Paranormal Division: Awakening

by Ellie J Duck

  “What’s on your shoulder?” he growls, rather than answering me; even though he doesn’t need to. I just found his happy spot and got kissed for it. And I loved it. Part of me wants to do it again, while the rest of me is warning that if I even think of mentioning it, let alone trying it again, will result in him hurting me.

  “None of your business,” I retort, my hands jumping to my shoulder and covering the mark before he can think to look for it.

  “Damn it, human! Just tell me!”

  “Why would I do that?” I ask him, stepping away from him and heading for the coffee pot, pulling down two mugs and beginning to make us both coffees.

  “You can’t know something about me without me knowing something about you,” he answers.

  I chuckle.

  “Well, as far as I know my happy spot is the same as every other girl’s happy spot. And you already know about the bruises on my legs, so I’m not telling you anything else,” I tell him, earning myself another growl as I hand him his coffee.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks, persisting.

  “Yes. And it itches,” I reply. “Happy now?”

  “Still don’t know what it is, so no,” he retorts.

  “Like a wolf with a bone,” I grumble before quirking an eyebrow when he blushes just a little bit. My gaze skids down his body when his blush darkens, and I begin to chuckle when I realize that perhaps my statement was a little more accurate than I thought.

  “This is your fault,” he accuses moodily.

  “See, ordinarily, that would be a compliment but knowing how much you dislike me is ruining it for me,” I tell him, wandering over to the couches and flopping down on one, not really wanting to leave his company even when he’s being a grumpy, pushy git.

  “Just tell me what you’re hiding,” he grumbles as he follows suit and comes over to the couch I’m stretched out on, sitting on the end by my feet before snagging a blanket from the floor beside the couch, tossing it over me and turning on the TV.

  “I’m hiding too many things and you have no right to my secrets,” I retort, grateful for the blanket since I’m still cold after so long spent outside.

  “I’m pretty sure I know what they are, even without remembering or having you tell me explicitly,” he informs me.

  “I’m pretty sure you don’t,” I reply, subtly touching my lips which are still tingling from that phenomenal kiss he gave me just now.

  “What makes you so sure?” he asks, sipping his coffee and flicking channels in search of something to watch despite it being three in the morning.

  “You’d be shutting up if you knew, rather than asking me more questions.”

  “So, you are hiding something. You do know what I was doing during the window of amnesia,” he accuses, eyeing me now.

  “Hilton?” I ask, waiting for him to raise his eyebrows in askance. “Shut up!”

  “Are you always this touchy?” he asks me.

  “Are you always this annoying? Just leave the whole thing alone. You didn’t do anything illegal or immoral; you didn’t lose control of the inner beast and attack me or anyone else. You went to your room and you didn’t come out again. That’s all I’m going to tell you, and you’re not going to ask me again, or I’ll shoot you,” I tell him, doing what I can to make him shut up.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me. You don’t even have a gun,” he argues with me although I can tell from his expression that he’s at least relieved to know he didn’t attack anyone or lose control or anything.

  “Keep pushing the issue then, I dare you,” I warn him.

  “Can you at least tell me why I woke up sore?” he asks me, and I glance over at him again.

  I debate silently with myself. Would it be so bad to tell him? After all he did just kiss me, and he didn’t look disgusted, though he did look annoyed. If he’s got a brain, he probably already knows what happened anyway, he just wants me to confirm it. As I watch him, the tense hold of his shoulders and the way he’s sitting as though expecting me to tell him something he really doesn’t want to hear, it occurs to me that I can’t tell him the truth.

  It’s bad enough for me knowing that it happened, and it was fantastic, and he doesn’t remember a thing about it. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be to know it happened and not even remember it.

  “I have no idea why you woke up sore,” I answer him, lying through my teeth.

  “Even though you woke up sore too.”

  “I never said I woke up sore,” I argue, glancing away and knowing he can probably see the blush creeping up my neck. I scratch at my shoulder again when it begins to itch insanely.

  “And yet you have a wound on your shoulder that you’re hiding from everyone and finger-shaped bruises all over you three days later,” he says, and I suspect he knows the truth, he just wants me to say that we had sex.

  “I’ve explained those,” I tell him without looking at him.

  “Not the ones on your ass, you haven’t,” he argues again, and I level a glare at him. “And you won’t even let me see whatever’s on your shoulder.”

  I sit up slowly, making sure to set my coffee on the side table and unfurl the blankets from my legs before I move. Then, before he can stop me, I swivel around until I’m straddling him on the couch.

  “What are you doing, little human?” he asks, sounding a little surprised. I don’t answer. Instead I dig my hand between his back and the couch, which causes him to squirm beneath me, before I snag the handgun tucked into the top of his sweat pants and yank it out, flicking the safety off and pressing the tip of the barrel against his chest right over his heart.

  “I told you to shut up about it,” I tell him, glaring at him and thinking seriously about pulling the trigger.

  “You appreciate that you’re straddling me after just sticking your hands near my happy spot again, right?” he asks, and I can tell he’s trying to make me embarrassed and uncomfortable enough to backpedal.

  “You understand there are silver bullets in this gun, right?” I counter, and he narrows his eyes on me.

  I jump and almost shoot him by accident when his arm loops around my lower back and slides me forwards on his lap until my body aligns with the hot hard lump in his pants. Biting back a moan at the contact, I clamp down on my muscles as hard as I can to keep my hips from rolling against him and grinding him right there on the couch. I don’t have the spare brain-power to stop him when his other hand goes for the neckline on my jersey again, jerking the fabric aside and exposing my entire left shoulder and almost my breast as well.

  I close my eyes in horror at the idea of him seeing the mark and I try my hardest to think of an acceptable lie. When I open them again, he is frowning and eyeing the skin there with an odd expression on his handsome face.

  “What are these?” he asks me, and I raise my eyebrows, before turning my head and glancing at my shoulder.

  I’ve never been so relieved to see nothing but scars in my whole life. The broken, bruised flesh that was there just this afternoon is gone, leaving nothing but a mess of bite-shaped scars behind.

  “Scars,” I shrug, before regretting it when he jolts a little at my weight shifting against his groin and making his eyes flash with heat. He narrows his eyes on me suspiciously and I do my best to keep my expression neutral.

  “Who bit you?” he asks nosily.

  “No one bit me,” I lie, groaning softly when his hands drop to my ass, pulling me even closer and making me wish neither of us wore pants.

  “You really need to stop lying to me,” he tells me, his voice turning husky as though he can smell my desire and can’t resist it.

  “I’m not….” I begin, dropping the gun when he bucks beneath me whilst holding me in place on his lap. I nearly come unraveled right then.

  “Did I bite you?” he asks me, his voice even huskier now and the lump beneath me growing by the second. I shake my head in denial.

  This is hardly fair. He knows I’m attracted to him and he’s using it to
his advantage to try and torture the information out of me. He’s not fighting fair and if he keeps this up I’m going to turn into a quivering puddle of delight on his lap.

  “Anna?” he asks, and I hate him for being such a tricky bastard and using my first name again. “Did I bite you? Did we have sex?”

  “Stop it,” I attempt to command, blushing when it comes out a breathy moan instead.

  “Answer me!” he growls, bucking beneath me again.

  “No!” I whimper, almost blind with how badly I want him to have his way with me.

  “No, we didn’t fuck or no you won’t answer?” he tries to clarify even though I can feel how much torturing me is torturing him too. I just shake my head, not trusting myself to speak without begging him to have sex with me again.

  “Anna!” he says, and I shake my head harder, one of my hands moving up his neck to tangle in his dark hair.

  “You’re not fighting fair,” I manage despite my breathlessness.

  “You’re lying to me. Keeping things from me. Things about me,” he argues with me. “Now, did I leave all these marks on you? Do my sheets smell like you because I’ve had you in my bed?”

  I shake my head again, biting my lip hard to keep the words inside. He punishes me by bucking beneath me again, the friction pushing me closer and closer to release.

  “If you don’t stop lying to me, I’m going to leave you like this, right on the brink…” he warns me and I almost cave when he says that.

  I lose the battle not to grind myself on him and the rumble in his chest gives away how much this is affecting him too. Doing the only thing I can think of to keep from spilling my secrets, I move my hand to his hip and burrow it under his shirt and to his lower back again.

  “Now who’s not fighting fair?” he growls at me; that rumble in his chest making his words vibrate on his tongue. “Tell me the truth.”

  I shake my head again and he punishes me with three quick bucks, holding my hips tight enough to bruise, keeping me on his lap to endure each one.

  “Damn it, human!” he snarls when I whimper but still refuse to tell him the truth. My nails dig into him harder and he loses the battle to keep interrogating me when his lips crash against mine.

  The sensation proves too much, and I feel him smirk against my lips when my whole body goes taut in his grip like a bow-string pulled too far back, before it feels like something inside me snaps and a rush of endorphins flood my system. He kisses me harder, rocking himself into each roll of my hips against him and when he pulls away from my lips to sink his teeth into my scarred shoulder once more, I open my eyes, feeling him shudder with his own release.

  “Fuck!” he breathes, when I lean back slowly, my shoulder stinging from the fresh bite and my limbs heavy with contentment. When he lifts his gaze to mine his eyes are lupine gold, completely gold but for the point of a black pupil in the middle. I backpedal out of his lap in a hurry when his body begins to shudder violently and his fingers on my hips grow long claws that tear at my flesh until I’m out of his reach.

  A feral and much more canine sounding snarl rips through his teeth, which are rapidly transforming into wickedly sharp fangs and I realize with shock and a little horror that just as Tara did a few weeks ago, Tobias has lost control of the inner animal because of me. Recalling the way Tara so relentlessly tried to attack me, I scoop up Hilton’s gun from the floor where I dropped it and I bolt for my bedroom.

  I hear the heavy thud of paws behind me as I pound down the corridor and I skid into my room, slamming and locking the huge stainless-steel door behind me just before the wolf can join me. I slide down it to the floor when I hear a heavy canine body colliding with it and I realize with horror than come morning, Hilton’s not going to remember this sexual encounter either.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ipurposely sleep late the following day, not wanting to run the risk of meeting Hilton in the hall if he’s still a wolf and none of the others have intervened. I don’t know how long it takes a Shifter to recover when losing control like that, and I don’t really want to find out by walking into waiting jaws. When I’m certain that the others are awake, I exit my bedroom cautiously, armed to the nines just in case.

  I clutch Hilton’s gun in my right hand and my dagger in my left and I stalk carefully out of the room and toward the kitchen.

  “Can I have that back?” he asks when I’m still on the stairs and I wonder if he’s seen me from the kitchen where, I assume, he is standing, or if he’s just smelt my presence.

  “Figured you might want it,” I reply, trying very hard indeed to keep the blush from my cheeks at the idea of him not remembering what happened last night.

  “Oh, my goodness, Anna, are you alright?” Greg asks, rushing over when I enter the kitchen, sheathing my knife and sliding the gun across the counter to Hilton.

  “I’m fine,” I answer, shrugging and dodging around Greg when he attempts an inspection to make sure I’m not wounded thanks to the big bad wolf. I make a beeline for the coffee pot since I was up most of the night listening to Hilton scratching at my door and snarling to be let in. I’ve got the shredded carpet and damaged door to prove it.

  “I don’t suppose you can shed any further light on what happened last night?” Greg asks me, fussing like a mother hen while I try to sip my coffee. I’ve been careful to cover my shoulder from view once more, lest they see the most recent bite mark Hilton left on me.

  “I don’t know if I can,” I answer him. “What do you already know?”

  “Tobias said he followed you out into the woods last night. That you were sleep-walking. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get sick, going out there barefoot in nothing but a jersey in winter,” Greg admonishes, as though it was a conscious choice I made. “He said he helped you back here and patched your foot after you cut it.”

  I sip my coffee waiting for more, thinking that surely Hilton must remember more than that. I slant a glance his way when no further explanation comes, and he is watching me with a strange look on his face.

  “We had a fight,” I admit, deciding not to mention the fact that he was trying to get a look at my shoulder and that I found his happy spot. I don’t think the team or Tobias really want to know about him kissing me as a result, or about the other stuff that went down.

  “Something new then,” Brody quips, smirking a little over how often Hilton and I argue.

  “Yeah, well,” I shrug, “it got a little out of hand and I don’t know what I did but one minute he was snapping at me, and the next, the snapping seemed far more dangerous. I bolted to my room and locked the door. That’s about it.”

  Greg eyes me doubtfully and I can see that Tobias doesn’t believe me either.

  “What, he just lost control over a fight?” Mitch asks, looking gleeful at the notion.

  “Are you sure that’s all it was Anna?” Greg asks. “Tobias has never lost control of the beast within before…”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I shrug, sipping more coffee to keep from having to look at anyone for too long. “And it's not like he’s the first Shifter to lose it because of fighting with me. Maybe I’m Shifter-Kryptonite.”

  “Shifter-Kryptonite?” Mitch scoffs, laughing now. “You’re secretly a dork inside that hard-core human package, aren’t you Cane?”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” I grin at him, thankful for the distraction from the serious topic.

  “Nerd,” Tara accuses, rolling her eyes. “Well, sorry superstar, but it looks like that record you had going of holding off on never losing control outside the full moon is broken.”

  She shoves Hilton’s shoulder playfully and I try hard not to see the scowl on his face. No doubt he’ll hate me even more now.

  “Why did you have my gun?” he asks me seriously.

  “I took it from you in the fight,” I tell him. “And since I sleep-walked out into the woods completely unarmed and underdressed, I didn’t have any other weapon to pull when you sprouted claws and started
slashing me.”

  “I scratched you?” he asks, looking mildly concerned now while Greg begins to fret some more. I wonder idly if he’s always this much of a mother hen when things get squirrelly.

  Rather than trying to explain and having them freak out, I turn around and pull up the back of my shirt revealing the pair of identical claw marks slashed over both my hips right where my love-handles should be. The claw shape is narrower and more closely spaced than the pair on my shoulder blades that Tara gave me a few weeks ago. Without the stitches that the last ones had, the ones on my hips are still scabbed and bruised but no longer bleeding.

  Brody whistles at the sight, clearly impressed by my ability to shrug the whole thing off.

  “How have you not had a mental breakdown yet?” he asks me. “Seems like everyone you fight with leaves a mark on you.”

  “Perks of being human,” I quip in return, resorting to sarcasm at the mention of being marked by anyone or anything.

  “You should let me put something on those Anna,” Greg insists, picking at one of them gently.

  “The bleeding stopped, I’ll be fine,” I wave him off, but he ignores me, darting to the cupboard to dig out the first aid kit Hilton used to patch up my foot last night.

  “You must be faster than you look,” Hilton says quietly when I hiss at the sting of the solution Summers pours over my wounds.

  “Probably,” I shrug, choosing not to be offended in favor of gritting my teeth on the urge to snarl at Greg like an animal.

  “Are you feeling alright Anna?” Greg asks, pressing his palm to my lower back when he stops bandaging me.

  “Yeah, why?” I ask him.

  “You’re very warm to the touch. Warmer than you should be….”

  “Probably a result of going out in the middle of the night and standing in the woods for God knows how long,” I brush his concern off, not wanting to think too closely on the matter.

  “You’ve been unwell since you were captured, haven’t you?” he accuses me, and I think about it.

  “Probably. I did have a fair bit of blood drained from my body that evening,” I shrug. “Quit frowning at me like that. I’ll be fine.”