by Ann Vremont
Cruz smiled. It was true. Cruz didn't like working the phones or writing out invoices. And Dom was too much of a perfectionist working on the cars. The garage would never show a profit if he worked the floor. Cruz got them out the door safe, fast and at a profit.
Tamsyn followed Cruz back to the Ranchero, where she rooted through the Wal-Mart bag. She pulled out a fist-sized bottle, opened it and swallowed down six pills.
Cruz took the bottle, his gaze zeroing in on the dosing instructions. "It says take no more than two a day." He looked down to the ingredients, his tongue tripping for a second as he read the active ingredients. "Beta-ecdysterone, tribulus terrest..." Shaking his head, he rolled the bottle in his hand until he was looking at the front label. "Okay, you want to tell me why you’re taking Testarol? How is this stuff even legal?"
She snatched the bottle away and shoved it back in the grocery bag. "Biology experiment. I’m not ready to explain my premise."
"You mean your hunch." When she shrugged at him, Cruz put a hand on each of her hips and leaned in to kiss her. "But I really like all your estrogen bits, baby."
She returned the kiss and then pushed him away. "Get to work on the car. The sooner we get Dominic on the road, the better he’s going to feel."
*****
Cruz spent two hours under the hood and the Ranchero’s undercarriage. A rock had punctured the fuel line, but was still lodged in the hole so they hadn't lost much gas. He removed the rock and duct-taped the hose, fixed a few more things. The manifold worried him. He taped what he could, but it was more rust than whole metal. As strong as the tape was, it wouldn’t last much longer.
He told Dominic and Tamsyn while the three of them re-packed the back of the Ranchero.
"I think I have an answer for that, Manito." Dominic slid into the driver’s seat. "You know Steiger’s?"
Cruz frowned as they pulled away from the impromptu camp site. "You sure you want to deal with someone that knows us? This group, they might send crews out to ask if anyone’s seen us, what we were driving."
"Right...that’s the beauty of it. I couldn’t get an answer from Steiger on the manifold because the old man is on vacation. Out the whole week, junkyard should be locked up."
"No one’s watching it?" Tamsyn asked.
Cruz leaned in and whispered against Tamsyn’s ear. "Junkyard, love."
"Yeah, okay." She laughed at herself. "But don’t those places have, like twenty foot metal fences and stuff?"
"Pair of Rottweilers, too," Cruz added. "But they can’t climb where I can."
Tamsyn let out a heavy breath and Dominic nudged her in the ribs. "Relax, T. Manito’s something of an expert now at scaling things."
Cruz cleared his throat. "You know, if you concentrate on the road, you might miss more of the ruts and the manifold might actually hold out until Steiger’s."
"Am I missing some subtext here?" Tamsyn looked between the two men. Dominic had decided to play nice and was staring at the dirt road ahead of them. Cruz chose to distract Tamsyn by brushing a strand of hair away from her face, leaning in and kissing her.
She found his free hand, curled her own around it. Eyes closed, she let him kiss her again. "Effective tactic."
"Yeah." He purred against her ear. "I thought it might work."
*****
Steiger’s junkyard was near the state line. The mountains had given way to low desert after a day of driving with just one stop for gas, food and Wi-Fi. A new message from Beemer was waiting for them. Offering to send help, he wanted to know where they were.
Dominic responded with a short, "No, where is Sanctuary?"
The conversation ended at an impasse, followed by four more hours of driving.
There were no cars near them when they reached Steiger’s, so they drove slowly past it. A mile on, they found a dirt road. They followed it half a mile in and then Dominic pulled about a hundred yards off the road.
The moon was up and fat, lighting the desert floor.
He shut the engine off and looked across Tamsyn to Cruz. "I’m thinking we shouldn’t risk pulling up behind the junkyard and waiting the whole time you look for what we need."
"Right." Cruz got out of the Ranchero.
Tamsyn slid across the seat to look at him. "You’re going to walk there and back?"
"Just there," Dominic said from the driver’s seat. "I’ll know when he’s got it and is ready to rescale the wall."
Tamsyn had already forgotten her question. She was watching Cruz toe off his boots and remove his socks. "You’re going across as a..."
Cruz nodded. She got out of the car, still staring at him. She drew her lower lip in, lightly chewed its edge.
"Can I watch you?"
Another nod and he peeled his shirt off, dropped it on top of the boots. His skin looked silver blue in the moonlight, shadows outlining the hard muscles of his arms and chest. Smiling at her, his eyes black from the shadows and unreadable, he slowly undid the zipper to his jeans. Reaching inside his pants, he hooked a thumb under each side of his underwear and pushed both articles of clothing down over his lean hips and muscled thighs.
He kicked the clothes to the side, standing for a second completely naked in front of her. Her gaze dropped to the dark tangle of pubic hair, and the soft long cock that grew out of it. She thought at first it was a trick of shadows, but the hair on his body started to coarsen and lengthen. Muscles rippled, expanded. He let out a low howl as another six inches were added to his height in as many seconds.
Hands turned to deadly claws. Bone cracked and reformed. Cruz dropped to the ground, Tamsyn’s gut falling with him. His hips twisted and strained. She heard a fleshy series of pops, bone-by-bone, joint-by-joint, as his tail formed. His body began to contract. From man, to wolfman, to wolf, it was over in a minute.
Cruz approached her cautiously, stopping half a foot from her. She held her hand out, felt the rough slide of his tongue over her skin. She closed the distance between them, kneeling to press her head against his. She scratched behind his ear, felt the fan of air from his tail.
"Be careful," she whispered and stood up to watch him set across the desert floor. When she could no longer see him, she retrieved his clothes and headed back to the Ranchero. Certain he could still feel -- if not hear -- her she whispered it again before sliding into the cab.
*****
The Rottweilers started barking when he was still a quarter mile out. When he reached the fence, they knew exactly where Cruz stopped. He could hear them whining and digging at the opposite side of the corrugated steel.
The whining turned to snarls as he started to shift into his hybrid shape. Reaching an arm above his head, he slammed his hand, claws out, against the metal. His nails punctured the fence and he hauled himself up, swinging his free arm to slam it against the fence. Arm over arm he went, the metal shrieking and moaning from his weight and the holes he was leaving in it.
He curled the top of the fence over, bending it into a fragile ledge long enough for him to peer down and check that the ground below was clear.
The dogs had backed a few feet away from the fence, schizophrenic between snarling and baring their teeth and then whining and showing their bellies. Cruz hit the ground, his growl rumbling in his chest and throat. He snapped his jaws and watched them tuck their bobbed tails and run.
He’d last been at Steiger’s a couple month’s back, a rush pick-up for a family stuck in town on a cross country trip. He knew the old man stripped the older cars of their best parts and warehoused them in sheds scattered around the junkyard. Any other junkyard and he could have spent all night searching just for the right pile of crap, but Steiger was something of an obsessive compulsive. Fords were hauled to one section, Dodges to another, foreign at the back because he liked to make their owners and mechanics walk the extra distance.
Cruz came to the first shed in with the Fords. The door was padlocked. Typical Steiger. He went to the side window and saw small parts. He busted the padlock on t
he next shed. A bare bulb with a pull chain hung in the center of the shed. Cruz blocked the window and turned the light on. There was no original equipment in the shed for the Ranchero but the vehicle shared a platform with the Fairlane.
Good enough. He slung the manifold over his shoulder. That had been the easy part. He just hoped the old man had an acetylene torch and a hand saw in the garage.
Reaching the garage, he growled. He could hear the ultra low frequency of an alarm system, something the old man hadn't had on the last visit. The doors and windows were probably wired. It might take the cops half an hour or more to reach the junkyard, but the longer the theft went undetected, the better. He growled again and felt Dominic at the back of his skull watching in.
You know what you have to do, Manito.
He knew. He didn’t have to like it. He’d already broken a lock, clawed holes in the fence, stolen an expensive part and made the old man’s dogs piss themselves. Not to mention he was going to steal a torch and saw before he was done for the night.
Drop the hesitation, little brother. We'll make good with him later -- if we're still alive.
The door and windows might be wired, but not the walls. Cruz jerked his arm back, brought it smashing into the wood planks. He repeated the motion two more times and then started to peel the shattered wood pieces away. He let his nose guide him to the shelf holding the torch. The saw was just as easy, moonlight glinting off a row of tools hanging from a peg board.
Done, bro.
Well, done except for getting over the fence without breaking something. He let his nose lead him again, sniffing out a coil of rope inside the garage. He bound the pieces together, slow and clumsy in his hybrid form, and carried them back to the spot where he’d gone over the fence. He clamped the end of the rope between his jaws.
"Fuck," he thought, looking at the jagged metal edges of the holes he had made. He couldn't use them on this side without tearing his flesh. He was going to have to punch through all over again. Up he went, hand-over-hand, then stood precariously on the ledge he had bent earlier as he hauled the gear up and eased it back down to the other side.
He could hear the Ranchero approaching as he worked. A plume of shadow rose in the sky from the dust it kicked up. Cruz finished lowering the parts safely to the ground and then he jumped, hit the ground in a roll and came up human.
Dominic pulled the Ranchero to a stop, jumped out and stored the bundle in the back of the vehicle while Cruz slid into his jeans.
"No problems, right," Dominic joked.
"I just hope old man Steiger doesn’t have video running." Cruz got in the car and Tamsyn threw her arms around him.
She ran her hands over his hands and arms, cooing over the small scratches from his jump before she touched his face. "Were the dogs a problem?"
Cold and tired, he snuggled up to her. "Terrible. I thought they were going to rip me to pieces."
Dominic put the Ranchero in gear. "He’s yanking your chain, Tam. Dogs are still off in a corner hiding. Don’t let him milk it."
"I won’t," she agreed, turning so that Cruz’s head could rest more fully on her shoulder. "Not too much, at least."
They drove back through the desert to the dirt road, heading further away from the junkyard until they crossed another highway and disappeared off road.
Stealing the manifold and tools had been the easy part. Swapping it out, with just one jack and in the dark was an all night job. When Cruz finished, Dominic had to pull him out, lower the vehicle back down and fold Cruz into the cab.
"Sleep, Manito. You earned it."
*****
The chance for a real bed came late in the day. They stuck to small restaurants, smaller gas stations and bypassed the chain hotels until they found an out-of-the-way rental office for a string of cabins at the base of a mountain. A single room and a bath, two beds, a TV broadcasting off a dish satellite.
Dominic straight armed Cruz in the direction of the bathroom as soon as Cruz had the laptop set up. "You’ve definitely got dibs on the tub, little brother."
Cruz looked to where Tamsyn had already taken a seat on the far bed, a pillow bunched up on her lap, her chin buried in its top as she watched him. She lifted her chin just enough to motion at her bag next to him. "Toss me my supplements, first, Medina."
Cruz pulled the bottle out, eyed the waste basket against the opposite wall.
Tamsyn caught the direction of his gaze and voiced a low warning. "Medina..."
"Tam, you’ve almost polished the bottle off in, like, three days?" He shook his head, pulled his arm back, aiming for the can. "I don’t think that’s safe -- not to mention the potential for PMS and 'roid rage at the same time."
"Medina..."
He let the bottle fly. Her hand shot out, easily snatching the bottle from the air.
Dominic stopped reading Beemer’s messages on the laptop to stare at Tamsyn. "You been taking catching classes, Tam?"
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"Seriously. I’ve never seen you catch anything. Seen you try a helluva lot..." He looked to Cruz. "You, Manito?"
Cruz shook his head.
"I catch things all the time," she grumbled.
"Like what?" Dominic pressed.
"Like shit from the two of you." She threw the pillow at Dominic’s head, hitting him square in the face.
"Pitching lessons, too." Cruz took the pillow back to Tamsyn and gently wrestled the bottle from her. He tossed it in a high arc that forced her to reach awkwardly behind her to catch it -- but she did.
She unscrewed the lid and dry swallowed the last four pills before tossing the bottle herself. Dominic left the reading table by the window and stood next to Cruz. He leaned forward, nose tilted up.
"If you even think about sniffing me, Dominic, I’m going to punch you in the balls."
Dominic stepped back, hands up in a gesture for peace.
Cruz corralled him back towards Tamsyn. "Would you tell her it’s too dangerous?"
Dominic slid low, rolled onto the empty bed and propped a pillow under his head. "How am I supposed to do that, little brother?" He picked up the remote, switched the TV on. "You must have been rolling in buzzard shit switching out that manifold and I can’t even get you to take a bath."
Cruz looked at Tamsyn, one of his dark brows raised as if seeking her opinion. She pinched a few centimeters of air between her thumb and index finger.
"A little, but I don’t mind."
"Fine." Cruz stripped his t-shirt off, wiped beneath his arms and tossed it at Dominic’s face.
Tamsyn waited until the bathroom door closed and then rapped her knuckles on the nightstand between the two beds. "Don’t you have a perimeter check or something to do?"
Dominic rolled his eyes and flipped to the next channel. Tamsyn moved to sit at the end of her bed and stared at him until he tossed the remote back onto the nightstand.
"Perimeter check, huh?"
She smiled sweetly. "Perimeter check, repack the Ranchero...count the rocks lining the drive."
He left, shaking his head and taking the laptop with him as she tiptoed to the bathroom door. Trying to ease it open without a sound, Tamsyn cracked it the first inch to find Cruz watching her from the tub. His gaze was heavy lidded, as if he was already imagining her stripped naked.
"You joining me?"
Tamsyn blushed, her boldness fleeing now that it was just the two of them again. "If I’m still girl enough for you," she joked.
His gaze wandered meaningfully to the center of the tub. She heard the surface tension of the water break and imagined his cock bobbing up -- hard and ready. "All indicators are a ‘yes.’"
He looked her up and down. "You have to take your clothes off to get wet, baby."
Tamsyn suppressed a snort. He had to know she was wet already, thinking of what the big, old tub was hiding from her view or the way he had just looked at her with his voice rumbling low in his chest like that.
She had already shed
her sandals in the outer room and she slid from her jeans and panties. A week ago, she would have died at the thought of him seeing her naked, certain his attitude toward her was nothing more than an aversion to her size. Now, she wanted to feel his gaze, her flesh warm and tingling from the heat in his eyes as he watched.
Seeing his hand slide from where it gripped the rim of the tub down into the water, Tamsyn pushed the thought of him touching himself out of her head long enough to peel her top away and undo her bra. She stepped toward the tub. Cruz put just a finger out and touched it lightly against the jut of her hip so that she stopped.
His fingers traced the shallow line between her torso and thigh, down to the soft silk of her cunt hair. She looked down at the water to see his hand wrapped around his cock. Tamsyn widened her stance, just enough that he could part her labia with his fingers. Her thighs and pussy squeezed at the light touch.
"I was wrong, baby. You're soaking already."
Tamsyn nodded. She could feel how slick she was, feel the warm liquid beginning to wet her thighs as his fingers worked her clit. Her nipples were hard, feeling every tug on her clit as the sensation worked its way up her stomach.
He tugged at his cock, too. The strong hand bobbed up to swallow half the head before sinking down to the dark, wet tangle of pubic hair, pulling the skin tight along the tip and shaft. The top split pearled with pre-cum.
"You’re shaking, baby." He reached up from the water to capture her wrist. Leaning close, he rubbed his nose against the triangle of hair, kissed each thigh. "You need to sit down."
"Yes."
His stomach tensed, his cock lifted, offering her something hard and thick to sit on.
"Yes," she repeated and raised one leg. She could smell her excitement now, knew her smell from his and the dissolving bath salts he’d sprinkled at the bottom of the tub. She stepped into the water, brought her other leg in and slowly sank down towards his cock.
His hand moved between them to hold his erection steady as her cunt settled against the pearling head. Centimeter by centimeter she lowered herself, her breasts swinging towards Cruz. He captured them, sucked at the swollen tips until they were bruising a bright eggplant.
