Secret Wolf: A Steamy Werewolf Romance

by Dancer Vane

  Where is Blake?

  “No, I don’t think so. Could someone have come in?”

  “Probably not: the gate is locked. But someone might have tried to force it open and that would trigger the alarm. Or a branch falling on the fence. Or someone already on the property, trying to get inside the house without deactivating the alarm first.”

  My heart was beating fast at every option he mentioned, and I could feel my back becoming sweaty.

  “It’s quite an isolated house you’ve got there,” the first one commented quietly. The one who hadn’t smiled to me, but touched his gun.

  I met his gaze. “That’s why we have the alarm.”

  He seemed to be thinking. He watched the path behind me intently.

  “Do you want us to come inside and have a look?”

  His colleague shot him a quick glance and frowned.

  I didn’t know what to do. I already had checked whatever could be checked from outside, and I didn’t like the man’s eyes.

  But beyond that, it wasn’t my property. I couldn’t invite two guys inside, unlock the gate for them, without Blake’s permission.

  In fact, I felt vaguely safer with them outside. The idea of unlocking the gate and letting them in made my skin crawl.

  “Fine,” the man said after a second, and I saw his colleague exhale softly. “We’ll stay close, just in case. You have our phone number?”

  Blake did. But not me, of course. I shook my head.

  “Well, anything weird, you trigger the alarm. Not the fence, because it’s electrified and you would get a nasty shock. But you can shove a door, or a window, and it will trigger the alarm. We’ll be near, just in case.”

  I thanked them, and stood in the path watching their car go.

  Some breeze made the trees give a long sigh. But everything seemed very, very quiet.

  Where was Blake?

  Not my business, anyway. Unless he had been kidnapped?

  No. The gates were locked, the house doors undisturbed… Blake, visibly, had chosen to spend the night somewhere else. Without his phone. His right. His choice. Not my business. If some animal hadn’t collided with the windows, or the gates, I would never even have known about it.

  That really wasn’t my business.

  So maybe, there was more, between the girl from last night and him, then I had imagined. If she had spent a night here and he spent the next night with her.

  It made me feel strangely empty. Sure, I knew there was nothing between us. But…

  I remembered this moment in the kitchen, near the ovens… for a second there I had believed… but no. He was just being playful… his own version of playful. Or he was just sleep-deprived.

  What I had said about his temper wasn’t even true. I meant that he was moody, often tense. But his temper was fine, under control. That man was always under control… in fact… last night with that girl, he had seemed rather controlled as well, rather detached. Until something seemed to motivate him suddenly and he became… ferocious.

  No use trying to figure it out. She probably understood him better than I ever could, anyway.

  I walked back to the main house, and checked the little light next to the doorway. Red, blinking. That meant the alarm was set. I took that ill-fated little path to check the kitchen back-door. Same blinking little red light. On this door too, the alarm was set. Blake was safe if he was inside, and if he wasn’t… well, he certainly wasn’t. Nobody could have slept through that alarm.

  I walked up the path again to get back to the carriage house. I felt sad, empty. I must have been still tired, but the adrenaline wasn’t going to let me sleep. In spite of myself, I remained on edge, waiting to hear the alarm start again anytime.

  If someone, anyone, might be on the property, I should go home and lock myself inside. But I felt on edge, still wired, and I knew I would turn over in bed until dawn.

  I’m not a heavy sleeper on a normal night. And once I’m woken up, it’s very hard for me to go back to sleep.

  Usually I felt good in my bed, knowing Blake slept in the main house nearby. But now, I felt cheated. He didn’t sleep there, and it wasn’t the first time, certainly, that I imagined his comforting presence close by, while he spent the night somewhere else entirely. I had reached the little terrace in front of my own door, and fished the key from my pocket.

  A noise in the bushes.

  I froze. It wasn’t exactly a noise, but… movement. Leaves rustling against each other, further in the woods.

  Maybe an owl. Maybe an insomniac squirrel. Or a… fox, maybe? Truth was, I didn’t know much about nocturnal life in the forest. But this had sounded like a bigger animal.

  Human-size.

  Someone could be lurking around, waiting for their chance.

  I could lock myself in the carriage house, I was just at the door. But they would only need to break a window to get in. The coach house wasn’t alarmed. If they were quiet enough, I wouldn’t even hear them until it was too late.

  Or maybe they were waiting for Blake to come home, to ambush him.

  Better to go check, knife in hand, rather than be surprised in my bed, or corralled inside my house without a chance to escape.

  I grabbed the knife handle firmly, and, as silently as I could, took a narrow path among the bushes, in the general direction of the noise.

  I heard it again. A rustle. A lighter shape in the shadows.

  Maybe the wolf? I hoped he wouldn’t freak out at the sight of the knife.

  I saw movement near a large tree trunk. I walked closer.

  The clouds moved away, revealing the moon, huge and a buttery white. And in the moonlight, Blake, naked and splendid, turned around and stared at me.

  Or rather, we stared at each other.

  For the second night in a row, he stood naked in front of me. His back to me, this time, and… what a back. His ass incredibly taut, his waist slim, and the planes of his back magnificent, right up to the large, muscular shoulders.

  His clothes lay at his feet in a small pile. He held his tee-shirt, as if I had surprised him when he was about to get dressed. He must have heard something, because he turned, and saw me. He froze when he saw me gawking at his body.

  Then he turned around completely. Tee-shirt still in hand, but forgotten. Apparently, the man had no modesty. And… could I complain? I was practically eating him with my eyes.

  I kept my gaze up, though. That was a bit on the hypocritical side, because I had seen all of him the night before, but… this time he was watching me. Intently.

  I licked my lips. Searched for something to say.

  He took in my jeans and tank top, and his gaze rested on the knife in my hand. He smirked.

  “Are you hunting at night, as well?”

  “I… the alarm went off.”

  He became serious again.

  “I know. I heard. Probably some moron who tried the gate, and flew when he realised there was an alarm.”

  “Right.”

  He shrugged.

  “Some of these houses aren’t occupied all year, so he might have believed he would find something easy to steal.”

  I watched him, talking calmly, explaining, as if he were not stark naked in the moonlight.

  “Don’t they all have alarms?”

  “Yes. But hope springs eternal. Nothing to worry about, though.”

  I realised I was shaking. Not with lust, for once; the vision of him in the silvery light, naked and beautiful, seemed too surreal to cause anything like this. He just didn’t seem real; this moment, this quiet conversation under the stars with my boss, when his clothes lay at his feet and he didn’t seem to notice, just felt like a strange dream. Not real enough to make my body react.

  But I had been scared. By the alarm, and then spooked to find the empty house, and… I took a deep breath. I had to stay calm, in spite of the mounting panic - fear rising just when there was nothing to fear anymore.

  “I thought you were sleeping at that girl’s place
,” I said, and was horrified to hear a hint of the panic in my voice.

  He looked stunned: “Cari? God, no. Why would I?”

  In the silence that followed, I heard the echo of my words, and realised what I had just said, and what it betrayed. I expected to see the understanding dawning on his face, his realisation that I had seen them — watched them — and he would become angry, or…

  But instead, it was another kind of understanding I saw, and he asked, sounding as if he just realised:

  “You’ve been scared, haven’t you?”

  “The alarm,” I said. “And you weren’t there, and…” I shrugged helplessly. I even remembered how uncomfortable I had felt at the idea of opening the gate to the security guards. I was trembling. Was I becoming completely paranoid?

  And, so, his girlfriend’s name was Cari? And why wasn’t he shocked that I knew about her? And why was I shaking, now that there was no danger anymore?

  He let his tee-shirt fall, and in two strides he was next to me. He encircled me with his arms, and I shuddered and, shamefully, cuddled against him, because he was warm, and kind, and he understood. I wasn’t sure how, because he could never have had the kind of life I had, but he understood.

  He held me close, and it should have weirded me out because he was naked, but I dropped the knife and slid my arms around his waist and held him close too, while he whispered. “You’ve had a shock the other day, with the fire. It’s normal to be still shaken. You’re shivering…”

  I was. Shamefully, when the situation could have given way to such beautiful possibilities, I was shaking and unable to say anything coherent. In my mind, vividly, I saw the guys in the alley, and then the security guy watching the path, over my shoulder, as if checking if we were alone — and I had told him the owner wasn’t home, stupid, stupid girl — and thought of the wolf, I don’t know why, thought of the wolf getting caught in the electric fence and dying…

  He made shushing sounds. Kissed my hair. What mattered more than anything, at that moment, was that he didn’t let me go. I held to him as if for dear life. I wasn’t crying; I was upset, and sad, but all that was because of the previous fear and excitation.

  I wasn’t afraid. He felt good, his chest silky against my cheek, my arms, strong and kind. There was no smirk and no chiding tone. Instead, a low, husky voice I didn’t know.

  “Hush, little rabbit. Everything is fine. You’re safe. I’m here. I was here all night.”

  I wanted to ask him about the girl, about leaving his phone in the house — and his clothes in the grass — but I couldn’t mention the girl again, or he was going to realise I had seen them before, and why mention that he was naked? He knew, and he didn’t care. I could feel his flat stomach against my hip, and his lips in my hair. His breath against my ear.

  “I’m not leaving you alone in the woods, all alone in your little house. I’m here every night. I stand guard. You’re safe.”

  But of course it couldn’t be true. Because he spent part of the night at the bakery. Because he had a girlfriend and if someone hurt me in the carriage house while he was with her, busy as yesterday, he wouldn’t even hear. The double glazing insulated both ways. They would never hear me scream in my little fairy-tale house.

  And why was I suddenly picturing things like that, and feeling my heart race in fear? I had felt safe in the carriage house every previous night, protected by the fence and the lock on the door.

  And I had been safe, because as soon as someone had touched the gate, the alarm had started, waking me up.

  “Shhhh… you’re safe, child…”

  “I’m not a child,” I said, my voice still unsure, as if diluted in water.

  “Of course you aren’t.”

  He wasn’t kissing my hair anymore; he was kissing my forehead, and my cheeks, and then I lifted my face and my lips met his.

  He froze for a second, then pressed his lips on mine, and then he was the one kissing me. His hand cupped my face and he drew me even closer; I heard a whimper that came from me, and held him closer, but there was really no space left between us.

  The kiss became more intense, not reassuring and sweet anymore, but urgent, demanding. He grabbed the back of my head and he wasn’t treating me anymore like a kid, or a “little rabbit” (I wondered where that came from?) but like a woman; and I answered his kiss with the same urgency, the same hunger.

  At some point we fell, and he let out a “whoops” and half a laugh, but he didn’t release me, and I fell over him. His hard body didn’t exactly cushion the fall, but he laughed and didn’t stop kissing me. He grabbed my legs so I was straddling him, in my jeans, his whole body hard and unyielding under me.

  We kissed and whenever I started to wonder about it, I saw the moonlight, his skin pale and gleaming in the silvery light, the thick grass, and thought it mustn’t be real anyway. I could always worry about it the next day when I woke up.

  It seemed real, though, real and urgent; the need that made me move and thrust against his erection, his little squeal of protest when the buttons of my jeans hurt him — his “this has to go” that didn’t expect any opposition.

  He helped me take off my jeans and underwear, then threw the tank top above my head. And what could be more natural that being naked with him when he was so comfortably naked himself, wearing his skin like designer clothes, like he knew his body was so beautiful, so natural, that there was no need to hide any of it.

  My own skin glowed in the silvery light, and my hair took an almost platinum shade. I didn’t have time to bee self-conscious, because his hands were everywhere, warming me, his grunts and sighs in my neck and against my ear, his kisses and his tongue real and wet, intimate, calling me, holding me captive of that dream, that moment…

  He positioned me over him, and I was grateful not to be pinned down under a stronger body, but in control, free to escape, to chose. His hands grabbed my ass, placed me over his rigid cock, and I rolled my hips to slide over it, making it slick with my own arousal. Nothing else existed at that moment but the sensations of his hands, his body. I glanced up and was shocked to find his eyes watching me, watching my face, intent, almost painfully so.

  “Good?”

  I nodded. He rubbed a thumb against my lower lip.

  “More?”

  I nodded again. He lowered my face to speak in my ear. “I want you to say it, little rabbit.”

  Instead, I took his cock in my hand and guided the tip to where I wanted it. He closed his eyes, breathing harshly, and I pushed myself over it, guiding him inside, his little moan — almost as if in pain — soft in my ear.

  Once he was inside, he was in charge again. He grabbed my hips with strong hands and guided me over his cock, slowly at first, then stronger.

  But I didn’t need to be guided; I knew how to make it good, for both of us. I rolled my hips, taking him deeper, while his fingers bruised my ass and the noises he made went straight to my soul.

  And it was so, so different from the night before; the slap of flesh on flesh, yes, and the moans, and all the sweet, harsh music of sex; but I looked up, and his eyes were closed and he looked so focused, so tense, as he was whispering my name, whispering yes, yes sweetheart, that’s good… and when he opened his eyes, he was looking at me, right to the core of me, and he kissed my lips and then kissed me deeply, while I moved on his cock and took him deep, deep, mixing my own moans with his.

  He grabbed my hair, my head, and kissed me hard, and I remembered him fucking a girl with half-closed eyes and such a distant, cold expression. I almost whimpered at the thought, but then he thrust inside me, and I rocked on his hips, into his movements.

  Then I couldn’t look at him because he was always kissing me, and kissing my face, my eyes, and whispering little things, little sounds that didn’t make more sense than mine; but the sound of them was sweet, and husky, and he kept saying yes, yes, oh yes in such an exquisite, tense voice, as if he was on the verge of something beautiful and rare…

  Yet
it wasn’t all exquisite, or dreamy; it was intense, sexual, and I heard the wet sound of his cock in me and the slap of flesh, and inhaled his scent, woodsy and male and the faint perfume, faded, the sweet sweat and harsher tang of sex.

  His cock filled me again and again, and my cries weren’t sweet anymore but urgent, pained, and he whispered something hoarsely and thrust hard, his fingers bruising my hips and my breasts, his teeth on my lips, and one of his hands very soft on the back on my head, stroking my hair.

  I came, unselfconscious, all inhibitions lost, crying out into the night, my body spasming in his arms, and they closed around me. Then he gave a few harsh strokes and cried out — but suddenly I was empty, bereft, and he was coming in thick spurts in the grass next to us, with a strangled curse.

  I vaguely regretted that he hadn’t come inside me, a vague thought about a condom — lack of — drifted in my mind, but I was warm, and safe, and loved, and my body wonderfully relaxed. I heard him chuckle and when I looked up, his gaze was luminous in the dark, gleaming, and he kissed me deeply and said nothing.

  I inhaled the scent of his skin, felt his taste in my mouth, and wondered about a dream with such vivid sensations. But I didn’t care. It was real, I thought that, it must have been real, even if a blade of grass was swaying in the breeze in front of my eyes, and the man who had just made love to me was gleaming like silver in the moonlight. I must have been already dozing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ALANNA

  Blake was nowhere to be seen when I arrived in the alley the next morning, so I took the spare key in its hiding place and let myself in.

  He had been in, though. The ovens were still warm, and in the kitchen, trays of sweet confections were waiting in the refrigerated cabinet, including one I’d never seen before, that seemed to be made of raspberries over a bed of cream and flaky pastry. One lay separate from the tray, on a plate, with a post-it that read in block capitals “TRY THIS.”

  I thought of Alice in Wonderland and wondered what would happen if I did. Being alone to open the shop, though, I didn’t have time to try anything.