Green's Hill Werewolves, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  “I’ll do that too in the shower. Now let’s go….”

  They made it back to the room using preternatural speed. Teague got there first and was running the shower as Jack and Katy walked in. Katy hung back by the door for a minute, and Jack turned to her with his hand extended. “What?”

  She shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I don’t know. This is your makeup thing. You really want me here with your makeup thing?”

  Jack snorted. “He broke up with both of us, sweetheart. You get the hurt, you get the makeup sex. It’s only fair.”

  Her slow-blooming grin was unrepentantly sexy. “There’s gonna be some awesome makeup sex, isn’t there?”

  Jack answered the grin with one of his own. “Oh yeah. Just as soon as I—”

  Katy nodded vigorously. “I know, baby. As soon as you brush your teeth. Now hurry! That man can take a damned quick shower!”

  Jack managed to get in and out of the bathroom before Teague emerged. He had a thought about going into the shower and joining Teague, but the shower wouldn’t fit three, and he’d meant what he said to Katy. She shared the heartbreak, she shared the joy.

  When he got out to the bedroom, Katy was bouncing restlessly on the bed.

  “What now?” she asked. He rolled his eyes, feeling nervous too.

  “I don’t know. It’s like I just want to offer myself up to him. I don’t want him to ever doubt that my….” Jack blushed. He was talking too much. This next part sounded great in his head but sappy and overdone out loud. But he couldn’t help it. He looked at Katy slowly, still blushing. “I want him to know that my body is just like my heart. It’s always his.”

  Katy flashed him that wood-erecting grin again. “Baby, hurry up and get naked. Man, I’m looking forward to this!”

  Tender Reckonings

  TEAGUE DIDN’T know what to expect when he walked into the bedroom. He was thinking more talk, which was probably necessary, but he was tired of talking. He wanted his family back. He wanted to claim them. He didn’t know the relationship protocol for saying “It’s all forgiven. I want you now.”

  Turns out he didn’t need to.

  He walked down the short hallway, a towel knotted around his waist, prepared to go through his drawers and find clothes and sit down and say whatever needed to be said. Instead he found Jacky on his knees on the floor, bent over the bed.

  He was naked, and his backside glistened with lubricant. Katy was lying on her stomach in front of him, talking softly in his ear as she anchored his hands in front of him with her own.

  “I want to touch you!” Jacky complained. She laughed softly, wickedly, and Teague’s erection was instant, burgeoning, and painfully hard.

  “Katy,” he rasped. She looked up at him, her brown eyes innocent and challenging at the same time.

  “What?”

  “Take off your clothes, lie on your back, and spread your knees. He wants to touch you. Make him taste you instead.”

  Her smile was slow and sensuous as she wriggled out of her jeans and threw them over the bed. “It’s good to have you back.”

  Teague growled, and his towel fell to the floor. Words. He was tired of them. His family had come and seen him be savage and violent, and they’d claimed him anyway. It was time to return the favor.

  He leaned over the bed as Katy scooted down, losing her bra and sweater as she opened her bare thighs around Jack’s head. Teague touched lips with her, and she arched off the bed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders—and oh Goddess, she was soft and silky under his hands. He pulled away and suckled a lush breast, playing the nipple with his tongue, and she knotted her hands in the hair at his neck. Then she made a little keening sound as Jacky began to taste her.

  Teague pulled away long enough to ask, “You know what you’re doing, Jacky?”

  Jack raised a shiny face to his lover. “I’m not very good at this,” he apologized. Katy laughed throatily and reached down between her thighs to push at his head.

  “You know what you’re doing, Jacky—just keep….” She moaned. “Yeah. Like that….”

  Teague leaned over Jack’s side so he could talk in his ear while Jack was busy. “Don’t ever turn away from me again.”

  Jack tried to look at him around the plumpness of Katy’s thigh. “Never,” he swore. “Never.”

  Teague kissed him—tasting Katy, tasting them. Then, before he could get lost in the kiss, before the kiss became everything and he lost this fantasy of Jack pleasuring Katy as Teague fucked him into oblivion, Teague broke off the kiss and positioned himself at Jack’s backside.

  Jack was already stretched and prepared, and Teague had to rest his head on Jack’s spine for a moment to get control of himself. The thought of Jack and Katy in here, making him ready for Teague…. God. God damn, that was sexy. They were his. It was that simple and that absolute.

  Teague’s cock probed at Jack’s entrance. Jack made a muffled whimper, a begging sound, and he must have stopped what he was doing because Katy made one too. Their physical happiness literally depended on Teague, and all the triumph he’d felt and squashed in his chest when defeating his enemy surged back into him now.

  He thrust deeply into Jack and grunted, “Mine!” Jack howled, the noise muffled in Katy’s flesh, and she giggled a little and then gasped as Jack seemed to remember what he was doing. Teague didn’t give him much of a chance.

  He pounded hard and slow, and every time their bodies were flush, Katy gasped. Jack’s hands, which had been on either side of Katy’s thighs on the bed, suddenly disappeared as Jack grabbed for his own cock.

  Teague knotted one hand in Jack’s hair and dragged his head back while yanking Jack’s other hand off his body.

  “Her, Jacky. Play with her!” Because as much as he loved Jack, Teague knew his lover’s greatest failing was an inability to think beyond the two of them. Loving Katy, touching her slickness, making her scream, that was a start.

  Katy gasped and shrieked, and Teague rewarded Jack’s good behavior with a reach-around. Jack felt long and full in his hand, and as Teague thrust hard into Jack’s body, Jack’s erection became slick with fluid as well. Jack groaned and rested his head on Katy’s thigh, and Katy protested.

  “No, you can’t do that, Jacky!” Teague stopped. Just stopped moving and waited for Jack to keep going. It became a lesson. Teague wouldn’t move until Jack remembered there was more to their relationship than the two of them. Jack appeared to be motivated. His busy fingers were working, and his clever tongue must have been doing something right. Katy’s eyes were glazed and her mouth was parted, and Teague slowly fucked Jacky to the point where—

  “Teague… I’ve got to come!” He was begging, but Teague wasn’t giving. Not yet.

  “You”—thrust—“know”—thrust—“what”—thrust—“to do….”

  Suddenly Katy started to gibber. “Oh God… Jacky, that’s my… my… not… oh… yes… right there….” and then her body bucked, practically coming off the bed, and her thighs clenched around Jack’s head. Teague, mesmerized by the sight of her beautiful climax, had mercy on Jack and cut loose his own desires. He started pounding, hammering at Jack, stroking him quickly, and as Katy relaxed and scooted backward on the bed, Jack buried his face in the sheets and howled. His climax spurted across Teague’s hand, and Teague pounded again and again and again, finally letting go of Jack’s cock to put both hands on Jack’s hips and thrust into him until his own orgasm ripped through his body and he poured himself into his lover’s flesh.

  He groaned, then louder, and then in a frenzy he hauled Jack up by the chest to bite the joining of neck and shoulders hard enough to leave a mark. Jack groaned some more, an aftershock making his body clench around Teague’s tight enough to make Teague bite him again. Finally they were done and lay panting, collapsed at the side of the bed, while Katy turned herself around and came to kiss them both.

  She kissed Jacky first, licking daintily at her own taste around his mouth and on his chin, and Jack gri
nned at her and kissed her back. Then she raised her face to Teague, and he possessed her. His body, still buried in Jack’s, stirred and stiffened, and Jack groaned as Teague’s hips gave another convulsive round of pistoning as he and Katy continued the ripe, passionate, lingering kiss.

  But eventually the passion banked, ebbed, and left them cooling their sweat, rubbing noses to cheeks and chins and jawlines as their breathing became normal.

  “Want to lie down?” Katy asked at last, and both men grunted in protest as Teague pulled out. He stood to go get a washcloth, but both Jack and Katy said, “No!” He turned back to them and shook his head.

  “We like the stickiness,” Katy sulked. “Not forever, but… don’t wash it away when it was wonderful, okay?”

  Teague nodded and crawled into the rumpled bed, not surprised when they climbed up on either side of him. He plumped the pillows and sat at the head of the bed and was truly satisfied when they joined him and snuggled. Katy tucked herself under his arm and kissed his chest, rubbing it absently as she smiled up at him.

  Jack sat taller and wrapped his arm around Teague’s shoulders. Teague leaned back against him and closed his eyes, allowing himself to be comforted. Allowing himself to be loved.

  “Never turn away from me again,” he whispered, surprised. He’d thought Jacky and Katy would do the talking. Turned out he had words in his heart too.

  “I won’t,” Jack promised, bumping his nose along Teague’s jawline. Teague closed his eyes and returned the bump, then found himself talking again.

  “I mean it,” he said roughly. “There’s only so much of me. It all goes away when you turn your back.”

  “I know that now,” Jack said back. He reached across Teague’s body and took Katy’s hand, and together they made themselves into the human safety net Teague had come to rely on. “I’ll never do it again.”

  Teague closed his eyes and figured that was about all the talking he could stand. He’d spent the last few weeks learning how to be happy and becoming the man his lovers needed. He figured now was a good time to put all that learning into practice.

  THE REMAINING werewolves were easily dealt with, but apparently Cory wasn’t convinced they were the end of the matter.

  They discussed it the morning she and Bracken put the remaining werewolves on a 3:00 a.m. plane out of town. They came back and caught a quick breakfast before Cory and the other students left for school.

  “The thing is,” she mumbled through a bite of eggs and cheese, “they’re going to go back and tell everyone to leave us the fuck alone, and they’re going to make pretty credible witnesses. But from what I can tell, it’s sort of a big snake pit down there. A little alpha on every corner, no big alpha holding the whole thing together.”

  Teague grunted in agreement and took the plate of bacon she handed him. He watched in amusement as Bracken gave her sausage to replace the bacon. Cory took a bite while she was talking before she even realized what he’d done and then glared at him while she was still chewing. With a sigh, she held the sausage down next to her chair. Renny was there in cat form, and she took the meat with a clawless swipe of her paw.

  “We never did figure out who’s converting the homeless,” Teague reminded her. She looked up in bemusement from another helping of eggs on her plate.

  “Bracken Brine Granite op Crocken,” she snapped, “you are trying to make me fat!”

  “You lost ten pounds over Thanksgiving,” the elf replied with a scowl. “Who in the fuck does that?”

  Cory gave Teague a rather abashed look. “We’ve had this argument before,” she confessed. “The weird thing is, there’s not a single scale on the hill. I don’t know how he thinks he knows!”

  “I know,” Bracken said, coming back with a bottle of chocolate milk for Teague and a chocolate muffin he put down for Cory. “Mostly I know the same way I know Teague lost weight too. Your jeans are sliding off your ass. So’re his. I suggest you both eat.”

  Teague blushed, and Cory rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “I can’t believe he thinks he’s more mature than we are,” she hissed, and Bracken managed a smile of smug superiority before he yelped and hopped off his stool.

  “Damn it, Renny!”

  Cory took a napkin and dabbed at the blood on his ankle with appropriate soberness, but she cast Teague a wicked look of amusement over her shoulder, and Teague laughed.

  He laughed a lot in this place. Not loudly—he might never laugh loudly—but that little chuff of amusement no longer had to force its way out of his chest. He liked it that way.

  “So, the werewolves,” Cory continued with a pointed look at Bracken after he sat down.

  “And the homeless,” Teague prompted, and Cory sighed, shoving the remains of her breakfast aside and resting her chin on her hands. She and Bracken had worked the night before, catching a few scant hours of sleep before taking the werewolves to the airport. After the stresses of Thanksgiving break and the week after that spent talking to the werewolves, well, the stress of being three or four or five people was starting to tell on her. She looked very mortal and very tired.

  “The way I see it,” she said quietly, “is that our boys are going to go home and put the fear of God into their boys down south, or whoever is trying to organize things down there. That’ll be great. They’ll kill each other in-house, make sure none of their mistakes make it up here, and for a while—I’d give it a year—we’ll be blissfully unaware of how truly shitty that morass is down there while we’re living up here in wolftopia, right?”

  Bracken mulled the thought over. “Right,” he agreed. “And whoever was making psycho wolves, well, he’s going to stop just so nobody notices.”

  “Unless it’s a glitch, like a serial-killer’s thing, yeah,” Cory said, looking at Teague for agreement.

  “And even if it’s a glitch,” Teague reasoned, getting into the game, “serial killers know how to lay low. Now’s the time to do it.”

  “Right.” Cory yawned, but her murky brown eyes were still focused as they worked things through. “So for a year, they or who or whatever will leave us alone—and then they’ll start forgetting. Or get their shit together and reorg. For all we know, this was just a feeler—but either way. We can’t go down there—we’ll be fair game. So we wait. We’ll start seeing bad guys and dumbshit activity eventually. Now, if we’ve done our job with those four, someone will call us and warn us, especially if they last that long. That would be nice, but we can’t bet the farm on it. But the first sign of anything hinky….”

  “We need to be ready to kick ass,” Teague concluded, and Cory agreed. She gave a sleepy, worn smile from her cupped chin on the wooden table.

  “We’ve got a war brewing,” she said softly.

  “Then what was this last week about?” Teague asked, curious.

  “A year of peace. We did all of that for a year of peace. Aren’t you glad you signed on, Teague?” There was some bitterness in her words, some self-recrimination. Teague hated to hear it, but before he could reply, Bracken put a hand on the back of her neck, and she leaned into it as he whispered something in her ear. “This is our last week before finals,” she said back softly. “We can’t skip school now. You know that. I’ll nap on the way there.”

  “Yeah,” Teague said belatedly, meaning it. “I am glad I signed on.”

  Cory smiled up at him again, looking dreamy and happy, the bitterness gone. “Hey, you haven’t seen us at our best. Wait until you see Christmas. It’s gonna be a trip!”

  Teague’s best Christmas to date had been the last one. He and Jacky had exchanged gifts, talked excitedly about how they thought Green had gotten his gifts to them under their tiny tree, drank beer, and watched football. Low-key, but, well, it had been his only Christmas with somebody who actually gave a shit.

  He privately cherished that memory, but now that he and Jacky were living at the hill, he learned that Christmas should never be low-key.

  One day while the students were out and Katy
and Jacky were at the bakery, Green came and got him from the garage—he was working on the Mustang—and said, “Wash up, mate. Come with us. We can be back before everyone gets home. It will be a grand surprise!”

  Teague had no idea where he was going until they ended up in the woods surrounding the gardens behind the hill itself, past the dividing line where the oak and scrub turned into pine and undergrowth. He and Green were by no means traveling alone—they came with an entourage of fey and shifters ranging in size from flitting sprites to compact pixies to what looked like a four-foot-by-four-foot pile of rocks holding hands with a compact pixie. He later learned that the happy couple was actually Bracken’s mother and father—a thing that about blew his mind out his left ear.

  The motley assortment of walking mythology was hunting for a Christmas tree.

  It had to be about twelve feet tall and perfectly proportioned, and most importantly it had to be in a position to be lifted from the ground, wrapped tenderly in cloths, and replanted into the floor of Green’s home for a bit before being returned.

  Apparently some of their company were wood nymphs—two-foot-tall, perfectly proportioned women with green skin and green hair everywhere. Green assured him that not only did the tiny women not feel the cold, they also grew to human size—when it suited them. Sort of like trees themselves, actually.

  When they found a tree—or rather, Arturo spotted it and the littles chittered, cooed, tinkled, and generally fussed over it—Green asked Teague with a smile if it would do.

  Teague blinked. “It’s perfect,” he said with some bemusement. “Why ask me? I’m not an expert!”

  Green’s smile was 100 percent tolerant affection. “It’s going to be your tree too, Teague—and Jacky’s and Katy’s as well. Is this the tree you want?”

  Teague looked at the tree again with new eyes. It looked less symmetrical than it had when Arturo first pointed it out, but it also looked personally perfect—those shoes you get from the rack and fit like you’ve owned them for years once they’re on your feet. “It’s an excellent tree,” he said soberly, and the tinkling, chittering, chattering cheer from his little entourage was worth the careful consideration and sincerity.