Tiger Tail: Shifter Romance

by Sky Winters

  Stella's hand slipped into Tristen's, and he led her up the old staircase inside the lobby and to the fourth floor. Three sharp knocks on the door saw it opened by a young man with brown hair and a long nose, who looked over them both with a somber expression. Scent spoke for them, she guessed. There was no hiding a bond from wolves.

  The walls of the apartment had been knocked down to create one large, open space joined through a large archway with the next unit, which was similarly opened. A den. And the men who visited there treated it as a home away from home.

  And there, amongst a cluster of couches and chairs, most torn to shreds, sat Derek. When he lifted his eyes to look at them as they entered, Stella thought he might bare his teeth and attack. Had Tristen entered on his own, she was sure he would have. Her presence kept him in check.

  "What the fuck is happening," Derek hissed from where he sat. His arms were draped over the back of the couch, legs spread. The man oozed authority and power, and Stella would have trembled had she not already faced death down just the day before. It was time to stop being afraid. Now she shared Tristen's heart after such a long time mourning Will's loss, and she was ready to move on and be happy.

  "The word of the alpha female is law," Stella declared, clutching Tristen's hand that much harder, "and I've made a decision. Tristen and I share a bond, and I will be his mate."

  Derek's body tensed, and he rose up from the couch in one smooth motion. Angry, he looked much bigger than he already was, but Stella would not back down.

  "But as the alpha female," she continued, "as Will's chosen mate, I know what's best for the pack. You will continue to lead us. You will rule. But my happiness is with Tristen, and you — and all of the pack — are going to have to accept that."

  Derek's lips tightened, but he did not continue his approach. Instead, he dug his hands into his pockets.

  "And if I take a mate?" he asked.

  "Then she will serve as alpha female in my place," Stella declared. "As the present alpha female of the pack, that's what I want. The position means nothing to me. I don't want power, or fame, or influence... All I want is to be happy at last. And I've found that now."

  Tristen's hand tightened around hers, and he leaned against her to press a kiss to her neck. The affection made her shiver, and a smile spread her lips. Happiness. At last. Tristen had begun to change her for the better, and from here on out, things were only going to get better.

  Derek approached, but it was not with anger. He stood uncomfortably close to her, eyes narrowed and near dangerous. When he moved again, Stella anticipated he would strike her, but the older of the two brothers simply bent down to scent the opposite side of her neck from Tristen. When he drew away, he caught her eyes and did not betray his emotion.

  "And what about the child I planted inside of you?" he asked. "I can smell the pregnancy on you. You were fertile when I had you last night."

  The news was jarring, and Stella knew her mouth had fallen agape. Pregnancy? Already? There was a small chance that the child could be Tristen's, but...

  "It doesn't matter," Tristen said from her side. He'd yet to let go of her hand. "Yours or mine, blood is blood, and Stella is mine. I will care for the child even if it is not my own."

  A child. Pregnancy. A family. The news was so sudden. After a year of living in isolation, it didn't seem possible. Over the course of a single day, everything about her had changed. Both brothers had made sure her life would never be the same.

  "As long as this is my pack," Derek said, "then you can do whatever the fuck you want, as long as it's respectful. I'm going to allow this to happen. I was never big on commitment, anyway. You start your happy little family, and I'll lead my pack. Sounds like a fair tradeoff to me."

  Hasty decisions and a bleeding heart had almost led her to ruin, but perseverance had served her well. There was no doubt Will had been a great love of her life, but he would not be the last. Tristen was there for her now, and by his side Stella knew she would be treated well.

  And now with a baby on the way, and a pack to serve as family, there would be no reason she would ever find herself on her own again.

  After a cold, bleak winter came the first beautiful buds of spring. The buds of her life were sprouting now, and Stella knew it wouldn't be long before her it would be in full bloom. *****

  THE END

  WOLF TWINS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Betraya

  Jolene let out a loud gasp when she opened the door and saw them there. “Bastard!” she shouted. She had come home early from work to discover that Kenny, her husband of three years, was in fact not at work like she had thought.

  Well, he was at work in one way.

  “Babydoll?” he asked, moving quickly off of the mystery woman he had in their bed.

  Kenny’s semi-erect penis was not doing him any favors right now. Jolene looked at him, horrified. “Get the fuck out of my house!” she bellowed at him. In actuality, the house belonged to both of them, but she was too angry to see that at the moment.

  The strange woman got out of the bed, covering herself in her dress and scooping up her panties and bra. She left the room, scampered down the stairs, and went out the front door without a word. Jolene got the feeling this had been going on for a while and her finding them had been inevitable.

  She shot her head back around to glare at Kenny as soon as the tart was gone. “You gonna get packing or should I?”

  “Babydoll, it doesn’t have to be like this,” Kenny said. He, unlike the bimbo, did not bother to put his clothes back on. He tried to wrap his arms around Jolene, but she pulled away and punched him in the shoulder roughly.

  “Get away from me!” she cried. “And don’t call me ‘babydoll.’”

  She went to the chest of drawers and started pulling out her clothing in large mounds, stuffing them into a suitcase she found in the closet. “You were supposed to be dependable, Kenneth,” she said. “I liked you because you had a career and a routine. You were practically boring, and I liked that. I didn’t want an asshole cheater like in high school. I guess I just attract asshole cheaters.”

  Kenny looked at her woefully as she spoke, but then he turned vicious in his own defense. “Well, maybe I was tired of boring routines. Maybe I wanted someone who came when I called her and drove me crazy.”

  Jolene moved back to the doorway. “Whatever. I’m tired of this shit.” She hit him forcefully with the suitcase as she passed him, knocking him to the floor. She smirked a little at that. It was a small victory, but she would take it.

  She left the house, tossing her suitcase into the backseat of her green Volkswagen Beetle. Jolene was in marketing and advertising, and did most of her work from home; that was the irony of this situation. Kenny probably jumped at the chance to be unfaithful the first time Jolene went to the office.

  Jolene McNulty was about as Irish as they come, though there certainly was no shortage of Irish people in Boston. She was pale and freckled, and taller than average. Curvaceous and attractive, she was no simpering thing, hence the bumps and bruises she had given Kenneth upon leaving their abode. Her hair was long and auburn, and her eyes were emerald green. At twenty-nine years old, she was still quite a looker, but she had not imagined she would be single again at this age.

  “That son of a bitch,” she growled under her breath, driving along but not really knowing where she should go. Part of her wanted to stick around in Boston. After all, that was where her office was. But the other parts of her knew that there was no way she wanted to stay anywhere near her soon-to-be-ex.

  Her mind made up, she went to a local courthouse and filed for divorce. Jolene signed the required documents, and then sent them on their way to be signed by Kenny. It surprised her how easy it was. It surprised her how much it hurt.

  When she got back into her car, she hit the road for Vermont. She had never been there before, but she’d heard a lot of good things about the place. It was autumn and she knew that winter would not b
e a dainty affair there, but it wasn’t exactly laid back in Boston either. At least her wardrobe would be appropriate. If she was moving to Maui, she would be screwed.

  Best of all, Vermont offered Jolene a quiet life. She would be able to sit back and enjoy nature as she wrote on her laptop instead of having to endure the loud Boston arguments and raucous night life. Vermont would be all porch swings and pleasantries.

  As soon as she drove into Burlington, she rented a small cottage on the outskirts of town. The owner was a small, shriveled man who likely would not need living arrangements for much longer. The cottage was blessedly furnished. Jolene came inside, dropped her suitcase on the floor near the door, and collapsed onto the couch. She took off the messenger bag that was on her shoulders at almost all times, and set it down on the coffee table in front of her.

  Her laptop was in that bag. She imagined she would be using that laptop a lot more now. Apart from doing her work, she was going to need to do some research into this new place. She pulled it out and plugged it into the wall, knowing that she was going to need to go shopping for power strips, along with food, fairly soon.

  Upon turning on her computer, Jolene realized that she wasn’t getting a charge. She tried the other outlet. No dice. She unplugged and strolled out to the kitchen. The light did not turn on and the outlets were unresponsive there as well.

  “Well, great,” she grumbled. “Could’ve put that in the ad.”

  Jolene turned her computer off so the battery would not die and pulled out her phone, calling the first electrical company listed. The company was managed by a guy named Luke Weir. She really hoped that he knew what the hell he was doing, because she was getting sick of everyone letting her down.

  “I’ll be right there,” the guy said when she called. He didn’t ask her a lot of questions, which Jolene actually appreciated seeing as she would have had very few answers for him.

  The guy that appeared at her doorstep was not at all what Jolene was expecting from an electrical repairman. First of all, he arrived on a motorcycle. No dorky truck with a logo on it for this guy. Second of all, he was not a fat slob with a beer gut and pants that hung low. He was wearing nice, form-fitting blue jeans and a tight, ab-showing t-shirt with the company’s logo on it. Alternating Current Electrics. He was handsome and possibly even a little nerdy without making it show.

  He looked up from his clipboard when she opened the door, the utility belt hanging around his waist full of tools that Jolene did not even bother herself with wondering about. She was too hung up on his hazel eyes. They were mostly green with one thin ring of gold-amber around his pupils. He had big dimples—one on each cheek—that caught her attention next, and dark wavy hair that was practically black if not actually fully black.

  “Miss McNulty?” he asked her, checking his clipboard to make sure he had gotten that right.

  Jolene forgot how to talk for a moment, but she nodded as she looked at him. Maybe moving to Burlington, Vermont was going to be the best decision she ever made in her life. But after a few middle schoolish moments, she told herself to be cool. He was, after all, just an electrician. A lowly service worker.

  A sexy, muscly service worker…

  She realized then that she had been staring at him without saying anything for going on two minutes. Clearing her throat, she ushered him inside, taking a peek at his shiny blue motorcycle before closing the door.

  “So what seems to be the problem?” he asked her. He had a gravelly, growly voice like one of the best old country singers minus the southern accent.

  She was almost embarrassed now. It seemed so silly. She felt like it may even be her fault somehow. “I plugged my laptop into the outlet here,” Jolene said, indicating the place on the wall. “And it didn’t start charging from either, uh, hole. And so then I tried the kitchen and the light won’t turn on and the outlets don’t work in there either.”

  The guy whistled slightly and made note of that on the papers on his clipboard. “Well, I’m Luke Weir and I’m here to help you with that,” he said casually. “Do you mind if I step over and check it out?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Jolene replied, realizing that that made it sound like she did in fact mind. “I mean, I don’t mind. It’s why I called you.”

  Luke looked at her and smirked, causing her to blush and turn his smirk into an all-out grin.

  She felt weak in the knees then, so she sat on the edge of the couch. Had she really been so romance-deprived by her ex that the mere sight of another man caused her to get all wet in the panties?

  But Luke was not just ‘another man.’ He was gorgeous. She had not been prepared for gorgeous in the land of rolling green hills and farms.

  “You can go about your business,” Luke told her, not unkindly but not entirely nicely either. She got the sense that he was minorly annoyed that she was still watching him. “I’ll let you know when I’m through where we’re at.”

  Jolene nodded a little. She couldn’t get her work done without the cord working, and she would also have a hard time focusing due to the hottie a few feet away from her. So she got one of her books off of a shelf and started reading. She hadn’t paid attention to what the book was and only realized once she’d started trying to read that it was a French-to-English dictionary.

  She could hear Luke chuckling and did not even have to glance up at him to know why. She was so embarrassed that she felt like burying her head in the book and maybe dying a little.

  “All right, you can watch me,” he said, still laughing. “I didn’t want you to be bored, is all. Watching me fiddle with outlets and cables is not that exciting, I’m sure.”

  Now that’s where you’re wrong, she thought.

  “Would you like a drink?” she offered him. “I’ve got some cans of soda in the fridge, some beer and of course there’s water.”

  Luke looked up from the place where he was kneeling on the floor and smiled at her. He had a wicked, almost dangerous sort of smile. “What kind of beer do you have?” he asked her.

  Jolene grinned at him. As soon as she had listed the brands of bottled beer she had, Luke gave her his choice and she got up, practically skipping into the kitchen to retrieve a cold Rolling Rock for him. She got a can of soda for herself. She wasn’t much of a drinker, even though she currently had several types of beer in her fridge. It was just that she had foreseen many lonely, bored nights there in that cottage. Perhaps she should have planned to go out and mingle with the Burtlingtonians or whatever they called themselves.

  She handed him the beer as soon as she got back to Luke. She had been kind enough to pop it open beforehand.

  “Thanks,” he said, sitting down on the floor and mopping some sweat from his brow with the back of his long, black-haired arm. He took the beer from her outstretched hand and took a long swig.

  Jolene sat on the arm on the couch which, as it happened, was the closest place she could sit in order to be near him. She popped open her can of soda and took a sip, smiling as she did so. She wanted so badly to flirt with him, but she had no idea where to start. She was rusty, since she had been out of the dating game for years. Not that she had ever exactly been a master flirter anyway. She was more like a master attracter, somehow. Guys dug her. At least, back when she was younger…

  It was good that Luke seemed to be in his early thirties, at least. She wasn’t robbing the cradle or anything like that.

  “New to town?” he asked her, catching her off guard as she was trying to think of something to ask him.

  “Is it obvious?” Jolene asked him.

  He chuckled. “Well, by the looks of things you just moved into this cottage today. Either that or you love keeping your stuff in suitcases.”

  Jolene looked over at her suitcase by the door. She had not been too concerned about putting her things away yet. Really, she had just been trying to play around on the internet. “You’re very perceptive,” she said.

  Luke smiled at her as he took another pull at his bottle of Rolli
ng Rock. Then he set the beer down on the coffee table and got back to work testing the outlets and working on the wiring. After a few moments, he got up from the floor. “Where’s your circuit box?” he asked her.

  Hey, there, tiger. Take me out for a drink before you ask such personal questions.

  “Um, I think it’s in the laundry room?”

  He went off in search of it. Jolene felt like such a dork. She worried that she was being too obvious. Was it a stereotype, to be the lonely single woman in need of a serviceman’s help?

  Suddenly, the light turned on in the kitchen. It was as if she had had a great idea all of a sudden. Man, did she wish…

  “Problem solved!” Luke announced, striding back into the room. “This is a nice place you’ve got here. I’m glad the electricity is not really faulty. That’s a nightmare avoided.” He smiled at her, showing off his dimples.

  Jolene looked at him and smiled a little, feeling sad. The problem being solved meant that this handsome electrician was going to leave. “Thank you. That—jeez—that probably should have been the first thing I thought of.”

  He waved a hand at her. “Ah, it happens all the time.” She noticed that he was looking at her in a way that did not seem so professional now, like he had just noticed her green eyes and curvy physique. It didn’t hurt that she was sitting in just the right way to make her neckline dip down and her breasts press together.

  “You doing anything tonight?” he asked her then.

  Jolene felt both surprised and vindicated. She knew what inquiries like that meant usually. “No, I hadn’t planned anything,” she said with a flirty, coy—she hoped—smile. “Mostly I was hoping to do some research about this town.”

  Luke just kept on smiling, his dimples getting deeper and more set on his face. They practically made him glow like a neon sign that said ‘kiss me.’ Jolene was glad she was already sitting down so she wouldn’t swoon or do something equally fangirlish. “I’ll do you one better,” he said.