She wasn’t going to pick up. She often didn’t the first time he called. That didn’t matter. Cole was persistent. She’d pick up eventually, if it meant he had to call again and again.
“Cole?” said a voice in his ear. Dana—angry.
He liked it when she was angry. There was something about her rage that inflamed him. He wanted to force her to channel all of that anger into… other activities.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“You lied to me,” she said.
This was different. She was usually angry, but she usually wanted to avoid talking to him. She didn’t usually directly address him. “Did I? Well, I assure you, I apologize. If I was there, I’d be sure to find some way to convince you to forgive me.”
“Stop it, Cole. Stop trying to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know what.” There was a hitch in her voice. “I can’t… not right now. You always call in the middle of the afternoon. You really think that’s the best time for this sort of thing?”
He laughed. “When would be a better time?”
“I don’t know. When it’s dark, or—” She cut herself off. “I mean never, of course.” Her voice was strained. “It would be better if you never called again.”
“Oh, Dana, Dana, Dana,” he whispered. He was thinking about how tense she got when she was this worked up. He was thinking about how easy it was to relax her. One hand inside her shirt… She had very sensitive breasts. He thought of how her nipples always stiffened under his touch. “You know I have to call. You know it’s torture being away from you.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could hear her breathing. It had quickened.
“Speaking of lying,” he said. “You’ve been keeping things from me. For instance, Avery Brooks called me yesterday. Why did you sick your little dog on me, Dana? Why didn’t you call me yourself?”
“Brooks called you?”
“You didn’t know?” That pleased him. He felt relieved.
“What did he say?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. That I should leave you alone. That he was going to kill me. That you and I were done.”
“He didn’t tell me that he called you,” she said. She didn’t sound angry with Avery for calling. She wasn’t reacting at all.
Cole couldn’t help it. He had to ask. “Are you…” Now that he was trying, he couldn’t seem to find the words. “Is there something going on between you and him?” He tried to keep his tone light, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
“You jealous, Cole?”
“Of him? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Why do you care?”
“You know why I care. Because you’re mine, and I don’t like sharing.”
“I’m not yours.” There was defiance in her voice.
“Oh, but you are,” he said. “And I’m yours. And there’s not a damned thing either of us can do about it.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’re a liar. You’ve always been nothing but a liar. You told me all this crap about your family. None of it’s true. You didn’t even get the lupine virus in the gym that night. You were born a god damned werewolf, Cole.”
His grip tightened around the phone, but his palm had started to sweat. “Where are you getting this? Why are you saying this?”
“I just met your damned mother.”
“My…” Cole switched the phone to his other ear. His voice grew urgent. “Where are you, Dana?”
“I’m on Hunter’s Moon Farm,” she said. “I’m getting ready to meet the big alpha cheese in these parts. Jimmy or something.”
“What?” He was panicking. “How did you end up there? Why would you be there?”
“It’s SF business,” she said.
“That’s out of your jurisdiction,” he said. “Dana, listen to me. You need to get out of there.”
“Why? You afraid I’ll find out more of your dirty secrets?”
“Fuck no. Anything you want to know about me, I’ll tell you. But don’t… Stay away from Jimmy, Dana. He’s dangerous, do you understand me?”
“I can take care of myself.” She hung up.
He dialed her number again.
She answered and immediately hung up.
He tried once more.
It went straight to voicemail.
Damn it.
Cole stripped the phone of its SIM card and battery and tore out of his room, heading for the door. She didn’t understand anything. Jimmy knew who she was. And Jimmy didn’t have a particularly great track record with women that Cole cared about. He had to go to her. He had to stop her.
Enoch stopped him. “Cole, where do you think you’re going?”
“It’s Dana,” said Cole. “She needs me.”
“You’re a wanted man,” said Enoch. “You want to go after Dana Gray? The woman that got you captured in the first place? You won’t be safe. You can’t go out there.”
Cole pushed Enoch out of the way. “Watch me.”
* * *
“Your phone,” said Rhoda, holding out her hand.
Dana hit the power button. “I’m turning it off.”
Rhoda kept her hand out. “Please give it to me. We don’t allow them here.”
“I’m not giving you my phone.”
“You’ll get it back when you leave,” said Rhoda. “But if you want to meet Jimmy, you have to give it up.”
Dana gripped the phone tighter for a minute. Cole had just said that Jimmy was dangerous. And she’d been wary of the idea of Jimmy when she first heard Rhoda begin to talk about him. But she was here for two reasons. One was to try to sever her bond to her pack. The other was to investigate this place for the SF. She knew that was going to need to see Jimmy to accomplish either of them. So, taking a deep breath, she handed the phone over to Rhoda. “I can have it back when I leave?”
“Of course,” said Rhoda, taking the phone. She put it in one of the pockets of her skirt. “Come with me.”
Rhoda turned and walked into the house.
Dana followed.
Inside, the house was sparsely decorated. There were no pictures on the wall, no shelves crammed with knick knacks or candles. The walls were painted white. There were several hooks next to the door. Navy blue jackets hung on them.
The floor was hard wood, finished with a dark brown stain.
Rhoda moved silently over the floor.
Dana’s shoes made loud clacking noises that echoed through the house. She tried to move more quietly.
They went down a hallway. Doors opened on every side. Dana peered inside to see bedrooms—the beds neatly made with homemade quilts. The rooms were just as spartan as the rest of the house.
At the end of the hall, Dana caught sight of the kitchen, and the smell of bread baking floated down to her. It was heavenly and wholesome. She couldn’t help but smile as she smelled it.
Rhoda pushed open one of the doors and led Dana into a room. This wasn’t a bedroom, but a den of sorts. It had a desk in one corner and two brown leather easy chairs that sat in front of it. The walls here weren’t bare. There were bulletin boards everywhere, each covered in a collage of photographs. All the pictures seemed to be taken here at the farm. There were children sitting on the top of tractors. Women with crowns of daisies on their heads, their arms around each other as they smiled at the camera. Women dancing with children. A few pictures of men dancing with women. Not many, but a few. More than one man, too. She guessed that meant that Rhoda was right about there being more men than only Jimmy on the farm.
“This is Jimmy’s office,” said Rhoda. “He likes to be surrounded by pictures of the Pack. We are one big family here, you know, and we all owe our togetherness to Jimmy.”
Dana nodded.
“When I left you on the porch, I spoke to him. He said that he would see you, and that I should bring you here to wait for him.”
“Oh,” said Dana. She looked around the room again. “Well, thank you.”
Rh
oda gestured to one of the chairs. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Thank you,” Dana said again. She sat down.
Rhoda stood. She smiled.
Dana felt uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure what to do, so she folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them.
She noted that her nails were getting sort of out of control. She usually kept them fairly short and filed, but she hadn’t really paid much attention to them lately. Her right thumbnail was sort of jagged. How had that happened? She was surprised it hadn’t gotten snagged on something recently. She had a nail file in her purse, but she wasn’t sure if it would be rude to whip it out and start in on her nails.
Dana looked up.
Rhoda was still standing there. Watching her. Smiling.
Dana fidgeted. Okay, that was a little creepy. She tried to think of something to say. Maybe if she engaged Rhoda in conversation, then it wouldn’t seem so strange for the woman to be standing there like that. “Does, um, Cole come to see you here sometimes?”
“No,” said Rhoda.
Oh. Well, that was awkward. “Maybe he means to and doesn’t get around to it.”
“I don’t think so,” said Rhoda.
Dana tried to think of something else to say. She looked around the room again. “Is there a picture of you here?”
“No,” said Rhoda. “Not anymore. He changes the pictures out fairly regularly.”
He did? But there were hundreds of them in here. And why wasn’t there a picture of Rhoda? Could she ask that without seeming rude?
She looked back down at her hands. She could see that the veins on the back of her hands were starting to stick out. Was that normal? Didn’t only old people have veins that stuck out like that?
But maybe that only happened on their legs. Dana wasn’t sure.
She traced the path of one of the veins with her forefinger. Down from her knuckle, down to her wrist.
She looked back up.
Rhoda was still staring at her.
Dana cleared her throat.
“Would you like some lemonade?” said Rhoda.
Dana nodded. “Yeah, that would be great.”
* * *
when Cole was seventeen…
Cole waited until it was nearly midnight to creep out of the trailer that he shared with his mother. He stole through the night, silent and quick, sticking to the shadows.
It didn’t take him long to get to the creek, where Tasha had told him that she’d meet him.
But when he got to the sideways tree, she wasn’t there. The sideways tree was a very old tree with a big trunk. For some reason, it had not grown straight towards the sun, but rather at a steep angle. When Cole was a child, he and his sisters had often scurried up the incline of the tree to climb into its branches. It was much easier than a normal tree, which they’d have to scale. This one was more like walking up a ramp.
The night air was chilly. It was early spring. Cole tugged his coat closed over his torso. He reached down to zip it up.
When he breathed out, he realized he could see a trace of his breath in the air. It was colder than he’d thought.
Maybe Tasha had decided it was too cold outside.
Or maybe the brides had.
Of course she couldn’t very well go anywhere on her own.
The brides weren’t supposed to leave their sleeping quarters at night at all. The fact that they weren’t doing it was a kind of rebellion that no one could know about.
What if they’d been discovered?
Cole peered around the tree. A few feet away, the creek glistened in the moonlight, winding through the field, flanked by trees. He could hear the gentle sound of the water sliding over rocks.
There was no one there.
He took a deep breath. He decided he’d wait for a few more minutes—maybe ten, maybe fifteen. If she didn’t show up by then, he’d assume that there had been problems, and he’d go back home.
He moved back behind the tree.
He waited.
A soft giggle come from above him.
He looked up.
She was in the tree, had climbed up into the branches. Her feet dangled down over the one of the branches. She was wearing jeans. “Hi, Cole.”
“Uh, hey.” He lost no time scrambling up the tree trunk to join her.
She had a scarf wrapped around her neck, a knit cap over her head. But her eyes were bright and mischievous. “I was wondering if you’d ever see me.”
“You could have said something.” He swung down onto a branch opposite her.
“What would have been the fun of that?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He felt confused around Tasha. She always seemed like she was so much more together than he was. She made him feel clumsy and stupid.
“The other girls didn’t want to come out tonight,” she said. “They said it was too cold.”
So, he’d been half right. “You came out alone? You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be fine. It’s not like there’s a rule that I have to stay in my bed all night.”
“Sure there is,” said Cole.
She rolled her eyes. “There aren’t rules here. That’s what Jimmy always tells me, anyway.”
“Trust me,” said Cole. “There are rules. He says different things to different people. He’d say whatever it is he thinks you want to hear, Tasha.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Why would he do that?”
Cole focused on his legs, dangling over the branch. He focused on the ground beneath them. “Because he’s trying to get in your pants. Or… under your skirt since girls aren’t allowed to wear pants around here.”
“I’m allowed to wear whatever I want,” said Tasha. She kicked out her leg to show him her jeans. “See?”
“But you wouldn’t wear those in front of Jimmy.”
“He likes the way I look in a skirt. He told me.” She smiled, the faraway look back in her eyes.
Cole noticed that she hadn’t bothered to deny the fact that his father was trying to sleep with her.
She turned back to him. “As for the rest of it, that’s what all guys are trying to do.”
“What are they trying to do?”
“Fuck girls.” She reached up for a higher branch and pulled herself up to a standing position. She peered down at Cole. “Like you’re not trying to have sex with me.”
“I-I’m not.” He wouldn’t dare do something so bold with one of Jimmy’s brides. Talking to her, sneaking off and meeting her like this, was bad enough. This was enough to make Jimmy really angry. Cole couldn’t imagine what might happen if he actually… “No, I would never—”
Tasha laughed, throwing back her head, cutting him off. “Of course you would.”
Cole pulled himself up too. Now he was standing. Facing her. “I wouldn’t.”
She smiled at him. In the moonlight, she was perfect—ivory skin, flattering shadows. Her voice lowered, and it was soft and seductive. “If I asked you to, you would.”
It sent chills through Cole’s body. It made him hard. He shifted, moving his crotch behind a branch. Not that he thought she could tell in the scant light. “It’s not why I’m here. Not why I’m talking to you. I’m not like him.”
Tasha cocked her head. “You are, though. You’re a lot like him.”
“No,” said Cole.
Tasha laughed again.
Suddenly, he didn’t want to talk about this anymore. He wanted to change the subject. He was out here because of Tasha, but he didn’t know much about her. He knew she was pretty. And brave. And that she questioned things. “Where did you live before here?” he asked.
She looked at him sharply. “Nowhere.”
“You had to come from somewhere.”
“I didn’t have a place to live,” she said. “I ran away from my mom and stepfather. Living there had become unbearable.”
“Why?”
“Because my stepfather r
aped me,” she said. It was nonchalant, as if she was talking about the weather, about what she’d eaten for breakfast. “It started when I grew boobs. The bigger they got, the more he did it. I told my mom, but she called me a liar. So, I left.”
“Oh.” Cole looked at his feet again. He felt horrible now. His hard-on had softened, gone limp in his pants. He felt deflated in the same way.
“It’s okay,” said Tasha. “I got away. I’m fine now. I like it here. I like Jimmy. This is a good place.”
He was speechless again. He wasn’t sure that this was a good place. He hated it on Hunter’s Moon Farm. And he didn’t like Jimmy.
Cole might still love Jimmy. He was Cole’s father, after all. He supposed that he loved him.
But he didn’t think he liked him.
Tasha leaned forward, holding onto a tree branch to keep her balance. “You want to kiss me, Cole?”
“Uh…” He looked at her lips. He looked into her eyes. The moonlight caught them, and he saw how blue they were. Yes. “We shouldn’t.”
“No rules, Cole.”
He shook his head. “No. You belong to him. If he found out he’d… I don’t know what he’d do.”
“He won’t find out.” She winked at him. “I won’t tell.”
Cole leaned forward.
Their faces were inches away from each other.
She parted her lips.
His eyes slammed closed.
Her mouth was soft and giving against his.
* * *
Dana was sipping her lemonade when Jimmy came into the room. He threw the door open and burst inside.
“Dana Gray,” he said, smiling.
She nearly dropped her glass. She hadn’t been expecting him to look the way he did. She supposed she should have. After all, Rhoda had gone into that whole crazy thing about Jimmy being her lover and her husband and whatever else, so it only stood to reason that…
Jimmy looked like Cole.
A lot like Cole.
Older than Cole, of course. Dana put him in his mid fifties, but he was in good shape. He was trim and fit. He was actually more muscular than Cole was. Jimmy had broad shoulders. He wore a white t-shirt that clung to his rippling chest and a pair of jeans with a wide belt buckle.
Jimmy offered her his hand. “Nice to finally meet you.”
Bad Moon Rising (Cole and Dana) Page 6
