by Sam Crescent
There it was. The unnamed vixen beneath him convulsed as an unmistakable cry of ecstasy sang through the trees, her walls clamping around him and triggering his own hard release. Her breast popped from his mouth as the roar poured from his throat, his body taking over to sneak in a couple more hard and fast thrusts before finally bursting. It was all he could do not to collapse on top of her.
Maddox couldn’t remember the last time he’d come that hard.
Chapter Two
Present Day
Aniya gave herself a reflexive shake before shifting out of her fur in the enclosed entryway. As always, her body tingled, an effect of going from four-legged, feline, and furry, to two-legged, human, and fleshy. It felt like trying to walk on limbs that weren’t quite awake, though the sensation faded almost immediately. She moved to the long, narrow table along the far wall and lifted the appropriate terrycloth robe that was always left out for whomever came to visit without their own change of clothing. There were several robes of varying sizes available—her mother was thoughtful like that.
Properly robed, Aniya pulled her long, straight black hair free from confinement and entered the heart of the building, in search of her father. It struck her, as it always did, how unchanged everything around her felt as she walked down the hall. She’d grown up in this house, as her father had before her, and in all her life it had looked almost exactly the same. The paint would fade and be touched up, but always the same color. The furniture would wear down and need replacing, but always with something similar and in exactly the same places as the old. They’re such traditionalists.
“We like what we like,” her mother would always say. It wasn’t a statement Aniya could argue with when the evidence was so strong.
But Aniya was different. She craved excitement. She loved experiencing new things. Sure, sometimes they went poorly, but sometimes … sometimes they went so well. She had to suppress the shiver at the flash of a memory, quickly shoving it down before her body could awaken to it. That was definitely at the top of the list of worthwhile risks. Just the memory of that wolf, whose name she’d deliberately failed to get, had brought her to orgasm several times since that day. Damn him, anyway. Why couldn’t he be one of us? Like it was his fault for being born the wrong species. Probably, there was something wrong with her for ever having lusted after a wolf in the first place.
That, however, was a reflection for another day. It wouldn’t do for her to be reminiscing about her brief affair when she met up with her father, Regis. She’d gone two years without him finding out—she intended to go the rest of her life.
She found him in the sunroom, which he used as an office, leaning back in his fancy office chair and gazing out the window. Though terming it a window was putting it lightly. It was floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, and in the center was a custom-built pair of French doors. The window wall faced westward, allowing for maximum sunlight despite the respectable natural shading of forest trees outside. Aniya understood why her father had claimed this as his office space. It was the most beautiful room in the house.
“Aniya,” her father called, turning his attention to her with a calm smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners, accentuating his age. Shifters lived for a significantly longer time than humans, it was true, but they did still grow old over time. Her father had ruled over their clan of werecougars for nearly two centuries, and he’d been an adult when he’d taken command.
“Hi, Dad,” Aniya said, smiling warmly at him and stepping up to give him a quick hug. He looked tired, a thought she had far too often these days. She tamped it firmly down, however, and answered his question before he could voice it. “I’m heading into the city. With the twins’ birthdays coming up, I thought I’d see what kind of obnoxious gift I could find to send to them.”
His eyes flickered with amusement even as his lips dipped in a frown. “Aniya,” he said again. “You go into town too much as it is. Just mail them something from here.”
Aniya rolled her eyes. “You’re so paranoid, Dad. It’s just a place. Places aren’t bad. Besides, I came here specifically to offer to pick up anything you or Mom might want while I’m out.” She flashed him her best sweet smile. It was manipulative, yes, but so much easier than an actual argument. She didn’t want to rile her father, and she wanted even less to rile her Alpha, who could technically command her to stay whenever he wanted. Not that he ever had.
Her father sighed and turned his gaze briefly toward the doorway. “I know what you’re doing,” he warned.
Aniya moved and lifted an old photograph he kept on his desk, of her and her twin baby brothers when they were younger. All three of them had been rambunctious, but when it came to her brothers, their behavior had been written off as that which was to be expected of future Alphas. In her case, though, it had always earned her heavy sighs and exasperating arguments. Apparently, only boys were allowed to live freely and play by their own rules. A subject which she suspected she would always bristle over.
Instead, she turned the picture around and held in front of her father patiently. “Dad,” she said. “I’m not a child anymore. Just because I haven’t moved away to another clan doesn’t mean I’m still young and naïve. You don’t need to worry so much.” Honestly, if exposing herself in a moment of raw, thoughtless passion to a wolf hadn’t killed her, the city would be a cakewalk. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t gone before.
“Fine,” Regis said at length. “But check with your mother in case she wants anything first. And don’t do anything reckless.”
****
“I don’t think I can ever understand you,” Ty declared as he stepped up beside Maddox, already shaking his head. “I mean, there’s no harm in tasting sometimes.”
Maddox rolled his eyes. Ty, his Beta and longtime friend, was, again, referring to his utter disinterest in any of the pack’s females. In truth, it was unfortunate. Maddox was in the prime of his life and, as Alpha, he had a certain responsibility to provide a future for the pack. Since the majority of Alphas were sired by Alphas themselves, it was commonly expected for the reigning Alpha to take a mate young and start a family fairly quickly. Maddox, though, had been sitting at the top of the pack for a little over six years already and not once shown enough interest in a pack female to claim her for his own.
If I could look outside the pack… But he couldn’t, not when the woman he really wanted wasn’t a wolf at all. Or at least human—which would have been problematic enough.
Ty released an audible sigh, heavy with dramatized exhaustion. “Okay, what was wrong with this one?”
Knowing his friend would only continue pressing, Maddox knocked him upside the head. “What would Mimi say if she heard you talking like this? Aren’t mated men supposed to immediately forget about the existence of other females?”
Ty laughed easily. “Mimi’s not so insecure,” he said. “She knows I’m only looking on your behalf. My eyes are for her.”
Maddox gagged and turned, striding toward the edge of their naturally sheltered territory. Maddox’s grandfather had settled this piece of the forest in his youth, with a larger and heavily male pack, as Maddox understood it. Though they ventured out for food and play, of course, their real territory remained tucked in a natural crevice where two mountains met. The sloping hillsides and towering trees provided solid cover from prying eyes, and the canopy of trees helped filter out the summer’s direct heat or the winter’s cold rains. Sometime since settling there, Maddox’s family and pack had dug out several crevices they called caves into the sides of the mountains. With the additional convenience of a large creek that ran past on one side of the settlement, as well as the accumulated boulders and shrubbery over the generations, they had all they needed for a good, simple life.
Except, in the modern world, it wasn’t safe to live blindly in the forest. Maddox understood that, and as Alpha, it was his job to occasionally trek into the nearest city and touch base. Sometimes he made Ty do it, but with Ty newly mated, he suspected his w
ell-meaning Beta would become distracted.
“I need to go into town,” Maddox declared. “Make sure there aren’t rumors floating around about people turning into wolves in the woods. Redirect any predator-based hunting parties. The usual.”
“Always fun,” Ty said from half a step behind him. “But don’t think I’m so easily dissuaded. When was the last time you got laid?”
A simple question was all it took for the memory to rush back. Maddox ground his teeth in an effort to keep from physically reacting to it. He knew exactly how long it’d been since he’d last made love to a woman. That luscious werecougar who’d made no bones about seducing him after their chance encounter on a hunt. With the adrenaline already coursing through his system, and the sight of her delectable body, it had never once occurred to him to stop her. Even two years later, the only thing he regretted was never catching her name.
“Tell me your name,” he’d murmured against her skin, his lips at her throat, as he came down from the high of an explosive orgasm.
She moaned and arched a little into him as if she were stretching, reminding him of her feline nature, and angled her head until her teeth and tongue teased his ear. “Shh. Don’t ruin it. The anonymity is part of the fun.”
He’d agreed, in a twisted way, but he should have insisted. Or followed her scent later.
It had been two years and he hadn’t felt the least bit compelled to touch another woman. He hadn’t seen his cougar since that afternoon, hadn’t caught her scent, and though he was pretty sure he knew where to find her, he knew hunting her down would raise all kinds of hell.
That was the other problem.
She was a cougar. He was a wolf. More to the point, he was Alpha.
For longer than he even knew, their packs had been teetering on the brink of war. It stemmed from some old rivalry that he prayed ran deeper than ‘cats versus dogs,’ and for the most part, the two species did their best to avoid contact. Maddox had heard stories, most of which had been tales even during his father’s tenure, but he had yet to have a problem with the felines. An encounter, however—well, he’d certainly had one of those.
Exasperated, Maddox raked a hand through his hair. “Do you ever think about things besides sex anymore?”
Ty barked out a laugh and clapped him on the back. “I’m newly mated, Alpha. So, no, not really.”
Kudos for honesty, I guess. Maddox came to a stop at the invisible territory line. “Just try to clear your head long enough to keep everything running while I’m out, got it? Don’t make me be an ass about it.”
Ty grinned and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Relax, Alpha. The pack’s important to me too. I’ll keep watch for you.”
“Good answer,” Maddox said, inclining his head in acknowledgment. He stepped back a couple of feet, stripped, handed off his clothes for safekeeping, and shifted to his wolf form. All he had to do was unlock the cage in his mind, releasing the more primal part of himself, and the change took over from there. His muscles rippled in waves, a disorienting kind of numbness taking hold of his pain receptors, and then he’d settled on four sturdy paws, sporting a healthy coat of dark-gray and white fur. The picture of a large, not-so-ordinary wolf.
“Safe travels!” Ty called after him as Maddox turned and trotted into the neutral part of the forest.
He appreciated the sentiment, but he wasn’t particularly worried. Around here, he was the primary predator.
Chapter Three
“I swear this city gets bigger every time I see it,” Aniya declared as she and Liv made their way to the UPS store.
Beside her, Olivia, or Liv, as Aniya called her, laughed easily. “You know that’s not really true. You’re just not very used to it, so you forget what it’s like.”
Aniya shrugged, acknowledging that her friend was probably right.
She had run into Liv on a sojourn into the city several years past, in a bar, and the two had hit it off. Aniya had been in a particularly rebellious state, so had crashed on Liv’s couch for over a week before reluctantly turning tail and heading home. In that time they’d come to know each other incredibly well, and so whenever Aniya visited the city, she made a point to drag her human friend along on her adventures. Liv had yet to complain, even though this time her new fiancé seemed to find Aniya’s unannounced arrival off-putting.
“Well,” Aniya said, lifting the chilled, sweet coffee concoction she held in one hand, “I’m sure this place wasn’t there before. I’d remember.”
Liv grinned. “Please don’t tell me caffeine is the were-cat equivalent of catnip.”
Aniya narrowed her eyes. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
Laughing now, Liv waved a hand at her. “You’re so easy! No, no, that place went up about four or five months ago. Probably less than a month after your last visit, actually.”
Popping the straw back into her mouth, Aniya said, “Glad you haven’t been holding out on me, then.” The drink really was divine. Liv swore the larger cities had at least a dozen of those shops in them and Aniya could only imagine how dangerous that would be. Her father would fillet her if she traveled down into the valley to visit a main city—again—but sometimes she was so tempted. It’d been well over a decade since her last time, after all. And it was hard to stay up on current events in the world by just keeping tabs on one city from time to time.
“Now are you sure you’re not getting them anything else?” Liv asked as they neared the shipping store. “I know you said birthdays aren’t a huge celebration, but it seems like you’ve gone out of your way for a small thing…”
Reflexively glancing down at the shopping bag in her other hand, Aniya grinned. “I’m sure. They’re easy to goad, it’s enough.” She bumped into Liv with her arm, adding, “Besides, the shopping was an excuse. Once this is done, I have all day.”
“I have so missed you,” Liv said, smiling as she opened the door.
They filed into the small shipping store, where Liv held Aniya’s drink while Aniya went about sending off the joke gifts she’d found for her brothers and the letters her mother had sent with her. The male working the counter helped her easily enough, though it didn’t escape her notice that he was interested. It wafted off him. But his youthful baby face didn’t appeal to her in the slightest, so she kept her smile small and casual, pretending to remain oblivious.
“Too young for you?” Liv asked after they’d stepped back onto the street.
Aniya sucked on her straw, an image of her nameless wolf watching her with lust in his hazel-green eyes as she rode him popped up in her mind. She barely tasted the swallow of her drink. “Among other things.” Not wanting to get distracted while she was out with her friend, Aniya turned the conversation around. “So, you’re getting married? That was unexpected. Five months ago you were on the fence about him.”
Liv shrugged. “I know,” she said. “We were in a rough patch. But what can I say? We made up. The truth is I thought about dumping him and it broke my heart just to think the words. So instead we argued about it for a couple of weeks, and that was horrible, but we got better. He only popped the question about three weeks ago.” She turned a bright smile to Aniya. “I know you might not be able to answer me yet, but, I’d really love it if you could come to the wedding.”
Tears stung Aniya’s eyes at the offer. They were good friends, but she’d always felt guilty, because at the end of the day she had to keep their bond a secret. Her old-fashioned father would likely not approve of her being friends with a human. He would definitely not approve of that human knowing that Aniya was a were. So to have the woman who, really, was her best friend, invite her to her most intimate and personal affair was touching. A gift Aniya didn’t know if she’d ever be able to reciprocate.
Despite that, her answer was easy. “I would be honored.”
Liv came to a stop and pulled Aniya into a hug. “Thank you! Next time I see you, we’ll have a date. I promise.”
Aniya returned the embrace as best she coul
d with one free hand. “Deal.”
She was so caught up in the moment she nearly failed to process the tingling sense of danger behind her. In the city, there were so many pairs of footfalls it became a headache trying to isolate them all, so she’d missed the fact that one pair was too close. Until it was close enough to come with the indescribable vibrations of a threat that made her inner feline want to turn and flee.
Aniya pulled back from the hug and turned in time to find a large man, maybe six-foot or six-foot-two, looming over them with a scowl. He was muscular, in a tries-too-hard kind of way, and despite the fairly clean clothes and overlaying scent of soap, she smelled something else too. Violence. Old blood. Whether he intended to harm them, she couldn’t be sure, but the proclivity didn’t seem to ever be out of the question if the scent was so strong. However it was the blood that concerned her.
That blood was coyote blood.
Clinging to his skin after at least one wash, it couldn’t have been more than a day old. This man, he’s a poacher!
“Ah,” Liv said awkwardly, “you can go around, you know. There’s room.”
He narrowed his eyes at Liv, shifted his focus back to Aniya, and Aniya heard his teeth grind. Was he going to say something? Could he somehow possibly know what she was?
“Move,” he finally said.
No, Aniya realized, he didn’t know what she was. He was simply an asshole. She had no patience for assholes. Returning his glare, Aniya said, “You move.”
“Aniya,” Liv whispered, her scent spiking with nerves.
“What did you say, woman?” The disdain in his voice was galling.
Gesturing with her drink to the open area of the sidewalk, Aniya repeated, “You move. Like she said, there’s room.”