Wolf Hunger

by Paige Tyler

  She tried escaping out a back exit, the door long ago ripped off the hinges and cast aside. But the moment she turned in that direction, two men stepped through the doorway and started shooting at her with silenced automatic weapons. It was surreal to run screaming from a hail of gunfire she could barely hear. If it wasn’t for the impact of the bullets hitting the wall, she’d have thought this was all some kind of game.

  Lana had no choice now but to run up the sagging metal stairs, toward the upper floors, even as every horror movie she’d ever watched screamed at her that she was making a big mistake. Footsteps echoed behind her, heavy boots on steel reverberating in the concrete stairwell. They were right behind her.

  Gunshots pushed her higher and higher, past the second- and third-floor landings. Not that there was anywhere to run on those levels, because most of the flooring had either fallen through or been ripped out. Only a monkey could have escaped across the remaining grid work of metal beams and rotten wood slats.

  She raced up the last flight of stairs, praying there’d be a fire escape or some other way off the roof. But when she reached the top level and saw the heavy chain running through the space in the door where the knob used to be, then snaking back through a hole that had been drilled through the brick and metal of the doorframe, she knew her luck had run out. There was no way she was going to get through that chain and the big padlock holding it in place.

  But whatever instincts had kept her alive this long refused to give up. Refused to let her mind consider how devastated her parents would be—how devastated Max would be—if they found her beaten and tortured like Denise.

  Letting loose a growl, she ran across the last few steps between her and the door, lifting her leg to kick the door with her foot as hard as she could. The chain going through the door held, but the rusted hinges on the left didn’t. They snapped with a shriek of metal and the door tumbled out of its frame.

  Lana braced herself for the pain of broken bones to come screaming up her leg, but she got lucky. Either that or she was so high on adrenaline she couldn’t feel anything. Either way, nothing hurt as she climbed over the remnants of the door and sprinted across the roof.

  She heard the loud thump of boots nearing the top of the stairs just as she reached the far side of the roof and discovered there wasn’t a fire escape. She gaped at the ten-foot chasm between the roof she was on and the one on the building next to it. But it wasn’t the gap that scared the crap out of her. It was the fact that the far roof was at least two floors lower. If she tried to jump over there, she’d have to throw herself hard enough to cross the gap and pray she’d survive the landing. She’d have to be insane to try it.

  She turned and hurried toward the left side of the building, hoping for better luck over there. But she barely made it halfway there before the sound of boots announced she’d run out of time. Boyd stood in the doorway of the stairwell. He was holding a small automatic rifle in his hands, a sick, demented smile slowly spreading across his face. The other men chasing her would join him soon enough, but for that moment, it was just the two of them.

  She glanced in the direction she’d been running, calculating the possibility that there might be a fire escape on that side of the roof. But with Boyd there, it was a chance she couldn’t take. If she ran over there and found nothing to help her, she was going to die up here.

  Lana spun and went back the way she’d come. The gravel and tar of the rooftop exploded around her at the same moment she heard the Pop! Pop! Pop! as Boyd shot at her with his silenced weapon. She ignored the near misses, running faster as she approached the far edge of the roof.

  She didn’t slow and she didn’t think. She simply held her breath and jumped as hard as she could.

  Bullets zipped past her as she sailed across the open gap between the buildings. How she continued to be so lucky was a mystery to her, but she’d easily cleared the chasm dividing the two rooftops. She had no time to marvel at the feat because the far rooftop was quickly rushing up to meet her. She braced herself for impact but envisioned so many things breaking she couldn’t imagine walking away from this. But when her feet hit the gravel, the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be. Those amazing instincts she was coming to trust with her life tucked her into a ball and rolled her twice across the roof before propelling her right back to her feet.

  She almost let out a whoop of excitement as she regained her balance and raced for the far side of the building she’d landed on. Bullets continued to slap into the roof around her, but she ran even faster now as she realized she could really get away from the men chasing her.

  Lana threw herself off the roof of the two-story building, far less concerned about how she’d handle the landing this time. The hail of bullets disappeared before she even landed, replaced by the sound of angry cursing. She almost laughed as she landed in the tall grass of a long-abandoned building and took off running again. It would take the men a little while to get down from the roof, and she wasn’t going to be around by the time that happened.

  She ran at full speed toward the more populated part of town, where the stores and clubs were. When she got there, she slowed to a fast walk, not wanting to attract attention. As she passed a darkened storefront, she caught her reflection in the glass, and the image stopped her cold.

  Lana stepped closer, her instincts telling her the threat from her pursuers had passed. Stunned by what she saw in the glass, she lifted her hand to touch her face simply to convince herself it wasn’t some kind of trick.

  But it wasn’t a trick. She was really seeing her reflection in the glass—except in this particular reflection, she had half-inch long canines protruding from her upper jaw. The canines on the bottom were longer than normal, too. And her eyes were glowing green. She touched one of her fangs and was shocked not only to realize it was sharp as hell, but also that the tip of her finger was now graced with a slightly curved claw half an inch long. A quick glance down confirmed that all her fingernails were similarly equipped.

  Crap.

  She had claws and fangs and glowing eyes.

  She gasped for breath, barely able to stand. Max had been telling the truth all along. She really was in danger, there really were people after her, and she really was a werewolf.

  A werewolf like Max.

  The fact that Boyd and his crew had been trying to kill her didn’t seem important right now. The only thing that mattered was getting to Max and telling him she was sorry. There’d been something special between them, and she’d walked away in a heartbeat rather than trust him. She had to fix that horrible mistake.

  The instincts that had saved her life were screaming at her again, except this time, they weren’t telling her to run away from something. They were begging her to run toward something—Max. At that second, the need to find him and tell him exactly how she felt about him was so overwhelming she couldn’t have resisted it if she’d wanted to.

  She gazed at her reflection in fascination as her fangs and claws slowly receded. It felt so normal she couldn’t imagine why she’d been so hung up about seeing those same weapons on Max.

  One more thing to apologize for.

  Lana pulled her phone out of her purse as she walked toward the nearest intersection. There were several text messages from Brandy and Miriam, asking where the hell she’d gone off to. She thumbed back a quick reply, saying the music had gotten too loud and she’d grabbed a cab.

  You going back to the apartment? Brandy immediately texted back.

  Lana didn’t bother to lie. No, I’m heading over to see Max. We need to talk.

  There was no response for several long seconds, but when it came, it was slightly different than she expected.

  Good. That’s what you should have been doing instead of coming out to the club with us.

  Lana threw back a thumbs-up emoji, then flagged down a cab. Giving Max’s address to the drive
r, she settled into the backseat, trying to figure out exactly what the hell she was going to say to him.

  She still had no answer to that question when the cab pulled up in front of his apartment building fifteen minutes later. By the time she paid the driver and walked upstairs to his place, she decided less talk and more action was called for in this case.

  Max jerked open the door before she could ring the bell. He was wearing a pair of black athletic shorts, his hair was sticking up, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, but he’d never looked more handsome. Why the hell had she ever walked away from him?

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She knew she probably looked more than a little rumpled after her mad dash through downtown and that tumble along the gravel-covered rooftop, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to get into any of that at the moment. There was more important stuff to cover first.

  Holding his gaze, she held up her right hand and let her claws extend. She’d discreetly practiced the move in the backseat of the cab on the way over and had been shocked at how easy it was to make her claws extend and retract by doing little more than tensing her fingers.

  “I know everything.” She stepped inside and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “I’m sorry I ran away from you.”

  She felt him take a deep breath, as if he was about to say something in reply, but she hadn’t come here to talk. They could do that later. When they talked about all kinds of stuff—like how she’d become a werewolf. Right now, she needed to be with the man she loved like he was the air within her lungs.

  Reaching up, she tangled her hand in his rumpled hair, jerking his mouth down to hers. Then she kissed the hell out of him, trying to say with a single touch of her lips something that would likely take a thousand words.

  Her body immediately began to tingle all over, and Lana felt her claws and fangs slide out. She simply couldn’t help it, and besides, it felt so right. Even so, she pulled back, worried about cutting Max’s tongue. Then she saw his fangs were out, too, and his eyes were glowing so bright they lit up the dim entryway.

  He reached out and kicked the door closed behind her, then his mouth was on her neck, nibbling and kissing her there, driving her crazy. She heard a deep growl coming from his throat before she realized she was raking his back with her nails. She started to apologize but stopped as he slid his hands under her shirt and pushed it up. Things got a little wild after that, as clothes flew everywhere and claws gently raked across naked skin.

  Then her back was pressed up against the door and Max’s cock was sliding deep inside of her. The pleasure was so intense she feared her growls would force the neighbors to call the police—or animal control.

  Biting her fist in an attempt to hold in the noise wasn’t going to be enough, but she had to do something. So she once again followed her instincts, sinking her fangs into the muscles of his shoulder.

  Growling, Max slammed into her so hard she thought the door behind her might shatter. But any concerns about that disappeared when she felt her orgasm approaching like a speeding train. Lana wrapped her legs around his powerful body and held on tight.

  She was home. Where she was supposed to be.

  * * *

  “So I’m a werewolf,” Lana murmured as she sat astride his hips and grazed her extended nails across his chest, watching with fascination as her claws left light welts on his skin that faded almost immediately.

  It took a minute for Max to reply. He was too busy catching his breath. They’d made love for nearly three hours straight, and this was the first time they’d slowed down enough to talk.

  Talking was so frigging overrated.

  Lana wiggled back and forth on his hips as she waited for his answer. Even after making love like two overly caffeinated Tasmanian devils, one little sexy move of that ass was all it took to get him going again. He couldn’t believe he was ready for more. But the night was still young, so anything was possible.

  He was pleasantly tired, his body completely wrung out. He had bite marks on his neck and shoulder, not to mention claw marks on his chest and back. Most were shallow, but he felt a few on his back that might take a day or so to heal up completely.

  The urge to mark Lana the same way she’d marked him had been intense, but she was a beta and wouldn’t heal as fast as he did. Still, he’d left a few reminders on her skin she was going to notice for a while. He couldn’t be sure without coming straight out and asking her, but he had the feeling she kind of liked the way those marks looked on her perfect skin. Possession was nine-tenths of the law after all, and it definitely felt like Lana was his now, the same way he belonged to her.

  “Yup,” he said in answer to her question, feeling himself getting harder under her rocking hips. “An extremely sexy werewolf.”

  Lana smiled but didn’t say anything. Instead, she lifted her hands and stared at her fingers, her claws extending and retracting over and over. Damn, her claws were so cute. Shorter and daintier than an alpha’s or omega’s, but still long enough to do some damage if she wanted to. His back was a stark testament to that fact.

  Suddenly, Lana jumped off him, moving so fast she almost damaged the part of his anatomy that had been trying to get her attention. She stood beside the bed and stared at her feet, her brow furrowing slightly.

  “Why won’t my toenails extend like my fingernails?” she asked, her face screwing up in effort as she looked down at her bare feet.

  “They will.” He chuckled. “You’re kind of new to this, so it will take some time to learn. The claws on our feet are naturally inhibited in most cases unless we really push it. Probably a genetic adaptation to modern footwear, I guess. Wouldn’t want to shred your shoes every time your claws came out.”

  Lana nodded, not taking her eyes off her feet. “That makes sense.”

  She pursed her lips as if she was trying to push her toenails to extend regardless of what he’d said. Sighing, she climbed back on the bed and straddled him again, leaning forward so that the tips of her beautiful breasts were pressed against his pecs, her face close to his.

  She opened her mouth and tried to look down her nose so she could see her canines as they extended. Then she reached up and pushed down on his chin, opening his mouth.

  “Show me yours,” she said, never taking her eyes off his teeth.

  He chuckled, making her frown at him with the sexiest look of fanged disapproval he’d ever seen. But he behaved, letting his fangs slip out.

  “Whoa.” She tipped his chin this way and that so she could see. “Yours are so much bigger than mine. And before you even go there, I’m not talking about some kind of fang envy here or anything. It’s just that my fangs aren’t even half as long as yours, and you seem to have a lot more of them than I do. Where the heck do they all go when they slide back in? They seem too long to fit.”

  He would have laughed at the pure, simple curiosity of her question if it wasn’t for the fact that having her breasts teasing him like this was seriously distracting.

  “They slide into curved pockets along the upper and lower jaws. The longer the fangs, the more horizontal those pockets are. That’s why your upper canines are longer than the lower ones—more room to hide them. I’m a slightly different kind of werewolf than you are, so I have more fangs, and they’re bigger. If I need to get even more of them out, my entire jawline can widen to make room. Yours won’t do that. You’re not that kind of werewolf.”

  Lana seemed to consider that for a second, and he wondered if he was going to have to explain the whole alpha versus beta thing. He hoped not. Science and medical stuff weren’t his strong suit.

  “Okay,” she said, apparently happy with his explanation. “That makes sense. In that whole this-shouldn’t-be-possible kind of way. But why didn’t my dentist see these pockets when he was taking X-rays?”

  “When was the last time you went to th
e dentist?” he asked with amusement, already having a good idea what the answer might be.

  She frowned, seeming to put a lot of thought into that question. “Oh wow! I just realized that I haven’t been to the dentist since the accident. After I started going to college, I never thought about it.”

  He nodded. “Now that you’re a werewolf, you won’t ever go back to a dentist. Werewolves don’t get cavities.”

  Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  He laughed. “Seriously. And you won’t get colds or the flu or any of the other common illnesses that affect most people. You’ll heal faster from cuts and fractures than a regular person, too. And by the way, you won’t gain weight or get drunk, either, not without a tremendous amount of effort.”

  Her eyes widened more with every werewolf advantage he listed. But then her face became intensely serious. “I can still have kids, right? Being a werewolf didn’t change that, did it?”

  Max felt something inside his chest expand, making him want to grab Lana and squeeze her until she squeaked like a werewolf chew toy. He settled for reaching up to curl her hair gently around his index finger. He loved her so much it made him dizzy thinking about it. He was wondering if he should say the words, just to make it official, but she repeated her earlier question, reminding him he hadn’t answered it yet.

  “You planning on having kids sometime soon?” he asked, a smile creeping across his face.

  Lana blushed, which only made her cuter in Max’s opinion. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never really given it any thought, until I saw you with Terence and the girls. That’s when I started thinking that you’d make a great dad—when the time is right.”

  He tugged her down for a long, soulful kiss where he attempted to convey exactly how much he cared about her—and her idea of future parenthood. Like Lana, he hadn’t really thought about kids very much. In fact, given his screwed-up background, he’d always assumed it would be best if he never did. Too much chance of passing on some abusive gene that no one understood yet. But with Lana, the idea of kids didn’t seem so scary. With her, he thought having children might be the most amazing thing in the world.