by Tasha Black
He sat up and looked at her. They were so close she felt almost cross-eyed.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe we should stand,” Ainsley suggested.
Clive shrugged. The mattress groaned heavily as he launched himself to his feet.
Ainsley joined him and looked into his eyes again. She thought about how handsome
he was and how nice it was that he was the sheriff of the town she had grown up in.
He looked back at her with barely restrained lust. His blue eyes were almost hypnotic.
Suddenly there was a shimmer around his hair.
Her heart leapt, but as soon as she looked at it, it disappeared.
“Hey!” he said.
“Let’s do it again.”
Clive fixed her with a steamy look, this time he took her in his arms. She looked back hopefully and again there was a faint glimmer.
Suddenly, Ainsley’s skin was humming with electricity. This was different than any
other time, but still weirdly familiar. Maybe it was working?
“Why are you doing this?”
The voice wasn’t Clive’s.
C H A P T E R
1 4
A insley’s head whipped around.
“Brian.”
He was standing in the room with them. His face was perfect. He had a backpack on
his back. Ainsley began to tremble.
“What?” Clive asked.
“You’re making a mistake,” Brian said.
Ainsley tried to force herself to breathe.
“What’s wrong?” Clive asked again.
Ainsley let go of Clive to turn to Brian.
Clive spun her around and tried to take her in his arms again. He searched her eyes in confusion. Some sort of understanding dawned in him.
“If you’re worried about getting pregnant, Ainsley, I can just cum on your tits,” Clive offered.
“Please don’t do this,” Brian implored.
“I know what I’m doing,” Ainsley replied, “Clive will protect the town, he already does, in a way.”
“Of course I will. What are you talking about?” Clive asked.
He couldn’t see the other person in the room with them.
“Clive Warren is the one that killed me,” Brian said simply.
“That’s not true,” Ainsley breathed.
“He did this to me!” Brian shouted.
Lightening flashed, illuminating Brian in pale blue light. Suddenly, his face was gored.
His clothes were ripped. Blood covered him.
“No,” Ainsley cried, tearing her eyes away from Brian.
“Ainsley,” Clive said. “What the hell is going on?”
She met his eyes, searching. There was no way that could be true. Was there?
“Clive,” she asked, deciding to lay it all on the table. “Did you kill Brian Swinton?”
“What?” Clive asked.
“Did you kill Brian Swinton?”
“That math club kid from high school? I told him to stay away from you. He didn’t
listen.” Ansley could see the anger building. Hear his heart hammering. “I followed you guys into the woods. It pissed me off to see you with him. He wasn’t like us. He wasn’t a wolf. He wasn’t anything. He was weak. I stopped you from making a big mistake,
Ainsley. It took you too long to get around to thanking me. Better late than never.”
Ainsley was speechless.
“Now, I know you say we need to make a connection, but I have a feeling that if we
just get down to business it’ll work itself out.”
He moved as if to take her in his arms.
Ainsley sidestepped him.
“You’re not going to be alpha, Clive.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. “Get out.”
Clive froze. Then anger transformed his face. His livid expression twisted and distorted his handsome features until Ainsley would hardly have recognized him.
“You don’t tell me what to do, you fat little cunt,” he spat. “I will be alpha. I gave you plenty of chances to do this the easy way.”
In an instant Ainsley realized her mistake. Terror set into her bones. She was about to be attacked and raped by a guy the size of a giant. And there was no one to witness it but a ghost.
Desperately, she looked around the room. There was a window out onto the front
porch roof. There was the door behind her. He would grab her before she could reach
either.
She wished she had a weapon. In True Romance Patricia Arquette’s character fought
off a guy by bludgeoning him with a toilet tank cover. But the bath was down the hall.
Clive took a step toward her and she backed into her dresser, knocking over a softball trophy from high school. Without thinking, she grabbed the trophy behind her back and waited.
When Clive took his next step, she hurled the trophy at him for all she was worth.
It hit him hard. Ainsley was grateful for a good pitching arm for the first time in ten years. Clive stepped back and she could see blood welling from a jagged cut across his face.
Then his eyes flashed yellow.
Clive was going to change.
He was going to tear her apart, just like he did to Brian.
This asshole had ruined her life, wrecked her relationship with her parents, killed
someone she cared about, and now he was about to rape and murder her - all to feed his mindless ambition. And there was nothing she could do.
No.
No, there was something she could do.
She could shift. She could fight.
Frantically, she tried to remember how she’d felt when she almost shifted with Julian.
What had she done to start it?
She hadn’t done anything. She had just been so furious, nothing could have stopped
her.
But something did.
Clive took another step and she knew she had only seconds.
Ainsley ripped the words from her memory.
“Subsisto lupo mutatis!” she heard herself scream.
A wave of unwholesome blue light blasted from her fingertips, coiled around Clive and slammed him to the floor.
She had time to take in his shocked expression before bolting out the door and down
the stairs.
“You bitch!” she heard him bellow as she flew through the kitchen toward the back
door. “What did you do to me?”
C H A P T E R
1 5
A insley crashed into the woods behind the house without breaking her stride.
Branches tore at her beautiful dress, but she didn’t care. The rain pelted down and
drenched her. Soon she would look like the wild creature she was at heart.
She was vaguely aware that she was running barefoot through rocks and brambles.
The little voice in her head warned her that she was sure to trip over a tree root if she insisted on being so heedless. That was the way it always happened in the movies.
Maybe she should hide?
She knew that Clive would be furious and she had no idea how long the magic would
last. Even in his human form, he was bigger and stronger and faster than Ainsley. And of course he could track her, so hiding was out of the question.
So she ran on.
She ran without any sense of what lay ahead. Her whole consciousness was focused
on what might be behind.
Something crashed through the branches close by.
Adrenaline kicked in, and she tore through the woods even faster than before.
She could barely hear over the sound of her own ragged breathing, but she thought
the sounds were getting closer. It was something big.
Suddenly it crashed through the branches and whipped around to stand in front of her.
The moonlight gleamed in its glossy fur. Its eyes were a burning amber.
Terrified, Ainsl
ey tried to wrench the words out of her mind again.
“Sub…subsento…subsisto lupis mutatim!”
Nothing.
She had tripped over the words and now she was going to die.
As Ainsley prayed it would be quick, the wolf before her melted into human form.
Erik.
Ainsley’s knees went weak with relief and she began to sink to the ground, shivering
as the cold rain finally fought up with her.
Quick as a thought, Erik’s strong arms were around her. For a moment, Ainsley
allowed herself to rest her head on his warm chest.
“Ainsley, what happened?”
“I- I- Clive…” The words just wouldn’t come.
“It’s okay, you can tell me later, just try to relax.”
She sank against Erik again and tried to get her head together. In a few hundred
heartbeats she began to feel better.
It dawned on her that he was naked. There was an incredible heat radiating off him.
It soaked down to her bones and made her feel sleepy and exhilarated at the same time.
Although she knew she could probably explain everything now – and that it was
imperative to do so, before Clive found them – she didn’t really want to let Erik go.
His arms felt like a fortress and his woodsy, masculine scent enveloped her. She felt that days or lifetimes could pass while she lost herself in his warm embrace.
With regret, she tore her head from his chest again and stole a glance around.
Her heart almost stopped. It was like they had gone back in time.
They were standing in front of the sycamore tree. The old tree fort was still mostly
intact. The creek rushed by, swollen by the storm, frothing and bubbling over the rocky bed.
She had run without knowing where she was going and ended up here.
Wrenching her mind away from that thought, Ainsley looked Erik in the eyes.
“I was trying to choose Clive as the alpha.” She had to look away. “But I found out
something awful about him. And when I asked him to leave he said he was going to be
alpha and he tried to…um, force me.”
A low growl emanated from deep within Erik’s powerful chest.
“What did you do?” Erik’s face was incredulous.
“I hit him with my old softball trophy. And then I…”
How was she going to tell him about the spell? Wolves and Magic didn’t mix. She
couldn’t risk turning Erik against her.
“Someone’s coming,” Erik said, before she could continue. “Ainsley, you need to shift.”
She gazed up at him mutely.
“Ainsley, you need to shift right now.”
“I – I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how? The same way you always do!”
“I mean…I’ve never shifted before.”
He stared at her in confusion. Suddenly, he lifted his nose to the wind, and the
confused look disappeared.
“There’s no time to talk about this. There’s more than one wolf coming. I’ll shift to fight them. You run!”
Ainsley remembered the crazy look in Clive’s eyes.
“No, Erik, you can’t – they’ll tear you apart. We need to hide.”
C H A P T E R
1 6
C live thundered down the stairs and burst out the back door into the rain, but that
dumb bitch was nowhere to be seen.
Although he wanted nothing more than to smash through the woods and catch her, he
forced himself to be smart. A good cop calls for backup. Especially when the perp has a weapon.
And Ainsley certainly had a weapon. He wasn’t really sure what it was but the thought of what she had done scared him. Clive didn’t like to be scared.
He jogged around to the front of the house and realized he was naked.
Fuck. There was no time to get dressed.
He spied flowery blanket draped over a sofa on the front porch. After a quick sniff of the air to make sure none of the neighbors were around, he slunk onto the porch and
wrapped the blanket around his waist. It wouldn’t do to have the good people of Tarker’s Mills see their sheriff running around buck-naked.
Satisfied, he trotted down the street a ways to where a non-descript Malibu waited.
He rapped on the roof, making the two guys inside jump out of their shoes.
Classic.
The driver’s side window slid down. The two kids inside were grinning widely.
“Hey, man, did you do it?” Justin asked.
“No, get out, NOW.”
Clive didn’t have time for these two jokers, but they were all he had. The two omegas were eager to please and didn’t ask a bunch of stupid questions – they were just glad to be recognized by a high-ranking beta.
He thought he had been pretty smart to send them into the house ahead of time on
Ainsley’s Neighborly.com ad. That way they knew the layout and could help if things got sticky once he got started.
He never thought she’d get out of the house.
Will scrambled out the passenger side and Justin hopped over the hood to join him on
the sidewalk, slipping on the wet surface and hitting his ass pretty hard on the way down.
Clive pretended not to notice, though he wanted to cuff the kid. Instead, he strode
purposefully to the back of the house. The omegas scampered after him.
“What happened?” Justin asked, trying to shield his eyes from the downpour.
“She did something to me and I can’t change,” he thundered.
“I hear that happens to a lot of guys!” Justin blurted and began giggling. Will smiled down at his feet.
The frustrated rage that had been brewing in Clive’s chest boiled over. He changed in a joint popping instant and snarled viciously.
The kids took a hint at least and changed on the spot, shredding their clothes.
Clive headed into the woods, his nose filled with Ainsley’s scent. She reeked of fear and flowers. It was goddamned delicious.
The rain felt great to his heated body. It ran in rivulets off his glossy topcoat, leaving his soft undercoat nice and dry. It made it a little harder to track, of course, but Clive was a legendary tracker. That was part of what made him such a great cop.
Ainsley’s scent led him deeper into the trees. Every couple hundred feet his tracking would be verified by a wet pink sliver of her dress. They looked like little pink cunts, wiggling in the rain, teasing and beckoning to him.
He growled in excitement.
When he found Ainsley Connor he would pin her down and fuck her to pieces before
forcing her to choose him. Once that was done he’d let the boys finish her off.
If they did a good enough job helping him catch her, maybe he’d let them have some
fun with her first.
C H A P T E R
1 7
Before Erik could think, Ainsley had him by the hand and was pulling him upstream.
Her small hand was cold and slippery in his, but the throbbing of her blood called to him and he followed. Her dress had been torn half away. It was hard to concentrate on the wolves behind them when he could see so much of her pale skin.
What had Clive done?
It made his blood boil, but he didn’t dare let himself change after seeing the fear in her eyes a few minutes ago.
Suddenly, Ainsley was pulling him into their cave. He let her hand slip in disbelief and she reached back and dragged him into the darkness with a strength he didn’t know she had.
“Ainsley, this is crazy! There’s no way out – we’ll be trapped.”
He tried to push past her, but she grabbed him and held him close.
The simple gesture melted his heart and he
wrapped his arms around her.
He liked how big and powerful his arms felt when her small, soft form was between
them. Her exquisite smell filled his nose. It was mixed with an intoxicating cocktail of pine and rain and blood.
Erik felt his body begin to respond to hers. It was totally inappropriate after what
she’d just experienced. Desperately, he tried to restrain his thoughts, but when she
sighed and snuggled closer he could feel her rock hard nipples pressing his chest through what was left of the dress.
She’s just cold, he told himself. She’s cold and frightened and I’m here to make her
feel safe.
“Hey!” Ainsley cried joyfully, pulling back from their embrace.
Erik let go with equal measures of relief and disappointment. Ainsley was in the corner of the cave, she had an old garbage bag in her hands.
“Is this our supplies?” she asked excitedly.
Erik smiled and took a last whiff of the wet air outside the cave. The wolves were still well behind them. He could humor her for a few minutes.
“It sure looks like it.”
“We should open it!”
“Alright, but you’re freezing, come close so I can warm you.”
“What did we put in here? Do you remember?”
“Not really – but I like surprises!” he teased.
He strode over and sat. She stood above him uncertainly, then carefully lowered
herself to his lap. He loved the demure way she tried to smooth her torn skirt over her legs.
She leaned back against his chest.
“You’re so warm,” she sighed.
The feel of her on him was incredible. He reveled in their closeness and tried not to let himself think about her warm thighs squirming against his lap to get comfortable.
Before he could fully enjoy the moment, she leaned forward again to open the bag.
He put his hands on her hips to steady her and his wolf moaned at the suggestive
position.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts.
Everything in the cave was covered in dust and spider webs - just like the day they’d found it. He couldn’t believe that prim and proper grown-up Ainsley was rummaging
through the leaves and dirt just like she had when she was ten.
Triumphantly, Ainsley pulled out a flashlight. She tried to turn it on, but of course the batteries were long dead.
“What else is in there?” Erik asked.
“Ooooh!” Ainsley held up a can of chicken soup.
“Yum – my favorite.”
