The Unforgettable Wolf

by Jane Godman

  This time, when her release slammed into her, her muscles gripped Nate’s cock, heightening the intensity of each spasm. It felt like liquid velvet had been poured into her veins. Her body was languid, yet every sense was heightened as she pulsed and contracted, each perfect wave ebbing and flowing rapturously over and around her.

  She felt Nate’s hard flesh stiffen further, his body jerking to a standstill as the white-hot force of his own release claimed him. Violet wrapped her arms around him, wanting to hold him to her, to capture the moment for all eternity.

  Eventually, she collapsed beneath him, shuddering in the aftershocks of unimaginable pleasure.

  “That was...” When her breath returned, she floundered, searching for the right words.

  “Amazing? Incredible? Perfect?” Nate drew her into his arms, punctuating each word with kisses. “Worth waiting for? I know I’m glad I waited. I hope you are.”

  “How would we know if it was perfect?” Violet looped her arms around his neck, pressing closer against him. “We’ve only just started.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re hardly likely to have got it right on the first attempt, are we?” She kissed her way along his collarbone. “And you know what they say about perfection.”

  Nate lay back as her lips moved lower. “Remind me.”

  “You have to keep practicing to get there.”

  * * *

  It was the same story whenever they toured. The bus was ready to go, but there was always at least one band member missing. Khan had the worst track record, but he was by no means the only offender. The next morning, it was Dev who couldn’t be found. Ged had sent the roadies out to look for him and was on his cell phone in the hotel lobby, pacing back and forth as he left increasingly heated messages for Dev to call him.

  When he saw Nate, Ged beckoned him over. “Any sign of him?”

  Nate shook his head. “He went to a club with Torque and Khan after the party last night and left with a girl. No one has seen him since.”

  “We won’t have to worry about him going off with any more girls after I’ve finished with him.” Ged’s expression hardened. “Because I’m going to remove his balls without anesthetic.”

  “This is not like Dev,” Nate said. “And, to be fair, we all know you tell us to be on the bus at least an hour before we need to set off.”

  Ged laughed. “It’s the only way to get everyone organized.” He cast a sidelong glance in Nate’s direction. “Where’s Violet?”

  “Already on the bus. She found a tourist guide to French cities so she’s reading about where we’re going next.” He sensed Ged wanted to say something more.

  “Who is she, Nate?”

  How was he supposed to answer that question? I don’t know? That would be the truth. She’s everything I ever wanted. Also true. Sex with Violet had been the most incredible experience of his life. His body was still on a high, reveling in the memory. His emotions were equally rapturous. He desired her the way an addict craved a fix, not just thinking about the next time he could take her to bed—although that had started to occupy a lot of his thinking—but he needed to be near her, to be able to touch her, to know she was close, to look at her whenever he wanted to. Which was just about all the time. She had enchanted him, and that enchantment instilled a mix of fear and wonder in him because he knew it couldn’t last.

  “Why?”

  He knew from Ged’s face he wasn’t just asking. This was more. Ged could sense something about Violet. And if Ged’s supercharged senses were involved, that could mean only one thing...

  Ged shook his head. “None of my business.”

  “No, but it’s mine.” Nate felt his jaw clench with tension. “Tell me.”

  “Not here.” Ged cast a look around the hotel lobby at the people milling past. “Come outside.”

  There was a small courtyard with a central fountain and rustic benches just off the main reception area. Its sole purpose seemed to be decorative. They made their way out into this haven of cool and quiet. Nate could feel tension curling through him, like a residue of the werewolf memory he tried so hard to forget. He wanted to protect himself from it by crouching low, slinking away, dealing with it on a purely sensory level.

  Because he knew what Ged was going to say. Hadn’t he known all along what Violet was? He wanted to cover his ears, to tell Ged it didn’t matter, to follow those hidden werewolf instincts and walk away. To tell Ged to shut the fuck up even before the other man had opened his mouth.

  He did none of those things. He had promised Violet he would help her find her lost memory and restore her to her family. Nate was a man of his word. “Well?”

  Ged looked uncomfortable, a fact that probably had a lot to do with Nate’s tone. “You know what I do.”

  “You’ve never come right out and said it.” Nate crossed his arms over his chest. Ged had been good to him, but he was in no mood to make this easy. On the contrary, he was determined to make the other man work for it.

  Ged scrubbed a hand over his face. “Hell, Nate. Okay, if that’s the way you want it. You must know I rescue endangered shape-shifters. You’ve seen the evidence, been a part of it for long enough.”

  He stared Nate in the eye as though daring him to challenge what he had just said. Nate couldn’t. Just because it had never been said out loud didn’t mean he hadn’t known. He almost laughed aloud at the thought. Weren’t they—Beast—the living, breathing proof of what Ged did? A perfect example of a successful rescue effort?

  In spite of his annoyance, Nate’s lip quirked in a half smile. “I sort of got that.”

  Ged laughed. “The clues were all there, right?” His face became serious. “I know shifters, man.”

  “And your point is...?” Make him sweat.

  “Violet is a shifter.” Blunt and to the point. Thank you, Ged. I can always rely on you. “She’s a werewolf...” Ged hesitated, his expression bewildered as though he was struggling to explain his thoughts. “But—and this is the hard part, the thing I’ve never come across before—she may not know it.”

  “You can read her that closely?” Nate was interested enough to overcome his antagonism for a moment.

  Ged ran a hand through his hair. “You have no idea. Talk about blessings and curses. But, yeah, I can get that much information from her. And I’m not saying this because I think her being a werewolf is a bad thing. I’m just telling you because you need to know. If you didn’t already.” He cast Nate a sidelong glance. “For what it’s worth, I think she’s good for you, werewolf or not. You’ve been—” he searched around for the right word “—restored.”

  Restored. It was true. That was what Violet had done. She had breathed new life into him. From the moment they had met in that dark, loamy forest, she had gradually been making him whole again, rebuilding him. Into what? His worst fear had always been that there were traces of werewolf left over from that attack. What if she was slowly but surely finding them and using them in this reconstruction job? Not deliberately. If Violet didn’t know she was a werewolf, she was hardly likely to be consciously building herself a new mate. But Nate was so smitten by her, so utterly captivated, that wasn’t it possible his wolfness was responding by becoming more dominant? Another question, one he had never thought to ask himself, surfaced as he thought this through. Do I care?

  He had to care. When Violet was gone, he had to cling to his principles. They would be all he had. Them and his memories of a sweet interlude with the girl who had taken his breath away. And his principles told him that the Wolf Leader was evil and manipulative. A cold, vicious bully who would use a confused and frightened young man as a weapon to further his own political ambitions. His principles still told him Nevan had to die.

  As for Ged and his strange talent... Beast was the result of his obsession with rescuing damaged shifters. Their audiences knew they
were witnessing something unique when they attended one of the band’s gigs, but no one could ever guess just how unusual the group was.

  “Don’t mention this to Violet.” Nate drew his mind back into his conversation with Ged with an effort.

  Ged held up his hands. “Of course not. I wanted to make sure you were okay. That’s all.”

  “I’m okay.” Nate smiled. “I’m better than okay.”

  It was the truth. For the first time in six years, here now, in this moment with Violet, he was happy. Anxious to get back to her, he moved toward the door that led back to the hotel reception area.

  Turning his head to look at Ged, he asked the question that had always puzzled him. The question he was able to ask now the other man had been open with him. “If we are a band of shifters, where do I fit in?”

  Ged’s expression was confused. “What do you mean?”

  Nate explained patiently. “The other four guys are shifters, but I’m not. I’m the odd one out. Why did you recruit me?”

  Ged stared at him for a moment, a strange, sorrowful look dawning in his eyes. “You may not be a shifter anymore, but you still needed rescuing.”

  A commotion in the lobby distracted them, and Nate didn’t get to question him further about that statement. They hurried forward to greet Dev, who, looking disheveled and with cuts and bruises to his face, stumbled to his knees.

  Chapter 9

  “Leave Dev alone.” Violet adopted a protective manner as Khan attempted to ruffle his friend’s hair.

  Dev opened one bloodshot eye. “You heard Violet. I need peace and quiet. You don’t do either of those.”

  Khan snorted with laughter. “Tell me again what happened, just so I can fix it in my mind.”

  “Fuck off.” Some of Dev’s cool had deserted him since Nate and Ged had picked him up off the floor of the hotel lobby and carried him onto the tour bus.

  Ignoring him, Khan sat on the sofa at a right angle to the one on which Dev was stretched out at full length. “No, seriously. How did it happen? You go home with some girl, right? Then, when you wake up the next morning and try to leave, she asks you for money and that’s when you find your wallet has gone. Am I getting this straight so far? When you begin to search for it, that’s when her three brothers burst in and start kicking the shit out of you.”

  “Make him go away.” Dev turned pleading eyes to Violet, who was kneeling on the floor next to him, holding a cold compress to his head.

  Khan snorted and looked over his shoulder. “Nate, are you sure this story isn’t some fairy tale just to get Violet here away from you?”

  Nate looked up from the book he was reading. “Isn’t it time for you to find Diablo and piss him off?”

  Khan unwound himself gracefully from his seat. “Thanks for reminding me.” He ruffled Dev’s hair again before sauntering away. A few minutes later they heard the sounds of an altercation coming from the kitchen.

  Nate rolled his eyes at Violet. “I feel bad about setting him on Diablo, but I know he’ll stand up to him and I thought Dev had been through enough.”

  “You should get some sleep,” Violet told Dev. His face wasn’t too badly bruised. She suspected his ego had taken more of a beating than his body.

  He stretched his long body, before rising tentatively. “Good idea. Thank you, angel.” He blew her a kiss from the tips of his fingers before making his way through to the sleeping area.

  “Is it always like this?” Violet rose from her kneeling position and curled up next to Nate. She had been feeling curiously fatigued ever since she woke up that morning. Maybe it had something to do with not much sleep and lots of amazing sex?

  Nate ran a hand down the length of her hair. “No. Sometimes it can get quite dramatic.”

  She turned her face into his neck. “I want to be alone with you again.”

  “We are alone.” He gestured to the empty living space.

  Violet felt a blush heat her face. “No, I want to be alone with you in bed.”

  Nate sighed regretfully. “One night and you’re already sunk beneath the depths of depravity.”

  “I know. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

  He kissed her. “Beyond wonderful. But you will have to control your wanton lusts until we get to Toulouse.”

  “That’s another seven hours,” Violet grumbled.

  “I’m worth waiting for,” Nate said.

  “One night and you’re already convinced you’re a sex god.”

  “Who’s a sex god?” Torque strolled through from the kitchen. “Has Khan been boasting again?”

  “There is no privacy on this bus,” Nate complained.

  “There is no privacy anywhere, my friend.” Torque tossed his cell phone to Nate, who caught it with one hand. “Check out the top story on the celebrity pages. Ged is not a happy man.”

  Violet leaned closer so she could read along with Nate as he scrolled down the screen on Torque’s phone. The simple headline Who Is Nate’s Mystery Lady? was followed by a picture of Nate and Violet in the car as they left the stadium the night before. Nate’s face was clear, but Violet had her head buried in his shoulder. All that could be seen of her was her dark hair and one slender, naked shoulder emerging from the white lace of her blouse. The text was more speculation than the story.

  Nate Zilar, gorgeous, enigmatic bass guitarist of rock supergroup Beast, didn’t hang around to celebrate at the after-party following last night’s sold-out gig in Paris. Sources say Nate couldn’t wait to get back to his luxury hotel room to be alone with the new lady in his life...

  The article concluded with a plea. Are you Nate Zilar’s new love? Do you know who she is? Contact us with details.

  “Enigmatic? That’s just another word for odd,” Nate said with a touch of outrage.

  “I’d take enigmatic.” Torque sounded envious. “I always get fiery or hotheaded.” He lowered his voice. “Leader alert.”

  Violet wondered how Ged managed to convey annoyance without speaking. It wasn’t as if his facial expression was particularly disapproving. He just gave off an aura of condemnation. Now that she thought about it, Ged always managed to communicate his emotions without any effort. Or is that just me? She glanced at Nate and Torque but couldn’t tell if they were picking up on Ged’s mood in the same way. Anyway, Torque had already warned them that Ged wasn’t happy, so maybe she was just projecting that information onto him.

  Nate held up Torque’s phone. “We’ve seen it.”

  “Fucking marvelous. What a great start to a tour. We have tiger-boy Khan doing his best to get arrested for violating French public decency laws. Now we have an online campaign to find out who you’re dating. No offense, Violet, but that means even more press wherever we go.”

  “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Torque said helpfully.

  “You would say that.” Ged flicked a glance in his direction. “How many times have I had to make a statement to haul you out of some shit-hole or another that you’ve dug yourself into?”

  Torque gave a cheerful grin. “Happens all the time,” he told Violet. “Last month, I had a bit of an incident that brought me to the attention of the London police. Ged had to come and bail me out.”

  “Again,” Ged said, with a long-suffering sigh. “I had to come and bail you out again. And this ‘bit of an incident’ Torque dismisses so lightly was actually him breaking into the house of a girl he liked the look of.”

  “She liked me, too,” Torque protested. “It was her father who objected. He thought all rock musicians were the devil incarnate. Anyway, it wasn’t my fault he came home early and found me in her room. I had to jump out of her bedroom window, stark naked. But there was no need for the shotgun...”

  “You set fire to his barn,” Ged said in an outraged voice.

  “That was an accident. I don’t know how it happ
ened.”

  Getting a grip on his emotions with an obvious effort, Ged turned back to Nate. “I suppose that’s a timely reminder that you being photographed with Violet isn’t so bad, after all. Just be careful in the future.”

  After Ged and Torque had gone, Violet bit her lip. “I’m sorry to have caused any trouble.”

  “You haven’t. No one saw you, and there is no harm done. Although in a way it would have been useful if we could have published your face in the press. That way your family might see it and come forward.” Nate shuddered. “But Ged is right. In the middle of a tour, it doesn’t bear thinking about. We’ll have to keep checking online to see if anyone is looking for you and hope that your memory comes back.”

  Violet nodded, resting her head on his shoulder. Or I can keep hoping it doesn’t.

  * * *

  They arrived in Toulouse in the late afternoon and had the luxury of free time the next day. Ged had secured invitations to the luxury home of a millionaire friend, but Nate suspected that Violet was less than enamored about the idea of a day spent lazing beside the pool. He knew from past experience that pools, alcohol and his bandmates tended to result in days that were anything but lazy, but he kept that information to himself.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked as they lay in bed that morning. “We don’t have to follow like sheep.”

  A wistful look came into her eyes. She seemed subdued, but it was hard to pinpoint what that meant exactly. “I know it sounds foolish, but we drove past a beautiful forest on the road from Paris. I would love to go there.”

  Nate felt that slightly panicky sensation tug at him. The one that always surfaced whenever he got an inkling that she might be a werewolf. But hadn’t the signs become stronger than inklings? Ged had come right and out said it. She’s a werewolf, but she may not know it. And Ged had been very clear. He should know because shifters were his business. His very lucrative business.