Wolf's Song (3 page)

One night, when the moon glowed full, Brick had come out of the cabin and howled up at the glittering orb, his voice hoarse, harsh, ragged. Caught in the grip of a compulsion he clearly could no longer fight. His clothes had seemed to choke him and he stripped them off down to his skin. Standing naked, face tilted to the light, he’d let the glow bathe him in silver.

That may have been the moment. The moment when everything inside her shattered, became still, reformed, truly recognized the male before her. When her heart, already lent to him on a part-time basis, became his. Completely. Irrevocably.

The considerable muscles he’d built up over the years took on added bulk as he dropped to his hands and knees, the air shimmering around him. His face twisted, his grimace somewhere between agony and orgasm, as his head grew, elongated, his nose lengthening and broadening into a muzzle, his mouth, his lips widening, stretching to accommodate fangs. His hair, oh. So sleek, so dense. So like the wolf he’d carved for her. His fur looked soft, lighter than his human hair, rich and tawny as butterscotch or melted caramel.

Something happened to her the first time she watched him shift. Something raw. Something metaphysical. Something eternal. And undeniably hot.

He’d bounded out of his yard and torn into the woods, racing below the moon. Athletic, graceful. Predatory and dangerous. She loved watching him shift, watching him running in his wolf form. Born into a clan of nocturnal cats, familiar and comfortable with the night, she soared into the skies above him, keeping pace, between him and the mother moon.

Whenever he ran, she flew with him.

Did he know?

Of course, he knew. Except for those first few weeks of the healing process, when he’d seemed soul-dead and oblivious to the world, nothing escaped him. He possessed a wolf’s acute and finely honed predatory senses, his innate skills so far beyond a mere human’s ability to see, to scent, to hear.

At dawn after that first full moon, he’d lain spread-eagled on the sweet, dewy grass, on his back in a fragrant wild-flower strewn meadow some distance from the cabin, his broad shoulders and huge chest heaving, sweat drying on his human skin, on the ridged muscles rippling from his slick pecs, down his flat abdomen, detouring to the chiseled ropes bracketing his carved hips. A dark ribbon of hair began below his navel, pointing the way, like a neon arrow, down his sin trail of delight.
Jackpot
.

Her mind had blanked and she lost control, shifting so abruptly into human form she’d nearly toppled out of her tree. Heat poured over her, through her, as if she’d been tossed into a boiling cauldron. She’d never really thought about sex before. Suddenly it was all she
could
think about.

Her breathing had hitched, her mouth hanging open. She took in shallow breaths, huffing them out. Panting. By the spirit of the Great Hawk.
Panting
. And her respiratory difficulty had nothing to do with the exertion of her flight, with their race in the moonlight. And everything to do with the potent, raw male strength displayed before her. Good thing the abundant summer foliage had kept her out of sight.

She hadn’t been able to tear her gaze from him. Her vocabulary failed her after spectacular. Magnificent. Powerful. Someone smarter than she needed to invent new words for this male.

He’d blinked one eye open and stared up at the lightening heavens, searched the leafy boughs of the massive sycamore that hid her.

Or did it?

“A good run, wasn’t it, Annabel Lee?”

His arms and legs spoked out from his sides.

An enormous erection jutted skyward.

He made no effort to hide it.

Brick stacked the cord of green firewood on a pallet in a corner of the porch, keeping the logs uncovered to let them season. The sharp scent of pine melded with the sweeter smell of maple he’d already cut. He did the U-Haul thing with another armload, toting the split white fir into the cabin, filling the rack next to the stone hearth. Screw Glade Plug-ins. Nothing finer than the natural tang of fresh-cut wood.

He’d left his flannel shirt outside next to the chopping block. But his recent exertions had left him sweaty and—
sniff
—a little ripe. His flesh called out for some wet-and-soapy, but the pristine chrome-and-tile Kohler in his bathroom didn’t make the short list when the other candidate glittered fresh and natural beneath the late afternoon sun out back of the cabin.

The wolf wanted the lake. Paced inside him with restless insistence until Brick sidled closer to the front door. The sharp, crisp scent of spring socked him through the open window; the rich mineral regeneration of damp ground, new grass, wild flowers fighting to burst free. And something else. Something he couldn’t place curled around him like a fist. Got the juices flowing, his hormones bubbling. A muted growl burbled out of him. Trying to wrest control back from his other half on the pressing issue of where to dunk his fragrant carcass seemed futile.

“What’s the deal, bro?” he murmured. No answer, of course. But his skin prickled as if two paws-worth of claws did a funky Harlem Shuffle beneath the surface. “No moon tonight, Dog. But you’re edgy enough to shave my whiskers.” And so was he now. Responding to the call from outdoors, the howl within.

While his shower might be all soap sludgeless sparkle owing to an under-the-sink Home Depot of cleaning supplies and a touch of, yeah, let’s face it, a little OCD action…no amount of Tilex and Kaboom! impressed Brother Wolf. And he sure as hell didn’t want to get hung up all day counting and recounting the mold-free ceramic squares lining the walls above the tub. Not that his beast seemed inclined to let him.

So slinging a towel around his neck, he grabbed a clean shirt and hightailed his way due west.

Fuck
.

Halfway there, a powerful charge of electricity pulsed through him, as if he’d gotten a wet finger stuck in a socket. Stiffening his limbs. Not to mention points south. Heat engulfed him, out of all proportion to the balmy spring day and the sun beating down on the surface of the glistening blue lake. Tendrils of spicy, intoxicating scent coiled around him. A flood of testosterone boiled his blood.

Someone had beaten him there.

A woman, her supple back turned toward him, stood completely bare, a tumble of wet, raven-colored hair streaming over her shoulders. Water licked gently at all the curved and rounded, at the tiny waist and flaring hips, the undulating ripples intermittently exposing twin dimples at the base of her spine. Her pheromones drenched him. He leaned forward, nearly coming out of his sneaks and planting his face in the soft earth, eyes bugging out as he strained to see more. Yeah. There it was. A hint of firm, curvaceous ass. Primo ass. A dimpled, heart-shaped ass that would feature in his lonely guy dreams. Leaving him to sketch in the unseen glory of her tits, the shape of her face.

And Jesus. Her scent.

The pepper of pink berries and musk of new moss, an edge of cedar, the sweetness of honey. Finished with blackberries, strawberries, a hint of early rose. Complex and many layered like fine wine, expensive perfume. He sniffed, then drew great draughts of the intoxicating fragrance into his lungs. His head reeled, his heart thudded, his breathing stuttered erratic and uneven.

Holy freakin’
—he didn’t give a shit what the fuck she looked like. All he could think about was rubbing his snout over her skin, inhaling her until he drowned in her scent, and had wrapped her in his. Of licking her, tasting her, basking in the promise of that juicy flesh just beneath the surface of the lake. Of slinging his arm around her trim waist, positioning her on all fours in the mud of the shallows, burying his cock deep inside her, his balls smacking that ripe ass as he banged her, the water slurping her sleek flanks, his mouth roving over her. Sinking his teeth into the soft skin of her neck. Marking her.
Mating
her.

He statued again.
Mating
her? He’d never considered the idea before, never expected he’d ever take a mate. He was a lone wolf. Banished from his pack while still very young. Untutored. Unclear on what it even really meant to mate another for life. Unable to stand more than a few minutes in company before the clamoring voices in his head drove him to violence. He lived contented, alone in the mountain cabin he’d fixed up over the years, turning it into a comfortable den. He could never ask any female to live that way.

But he’d never reacted to any woman with such intensity. To any female. His experience might have been somewhat limited to the more daring Black Hills wolfettes before he turned eighteen, or the easy pickings at the Graymarket Trading Company Saloon and Casino in town, but Calhoun Seven’s ladies were extremely skilled and talented—and knew exactly what to do to get a male hot and fevered. And yet…he’d never been on fire like this, flames licking into every one of his cells, turning his groin into a blazing inferno.

Within him, his beast nearly burst out of his skin, almost forcing a shift to fanged and hairy. The growl filled his chest, vibrated low in his throat.
The wolf wants what the wolf wants
. Somehow Dog had known, had led him down here to this place. Ready to pounce. Ready to claim. Ready to
own
.

“Down, boy,” he muttered. “You can’t have her. She’s mine.” He shook his head, poleaxed by the wave of fierce possession that hit him. “And how the hell did you even know?”

The wolf recognized her. Sensed her? Scented her? Sniffed and audited the blasts of fierce pheromones sent over the airwaves by Radio Free 1-800-Mate before he’d even laid his human eyes on her or caught her sensual moss and berry scent. That’s what the pacing, the edginess…the agitated anticipation…had been all about.

He’d never seen this female before. But…he knew her. Somehow he knew her. Her scent socked him again, at once woodsy, crisp, and sweet.

With a sudden burst of clarity that launched him straight into zero gravity amazeballs territory, he saw her soaring over his head, her silhouette a slash of ebony against the daytime sky. Keeping pace with him at midnight when he raced beneath the fullness of the moon. Lobbing walnuts at him in jest. Or when she rescued him from an abyss of despair by tossing shiny gifts onto his porch.
His raven. His….

Annabel Lee.

She paused—froze more like—one graceful arm raised above her head as she washed herself. Her other arm bent, her elbow bobbing up, back, around and he imagined the slow, almost caressing circular motion of her hand in the place where her tits would be. Stroking, stroking. Beyond bathing. He shut his eyes, nearly groaning, envisioning the slick, plump flesh beneath her fingers as she teased her nipples to aroused, erect points.

Had he said the name out loud? Had she heard him?

No question she knew he watched her. An imbecile suddenly struck dumb and brainless. Unable to move except for the cock whipping to attention and saluting against the tight confines of his jeans.

Usually, when other shifters were around, members of the Black Hills pack especially, their thoughts, their conversations, bombarded him. The
t’ai chi
techniques Gee had taught him had helped with that, as he’d proven to himself with his excursions into Shady Heart. But as he gazed at the graceful sway of the female’s back…he heard…nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a murmur. Silence far beyond the muted vibe he got off Gee, when the ancient werebear imparted his rare words of wisdom. This took him into deep and profound country, a restful well of peace that Bengay-balmed his psyche, a set of earmuffs for his clanging nerves.

Was she human then?
He didn’t get as chaotic a read with humans as he did with weres, their voices mere whispers, the buzz of mosquitos. No visions of their deaths to haunt him.

But this female…. Blessed stillness enveloped him. Soothed the savagery once so ready to erupt, that he’d forced into submission only through a decade of solitary living in the woods, and long hours of
t’ai chi
training that channeled his innate ferocious tendencies. Tendencies that nevertheless always lurked below the surface.

He shut his eyes, breathing her in.

“Brick.”

He snapped his eyes open again. The harsh, blunt, one-word syllable of his name fell from her lips, soft and lilting like a song, producing a magical effect on him. Calming. Sweet music played in his brain like a movie score, her unique theme, swelling when she came onscreen. But the soundtrack remained hushed. Quiet. He did not hear her inner thoughts. Tranquility bathed him. But did nothing to tamp down his sexual excitement.

He was still aroused, maybe more so. He wanted her. Badly. The wolf paced with anticipation. Would bite through the leash of Brick’s tight control to get at her if he let him. They
both
wanted her.

“Turn around, Annabel Lee. Let me see you.”

She did not move, except to lower her raised arm from its frozen position. “Why do you call me that…? Annabel Lee?”

“I don’t have another name.”

“Summer,” she said. “I’m Summer.”

Yeah. Def. When the berries plumped sweetest. “Suits you.” His raging arousal made the words hoarse and jagged. Too harsh for this gentle female. “Turn,” he murmured. “I want to see your face.” A low growl escaped him before he could bite it back. “Your breasts.”

She turned then, slowly through the water, rounding to face him.

He sucked in his breath, his heart slamming against his chest. She was stunning and glorious. The beads of water rolling down her golden body sparkled in the sun. She glistened. All natural. No makeup. No artifice. Everything a female should be. And more. Much more.

Another pheromone cloud engulfed him. Her eyes went large and rounded, as if she guessed she’d zapped him with her hormonal lures, but couldn’t help emitting her sex juice any more than he could. Her nose twitched and she sighed, as if enveloped in a vat of melted chocolate, or whatever the fuck his own mating scent smelled like. He could only hope he gave off an aroma as rich and delicious as she did.