by Desiree Holt
He stood there on the slight rise, taking his time looking around, and—
His gaze stopped as if he’d been hit. He blinked, unsure whether he was seeing something or hallucinating. On a rise similar to the one he was standing on, about a hundred yards away, was a pure white wolf. He blinked, but when he looked again, the wolf was still there. It turned and stared right at him. A shaft of electricity like a bolt of lightning blazed through him.
Holy fucking shit!
He took one slow step forward, then another, but, in the next second, the wolf turned and raced off in the other direction. Stone didn’t know if he should follow or not. Where had it come from? Everything he’d read had told him there were no wolves in this area. Was it a shifter? Was it male or female?
Damn. He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.
He stood there a few minutes longer, waiting…but for what? He still couldn’t seem to get his head around the whole thing. For just a moment, he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing or hallucinated. But then he lifted his face, drew in a deep breath, and the very faint scent of wolf drifted to his nostrils.
Okay, something was screwy here. He was past wanting to discover what, tonight, but tomorrow night, he’d damn sure be out here again. He turned and loped off toward the cabins and the tree where he’d left his clothes. He hoped there were no middle-of-the-night risers in the other cabins. He’d be very careful not to be spotted by anyone.
But he had no worries. When he got to the edge of the woods, fully dressed, he paused behind a thick maple tree and took in the entire camp, from his cabin to the far end. Nothing moved, and there were no lights on. Wait! Was that something on the far end past the office? Was there a person out there? He counted to one hundred, but, when nothing else caught his eye, he let out his breath. Moving with stealth, he walked to his cabin and let himself in. Inside, he stripped down to his boxer briefs, pulled back the covers, and lay down on the bed, hands crossed behind his head.
He had come to the Allegash for quiet and solitude, a place to shift and run without fear of discovery. If there was somehow a real wolf here, he’d have to examine his options and decide what to do. But, if it was another shifter, that presented a new set of problems, not the least of which was discovering where he or she had come from.
* * *
Jordan pulled her clothing from the crotch of limbs in the tree where she’d left it, taking it down with shaking hands. Once she was dressed, she remained standing in the midst of the group of oaks, watching. Waiting. Drawing very shallow breaths. She had to be sure beyond all doubt no one would step outside and catch her before she could get to the safety of her cabin.
The day she’d met the Pelleys and they’d brought her to Allegash, she’d been stunned at the vast expanse of forest. Her inner wolf had clawed at her to get out after being suppressed with ruthless determination on her flight to freedom. She had needed to exercise every bit of discipline to make herself wait before allowing herself that first nocturnal run. Each night, she checked the routine, paying special attention to the Pelleys’ house, which sat on a knoll across from the office.
After a few weeks, she had their routine down pat. Not that something couldn’t derail the situation, but so far so good. Now, many nights, just before midnight, she’d slip out of her place through the back porch and melt into the thick trees that came right up to the little cabin. Walk about a quarter of a mile to the place she’d found that was safe to store her clothes, away from the wildlife, and take off for her run.
She always came back exhilarated. Although there were places to run when she lived with the pack, they weren’t as wild and uninhabited as this area. In addition, everyone was always in everyone’s business. And topping it off was her constant need to avoid the alpha and figure out a way to get out of there. This camp that, lucky for her, adapted itself to other seasons to attract tourists, provided her the ideal environment. And also lucky for her, they did not have a dog to sniff at her and chase after her.
Jordan felt freer than she had in a long time. Settled. At ease. No one saw her at night, and no one suspected anything. She had set the stage early on by telling the Pelleys she liked to take walks at night. And, yes, she’d take a flashlight and be careful where she went.
Many nights, sometimes even in the rain, she escaped the human world and ran free as a wolf. She’d come to think of this area as her own. Until tonight. Where on Earth had that black wolf come from? There were no wolves in the area. She was pretty damn positive of that, unless someone had trucked them in and not told anyone. The lack of wolves was an additional reason why she went to great lengths to conceal her presence in the woods.
The sighting tonight threw her way off her game. Was there a shifter staying at the camp? One of the guests? Could it be—
No. She shook her head. That would just be too crazy.
The snap of a twig made her jerk, startled. With her acute hearing, she could pick up almost any sound. She looked down the length of the cabins, all the way to the isolated one, but the trees surrounding it blocked her from seeing anything. Not good. He could watch her, but she couldn’t do the same with him. At last, she gave up and slid into her own place through the back door.
She brewed some tea and carried the filled mug into her bedroom where she could sip on it while she stripped off her clothes. After pulling on sleep shorts and a T-shirt, she took her mug out onto the back porch. It was so quiet and still out here, the surface of the lake like a blanket of dark glass, the moon, a silver globe, reflected on it. Jordan inhaled, loving the night scents, aroused by them in so many ways.
Then, without warning, her nose twitched, a strange scent pricking at it. She drew in a deep breath and held it for long seconds before releasing it. She had to be wrong. That faint trace of the unusual pheromones that clung to the air around shifters drifted across her senses.
No! Not possible! A shifter? Here?
The image of the massive black wolf popped into her consciousness. She looked around, trying to identify where the scent had come from. She called each customer to mind then discarded them one by one for a variety of reasons. Besides, all the cabins had been rented for the better part of a week, and tonight was the first time this had happened.
The only new thing added was Stone Mackenzie, sequestered in that separate cabin, away from everyone. Stone, with his coal black-hair and unusual eyes. Stone, who had set off tiny electrical impulses in her body.
No, no, no. That is just not possible.
She felt good at last about the sense of freedom and well-being she had achieved. Could Stone Mackenzie be a danger to her? What was his reason for being here? Jordan wanted to pound her fist on her forehead. Had she succeeded in finding a safe place only to now be put in danger?
Jordan finished her tea and rose, an unsettled feeling gripping her. Tomorrow night, she would be more alert and more cautious. She’d find out what the hell was happening here and hope she didn’t have to pull up stakes and leave. Where on earth would she go, and how would she get there?
Chapter 3
“Stone. Stone. I’m hit!”
Stone belly crawled to where Crawford lay on the ground beside the truck. Blood soaked the man’s chest, bleeding through his clothing into his equipment. Stone grabbed the bandana he’d wrapped around his neck and pressed it against the wound, but the blood was pumping so hard it soon saturated the cloth and spilled over his fingers.
Shit, shit, shit!
Gunfire blazed all around them, and another one of his men shrieked in the night. What a goatfuck this had turned into. Big surprise. It had been like this from the beginning. God. If he could just strip off all this gear and shift, get his men to shift, they could launch an attack unlike any these assholes had ever seen.
Another of his men, dragging the medical box, crawled up beside him to tend to Crawford. Stone eased himself away and tried to check on the rest of his men when something whistled in the air and their truck exploded, pieces of i
t hitting all around him. He had to get the survivors out of here. He had to—
As he turned on the ground, he came face to boots with an enemy, rifle pointing at him.
“I like to watch you die.” He grinned, a look like the devil.
Stone tried to claw for his own gun when a white blur came flying out of the air, toppling the tango, growling as it sank its teeth into the fleshy neck. He—
Stone sat up in bed, his body soaked with sweat, his heart pounding a wild beat. He took several deep breaths, holding each longer than the one before, lowering his heart rate with conscious effort. When he was sure he could move without falling down, he eased out of bed and made his way to the tiny kitchen setup. He filled a glass with water from the tap, drank it down then filled another one.
He drank the second one much slower, leaning against the counter. His heart rate had slowed, but he didn’t think he could do much more than make it back to bed. Or the porch. Right, the porch. Slumped in the Adirondack chair, he tried to figure out the dream. He’d had the same nightmare too many times since returning from his final deployment, but none of them had ever included a white wolf.
Or shifter.
Holy fucking shit. What was going on here, anyway?
Immediately, his brain flashed back to the stunning white wolf he’d seen two nights ago. Last night, he’d run, covering the same ground, but never spotted it. Same story tonight. He’d begun to wonder if he’d imagined the entire situation. But now, tonight, he’d had this dream, or a nightmare turned into a dream. How the hell had a white wolf gotten into his memories of Afghanistan? What was going on with him?
Leaning back in the chair, he closed his eyes and at once the image of the white wolf flashed across his brain. His eyes popped open, and he looked around to make sure it hadn’t appeared in front of him. It had to be a shifter. A creature that was wolf only would not haunt a shifter’s dreams like this. But who was it, and where was it? Was it a man? A woman? Did it have anything to do with the strange vibes he’d gotten when he was around Jordan West?
His head began to ache from the barrage of unanswered questions. Back in the kitchen, he grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the counter, poured two into his hand, and popped them into his mouth, chasing them with a glass of water. He crawled into bed and pulled just the sheet over his body, closing his eyes and hoping the aspirin would get him through the night.
They stood in the tiny clearing, muzzle to muzzle, staring at each other. The heat in her amber eyes flared. He rubbed his muzzle against hers, a soft, tentative gesture but firm enough to let her know his intentions. In silence, they circled each other, bumping bodies, sometimes taking a brief lick of each other’s coats.
When he stopped, she did, too, watching him, waiting for his next movement. He moved to her side and pressed his body against hers, licking the fur on her neck and gently nipping her ear. When he thrust his head beneath her body to lick her genital area, she growled, but it wasn’t an angry sound, so he did it again. And again.
He wanted to mount her, to thrust his long cock inside her, to mate with her. She was his. He moved behind her, rose up on his hind legs and, with his front paws on her shoulders, slid his heavy cock into her hot channel. But, as he began to move, she changed shape beneath his touch, a human form beginning to emerge. A cry of panic split the air, and he saw terror in her eyes. He froze in place.
Stone sat bolt upright in bed.
Holy fucking shit!
What in the hell was happening to him? Maybe he should get up and go for a run, try to clear his head. But an ache in his groin told him his dick had swelled and now throbbed, and his balls ached. Jesus Christ on a crutch. He was in worse shape than when he’d first returned home.
He stripped off the sweat pants he’d been sleeping in, staggered to the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Taking the bar of soap from the built-in dish, he worked up a good lather then wrapped his right hand around his aching cock. He leaned back against the tiled wall, closed his eyes, and stroked himself. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the image of the last woman he’d been with, or any woman he’d been with.
Jordan West’s face popped into his brain, silvery hair falling about her heart-shaped face in waves, blue eyes the color of a vivid sky, full lips he could visualize around his cock. She was standing in a pool of sunshine, the golden rays lighting her hair, turning its color almost…white?
As his climax peaked and cum spilled over onto his fingers, all he could think of was a white wolf.
* * *
Jordan finished the last of her tea and set the mug on the tiny nightstand. Last night, her sleep had been restless, her dreams disturbed by conflicting images. During the day, she’d been edgy, keeping to herself as much as possible. She didn’t want Allison or her husband, Don, to think something was wrong with her. They might decide to get rid of her and then what would she do?
So she buried herself in work, cleaning each cabin except Stone’s from top to bottom then clearing out all the paperwork Allison always had for her to do. Today, when Allison sent her home early from the office, she cleaned her own place from top to bottom, hoping to exhaust herself with labor. She ate a light dinner, read a little until her eyelids drooped with weariness, and turned out the light.
He was after her. She could hear him running through the woods behind her.
“Jordan.” He called her name in that harsh, authoritarian tone he used. “Jordan, this will do you no good. I’ll find you sooner or later. Sooner would be better, before we’re both tired out.”
Still she ran.
Tonight, he’d come to the house where she lived with Jean and Raymond West, the couple who had taken her in when she’d been found wandering in the woods as a lost four-year-old.
“Be ready in one hour.” He said the words in a voice that left no room for argument.
She should have already left, but she’d had to gather her courage. Being a shifter alone in the human world was frightening in and of itself. Where would she go? What would she do?
She stubbed her toe against a tree root, stumbled, and fell forward. Before she could struggle to her feet, hands reached down and hauled her upright and fingers bit into her arms, their touch cruel and painful.
“You made a big mistake running.” Fury filled the alpha’s voice. “You will pay for that. And, once we are mated, you will do exactly as I say at all times.”
She wondered how hard it would be to kill herself. They reached the end of the clearing, the alpha gripping her arm on one side, Dean on the other, as they tugged her toward the street where his house was. But, before they could move another step, a shape hurtled toward them, a huge black blur.
Wolf!
“Get away,” the alpha commanded. “You know better than to challenge me.”
But the huge black wolf didn’t seem to care a bit. He growled at Dean and snapped his teeth, causing the other man to let go of her and race off. Then he turned to the alpha, baring his teeth, another growl rumbling in his throat. He snapped his teeth so close to the alpha’s hand, he had no choice but to release her or lose his fingers.
The black wolf knocked the alpha to the ground and pinned him, inclining his head toward Jordan. Did he mean she should go? Who was—
Jordan bolted upright in bed, sweat making her sleep shorts and tee stick to her body. She stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water and stood there gulping it down.
What the hell?
How had the black wolf insinuated itself into her nightmare about the alpha? Where had he come from? Had her sighting of the black wolf the other night triggered this dream? Did it mean the alpha was tracking her? That he’d find her soon and she’d need protection? She was losing her mind for sure. The nightmares about the alpha weren’t new, but inserting the black wolf into them scared her. Was he coming to rescue her?
Her head hurt from thinking. She found the bottle of aspirin in the cupboard and swallowed two with the rest of her water. Having the nightma
re was bad enough, but the thought she’d mixed the black wolf from the other night into it knocked her off kilter. What was worse, at the sight of him, her entire body had responded, her pulse pounding, the walls of her sex throbbing. She was so wet she could smell her own musk.
Ohgodohgodohgod.
She stumbled back to her bed, stripping off her sleep pants and tossing them onto the floor. Her hands were clammy and her heart was beating so fast. She reached into the little drawer in the nightstand and took out the tube of lotion she always kept there. Before she’d discovered how both good and bad sex could be, she’d learned to satisfy herself and not worry about another person. Tonight, she needed it, no question about it.
She poured the lotion into one hand and rubbed them together, liberally spreading it over her palms. Bending her knees, she spread her legs as wide as she could and closed her eyes. When she touched her labia, they were warm and so slick with her liquid, her fingers slipped up and down with ease. She stroked the slippery flesh, catching her clit between two fingers and squeezing it.
Her pulse beat in her womb, the percussion vibrating through her entire body. She moved her fingers up and down, faster and faster, just nipping her clit with her knuckles. Her free hand stole beneath her tank top to pinch one pebbled nipple, squeezing it until blissful pain raced through her. If the Wests had known what kind of books she sneaked into the house, or read on her lunch hour at work, they’d have had multiple heart attacks. Somehow, they never could see her as more than four years old.
She called to mind the latest erotic scene she’d read, where the woman had pleasured herself like this in the absence of a lover. Was that what she was doing? Was she—
Heat sizzled through her, short-circuiting all thought in her brain. She gave herself over to the pleasure, the pulsations at all her sensitive spots. When she could stand it no more, she pinched her clit between thumb and forefinger and began a series of strokes and tugs, pulling on it then abrading the hot tip. She moved her finger round and round as she moved her free hand to her other breast, the other diamond-hard tip.
