by Gale Stanley
“Agreed.” Tanner nodded. “Matchmaking for breeding purposes doesn’t count. That’s just doing what you got to do for the good of the pack.”
“But that little female got me hard just looking at her. It surprised the hell out of me.” Gage didn’t have much experience with women. He had been a kid of thirteen when he lost his family. It all started when the Lycan elders gave one of their women permission to marry a human man and live with him in their secret community in the Pine Barrens. Others had chosen to leave the pack and hide their identities so they could live in the outside world with human lovers. The elders didn’t want to lose any more of their people, and they had made a bad decision.
When the marriage failed, the human man betrayed his wife and her people and came back with other men to burn down their homes. The Lycans shifted to their wolf forms and tried to escape, but the majority of their people died. Most humans didn’t suspect the burnt carcasses weren’t ordinary wolves. Forest fires were common in the Barrens, and humans didn’t cry over dead wolves. The survivors, a small group of shell-shocked youngsters, were afraid to stay and rebuild.
Alex, the oldest, became their leader. One day he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday with a wife and child. The next he was a young and inexperienced Alpha leading a group of younger men and a few females halfway across the country. Alex chose New Mexico, home of their gods, the kachinas, powerful spirit beings who, if given proper veneration and respect, would provide and protect. The Lycans believed their very beginnings went back to Kweo, the wolf spirit, who had mated with a human woman and brought forth the first wolf-shifter.
Somewhere along the way, the Lycans had displeased Kweo, and he had deserted them in their time of need. Since the great fire, they’d been trying to repopulate, and it just wasn’t happening—until pack members Noah and Wade took a human woman as their mate. She became pregnant, and Gage suspected Kweo had had a hand in it, wanting the two species, Lycans and humans, to become one. Perhaps Kweo had even sent them the she-wolf.
“Earth to Gage.” Tanner gave him a little shake. “So why don’t you want to tell Alex?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell him.” Gage sighed. “I just don’t want him passing Kate around the pack with the hope of getting her pregnant. I found her. She’s mine.” The words just popped out, but Gage felt right about them.
Tanner’s jaw dropped, along with the rest of his face. “Do you think you found your mate?”
The hurt look on Tanner’s face made his heart twist. Supposedly a Lycan knew when he found his true mate, something about matching hormones and body chemistry, ripe for reproduction. “Our mate.” Reproduction aside, he loved Tanner, and he wouldn’t let anything or anyone affect their relationship. “We’re in this together or not at all. Whatever this feeling is—love or just making pups—it’s not going to come between us.” This feeling he had for the female seemed strong but different. Maybe all the old Lycan traditions hadn’t disappeared with their people. “We need some time to figure things out. Let’s keep this to ourselves, just for a little while.”
Tanner still didn’t look convinced. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Alex won’t be happy if he finds out we kept it from him.”
“Fuck! Does Alex have to know every damn move we make?”
Tanner didn’t say a word, and that was answer enough for him. His face heated, and he stormed out of the living room, not really knowing why he felt so angry. He needed some alone time to cool off and let his wolf settle. Maybe a shower would help.
Gage closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and let the warm water wash away his tension along with the sweat. He wasn’t really angry with Tanner. He just felt at odds. Meeting this woman had brought everything back, memories of all he had lost. Right now, he wanted to wipe his mind clean, as well as his body. Or try to, anyway. There’d be time enough to think and talk about the past tomorrow night, when he and Tanner would meet the she-wolf and her cowboy for drinks. Gage reached for the shampoo, poured some in his palm, and lathered his hair. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the shower door open.
* * * *
Tanner followed the sound of running water to the bathroom. They had opted to build a shower for two, and Gage must have turned on both jets. Steam poured through the open door in a warm, silent invitation, and he accepted it. His lover’s body outlined through the smoky glass of the shower proved a potent allure, and hoping to surprise him, he slipped inside and wrapped his arms around Gage in one quick motion. Gage jumped, obviously startled, but then he relaxed back into Tanner’s arms.
“I was hoping you’d join me.” Gage’s voice was still tight with tension.
“I almost didn’t. You were so angry, I thought maybe you needed some time alone.”
“I think I’m more upset with myself than anything. Old memories…”
“I know, baby,” Tanner murmured, working the shampoo through the long hair he loved so much. “Seeing the she-wolf brought it all back for me, too.” He rinsed Gage’s hair and brushed his lips over a broad shoulder. “You’re not the only one who feels something for Kate—and Shiloh. I don’t know what it means, but I do know we need to find out for ourselves, and you’re right about the Alpha. He’ll put things in his own perspective and do what he thinks is good for the pack, not for us, or for Kate. As far as I’m concerned, the she-wolf and her cowboy are our little secret, at least until tomorrow night when we get a better idea what’s going on.”
Gage sighed with relief. “Thanks, I feel better knowing you’re with me on this.” He rolled his neck. Bones cracked and popped.
“Thank me later after I loosen up all that tension in your muscles.”
“You just want to get your hands on me.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Hell no.”
Tanner started at the shoulders, applying gentle pressure in circular movements. Gage arched his throat, obviously enjoying the attention. Running his hands slowly down Gage’s back, fingers charting a smooth course over well-defined muscles, Tanner worked his way down in slow, fluid motions. He paused at his lover’s hips and pulled Gage toward him, wanting desperately to feel that fine ass pressed against his aching shaft.
Gage gave up control, letting Tanner do what he wanted. What he wanted was to make Gage crazy. Wanting to build tension and excitement, he slid his hands around to his lover’s lower belly, forming a circle with his fingers, purposely not touching his erection. Gage wiggled his hips back, and Tanner’s cock slid up the crack of his ass. A strangled cry escaped his partner’s throat, and Tanner licked a sensitive spot behind his ear. “Want something, baby?”
Gage let out a soft groan. “Touch me.”
“My pleasure.” As the water flowed over them, Tanner used his soap-slick palm to torment Gage’s cock with slow friction, moving the foreskin back and forth over the swollen cockhead.
“Fuck. Are you trying to make me crazy?” Gage spun around and ground his mouth against Tanner’s in a smoking-hot kiss. Tanner gasped when Gage started massaging his ass cheeks then rimmed his hole with a finger.
“Now who’s the tease?” Tanner murmured against his mouth. In response, the soap-slick finger pushed inside. “Oh hell.” Frustration won out, and Tanner reached down to fist both of their cocks in his big, soapy hands.
Gage closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Tanner’s. “More.”
Tanner positioned their cockheads together and rolled his stretchy foreskin over the head of his lover’s penis. Docked together like two spaceships, the delicious intimacy had Gage moaning. “Do you like this, baby?”
“God yes,” Gage hissed, rubbing and grinding against him.
Tanner started a rhythmic stroking, loving the feel and the friction of their shafts joined together like this. At his partner’s coaxing, he pumped harder and faster. Gage tensed, and Tanner could feel how close he was. A deep, animal groan rumbled up from Tanner’s chest, and his toes curled in pleasure as his own climax appr
oached the point of no return. He thrust savagely and let out a roar as he exploded. Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watched his lover’s face contort in an expression of lust-filled bliss as he growled out his release. Continuing to hold each other, they relaxed and let their orgasms play out.
Tanner nuzzled and nipped at Gage’s neck. “Who needs a foursome?”
Chapter Four
Shiloh rolled over, and in a few minutes, Kate heard his soft snores and knew he’d fallen asleep. Sleep didn’t come that easy for Kate. She lay awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling and hoping the rhythmic whump of the fan overhead would lull her to sleep. It didn’t. It didn’t do much to cool off the room either. Naked and drenched with sweat, she panted like a bitch in heat, trying to breathe in the heavy air. Finally, afraid she would wake Shiloh, she decided to let him have the bed to himself.
She sat up and brushed aside the long hair plastered to her face and neck. Freeing the tangled sheets from around her feet, she slipped out of bed and crept noiselessly through the house. The air, thick with moisture, wasn’t any better in the living room. She went into the kitchen and opened the freezer, grabbed a few ice cubes, and held them against her heated neck, then down her chest. The cold made her nipples pebble, and once again her thoughts turned to the Lycans.
Her mind whirled in mass confusion, her thoughts returning to the two men again and again. She had a million questions, starting with where had they come from and ending with why were they here. If they were from her pack, then they’d been born in the Pine Barrens, halfway across the country.
She had taken that journey herself in a roundabout way, hitching and hiking. She’d be traveling still if she hadn’t met Shiloh. New Mexico was not a place she would have chosen to settle otherwise. In all the states she’d been through, she had never come across anyone like herself. Even so, she never assumed she was the only Lycan left. But it surprised the hell out of her when the two wolf-shifters showed up.
She knew from personal experience just how hard it was to keep a wolf bottled up, and she assumed if there were others, they probably shifted, if not frequently, at least from time to time, yet wolf sightings were few and far between here in New Mexico.
So if they weren’t living here as humans or living wild, then where? Had she brought them here? Had her sex pheromones sent out an invitation to mate? She had no idea how far her scent could travel. She knew so little about her own people.
When her family was killed in the great fire, she’d been a child of six. She survived only because she hadn’t been home when the fire started. Her father had taken her and Casey hunting. Her older brother didn’t think she should come, and her father agreed with him, but she begged and pleaded, and finally he relented. To this day, she regretted not staying with her mother. She might have comforted her at the end, and she would have died with her gladly.
They had been quite a distance away when her father smelled smoke. He told her and Casey to stay put, warned them not to move until he came back for them. Then he left. Casey, at twelve, thought he was a man and should be helping to put out the fire, not hiding in the woods. He left a crying Kate squatting among the brambles at the edge of a glade. She never saw him again.
Afraid to move, she stayed put until two days had gone by. By the time she returned home, everyone was dead or gone. A hunter, maybe the very one who had set the fire, found her sitting by her dead parents, crying. He took her home, and so her new life began, with a human hunter and his wife.
She had a very lonely and secluded childhood. Homeschooled, she had no friends. She might as well have been a prisoner. Kate never spoke to her foster family about her biological family. She hardly spoke at all. She buried her past. It was too painful. Puberty came and went, yet she never shifted. Her wolf remained confined, just like her human self.
Then one day she overheard a conversation between her stepparents.
The woman’s voice sounded shrill, and the man kept shushing her. “I don’t think she’s going to shift. Maybe she can’t.”
“She can, all right,” he told her. “They all can. Or could. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to prove she’s functional. They want her, and they’ll pay for her. That’s all I care about.”
“Why do they want her?” the woman asked.
“Who cares? You know I never planned to keep her.” There was no mistaking the hard disgust and dislike in the man’s voice.
Although she had never revealed her identity, they had known all along she was Lycan. Just as she suspected, the man had been one of those who burned down her village. Now he intended to sell her. Kate had no idea who they were, and she had no intention of sticking around to find out. A day came when the man and woman locked her in her bedroom and went out of the house. Kate packed a small bag that she could carry in her jaws. Then she broke the window in her bedroom.
She had never shifted before. The change always came with sexual maturity, but there had been no one to guide her through it, just as there was no one to guide her now. She was scared to death, not even sure she knew how to transform her body. But the broken window was her incentive. The man and woman would find the shattered glass, and she would never get another chance.
Suddenly visions of her childhood had resurfaced, and her eyes brimmed with tears. She could almost hear Casey’s taunts. In typical big-brother fashion, he would never tolerate her crying. “Stop whining,” he’d tell her. “You’re a wolf. Remember, Kweo has placed some of his own heart and spirit inside you. Find it and you will find your inner wolf.”
Change begins in the mind.
The body serves the mind.
We are shaped by the mind.
She had concentrated and repeated Casey’s mantra over and over, and it had taken her to a place of spiritual transformation that called to her wolf.
Instinctively her body had dropped to a crouch and bent forward, twisting in painful contortions. God, how it hurt. Her bones pushed and pinched, threatening to pierce her skin. Black fur had raced over her limbs, and her face elongated into a snout. At last the agony ended with the eruption of a tail wagging furiously. The black wolf was glad to be out. It took her bag in its jaws, leaped through the second-floor window, and discovered it had the righting reflexes of a cat. It ran and never looked back.
* * * *
“The unseasonably early drought, which could go down as one of the nation’s worst, has spread across twelve states. Severe water restrictions are being enforced as record temperatures are broken. A massive wildfire in Arizona that has already burned hundreds of square miles of forest and forced thousands of people to evacuate is now poised to move into New Mexico. Fire crews are cutting down trees and burning fuels to try to stop its advance.”
Gage shut off the radio and turned a worried face to Tanner.
“What? We knew it was coming. The drought left the state ripe for wildfire.” He put his arms around Gage. “I don’t like fire any more than you do. If it gets close, Alex will probably want to evacuate. We can’t do anything about it. If you want to worry about something, focus on this header so I don’t get a concussion every time I walk in the front door.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gage and Tanner stayed inside and worked on their house all day, thankful they didn’t see Alex. Neither man wanted to lie to their Alpha, but they weren’t ready to come clean yet either. Whether or not they confided in him depended on tonight’s meeting.
At seven they showered and dressed in black jeans. Tanner wore a white shirt. Gage put on a black shirt and tied his long hair back with a leather band. He looked to Tanner for approval.
“Very sexy. Irresistible, in fact.” Tanner planted a kiss on his lips. “If we don’t leave now, I might change my mind and drag you back into bed.” He grabbed the keys from the dresser. “Come on, I’ll drive.”
Shiloh had suggested a place near Deming, about an hour from SilverCity. It was a midsize hotel with a restaurant and a bar that looked like a set from a John Wayne m
ovie, with wagon wheels, wood floorboards, and whiskey barrel tables. It was definitely not a locals’ bar. The customers were all tourists, cowboy—and girl—wannabes wearing all the proper gear: jeans, boots, and wide-brimmed hats.
“Fuck!” Gage growled under his breath when they walked in and saw Shiloh alone at the bar.
“Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”
“She’s not here.”
“Okay, calm down. She might be meeting us.”
Tanner took the empty stool on Shiloh’s right. Gage took the one on the left.
The cowboy looked from one to the other, settling his focus on Tanner. “I’m glad you both came.”
“Glad we did—”
“So how come you didn’t, both come, that is?” Gage broke in abruptly.
Shiloh’s head swiveled around. “Uh, excuse me?”
Gage forced a smile. “The invite was for two.”
Uncertainty crept over Shiloh’s face. “Is that a problem? Kate doesn’t go out much. She already told me she wouldn’t be at the rodeo tomorrow.”
Shiloh waved the bartender over. “Draft?”
“Sounds good,” Gage answered for both of them. “So do you go out without her often? Leave her home alone?”
“That’s none of your business.” The cowboy flushed red. “What’s all this interest in my girlfriend?”
Gage almost told the cowboy that everything about Kate was his business, but he bit his tongue. “It just doesn’t seem right, that’s all.”
“I told you Kate is a homebody. I travel all the time. She’s welcome to come, but she doesn’t want to.” Shiloh finished his beer and got off his stool. “Hey, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Nice meeting you, Tanner.” He ignored Gage.
Gage looked at Tanner and silently shook his head, willing his boyfriend to let the cowboy go. They weren’t here for him. As tempting as Shiloh was, they’d come to get closer to the she-wolf, not to get involved with a human man. Either Tanner didn’t see him, or he flat out ignored Gage.