Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (14 page)

Once the bell at the gate rang at the arranged time, Renee remotely opened the gate, a mechanism she only used on the days the shipping trucks came, and waited five minutes before closing it. The shipping truck would be up in about ten more minutes. It sometimes took them more effort because of their vehicle’s size on such an unsure and sometimes slippery gravel road.

She shed her house shoes for more substantial boots and pulled her denim jacket on over her thin sweater. It would be cold when they started unloading, but after a while, the work would keep her warm enough.

“Are you going to help this time, Les?” Renee asked, closing all the windows on her computer after saving some of the copy for new blog posts and dog profile changes.

“I’m afraid I’m in too far in this scene to leave it like this,” Leslie said, not taking his eyes from the computer screen as his fingers typed almost too quickly to see. “Maybe next time.”

Renee grinned. He always said that, but she knew Leslie liked to be asked.

“Don’t work too hard,” she said. “Be sure to eat something.”

“Mm-hmm,” Leslie replied, already deep inside the fictional world on the page in front of him.

She went out to see all her usual shapeshifters on duty, ready for the afternoon-long effort and knowing that there would be frozen pizza ready for them after all their work. It was both a treat and a thank you from Renee for helping the sanctuary run smoothly. As far as she knew, pizza was a universal language for appreciation, and it was so easy for Ki to cook it for everyone.

The dogs all rushed around them, mouths wide and tails wagging furiously. They would get in the way, of course, but Renee and the group were used to that, as were the shipping guys. They usually loved to come to the sanctuary because they were surrounded by dogs who were all excited to see them. In general, she had a good relationship with this particular shipping company—they had been working with her for all six years that she had run the sanctuary on her own.

Britt was there, too, looking regal and calm near the dog barn wall, watching everything and making sure that the dogs kept in line. Max was nearby as well, also for dog control purposes. They did want to help as much as they could, even if they could not do it in their human skins.

Renee’s eyebrows rose when she saw Grant walk around from the back of the log home to join them. He was not wearing anything warm, in spite of the increasingly cold weather. Just one of those white undershirts with his jeans and boots.

“Well, don’t look so surprised,” Grant said. “I haven’t seen human meat in a while. With exception of you and your friends from town, of course.”

Renee did not comment on his designation of humans as meat. It was just too much like him. As long as he behaved himself and helped, she was just going to ignore it.

“There they are,” said Malcolm.

“Thank you, Malcolm,” Lotus, the youngest shapeshifter in the sanctuary at just under eighteen years old, said. “It’s not like any of us have eyes or anything.”

“I’m just saying,” Malcolm retorted.

“I know. But you don’t have to.”

Nancy, a woman around Leslie’s age, punched Lotus in the arm, and she must have punched him more than just playfully, because he winced and didn’t continue to goad Malcolm, who sometimes took his managerial role a little too seriously.

Renee raised her hand in greeting as she went up to meet the shipping guys.

“Hey, Miss Chambers,” said the taller one, Vic Taylor, who had a face something like a thin basset hound’s. “It’s good to see you again. Got any early Christmas presents for me this year?”

“Sorry, I just have the usual tip,” Renee replied.

“Shame, that,” said the other one, Daniel Franklin, whose proud moustache made him look a bit like a fox terrier. “I had my heart set on an Xbox.”

“A what?” Renee asked.

“Popular game console,” Daniel Franklin said. “I guess you guys are kind of cut off up here. There are advertisements for it all the time on TV.”

“We don’t watch much television,” Renee said.

“Do you even have a television up here?” Vic Taylor asked.

“We have one,” Renee said. “It doesn’t get used much. We sometimes watch movies.”

“Sounds nice,” Vic Taylor said. He took a deep breath and clapped his hands together. “So, you ready for this?”

“Whenever you are, boys,” Renee said.

It was a long, hard slog, but after two hours they managed to get every box off the truck, in addition to the items that Renee took out of some of the boxes and stored in trash bags in her old room. She didn’t want the shapeshifters to see their Christmas gifts when they started unpacking. They knew what Renee was hiding and where, of course, but as far as Renee knew, they’d never peeked. Either that or they could all play a mean poker game, because they always looked surprised and pleased on Christmas morning.

Grant was a bigger help than Renee had thought he was going to be. And he was certainly stronger than he looked. It could have been because the werewolf in him gave him supernatural strength. Or Grant could just be particularly strong. Renee wasn’t sure.

Renee thanked the shipping guys after they’d finished unloading everything. Even though not everything—not even
nearly
everything—had been put away, she would not let them stay to finish packing everything away, knowing that she would get a little extra help after they left. She tipped them her usual one hundred dollars in cash for each of them, gracious that they came up every season for her needs and never once complained or seemed resentful of tripping over dogs and stepping around shit that hadn’t been picked up yet. Renee guessed the job was routine for them, but it was more than that for her and the sanctuary.

Once the truck had left, Britt and Max went into the house and re-emerged with Ki, clothed and ready to resume the unloading. Things moved more quickly now.

She didn’t notice that Grant was behind her as she carried one of the boxes back to the house from the pile of items in the centre of the front yard. He pulled her into the thin space between the shifters’ barn and the dog barn.

“What?” Renee asked.

He did not even hesitate. “You know I say what I want, and you probably guessed I don’t like to be told no. And you haven’t told me no yet. You gave me the benefit of the doubt when you shouldn’t have. And I just wanted to say… Thank you. I wanted to say thank you.”

Renee blinked. “Sure,” she said. Somehow, she could not find the words to say he was welcome when she wasn’t sure how sincere he was.

“I know that you and the bitch are getting along,” Grant said. “And I can smell him on you, too. Not as much as the bitch, but it’s enough.” He took the box she was holding from her arms and let it drop to the ground, so that she did not have anything to use as a barrier between them. “So you really are okay with the two of them together as long as you’re in the mix.”

“It’s none of your business,” Renee said.

“It’s all my business. I can’t help what I smell, and as long as I can smell their scents all over you, it becomes my business.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Oh, I think I’ve been quiet long enough,” Grant said.

“So, what? You don’t approve?” Renee said. “It’s not right? They’re not a match for me? I’m going to get hurt? When did you become so altruistic?”

“My goals are completely self-serving,” Grant said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re not good enough for you.”

“And you are.” Renee did not state it as a question, but it was implied. She turned to pick up the box and leave.

He grabbed her by the arms and spun her around so hard that she almost lost her balance. He gripped the flesh to the bone, his fingers tight and painful. “They can’t give you what you need,” Grant said. “Because you can’t give them what they need, you’ll never get what you need.”

Renee did not even dignify his unfounded accusation with an answer. There was no way he could know what all three of them needed. He was trying to intimidate her, and he was doing a good job just with his hands. What he was saying seemed secondary. She felt her heart beat against her lungs the way it always did before a panic attack. Her shoulders began to turn inward.

“They may think they’re doing right with you,” he continued. “But they aren’t. They know you too well to give you what you need.”

God, this was just perfect timing for a panic attack. A cold sweat surfaced on her face and palms, and she could feel her tongue become heavy. Everything around her seemed to slow down.

“No,” Grant said, getting in close so that his face filled her vision. “You aren’t going to leave. You are
not
going to lose yourself. Not this way. Do you understand me?”

“I need…” She needed her Xanax, that was what she needed, but there was only him. With the scents of dirt and sweat and hair and fur, and with his unusually dark blue eyes staring straight into her.

“Stop thinking.” He tightened his hands even more, sending a stab of pain up and down her arms, which interrupted the progression of the panic attack a little, but she was still on the cusp of falling into something she could not get out of. Why couldn’t anyone hear what was going on? Because everything seemed so loud. And there he was, right in front of her. Right there.

“Stop thinking. You think too much,” Grant said. “It’s not a bad thing in moderation, but that’s what people like you do. Think entirely too much. Whatever you’re thinking… Just do it. Don’t think. Act. You live your life in your head, why don’t you just
live…
?”

She lunged forward, her arms still held tightly at her sides, and kissed him, not even bothering with preliminaries. Just taking him, tasting him, feeling the roughness of the skin around his mouth and the fullness of his lips beneath hers. Then the hot velvet of his tongue on hers as he proceeded to give as good as he got. He was good at what he did, and Renee thought that her legs were going to give way completely as all her blood rushed to the area below her belly in a dizzying wave.

He loosened his hands on her arms, pulled her against him as he reached one of his hands down to feel her ass through her jeans. He was not slow, not careful, not gentle. His teeth were almost sharp when he bit her lower lip hard, not enough to draw blood but enough to make her cry out into his mouth. Not enough to make her pull away. If kissing Britt or Jake felt like becoming part of a whole, then kissing Grant was like falling, drowning, not being able to breathe with everything rushing above her, and she kept opening her mouth to gasp for air, but she only drowned more.

He did not have to hold her anymore. She clutched at him herself, pulled on his shirt until she found skin beneath his collar. She slid her hand beneath the clothing and down the stretch of spine as far as she could reach. She combed her other hand through his hair to find purchase, to keep him against her mouth so that she could breathe him in as though he were air. Whimpers tried to escape her throat, but Renee held them back, a small but persistent part of her still self-conscious. Grant had no such reservations. He groaned into her mouth, tasting her and inviting her to taste him in a torrent of tactile sensation hooked into a deeper response than emotion.

When he finally tore himself away from her mouth, Renee was prepared to pull him back in, but he attacked her neck instead, down to the juncture of collarbone and shoulder, with open-mouthed kisses that were almost bites. He pushed her shirt to the side to bare the rest of a creamy shoulder and the swell of one breast above her bra cup. He laved down until the bra got in the way, then yanked it down so that his mouth closed on the hardening peak of her nipple. She had done this to Britt but had not imagined just how good it could be, each rough suck on her nipple over-stimulating her almost to the point of pain. Her clit seemed engorged and sensitised to every touch of fabric against it. She could feel her cunt softening and opening, minor tremors fluttering through with each press of his teeth against her nipple. Just enough to hurt, just enough to make her skin sing.

As he moved away, the cool air puckered the skin of the areola even more, but now Grant knelt down and pushed up her shirt to kiss and bite down her stomach, laving each red mark that he left behind so clearly on her milky, pale skin. She felt the muscles right above her legs twitch of their own accord. She did not know exactly how she was still standing, even if Grant had backed her against the wall of the barn so that she had something to lean on.

Without thinking, Renee brought a hand up to fondle the breast that Grant had just given up, pinching the nipple to try and simulate the feeling of his teeth. Grant watched her for a beat from where he was occupied, nipping and licking around the rim of her navel.

“That’s right,” he muttered, voice guttural enough that she could feel it all the way to her spine. “Do what feels good. Don’t think. Do it. Do anything.”

He fumbled with the button of her jeans almost frantically, and as soon as he managed to unbutton it, he yanked the zipper down, then pushed her jeans down so that he could press his nose against the fabric of her panties, inhaling deeply. It all happened before she could even think to stop it, and by the time it was happening, she didn’t
want
to stop it.

He pressed his tongue, which seemed impossibly big and impossibly long when she could not see it, against her clit through her panties, and she could feel the wetness seep through. And that was not the only place she was wet. She squirmed against him, although whether she was unconsciously trying to get closer or get away was still in question. With one hand still occupied with her exposed breast, she pressed the other against her mouth, trying to suppress the whimpers that threatened to come out. She barely realised just how hard she was biting down to keep from making a sound, because Grant was pulling her panties down over her ass, brushing his fingers close to the crease between her cheeks, which was surprisingly sensitive.