“No,” Renee said. “I just don’t know my decision.”
“How can this even be a question?” Britt shouted, shaking her. “How can you even be thinking about becoming a werewolf? By choice? You know what they are, you know what they do.”
“They invade personal space and rile dogs up,” Renee said. “I don’t have the benefit of a sense of smell that discerns character or…mystical monstrosity or whatever. I don’t know werewolves, and I want to see for myself. I don’t want to just condemn an entire group of people because of the nature of one I’ve met. I don’t even want to outright condemn him. He’s not a good person, but I’m not convinced that he’s a bad one.”
Renee shrugged out of Britt’s grip, which was beginning to hurt, and touched Britt’s cheek lightly. “Do you really think that Grant is going to deliberately get me killed? Do you think he’ll turn me if I don’t ask him? He’s already had that opportunity. Many times. And he hasn’t.”
For a moment, Britt resembled Renee as she tried to answer, but clearly could not answer the way she wanted. Finally, she shook her head.
“Look,” Britt said, trying a different tack, “Jake didn’t want to concern you when we didn’t have any evidence of anything, but you know the dead hare and a few other animals? The ones killed but not eaten? There’ve been more that we haven’t told you about. There were some rabbits, rats, a hare, some squirrels, bird feathers all over. They’ve all been on the edge of the sanctuary. This was not just an isolated incident or something a sick animal did. Someone sick did this, Renee.”
Renee did not have to be told that they thought the animal killings were Grant. She believed they were, too. But as Britt and Jake said, they had no proof one way or another. For all they knew, it could have been a rogue shapeshifter.
And if it was Grant? He was keeping those impulses away from the compound, away from her dogs. Renee was disgusted by the idea that Grant could do that, although she was not surprised, but maybe he had come for sanctuary because of that impulse. It was possible he was trying to control it, but he couldn’t. In any case, they could not do anything about it for now.
Renee nodded, took in and filed the information. “I need to know, Britt. I need to see what Grant is for myself.”
Britt sighed. “I know you do. I’m just… I’m worried that it’ll make me lose you. If you become a werewolf, I’m not sure if this, this, can continue.”
“Because of the smell?”
“Because of everything,” Britt said. “The whole package. I don’t think you really understand what werewolves are to us. Humans who don’t shapeshift…you have the bogeyman. We have werewolves. Except we know they exist. Other creatures aren’t even on the radar. To them, we’re animal prey and human prey, no matter what shape we’re in. You can’t know. You can’t know how it is between us.”
Renee stood on her toes to kiss Britt on the side of her mouth. “I need to know.”
“I don’t want you to know,” Britt said. “I’m supposed to protect you, babe. That’s what I was called to do. It’s what I am. And I won’t be there with you. I’m scared. I’m scared you won’t come back.”
“I’ll come back,” Renee promised. “I’ll be back before Christmas.”
Chapter Eight
She hadn’t worn this skirt since high school, and although she hadn’t grown since sixth grade, she could not remember it being quite so short.
Britt had found a few skirts under the oversized T-shirts that Renee sometimes wore for pyjamas. Renee had completely forgotten about them. They weren’t exactly practical for her work, and they weren’t exactly practical now with the weather as it was. Her floor-length coat was not going to do much to keep the cold from going up her legs. But Britt had taken her best friend job to heart, no matter what the lover part of her was thinking. She told Renee to wear the skirt the first day at least.
Renee could wear a tank top and torn jeans during the summer when she was working in the sanctuary, no problem. But it was another matter to be going into town with her legs showing. In the dead of winter. With a man that no one in town had ever seen. She was not concerned about her reputation, which she knew had already been ruined by her quirks. But people would be looking at her a little more closely. She buried her hands in her coat pockets and wrapped the coat around her.
Grant didn’t talk to her. She didn’t mind. He had thrown his duffel and her vinyl suitcase into the back seat of the truck, then taken her keys from her without fanfare. When she had asked for his driver’s licence, he’d grinned a little and dug it out of the duffel. It was nice to have someone else drive for a change. He’d turned the radio dial to a classic rock station and occasionally tapped out a beat on the steering wheel. She was surprised at how comfortable it was. She was just nervous about what would happen when they got out of the car.
That morning, she had woken up to an empty house. When she’d walked down the stairs, all she’d heard was the click of dog claws on the wooden floors, and when she had opened the doors to the porch to a surprisingly tolerable morning, she had seen Jake’s golden retriever tail over the top of a snow bank, heading towards the barns.
Renee had anticipated that she and Grant would be leaving that afternoon. Her truck was tough and had weathered her through harder winters than this. Her dog pack must have known that, too, because all she’d seen of them were glimpses of dog fur. It was their way of ignoring her.
As Grant had turned the key in the ignition, then eased the truck down the dirt driveway, Renee had seen Britt sitting on the porch in her dog skin, watching them go. It had been the first time in years that she had left the sanctuary without Britt at her side. The early flutters of panic had begun to climb up her throat, and she’d clenched her hand in her over-the-shoulder bag, where she’d stored her anti-anxiety medication. She had already taken some, but it had felt good to be reassured.
Grant had distracted her with a hand high up on her thigh, where her skirt covered skin, and she had turned back around to look through the windshield.
Her stomach found her throat again when they reached downtown Antoine.
“I need to go to the bank,” Grant said. “You don’t have to come with me. But when I get back, we’re going to a bar and having a drink. Maybe five. You’ll eventually want to take off your coat. I can’t be the only one in town who wants to see those legs.” He pulled into a parallel parking space with surprising ease, then looked at her. “It won’t take long. Don’t run away.” If it had been anyone else, she would have thought he was considerate. But the look in his eye was not quite mocking. Close.
If she’d had control of her muscles, if she’d had control of her brain, she would have been able to get out of the truck and pace the sidewalk. Maybe look in a window or two while she was waiting for him to come out. Instead, all she could do was sit meekly and wonder if she could get away with taking off her seatbelt and sinking down into the foot space below. She felt like every passerby was looking through the windows, which were not even tinted. She knew logically that even if people were looking, they’d forget her almost as soon as they saw her, but her legs still felt locked in place. She waited and wished that she had Britt’s fur in her hands.
She noticed Marcus on the sidewalk, heading her way. She ducked her head so that her face was hidden, but she realised too late that her hair itself was enough to identify her. He slammed the flat of his hand into the window in greeting, and she jumped. He had done that on purpose.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Marcus said. His voice was muffled through the glass, but his leering grin was easy enough to see. “In town early this season, aren’t you? Decided you needed to see us after all?”
She unconsciously checked the locks, glad to find all the buttons were down. Marcus caught the direction of her gaze, and he grabbed the car door handle, jiggling it threateningly, all with a smile on his face. As if he thought scaring a woman was the way to her heart.
“Come on down to the bar with me,” Marcus said. “
It’ll be fun. You can unwind. Maybe give us a dance or two. Loosen up.”
He bent down to peer directly at her. His eyes were a little red—not enough to indicate that he was drunk, but he had certainly been drinking.
“You don’t seem to have as much to say now that you’re out of your little piece of land,” Marcus muttered. “Can’t function unless you have an iron fence and barbed wire between you and everyone else?”
He looked down both sides of the street to make sure that he was not being watched, then leaned against the window and pressed his tongue right where her face was, leaving a trail of saliva on the glass.
“All you need to do is wrap your pretty little self around me, and I promise I’ll screw every thought out of that pretty little head.” He laughed as he grabbed his crotch. He gave an exaggerated moan, just loudly enough for her to hear it through the glass. “Come on, Renee, it’s all in good fun.”
She was seriously contemplating climbing to the driver’s side—if she could convince her arms and legs to move—when she saw Grant coming out of the bank, tucking something into his back pocket. The relief must have shown on her face because Marcus straightened and turned around. She wished she could have seen his expression, but she did see Grant’s—a perfect combination of glee and savagery that made Marcus jerk away from the car and stumble back around the front of the truck. In comparison to Marcus, who had been a linebacker in high school, Grant was about half his width and barely reached past Marcus’ chin. But it was undeniable who would win if it came to a fight, just by virtue of self-confidence. It was really no wonder that Marcus backed away in the presence of a far fiercer predator.
Grant took Marcus’ place outside her window. “It’s all right to come out. That cretin won’t lay a finger on you with me around.”
“Like hired muscle,” Renee muttered as she undid the lock and stepped out. Grant locked the door behind her.
“Not quite.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder with what would appear to outsiders as affection. He was only wearing an olive-green T-shirt, but he was warm enough that the coldness on her legs seemed insignificant. She still wrapped her coat around her so that no one could see them. But with Grant there, she did not think she would have that luxury for very long.
“They’ll be in the bar,” Renee said as Grant led her right into The Benefit. At this time of the evening, it was just beginning to get crowded. Locals frequented it often in the evenings, more often than tourists, although the bar wasn’t entirely without them tonight. Hopping in small-town bars wasn’t the same as hopping in a big town, but it was still the first real crowd that Renee had been in since her high school graduation.
Marie looked up from the bar and raised her hand when she saw the familiar coat and face to go with it. She paused upon seeing the man who took the front of the coat and spread it, pulling it down Renee’s arms. Renee wanted to give Marie a reassuring smile, but she was afraid all she could manage was a grimace, so she just lifted a hand back.
She felt a few eyes on her that she was not accustomed to having, but it was not as though her arrival had stopped the world so that all eyes were on her, even if it seemed that way to her rapidly panicking mind. Marcus had come back to the bar after his scare and joined his friends at a booth. Will and Josh were there. Josh nursed a mug of draught beer and stared at her thoughtfully, taking in the length of leg and the flash of skin at her neck. What she was wearing was nothing really showy. Just a slightly smaller shirt than she was used to, which actually fitted her rather than gave her room for working movement, and a skirt that she wasn’t used to at all. But it was different. And Josh was no fool. He knew that the man she was with was the reason. So even though he had a girl talking to him and hanging on to his arm—Renee thought her name was Melanie—he regarded Renee with a blank expression.
Marie came over, still surprised and even wary.
“Do you want your usual, Renee?” she asked. “Samuel Adams and chicken strips?”
“The chicken strips and fries sound good,” Grant said. “But let’s try a bottle of Jack Daniels and glasses for the two of us.”
Marie looked to Renee and raised her eyebrows at the way he ordered for her.
Renee nodded an okay. She knew what it looked like from the outside, but nothing that the outsiders saw was true.
“Can I have a water while we wait?” Renee asked before Marie left.
“Sure, hon, be right back,” Marie said.
“Do you have to be so creepy?” Renee asked, after Marie had gone back behind the bar.
“It’s just an experiment, the drink,” Grant said.
“Not the drink. Ordering for me when she was asking me.”
“I knew what you meant.”
“You won’t get me drunk,” she said.
Grant cocked his head curiously with a strange slant to his smile. “And what makes you think I’m not going to get you drunk, a little girl like you?”
“You can give me a hangover in the morning, but I don’t get drunk.” She shifted in her seat, pulling the hem of her black skirt down. It did not move very far. “I don’t know what you’re after.”
“Well, the aim was to get you drunk, but I’ll settle for pleasantly buzzed.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of it.”
“It seems like a stupid pastime. I’ve never understood why people do it.”
“It is,” Grant said. “Sometimes it’s good to have a few stupid decisions under your belt instead of playing everything so safe and ordered.”
Renee stared at him and wished that he couldn’t stare right through her clothes and know exactly what she looked like. It made her think everyone could. “Not everything is safe and ordered.”
“No,” he said smugly. “Not everything.”
“What next? A shot of heroin and a hold-up at a jewellery store?”
“If it strikes your fancy,” Grant said. He found her fingers at the hem of her skirt and pushed them aside before sliding familiarly underneath, clutching at the whole curve of her thigh. “Although I thought we’d try getting drunk and having sex somewhere unexpected for tonight.”
“You won’t get me drunk, and I don’t want a headache in the morning,” Renee said. Marie walked up with the water, and Renee knew she’d seen Grant’s hand under Renee’s skirt. She did not say anything, just set the water on the table and went back to the bar.
But she thought Marie was watching her out of the corner of her eye. And she knew that Josh was watching her, and sometimes his friends would crane their necks—it was as though their gazes bored holes into her. Her clothes were too tight, clinging to her like leeches, and everything on the inside tightened away from where they touched her skin. She sensed the panic attack coming before the physical manifestations really started, such as the cold sweat and the shallow breaths, her heart pounding against her ribcage.
Grant saw it coming, too. “And you were doing so well,” he muttered.
If she had been able to open her mouth, she would have said that if he had really intended her to do well, he would not have brought her here, where he had an excuse to claim her in public.
He pulled the rubber band from her hair so that it could fall over her shoulders—just one more way he wanted her to draw attention. His lips seared the thin, pulsing skin of her neck, and he pressed his other hand unapologetically between her legs, cupping her in his palm. If Marie had been looking, she could have seen exactly what he was doing to her with his hands. All the men in Josh’s booth could see were his lips and the glimpse of his tongue and teeth on her, making her head fall back as air rushed into her lungs. Her heart was still racing, but now it was for a different reason.
She was finally beginning to attract attention from some of the other patrons. Although some were dancing in the open floor area on the other side of the booths, separated by a wooden railing and glass plating, they would be able to see the shoulders and heads of people in booths. Which meant that they had an
unobstructed view of Grant making love to the stretch of a woman’s neck. They’d see her threading her thin fingers through the man’s hair and bringing that searching mouth to her own. She kissed him slowly but thoroughly. In this setting, neither of them was as impulsive and lost in the feeling as they had been at the sanctuary. But it was still perhaps beyond propriety, especially in a small-town bar that still got its music from a jukebox.
The clearing of a throat broke Renee from her trance, and she realised belatedly that Marie had caught her with Grant’s hand in an obviously compromising position. This was one of those times when her blush was well qualified. Marie did not look disgusted or like she was going to call the cops, but she certainly looked as if someone had hit her in the face with a two-by-four. There was probably nothing in the world less Renee-like than sucking face and getting fingered by a man like that. As embarrassed as she was, Renee could not help the swell of giddiness in her chest. What she wouldn’t give to be un-Renee-like all the time, not just when Grant was kissing her or screwing her. Not that those things didn’t get her giddy in another way.
Marie put the two plates of fried chicken strips and fries under their noses. Then she put down two tumblers and poured them each a drink.
“Leave the bottle,” Grant said.
Marie looked to Renee again, and Grant leant forward as though he was going to have a say. But Renee suspected that any say he had would only dig the hole deeper.
“It’s fine,” Renee said. “Really. He’s not taking advantage.”
“I’d say different, hon,” Marie muttered.
“He’s not forcing anything,” Renee reassured her. “If I didn’t want the drink, I’d say something. I promise.”
“You wouldn’t be the first woman with her man pushing his luck in this place. Nor the first woman who might get a shiner the first time she says no,” Marie whispered.
Grant snorted impatiently. “Why does everyone think I’m some kind of demon who’s looking for innocent flesh to corrupt? Look, lady,” he said, “she said she’s fine. Give the girl a little credit.”
Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Page 16
