by Skye Jones
“You should get one before we leave.”
I shook my head. “I think they look silly in homes that aren’t by the sea. But I’ve always wanted a cottage by the ocean, and if I ever live by the sea, I will buy myself some.”
A hand smoothed the hair away from my nape, and Adam’s lips brushed against my neck. “I’m going to buy you one anyway. You can keep it in your bathroom.”
I smiled as he kissed me, and I shivered in anticipation at the first soft touch of his lips to my skin. More thunder cracked overhead, and I flinched slightly. Adam’s arms came around me, tight and warm as he squeezed my middle and pulled me close. “So skittish.”
I laughed at his words because he’d said it before, but I was.
His hands slipped under my sweater and my T-shirt to find my stomach. I sucked in a breath, hoping to firm it up some. Adam’s hands swept over me, warming me where they touched as his lips continued to nibble at my neck.
“Put your arms up.” I did as he instructed and raised my arms into the air. My clothes rubbed over my already oversensitized skin as they came off over my arms. In only my bra, I faced the window and felt exposed suddenly. I doubted anyone would be out there in this storm, but then I remembered the beautiful face of the man sucking the blood from my neighbor’s neck, and I shivered for a whole different reason.
“You okay?” Adam turned me around in his arms to face him.
“I swear, sometimes it is as if you read my mind.”
“Nope, sorry, can’t do that. I can read your body, though.”
“You can tell a fearful shiver from a…sexy shiver?”
He smiled at my words. “A sexy shiver, eh? But yes, I can tell the difference.”
“How?”
“It’s a long story. And one I intend to share with you, but not right now. Why don’t you tell me what scared you suddenly?”
“Old memories.” I suddenly needed the curtains closed, so I wriggled out of Adam’s arms and pulled them shut. Ever since seeing that horribly gorgeous man, I’d slept with a night-light on and my curtains drawn, and even in the heat of a hot summer night, I’d never let my feet hang out from under the covers. Since Roger left, my nights had been torturous. Sleeping alone freaked me out.
“The man you saw as a child has really affected you, hasn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t it you? I essentially saw a vampire. I’m either mad, or scary things exist in this world—and both are terrifying. And you’re not surprised by what I told you, which kind of scares me some more.”
Adam sighed. “I wasn’t going to do this. Not now. And here you are all gorgeous and half naked and I must be fucking insane, but I can’t do this, can’t take this further, until you understand. Know it all.”
My heart plummeted. I didn’t like the sound of this. I bet he was going to tell me he had a wife or something. A new one he’d neglected to bring up in conversation before now.
“I’m not exactly human myself.”
His words took a moment to register, and then I burst out laughing. Adam waited me out, watching me, patient and calm. When I’d finished laughing, and I saw the seriousness in his eyes, I suddenly chilled as if a freezing cold wind had blown into my soul. I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged myself.
“Here, you must be cold.” Adam gathered the comforter from the bed and wrapped it around me, and then led me to the bed, where he gently pushed me down by my shoulders.
“I’m going to tell you something now that will freak you out. I want you to try to stay calm. You might want a good sip of the wine you’ve got there.”
“Are you one of them?” I mean, he hadn’t been surprised by my confession, and he looked beautiful enough to be like the man I’d seen, albeit in a much more rugged, masculine way.
“No. I can go out in the light. Vampires, for that is what you saw, mostly cannot. Although some of their kind, the Warriors, in particular, can for short periods of time.”
“Warriors?” My head spun but I took more wine, needing it as my world started to fracture around me. Did this man mean to kill me? Or harm me? Should I run? But where? The storm raged outside. The coincidence, though. Suddenly meeting someone out of the blue who didn’t flinch at my vampire story or laugh it off the way Roger had. In fact, Roger told me never to repeat it again or I’d find myself locked up.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Pam.” Adam reached for my hand, but I jerked it away. He sighed and began to pace up and down by the side of the bed.
“I’m not human, but I’m not a vampire. I’m a…you might call us shapeshifters. Or, gods, I hate this term, but it is the most used here, even though it doesn’t describe what we are at all. Many in Britain call us werewolves.”
I coughed in shock and shook my head. No way. A werewolf. Ha-ha. As if. And then I realized. He was taking the piss out of me. Making a mockery of me and my story. It proved the only rational explanation. No way could I be sitting in a room with a werewolf. I’d made love to him, for God’s sake.
“You look disgusted at the idea.” Adam’s words were laced with sorrow, and despite his cruel trick, part of me still felt sorry for him. Half taken in by his act. “Does the idea of what I am disgust you so much?”
“No. The idea you’d play with me this way does.”
“Play with you?” Adam’s words were terse and laced with real anger. I flinched in response to the aggression in his voice. “I’ve told you a highly guarded secret. Something our kind hardly ever shares with humans, not anymore, not unless they are empathine.”
His words confused me, and I didn’t understand what an empathine was, but I didn’t dare interrupt. I’d angered this man. This big, powerful, and probably crazy man, and now all I needed to do was try to think about how to get away. Oh, my life kept getting better and better.
“If you don’t believe my words, I ought to show you.”
I looked up in surprise and alarm. Show me? How? People talk about fight-or-flight, but right then, I froze. I sat there, stupidly unable to move as Adam began to strip in front of me. Unlike other times, I didn’t revel in the magnificence of his body. Instead, I catalogued all that strength and what it meant for my safety.
Whatever he was about to do, there’d surely be a moment when he’d be distracted. I’d wait, and then I’d run. Please, God, let me find the strength to run, I prayed.
Adam got down to his boxers, and my alarm built. Did he mean to rape me? I looked around the room to see if I spotted a weapon anywhere. Something to use if he tried to overpower me.
I’d gone from wanting him to be dominant and powerful to being terrorized by it. Of course, there was a whole world of difference between role-play between consenting adults and actually being attacked. But my mind still struggled to grasp all that had occurred, and one thing after another flitted through my racing brain, making it hard for me to do any coherent thinking.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Pamela. Please remember this.” Adam shucked his boxers and then got on all fours.
I frowned at his odd behavior and then braced myself as he lowered his head. I’d only get a moment, and I needed to take it now that he’d looked away. I shot off the bed and ran for the door, grabbing the handle and yanking it down to open the door. Once in the long hallway, I ran and didn’t stop until I got to the end. For a split second at the end of the corridor, I became disoriented and looked left to right. A low, mournful howl rent the air, and every single hair on my body stood on end. Slowly, so slowly as if I were moving in slow motion, I turned around. Framed in the doorway of the bedroom stood a huge wolf. A monstrously big creature, but it wasn’t monstrous in any other way. It was…beautiful.
Frozen in a mix of terror and awe, I didn’t move as the creature stood and looked at me. When it began to move toward me, its huge paws clacking on the wood, I stood still and stared.
It reached me, and my heart nearly gave out. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. But instead of an attack, all that came at me was a wet nose shove
d against my hand. The wolf’s tail wagged, like a big old friendly dog, and it nudged at my hand again.
Tentative and still scared out of my mind, I let my curiosity win out, and I reached out and touched the creature’s soft head. My fingers dug into thick, luxurious fur.
As I stroked the wolf, my mind raced. So…not a lie. Unless, Adam still stood in that room at the end of the corridor. Needing to see, I took off at a run past the wolf and pushed the door back with a slam as I shot into the room. No Adam. Only his pile of clothes. I’d known, deep down, he wouldn’t be in there. I mean, what did he do? Go around hiding giant wolves in closets so he could play parlor tricks on unsuspecting women? No. Adam was the wolf. Adam was a werewolf.
Chapter Six
The wolf entered the room behind me and gave a low, mournful whimper. I looked at it and noticed for the first time its ice-blue eyes. So unusual and striking. Its dark fur came marked with odd flashes of silver on its lower ruff and around its paws, with a few dabbed throughout its tail. It truly was a beautiful creature. How much of Adam resided in there?
After spending so long being scared of my own shadow, I frankly couldn’t believe I wasn’t freaking out more. But I think the utter shock of it all worked to keep me calm. For the moment.
The wolf dropped its head, and its limbs began to crack and elongate before my eyes. It looked painful, and as one paw bent at an unholy angle, I looked away and shut my eyes. A few more moments of cracking and a grunt and then something warm touched my leg.
I gave a small squeal and opened my eyes. Adam stood in front of me, and he came naked as the day he was born. He quickly reached into his pile of clothes and pulled up his boxers, and then sat next to me on the bed.
“Pam, I need you to listen to me. I won’t hurt you. I’d never hurt you. We wolfen, when we meet people we are physical with, sometimes we start to bond with them. I think it’s happening with you. It means we feel…we feel an awful lot for them. We could never harm one we are bonding with, so you need to understand one thing in all of this. One basic truth. You are safe with me.”
For some unknown reason, tears pricked at my eyes, and I sniffled as I glanced at Adam and nodded my head. Safe. Such a small word with such a hugely important meaning. Particularly for anyone like me who suffered with anxiety and panic. We spent our lives looking for a sense of safety and security, and often, we didn’t find it. It struck me as exceedingly ironic that the one person I truly felt safe with was one others would find a textbook monster.
Did I see him the same way? As a monster? I still struggled to process what I’d seen and learned, but I realized I didn’t view Adam as a monster. In fact, his wolf was astonishingly beautiful.
“Now, I need you to listen to me, please, Pam.”
I nodded again and let him take hold of my hand. His touch still felt the same to me. It still somehow grounded me, soothed me, which made no sense at all after what I’d witnessed.
“When I said I’d made a stupid mistake, I referred to the fact that I think I may be bonding with you. My feelings for you are growing rapidly. It happens to us. We go on so much more than humans when it comes to finding a mate. Or, I should say, in some ways so much less! We rely more on scent and things like the way our heartbeats match up when we are together. But scent is a big one. As is the initial attraction. Some of our kind, they need nothing more. Others do want more compatibility, but we don’t need months or years of being together before we can make a commitment the way humans do.”
I nodded numbly. Was Adam telling me, in his own werewolf-y way, that he loved me?
“Amongst my kind, it is not really our practice to mate with a human. It hasn’t been for a long time. Although, there are special humans we bond with called empathine. One of my sons, Drew, he mated with an empathine.”
“Mated?” The word squeaked out, loaded with surprise.
“Yes, and married as well. They’ve done it the wolfen way and the human way.”
“Do you turn on the full moon, then? Whether you want to or not?” I couldn’t get my head around a human wanting to marry a man who changed into a wolf and went on a rampage. No matter how good and how safe he made her feel.
Adam laughed. “No, baby. We don’t change against our will. We don’t howl at the moon, and we don’t hurt people.” His face grew serious, and his lips hardened into a thin line. “At least, most of us don’t. A few of our kind—but not ones who live with our pack—they do these things. We call them rogue. They gave in to blood lust, or plain old lust. They’ve gone bad, and we have no time for them. They are ostracized or worse.”
“So your son married a human woman. An empath, did you say?”
“Empathine. It means one who understands us. And yes, he did. My other son married and mated a woman who isn’t empathine. She’s human, like yourself, with no special powers as far as we are aware. Her best friend is mated to our enforcer, Boyd, and she too is human, but she has the ability to see and sense some things. And my other enforcer, Louis, he is also married to an empathine. They have a newborn child.”
Adam’s face softened as he spoke of their child, and he looked at me and smiled. “This child is a blessing in ways I cannot easily explain. We don’t make many young, and very few females, and Louis and Izzy have a healthy baby girl. Our pack celebrated much the day she was born.”
“So you live in a pack? Do you mostly live in wolf form?” I couldn’t believe how calm I kept my voice. It seemed in times of severe stress, I could find my inner calm.
“No. We live mostly in our human form, but we do change into our wolf form and go for a run or sometimes on the hunt. For deer or rabbits.”
Something occurred to me. A weird and frankly disturbing idea, but I had to ask. “Do you ever…I mean, when you…you know…does the wolf come out.”
“Do you mean when we have sex?”
I nodded and flushed.
“No. We don’t mate in our wolf form. Not even two pureblood wolf shifters do. It would be dangerous, and we believe it can lead to a wolfen turning rogue, so it is taboo. But our wolves peek out of our human shell sometimes. For example, when our enforcer Boyd bonded with his mate, Laura, it happened. Before he understood how far gone he was, he’d seen her flirting with another male, and without realizing, he began to growl. And of course, even in human form, we are stronger than most humans. But we are aware of this and are extremely careful. We’d never hurt our mates. You don’t understand the bond. It is so much more than love or marriage. It’s physical as well as emotional and spiritual. Our hearts connect, our scents match. We soothe one another. Once a pair is truly bonded, even a short period of time apart hurts. Physically as well as emotionally. We can literally become sick.”
Wow. Talk about a deep and meaningful commitment. In many ways, it seemed to be everything I’d ever wanted. To be with someone who held a strong and abiding love for you and would never turn their back on you or let you down. Yes, I wanted all of that and more. Something Adam said earlier struck me in light of this new information.
“But…didn’t you say you might be bonding with me?”
“I am, yes. And I think you’re bonding with me in return, too. My touch soothes you. I can tell by the way your heart rate and breathing slow down. It means we have a bit of a problem. Because, depending how far gone the bond is, we might have to treat you for something we call the burning.”
“Burning?” Oh Lord, that didn’t sound good.
“Yes. It is like a painful sickness a human who is bonding with a shifter can get. But we can fix it.”
“How?”
He looked at me and smiled. “Two ways, sweetheart. We either give you a tincture, or I mate you and fuck you senseless.”
“Oh.” My hand went to my chest, and my face must have been a lovely shade of red as I burned up at his words.
But, despite my shock, another feeling coursed through me. One of excitement. And his words put pictures into my head. Images of Adam above me, holding me down,
thrusting into me. Me on all fours with him behind me, powering into me. Us, writhing against one another on a huge bed with what looked like some sort of deer skin on the bottom.
I looked at him and gasped. “Did you put those images in my head?”
“What images? And…erm…no. I told you, I cannot do these things. What images?”
I ignored his repeated question, because the whole thing weirded me out, and answered with one of my own. “So if I go home in a few days, you’ll need to give me some medicine?”
“It’s a bit more complicated.” He rubbed at his jaw, and I followed the explicitly masculine gesture with hungry eyes. Oh, my God. How could I be lusting after him all over again in the midst of all this? I’d lost my mind.
“You will need to come back with me. I want you to see our medicine woman and get checked over. If you don’t want to stay with me, then you will need to take the medicine. I’d also like you to meet Laura. She might have some insight into your experience as a young girl. She sometimes sees things.”
“You want me to stay with you? I mean…forever?”
“I’d certainly like you to come back with me and stay for a while. See how things go between us. If we find out we hate one another, you can take the tincture then and be on your way whenever you like. I’d really love you to come meet my people and our pack. Of course, my sons will be shocked to shit when I bring a human woman home with me.”
“Why? Didn’t you say your sons were with human women?”
“Let’s just say, I’ve been somewhat old-fashioned in my views of wolfen and human relationships in the past and leave it there.”
“I don’t know.”
I nibbled on a fingernail. I’d possibly be in danger. Okay, Adam said he’d never hurt me, but what about others of his kind? I’d literally be walking into a den of wolves. And should I simply run off with him to his commune…pack, whatever? Who did that?