath caught in her throat.
And she was transfixed, pinned against the refrigerator, with his hands on her breasts and her sex, touching her and driving her insane. She gave in to the pleasure. She gloried in it. She surrendered, and he touched her for a very long time.
His mouth on her jaw. “I want to see this.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. He’d seen everything. She was naked.
But he was moving her—moving them both—away from the refrigerator to a nearby counter.
“Up,” he growled, and he lifted her. (Well, maybe she helped a little bit. It wasn’t as if she was light as a feather, after all.) But then he had her sitting on the counter.
He pushed her knees apart, and then she understood.
He touched her, gazing deep into the center of her, pushing aside her folds and creases, exploring, and then returning to her most sensitive spot.
She could hardly catch her breath. She’d never experienced something so erotic, never had a man look at her in quite this way before. Maybe she had been too self-conscious to allow it, she wasn’t sure. But the hunger in Ryder’s eyes as he touched her body made her quiver.
“I want to see too,” she said suddenly. “I want to see you.”
He looked up at her face.
She reached for his shirt, grabbing handfuls of it again. She tugged it up and over his head. He was bare-chested then. Beautiful, tanned, muscled, hulking… She touched him. He was both hard and soft. And so, so warm. She sighed.
He kissed her.
He unbuttoned his jeans.
She broke the kiss to watch him slide them off.
And then there he was. He was hard and thick and long and just as pretty there as he was everywhere else.
She wrapped her hand around him and stroked.
He let out a noisy breath.
And then he was kissing her again, and his thumb was drawing frenzied circles on her clit, and she was pumping at him, rubbing his hardness, and it was all ecstasy, all wonderful, all bliss.
The way she sat on the counter, he was between her thighs, just at the perfect spot to take her, and she wanted him. God, how she wanted…
He pulled back. He was out of breath. “Wait.”
“What?” She was confused.
He stopped her hand, prying it away from his shaft. “Hold on,” he gasped.
Now, she was worried. S
he had a sudden urge to cover herself. What had seemed erotic a minute ago was starting to feel vaguely ridiculous and—
“Before… last time, I said something stupid,” he said. “I said that stupid thing about STDs, and—”
“The lupine virus?” she said. “I didn’t get it.”
“Well, we should—”
She shook her head. “I don’t care.”
He raised his eyebrows.
The fire was returning to her, all the bravery she’d discovered when he removed her clothes. She wanted to lay it all out there, even if it was risky to say something like this out loud. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to live in this house and teach high school English. I want to run away with you. I want to go work at that carnival. I know that we don’t really know each other, but—”
He cut her off with a fierce kiss.
And in one, swift, slippery stroke, he was inside her.
She gasped.
“I do know you,” he murmured into her ear, his fingers digging into her hips, holding her in place as he drove himself into her.
She moaned. He filled her up, he made her feel like she was bursting in the sweetest of ways. She wrapped her legs around him.
“I know your heart. Before, when I wasn’t a man.” He buried himself in her. “It’s something I sensed.”
She kissed him. She knew him too, knew him in some primal, savage way. Knew he was good and gentle and noble. And she wanted nothing more than to be with a man like that. That was what was important.
They were joined together there on the counter, both drunk on each other’s bodies.
She threw back her head, moaning out her pleasure.
His lips found her nipples. His hand went between them again.
She wasn’t sure how long it went on. It was like a whirlwind of pleasure, being swept away into an alternate universe where time no longer mattered. Every stroke of him, every caress, pushed her deeper and deeper into pleasure.
And when she finally tunneled as far as she could, burrowed inside, the pleasure became so intense that it breathed and convulsed. She lost herself in it, and she found her release, climaxing again and again in this deep, sweet, warm place of joy.
Midnight Moonlight Page 16