SEAL Wolf In Too Deep (18 page)

She noticed his tail wasn't tucked submissively between his legs, but straight out, showing he was allowing her to be on top, to feel empowered. She moved off him, giving the play bow a try to see what he would do in reaction. He watched her, then rolled off his back and rested on his belly for a moment, his ears up, his gaze on hers. Then he jumped up and she whipped around and ran. She hadn't meant to. She knew you never ran before a wild animal. And she knew he was so much bigger than her that he wouldn't have any trouble catching her.

He nipped her butt and she yipped in startled surprise. He did it again, but this time she rounded on him, and they were in his bedroom, standing on their hind legs, teeth biting at each other's mouths.

They played like that for half an hour, her tackling him, him tackling her, and then they sat panting in his living room, studying each other. He stood, then motioned to the hallway with his head.

He looked as tired as she felt after the restless night they'd had. He loped off toward his bedroom, and she followed him, only this time she nipped him in the butt. He barked at her, a happy kind of bark.

She'd like to think this was all there was to it. But she knew better. If she shifted outside his cabin, it could spell disaster.

* * *

Allan couldn't think of a better way to end their play than to take a nap with each other. Thankfully, Debbie seemed to like the idea, and he was proud of her for playing so well. He thought at first she wouldn't play with him. Or that it was too difficult to understand what he was trying to tell her while he was in his wolf coat. But she picked up really quickly on cues, so he thought this might not be so hard after all. The shifting without warning? That was another story.

They curled up together in bed, her head over his body, his head tucked close to hers. He thought they might even go for a run together tonight in the woods. But what if she turned into her human form in the frozen cold? He'd have to shift and carry her home, and they'd both be naked. If it were summer, it wouldn't be quite such a bad an idea.

He
could
take her for a walk in the woods as a human and carry a backpack of winter clothes for her so that she could dress if she shifted. It wouldn't be the best plan, but it would be nice for her to get out and smell the woods and animal scents. To get used to them as a wolf. He'd be with her so if any hunter showed up, he'd set him straight about his pet wolf. And he'd be armed.

He'd talk about it later with her to see what she'd like to do. He thought being confined to the house would drive her batty after a while. It would him.

His phone rang, but Debbie didn't stir, and he wasn't getting up and shifting to get it. It was probably Paul to see if he was all right. Allan didn't want to disturb what he and Debbie had for the moment. Peace. Quiet. Naptime. Until she woke, and then who knew what would happen next.

* * *

“Do you think Allan's okay?” Lori asked Paul again. She couldn't help it. She wasn't a worrywart, but she had been concerned when Paul said that Debbie had shifted and was growling in the background, and Allan had ended the call right away.

“I think they're fine. Maybe they didn't sleep well, and they're taking a nap now. I don't want to disturb them if he's making any progress with Debbie. They need the alone time.”

“Like we had?”

“Well,” he said, pulling Lori into his arms so her back was against his chest and he could gently caress her swollen breasts and her swelling tummy. “Our alone time was a lot different.”

She sighed. “I thought maybe if I went over there and talked with her, she would be less growly, you know, because I'm so pregnant, and she'd behave better.”

“I think she's in good hands with Allan. You know how much he cares for her. He'll handle this right.”

“I hope she's not too angry with all of us. I wonder if he told her that she has my wolf genes.”

“As long as it didn't make her pregnant and it saved her life, I'm certain she'll be all right with it. Speaking of napping and having a rough night of it…”

She sagged against him. “If you'll give me a back rub.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “I'll give you much more than that.” Then he led her to their bedroom.

Allan woke to find a naked woman curled up against him, only he was still all wolf. He shifted and pulled the covers over them, wondering what the next phase in training would be. He realized that's what this was going to be for a while. An in-house boot camp for a
lupus garou
until Debbie could get her shifting under control. He'd never really thought anything about the full moon, except that he loved how it lighted the whole sky at night.

Because of the situation with Debbie, he was counting down the days when the new moon was here, and she wouldn't be able to shift for a week. He planned to pack in a month's worth of outdoor activities in that week—searching crime scenes, diving, shopping trips, eating out, and movies, anything that she wanted to do that she couldn't during the rest of the month until she could control her shifting better.

Maybe if she had a week of scheduled activities crammed in, she'd be ready for three weeks of not going places as much. At least he hoped that's what they could do. He'd propose it to her when she woke.

Her naked body resting against his had stirred longings again for something more. He felt driven to make her see the benefit of having him for her mate. Someone who could protect her, show her the ropes, and love her unconditionally. They would be perfect for each other, he thought, as much as they had been compatible before she was turned. He really believed if she hadn't been turned, and he hadn't been a wolf, they would have been perfect as human companions.

So he wasn't giving up on the notion.

He thought about what she'd said earlier. That she'd woken as a woman, naked against him. She must have fled the bed right away or he would have noticed.

Would she flee the bed when she woke this time? He hoped not. If not, he figured she had to agree they were dating, of a sort. Wouldn't she?

* * *

Debbie couldn't believe she had woken and found herself naked against Allan again, except this time she was sleeping against his naked body. And he had to have known it or she wouldn't be wrapped up in his arms underneath the covers in a totally human way.

She had to admit she loved being held in his arms like this. Loved the way he was so tender. She wished they could have done this as humans and she didn't have to deal with this wolf business. But she was glad she was alive and better than fit. She had to remind herself of it every time she shifted and was furious over it.

Right now, like this, she wasn't sure what to do. Unless she quit coming to bed with him as a wolf, she was bound to keep waking up against him as a naked woman so she might as well just get used to it.

He must have felt her tense, because he opened his eyes and sighed. “I've been thinking—”

“I'm not dating you.” She closed her eyes and snuggled against him, giving up the pretense that she wasn't happy with this—here, with him.

“Okay. But I was thinking about the week of the new moon.”

“Which is three weeks from now.” She couldn't help but be irritated about it.

“Right. We'll do everything during that week. Investigations into the murders, diving, rescuing. Wherever we're needed. We'll do our investigative work at home until then. Internet searches, whatever we can run down. During the week you're free from shifting, we can go to the movies, eat out, shop, whatever you'd love to do.”

“I can't really go anywhere for three weeks, can I?” she asked, hating that she would be confined like that. She loved the outdoors and she loved her job because she could go diving and help rescue others or help solve crimes. She hated that she'd be cooped up in the cabin for weeks on end, which she suspected would be the ultimate case of cabin fever.

“After a time, you only will have trouble during the full moon. We'll have get-togethers with other pack members. If you have to shift, you can do so in a bedroom, and then you can rejoin the party.”

“As a wolf,” she said skeptically.

“Yeah. But we're all
lupus garous
, so everyone will understand and have no problem with it.”

“But me.”

“It would be a safe way to learn to get used to it. After a while, it will seem like no big deal to you.”

“I don't see how I'll ever get used to it.”

“You will. Do you remember Michael, the artist?”

“Who paints pictures of wolves? Is everyone a wolf but me?”

Allan smiled. “He's fairly newly turned. He's just as happy as can be.”

“No wonder he paints such beautiful portraits of wolves. I thought they were drugged so that they could sit and be photographed with people or out in nature.”

“Nope. He's one of us, and the portraits he does? Only of the
lupus garous
who are willing to sit still long enough to have their portrait taken.”

“You haven't had one made of you?”

“No. Nor has Paul. We couldn't believe he had Lori sitting long enough to do hers.”

“Maybe he takes photographs.”

“He says he can't capture the essence of the wolf unless he paints the actual wolf.”

“How come he was turned?” Debbie asked, afraid he'd seen someone shift and was forced to be one of them.

“You know Hunter, the leader of Paul's and my SEAL team?”

“He lives on the Oregon coast.”

“Right. He fell in love with a woman who had wolf genes from a parent. She wanted to be mated to Hunter, and she was really close to her brother.”

“So they turned him?”

“Tessa did. He was glad because they are really close, and he would have been left out of the family otherwise.”

“If he had these wolf roots too, it's not exactly the same as with me.”

“Well, it is, in that they didn't have any of the wolf senses, the shifting, none of that. So since Hunter is Tessa's mate, he oversees her shifting, and others watch Michael because he has no mate.”

“He came here to the art festival. I saw him. No one was with him.” Then she thought back to how either Allan's mother, sister, or Lori's grandmother had been nearby. They had a booth where they were selling jams and salsas and hand-beaded moccasins. “Oh, scratch that. I remember he was with your family. He must have had the shifting down fairly well then if he was out in public.” She hoped it hadn't been long so she could have some of her old life back. Although it would never be quite the same again.

“He does. But it's been two years now. Even at that, he has trouble during the night that the moon is at its fullest and some days after.”

“Two years? Ohmigod. I will never last two years at this.”

Allan rubbed her arm. “Yeah, you will. You'll learn to cope with it and be just fine.”

She couldn't believe being with him like this felt so natural, but she figured it would have gotten to this if they'd continued to make love like they had at her place. Something about her playing with him as a wolf and then napping…she didn't know. But she was already feeling like she was closer to him than she'd ever been to a man she had been interested in being with.

Had turning her into a wolf made that happen? She didn't think so. She'd been fascinated with him from the beginning. Maybe he was right in saying that somehow they saw in each other what they needed to feel complete. Even before he should have thought that way, because he was a wolf shifter.

If they continued to get naked like this and ended up in bed together every time? She figured he wouldn't need to date her. She'd be all marshmallows and agree to a mating before she was ready. Until she turned into a wolf again.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Franny agreed to come and talk with them to see if she could aid them in discovering Otis's whereabouts and how he came to be here and caused her accident. She hadn't known him by that name, but when Lori had showed her the picture of Otis, Franny said he was the same man who had dated her and then stalked her.

It was sunny and a bit warmer when she arrived. Lori's grandmother was taking care of her baby while Franny's husband was busy with his chef duties at the Italian restaurant.

Franny sat across from Allan and Debbie, who was sitting on the couch in her wolf form, annoyed that she couldn't hold her human form for an hour or so while Franny talked to them.

“Debbie was concerned you would feel uncomfortable with her listening in on the conversation as a wolf,” Allan said, not wanting to mention it because he knew Franny wouldn't mind at all. Like everyone else in the pack, Franny wanted Debbie to feel at ease around them in any form she was in. But Debbie had insisted he mention it, right before she had to shift.

Franny shook her head, looking tense.

“Okay, what we're trying to put together is when you were seeing Otis and then stopped seeing him. He killed Sarah around the day of your accident, maybe the night before, according to the autopsy reports. From what we understand, he was in a LARP group and Sarah became his best friend's lover.”

“Lloyd.”

“Right. So then she turned Lloyd. Had she then convinced him to come up here with her to join our pack instead of joining Devlyn's in Colorado? I assume she knew Devlyn wouldn't have approved of her turning Lloyd when he wanted to be a werewolf hunter. And he was best friends with Otis, also a werewolf hunter, who was ready to kill any werewolf he could locate and genuine wolves too. Because of her desire to come out as a werewolf, Devlyn wouldn't accept her in the pack.

“What if she and Lloyd were together still and she told him to come here? Then he told Otis? We never found any evidence she had a car anywhere in the area. Then Otis murdered Lloyd because he was also a werewolf. Lloyd had no defensive wounds on him, making it appear as though he didn't believe his friend Otis was going to kill him.”

“Otis must not have had any of your names, or he would have tried hunting you down, don't you think?” Franny asked.

“I believe that's why he just shot wolves that were checking out the blood left at the site. But it seems like too much of a coincidence that he ran you off the road, that he knew you were here, when he was most likely trying to learn who else was a werewolf in the pack Sarah planned to join.”

“He must not have seen Rose and Lori arrive,” Franny agreed.

“Yeah, we got damn lucky on that.”

Allan sensed Franny knew more than she was letting on. Suddenly, Debbie bolted from the couch, sending decorator pillows flying as she raced to the bedroom. He suspected she was shifting again, but it was the first time she was able to do so that soon after the last shift.

He and Franny waited for Debbie to rejoin them, not wanting her to miss out on the talk.

When she stalked back in the room, she was wearing a pale blue sweater, jeans, and fluffy blue slippers. She curled up with him on the couch and he wrapped his arm around her, glad she was happy to be back to her human form.

“Did you know Sarah?” Debbie asked.

Allan had never considered such a thing. As far as he knew, Sarah was a stranger to the pack and somehow had heard they were looking for wolves—courtesy of Lori's grandma and his mother.

Franny hesitated, looking a little panicked.

“How did you meet Otis?” Debbie asked.

Franny let out her breath. “Through Sarah. We knew each other in drama classes at the community college in Boise. She was really wild; I wasn't. She'd met these two guys—Lloyd and Otis. Only Otis went by the name of Cleveland when I knew him. She started dating Lloyd, and I went out with Otis. Then I met Gary, my wolf mate, and I called it quits with Otis. He was really angry about it. Kept stalking me and Gary. Then Sarah left for southern Montana and said that Otis and Lloyd had headed out that way too.

“I didn't hear from her again until right before…before Lori and Rose found her. Sarah and I had been close friends. She had some notion we should come out as
lupus garous
—tell people what we were. That people would see we weren't vicious or anything. I'd hoped someone would convince her how foolish the notion was. I figured she might get in trouble with a wolf pack over her wild ideas. Not that she'd die at the hand of some professed werewolf hunter.”

“Did you know Otis had notions of killing werewolves?” Debbie asked.

Franny looked at her lap. “Yes. His talk about finding werewolves amused me. He hadn't found any, but he said he was looking. I said they could be just anyone, didn't he think? No way did I believe he'd ever really run across any, other than Sarah and me, and he was clueless about us. We figured he always would be. I feel I am to blame for indulging in his illusion too.”

“Why didn't you tell us before that you knew Sarah?” Allan asked.

“She wanted to be a member of the wolf pack in Boise that Gary belonged to. He was one of the sub-leaders who voted her down. He said she should be put out of her misery before some of our kind were killed because of her wild ideas. When I met him and heard how he felt about her, I didn't want him to know I had been running with her. I hadn't wanted him to know about Otis either because I'd stayed with him much longer than is safe for our kind. I just wanted that part of my life to be over and to start anew with Gary.”

“But you knew her name and the men who had been involved with her when we didn't. We might have caught up with him sooner,” Allan said, annoyed.

“I was really shaken up with the car accident and nearly losing my baby. No one showed me the picture of the woman Lori and Rose had found.”

“Okay,” Allan said, backing off a bit. That had probably been Lori's call.

“I didn't learn of it until recently… I heard you went to southern Montana to investigate some lead, but not anything about it. As far as I knew, Otis had learned where Gary and I were and was stalking me, and now he wanted to kill me for leaving him. I had no idea he was in the area because Sarah was.”