by Amy Lane
Green’s Hill Werewolves, Vol. 2
By Amy Lane
In the world of the Little Goddess
After a rocky start and some unexpected battles, Teague Sullivan may have found a home at Green’s Hill. With Jack and Katy by his side, he has the chance to achieve a happiness he only dreamed of during his impoverished childhood.
But much of Teague’s happiness depends upon being worthy of serving Green and Lady Cory, two leaders he’d die for and two people who gave him a chance to be a good man. Teague needs to serve them to feel worthy of love, but Jack resents anything that takes Teague away from his lovers, even his duty.
The three of them, Jack, Teague, and Katy, perform a delicate dance with an uncertain crescendo. What’s more likely to destroy them? Jack’s jealousy, Cory’s wrath, or the true enemy, the rival wolf pack with the insane leaders who are trying to take over Green’s turf? Teague Sullivan, who never thought much of himself, is suddenly the crux of everything he’s ever loved. Can he become the man and alpha wolf his people need?
For the first time in print: Becoming and Being.
Table of Contents
Blurb
Becoming
Being
Amy’s Alternative Universe Romance
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About the Author
By Amy Lane
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Copyright
Becoming
Prologue
TEAGUE WASN’T the only one who had bad dreams—at least not this night.
Two days after the Werewolf Debacle, as Jack was starting to think of it, he lay beside his lovers. He should have been hearing their breathing in the dark, but instead he was sweating, trying to recapture the dream that had ripped apart his night. Jack had been a big reader as a kid, and he’d spent much of his childhood in stories of knights and ladies, quests and battles—silly, idealistic bloodshed for a sheltered, bloodless boy. This dream had been just like them. He remembered bold lines and fairy-tale colors—just like a comic book or a kid’s story. And just like a comic book or a kid’s story, the movements had been broad and stylized—it hadn’t looked real at all, but the beautiful parts had been more beautiful and the scary parts had been terrifying….
Unlike in real life, where she was a rather plain college student, Lady Cory was very beautiful in the dream. Her hair was a glorious scarlet waterfall, and her eyes flashed green-brown fire. There were no freckles to make her average, and her cheekbones seemed to have moved up and gotten a little narrower. The results were lovely and terrible and terrifying—there was nothing of the friendly, frightening human being Jack had been humanly jealous of. In her place was an inhumanly beautiful, cold and bloodless monarch, the kind men would die for and women would kill to serve.
Teague stood before her—wearing armor polished to a sheen, of course. He held his helmet under his arm and knelt with his head bent forward in servitude.
“I give to thee, my lady, all that is in my power….” Not Teague’s words in real life, of course, but Jack could see the sentiment was real. The lady could too, and she bent her head and replied. Her words were humble, but her face was haughty and indifferent, and Jack felt a blaze of anger in the dream because he knew—just knew—that bitch had no idea what it was she was being offered.
“Your sacrifice is unnecessary, sir knight. You serve us well. Be happy, go home to your lovers. Be well.”
Of course Teague wouldn’t just let that stand, now would he? He’d have to go and do the noble goddamned thing and make her accept what he was offering.
Jack watched in horror as Teague turned the sword inward, and—grabbing it by the blade—thrust it into his chest. Of course, in real life this would be impossible since he was wearing two tons of armor, but just for Jack’s dream, because he was horrified and freaked out, that fucking sword slid in like the steel plating was butter. And the damned lady of the house, she did nothing. She did jack-fucking-diddly-shit as Teague reached inside that wreckage of metal and chest cavity and pulled out his still-beating heart.
In the dream Jack started to scream—one of those terrible screams you make when you’re asleep, where your mouth is open and your chest is working like a bellows but no sound comes out. Teague looked at him with that beautiful fuck-me grin and winked. When he spoke, blood frothed and bubbled from between his lips. “Don’t worry, Jacky. There’ll be enough for you when she’s done.”
But Lady Cory was gnawing on the thing, flashes of scarlet blood coating her cheeks and dribbling down her chin, and Jack was pretty damn sure there was going to be nothing left.
Jack’s eyes opened in the dark, and his heart—still securely in his chest, unlike Teague’s dream heart—hammered blood in his ears.
He turned to Teague, that bantam, wiry body back-spooning into Jack’s arms, just in time for Teague to gasp like a swimmer who’d been under for too long. He struggled to sit up, making what sounded like suppressed screams in his throat, but Jack tightened his embrace and forced Teague to lie down.
After a few moments, Teague’s body relaxed. He turned away from Katy, who was soundly asleep, and let Jack kiss his forehead and nuzzle his cheek. As Teague’s breathing calmed down and his terrible shivers stopped, Jack spoke, his voice startling in the dark.
“What do you dream about, beloved?”
Teague hauled in another breath, and Jack felt one final, convulsive shiver rock his scrawny, tree-root body.
“Letting you down,” he said after a moment. Jack kissed his forehead. It was still clammy from the dream, and Teague made a rough sound in his throat before his shoulders came down in that self-protective cocoon Jack recognized so well.
“Impossible,” Jack said fervently. He was thinking that his dream could wait. Teague had enough on his mind.
Personal Debt
WHEN TEAGUE Sullivan was fourteen years old, he made a miraculous discovery.
Girls wanted to touch him.
Boys probably wanted to touch him too, but he didn’t figure that out until Jacky, and it was beside the point. The point was, Teague had never been touched unless he was getting beaten. When Michelle Campos—with glossy dark hair in rolled curls, vivacious brown eyes, and the sexual confidence of a girl who knew she was wanted—pinned him behind the boys’ lockers after sixth period gym, whispered breathily into his mouth, and put her hands on his shoulders, Teague was mesmerized. Not by Michelle, although she was pretty damned awesome, but by the feel of her palms on his flesh.
He opened his mouth to her kisses, and she tasted like soda and chocolate. He didn’t get a lot of sweet in his life, so he learned to love sweet, although he never ever asked for it. She pulled up his shirt and rubbed his bare skin with her whole hand, and he must have whimpered in complete surprise when she hit his nipples and his whole body tingled, because she laughed into his mouth and kissed him harder.
Before he could protest—not that he would have—she had unbuttoned his jeans and was on her knees in the dark of the locker room with his hard, aching cock in her mouth and her hands massaging his thighs. He couldn’t have said at that moment which one felt better. When his vision went dark and his body exploded and his eyes rolled back into his head, he might have said it was the mouth on his cock, but it was a near thing.
He didn’t know what to do then.
He stood there, stroking her hair as she laughed some more into the closeness of his thighs, and then they heard voices.
“Oops!” she said, standing up and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She had a wicked smile, and he found himself answering it, feeling shy and dumb and inept. It didn’t matter. She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, let
ting him taste himself, and then held her finger to her lips and disappeared through the back entrance to the boys’ locker room, leaving Teague to haul up his jeans and continue breathing, although that second one was somewhat of a stretch.
He’d felt vaguely ashamed of that moment.
Not of her mouth or her hands or anything she’d done—that had been wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that sex became like soda or chocolate—that sweet thing he would never reach for but would take only when it dropped into his lap. Which it did frequently, much to his constant surprise and puzzlement. He didn’t do anything! Why did women keep wanting to feel him up and blow him?
No, he felt ashamed because of what he didn’t do. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that miracle of firing nerves and human touch. He’d just smiled at her a little in math, that was all. But she’d kept smiling at him, and he’d kept returning it, every day a little longer, and then… then on this day, she’d blessed him with human touch and orgasm, and he hadn’t paid his debt.
He never got a chance to pay that debt. Michelle’s boldness had been an act of desperation and goodbye—her parents were moving her to an even smaller school in an even smaller town, because the assumption was that sex doesn’t happen in small schools in small towns. Anyone who’s ever been to one could tell you different, but parents are often afraid of sex, and there has never been any reasoning with them.
So Teague learned his second lesson.
He learned that if you don’t see the person ever again, any mistakes you made, any fuckups or uncomfortable moments could be pretty much forgotten.
Teague lived to be fourteen because he learned quickly and acted on that knowledge. He learned to be a fucking awesome lover in the same way. He never wanted to feel that sense of shame and debt for not giving back. He also learned to only go home with girls who wouldn’t want to know his name in the morning.
Teague had been almost thirty when he woke up in Green’s bed after being healed of what should have been a mortal wound. He never said a word to Green—he never had to—about how Green’s touch was like food to a starving man and balm to a ravaged soul. Green knew. But when Teague found himself sharing a bed with Jacky and then Katy, being touched constantly, especially in sleep, became a sweet and terrible part of his life.
Sweet because it was the thing he craved most of all and never wanted to admit to needing.
Terrible because he could not see how, in his entire history, he had ever come to deserve such kindness. How could he repay it? It was like that long ago blow-job—perfect, exquisite, and stolen from the pain the world should be.
So that touch as he went to sleep haunted his dreams. Whether his lovers were being chased by a dragon with his father’s face or whether he was locked in his head, screaming in his skull as his traitorous body destroyed what he loved best, it was all about being touched and how if it didn’t hurt, Teague Sullivan didn’t deserve it.
Now that he’d had love for a couple of weeks and learned that it hurt sometimes worse than no love at all, he would have thought the dreams would ease up a little, but they hadn’t. Life became a crapshoot. One day he was sitting with his family and ready to reach for them like he had a right to be happy. The next day he was howling his chest raw because he had no right to be happy, none at all. It was almost easier when he’d expected to be beaten all the time—at least then he’d known what was coming. It had sucked, but he hadn’t been touched then. He hadn’t known the opposite of “suck.” He hadn’t known that sometimes heaven might allow “rock” as opposed to “suck.”
The dreams hurt, gleeful demons frolicking in the viscera of his broken heart.
That was what love should feel like, right? That was all he deserved.
He certainly didn’t deserve Jacky holding him, rocking him, kissing his forehead tenderly, making him feel protected and safe. He definitely didn’t deserve Katy’s softness—Katy pressed up against his back in sweetness, better than chocolate and soda and softer than cotton candy or puppy fur. He didn’t deserve them—he knew he didn’t. But they wouldn’t let him up, wouldn’t let him out of bed into the cold and the dark and the wet.
They wouldn’t let him go, and so he accepted them. He had to, because even when he didn’t deserve them, he knew better than to hurt them when punishing himself. Any asshole knew that was a debt you could never repay, and Teague always paid his debts.
The next morning, Katy woke him with a sleepy kiss.
“Last two days were nice, baby, but today I’ve got to work.” She smelled spicy and exotic as she kissed him—something about the soap she’d bought to use in the shower. He liked it. It was like cinnamon and bay leaves—warm and sharp, just like her.
“You have a good day, Katy,” he mumbled, and she surprised him by keeping her face close and regarding him with warm brown eyes.
“Last time I told you to sleep in, Teague, you didn’t. You got all hurt and then went on a run and then you and Jacky almost got killed, and then we had to sit on you to make you sleep in. I know you’ve got to meet werewolves and be all functional today, but… could you, just for me, let me think of you tucked in here with Jacky for an hour? Don’t get into no fights, don’t get all hurt on your inside. Just sleep. Make love. Try a do-over, okay?”
Teague blinked. “Maybe I’m just not designed for sleeping in. You ever think about that, Katy?”
She shook her head and swore softly in Spanish. “I think you got some time to go before your heart’s all better, that’s what I think. And you might kill us first while it’s mending. ’Bye….”
“Katy….” He’d hurt her, though he didn’t know how, and she scowled at him and gave him a flipped wrist with an open palm. Talk to the palm, Teague. I’m done talking to you.
“Fine, damn it!” he snapped before she could slam the door. “I’m staying here in bed. Are you happy?”
She looked over her shoulder as she got to the door, and he couldn’t help but think that even the sulky thrust of her lower lip was charming. “You gonna get laid?” she asked, considering.
Teague risked a look at Jacky, who squinted one eye at him and went back to feigning sleep to keep out of the argument.
“No,” he said punitively, and as Jack sat up in bed and protested, “No?” Katy let out a musical laugh and slid gracefully out the door.
Teague grunted, a reluctant smile twitching his usually compressed mouth. “Serves you right,” he grumbled. Then he hauled the comforter over his shoulder and retreated to the corner of the bed where he usually slept when he was by himself.
Jack scooted next to him and grabbed him around the waist in spite of his startled squawk, and Teague found himself hauled up back-to-front with his lover.
“What in the….”
“Humor me.” Then Jack… fondled Teague, for lack of a better word.
“I thought we were supposed to be sleeping,” Teague complained, but he wasn’t protesting very hard. God—Jack’s touch, Katy’s touch—it really had become his drug, hadn’t it?
Jack’s hand slid across Teague’s chest, rubbing deliberately against Teague’s sensitive nipples and down his stomach, and Teague arched into it, appreciating the pure touch of skin on skin.
“You go ahead and sleep all you want,” Jack murmured into the sensitive hollow of his ear. “Just let me touch you while you sleep.”
Teague bit back on a half-strangled sound. It might have been “please” before he killed it.
“Please?” Jacky asked plaintively, and then Teague felt like a coward for not saying the word first.
“I really do need to run today,” he protested half-heartedly. “That’s not just bull… sh… eeeet….”
“Bullsheet?” Jack chuckled. He had just wrapped his arm over Teague’s shoulders and framed Teague’s throat with his long-fingered hand. It was an intimate position, a vulnerable position—especially when the hand was large and it was attached to a tall, strong man. Teague’s vulnerability slammed into his chest, and it occurr
ed to him that he was giving Jack his safety, his life, just with that one gesture.
He wanted to run, and his shoulders quivered with the urge to push himself out of bed and head for the cross-country track. It took all his will to simply lie passive under Jack’s seductive touch.
Jack seemed to sense this. Carefully he stroked down from Teague’s throat and whispered, “Shhhhh… take it easy, big man” into his ear.
Teague swallowed. “I wasn’t kid—”
“I know.” Sometimes these exchanges got heated, sharp—Teague’s driving need to run coming up against Jack’s possessive need to keep him in their bed. But not this time. Maybe it was the enforced intimacy of the day before, or maybe Jack just knew what Teague needed, but this time Jack’s voice only grew gentler.
“Here, beloved,” he whispered. Teague blushed under the endearment just as he blushed under Jack’s hands. “Here, I’ll make you a deal.”
“Yeah?” Teague hated the note of pleading in his voice, but his insides were still raw. The day before he’d had an emotional pain dump of epic proportions, a 9.9 on the Richter scale of internal cataclysms. He couldn’t have another argument right now—he wouldn’t do it. He needed something easy…. God help him, he needed to give in. But he was stubborn. He would negotiate. He wouldn’t go too far into the debt of touching… he couldn’t. That was his code. It had kept him sane for thirty soulless years. Yes, whispered his traitorous body, but those years were before Jacky. He told the voice to shut up—Jack was offering him a way out.
“Yeah.” Jack nibbled on his ear again. Teague’s hips started to arch and wiggle. He tried to make himself stop that—it was impossible to stay out of personal debt when your body was taking touch on credit.
“What’s the deal?” Teague tried to turn, thinking he would pin Jacky down, ravish him, take his long, drooling cock into his mouth and make his lover crazy. Jacky would touch him then unreservedly, and Teague could earn the touches that way. But Jack kept his arms around Teague’s chest and tightened the embrace, not letting him move unless he jerked his body out of Jack’s control. That would lead to a fight, to a conflict, and Teague… oh Goddess… he was still bleeding from thinking Jacky was dead, from having his lovers tend to him like a fraught, weepy child.
