by Kele Moon
“Come down here. You’ll dent Jason’s ride and he’s going to be pissed.”
“Stay away from me!”
“I can’t do that.” The guy shook his head. “You’re a little meaner than I’m used to, but you smell too fucking good. We’re going to have to work something out.”
She clutched the poker, feeling her hands shake.
Did these Werewolves miss that no-means-no part of health class?
“I’m not like you. I’m…” She swallowed hard. “Not like you. I don’t grow a tail. Now shoo!” She waved her hand toward the woods. “Go chase a ball or something.”
The man’s mouth fell wide open and he gaped at her. He blinked more than a few times, and then slammed his mouth shut. “Did you really just tell me to go chase a ball?”
How stupid is this guy?
She frowned. Didn’t he know his own kind? She was still wound up and more than a little irritable after the day from hell she was having, so she couldn’t help but snap at this growling Werewolf, “Have you ever heard the term ‘too stupid to live,’ ’cause you could write the book on it, dumbass. I’m not a Werewolf, and I wouldn’t be interested even if I were.”
“That’s it.” The Werewolf stopped at the back of the SUV. “I’ll pay for the dents myself when Jason freaks out.” He jumped and the entire SUV moved when his weight hit the back bumper. “Lying bitch. I know you’re a wolf. New bitches come into our territory looking for men to hook up with. What’s a matter? Don’t you think I’m good enough for you?”
Brandi screamed, almost sliding down the windshield when she heard a snarl. The Werewolf grabbed her, his grip steely and unbreakable despite his lanky frame. She screamed again as the fire poker was torn from her hand and tossed to the ground.
It started to rain, but she fought like her life depended on it, knowing she probably looked like a mad woman, kicking and screeching like she was.
“Son of a bitch,” the man cursed while he fought to keep ahold of her. The rain fell harder, making her slippery as the fine coating of dust on her turned to mud. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to play rough back and you won’t like it!”
“Drop her.” A low, inhuman growl cut through the raging storm, vibrating with a fury so potent it was almost tangible in the air. “Gently.”
The man fighting with Brandi spun, holding her to him like a child clinging to a prize. Brandi saw Jason storming out of the woods totally naked. Her gaze locked with his just as he growled viciously and snarled, showing those sharp, deadly teeth in a way that made the other man look like a puppy.
“I said drop her gently, Paul. Be very careful or I will kill you.”
“She took a fire poker to me, Jason. The bitch is in heat and she took a damn fire poker to me when I was just trying to help her out. What bitch turns down a perfectly good male when she’s smelling like this? She’s crazy!”
“You’re treating a human under my protection like a bitch in heat?” Jason sounded completely incredulous, despite the inhuman rumble still heavy in his voice. “Please give me a reason to challenge you. Give me a reason to save this fucking pack from your stupidity!”
The growl he let out was deafening, his teeth seemed deadly as he jumped at the car like he couldn’t help himself. Brandi and the other wolf nearly tumbled off the roof with how fast they both jerked back as Jason shouted, “She was in my house! Under my protection! That means she’s mine! And you touched her!”
The other Werewolf, Paul, did fall off the roof with how quickly he let go of Brandi. She turned around, watching as he changed into a brown wolf before her eyes and took off running with a whimper she actually heard over the wind and rain.
Jason chased him, still human, still growling as though he was anything but human. He got all the way to the edge of the woods as the younger Werewolf slipped away. Then Jason yelled into the dense forage, “You better hide, you little shit! Stay out in these goddamn woods for the next three days ’cause I’m not forgetting. Hide like the rat you are. You go home to your mother and she will be watching me beat your ass! I’ll make you cry in front of the whole pack!”
Brandi stood there on the roof as she watched Jason stalk back. Her hair was sticking to her neck, the shirt she was wearing clung to her body like a second skin, leaving very little to the imagination, but she was still wearing a whole hell of a lot more than Jason.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he stopped in front of the SUV, buck-ass naked in the rain, to look up at her. “He’s young and stupid. You’re a beautiful woman, but I don’t know why the fuck he thought a human was in heat. Rain and dust, I guess. It messes up our sense of smell. Must’ve been wishful thinking on his part.” Jason’s voice got a little husker as he tilted his head and eyed her legs. “This probably didn’t help your shitty day.”
“You think?” she asked dully.
Jason looked genuinely abashed. “Can I help you down?”
“How about putting on some pants first?” She looked to the porch. “The naked thing is a little distracting.”
Brandi stayed on the vehicle, rain-soaked and miserable, with her heart still beating the hell out of her ribs. She was shaky in the aftermath, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching as Jason bent over and picked up his jeans when he got to the porch.
She wasn’t impressed with herself that she studied him, but she did.
That adrenaline she noticed earlier seemed to multiply a thousand fold as she admired that firm, muscular ass in the halo of the porch light before he tugged his jeans on, buttoned them and shoved the keys in his hand into his pocket.
She glanced away before he caught her staring at him, and folded her arms over her chest protectively. This day from hell had officially broken her, because she should not be standing there soaking wet in a strange man’s T-shirt, lusting over him five minutes after almost being sexually assaulted.
“Are you ready to come down?”
Hearing his voice only made it worse. A shiver of raw, uncontained desire washed over her and she shook from the force of it, but said nothing. She crossed her arms tighter and refused to acknowledge him.
She didn’t even trust her voice, that’s how deeply he was affecting her.
After waiting hours for Jason to get home, needing him back to the point that she nearly ripped his cabin apart out of nerves. She couldn’t speak to him, and she didn’t dare look at him, because he would know. He’d know something about this day had made her crazy. She should not be shaking with desire like this after being chased…like a dog.
Again.
“I said I was sorry, Brandi.” Jason waited as she stood there trying to get herself under control. “You’re strong. Far more so than any other human I’ve met. Please don’t choose now to break down.”
She did have an impossibly difficult day; so much so, she wouldn’t have been able to imagine it in her wildest nightmares. Brandi decided to give herself a little credit and admit, “I don’t feel like myself. I’m shaky.”
“Well, I guess so. Paul is very lucky I didn’t fucking bury him for that stunt. If he wasn’t so young, I would’ve. Young wolves, they still have puppy tendencies. They’re not known for thinking before they jump.” Jason’s voice was still gruff, a little inhuman, but he sounded sincere again, like the man she remembered doing dishes with. “Come down and I’ll make you a late dinner.”
Jason reached out and caressed her bare ankle, sweeping this thumb over the back of it and she found herself leaning down before she made a conscious decision to do it. Jason took her hand and helped her climb off the SUV.
Brandi chalked it up to her shitty day when she let her guard down and wrapped her arms around him. She clung to him, feeling safer than she had in a long time.
Jason didn’t hug her back. It felt as though his entire body tensed and every muscle was suddenly steel. The shock was icy cold, but her face was on fire despite the chill in the air.
Feeling completely mortified, she let him go. “I’m sorry
. It’s just…nerves.”
She looked to Jason, who still hadn’t said anything. Though it was dark, she was close enough to see how his eyes had dilated, unusually so, more animal-like than human, as if he was suddenly feral.
She couldn’t help but ask, “Are you okay? Is this a wolf thing?”
“I…” Jason blinked, his voice was gruffer than ever as he looked down at her, and then shook his head in a very wolf-like manner. “Yeah. It’s a wolf thing. We should go inside.”
Considering it was still raining, Brandi had to agree.
Jason put his hand on the small of her back as the two of them walked to the cabin, and again she was unnerved by how comforting it was. She wasn’t one to trust easily and she had to remind herself to guard her heart. Now more than ever, she should be careful. He wasn’t even human.
Jason is more.
A Werewolf who’d saved her…twice.
And that didn’t seem nearly as unnerving as it should.
Chapter Five
Jason was fucked.
Highly, irreversibly, and undeniably fucked on every single level.
Somehow, for reasons he couldn’t begin to comprehend, Brandi was in heat.
No wonder Paul had chased her on top of the SUV. The scent of female pheromones was so strong, it overrode the fact that she was human. Paul was young, with very little control, and a female in heat could make any male go crazy. Jason was barely holding it together ever since he smelled what the rain and mud had hidden, until she wrapped her arms around him as if she was looking for more than a hug.
Everything in him was focused on breathing slow and steady through his mouth, but it wasn’t working very well. Once they got inside the cabin, her scent was everywhere, drowning out all sense of reason. He could feel it sticking to his skin, sweet, feminine, making his dick hard and his mouth water. His canine teeth had grown long against his will, which was a first for him. He’d wanted women before. He’d been with females in heat, but this was different.
He wanted to bite Brandi.
Taste her.
Fuck her until they were both raw and aching.
The Werewolf chemistry that had created so many unions was working overtime on Jason, but she was human. He was fairly certain human males didn’t claim their mates like wolves did and fuck them until they both passed out in complete exhaustion. Humans bought flowers and went out to dinner to court a relationship. They didn’t sense a connection immediately and act on it like nature intended. They looked for all kinds of tiny clues and sorted through a million feelings before they hooked up, and eventually broke up after all that soul searching.
It had always seemed like a very slow and tedious process to Jason, but right now he would give anything to have taken more after his father. To be clueless like the humans, instead of feral and alert to sexual compatibility like the wolves, because he was more than aware of just how compatible he was with Brandi. She’d appealed to him since he’d first laid eyes on her, but now, it was clearly something much more carnal.
It was obvious she sensed it too. Even as a human, she had clung to him with an innate feminine instinct to be cared for and protected. He’d have to be blind to miss it.
Jason was half-human, it gave him a semblance of control, but even still, it was almost impossible to stop himself from going after her and letting nature take its course. His shirt was clinging to Brandi in all the right places, showing off the curves of her hips and clinging to her full tits that he wanted to lick, bite and suck on until she was writhing and begging under him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, why?” he mumbled, still watching her wring out her long, curly hair. She was slightly bent over, putting her perfect, rounded ass on display. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Brandi looked at him with wide, innocent blue eyes, making him feel like the big bad wolf, plotting to get her into bed and ravage her after she’d been dealing with feral wolves all day.
“You growled.”
“I did.” Jason flinched, but he still couldn’t look away.
“Is that another wolf thing?”
He nodded, still trying to breathe through his mouth. Still fighting to look away, but staring instead. “It’s definitely a wolf thing.”
“I’m freezing my ass off.” She shivered as she straightened and obviously gave up on her hair. “You were gone a long time.”
“Sorry.” He flinched again, because it felt decidedly like he had failed to protect his mate, and that was a failure most male wolves couldn’t tolerate. “We located the tracks where they parked the van they brought you in and we followed them to the road. They’re gone. We didn’t find your car and we didn’t find any other wolves in the woods, either, but we’re putting out more patrols. They might grab another human to kill and leave as a challenge for our territory. We’re on alert. I had to talk to some of the other enforcers and it took some time.”
Even as he fought against smelling Brandi, he couldn’t help but notice the scent of blood. “You made Paul bleed?”
She glanced at the fireplace. “I hit him with the fire poker. It’s outside. He threw it away after he grabbed me.”
Jason arched an eyebrow, feeling himself tense for a different reason. Anything could’ve happened to her while dealing with a male wolf, even a young one, when she was in heat. “You thought you’d win against one of my kind with a fire poker?”
She hesitated. “It was the only weapon close to me. He had a key to your cabin. The door was locked. He unlocked it and walked in. Then he was naked and coming at me like…” She snapped her mouth shut. “What else could I do?
Jason slowly moved towards her. “Did he touch you, Brandi?”
Young or not, Paul was a dead wolf if he had done more than chase her.
She hesitated. “He just grabbed me, and then you came. Thank you for having wonderful timing. It seems you’re very good at playing the superhero. Lucky for me. I was scared.”
“I was on my way home and I heard you scream. You just made me run faster.” He shuddered, trying not to think about what would’ve happened if he hadn’t heard her. “Maybe you should take a shower. Warm up. I’ll put more wood on the fire.”
She nodded. “What about you?”
“I have a shower in my room.”
“Won’t we run out of hot water?”
He couldn’t help but snort, because he planned on taking the coldest, most miserably icy shower possible. “No, we’re good. Use all the hot water you want, darlin’.”
****
Jason thought Brandi taking a shower would give him a reprieve, but her scent was still everywhere, making every muscle in his body tighten. He threw some logs on the fire, and then went to the SUV to get his phone out of the lockbox under the passenger seat where he’d stored it.
Even outside, in the rain, Jason couldn’t stop smelling her desire now that he knew it was there. So he got in the vehicle and called one of his alphas, looking for guidance.
“What’s going on?” Desmon answered on the first ring, his voice tense like it got when they knew another pack was trying to move in on their territory. “I better not hear you say it’s bad news.”
“It’s bad news.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” Desmon groaned. “Why don’t they just leave us alone? We don’t even know these goddamn wolves.”
“’Cause we’ve earned the reputation for being the hardest pack to take down in Northern California. We’re a small pack, but we’re strong. The power play is massive. Plus, we have two alphas. That’s twice the challenge, and—”
“Thank you, Jason. It was a rhetorical question. I wasn’t actually looking for a response. I know the issues, I’m just irritated by them. What it is about wolves? They always have to go and piss in someone else’s territory to prove their dicks are bigger. Like sharing a border with Goodwins isn’t bad enough.”
“Sorry, it was just easier to worry about your problems than my own.” Jason shook
his head as he said it. “Somehow I put her in heat. I’m so fucked, Des.”
“The human?” Desmon sounded as shocked as Jason felt. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“Nothing.” Jason shrugged “She was injured. It wasn’t major, just a small head wound. I licked it, but—”
“A human let you lick her head?”
Jason ran a hand through his wet hair. “She was asleep. I thought I’d help her heal.”
Desmon was quiet for a moment. “Were you bleeding at the time? Is it possible that your blood mingled with hers?”
“I had a cut on my lip.”
“Damn it, Jason. You’re half human. Didn’t you think about how mixing your blood with hers might cause a reaction? Let me guess. You were turned on at the time?”
Jason winced as he admitted, “Yes.”
“Wow, you are fucked.” Desmon snorted. “Half the pack’s out protecting the borders with Jazz. They’ll be out for the next couple days, and you’re going to have a lot of company unless you find a way to cool her off.”
“She’s already traumatized,” Jason reminded him. “She was nearly killed by Weres. It’s been a really bad fucking day for her.”
“She’ll have a worse day if she ends up with a houseful of unmated males wanting to fuck her. Not to mention, leaving a woman to deal with a blood-induced heat is cruel. It’s agonizing for them. I know you don’t like humans. I can take care of her if you have an issue. I’ve been with human women. I can be gentle.”
Jason growled. Even though Desmon was his alpha, he couldn’t help the viciousness of his wolf that wanted to rip his friend apart for that suggestion.
Low and threatening, he snapped, “Don’t even think about touching her.”