Ghost Wolf: Paranormal Shifter Romance (ComeShift Series Book 1)

by Sky Winters

  Love is the opening door

  Love is what we came here for

  No-one can offer you more

  You know what I mean

  Have your eyes really seen?

  He played a four-song set, joined on the stage for his last song by two other guys: a bassist and a drummer. They were close to his age and Summer wondered if he had met them in his club. The small band played sweet covers of classic rock love songs.

  When their set was done, he came off stage to meet her again and greeted her with a kiss.

  “Do you live in New York now?” she asked him, her voice thick with emotion. She had a feeling that if she didn’t speak up now, she might lose him forever and never get another chance. New York City was not so far away from Philly, but she didn’t want him to be far away at all. It had been confusing and messy for her at first, but she knew now that she and Eric belonged with each other. There had been way too many signs along the way for her to be wrong in that.

  “I don’t really live anywhere,” Eric replied, giving her a sweet and sexy smile. “I live in a van mostly.”

  “You live with me,” she said. “Please come home, Eric. I don’t care if you rob the national treasury.”

  He laughed. “I don’t rob places anymore. I gave that up after that one time. Now I mostly just rob people by making them pay to hear my bad playing.”

  She leaned in and pressed her forehead against his. “Come home and be with me… and our baby, eventually,” she pleaded. “I overreacted because I was scared.”

  Eric shook his head slightly. “You overreacted because you didn’t want to be hurt again,” he said. “I don’t blame you for that. I don’t want to hurt you…”

  “You won’t,” she said, kissing him and keeping her face close to his. “You won’t if you stay,” she whispered.

  He gazed into her eyes. He clearly worried about her feelings. “You want me to stay with you again?”

  Summer nodded. “It’s where you belong.”

  He kissed her lips, gently gliding his tongue along hers. Unless she was mistaken, she felt a rush in her tummy as though their miracle baby was responding to the kiss, too.

  “Come on then,” he whispered. Taking her hand, and with his guitar slung over his back, Eric led Summer outside to his waiting motorcycle.

  After he got the helmets out, she surprised him by climbing onto the large bike all by herself. She looked at him, biting her lip expectantly, and patted the seat in front of her.

  “Let’s go home.”

  THE END

  Rebound with the Biker

  “We need to talk,” Zach told Allie over their dinner.

  Uh oh. That particular phrase usually did not begin a good conversation. Allie Reynolds and Zach had been dating for two years. They were out to celebrate their anniversary. After barely surviving her teen years, Allie felt as though she’d finally found the one. But now, she guessed, he disagreed.

  “This past year has been great,” he went on.

  If it was so great, why are you dumping me?!

  “But honestly, my heart’s just not in it anymore. I can’t be your knight in shining armor. I can’t go on feeling as though, if I should do anything wrong in any way, you might relapse.”

  Allie shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. Zach, it’s not like that. I don’t need saving. I didn’t even know you felt like I did.”

  He frowned a little at her. “Allie, when we met, you were a mess. If you weren’t high, you were drunk. If you weren’t drunk, you seemed pretty depressed… I know, underneath all of that, you were just scared. But I can’t be your rock for you any longer. You rely on me too much and it’s… stifling.”

  Slowly moving her eyes down to focus on the checkered table top, she could feel the tears rushing in.

  “Do you understand?” he asked her. His voice was so gentle and caring. She couldn’t believe he was doing this to her, on their anniversary of all days!

  “I don’t,” she replied.

  Zach patted her hand. “Well, you will,” he said. He stood up from the table, abandoning his plate full of the remnants of burger and fries. Abandoning her. “In time, you will. Let me go pay the check. I’ll see you around, Allie.”

  That statement was such a lie. “No you won’t,” she said under her breath. He was going out of her life. He was leaving her. After she had come so far and they’d been so happy, he was leaving her.

  Allie pushed her plate of food away from herself and left the diner. She hadn’t cleaned her plate as well as he had, but it didn’t matter. Like hell was she going to just sit there alone, with all of those judging eyes of the other diners now on her. She threw her coat over her shoulders and went out into the chilly late February air.

  Underneath her long but slightly thin coat, she was wearing a little black dress, her short brown hair in a bob with bangs swept across her brow in a slanting style. In her blue eyes, she wore contacts and they were now stinging as they mingled with her tears.

  They had arrived by Zach’s car. Now, without him, she would have to walk home.

  What an asshole.

  Thankfully, the restaurant was not too far from her Portland apartment. It was not exactly a city meant for walking, but there were crosswalks and walk signs. She’d be all right walking home, provided the drivers were paying attention and there were no scary homeless guys to jump out of the shadows at her.

  When she was a user, she’d spent a lot of time out and about. It was how she found dealers and how she made friends, strolling the streets and chatting with fellow patrons of nightclubs and bars. Now that she was out of that realm, Allie wanted to stay out. In fact, she was starting to think that a change of scenery wouldn’t be so bad.

  When she finally trudged through the doorway into her apartment, she collapsed onto her black couch-bed, letting her heavy metal front door slam shut on its own. Now that she was alone, safe at home, she sobbed into her pillow. “That asshole!” she yelled, punching at the back cushion of her couch. She’d left the bed unfurled. The last time she’d been on it, that morning, she and Zach had made love. She was so fucking happy.

  Now she wanted to burn the couch-bed and anything else he’d touched in the place. They hadn’t lived together. She was glad of that now, because there wasn’t going to be any kerfuffle with the landlord. But everything just hurt now. He may not have lived there with her, but he had been there so often that he may as well have.

  She even missed the random piles of clothes that he would leave everywhere.

  Allie didn’t want to let herself be sad and mopey about Zach. She didn’t want to give him the honor of making her feel like shit. She decided she was going to take action and move on right then and there.

  It had been many years since she’d last done it, but she got out her phone and logged onto a dating app. She was going to find someone to hook up with. A rebound would be good for her. She could take her mind off of things. She could be with someone again, someone who made her feel good and someone who wouldn’t expect her to be there afterwards. Sex without the commitment of years.

  After flicking her finger through several guys who seemed too sincere or too nice for what she wanted, Allie’s eyes fell on the profile of one Lance Chase. She arched an eyebrow, smirking at his pictures. He had dark hair and brown eyes. There was a sort of James Dean look to him. He wore leather jackets and rode a motorcycle. When she read his bio, she laughed to herself. He was the VP of a motorcycle club: The Tomahawks.

  “I highly doubt that your real name is Lance Chase,” she said out loud, as though he could somehow hear.

  She swiped right on his profile, deciding that he was the one she needed right now. He was sexy, casual and nearby.

  She hoped she’d read it right and that he was in Vancouver, Washington. Allie was not driving all the way to Canada.

  Lance was a tall man with a lean, muscular body. He had several tattoos including a tomahawk on his upper left bicep, a roaring panther on his right pec a
nd a large, colorful Joker card on his right calf. Not all of his tats had a real inspiration behind them; some of them he’d just picked out because he thought they looked cool. But those three mattered to him for different reasons.

  He had coffee-colored skin, brown eyes and dark, almost black hair. He looked very much like a Native American, and that was because he was the grandson of one. His grandfather was a member of the Nez Perce tribe in Washington. Lance did not know much about it, beyond the fact that it was cool to get to say he was an Indian and have it be true. He wasn’t one of those “2% Cherokee on my mother’s side” posers.

  The Tomahawks were his motorcycle club. They were more like his band of brothers. Everyone in his club had some sort of problem with substance abuse. Maybe someone’s parent was a user and treated them like shit because of it. Maybe someone was a former user who had sobered up. Maybe someone was still a user and was trying to be better by allying himself with people who would understand and be able to offer them guidance and comradery.

  For Lance’s part, he had been free of drugs for three years. He still drank and smoked on occasion, but he no longer touched cocaine and heroin. That was a good thing, because the drugs nearly killed him.

  He and his motorcycle club rode their bikes to raise money and awareness about substance abuse and its victims. Lance was pretty damn proud of what he did. It wasn’t his job or anything but he sure wished it was. His day job was working as a pizza chef in this place called The Blind Onion. It wasn’t much, but it paid the bills and he got free pizza out of the deal.

  What he still wanted out of life was a girlfriend. Sure, Lance had been in many short-lived relationships over the years, but he was hoping for something lasting. He wanted to sweep a girl off her feet, take her for a ride on his motorbike and feel real love. That was why he signed up for the ridiculous dating app. That was why, during downtime at meetups with his club, he could be found head down and eyes focused on his phone’s screen, browsing potential dates and hoping that at least some of them would be interested in him.

  Once such potential date was this girl named Allie Reynolds. She looked cute in her pictures. She had short, brown hair that curled slightly outwards and bangs that sloped across her face, nearly covering her left eye. Her eyes were big and blue. She seemed to be a fun-loving person. She was smiling in nearly every picture. Lance liked that. He didn’t want to be with another depressing person. He’d spent too long in the game, trying to find someone who would make him happy. He wanted to be with someone like Allie… If she would have him.

  He swiped right on her profile and then received a message from the app. She had apparently swiped right on him, too! That meant that they could message each other now. The only problem was that he didn’t know what to say.

  Allie was gleeful when her phone alerted her to the fact that the biker dude had liked her back. He had been quick about it, even. She could send him a message, so she thought it out carefully. She didn’t want to come across as desperate or slutty… But she didn’t want to just say ‘Hi’ either. That was not a good conversation jumping-off point.

  Suddenly, she smirked a little. Why not go ahead and say it?

  “Is Lance Chase really your name?”

  She hit send before she could talk herself out of it. Now, she just had to wait for him to respond. He was local, so at least they were in the same time zone.

  He sent back a message almost instantly.

  “Lance Chase DuBois, but don’t spread that around too much. I’ve got a reputation.”

  Allie laughed. “What kind of reputation is that?” she asked in her next message. She could tell that a guy who rode motorcycles probably had a bad boy image. That was the sort of thing she was looking for at the moment. Someone who wouldn’t be looking for anything other than one fun night.

  “You probably don’t want to know,” he replied.

  Grinning, she messaged him back without hesitation. “Let’s see about that. Meet you in Vancouver for drinks? You name the time and place.”

  It took a little longer for a response to come that time. Allie decided to use the pause to go into her closet and pick out something attractive to wear. She did not want to meet him in her little, black dress. She took that off and threw it into her hamper, still thinking that anything to do with Zach needed to be cleaned and burned.

  She was standing there, naked and going through her wardrobe when her phone’s notification sound went off again.

  When she picked her phone back up and read over Lance’s message, she got excited. They would be meeting at a pizza place the following evening, and from there it was “TBD”…

  Allie sank back down onto her couch-bed, cradling the phone in the palm of her hand as though it was now some fancy, important piece of her new man friend. The following evening was a Saturday. That made things infinitely easier.

  “As long as TBD doesn’t stand for ‘To Be Dead’, I’m in,” she joked back.

  Zach had royally screwed her over, but she was going to have good, excited dreams tonight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Blind Leading The Blind

  Allie drove for about an hour to arrive at the place Lance Chase DuBois had specified, some place called The Blind Onion. It was apparently a pizza place, and she was always willing to eat pizza. She parked her car in the lot nearby and strolled inside. There weren’t many diners in the place. In fact, aside from her, there appeared to only be one other person in the place.

  Oh, please don’t be Lance, she thought as she eyed the guy subtly and sat as far away from him as possible. He was older, at least fifty, wearing a trucker hat and a wife-beater. Allie preferred to sit by the window and the front door in case she would need to quickly make an escape.

  Thankfully, Lance had messaged his number to her so she could call or text him as soon as she’d arrived. She pulled her phone from her purse and chose to text him so this strange man wouldn’t hear her and get any ideas.

  She didn’t know why she’d become so paranoid. She supposed it had something to do with being in a different place. Even though that was what she’d wanted out of this. A new place and a new person…

  Just then, she heard the sound of a door opening up in the back. She swiveled around in her chair and craned her neck to see the tall, dark and handsome man ambling towards her. He had shaggy, black hair and brown eyes. Allie hadn’t fully realized how exotic-looking he was until this moment.

  This is more like it.

  Lance smirked at her. “Allie R?” he asked, even though he had a smug sort of look on his face. He knew it was her.

  Allie nodded anyway. She wanted to give him the pleasure of knowing he was correct. She wanted to give him all kinds of pleasure… “Lance Chase?” she asked, grinning a dimpled grin back at him.

  “Yep,” he said. He took a chair at her table, turned it around and sat in it backwards. Then he offered a hand to her and she shook it. “Thank you for driving up here. How was your ride?”

  “Ah, it was no problem,” she replied, waving that away as though forty-five minutes and a tank of gas were nothing. “It’s nice to finally be out of Portland. Do you work here?” She noticed that he came from the back, where the people making the pizza worked, so she assumed.

  Lance laughed and nodded. “Very perceptive. Yes. My shift just ended. Do you wanna go somewhere else? This place is good, but I wouldn’t mind getting away now.”

  “I can’t blame you for that,” Allie said. “I’m easy. What did you have in mind?”

  Thinking it over, he suddenly snapped his fingers. “There’s this great bar up the street from here called The Corner Pub. It sounds all Irish and shit, but it’s not. It’s more like a sports bar. They’ve got live music sometimes, and pool tables. Does that sound fun?”

  Allie certainly appreciated that he wanted to do what she thought sounded fun, instead of just dragging her along with him to places. She needed to prove that she could be adaptable, too. “Sure,” she answered. “Sounds
fun. I parked my car out front.”

  “Ah,” he replied. “Do you want to go for a ride on my bike?”

  Sometimes, Allie’s mind could be quite innocent. She imagined him riding a bicycle for a moment before realizing that he meant his motorcycle. Of course. That was what vice presidents of motorcycle clubs rode…

  “Sure,” she said, a little bit more hesitantly that time. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

  “It’s like riding a bicycle,” Lance said dismissively, smiling.

  Ha ha.

  He assured her that her car would be safe in the parking lot and led her out back to where he’d parked his bike, in the employee lot. His motorcycle was a black Harley Davidson. She didn’t know what kind. She didn’t care what kind.

  “I only have one helmet,” he told her, “but you can wear it since you’re new.”

  That was both gallant and crazy of him. He handed the helmet to her and she readily put it on even though she wasn’t even on the bike yet. Lance chuckled as he looked her over. “How old are you, if I can ask that?”

  Allie eyed him. “Twenty-five.”

  He suddenly sighed, relieved. “I was starting to worry if you were in high school. I’m thirty.”

  “It says our ages on the app,” she pointed out.

  That just made him chuckle again. “Like anyone pays attention to that.”

  Without really giving her any warning, he lifted her up and placed her on the motorcycle. So far, so good. It didn’t fall over and crush her or burst into flames or anything. At least not yet. Calm down, she mentally admonished herself. Remember, you’re going to fuck this bad boy later. He won’t want to bang if you keep acting so jumpy.

  Lance mounted the bike in front of her and took her hands, placing them around his midsection. “You’re going to want to hold on tightly to me now,” he said. “And then, after several drinks, you’ll want to hold on even tighter.”

  She was pretty sure she knew what that was supposed to mean.