A Very Alpha Christmas

by Anthology

  Annie hesitated. “If it’s no trouble.”

  “Less trouble for me than lying awake wondering if you’re hitching to the next town.”

  She’d hitchhiked to Angels Rest? Why? Some were born in Angels Rest. Some got caught when they ran out of gas or ran out of reasons to keep running. But who made plans—shitty plans, apparently—aimed at the middle of the Four Corners, where four whole states didn’t bother putting anything important?

  Annie shuffled her feet, sneakers crunching on the half-frozen gravel. “I don’t know…”

  The wolf wanted to nip at her heels, to drive her back into the warmth and light. Blaze growled low in his throat, a subvocal warning to anything in the world that might threaten her.

  Gypsy scanned the darkness, but he knew her senses would be dulled by the overwhelming scents and jukebox tunes.

  “Well,” she said at last. “Hounding never convinced nobody of nothing. But if you want to stay, the key is under the lawn gnome. Make sure there’s no one sleeping in the bed before you jump in. And lock the bedroom door so you don’t find anyone besides you sleeping there when you wake up.”

  Blaze’s wolf huffed to itself in surprise. Maybe the wily bar owner was perfectly aware he was there after all.

  “If you’re sure,” Annie said.

  “I’m offering you the place cuz nothing’s sure,” Gypsy said.

  Annie snickered. “That was on the bottom of one of the beer caps.”

  “We take our wisdom where we find it, yeah?” Gypsy smiled back.

  “Yeah,” Annie replied softly. “Thanks.”

  Gypsy nodded and walked away with a backward wave.

  Blaze was furious she’d left Annie alone in the winter night.

  The wolf was delighted.

  Together, they shadowed Annie to the trailer.

  The part of him that walked on two legs knew he was being stalker-y. The four-legged part had no idea what he was talking about: stalking was for rabbits and deer, and his Aah-eee was going to be much tastier than any other prey.

  His third leg… Well, damn.

  He’d slept in the trailer himself, last year on his twenty-first birthday, thanks to Sanchez’s bottomless shots. They’d made it as far as the living room before passing out, and they’d stumbled out the next morning, still mostly drunk, to run off their hangovers in the first light of day.

  Tonight, he was stone-cold sober. Emphasis on the cold.

  Double emphasis on the stone, according to his dick.

  Annie shivered as she crouched next to the world’s ugliest lawn gnome and retrieved the key. In the bar, her snug jeans with the hole over the knee and the worn sneakers had looked shabby-casual. Out here, the glimpse of her tender skin in the trailer’s yellow door light made his chest tighten. He would willingly give her the clothes off his back.

  More than willingly. The wolf writhed against the confines of his jeans.

  Its intensity pinned him in place more firmly than winter’s bite. He shouldn’t be here, as man or beast.

  Annie—Aah-eee—wasn’t theirs to hunt. She was just a human, and he had no right to stick his nose into whatever had brought her to Angels Rest.

  He took a step back, fighting the wolf to fade into the black.

  She straightened and thrust the key toward the lock, just one step away from closing him out.

  And she dropped the key. It bounced off the step and into the frost-crisped grass.

  A sound—half curse, half sob—burst from her, and he realized suddenly how close she was to the edge. She’d seemed so strong, yet light on her feet, hauling the bus tub between the tables and dancers. The silky hair that had set his fingers twitching slid forward to hide her face as she knelt, patting around her feet for the key.

  But she couldn’t see it with her human eyes, especially not with the tears he scented, salty and bitter.

  The wolf was at her side even before the key, warmed by her hand, had melted the frost.

  “Here.” He nudged the damp metal within reach of her searching fingers.

  She gasped and flinched back.

  This was the closest he’d been to her all night, and the essence of her was more intoxicating than any bottle on Gypsy’s shelves. He knew better than to grab her—he’d seen how she went fatally still when Sanchez had tugged at her arm—but it took all his might to stop himself from reaching for her.

  He’d tell himself it was just to steady her, but then she’d be in his arms, and then—

  “Are you going to bite me?”

  He dropped back on his ass in shock, and the chill of the frozen step nipped through his jeans. “What?”

  Her voice was breathy. “Are you…are you going to bite me now?”

  The cold under his nuts should have put his lust on ice. Instead, her question sent a rush of anticipation boiling through his veins, and he thought he might erupt right then and there.

  “If you—” He swallowed hard to erase the rest of his words.

  If you want me to I will.

  That would be the answer to anything she asked. The naked longing in her gaze was too much. It wrenched at places inside him that had never been touched, deeper even than the wolf.

  She wanted him. And he’d never been wanted.

  Very slowly, so slow he thought the half-frozen resin in the pinyon pines must be faster, he reached out to touch her hair.

  Ah, just as silky as he’d imagined. Living his whole life in the desolate desert shadow of Mesa Diablo, he’d never touched anything as soft except maybe the cottonwood fluff that drifted through the air in the very hottest days of summer.

  And though tonight was one of the coldest and darkest nights of the year, he felt himself burning up.

  She didn’t move, just stared at him.

  She had dark eyes, a striking contrast to her fine, pale hair. Even his sharp wolf vision couldn’t find the line between pupil and iris though he searched and searched.

  “What are you looking for?” Her breathiness took on a slight edge. “Is there a secret or a trick?”

  “A trick to what?” He barely found his own voice. The wolf just wanted to keep staring at her, the strand of her hair still in his grasp as if she might try to run away.

  “To getting bitten,” she said with a touch of impatience. “To becoming a werewolf.”

  Even the wolf blinked at that, finally breaking her spell.

  “Werewolf?” he repeated dumbly.

  Hot color blazed across her cheeks, and she pulled back, tightening the lock of her hair between them. “Never mind. I—”

  But her blush caught his attention. He looped the hair behind her ear to expose her cheek.

  This time fury not lust exploded in him. But he kept his voice low. “Who hit you?”

  The blood fled from her face, that part of her beyond his reach though the wolf wanted to give chase, to bring back her hectic summer color.

  “Never mind,” she said again. “You shouldn’t be here. Gypsy said no one else should be here.”

  “Gypsy’s my cousin,” he said. No point explaining that in a way all shapeshifters were cousins since they shared the same extraordinary ability to transform. “And she’d destroy whoever hit you.”

  Annie bit her lip, bringing back a spot of red. “But would she make me a werewolf?”

  His wolf circled inside him, wary and intrigued, the restless thud of its paws matching his confused heartbeat. “Is that why you hitchhiked to Angels Rest? To find werewolves?”

  She shook her head, knocking the hair back into her face. “Not find werewolves. Be a werewolf.”

  He stared at her, then finally held out his hand. “Give me the key.”

  Inside the small trailer was almost as cold as outside, but he went to the gas fireplace and cranked it up until the flames were almost scary.

  Felt like that inside him too.

  Gypsy—the original one—had updated the trailer sometime in the 1950s. The couch and chairs, finned like the cars from the era, w
ere a little saggy, but somehow the harvest gold and avocado colors fit the desert mood. For Annie’s sake, he clicked on the overhead light that looked like some sort of weird spaceship. Half the bulbs were burned out since werewolves didn’t usually bother with lights, which gave the fixture the look of a spaceship about to crash.

  Yeah, he felt like that too.

  Annie still stood by the door, her arms wrapped around her middle, making herself smaller. That wasn’t right; she should at least take the space that was hers.

  He let the prowling wolf circle behind her and nudge her closer to the fireplace.

  Finally she held her hands out to the warmth. “Look,” she said, though she kept her gaze on the fire. “I made a mistake—”

  “Is that what he said when he hit you?”

  That brought her eyes up, reflected flames snapping in the dark depths. “No, he totally meant to hit me. Every single time.”

  His wolf stilled, prelude to an attack. But there was no deserving victim in reach.

  Blaze breathed out slowly. “So you want to stop him next time.”

  “There can’t be a next time.” Her outstretched hands fell to her sides and tightened into fists. “But yeah, I’m going to stop him.”

  “By becoming a werewolf?” He couldn’t restrain the disbelieving note in his question, even though he knew it would piss her off. “Have you thought about something less drastic? Like, going to the police. Or, I dunno, shooting him.”

  Sure enough, the flame behind her eyes turned to ice. “Like I didn’t think of that.” Derision dripped in melting icicles. “But I don’t want to end up dead myself or in jail. He doesn’t get the rest of my life.”

  “So you’re going to give your life to a bunch of hairy, cursed monsters instead?”

  He expected her to waver. She must be exhausted by the night of hustling on top of however long she’d traveled to get here, on top of whatever exactly had been done that was bad enough to push her this far.

  To his surprise, she held herself straighter. “Do you know where I can find one?”

  The pack alpha was going to freak when he found out the werewolves of Angels Rest were attracting groupies.

  “You can’t just go around asking people to bite you,” he said.

  “They wouldn’t be people,” she countered. “They’ll be werewolves.”

  “Werewolves are people too. Sort of. Just…different.”

  She brightened, practically replacing the burned-out bulbs. Oh fuck, he’d all but confessed that she’d come to the right place to get bitten by a werewolf.

  His pulse skittered at the thought of what his alpha would do. Kane Villalobos had found his true mate, but being mated hadn’t mellowed him. The bond had only made him stronger, more dogged about protecting the pack against any threat.

  But when Annie took a slow step toward him, Blaze realized the true threat was much, much closer.

  3

  He was a werewolf!

  Annie shivered, but not with cold this time. Him being a werewolf was why she’d been drawn to him and his tight jeans as soon as she’d walked into the bar.

  He had what she wanted, what she needed.

  She sidled toward him, her sneakers slipping over the shag carpet. This was how a hunter felt…

  But could she take him? Rolled warily to the balls of his steel-toed boots, he was half a foot taller than she was. The black-inked marks peeking out from under his sleeves writhed as his muscles tensed, and his blue-green eyes locked on her with the strength of one of those fancy liqueurs at Gypsy’s that looked so pretty but she knew would knock her on her ass.

  She was good at predicting the chances of violence or extortion in any given situation, but all her guesses were failing her now. Would she get what she wanted, or was she going to get hurt? She chewed at her lower lip uncertainly.

  His gaze arrowed to her mouth, and the weight of his focus felt like he was touching her already.

  Oh yeah, guess that answered that.

  She stalked forward another step and at the same time shrugged her jacket off her shoulders. The denim slumped to the floor behind her like an empty skin.

  Blaze held his ground. “You’re making a mistake.”

  She shrugged. “That’s how I’ve gotten this far.”

  She meant it to be sarcastic, a slam against herself if he wasn’t going to take the swing. But instead, for once, she thought maybe she was in a good place.

  Far from home, with a stranger, who she was pretty sure was a werewolf.

  What did it say about the rest of her life that this was probably going to be the highlight?

  When the toes of her sneakers were almost right against his boots, she stopped and looked up at him. “How does this work? Do I bend my head and you bite my neck?”

  His eyes glittered under the dark lock of hair falling across his brow. “I think that’s vampires.”

  “Damn it. I always get those confused.” She tilted her head anyway, her muscles turning soft and warm under the heat of his stare. “Don’t you know the difference?”

  “I don’t go around biting little girls.”

  She put one hand on her hip, drawing his attention downward where she knew he wouldn’t be able to miss the curve of her booty. “I ain’t little.”

  “To me you are.”

  Maybe that was the sort of thing big girls like her thought they wanted to hear, but she didn’t want to be small, not in his eyes.

  That blue-green glow gave her a boldness that usually came along only with the booze she sneaked with her fake ID.

  She lifted her hand, hesitated, then flattened her palm in the center of his chest.

  For a second, she didn’t feel his heartbeat—oops, maybe he was a vampire after all—then the furious bang raced away under her touch, and his chest swelled on a silent gasp.

  Oh, he’d been holding his breath.

  Waiting for her touch.

  She leaned toward him, knowing the V-neck of her shirt would let him see down between her breasts. No man could resist wondering what else was down there. As if it would be such a big surprise.

  But Blaze’s eyes never wavered from hers.

  Of course not. Because he wasn’t a man.

  As crazy as the thought was, somehow it reassured her she was right to do this.

  “I can’t promise you anything,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”

  “It’ll hurt.”

  “Everything does.”

  She wasn’t being snarky, only telling him the truth. But his eyes narrowed and he grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his stare. “Don’t make light of this. Getting bitten is…dangerous. You could die.”

  “You think I’d come here for fun? Gypsy’s jukebox isn’t that great.” She shrugged off his grip and shook back her hair, so he couldn’t miss the bruise. “I’m lucky I’m not dead already. For Christmas last year, my ex gave himself a bottle of tequila and gave me an overnight vacation in the ER. Well, I’m getting my own gift this year: a werewolf’s bite. I know what you are, so don’t try to lie to me, because I’m as done with getting lied to as I am with being smacked around. Is it going to be you or someone else?”

  “Annie.” With a low groan she felt more than heard, he anchored one arm at the small of her back and reeled her closer.

  She tilted her head back, closing her eyes. This was what she’d come for, but she couldn’t stop the quiver that went down her spine. She knew he’d feel it under his fingertips. Her own hands crept up to tighten on his biceps, a second set of arm bands, in case he tried to get away.

  But instead of a piercing pain in her neck, a fleeting puff of heated breath on her lips jolted her eyes open, just as his mouth settled over hers.

  He kissed like he shot at pool: a deft alignment and then a thrust that went all the way through her, scattering her thoughts. He stroked his tongue across the seam of her lips, opening her wide. Her senses bounced and rebounded, and she inhaled the wild taste
of mesquite and snow and the hot embers that were Blaze.

  Under her grasping hands, his biceps bunched, and she realized hazily that he was turning her toward the couch. He laid her out on the mustard-brown cushions, but he was barely perched there himself, one knee pressing hard against the outer curve of her thigh.

  Was he going to try to leave her there? She skimmed her hand up inside the hem of his T-shirt. He sucked in a startled breath, and she ticked one fingertip down the muscled ridges of his abdomen to hook in the waistband of his jeans.

  She held him there with her finger. “Is this how you turn someone into a werewolf?”

  “It’s how you turn on a werewolf,” he muttered.

  She tried to laugh, but her heart seemed to be skipping every other beat, as if it wanted to fill in the gaps with the heavy pulse she saw beating in the hollow of his throat. “Is that part of it?”

  He nodded. “The change isn’t just in our saliva when we bite. It’s in our blood, our sex. It wants to be free.”

  “Then do it all. Bite me. Fuck me. And I’ll…I’ll bite you back. I want it all.”

  She smoothed her hands around his flanks. He shuddered and arched into her stroke, like some wild thing afraid but longing for her touch.

  She gripped both sides of his T-shirt, and he ducked backward, turning the soft cotton inside out.

  Turning her inside out. She gazed up at him, marveling at his sculpted chest, the hard planes peaked with dusky nipples and sloping down to lean ribs. The taut muscles of his abs arrowed down beneath his waistband, out of sight. The homeboys she ran with in Albuquerque were built. Tomas had been all into juicing—and not the nice kind with veggies either. But they were just a little soft around the middle, as if they could never quite be all the man they wanted to be.

  But of course, they were just men.

  And Blaze was more than that.

  She traced her hands down his chest, lingering on the ink over his left pec. In the black tangle of curves and edges she could just make out the shape of the whirling wolf. Attacking? Dancing? She wasn’t sure.