by Dani April
Now she did push out of his grip and get away from him and run down the trail as he followed her. “I’m not going to do that! I’m not going to become a whore with other men just so you can stay as an animal and watch while they fuck me. If you really think that, then you must think very little of me.”
“You have my permission to do whatever you need to do to survive until I come back for you. If you want to stay alone without companionship, then stay alone. I’ll always be nearby as the wolf.”
He caught up with her and pulled her back against his body. His lips found hers for a brutal kiss of desire. Her mouth opened to him, and their tongues warred between their mouths.
He tasted the salt of her tears as they fell down her cheeks, and he kissed them away for her. He realized this glorious woman loved him, and she would be his reason to come back as a man one day, stronger than ever. She would be his reason to fight the disease and live.
“I love you,” he whispered as their kiss broke.
“But not enough to stay with me,” she challenged him.
“If I could rip my heart out and stop the change inside my body, I’d do it for you.” He shook her in his arms and pulled her hair back, forcing her to look at him. “Goddamn it, Morgan, I need you to understand me now. I need that more than I’ve ever needed anything from you.”
When he raised his voice, he saw a hint of what might have been recognition pass through her. Her stance softened against him.
“Will you be a year?”
He shook his head. “It may be longer than that.”
“It damn well better not be.” Now her voice was forceful. “I’m giving you a year. You had better be back to me as a man one year from today.”
Nathan brought up his courage. He would not lie to this woman who he loved so much. “All right. For you, I’ll make it happen.”
They kissed again long and hard.
“In the meantime I want you to make it by without me in the best way you can,” he told her. “Do anything you have to, and know that I love you. Be strong, Morgan. Be strong for us.”
Chapter Four
Morgan poured a not very cold bottle of water over her face to try and get the sting of sweat out of her eyes. She had finished tilling one acre that morning. In the afternoon she would have three more to take care of. She wouldn’t be finished until well after dark.
When she looked up, the wolf had entered from the edge of the field and was staring at her.
“So there you are,” she said to Nathan. She really didn’t like to see him in this form. It was just too damn painful. But then again this was the only contact they had, and it did help to be able to feel his presence close by.
In May, the weather turned really nice for the first time. It had given Morgan a chance to get out and work in her fields behind the house. She and Nathan had planted four acres with crops the year before, and it gave them both something to do when she wasn’t working on her painting and he hadn’t been working on his computer programs.
Now Morgan realized without Nathan’s income, these crops and the handful of farm animals they kept would be all she had to make a living with. It wouldn’t be much, but she could make do for a year. At least she hoped she could.
The work was hard in the fields. She was covered with sweat after only an hour of work and had to stop for a rest. They didn’t have the correct equipment, so she had to manually see to the crops. It was back-breaking work. She wasn’t even sure she was doing it right. Nothing in her background had trained her to be a farmer.
She and Nathan had never thought they would do anything with these fields and animals other than to have some fun with them. After all, it was quaint to have their own farm. The income from Nathan’s business was more than they required to live on. They thought they could play at farmwork to distract them from daily life.
Now it had become Morgan’s daily life.
She had gone into Wolf Creek to see Nathan’s doctor the previous week and had demanded to know what was wrong with him. He would tell her nothing, and she left more frustrated than she arrived.
Morgan realized Nathan was sick, but had no idea what was wrong with him.
She was tempted to contact his parents, but knew that would be no good. They didn’t like her, and they didn’t approve of her for their son. They had told her as much on the several occasions Nathan had taken her to their farm for Sunday dinner. It had become so tense between them, he had stopped taking her. Now they were a lost avenue of help.
The wolf stared up at her with the beautiful eyes of Nathan.
“I wish I was one of your shifter bitches,” she told him. “Then I could shift, and we could be together. But I’m only human, I’m afraid.” She leaned back against the fence and continued with her rest.
The silence of that land had started to become creepy to her. Knowing she was all alone was okay, a fact she could deal with. But over time, and it had been six weeks now, it had started to grind her down.
She looked down at the wolf. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with you before you left me?” she asked the wolf. She felt angry with him. “Why didn’t you trust me enough to deal with whatever it is that’s the matter with you?”
She pushed herself away from the fence and wiped the sweat off her brow. She had to get back to work. The fields would not till themselves.
“I hate you,” she told the wolf. “And if I only didn’t love you so much, I’d pack up and head home to Chicago. You’ve always been my only weakness because I still love you with all my heart.”
* * * *
The next day Morgan drove into Wolf Creek. She needed to buy feed for the animals and gasoline for her equipment and grab a few groceries for herself.
She had stood under the shower for an hour that morning but still felt grimy from all the farmwork. When she walked into the town store, she imagined that people were staring at her. She felt like a tired old woman at twenty-four.
“Haven’t seen your boyfriend Nathan around for a few weeks,” the manager of the store inquired as he checked her out at the register.
“He’s away,” was Morgan’s curt reply. Like it was really anyone’s business in the small town where Nathan was anyway, and of course they would never have understood. She still didn’t understand herself.
“You trying to run all those acres out there all by yourself?” the manager asked her.
“Yes, I am,” Morgan answered.
“That’s a lot of work for one woman.”
“Don’t worry about me. I can handle it.” She tried to give him a smile, but it didn’t work.
The manager gave her a stern look. “You and your boyfriend have a fight and break up, Miss Richards?”
“No. Of course not.” Morgan became defensive. Small-town gossip could be so terrible. Growing up in Chicago, she had never had to deal with it before now. “Nothing like that has happened. Nathan is coming back. We just don’t know exactly when he’s scheduled back yet. Like I said before, it’s nothing for you or anyone else to worry about.”
“The only reason I ask is that his mother and father happen to be friends of mine.” He gave her another stern look, this one more accusing than the first. “I’d hate for their son to be done wrong. I understand he’s got his own successful business now. Probably has a lot of money stashed away in the bank. I wouldn’t want to see him done wrong by anyone.”
Morgan grabbed her sacks and left the counter, not giving another glance back at the inquisitive store manager. As she walked out the front door, it was on the tip of her tongue to yell back at him. She wanted to say that Nathan had been the one to leave her. She had not left him, and the money he had in the bank she definitely didn’t have access to. But she bit back her anger and continued outside to her truck.
Morgan knew she was the outsider in the small town. Nathan had been the hometown boy, and she was just a girl from the big city. No one trusted her. She would have no friends in Wolf Creek.
When sh
e began loading up the truck, a couple of tough-looking cowboys had come out of a bar across the street. They stood on the corner and watched her as she loaded the supplies into the bed of her truck. They didn’t offer to help.
“How you doing today, pretty lady?” one of them asked.
His voice taunted her and was filled with rude implications. Morgan ignored him.
“Hey, honey, when you’re finished with that, why don’t you come on over to the bar. My boys want to offer to buy you a drink.” The rude cowboy leered at her through unkind eyes.
Morgan heard the other hands he was with start to laugh. Apparently she was the brunt of some joke they all found very funny. It was probably a very obscene joke.
“Come on over here and sit on my lap, honey,” one of the cowboys called to her.
Morgan quickly finished loading the truck bed. Her heart was racing. She didn’t want to have any trouble with anybody. Her life was already complicated enough without adding to it.
A young, reasonably attractive woman alone in this town of horny male shape-shifters was not safe for very long. Nathan had often warned her of the dangers and never let her come into town by herself.
She got in behind the wheel of her truck and started the motor. Without even looking where she was going, she backed out of the lot. A tractor trailer almost hit her as it was pulling in. The driver laid on his horn.
Morgan got the truck in drive and sped away down the main street, headed for the rural road that would take her home. She was out of breath, and her hands held the steering wheel all too tightly. By the time she made the safety of the road home, she was covered in sweat and shaking.
She hit her brakes and paused for a few seconds at a stop sign. A road marker gave directions to I-80 and told how many miles south it was. Morgan looked at it with longing. That was the way home back to her old and sane life in Chicago.
Every morning for the past six weeks she had been tempted to get in this very same truck with her bags packed and head in that direction. Now as she watched the road sign leading toward her old hometown, she was overcome by a temptation. How easy would it be to make a right turn here instead of a left turn and start the long trip back home?
“I’m not that weak,” she whispered to herself. “He wouldn’t leave me if I needed him. He still loves me, and we will have a life together again.” She gave herself a pep talk and tried to force herself to believe her words.
Then she made the left hand turn and headed back to the house Nathan had built for them. She would see this thing through to the end.
Chapter Five
Drake Sinclair had just arrived at the bar for a couple of quick drinks. He shook hands with a few men he knew and inquired after their families and businesses. Then he took a stool up at the counter, ordered a beer, and watched a few minutes of the game on the overhead television.
The buzz around the bar was about Nathan McLaughlin’s woman. Nathan hadn’t been seen around town for weeks. Now his woman was coming into town every week to buy supplies. The small-town gossip speculated something was going on out at Nathan’s place. No one knew for sure what, and Nathan had always kept himself at a distance from the run-of-the-mill life, so it was hard to know.
Hunter Cole came up to the bar and to the stool next to Drake. The two friends exchanged a greeting. Drake had expected him and already ordered up a beer for his longtime business partner.
They exchanged a few general comments about the town and their business. But Drake knew Hunter had heard the gossip about Nathan’s woman, too. Hunter was always chasing after a new woman, and someday it would get him into trouble. Now Drake knew it was time for Hunter to get down to business and discuss his latest target.
“Her name is Morgan,” the younger man started off.
“Who?” Drake laughed and feigned ignorance of what Hunter might be talking about. Of course Drake knew. Nathan’s woman had been on his mind, too, ever since they had met up with her two months before outside the rodeo.
“I know you remember her, man,” Hunter reminded him. “She’s attractive. Long dark hair down past her shoulders, light complexion, slender figure, early to midtwenties. She was dressed in those tight jeans. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to rip them off her, too.”
“I know who you’re talking about,” Drake acknowledged. “But she’s taken. I don’t think old Nathan’s into sharing his woman. If you remember, Nathan McLaughlin almost tore both our heads off because you were trying to touch her hair.”
“I could have taken McLaughlin in a fight,” Hunter said with overconfident bravado.
“McLaughlin’s older, taller, and heavier than you. He also played football for some fancy college team up in Chicago. He could eat you and me for lunch,” Drake warned his friend.
“Could be,” Hunter reluctantly admitted. “But then why isn’t he taking better care of his lady? If I had a lady that fine, I wouldn’t make her come into town and do my shopping for me.”
“You’ve got a good point there,” Drake agreed and took a swig from his beer. “Especially not with all the rough-and-tumble shifters around here. A pretty woman like that in town by herself is going to find all sorts of unwelcome trouble.”
“So do you think McLaughlin has abandoned his woman?”
Drake shook his head. He just couldn’t believe it. “Not likely,” he answered. “You saw how protective he was of her that night.”
“If she was my woman, I’d be that protective of her all the time,” Hunter put in. “I say we go out there to the McLaughlin place and pay our respects to Miss Morgan. We’ll take our chances and see what develops.”
Drake put a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Easy, cowboy,” he told him. “We don’t want to go doing something like that and risk McLaughlin coming home and finding us. He’d tear us apart.”
“Then what do you want to do, Drake?” Drake could tell when his young friend was getting impatient for a woman. This was definitely one of those times.
“Normally I’d say if McLaughlin doesn’t want to share her that the better man had won, and I’d wish him luck,” Drake explained. “However, there does appear to be extenuating circumstances here.”
“So you’re saying the two of us still have a shot with her?”
“Perhaps.” Drake felt like a fool for pursuing another man’s woman. But this seemed like a woman worth pursuing. “We’re going to have to play it real cautious and smart.”
“I’m not good at cautious or smart when it comes to women,” Hunter said and laughed. “But I am pretty good at seducing them when I want to be, and once I do get to know a woman, I’m excellent at seeing all her needs are met.”
Drake smiled. He’d shared a number of women in the past with Hunter. They complemented each other well in the chase for a woman and in the bedroom when they had finally forced the woman’s surrender. Drake was slow and sensual with women, and Hunter was rough and fun.
Drake was twenty-nine, about to turn thirty, and had lived long enough to have learned a modicum of wisdom, whereas Hunter had only just turned twenty-four and was all hard-ons and testosterone when it came to a woman.
Hunter had rugged good looks, and the ladies seemed to think he filled out his jeans nicely. He liked to fuck a woman and fuck her hard on the first date. Drake, on the other hand, liked to take his time and get to know the woman he was after and then worship her once he had gotten in her bed.
“Let’s start by learning everything we can about McLaughlin for the past couple of months when all the trouble seemed to start.”
“In a small town the size of Wolf Creek, that won’t be hard,” Hunter said.
“Can you afford to take a few days off from the business while we do some legwork around the county and ask some questions?” Drake asked.
“Sure I can, for a woman that fine.” Hunter gave a wicked smile.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” Drake said, making up his mind. Drake wondered about this one. Something about their first m
eeting with her told him she just might be special.
* * * *
Morgan pulled up the truck outside the large farmhouse that was the home of Nathan’s mother and father. She took a deep breath. She knew she could do this. Nathan’s parents didn’t like her, but enough time had gone by now. She knew Nathan had talked to them before he got lost in his wolf form. If she was lucky, maybe his parents knew what the problem was and would share it with her.
Mr. McLaughlin, Nathan’s father, opened the front door and showed her inside to a sitting room. He was just like Nathan, just as good-looking, only twenty-five years older. He also had that same intensity about him Nathan always possessed. She could see where Nathan got both his character and his winning looks from.
Nathan’s mother was already seated in the sitting room waiting for her. Morgan had called ahead and let them know she was coming by. Mrs. McLaughlin didn’t look pleased to see her.
“Won’t you have a seat, my dear,” Mrs. McLaughlin said to Morgan.
Mrs. McLaughlin was a hard woman, and Morgan had her figured out. She was the perfect shifter mate when around others, submissive to her husband in all things. But Morgan knew from the little Nathan had discussed his parents with her that Mrs. McLaughlin really called the shots in this family behind the scenes, and most of the animosity Morgan had gotten from these two had come from her.
“I have chores to do out on the land,” Mr. McLaughlin said, excusing himself and leaving the two women alone to talk.
“I was just having some tea. Would you like some, dear?” Mrs. McLaughlin asked and began pouring the hot water even before Morgan had a chance to decline.
“I’ve come to talk about Nathan,” Morgan announced, getting straight to the point of her visit. Mrs. McLaughlin didn’t like her, so there was no point in pleasantries.