Conner's Wolf

by Jory Strong

  She laughed. “I think you mean, spread your legs.”

  His smile made her toes curl. “Yeah, that too.”

  “When I get back, we can experiment with your exercise regimen.”

  “Fair warning, it’ll be vigorous. Extremely vigorous.”

  “We’ll put 9-1-1 on speed dial in case you go down then.”

  He touched his mouth to hers before nibbling over to her ear. “Oh, I intend to go down all right, but you’re the one who’s going to pass out.”

  She snorted. “I’ve never passed out in my life, Conner, during sex or otherwise.”

  That just widened his smile. “You will.”

  “We’ll see. After my run in the woods.” She hugged him before using palms to his chest in a gentle request for space.

  He stepped back. And what she felt for him deepened at his willingness to let her go.

  She’d donned shorts and tank top at the motel. She swapped out the sandals for tennis shoes so she could maintain the pretense she planned to jog.

  Contrary to depictions of the change in horror films, werewolves were imbued with genetically tied magic and shifted in a shimmer of it. Whatever she wore became part of the fabric of her being.

  “If you get hungry, eat without me,” she said, giving him one final kiss before she headed for a trail that led farther into the mountains.

  Anxiety whined through her with the feel of Conner’s gaze on her back. At separating from him, as well as from knowing she’d have to be careful not to leave tracks, in case he changed his mind and came after her. An abrupt end to footprints and the beginning of paw prints wasn’t the way to tell him what she was.

  She stumbled. Did she intend to tell him?

  Her mouth went dry. Telling him wasn’t a good idea unless his scent and his stiffened muscles had lied about his reaction to the supernatural. And showing him… The penalty for breaking covenant law and revealing the existence of werewolves—except to a mate or in a life-threatening event where any witnesses could be handled—was harsh.

  She shoved worries about a future with Conner to the back of her mind. First she needed this.

  Sight and scent and taste burst over her with the change. Mother Earth sang through the pads of her feet as she ran, was there in the voices of whispering trees, in bird song and the sound of insects, in the scurrying and crashing of prey animals as they became aware of a predator in their midst.

  A deer bolted across the trail and she took off in pursuit, eager to catch it, accepting that its death was part of the cycle of life. Joy filling her with each stride though enough of the woman remained to silently laugh at imagining Conner’s reaction if she returned with a doe slung over her shoulder.

  The wolf tired without bringing the deer down but still found immense pleasure in drinking from a stream before lying down and rolling in dirt and leaves and a thousand scents. She’d heard tales of Weres who rejected their animal nature and chose to live among humans, to breed during those times when their cycle coincided with one of the moon phases where the gene drawing upon magic went recessive, so their children were born free of the moon’s call and unable to shift.

  She would never deny her children this. Never.

  Time held no meaning for the wolf though she noted when dusk gave way to a night lit by the full moon. She rose and shook, leaping and snapping at fireflies, giving chase to first one rabbit and then a second, and a third, uncaring of anything but the moment.

  Chapter Four

  Conner put the guitar down gently though he felt far from calm. Where the fuck was she?

  It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question and he had a bad feeling it wasn’t going to be the last. Christ. Anyone else and he would have called it in by now and started a search. Anyone else and he wouldn’t feel raw at the prospect of having been lied to.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face as if doing it would erase the conflicting thoughts and emotions. He never should have let her out of his sight, but fuck, trust had to start somewhere.

  He left the lounge chair and added another round of charcoal to those already dying out in the brick grill. He’d give her a little bit longer then decide what action to take.

  Returning to the chair, he accepted the impossibility of getting any songwriting done. Composing didn’t come naturally to him on a good day, something his partner razzed him about when early versions of a piece could be likened to torture by a listener.

  He put the guitar in its case and hauled it into the cabin, bringing the flute out and sitting on the back stairs of the wraparound porch. A semblance of peace came with the first note, a calming grace made more beautiful by nighttime woods and lack of city sounds.

  The wolf abandoned her pursuit of a rabbit when the music reached her ears, a sweet serenade whose lure was every bit as potent as the Pied Piper’s. She raced toward the sound as if it were a summoning, a different type of joy filling her. Her will becoming more closely melded with the woman’s, though she wasn’t yet ready to relinquish her form.

  When she reached the edge of the woods, she left them rather than hide in comfortable darkness. She crept forward, her belly only inches above the ground, her body held low in deference to the alpha.

  She whined, wanting his acknowledgement, wanting him to shift forms and join her though on some level she understood the impossibility of it. He didn’t smell like the males of her birth pack. But of all the males she’d encountered in the place the woman had chosen to live, he was the only one who felt right, worthy of being a mate in the world outside of the insular one of pack.

  Conner’s breath caught when he saw the wolf, a pause bisecting a note before he continued on. He thought female, given her size, and she was achingly beautiful, the embodiment of a fierce wildness even if her actions were unnatural.

  He wondered if she’d escaped a pen somewhere in the mountains, or been dumped by one of the thousands of people who thought it would be cool to own a wolf and then found out otherwise.

  Did the music bring her? Or was she hungry? Or worse, rabid, the disease and her familiarity with humans translating into a lack of fear and presenting a danger he couldn’t ignore, especially with Khemirra in the woods.

  His shoulder rig was in place, the off-duty piece within easy reach. From this distance, he was reasonably sure of making a kill shot. Anything less would be unacceptable.

  The wolf edged closer in a slinking crouch. He couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a prelude to attack, but something about the body language suggested otherwise.

  She grew more breathtaking the closer she got. Her coat was luxurious, black rather than shades of gray. Her irises were the gold-brown of Khemirra’s and he felt their impact, saw the intelligence in them when their eyes met for a brief instant before her increasing boldness finally forced him to slowly lower the flute. She stopped the instant the music did, watched with unnerving intensity as he pulled the gun from its holster.

  “What’s your story, beautiful?” he murmured, thumbing off the safety.

  Her ears swiveled but her gaze didn’t veer from his gun hand. He had the sense she understood the danger she was in, that she’d crept far enough away from cover that a charge forward or a retreat to the woods could be equally deadly.

  His appreciation of nature warred with a moral code embracing a duty to protect. He didn’t want to kill her without justification, yet her behavior wasn’t normal and letting her go might lead to an attack on someone else, on Khemirra.

  He strained to hear the sound of footsteps approaching, either at a walk or a run. He heard nothing and the moment stretched between them, fraught as he considered what should be done, what might need to be done.

  Conscience won. He couldn’t be certain she would attack someone else and he couldn’t be sure his music hadn’t been responsible for bringing her this close to the cabin.

  “I’m not going to shoot you without cause,” he said, standing, the movement freeing her, making her wheel and rush into the woods.


  Her disappearance didn’t relax him. It made him tenser.

  He thumbed the safety on, holstering the gun before taking the flute inside. It was time to go hunting, and when he found Khemirra…

  Khemirra shifted a mile from the cabin, the wolf’s lope becoming a human’s run. Shit! Her heart felt like it might take a flying leap up her throat and out of her mouth.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that Conner might actually shoot her! Hadn’t occurred to the wolf either, another little telltale marker that had her shying away before the word mate became too deeply ingrained in her human psyche.

  She stopped, turning and jogging toward the cabin rather than running away from it. A smile worked its way out from the wolf within. He’d called her beautiful.

  She heard Conner before he came into view and attempted to head off an argument by yelling, “Conner, that you?”

  “Yes.”

  She grimaced. His voice held aggravation where it had been soft for her other self. She’d laugh at the irony of it except she didn’t want to make the situation worse, not when his being pissed stemmed from worry, maybe even fear something had happened to her.

  “Sorry,” she said when they got within sight of each other. “I went farther than I intended.”

  She could see him visibly wrestling down his emotions and putting a muzzle on what were probably some choice words about her disappearance. “Sorry,” she repeated, and found she really was, though short of telling him the truth, this couldn’t have been avoided and would have been far, far worse if he wasn’t the wolf’s choice.

  The wolf didn’t readily yield her shape. Usually there’d be zero chance of shifting forms until closer to sunrise unless she found herself in a life-or-death situation requiring the use of hands or words.

  Khemirra went willingly into Conner’s embrace, pleasure moving through woman and wolf at being surrounded by his heat and scent.

  “Fair warning,” he growled, his arms like bands of steel. “If you were my girlfriend or my wife and you put me through this kind of hell, you’d feel my hand on your bare ass the minute we had some privacy.”

  The threat caused a ripple of need through her belly. The dark timbre of his voice reminding her of the spanks he’d delivered to her cunt the night before.

  “And then?” she asked, her sudden breathlessness having nothing to do with physical exertion.

  “Then I’d fuck you long and hard.”

  Her channel clenched violently and there was no way to suppress a smile. “You might want to rethink that approach, Conner. It sounds to me like you’re trying to incite disobedience.”

  He laughed and she felt the tension flow out of him. The muscles in his arms relaxed though he didn’t loosen his grip on her.

  “You saying you’d like me to punish you, baby?”

  “Put your hand in my panties and see what I think about the concept.”

  “Jesus,” Conner said against her neck before letting her feel his teeth. He shouldn’t allow her to distract him, but the wildness running through her surged into him, fed by moonlight and the scent of a hot summer night.

  Feeling her arousal on his fingertips wasn’t going to satisfy him. He wanted to see it, taste it. He knelt, unsnapping, unzipping, a tug taking her shorts and panties to her ankles.

  “Your punishment can wait until after dinner,” he said, pushing her tank top up far enough to torment her first with open-mouth kisses and teasing licks to her navel, followed by a string of sucking bites to her belly.

  He’d never been a man to mark a woman before Khemirra, but then he’d also never felt the raging possessiveness he did when it came to her. The scorching lust she incited with words alone, the white-hot fury of need to be inside her that came with the mere thought of her.

  She widened her stance, revealing inner thighs damp with arousal and cunt lips already swollen and parted. He touched her first with his fingers then with tongue and mouth. Loving the way she ground against him in both demand for pleasure and surrender to it. Loving her taste and scent, loving everything about her.

  His cock grew wetter, the foreskin retracting fully as the sounds she made excited him further. He’d never make it to the cabin without joining his body to hers first.

  He stood, his hands going to the front of his shorts and freeing his cock. All thought disappearing as she positioned herself on elbows and knees in a presentation of her slit, an invitation to be mounted that left him driven by raw instinct.

  Khemirra shivered in anticipation. Primal desire surged through her as she felt Conner’s eyes on her wet cunt. She needed this. Her wolf needed this. Here, now, in the woods and beneath the moon.

  It was as close as the wolf would ever get to being covered by him, but the wolf was content. The wolf accepted, trusted more deeply than the woman did, negated what Khemirra knew.

  This was dangerous, so very dangerous, not to her physical self but to her heart. She wasn’t in full heat but for the wolf, this was a precursor to breeding, an invitation that had never been extended to another male. This was the beginning of the bonding process—not irreversible. Yet.

  Her rational mind issued the warning but it was too late to heed it even before Conner joined her on the ground, his hands caressing her buttocks, petting her an instant before she felt his teeth on one ass cheek, followed by the lap of his tongue, first over the bite and then a slick, hot glide over parted, swollen folds.

  She begged with a husky, “Please, Conner.” And he took what she offered, what her wolf offered. Thrusting hard and deep and fast, the rhythm marked by the sounds of a rough, fast mating. The slap of flesh against flesh and harsh breathing. By whimpers of pleasure ending in a cry of ecstasy and a feminine demand enforced with the fist-tight squeeze of her sheath.

  Conner came, the force and length of it making him feel powerful, exultant even as it drained him, requiring him to gather strength before he could pull from her body and get to his feet.

  She followed his lead, rising and dressing before wrapping her arms around his waist, her smile as dangerous to his self-control as her body was. “You look pleased with yourself. Like the big bad wolf after he’s swallowed Little Red Riding Hood.”

  Conner laughed against her neck, kissing along the length of it. “I won’t argue with that assessment, but I’m not the only wolf in these woods tonight. One showed up at the cabin just before I decided to come looking for you.”

  “You sure it was a wolf?”

  “Positive. Probably escaped or was dumped by someone who thought owning one would be cool.”

  Khemirra snorted. “As if you can own a wolf.”

  “As if, though I can understand the temptation. She was gorgeous, eyes the color of yours. I think she liked my music.”

  “I heard it. It helped bring me back.”

  “And now it’s time for dinner and some answers.”

  Conner took her hand as they walked back to the cabin, holding off his questions until the steaks were done and they were sitting at the picnic table eating. “Talk, Khemirra.” Not the smoothest of interview techniques but he wanted to get to the point and get this behind them.

  “Armand Scholes.”

  “The science fiction writer?”

  “You a fan?”

  The full moon provided enough light for him to see her tense though her voice didn’t reveal her thoughts.

  “No, I’m more of a mystery/thriller kind of guy.”

  “You like Robert Crais?”

  “Nice try. I read his stuff the day it comes out, but we’re not going to talk about that now. Why is Scholes after you?”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Fair enough. Not much more than what I’ve read in the papers. He’s reclusive and eccentric. A larger than average number of his fans seem to be nut jobs who believe there are aliens among us with wisdom to share, and Scholes is in contact with these extraterrestrials, giving him kind of a cult-like following. But to give the man his due, he gives
back, and one of his charities is wolf preservation. He spends a lot of money trying to get bills passed supporting the reintroduction of them into areas they once inhabited. He’s got a compound in Florida where he houses wolves rescued from various situations. Now what do you know about him?”

  “He believes in werewolves.”

  Conner laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “So he’s as whacked as his fans. Why am I not surprised?”

  “You might want to keep an open mind here, Conner.”

  The sharp tone of her voice warned him against smiling but he couldn’t prevent it any more than he’d been able to stifle the laugh. “I’m all for keeping an open mind, within reason. But you want to know what happens when you open your mind too wide?”

  “No. But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Your intelligence falls out and you start believing in demon possessions, little green men from outer space, werewolves and a wide array of other crazy shit.”

  “And if I’ve seen some of it for myself?”

  He put his knife and fork down and opened his arms wide. “Show me the proof, baby.”

  Her glare was ruined by the tiniest hint of a smile. “I can’t.”

  “There you go.”

  “It’s not as simple as that.” Exasperation threaded through her voice, attracting him rather than repelling him. “There are things out there, but there are also rules in place as to who gets to know about them.”

  “Isn’t that convenient. If I never hear the world supernatural again, I’d be a happy man. Same goes with seeing it.”

  He picked up the knife and fork, spearing his steak hard enough to hear them slam into the plate. He didn’t know how Trace handled it, except he wanted Aislinn badly enough to deal with the weird shit, not just Inner Magick, her shop, but the psychic stuff.

  Remembering Aislinn’s ability to pick out the glove belonging to the Morrison boy when faced with dozens of choices, and then, on another occasion, being able to locate the missing Kirby kid, had his mind shying away, not wanting to look too closely at unexplainable things. Even as the memories forced him to silently admit it’d be a mistake to discount the possibility someone like Aislinn might lead Scholes to Khemirra.