“Ellie,” I said. “I work in the city doing pharmacological research. Sam is going to take me home after the meeting.”
“I’m trying to get her to agree to a date, but she doesn’t seem too interested,” he said.
“A date?” Mike’s brow furrowed. “You’re trying to get her to go on a date?”
“Yeah,” Sam said shortly. His eyes warred with Mikes, and the other man quieted. His intense expression stayed parked on his face, though.
“Nice day for a ride,” said Madison. “I might get Mike to drive along with you guys so I can get some road time today too. It’s better than gardening all day.” She steered me away from the knot of men. “I’m going to take Ellie to get some OJ and a muffin. We’ll be in the lounge when you’re done with your meeting.”
“See you, Sam.” I followed Madison to a room that was ringed with windows. She switched on the television and opened the fridge, pulling out a carton of orange juice.
“Here you go,” she said, handing it to me. It was so sweet and cold that it made my teeth hurt, but I gulped it down and enjoyed every drop. She refilled it, and I made myself drink the second glass more slowly. She watched me and then asked again. “Where were you hurt?”
I pushed back my hair, showing her the cut on my scalp. “I feel fine though.”
“Are you sure? I’m a doctor.”
“Wow, where do you practice?”
“Just here,” she said. “We’re far from any hospitals and it’s good to have someone around to mop up the men if there’s an accident.”
We chatted about clothes and movies until I heard a scream and a crash. Shooting to my feet, I hurried to the door that connected the lounge to the main room. Madison was hot on my heels, but not fast enough to stop me from opening it. “Ellie, no!” Her words were too late to keep me from turning the knob and yanking.
In the middle of the room was a man who was shifting from one form to another. My eyes couldn’t take it in. One moment he was a man, covered in sweat and blood, then he was a wolf whose body was wracked with tremors. The in-between times were the most frightening. Then he was nothing that I could recognize as a man or an animal.
I screamed and leapt back, but Madison was pushing past me, running to the man. I couldn’t breathe. Could only watch.
“Hold him,” she shouted. Her husband emerged from the back of the room, looked to see what was happening and rushed out to the manwolf. I pressed back against the wall, wanting desperately to blink and have the whole thing disappear. Or, barring that, to get past them and get outside.
As soon as the human emerged from the wolf, Mike clasped his wrists. Madison took out an emergency aid box, popped the top and pulled out a syringe.
“Inject him,” Sam yelled, pushing past the gathering crowd to help Mike hold the man down. “Get the gawkers the hell out of here.” Another man started sending people out the door. They went reluctantly, looking over their shoulders and back at us the whole time until it was three men, Madison, the manwolf and me, alone.
She plunged the syringe into his chest and his shuddering got worse. “It’s going to be okay,” I heard her say. “You’re okay. As soon as we get you stable, I’ll take care of you.” His body changed again, more swiftly this time and then a panting wolf replaced the on the ground before them. His torso heaved with every deep breath, but he seemed more still. He wasn’t wavering like a line of heat down a desert road, on the verge of turning back into a man.
“Take him to the infirmary,” Madison said, frowning and rising to her feet. “Get Sal to start him on a fluid drip. He’ll be well enough to transition by tonight. Fuck. Someone might need to go get some supplies. That leg looked twisted and I have nothing to hold it once it’s set.” The man I didn’t recognize gathered the large wolf tenderly in his arms—I dully registered that he didn’t even stagger under its bulk—and carried him out the front door. Madison followed without a second glance back.
I sank to the ground, putting my head to my knees. My eyes couldn’t comprehend what I’d seen, but understanding still clicked. The wolf with the golden eyes. The man with the golden eyes. Oh god.
Sam.
Five
Sam
“No, Mike,” I said as the president of the Howlers pushed ahead, crossing the room to stand over the girl who was so beautiful it made my chest hurt. “Cut it out right the fuck now.”
“What do you want me to do?” He turned and I saw the struggle in his eyes. “She can’t leave.”
He was right. The number one code we lived by was protecting the Howlers. Family first. Family always. She’d seen our secret and that meant she had to die.
But the taste of her still lingered in the wolf’s mind. Safe, it said. A bleary memory of promising her she’d be safe.
“Let’s just keep her.”
“What?”
“Put her in a room. Maybe she’ll forget.” I was grasping at straws. The wolf perked up its head and encouraged me to continue. “Look at her man. She’s fucked up. Don’t say anything and we’ll see what happens.” I didn’t want to kill her—not her. My wolf knew what she was to me, even if I couldn’t admit it. Matehood didn’t automatically mean happily-ever-after, and the pack would sacrifice my mate to protect themselves if she threatened to expose them.
Too many people would be at risk if they didn’t.
He looked at me with pity and a deeper understanding, even jealousy. Then turned as the girl rose to her feet and ran for the door. Two strides forward and he’d caught her, his arm locked around her neck. He should pull. I knew that. One clean twist and everyone would be safe.
Despite knowing that, I tensed, ready to attack if his arm twitched.
But it didn’t.
Instead he stopped her breath and then picked her up once she’d been rendered unconscious. He handed her to me and I took the soft burden into my arms.
“If she tries to escape, you know what you have to do.”
“Yes,” I said. No, the wolf whispered.
“I’ll send someone over to reinforce your guest room.” He walked out and I followed him, carrying the girl to my house and up the stairs into the guest room that I kept for when my family came to stay. I set her down on the bed.
Her wrists were so delicate. I traced my finger down the blue veins that ran under her pale skin, marveling at how soft they were. Her scent, like green spring apples, permeated the air. It was so delicious that I felt my mouth water.
“I’m going to keep you safe,” I whispered. Taking a pair of handcuffs from my dresser, I circled one ankle with the cold metal, then attached it to my footboard. “But I can’t ever let you leave.”
The man Mike sent to reinforce the house nailed the windows shut from the outside and put a lock on the door that could only be opened from the hallway. Ellie’s pulse and breathing were fine, so I left to get some food, hoping she’d be reasonable when she woke up.
Six
When the man grabbed me around my neck, I was convinced that my life was over. My lungs burned for oxygen and then I was just gone. So much for making it out of the woods.
But I woke up sitting on a soft bed. Immediately I tried to run, but my leg was attached to the footboard and kept me on the mattress. That idea was off the table.
Why didn’t they kill me?
As soon as Mike put his hands on me, I’d realized that what I’d seen equaled death. No matter how nice his wife was, no matter that Sam and I had been together, they couldn’t let me live. Wolfmen—werewolves?—were real. That wasn’t information that they were going to let me leak anytime soon.
After a few hours, when the tears had stopped and I felt calmer, it occurred to me that the best option was to forget what I’d seen. Play dumb. I could do that. After all, I dated Jeremy for years.
I practiced an innocent expression, curving my lips up and trying to look normal. “What happened?” I said to the empty room. “What happened?”
Then Sam walked in.
; Now that I knew the truth, I could see the wolf under the skin of the man. He walked with the same grace. He smiled the same feral smile. His sharp teeth gleamed white behind those beautiful lips that had kissed and pleasured me.
Oh grandma, I shouldn’t have gone through the woods.
“What happened?” I asked him, sitting up. “Did I pass out? Was it my head injury?” I raised a shaky hand to my forehead and grazed my cut, mentally congratulating myself on an award-winning performance. “Maybe I should go to the hospital? Did I hurt someone?” I smiled a million watt smile and looked straight into his golden eyes.
No dice.
“Don’t. Just don’t, Ellie.” He sat down on the bed and dropped his head into his hands, hiding his tortured expression. “We both know.”
“Know what?”
He leaned back to look at me. “We both know you know what we are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him, still playing dumb. “I think I hit my head or something while you were in your meeting.”
“You can’t ever leave.” The words ripped through me like a blade and I choked on my fake smile. My thoughts ran first to Sarah, then to my project.
“Are you going to kill me?” His silence filled me with cold dread that spiraled from my toes to my throat, which felt like it would close. I took deep breaths, trying to stay calm.
“I don’t want to,” he said finally. “I like you.” The admission seemed to shock him. “You were nice to Madison. You made me laugh. You smell good, and if I remember right, you taste better. But I have to protect them.”
“Protect who?”
“The Howlers. Family first. Family always.”
“What’s that?”
“Our motto.” He popped the lock on the handcuffs and pulled me up, bringing me to look out the window. I took advantage of the momentary freedom and pushed him, whirling to sprint for the door. Two problems: my actions didn’t budge him an inch and my legs were so numb that I had to reach out for him to keep from falling. He wrapped an arm around me and hauled me back to the window.
Near the garage, a group of men were saddling up on the backs of their gleaming black Harleys. The chrome was polished and shiny. Some men had stickers or decorations on the metal of the bike, while others were more plain and discrete. “Those men are my family,” he said simply, watching them.
“Where are they going?”
“On a run up the coast.”
“For what?”
“For the joy of the road,” he said.
“Will you go?” He touched his fingers to the glass and I thought that he wanted to be down there with them so much that it must have ached.
“Not today. Today I’m going to stay here with you.” He set me back on the bed and cuffed my leg again.
At first I refused to talk to him. I took the glass of water he offered, turned my head away and looked at the wall.
“You can sit there like that for years if you want, or you can talk to me.” His voice was filled with yearning, and I wondered when the last time he’d had a real conversation with someone outside the compound had been. I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at my face. His eyes were on the cuff around my leg; they were shadowed with regret, as if he hated what was happening as much as I did. I sighed and gave in.
We spent most of the rest of the day talking. He told me about his life—how his father had been a Howler before him. How he’d saved Madison’s life from a group of drug addicts in the city and introduced her to Mike. All about the club and how they made a life as werewolves in a modern world. Some of their financial projects were a bit illicit, he’d admitted, but none were bad enough to make him ashamed to participate.
The more he spoke, the more my admiration for him grew. The dichotomy was strange—he was keeping me captive, but I understood why. He’d tied me to the bed, but he seemed like a decent man. It sounded like being a werewolf wasn’t all increased strength and striking good looks. The urge to kill when the transformation hit was almost overwhelming when you were a new wolf. He told me about his first painful, twisted transformations. Sam opened up like a reluctant vein, first a trickle, then a surge.
He liked the power that he got from the wolf, but the responsibility of keeping it in check was a strain. A group of men who’d believed the wolf should be allowed to roam—and kill—had broken off from the Howlers twenty years ago and still caused problems for them. Matt, their Sergeant, had recently been looking into a group of them, so Sam was taking on some of his duties while he was gone.
As he spoke, I began to understand how seriously he took the club motto. I’d never known my parents; my whole life, I only had Sarah and her family to turn to.
I’d have done anything to protect them.
I’d have killed for them.
One of the benefits of being a scientist is being able to think rationally. Instinctively, I saw the wolf-aspect of the men here as a threat, an unknown. Now Sam was making an effort to explain it to me in a way I understood and it became more of a known. Something to be wary of, yes, but not blindly feared. Hours passed and I felt the ache in my stomach abate, realized that the panic riding me since I’d seen the transformation in the clubhouse had worn down.
As he spoke, his hand settled on my leg and began to rub slowly, moving the cuff and soothing the chafed skin beneath. “If it was just me,” he said, turning toward me, “I’d let you go and damn the my secret. There are other places to live. But we have children here. We’re free here. I can’t let you take that away from everyone.”
“What does that mean for me?” He didn’t answer right away. Waiting was like standing on the precipice of a very large drop. I couldn’t see whether the wind would blow me off or push me back to safety. When he lifted his head again, I searched for the answer in his beautiful eyes.
“It means that you’re staying here for the foreseeable future.” I thought again of Sarah and my work. But he was saying that I wasn’t going to die, and that was enough for now. Enough for hope.
“Will you untie me?”
“If you try to get out of this house, I’ll kill you. I don’t want to kill you, Ellie.” He hunched his shoulders and moved his head forward, pressing his forehead against mine. Like the night before, the skin-to-skin contact made me want things I knew I couldn’t have. Heat ran through me with every stroke of his hand on my leg. He closed his eyes.
“I won’t run. I promise.”
“Then I’ll untie you.” He undid the cuff and I stretched my leg, enjoying the motion. His eyes followed the curve of my calf as I moved it into the air, flexed my foot and then sat up in the bed. “Is there anything you need?”
“I wouldn’t mind a book. And a shower.” As long as I was stuck here—and I’d be looking for a way out—there was no reason to not be comfortable.
“There’s a shower through that door.” He pointed at a door toward the back of the room. “I’ll get you some of that flowery shampoo girls seem to like tomorrow. I won’t tie you up again, but when I’m not in the house, you’ll be locked in this room. And Ellie, I have better hearing than you’d expect. Don’t try anything.”
“Fine.”
He looked out into the night. “I’m going to go for a few hours. There’s a walkie talkie on the desk you can use to call me if you need me.” Sam walked to the door, then hesitated. “I’ll bring dinner back with me. Do you eat hamburgers?”
“Yes. With pickles and ketchup please.”
“Alright.” He walked through the door and closed it without looking back.
A few days later, I was bored with my situation but also more accepting of it. I spent a lot of time sitting in a chair by the window, watching the people below live their lives. I’d seen Madison playing with her son. He was a chubby-cheeked little boy with curly dark hair. I’d watched Sam help rebuild the engine on a Harley that one of the men towed up and into the compound. According to Sam, the man was a prospect—someone who wanted to be a Howler, but wasn
’t patched in yet. They’d joked and laughed the whole time the work was happening.
I’d learned a lot in a few short days. Women were considered property, but it wasn’t a bad thing. When a biker selected his ol’ lady, she got the protection of every man in the club. Sam had explained that Paul’s ol’ lady was the most recent addition. Like Madison, she was delicate and beautiful. And human. There were no female werewolves anymore, Madison had told me one night in the clubhouse while we watched a show and Sam met with Mike.
“It was a hard trial,” Sam said, “for her and Paul. But it all worked out in the end.”
“Trial?”
“Michael examines the woman before she’s allowed entry into our club. A woman who wears our club’s patches—a woman who’s the property of one of my brothers—she has to measure up. It’s easier for mates, of course.”
“Measure up by being beautiful?” Some of my old insecurities swamped me when I thought of Sam with the sexy, lithe women I saw sprinkled across the compound.
“By being strong.”
“What makes it easier for a mate? What’s a mate?”
“Each wolf has a mated female. Someone who calls to them. I’ve never seen a mate not get accepted.”
“What if a biker marries someone and then finds his mate?”
“Doesn’t happen,” he said with a shrug. “The theory is that by choosing to share a life with someone, we no longer have a mate. We aren’t able to give her everything.”
Sam was gone a lot, helping deal with problems in the community. As Michael’s second-in-command, he had a lot to do. When he was home, though, he spent most of his time with me. On the second night, he even offered me two gifts: clothes from a club member’s sweetie and to let me come downstairs.
Of course, I think that was just a ploy to get me to make dinner for him. The man couldn’t cook a thing. Some of the prospects who hung around, hoping to prove themselves, cooked a nightly meal in the clubhouse, but that evening Sam opted to stay home with me.
“It’s nothing personal,” he said. “I’ll bring you over there at night soon. Some of the prospects are a little confused about why Michael decided to let me keep you is all.” I couldn’t deny that a thrill ran through me at the prospect of being his, even though he hadn’t so much as kissed me since I found out his secret.
KEEPING YOU: Howlers Motorcycle Club 1: A Werewolf Shifter Paranormal Motorcycle Club Romance Page 3
