“I was beginning to think maybe you’d drowned in there.” His smile was tentative, still worried, and he inhaled deeply through his nose.
“Are you—are you sniffing me?”
He blushed. Two new things today: Sam crying and Sam blushing. “Sorry. It’s—it’s a habit. But if I never smell stale blood and terror sweat on you ever again, I’ll be happy.”
“A habit?”
His face was red from his hairline down to his beard. “You’re—you’re my best friend. You’ve always been practically part of the pack, even if you didn’t know it. The sniffing each other out thing, it’s part of it. So, um, yeah, I know what you’re supposed to smell like.”
This was a normal pack thing? She tested it out. That morning, she’d been convinced she was hallucinating when she’d smelled him running his hands through his hair but when she focused on filtering out everything else in the room, she found that she could pick him up. And she realized his warm, human male smell was familiar and soothing, and heat bloomed in her cheeks because his scent also kind of turned her on.
Sam cleared his throat. “You, uh, might find that you have some, um, strong feelings for a while as you adjust.”
“Strong feelings?”
“If you’re born to it, starting to shift usually coincides with puberty.” His face was almost purple. Sam had never been a prude exactly, but they’d never had the kind of friendship where they talked openly about sex.
“Oh.” Shit. He could smell that she was aroused.
“You don’t—It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s best to, um, deal with it, though.”
Oh God, her best friend was telling her to go masturbate. She didn’t know what was worse, that or the fact that she wanted Sam to be the one to help her “deal with it.” The voice that wanted to run through the woods told her to run and jump on him. Down, girl.
“Callie? You okay? I know this is awkward.”
She could hear his heart. Racing, and not from fear. Anticipation? Something snapped. She was only half-aware of launching herself across the room and into his lap. She ran her nose up and down his neck, under his chin, through his beard, and that thing inside her curled up in contentment. This is where you belong.
Sam didn’t touch her. He spread his arms and gripped the back of the couch, but she could hear his heart, feel his cock rising under her. A rational voice in her head told her that in spite of that, she should stop humping the poor guy who was saying and doing nothing to indicate that he wanted her in his lap.
She launched herself backward and landed smack on her ass again. She hissed as the impact jolted her ribs and her head. “Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry.”
He let out a stuttering sigh and scrubbed his large hands over his face. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I jumped you!” Her face was on fire and she wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there awhile.
“You’re not in control. That wasn’t you, that was the wolf. I know what it feels like, remember?”
“But—”
He cut her off. “You’re not yourself. I won’t take advantage of that. You’re vulnerable and confused.”
“And you’re my best friend,” she said woodenly. Her friend, only her friend. She had made a fool of herself and now he had to let her down easy. And he was stuck with her until whatever time his father deemed his responsibility fulfilled.
“I don’t want you to hate me when this is over.” He got up and went to the door. “Meet me at the Pancake House in an hour, okay?”
“Okay.” She lay back on the carpet and hid her face in her hands. The fact that he’d been kind and blamed it on the change took a tiny bit of the sting out of her humiliation. Only a tiny bit, though. And she was still frustratingly aroused, the need for satisfaction muting her lingering pain. “Strong feelings.” Understatement of the fucking year.
He’d said to deal with it. She slipped one hand in her tank top while the other unbuttoned her shorts so she could slide her fingers under the waistband of her panties. He’d given her an hour; it would take minutes. She pinched and rolled her nipple and her clit throbbed. In her head, she was still on Sam’s lap, grinding against his cock as he lengthened and stiffened underneath her. She’d never given much thought to his cock before, had refused to let her mind go there, but she had felt that ridge of hard flesh under her and she wanted more.
She stroked her clit and shuddered. In her fantasy, Sam stripped her shirt over her head and roughly tore off her bra. Her pinching fingers were his work-roughened ones, his sharp teeth bit and nipped at her skin, sucked her tender, sensitive nipples into his warm, wet mouth. She would feel the scruff of his beard, soft and scratchy at the same time, as he teased her body with his lips and tongue.
Callie pressed two fingers into her pussy and felt her muscles clench as she thumbed her clit and imagined Sam picking her up and carrying her to her bed, throwing her facedown on the mattress and yanking her shorts and panties down her legs. He’d hold her down with one large hand between her shoulders while he dipped the large fingers of the other inside her. He’d be pleased with how wet she was. He’d breathe in the smell of her and lose control. Roughly spread her legs and thrust inside her without hesitation. Fuck her hard and fast, his chest bent over her back, holding her shoulders to pull her against him as he thrust into her.
She slid her fingers free, spreading wetness to her clit. She circled the tight, hard bud with her slippery fingers and pressed against her pubic bone. Her hips jerked with every imagined thrust of Sam’s hard cock. He would grunt and growl over her, fucking her hard, making their skin slap together. She’d be spent and sore but it would be worth it. She could almost feel his chest pressed to her back. And when he came, he would bite her shoulder, mark her as his, and the shock and the pain of it would send her spiraling into her own orgasm.
She came for real then, jerking and shuddering on the floor with her hand up her shirt and her shorts half-off. When her racing heart had settled and she could breathe again, she stripped out of her clothes and got back in the shower. Sam might have basically told her to jerk off and pull herself together, but he didn’t need to be able to smell the evidence on her.
* * *
A thousand cold showers wouldn’t be enough to freeze out the feeling of Callie on his lap, nuzzling his neck and grinding on his cock. But it wasn’t Callie. Callie had jumped away from him when she realized what she was doing. He remembered what it felt like. The way lust pounded through his veins and the wolf wouldn’t take no for an answer, he had to find a release. As a kid, it meant they all did a lot of furious, furtive jerking off, not much different from most teenagers. He had better control of it now. He could run. Hell, he could find someone to fuck. But he never forgot the way it had felt when he first started to shift. Or the way so many of those episodes of overwhelming desire were set off by the same girl who’d just been grinding on his lap.
He’d done the right thing. The wolf and the woman had battled for control behind her blue irises. He would never take advantage of her. He’d done enough to fuck up her life.
He climbed into his truck and headed up to his parents’ house, bracing for more of his father’s disappointment and anger. The screen door snapped closed behind him when he walked into the kitchen. His father was at the table with his uncles, the three of them looking especially grim, even for them. His mom and aunts were by the sink, looking on with worried faces and clutching cups of coffee.
“What’s going on?”
“Sit down, son.” Angus pointed at the remaining empty chair and Sam sat. “Do you remember who all was at the party?”
“Kind of. People came in and out. Why?”
“Who saw the accident?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Bren was there, but I don’t know if he saw it or if he heard it and ran. He helped me carry
Callie into the house after. What’s going on?”
“Patrick Dunphy wants your head, that’s what. What I want to know is how he found out about it. Were any of them hanging around?”
“No. God, no. I would remember if any of those assholes showed up.”
If it was the right answer or the wrong one, Sam wasn’t sure, but his father’s expression darkened considerably. “Tell me about the truck.”
“I didn’t get a good look at it. It happened too quickly. Older model, black, maybe dark gray.”
His father crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. “Where’s Callie now?”
“At her place. She’s—” he cleared his throat “—starting to feel it. I left to give her a chance to cool off.”
His father looked around the table, met each man’s eyes, then over their heads at Sam’s mother and Aunts Melissa and Morrigan. “I don’t think this was an accident. Dunphy’s been looking to shake me from the council for a long time. Provoking my son into changing the girl? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Sam looked wildly around the table. “She was dying. I didn’t have a choice.”
His mom rested her hand on his shoulder. “We know, honey. But they’ll say you have no business meddling in the life and death of humans, no matter how much you love her.”
He knew it was true, but he wouldn’t accept it. They were supposed to be descended from fierce warriors, guardians of the weak and the wounded, protectors who would go to hell and back for their people. What good was the magic in their blood if they couldn’t save the people they loved from a senseless accident?
“Dunphy’s calling for a hearing in front of the full council. Sam, you are not to let that girl out of your sight. Bring her up to the cabin and stay there. You’re going to need her on your side in front of the council. However angry she might be at you for keeping secrets or what you’ve done, she needs to accept it and she needs to do it quickly, or we stand to lose everything we’ve done to keep our community safe and peaceful for a hundred years. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Go get her. We’ll send someone up to check on you, bring you whatever you need, but you do not leave the cabin.”
“Understood.” The chair scraped over the old boards as he got to his feet. “I told her to meet me at the Pancake House. We’ll eat, then I’ll have her pack up some things and we’ll head up.”
* * *
As he walked into the restaurant, Sam had no idea how he was going to survive being alone in a cabin with a newly changed female wolf without violating the promise he’d made to her and himself less than an hour ago. Especially not when it was Callie. Not when she looked like that, slightly flushed and fresh out of the shower, tendrils of still-damp hair escaping the knot on top of her head. Not when she blushed pink to the tips of her ears the moment he sat down across from her in the booth. She’d gotten herself off. And the flush in her cheeks now made him wonder if he’d played a role in her fantasies. His groin tightened.
Their silent communication of scents and heart rates and widening pupils was interrupted by the delivery of a stack of pancakes for her and a cup of coffee for him. He ordered his usual “big bear” breakfast, with a lot of everything, and sipped his coffee, stalling the moment he had to insist that she go up to the cabin alone with him. She shoveled a few bites of pancakes into her mouth, past her perfect rosy lips—he had to stop thinking of her that way. She was his best friend. He had to protect her. From himself, if need be.
“I went to my parents’.”
She slowly lowered her forkful of pancakes back to her plate. “And?”
“My father wants us out of town.” He dropped his voice and looked around. No one who would pass information back to Dunphy. “We keep a cabin up by one of the old logging settlements. I’m supposed to take you up there as soon as we’re done here and stay for a while.”
“What? Why? Is that what you normally do when this happens?”
He debated how much to tell her. He didn’t want to scare her even more than she already was. But he knew she was hurt by the lifetime of lies he’d told to protect his family’s secret. He settled on partial truth and hoped for the best. “My dad wants us both out of the way while he looks into what happened. And it’s probably for the best to get you out of town while you’re adjusting; there’s plenty of space up there and no people.”
She leaned in and whispered, “I’m not going to hurt someone, am I?”
Sam wanted to press the crease of worry between her eyebrows with his thumb. “No. It’s more likely that a person could hurt you if you lost control.” He didn’t finish the sentence but Callie nodded and closed her eyes in relief. Of course she was more afraid of what she could do to someone else than what a person who spotted a wolf roaming around Pullman could do to her. “Come on, finish your breakfast and I’ll take you back to your place to grab some things.”
Chapter Four
She tried to get Sam to stay downstairs while she packed a bag, but he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. If he was trying not to scare her, it wasn’t working. Something was wrong, no matter how Sam tried to downplay it. She gathered a few changes of clothes into a bag while he waited awkwardly next to her couch, standing nearly on top of the spot where she’d been writhing on the floor fantasizing about him a couple of hours ago.
He drove them up the winding mountain highway, past Farnsworth’s Notch, and turned off onto an old access road. “Does the park service know you have a cabin in the middle of the White Mountain National Forest?”
Sam smiled. “We’ve been here longer than they have. And one of us is always in the local office.”
“What about hikers?”
“You’ll see.”
The road petered out into a barely visible track under closely packed trees. Sam weaved through the dense new growth, running over a sapling or two in the process, and finally parked in a cleverly concealed spot hollowed out from a copse of white birches. A small sign read Trail Closed for Bridge Repairs. Water rushed down the mountain close by.
“Clever.”
“This road isn’t on any of the trail maps, but we replace the signage every couple of months to be safe. Once in a while, you’ll see a question about old logging roads on a hiking forum, but other hikers will usually shut it down, better to stay on known, marked and maintained trails.”
“Very clever.”
“Eh, it works.” He shrugged and slung both of their bags over his shoulder and pulled a cooler out of the truck bed. “Come on, it’s up this way.”
“I can get my own bag.” Callie held out her hand but Sam shook his head and strode up the trail past the closed sign.
“You’re still healing, whether you feel it or not.”
She followed behind him for a few hundred yards and suddenly a small cabin appeared, tucked under the trees on the banks of the river. It was almost reclaimed by the forest, its dark wood worn and spotted with moss and lichens, shingles curling at the edges; it looked like one good snowfall would collapse it in on itself.
Sam bounded up the steps of the sagging porch and Callie waited to see if it disintegrated under his weight before she joined him at the door. The sturdy lock was the only thing on the place that looked new. Inside, it was surprisingly clean and tidy, right down to the brightly colored crocheted blanket on the single twin camp bed tucked into the far corner.
A small cast-iron woodstove, a few cupboards, and a battered card table and two chairs occupied the rest of the space. Sam busied himself unpacking the contents of a grocery bag into the cupboards while Callie turned herself in circles.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Sam said to the window above the washbasin.
“Huh? It’s not that.” It’s totally that. And that a very loud part of her very much wanted to squeeze both of their bo
dies into that tiny bed. “Bathroom?”
“There’s an outhouse about fifty yards that way.” He pointed out the window. “And a small pool in the river a little ways upstream for bathing.”
Of course. They were in the middle of nowhere, off an unmapped, long-defunct logging road, in a cabin no one was supposed to know about. It was the definition of off the grid. No running water, no electricity. Callie might have grown up in the mountains, but she wasn’t much for camping. Day hikes followed by drinking beers around Sam’s fire pit were more her speed.
She started to panic. She was trapped in this tiny cabin with nowhere to go and nothing to do but what? Dwell on the fact that everything she knew about her best friend was at least partially untrue and in spite of that she still wanted to climb him like a tree? How could Mr. MacTire have thought they would be safer out here on their own?
Callie slammed out of the cabin and sat down hard on the top step, ready to run down the mountain and hitch her way back into town.
Sam followed more slowly and leaned on the door frame behind her. “Remember I told you we usually start going through this around puberty?”
Callie’s face flamed. “Yes.”
“Do you remember what it felt like when you were that age?” Sam inched forward.
Oh God, it did sort of feel like she was back in that place where everything felt wrong and it all sucked harder than anything had ever sucked in the history of the world and her moods swung from pole to pole at the drop of a hat. “So, what, I’m going through puberty again?”
“In a way.” He sat gingerly next to her, leaving plenty of space between them.
“Is that why you’re not supposed to change people without a plan?”
“One of the reasons, yeah.”
Callie scooted a couple of inches closer to him. She couldn’t help it. Their knees brushed. “I guess I’m glad I’m not dead?” It was almost impossible to wrap her brain around the idea that she could be this, or she could be dead, when she had no memory of almost dying.
Mated: A Paranormal Romance Shifter Anthology Page 12
