Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1)

by Penny Alley

  “Say my name,” he commanded.

  God, he sounded so real. He felt so real. Why did this have to be a dream?

  “Colton,” she first gasped and then shouted when in a single thrust he went from pressing against her to pushing up deep inside her. “Yes! Oh, please yes!”

  He rocked the entire bed with the force of his possession, and she loved it. It had been so very long since she had felt the intensity of sex like this. She grabbed, catching his buttocks in both hands, capturing him in the wrap of both legs and pulling him as deeply into her as he would come.

  “Please,” she begged, her whole body arching up into his next thrust when he growled—that low, delicious sound—into her hungry mouth. “Please!”

  He caught her wrists and she didn’t mean to, but her nails raked him when he tore her hands from his ass and pinned them to the pillow above her head. The lamp on the bedside table rattled from the force of his pumping. His kisses became nips; her gasps, groans. It was a bad line in a comedy romance, but the headboard actually knocked against the wall and she was barely aware of it when the lamp fell off onto the floor. Every inch of her luxuriated in the feel of him, the dream of him, so fierce in his need of her that he was growling and his eyes were brightening. They were so yellow that she could see the glow of them in the dark.

  A flickering flash of lightning briefly lit the room, casting him in a wash of ghostly white and illuminating the bump and grind where their bodies were so fiercely joined. She both saw and felt it when he pulled out of her. In the flicker of the lightning, she only caught a glimpse of her arousal glistening on his standing cock before the shadows reclaimed the room. His eyes stayed yellow though. His exhaling breath seared her shoulder, a lusty growl that made her sex spasm to hold him again.

  He flipped her onto her belly, his warm hands scouring caresses up and down her body just before he bit the fleshy hills of her buttocks, first one and then the other. He threw his leg over both of hers and she gasped, arching into the unbelievable rightness of his tongue running up the length of her spine. She scrambled to get her hands and knees under her, to tip her hips back for him even as the burning heat of his cock burrowed between her legs.

  Karly thrust her hand down, needing to touch him as he slid inside her again. They both groaned, guttural and raw. His fist locked in her hair, dragging her head back until his mouth claimed hers once more. He wasn’t just kissing her now— even passionate kisses were gentle. This was devouring. The steady slap of his hips spanked her ass, punctuating her moans and his growls. This wasn’t just sex, either. He was consuming her, possessing her one rigorous thrust at a time, as powerful and unstoppable as the rain that was beating down on the old tin roof. His strong arm around her waist kept her right where he needed her. Her hands twisted in the sheets, clawing as she strove for something grounding to cling to.

  It all felt so real—from the shuddering force of the climax that ripped through her, to all the points of his teeth sinking into her shoulder blade as he used her flesh to muffle his escalating grunts before that final violent shove pushed her flat against the mattress. He ground into her, fighting to get as deep as he could. He shook and shook, shuddering out that long, last growl before he sagged on top of her. His breaths burned her throbbing shoulder. His sweat dripped and pooled, mingling with hers in the small of her back.

  He felt so very, very real.

  “You’re the best dream I’ve ever had,” she breathed as he rolled onto his back beside her to catch his breath. “I wish you were really here.”

  He looked at her, the shadows of surprise illuminated by another flash of lightning already melting into quiet resignation. “Maybe tomorrow I will be.” He pulled her closer, tucking her in snug against his chest and wrapping her in arms that felt strong and warm and safe. He stroked her hair. “Sleep.”

  Her sex pulsing—hot, wet and sated—her eyes drifted closed. She liked the way his breath felt brushing across her neck. The morning might erase it all away, but right here and now, all she felt was how good and right this was.

  Somewhere outside, a lone wolf howled. She didn’t think it possible to sleep within a dream. She thought she felt it when Colton rolled his head to follow that sound, but by then, she was dozing in and out. His fingers caressed lightly through the tangles of her hair. He might even have kissed her on the forehead, but then he let her go and the mattress faintly jostled as he got up. Her eyelids felt almost too heavy to lift, but she managed to pry them open long enough to watch as, naked, he went to the window. He even looked like a dream: lean and strong and so…primal. His shoulders were so broad; his chest tapered to a narrow waist and lean hips. Muscle after hard muscle flexed as he parted the curtains, rippling in the eerie blue flash of another lightning strike as he peered outside.

  He turned his head as that howl came again, closer this time. He listened a moment, then glanced back at her. The shadows must have hid her face better than it did his. Another flash of lightning, a rumble of distant thunder, and then he turned from the window. A strange, melting undulation hunched and twisted him, dropped him to the floor. And then it wasn’t Colton at all, but Puppy who trotted from the room on shadow-black and whisper-soft paws.

  “You are so fucked,” Dan hissed in her ear.

  Karly jerked upright, lurching backwards in an eruption of bedding and flailing limbs, her heart jumped up into her throat, colliding with the scream that choked her there as she fell right off Puppy’s side of the bed and landed with a graceless ‘whump!’ on the floor.

  Night was gone. It wasn’t yet dawn, but there was just enough grayish pre-morning light for her to see she was alone in the room. Puppy was gone. There was no Colton standing naked at the window. Certainly there was no Dan crouched in the shadows at the head of her bed, but it still took a long time for her to calm down enough to stop hyperventilating. It was longer still before she stopped shaking. So much for last night’s feelings of empowerment, all she felt now was nervous and sore.

  Huddled up against the wall under the window, Karly unfurled. Every single muscle in her body was protesting yesterday’s indiscretion and this morning’s fall. And where were her clothes? She looked all around the floor. The last time she had slept naked, it had been her third anniversary and not her choice. What a horrible way to end what had been, up until then, a nice, if inappropriate dream.

  Picking herself up off the floor, Karly had to remake the bed before she found her nightshirt and discarded underwear wrapped up in the tussled sheets and blankets. The elastic scrape as she pulled her panties up her legs rekindled sleepy memories of how it had felt when Colton had dragged them off her. She’d never had a dream so vivid that she’d kicked her own clothes off before. She’d never had a dream so vivid, period. And her body had definitely reacted. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn she honestly had spent the night in Colton’s erotic embrace. Her thighs were still sticky and slick, and her shoulder…

  Karly reached back, finding a tender spot high up on the back of her shoulder blade. She was tender everywhere though, which was probably why that bite had felt so vivid when she’d dreamed it. Every inch of her ached. Her brain must simply have converted the sensation to make her sleeping imagination all that much more realistic.

  She managed to hold that thought right up until she’d made her way to the bathroom. Ugh, she looked awful. The bruise Dan had given her now stood out as old marks amidst all the fresh new cuts, scrapes and purpling weals. She tsked and turned, twisting and arching up on her tip toes in an effort to see as much of herself from behind as the short medicine cabinet would allow.

  She had a massive purplish-red circle on the ball of her shoulder and down her arm where she must have blocked some kicks yesterday. A series of crusty scrapes down her spine reminded her of road rash that looked far worse than it actually felt. But then she saw the crescent of tooth-like marks that marred the slope of one shoulder blade. Practically hidden behind her cascade of blonde hair, it stood o
ut against her pale skin in a place that was, as if by some grand design, remarkably void of injury.

  Sweeping her hair back and twisting as far as she could, Karly craned to see it better. She tried to touch it, struggling to make out what that mark was, even as her startled brain supplied the ready answer: A love bite. Colton’s love bite.

  “That’s not possible,” she whispered, her skin prickling at an echoing approximation of his hands locking in her hair, his five o’clock shadow scraping her flesh a half second before his teeth sank into her.

  Her stomach fell all the way to her toes. It was the oddest sensation, that. Could someone have bitten her yesterday and she’d just not noticed at the time? They’d been kicking and pummeling her so ferociously, and she had lost consciousness ever so briefly. It was possible. But as she stared into her own wide eyes, she already knew that wasn’t what she believed. Except, what did that then mean? That her dream last night had been…real?

  Karly cupped her forehead, stubbornly determined not to go there. Of all the possible explanations—not that there were many—that was the most ridiculous. Colton did not break into her house late last night, and not only slip past Puppy, but replace him in her bed. He certainly didn’t cuddle right up behind her, awakening her so erotically that she hadn’t startled or even thought it odd when he began to make love to her. And he absolutely did not do all that and then, what? Sneak back out again like some guilty morning-after attempt to flee any chance of commitment or entanglement?

  Against her will, her mind shot back to that moment when the lightning had lit up her room just as Colton turned from her window. Karly went from cupping her forehead to cupping her mouth as she remembered again the way he had rippled, melted, shifted right there in front of her eyes, dropping down onto all four legs before trotting from her bedroom in his Puppy guise.

  No.

  No, that had definitely been a dream. It just…it just wasn’t possible for a man to transform into a dog—

  Wolf.

  —anywhere except on a Hollywood movie screen.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she told herself.

  Except that it would explain so much.

  “The hell it would.”

  Like Puppy’s ability to open doors.

  “Lots of dogs open doors.” Cats too. You-Tube and Facebook both were full of such videos.

  Like Puppy and Colton never being in the same place at the same time.

  Mama Margo yelling at Puppy as if he were a person…

  Gabe, leaning against her car, talking to him and that moment when she could have sworn she’d heard Colton talking back, right before she’d rounded the tail of her car and Puppy had popped his head up over the seat to look at her…

  A soft thump from downstairs made Karly jump. Her heart was racing, but it took her a moment to realize it had been doing that even before she’d heard that sound. She rubbed her forehead.

  “Get a grip, for God’s sake,” she whispered, both in regards to her absurd thoughts and in her jumpiness. “He’s not a…”

  A what? A werewolf?

  That was just plain crazy.

  Another soft bump. Karly felt her stomach tighten, but in the back of her mind, she already knew what that sound was: Puppy, doing his early morning Houdini routine, either letting himself out of the house or trying to get back in again.

  Did she really want to go down there and confront him? She could just see herself now, refusing to let him back into the house until he proved he was just a dog and not Colton in disguise.

  Shaking her head at herself, Karly jerked her nightshirt on, covering that mark on her shoulder blade, as if banishing it from even accidental sight might somehow rob it of its existence. Leaving the bathroom felt a little like fleeing, but Karly refused to continue standing there, entertaining the most absurd thoughts imaginable.

  She hit the bottom of the stairs, turning left into the living room, but the body she suddenly came nose to chest with was much too big and much too human to be Puppy’s.

  “I’ve got your divorce papers right fucking here,” Dan said, effectively ripping all breathable air right out of her chest. The panic didn’t hit until a half second later, a blinding shock of force that had her legs moving before her brain had even fully recognized the danger, when Dan grabbed for her. He didn’t have anything in his hands. He didn’t even have hands; he had fists.

  Karly tried to run back up the stairs, but he grabbed first her nightshirt and then her ankles. She screamed as she fell, landing half on the second floor landing. Her nails scraped the carpet as he dragged her back down the stairs on her belly, whacking her chin on the corner of the topmost step as she went over it, hands flailing to grab anything with which to anchor herself.

  When she hit the living room floor, she tried to roll over, but Dan had already shifted his grip, abandoning her legs to seize her by the hair. Karly grabbed his hand in both of hers just to keep from being scalped as he dragged her around the tiny living room, content for the moment just to make her crawl.

  “You think you can humiliate me in front of everyone and then just walk away? Oh no, babe. ‘Til death do us part. That’s what you promised me, and that’s what I’ll fucking have!”

  He flung her like a ragdoll against the wall. Karly grabbed blindly, catching hold of his belt as she fell, and he slapped her. Her ears rang. Everything spun. When she saw his hands coming at her, she slapped back, but he still grabbed her throat in both hands, slamming her to the floor as he squeezed and pinning her there.

  Sucking but unable to find the air, Karly clawed at his fingers. The weight of him pressed down on her chest. No matter how she kicked and bucked, she couldn’t dislodge him. He just squeezed harder until spots of bright light began to flash in front of her eyes and the pressure in her head perched on the verge of explosion. Her own panicked pulse was pounding so hard in her ears that she never even heard the crash.

  A shower of glass peppered her hair and face, but it was only when Dan ducked, letting go of her throat to shield his eyes that Karly realized she could hear snarling. In the next instant, Puppy was on them both, flecks of glass from the shattered living room window and drops of blood falling from his fur as he attacked. A gun went off; Karly hadn’t even realized Dan had pulled it from his jacket holster, but she both heard and felt the whiz of the bullet pass through her hair.

  She screamed, but then so did Dan as Puppy’s jaws snapped onto his arm. Dan dropped the gun when the wolf shook him, yanking him off balance and off Karly, and letting go only when Dan hit the floor on his knees. That’s when Puppy went for his throat.

  “No!” Karly screamed, but even as it was happening, she honestly didn’t know who she was trying to stop—Puppy, savagely pressing his attack, intent only on getting his strong jaws around Dan’s vulnerable neck…or her ex-husband, who was fighting back, kicking, punching, and already reaching for the concealed revolver he kept as a backup, tucked under his shirt at the small of his back.

  Karly dove for the gun, lying where it had fallen on the carpet. She saw the glint of light flashing off the shiny nickel-plated revolver when Dan raised his hand, but she got hers up first. They were less than six feet apart. He could have shot her first had he noticed what she was doing, but he didn’t notice and Karly had no desire to warn him. She simply shot. Not once or twice, but over and over again

  The sound in that tiny rental cabin was deafening. She honestly didn’t know if it was the sound alone that sent Puppy leaping to get out of the way or if she’d accidentally shot him. That she didn’t accidentally shoot all three of them was nothing short of a miracle, because she didn’t stop firing until the bullets were gone and the slider snapped out and locked.

  If she hadn’t been such a coward, she would have shot Dan. But she was a coward. She’d wasted every bullet in that gun, shooting up the floor between them instead.

  Panting, her hands shaking violently and her finger still fighting to pull that trigger, Karly stared into the wi
de and furious eyes of her ex. He blinked once and then again.

  “You fucking crazy bitch,” he breathed, incredulously.

  She had no bullets left, but Dan did. The gun in his hand was trembling, but he seemed to have forgotten he had it. He only stared at her, his shock visibly building back toward fury just before his gaze slid slightly past her. She didn’t realize he was staring just past her shoulder until she saw the anger in him suddenly melt into shock.

  “Put that god-damn gun down,” Colton growled behind her, “or I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

  It was the fear on Dan’s face that made Karly turn around. She already knew what she was going to see and, oh, but how she didn’t want to.

  She heard the clatter when Dan dropped his backup gun. She dropped hers too. Not just because it was empty and useless, but because Colton was crouching on all fours between her and the kitchen, where she knew for a fact he had not been bare seconds before. He was bleeding, rivulets of red dripping down the length of his arm from where a bullet she’d fired had grazed him and from all the tiny cuts that coming through that living room window had left on him. Worst of all though, he was naked. Completely unabashedly naked, with Puppy’s brand new collar decorating his neck.

  His teeth were bared. He was growling, like something savage—a very convincing something savage—and he was…rippling. His muscles kept bunching, flexing; the leap that would bring him right back into the fight barely held in check, while his very flesh buckled in and out with a strange fluidity. He still looked human—of course, he did; how else was he supposed to…look? And yet, he also looked very much like something else. It was in his eyes. Those yellow, yellow eyes that remained locked on Dan, ignoring her completely even when her legs suddenly gave out under her and Karly sat down, right there in the middle of the bullet-riddled floor.