Her Billionaire, Her Wolf--The Novel (A Paranormal Alpha Werewolf Romance)
Page 24
Momentarily stranded on his own deserted isle, Flair found he was terribly thirsty. He wasted no time in ordering a drink only to turn around and see someone waving wildly at him from the back of the bar. His wolfish vision glimmered for an instant and in the shadows he made out a shifter known to him, an urban wolf as he was, who went by the name of Digger.
"What was that?" Flair shouted over the clamor of voices and music.
"Groovin' hicks, man....rig buses...ya know?"
Flair thought it over, then laughed outright when he had it figured out.
Human chicks dig us, ya know.
Digger looked perplexed and frowned at the way Flair laughed.
It was understandable, but given the circumstances Flair could not resist. So, he leaned toward his friend and said, "Frengle lizard, ketchum lips."
The other shifter sat back to think over what he had heard, then he nodded at Flair as if what he had said had been the wisest words ever.
Flair snorted, then took a long pull from his beer. Digger was a good guy, but, as they say, probably not the sharpest tool in the box.
The two of them were seated at a small, high table with taboret style bar stools. They were comfortable enough and the best part was they spun full circle on smooth ball bearings which meant no one actually had to pull them in and out in order to get up in search of something else to drink. And that was a good thing, since the servers were always overwhelmed on Friday nights and if one waited for them to take an order, death by thirst might likely be the result.
Flair was thinking of some other nonsense phrase to tell Digger when he saw them come in.
Later, when he thought of that moment...and he did think back to it often...he would tell himself that it had been like magic. As sure as any magic that might exist that can bring silence to a room filled with shouting people and pounding music. A magic that felt like someone had just draped an enormous velour coverlet over everything and shadows and silence fell so that all eyes saw them and no one else.
The Twins.
Flair did not know how he knew, but the two women who stepped into the bar could have been nothing else, and every head swiveled to fix upon them. From men whose pupils flew wide and black, nostrils flared and light sweat making a sheen across their brows....to women, whose lips raised in contempt while still others ran moist pink tongues over their already wet lips.
"The Twins."
Digger had leaned over and spoke so closely to Flair's ear that he felt the shifter's lips drift across his skin.
"Yeah," he said, nodding, "But, who in the hell are they?"
Digger started going on about how he had heard the two women hailed from the midwest, or maybe it was the west coast, and that they held the wildest parties where they lived. He said where they lived was as wild as they were, off in some enormous abandoned warehouse and that they got up to crazy sex parties that usually finished with everyone joining in.
"Ya know...orgies and all that shit."
This time it was Flair's turn to sit back and nod at Digger's words while he watched the two women come into the room. They swayed as they walked and there was no need to push their way to their destination. People simply separated before them, like the parting of a sea, before they took a seat with a group of people that Flair then realized had been waiting for them already.
The noise and music flooded back in as they sat down and the lighting diffused again as shadows seemed to lift while everyone in the bar remembered to breath back out again.
They were some distance away, but even at that, Flair could see that there was something about the two women.
They were like two halves of a whole. Dark and light. One with rich hues, full lips made fuller with deep violet color, and heavy breasts that swayed with her every movement. The other was as pale as the first was somber. Her skin was milky white as the constellations that turned overhead. And that one's eyes were a silvery blue that hinted of ice and flame entwined in eternal opposition, the threat of raging frost ready to burn a mere heartbeat away.
It was ridiculous, he knew, but Flair thought he could even see how long their lashes were from where he was sitting across the room.
"...meet 'em?"
Flair startled. Digger had leaned close to say something while Flair had completely forgotten the other shifter was even there.
"What's that?"
"I said, do you want to meet 'em?"
He was nodding his head before he could get his next words out.
"Oh yeah. 'Sure do."
Digger clapped him on the back, then said, "Wait here a minute. I'll see what I can do for ya buddy."
The wolf in him dared Flair to stand up and trail after his friend like a lost puppy. The man in him forced him to remain where he was and coolly look away in feigned nonchalance. Flair took in a long steady breath and let it out again as slowly as he could and told himself that he must not act like a young inexperienced beast around those two.
It was if he waited upon the pleasure of royalty and he did not doubt the least false move could ruin his chances at seeing the Twins up close...the chance at scenting the two most beautiful she-wolves he had ever laid eyes on.
And all of it depended on his foolish friend, Digger.
All pretense at looking coolly aloof fled as Flair flashed a panicked look toward his friend.
Alcohol had surely clouded his reason or he would have never let Digger be the one to introduce him.
But as he started to get up to signal to Digger to leave off, Flair saw the Twins and the entire table of their entourage stand up and begin filing out of the bar.
Digger, not even halfway there, caught his eye and shrugged. Flair grimaced, then his own eyes widened as the line of people came to an abrupt halt and one of the Twins, the light skinned one, turned to look directly at Flair, then lifted a hand to hook her finger in the air, beckoning him.
Flair cleared his throat then did what he could to walk calmly toward the group that had begun moving again. Digger stumbled as he forced his way through the crowded tables and chairs to Flair's side, then fell in with him as if he had been invited, too.
"What the hell...?" Flair said to his friend.
Digger simply nodded.
"I know. They're like that. I didn't even get a chance to tell them who you work for."
Flair groaned. He would have done much to be rid of his simpleton friend just then so that he might be rid of him and the foolish things he would say later. Things that might leave Flair looking like more of a lackey than anything else.
He stepped up his pace then got close enough to the trailing line of people following in the two beautiful women's wake.
"So, where we goin'?"
Red, glassy eyes turned to regard him and a flushed young man at the back of the Twin's group answered Flair.
"The girls have invited everybody over to their place. 'Said it's too noisy and not enough naked here."
Not enough naked.
Flair remembered what Digger had said about orgies, then grimaced. But then he caught another glimpse of the two she-wolves as their hips swayed while leaving the bar.
It might have been the alcohol talking again, but he shrugged and thought to himself that maybe his life needed a little more wildness in it. And if it would mean a chance at those two very fine women, it might even be worth it.
Digger stayed close enough that their elbows practically rubbed and did not seem to notice that Flair frowned back at him when all he wore on his own face was his usual wide, goofy grin.
"Ketchum lips," Flair said to no one and hoped Digger would just get lost before he said something Flair would regret.
Digger must have heard him. He nodded back at Flair with the same grave visage as before, looking for all the world as though Flair was the wisest shifter he had ever known.
For all Flair knew, it might have even been the case and, if so, then that was a sad thing, indeed.
~~~
Flair and Digger followed t
he snaking line of cars down dark streets that quickly left behind the urban sprawl. But rather than transform little by little into some sort of orderly tree-lined suburbia, Flair made out long low buildings and chain linked fences topped in barbed wire that ran in humorless rectangles with the arc lamps overhead few and far between.
His window was down and occasionally he heard growls and snarls as they rolled by some of the warehouses. He had no doubt there were very large and very violent watch dogs within those rusted fences.
Still, if it came to it, they would be no match for the least of the wolf shifters. Nevertheless, the feeling of having left behind one kind of wilderness for another only grew with each passing building.
There was no sign of life in the surroundings and the buildings showed more signs of disuse until they finally came to one that stood away from the rest.
It was just as barren as all the others, but there was an aura, some subtle touch of wolfish presence that made him prick up his ears.
Flair pulled his car in alongside the rest of them as they passed inside the chain linked fence. In some ways, he would have preferred to be driving his employer's car. Or cars. The man had enough that he could choose a different one for every day of the month, but it was almost always some nondescript black sedan of custom European make.
If he had been driving one of those horrendously expensive pieces of rolling steel, it might have lent Flair a little authority or given credence that he was not just another male panting after the Twins. Or, it might well have done the opposite if someone should question him and oblige him to admit that kind of car did not belong to him after all.
As it was, he was in his own car of modest make and it might have been just as well. For whatever reason he might have imagined as the motive for the Twin's apparent interest in him, Flair still hoped it was somehow for him alone and not in the shifter who ruled most of the wolves in the city.
For they were, one and all, urban wolves and in most every respect a species apart from their forest dwelling counterparts. To make their differences even more pronounced, urban wolf and forest wolf looked upon one another with suspicion, or even with open derision at times.
Forest shifters thought of themselves as a purer, unadulterated kind of beast that acted in the way their father of legend, Galgallin, had always intended. Of course, the urban wolf would contend that Galgallin had disappeared in the mists of time and that the dispossessed forest wolves refused to adapt to a modern world which changed and evolved, often at a lightning strike pace.
Flair did not think either side had more reason than the other for the way they lived. But, he supposed, even that kind of thinking would be reckoned as a man's reasoning and not the merciless, direct logic of a real wolf if one asked his wild cousins living far from the city and its jungle of concrete and macadam.
They had hardly come to a stop before Digger popped out the passenger side door like a jack-in-the-box wound overtight.
Flair followed but with what he hoped looked like more reserve and at least a little elegance in comparison to his friend. The same friend who then wore a decidedly doggish grin and whose eyes sparkled with thoughts of what might happen next.
"Hey Flair. Can we talk now? I mean, you don't have to concentrate anymore on driving and all that, right?"
Flair simply shrugged in answer and walked past Digger to fall in line once more with the Twin's entourage then lining up to pass through a smaller, normal sized door inset in a very large pair of warehouse doors surely meant to allow full sized cargo trucks to offload their affairs directly within.
Digger fell into place beside him and the two quickly came to the door where two hulking figures stood on either side, barely seeming to take notice of those who filed within.
At least until it came to their turn.
One of them reached out a massive, meaty hand to stop Digger cold.
His ever-present grin lifted into an unmistakeable snarl.
"Hey...what's your problem?"
Suddenly, Flair had the distinct impression they had simply left one kind of club for another and that the two sentinels were, in fact, bouncers charged with keeping out undesirables.
"I don't know your face, pup," one of the big men rumbled, "So get out your invite or go get lost."
Digger stammered something unintelligible and Flair was about to launch into some kind of explanation when a pale face slipped forward from the darkness within the warehouse.
She was one of the women who had stayed closely beside the Twins as they had all left the dance club. Slightly built, willowy even, Flair could imagine that she would make a sleek, finely muscled wolf once shifted.
Her dark eyes surveyed them coolly before she spoke.
"The girls sent me to tell you that one is ok...."
Her eyes were dilated and she licked her lips as she spoke while looking Flair over, then she turned her head to barely glance at Digger before continuing.
"They didn't say anything about the other one."
Digger's mouth came unhinged as what she said sunk through the dull rind of his slow motion brain.
"But we're together! Right, Flair? Tell 'em."
Flair did not have time to say anything before the woman turned back to look them both over again.
"Oh, so you're together...? That's interesting."
Flair gave his friend a shove, then said, "Yeah, but not that kind of together."
The girl smiled a half-smile as if she knew something they did not, then shrugged before disappearing back into the darkness from whence she came.
The two bouncers stepped back, their interest in the two shifters apparently gone.
For once, Digger had nothing to say and the two of them stepped over the threshold into the Twin's domain.
They walked a realm made of low music, words spoken in low voices, the whole covered in low shadows that was at odds with the odors of a warehouse beneath it all.
Flair scented sawdust and old motor oil. There was also musk in the air and it was a humid thing that sent tendrils to his mind, lighting tiny fires there in its deepest, most primitive corners.
The air was cool, yet there was heat. Light was close to absent, yet all of it felt ready to burst into flame.
He walked forward and felt people writhing on all sides of him. He was the only one standing and he could no longer tell if Digger was at his side for it was a velour universe, soft and alluring.
At times he smelled something acrid, pungent. Flair turned away from its source, telling himself that he would not be trapped into red eyed foolishness and forgetfulness...not when there were two females who had beckoned him to come to them.
He meant to find them. He meant to taste them if he could. He desired to know their flavors of darkness and light upon his tongue.
Flair wended his way through bodies that twisted this way and that, twining around one another like tropical vines in a jungle woven from a fever dream.
He picked his way along and thought he could make out the face of the woman at the warehouse door. It was so dark, he could not be sure, and without her clothes she revealed herself as being just as finely built as he had imagined.
Her form shifted to that of a bitch in heat. Her tail was up and her hind legs trembled as the figure of a man on his knees moved behind her. When his hands reached for the female's haunches, Flair recognized him at last.
Digger's wide grin was as present as ever, then that smile slipped into a wide mouth lined in the bright teeth of a young male wolf.
Flair turned away as one wolf mounted the other. His path lay elsewhere.
The faint sounds of heavy panting or the occasional very human moan fell behind him as Flair felt unseen walls draw in closer as he walked steadily forward.
The corridor continued some way before coming to an end and in the darkness, Flair felt the outline of a door frame and, at last, a doorknob that turned freely in his hand.
He stepped through and the scent of the Twins rose to greet
him.
It was a breath of spring and light that filled his head. Cool, comforting with notes of cucumber and behind that scent of faraway beaches and foamy surf. Coconut oil and warm bodies dancing under an evening sun while the sea washed gently back and forth upon the shore.
Then warm hands held his, two pairs to his one.
Warm, subtly perfumed bodies pressed themselves against him and Flair felt firm yet yielding breasts brush against his arms.
He turned his head and a soft mouth found his and enveloped the words that he had begun to form.
That mouth was made of lips as full as sun ripened fruit, dew-kissed and moist. All choice blowing away, Flair kissed back as the other body in the darkened room found its way to his belt buckle, undoing it quickly as a magic trick, then his trousers were sliding down and his shirt was lifted up and away.
Flair's breathing grew heavy as gentle hands flowed over his chest and across his lean stomach. He might not have been the most massive wolf in the city, but he was fit with a form that showed the sinewy ropes of his muscles easily beneath his skin.
The soft mouth occupying his lips and tongue broke away then began tracing down his breastbone to his abdomen before lingering at his navel.
The female must have surely been upon her knees at that moment and as her hands lifted to follow the insides of his thighs upward, Flair felt the sting of pain as she bit down and pulled back on the trail of light hair that ran in a path down his abdomen.
He hissed, then smiled when those same hands continued to their logical destination, cupping him then holding him.
Flair trembled. He had not been so highly aroused since his very first adventures with females and their wily ways. He willed himself calm for the potential of cutting short this rare experience teetered in his wolfish resolve.
He was rigid, his tumescence growing in the grasp of the female whose hot breath slipped over his member like a dark promise.
That was when the other female pressed herself against him and Flair felt the nipples of her full breasts on either side of his spine. She swayed against him while the other gripped him hard, still refusing him the honey touch of her mouth there where his pulse lifted in her hand with each beat of his heart.