Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines)

by Lia Silver

  “Sure, thanks. Let me just take a shower.”

  Cautiously, Laura stood up. A twinge of pain shot through her ankle, but she could walk on it. And she felt a lot stronger than when she’d first woken up.

  I’ve got super-healing too, she thought.

  It was still hard to believe that she’d changed so profoundly. It wasn’t only becoming a werewolf. Everything had changed. Her entire life was rearranging itself around Roy, as his was around her. Everything she did now would affect him, as everything he did would affect her. It felt like skydiving together, the primal terror of falling transmuted into excitement and joy.

  In the shower, she realized that she could have asked him to join her, even though he’d obviously had his already. Their whole relationship was so new, it hadn’t occurred to her that she could do such a thing. She looked down at her belly, which had never in her life been perfectly flat, at her plump hips dimpled with cellulite, at everything she’d ever seen as a flaw that would turn men off, which was pretty much everything, and knew that if she’d invited Roy in, they’d never have gotten out without making love.

  They could do that now. It was only a matter of time. She’d get to see his body by the light of day or candles, and get a look at the scar on his hip that she’d forgotten to check out before. She could learn the story behind it, since he surely wouldn’t have brought it up if it was a sensitive topic.

  As she rinsed her hair, she felt for Roy with the pack sense. He was in the kitchen, which she already knew, but she liked being able to feel where he was. When she pulled back from the intricate depths of his self, she got a glimpse what he was feeling, floating and delicate as a soap bubble. She caught some worry, some melancholy, and some regret. But what she felt most strongly was his happiness, deep and resonant as a tolling bell.

  Laura got dressed and joined Roy at the dining room table. He’d made hash browns with onions and bell peppers, and pan-fried small venison steaks.

  “Very impressive. Thanks.”

  He slid a steak on to her plate. “I thought it’d be appropriate, since you’re a wolf now. You know, the two of us could pull down a deer.”

  Laura cut into her steak: perfect medium-rare. “I assume the one of you could do that. Your wolf is nearly as big as a deer.”

  “You’d like hunting as a wolf. I bet it’s even more of a thrill if you do it as a pack.” His gray eyes had the same cool, predatory light she’d seen in his wolf’s ice-blue eyes.

  The wolf in him was much closer to the surface than it was in her, Laura realized. Maybe that was why he’d become a werewolf so quickly, while she’d struggled for hours. Roy had obviously spent a long, long time in that clear bright place where ruthlessness and intent and action became a single, shining thing.

  “I’ll hunt with you,” she promised. “Not today, I don’t think I’m up for it. But I at least want to walk around as a wolf, even if I don’t run as one. I didn’t get to do anything at all yesterday.”

  “Yeah, it was the same for me when I changed. Second time was much more fun.”

  Laura ate ravenously, polishing off three steaks to Roy’s two. She hesitated, self-conscious, before taking the third, then decided that becoming a werewolf clearly expended a lot of energy and anyway Roy liked her body exactly as it was. He seemed to like it when she enjoyed his cooking, too, and eating lots of it was the highest praise.

  When she was done, Roy stacked the plates and got up to take them to the sink. As he took a step toward the kitchen, Laura caught sight of a shard of muddy glass that he must have tracked in earlier. It lay on the floor glinting and sharp, in exactly the right place for him to step on with his bare foot.

  “Stop,” Laura exclaimed.

  As she said it, she knew that she had spoken with more than mere words. A sensation of power rippled though her. Roy stopped as if he was caught in a freeze-frame, his foot poised an inch above the shard.

  Laura yanked him away. She felt his muscles flex under her hands as he abruptly regained the ability to move. His foot came down awkwardly and he stumbled, off-balance. Laura rescued the dishes in the nick of time.

  “What was—” Roy began, then spun to face her. “That’s your power!”

  Now that she’d done it once, Laura instinctively knew how it worked: a word, and an intense focus on making the person do what she said.

  She had a power. And a deceptively strong one, at that. She’d only been able to make Roy freeze for a second or two. But if she’d been able to make Gregor obey her for a single second, no one would have died at the bank.

  You don’t know what you’ve done, Gregor, she thought. You’ve given me the power to set your pack free.

  “Do it again,” said Roy eagerly.

  “Do your absolute best to hold still.” Laura concentrated. “Clap.”

  She had to laugh at his expression, part baffled and part delighted, as his palms flew together as if they were magnetized.

  “That’s badass. I’m jealous. And congratulations. I can think of all sorts of things you could do with that. Like drop or run or…” He eyed her with an expression that again made her think of his wolf. “I wonder what would happen if you said, die.”

  “I don’t know.” Laura found herself fishing for reasons why that wouldn’t work. It would enable her to simply walk into Gregor’s lair and kill him. But the idea of being able to order someone to die unnerved her. “‘Clap’ and ‘stop’ are actions you could choose to do. You can’t choose to die. I bet it wouldn’t work.”

  “Let’s test it,” Roy suggested. As Laura’s jaw started to drop, he went on, “With something harmless, obviously.” He went to the living room and lay down on the sofa. “Order me to sleep. That’s not something I can decide to do.”

  Hoping it wouldn’t work, her hands tingling with anxiety, Laura said, “Sleep.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Too bad.” Roy glanced at Laura, and seemed to sink deeper into the sofa, as if he was suddenly very tired. “Or maybe it’s just as well.”

  “What do you mean?” Laura asked.

  He hesitated. “You obviously didn’t want it.”

  Laura was certain that hadn’t been what he’d been thinking, but she decided not to pursue it. The entire idea gave her the creeps. She smiled at him. “It’s still badass. Let’s go run with the wolves.”

  Roy went out first, sniffing in all directions before declaring that the coast was clear. Laura looked around, memorizing the landscape so she could see it shift. The driveway was dry but it was still muddy beneath the trees. She could smell pine and wet earth. The air was chilly, the sky overcast.

  “Since you like to watch me do it…” In a shimmer like a heat wave, Roy became a white wolf. He nudged at her hip with his massive head.

  She had a moment of irrational fear that she once again wouldn’t be able to change. But when she searched within herself, she found the part of her that acted without thought and lived for danger, all instinct and ferocity and the joy of simply being.

  Laura changed.

  It’s like Dorothy arriving in Oz, she thought. Except that the color goes away instead of appearing.

  But the impression of everything being brighter and more vivid was the same. She still smelled pine, but now she could distinguish the oily astringency of the needles from the resinous scent of the bark. The ground wasn’t merely earthy, but rich with dead leaves from various trees and interspersed with the mineral smell of stone.

  Laura hadn’t realized how huge Roy was as a wolf, or how small she was; he was nearly twice her size. She nosed at him, inhaling his complex scent of leather and chocolate and charcoal, rich and smoky and earthen.

  The pack sense was much more clear and detailed when they were wolves. She could discern Roy’s intentions almost as thoughts: his pleasure in her company, his delight in his sensory perceptions, and his suggestion that they head uphill, into the woods.

  He bounded off, and she followed. Her legs seemed to fly beneath her,
she didn’t feel the cold, and her body worked like a perfect machine. She wondered if humans ever felt like this—athletes at the top of their form, or maybe Roy before he’d been changed—and then lost herself in the pack sense, in running, in being a wolf.

  Rain began to fall in a sudden storm. Her thick coat held it off at first, but it ran into her eyes and mouth and spattered at her feet, then gradually soaked through her fur. She had the impulse to roll in the mud, but he thought she shouldn’t. Instead, he suggested that they go back. With a lupine shrug, she acquiesced.

  They ran down the hill and on to the porch, where they both shook the rain from their fur in a flurry that soaked the walls. Roy became a man and opened the front door, gesturing to her to go inside. She padded in, her claws clicking on the hardwood, and changed.

  They stood together, dripping all over the floor. Roy’s black hair was plastered to his head, sleek as a seal. There were even tiny drops of water in his extraordinary eyelashes, framing eyes the color of rain clouds. His white T-shirt was so wet that it might as well not have been there, outlining the bulging muscles of his broad shoulders. She could even see the raised welts of his jagged shrapnel scars.

  Laura could no longer catch his unique scent, but she was close enough to smell what a human could: the rain, the clean scent of his wet hair, and a whiff of soap and mud. Heat rose off his body in an almost visible fog.

  “You’re soaked. You have to dry off. You’ll catch a cold.” Roy’s voice was even deeper than usual, and rough rather than velvety.

  Laura was caught between laughter and desire. Or maybe, like the place where action and intention were one, they were the same thing. “Then you’d better get me out of these wet clothes.”

  Rain drummed against the roof and window. Laura didn’t hear the sound of Roy’s feet as he took a step forward. He took the gun from his belt and put it on the counter, then caught the hem of her blouse. She stood stock-still, her breath coming faster, as he laid his palms flat on her waist. They were cold and wet, but they quickly warmed as he slid them upward, making the removal of her shirt into a caress.

  He pulled it over her head and tossed it on to the counter beside the gun, then unsnapped her bra and sent it to follow the blouse.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he said.

  Laura pulled him down to her, unable to wait any longer, kissing him with all the passion she’d been too exhausted to feel the day before. His mouth opened under hers, his lips soft, his tongue hot. He hadn’t shaved that morning. His stubble scratched her chin.

  He moved in closer, pressing her against his body. Her nipples hardened. She eased back, then moved her torso so they slid against his chest, letting him feel them. Roy let out a muffled groan, his hands tensing against her back. He kissed her hard, catching her lower lip between his teeth and pressing down almost to the point of pain. Then he broke off the kiss and pushed her up against the wall.

  Laura was so dizzy with desire that it was hard to think. Roy was breathing quickly, the rise and fall of his chest easily visible beneath his clinging shirt, his hair tousled and falling in strands over his forehead, his pupils huge and black.

  If Laura had somehow failed to notice how hard he was when they’d stood so close, she’d have noticed now. His soaking-wet jeans were so tight that she wondered if he was uncomfortable.

  Roy reached for his belt buckle, but a mischievous impulse made Laura hold up her hand.

  “Take my shoes off,” she said.

  Obediently, Roy knelt at her feet and removed her sandals. He could have just pulled them off, but he unbuckled them instead, lifting them from her feet as reverently as if she was a queen. She watched him do it, enjoying the view of his powerful shoulders and his long, long eyelashes.

  “And my jeans,” she added when he was done.

  He worked them over her hips, taking her panties off with them. Still kneeling, he looked up at her. “Do you want me to—”

  “Stand up.”

  He stood. His hands were clenching and unclenching, as if he was having trouble controlling himself. “Do you—Do you want—”

  Laura took a deep breath. “Kneel.”

  Roy dropped instantly, his knees slamming into the floor with a bang.

  “Oh, God!” Laura exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I hurt you.”

  “No,” Roy gasped. “Fuck, no. Don’t be sorry. That was hot.”

  Without moving from where he knelt, he put his hands on her hips and bent his head to her. Laura leaned her head back and rested her hands on his shoulders as Roy laid his mouth on her.

  Electric heat rippled through her body, a new jolt going through her with every flick and caress of his tongue. Laura drifted from pure sensation, as divorced from thought as when she’d run as a wolf, to occasional thoughts like How the hell did Roy get so good at this when he’s spent most of his adult life with no women around and I hope he was serious when he said he didn’t mind if I drew blood because I don’t think I can stop myself.

  Roy reached up and pressed one hand into her sternum, pinning her to the wall. Laura wondered why he was doing that, then forgot to care about anything but the climax she could feel building in her, like a current washing her out to sea, dragging her inexorably forward until, inevitably but still suddenly, it pulled her under.

  Laura heard her own cry burst from her lips, felt her nails driving into Roy’s shoulders through the wet cloth of her shirt. Then a tide of warm relaxation washed over her, her knees buckled, and she would have sunk to the floor if he hadn’t been holding her up.

  When she could stand on her own feet again, Roy let go of her. He was still fully dressed, all the way down to his boots. Laura wasn’t surprised to see spots of blood on his shoulders, and was equally unsurprised, though a touch more guilty, to see that he was in danger of ripping out of his jeans.

  He looked up at her, still kneeling, his eyes reminding her less of rain clouds than of molten steel. “Get me out of these wet clothes before I lose my fucking mind.”

  Trying not to laugh, Laura hastily pulled off his shirt and took off his belt. The bullet he’d taken for her had left yet another mark on him, as a star-shaped pink scar.

  He sat back to allow her to haul off his boots, and then his jeans and underwear. This time Laura tried not to be so distracted that she forgot to look for the scar on his hip. It outlined the bone, white and thin, curving all the way around to his back. “How did you get that?”

  “Tell you later. I don’t think I’d make any sense right now.” Roy took a condom out of the back pocket of his jeans. As he started to roll it on, Laura started laughing. “What’s so funny?”

  She reached into the back pocket of her own jeans and held up another condom. “I guess we both hit the stash under the pillow this morning.”

  “Great minds think alike.” Roy scooped Laura into his arms and got to his feet. “Like I promised. Standing up.”

  She opened her mouth to ask if she wasn’t too heavy, then closed it. He’d run for at least a mile carrying her the day before. His everyday gear weighed eighty pounds. Whatever the rest of the world thought about women like her, she certainly wasn’t too heavy for Roy.

  As if he’d read her mind, he smiled and said, “I’m not going to claim you weigh less than my SAW and my pack and my body armor. But I’d much rather be carrying you.”

  Laura sucked in a startled breath as he eased her down on to him. She pushed her hips forward, and he was inside her, filling her. Roy gasped too, his eyes opening wide.

  “Wrap your legs around my waist,” he said, his voice roughened.

  Laura did so, drawing her legs tight and pressing him all the way in, her hands clasped around his back. She waited for him to move in her, but he stood still. He was trembling, his chest heaving against hers, his skin hot and damp.

  She’d forgotten the pack sense, but she touched it now. Laura could perceive his emotions more easily now, when they were so intense and close to the surface, unmixed with conscious tho
ught. Even the lightest touch sucked her into a storm of lust and love and, to her surprise, fear.

  “Hey,” Laura whispered. “What’s the matter?”

  “I love you so much,” Roy said, his words stuttering and ragged. He took a deep breath, and Laura expected him to explain. But he only repeated, desperately, “I love you. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Laura again reached out through the pack sense, and this time tried to hold it open. It felt strange, as if she was in two places at once. “You can feel me, can’t you? I made it, Roy. You saved me. I lived.”

  His fear faded. He took a step forward, bracing her back against the wall, and began to thrust inside of her.

  Normally Laura wouldn’t have been able to come more than once, but whether it was from the position or because she was in love or because she could feel an echo of Roy’s own building climax through their bond, she was carried with him. They were breathing in the same rhythm, she realized. Even their hearts were beating as one, synchronized by the pack sense.

  Roy’s eyes were closed, his lashes trembling and wet. His hand clenched on her shoulder, harder and harder until she was sure he’d leave bruises. But she didn’t mind. She’d marked him with her nails. He could mark her with his fingers.

  “I love you,” he gasped. “Laura—”

  She felt his shattering ecstasy through the bond, triggering her own. For a brief and endless moment, they were not two but one, lost in a single joy.

  Chapter Sixteen: Roy

  Guinness

  Roy trotted through the woods, the scent of damp earth and leaves rising up from under his paws. Laura’s lemon meringue scent wafted up from her as she ran beside him, her short legs taking two steps for every one of his. He checked through the pack sense to make sure he wasn’t wearing her out, and she sent back her delight in running and in the movement of her own body.

  Roy halted, smelling metal and plastic and wood smoke, oil and tomato sauce and the distinctive herbal-woody scent of a human. He became a man, and watched Laura shift from her elegant wolf form into her beautiful woman’s body.