by Eden Myles
No, she would need to talk him down from this madness somehow. “Ethan, perhaps in a few years…”
“Jilly, in a few years we’ll both be too old to chase after a child,” Ethan said, laughing to conceal his embarrassment. She could tell he was already regretting bringing this up.
She offered him a patient smile. “You’re right, of course…sometimes I lose track of time…but, Ethan, you just made junior partner. And PAWS is talking about expanding the sanctuary. I’m not sure this is the right time…”
His face fell. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Patronize me like some child.” Now he sounded angry rather than embarrassed. He shook his head. “Every time you disagree with me, you give me a smile and a little nod and make it sound like you agree with me, but you don’t. Then you make some longwinded excuse about why we’re not cut out to be parents. If you don’t want a family with me, even an adopted one, just say so…”
“I’m not trying to patronize you! Ethan!”
How had their romantic little night turned into this stupid drama? Great Odin, give me strength! she thought. Gods, she wished Joshie had never called tonight!
He started getting up, but she grabbed him by the shoulders to keep him with her. She shook her head. “I want to raise a child with you, Ethan, I really do. I just don’t know if I’m ready. If we’re ready to be parents.”
He gave her a hurt expression. “If not now, Jilly, then when? Five years from now? Ten? I’m thirty-two years old. Most guys my age already have a family…”
“You’re not being fair. We talked about this! You agreed…”
“I know we talked about this!” he shouted back, sounding hurt and angry. “I want to talk about it again!”
She gave him a look. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“I don’t know. A few months. Ever since Joshie and Tess.”
Now she felt a surge of anger. It took a moment of complete self-will to keep her eyes from going to wolf. “If you felt this strongly about the subject, why didn’t you bring it up before?”
“I don’t know, I just…ah, never mind.” He pulled away from her, clearly hurt but unwilling to let her see, and grabbed his pillow before marching into the living room.
“Ethan!”
He waved her back. “Just…give me a moment, all right?”
She sighed and dropped back down onto the bed. Fine. If he was going to be all passive-aggressive about this, he could go sleep on the couch. All she’d wanted was a little fun tonight, a lot of sex, and some cuddling, but he had to go make it all about his human drama.
Humans, she thought, before turning over with a huff and burying her head under her pillow. They could be so…annoying sometimes!
***
Chapter Two
Ethan slipped back into bed around midnight, as she’d expected he would. She rolled over and put her hand on his chest, her fingers splayed possessively over his heart. He covered it and looked over at her, his sad, beautiful face carved in the somber light of a full moon pouring through the bedroom window. “Sorry, Jilly. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I didn’t mean to be such a jerk.”
She smiled. They never could stay mad at each other for long. “You’re not a jerk. You’re a passionate young man. The man I love.” She didn’t stretch out their disagreement by talking about it further. It was over with and done. She leaned in and kissed his nose. “I love you, Ethan Twofeathers.”
“Me too.”
“And if it’s this important to you, I think we should talk about that adoption.”
His eyes positively sparkled. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.” She bit her lip as she contemplated making the biggest and potentially most dangerous decision of her life—letting a human into her world. “But there are some things you need to know about me first, things that might influence your desire to raise a child with me.” If they were going to do this, be parents, a family, it was high time she laid all the cards out on the table. Either Ethan would accept her as she was, fur, fangs and everything, or he would not. She was tired of keeping this secret from the most important man in her life.
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “What things? You’re not like an alien or something?”
She laughed. “Tomorrow, Ethan. Tonight, make love to me.”
He did, slowly and gently, kissing the side of her neck and moaning out her name while he rocked his hips, his incredibly hard erection sliding wet and urgent over her belly. “Not that way,” she told him and turned over in bed, bracing her elbows on the pillows and elevating her ass. “Take me from behind. I want you to mate me hard and fast, Ethan.”
He chuckled at that and kissed the back of her neck. “Whatever you want, babe.” He rose up on his knees and positioned himself behind her. He swept both hands down her body, his grip rough and possessive, the way she liked it. She wriggled demandingly and he gripped her at the hips to keep her still while he slid his fat cock between her legs, lazily seesawing it over her throbbing core before entering her a few inches. He wasn’t long, but he was thick, which counted for more. She loved the feel of him. They fit each other so well, like they were made for one another. He teased her wet opening before withdrawing and then repeating the gesture, entering her with a series of shallow thrusts. She groaned at the feel of him and sank her sharp fingernails into the pillow.
He stroked over her aching emptiness before entering her fully and making a circular motion with his hips so his cock rubbed and stretched at her walls, teasing over her g-spot. “Hard,” she bit out, her voice guttural with desire, and he obediently increased his rhythm, bucking his hips faster and faster until his balls slapped her ass with his urgent need to mate with her, to be one with her. She moaned out commands, urging him on, telling him faster, harder, now, now, now.
“Christ, I love it when you push me around,” he laughed.
She felt her wolf rise to the surface, her nails lengthen, and her teeth sharpen ton points in her mouth. She muffled the primal cry that lodged in her throat in her pillow. She knew her eyes were now all wolf, no longer human, but luckily, she faced away from Ethan and he didn’t see the changes in her. “Dear sweet gods, Ethan, I love you,” she growled out through the pillow. “I need you.”
He sank one hand in her hair, giving it a rough tug while he pumped his hips. The sharp, sudden pain only increased her desire for him. “Me too, Jilly. Me too.”
Closing her eyes, she imagined the two of them in a moonlit forest, mating like the primal animals they were, bucking and growling and scratching. Then, out of nowhere, she sensed a presence, and a huge, proud wolf with a shining, ebony coat and stunning yellow eyes stepped out of the undergrowth and watched them fuck for several minutes before joining them. In her mind’s eye, she saw the wolf stretch and shimmer into Giovanni’s breathtaking male form before making them a threesome. He mated them both—first her, roughly, his clawed hands clutching her breasts, then Ethan, his beautiful cock pumping in and out of her boyfriend, his teeth in Ethan’s shoulder.
She cried out as she came for Ethan, head tossed back, voice raw with lust, fingernails ripping gouges in the bedclothes. Ethan was so lost in the bliss of the moment he hardly noticed. They came together, grunting and crying out. Ethan shivered and Jill’s powerful inner muscles milked his cock clean of come. Afterward, she snuggled against Ethan’s chest and eventually they drifted off to sleep together.
It was the howling that woke her some time later.
Her dreams had been deep and detailed, like her fantasy, but more real. When she woke up, she thought at first that she was still in the forest, running with Giovanni and Ethan, who had taken on a wolfen form. Then she saw she wasn’t. She was in bed, with her human Ethan. She sat up, the sheet falling away from her breasts, and listened. It had to be the dream, she thought, some fantasy conjured in her waking moments.
Moments later it came again—a high-pitched, frightened howl, followed by several
sharp yips. Maya, she thought, her heart fluttering inside her chest. Maya was calling out to her in distress!
They lived on the very edge of the sanctuary, and it wasn’t unusual for the animals to cry out in the night. Sometimes it seemed they were holding full conversations, and she lay awake for hours, listening to them. She could identify every call, knew what they all meant. This was Maya crying out in terror.
She glanced over at Ethan, but he was dead asleep beside her. He wouldn’t have heard it anyway; it was at least five miles away and no human could hear that far.
Jill slipped out of bed, trying not to rock it and wake Ethan, and reached for the jogging suit she kept on the nearby chair for emergencies, like when the vet called in an emergency in the middle of the night. In the six years of working for PAWS, she’d gotten very good at leaping from bed, barely awake, and driving to the site of an emergency. In thirty seconds flat she was fully dressed and pulling on her running shoes. She raced into the kitchen, grabbed up her keys and cell phone, and ran out to the Jeep parked a little askew on the white gravel drive.
As she drove up to the gates of the sanctuary and unlocked them with the remote she kept on her key ring, she wondered what had upset Maya so. She thought about texting Ethan in the event he woke up and wondered where she was, but he’d looked so tired, like he needed some uninterrupted shut-eye for a change, and she hated disturbing him with her PAWS-related crises. Besides, this was her responsibility, not his.
She eased the jeep through the electronic gates, wondering where Al, the security guard, was. Probably off getting a smoke in, she thought with a sigh as she turned right onto the gravel path that wound through the sanctuary.
Soon she was driving through the park, her headlights on and picking out the visitor’s area, concession stand, petting zoo, and rangers’ station. She pulled into her assigned parking space and cut the engine. The headlights flickered out, but she didn’t really need them anyway to see in the dark. The station was a small, artistically constructed log house outfitted with a handful of offices, an attached security shed, and the vet’s clinic located in the back. It was empty at this time of the night, with Al nowhere to be seen, but Jill had spent many a late night here. She knew where to get a tranq gun and ammo out of the gun cabinet in the barracks, just in case. She might have a rapport with animals, but she was no fool to rush into an unknown situation unarmed.
As she was exiting the rangers’ station, gun in hand, she noticed the llamas and goats in the petting zoo bleating and rushing hither and yon in their pens, which was distinctly unlike them. It didn’t make her feel any better about the present situation. She picked up her walkie, also gotten from the barracks, and tried getting Al on one of the frequencies they used.
No answer. Where the hell was he?
“I can’t stand around waiting for you, Al,” she said irritably as another howl pealed out over the sanctuary, making some peahens nesting in the low-hanging pear trees scream in alarm. Jill felt her heart trip in her chest.
Now well armed, she jumped back in the jeep and gunned the engine as she made it in record time past the Reptile Refuge, the Bug House, and down the gravel road to Maya’s enclosure in Wolf Town. By then, the howling had stopped and the night was filled with only the strangely hostile twittering of nighttime insect life. Shivering, she jumped out, the tranq gun tucked under one arm, and hurried to the gate. It didn’t look disturbed, and there was no way a human could jump the fourteen-foot, wire mesh enclosure fence, so she doubted anyone human was disturbing Maya and her pups. Still, that didn’t rule out other animals. Sometimes raccoon, opossum or even bear made their way down the mountain and into the animals’ enclosures, looking for an easy meal.
Suddenly a panicked Maya barked harshly, three short yips that ripped its claws through Jill’s brain and almost made her drop the gun. She hoped it wasn’t a bear. She didn’t want to have to face down a bear alone, but she did have the gun. She jabbed in the security code, then slipped inside the enclosure. She sniffed the air, but the fecund scent of wolf overwhelmed all other scents. She checked the tranq gun to make certain there was a dart in the chamber, then moved steadily and carefully like some great African hunter toward the manmade cave where Maya had her pups.
Ahead, she spotted a large lump amidst the leaf litter, blood glistening upon it. “Oh god,” she whispered, hurrying toward it. When she got close enough, she realized it was Roscoe, torn to pieces by something with incredible power. She dropped to her haunches, tears welling up in her eyes. Red wolves were so rare they were nearly extinct, and now her prize male was dead. It felt like a member of her own family had been murdered, but she forced her feelings aside and stood up, wiping her eyes with her sleeve before reassuring her grip on the gun. I should call Ethan, she thought. I should call Steve or one of the other rangers…someone!
Protocol demanded that no member of PAWS deliberately put themselves in danger without backup, a rule rigidly enforced by Steve, their Head Ranger—but Maya might not have time for her to call him or one of the other rangers. It was obvious she and her pups were in mortal danger.
Jill’s first instinct was to rush ahead, but she forced herself to go slow, to think it through. “Maya,” she whispered softly, moving with careful, silken grace toward the cave. Her muscles twitched and her jaw was locked with teeth-grinding intensity. She kept sniffing the air, but there were animals everywhere in the sanctuary, and scents had a tendency to get all tangled up together. “Maya!” She called a little louder. “Maya, answer me!”
Maya barked sharply, then screamed as something in the cave attacked her.
“Maya!” Jill rushed forward into the cave, no longer afraid of hidden dangers. “I’m here!” she cried, her eyes piercing the darkness well, but her hands shaking around the stock of the gun. She immediately spotted Maya being backed into a corner, her cubs whining piteously on the ground behind her, while a huge, hulking creature stalked her. Jill recognized more shadow than detail. Its head was low, ears flat, evil little eyes glistening like pinpricks of yellow moonlight. Blood and saliva drooled from its huge jaws and saber-like teeth.
Her first impression was of a bear, but the moment it sensed her, it swung its huge head around and let out a guttural growl, and finally she recognized it for what it was: a werewolf.
Jill was frightened, outraged and confused that one of her own would invade her territory and threaten her pack this way, even if they were just regular animals. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” she growled back at it.
Its ears pricked at the sound of her voice. Its eyes simmered like a pair of Halloween lanterns. It responded with an inhuman roar of rage, splattering the walls of the cave with blood and saliva.
Jill asked no more questions. She raised the tranq gun and lined it up with her shoulder, determined to drop the werewolf in its tracks, but it was faster than she anticipated. Despite its great size, it sprang at her too quickly and knocked the gun aside as easily as a toy before she even had a chance to squeeze the trigger.
With a cry of fear and confusion, Jill fell back onto the ground. She immediately started scrambling to get up, but then paused, surprised to see the werewolf withdrawing, sniffing the air as if it were trying to make heads or tails of her. Its evil little eyes shrank to lurid points, and slowly it lolled its tongue and licked its black lips. She recognized its expression, and the familiarity of it pinged in her brain. Despite it being a fully transformed werewolf, she suddenly knew who it was.
“Jace…” she cried, virtually strangling on the sound of the name. She’d hoped never to see him again—not in this life. Not in the next. He was the stuff of nightmares, the one thing in this whole world she feared as both a woman and a werewolf.
Jace growled in response as he took a slow step toward her. She noticed he had a huge hard-on pressed up tight against his furry belly and the musky male scent of him made her want to gag. Baring long, almost primordial teeth, he swiped one giant and heavily clawed paw at her like s
ome housecat playing a deadly game with a mouse, but Jill had found her footing by then and stumbled back just in time. The huge, black werewolf followed, stalking her slowly, precum pouring out of its enormous cock and splattering the floor of the cave. She looked for reason in its eyes and saw only madness. Desire. Stupid animal lust.
“Jace, stop, it’s me!” she said as she groped her way backward in the near pitch darkness of the cavern. “It’s Jill!” Her back hit a wall of the cave and she stopped as the creature let out another rattling growl that made the ground tremble under her sneakered feet. She tried to shift away but he closed in on her, boxing her against the wall. His eyes never left her face. His erection seemed to grow moment by moment, heaving with each of his harsh, labored breaths. He knew damned well who she was, and he didn’t care.
Jill’s heart started racing and she gasped for breath as she worked at controlling her panic. She could conceivably fight Jace off if she had to, but not as a human, and she had no time to shift into her werewolf form before the creature ripped her apart. The best she could do was try and reason with him, not unlike how she might handle a hurt and erratic wild animal. She put both hands out to halt his progress and modulated her voice so she sounded calm. “Jace…I know you’re in there. I know you’re upset with me, but you need to calm down. Do you understand? Calm down…”
Jace, oblivious to her words, lunged at her like a giant, black-furred locomotive.
Jill managed to shift to one side, scratching her back harshly on the cave wall; it was the only thing that saved her. Jace crashed into the wall, his claws flailing wildly as he let out a bellow of anger and betrayal.