She was right about the oddness of Jake covering her. The oddness of everything—the smooth softness of the body hair on his chest and arms and legs. The press of his mostly flaccid cock on her leg, bigger than Grant’s, as Jake was bodily bigger than Grant. She knew it didn’t always work that way, but in this case, it did. She was caved in by his body, her skin tingling as it touched his, sensitive to each and every little hair. And he was gentle, so very gentle. With Britt and Grant, Renee knew there was passion there, an undeniable attraction to her. What Jake did—while he was very good at it and while it was clear that both he and she were enjoying themselves—was more like a deep sexual massage. By a good friend. A friend. Not a lover. But God, if he wanted to, she would let him inside her. She thought it would feel nice.
His palms were flat and dry against her. He could cover her face with just one hand, and yet his hands were soft as they held her face, her neck, sliding down to her chest to cup one breast. He was so very vanilla, not rough at all, that the bruises on the sides of her breasts, and the places where Jake’s hair brushed against new skin, made her feel almost ashamed. She knew that he could be much less delicate with Britt, fucking her into the mattress, yet he was delicate with her because she was Renee. Not because she was breakable, but because he cared so much about her wellbeing and because he was still worried about hurting her in any way, perhaps in a way that associated him with Grant. But she did not have any need for him to hurry in spite of the arousal between her legs that still yearned for some kind of release. She gripped the wide expanse of his back, but she did not curl her nails into the flesh. She wrapped her legs around his hips and brushed her heels against the firm muscles of his ass. His breath caught in her mouth, and she began to feel the first real sign that his erection was recovering.
Renee gently pushed Jake away, down onto the covers so that she could straddle him. Her legs protested the angle, but it was worth it for the way that Jake stared up at her. His golden eyes were glistening, glazed over as his eyes and fingers strayed over the curves of her breasts, her stomach, her lips.
Britt came up behind Renee and wrapped her arms under Renee’s breasts. She teased the edge of Renee’s ear with her mouth as she helped balance Renee to slide down around Jake’s still growing shaft. Renee gave a soft cry—she hadn’t thought that a bigger cock would feel much different since most of her sensitivity was nearer to her clit, but Jake was stretching her, straining that sensitive flesh. Her nails caught on his skin reflexively, and the muscles under her fingers fluttered at the sensation. She clenched her pussy around him, getting a sense of just how big he was. He threw his arm above his head and arched his back as she did. He was engorged inside her, and she dripped down between them. Britt spread her fingers and pushed her hand down Renee’s stomach until her forefinger and third finger were poised just above her clitoris, right where Renee needed them to be. Renee began to rock. It was not quite the sensation of riding cock—she was teasing herself mercilessly now, as much as she was teasing him. But he had already got off once, and as long as she did not have the ropes around her wrists, she was going to enjoy herself and set her own pace.
It was a little harder to focus on teasing as Britt began to massage that area above and around her clit, pressing deep under the hood, her mouth finding all the ravaged, sore places on her neck that made her nerves tingle. Pleasure dripped down her spine as surely as she dripped around Jake’s cock. He was beginning to moan, long breaths low in his throat as his hips sometimes snapped up in reflexive need.
“I’ve felt what you feel,” Britt murmured. “I’ve had his cock in me. Just a few minutes ago. He was in me, and now he’s in you—my juices are mingling with yours. It’s like you’re surrounding me. Come on, Red. Come for us. All tight around him, squeezing him until he pops and calls out your name. We want you to come for us.”
Britt’s fingers were more insistent, circling the place that made her hips buck. Then she wrapped her other arm more firmly around Renee’s stomach, and Jake braced one of his hands on her hip. Using her own hips and the strength of her limbs, Britt lifted Renee up and brought her down hard around Jake’s erection. Then again, until Britt and Renee seemed to be one woman riding him. His groans grew louder—Renee almost imagined she could feel his blood pulsing through the piece of him inside her.
The orgasm came suddenly after so much build-up. It ripped through her, and she simultaneously went limp in Britt’s arms and tense around Jake’s hips, her hands clenching in time with her cunt. A soft whine escaped her lips, but that was all as she shook through the orgasm. Britt stroked her and rocked her on Jake’s still turgid erection until he too came through Renee’s aftershocks. Renee gasped when her pleasure rose again in a smaller orgasm, like driving over a swell. She almost hit Britt squarely in the jaw as her head snapped back through the last shudders of her second climax.
Jake didn’t have to collapse back, since he was already on his back, but he did make a noise of protest as Renee twisted around to kiss Britt. She belatedly noticed that she was bending his cock in ways it did not want to bend, and she lifted herself off him.
All the combined fluids dripped down her thigh, and her first impulse was to go straight back into the shower now that she was covered in her sweat and theirs, their saliva, their combined fluids. But Britt pushed her onto the covers, and Renee told herself that if she could resist the impulse to clean for Grant, she could resist it again for their sakes. And besides, this was Britt’s bed instead of hers, and Britt was not so concerned about such things.
Their breasts were sticky as they rubbed against each other, and Renee’s nipples were oversensitive, tight and tingling, but she wasn’t ready to let Britt go. This touching was not about getting anywhere, it was just being able to touch and feel that clenching warmth without fruition. It was as though neither she nor Britt wanted to let go, for very different reasons. Britt because she did not want Renee to go away, and Renee just because it was nice to be home. And it was home.
Chapter Twelve
It was both strange and familiar to go back to her normal routine after the last week and the welcome home. Grant stayed scarce the following weeks, more out of a sense of self-preservation than of courtesy, Renee thought. And maybe it was a welcome return on his part as well, since they had been in mostly civilised areas following the meeting with the werewolf pack, and here he had hundreds of acres to run without having to rein himself in. However, when he did come up to the compound, he did not let Renee relegate the two of them to private areas where no one could see what they were doing. The shapeshifters would have known what she was doing with him anyway. So while they were not screwing around in plain sight, Grant made no effort to hold back his groans as she went down on him in the greenhouse, or when he invited her to his cot in the shapeshifter barn. Mostly, though, they had sex in Renee’s old room, where it was comfortable and private without really having to hide.
Renee did have one demand she did not compromise on. The loft area was off-limits for him. Only Britt and Jake were allowed there, and Renee would not protect him from them if he invaded that space. Grant had not agreed to the rule, but he never went up there anyway.
At first, the atmosphere between Renee and her shapeshifter pack was tense. She went into the computer room with Leslie the day after coming home and started working at her station, and although neither she nor Leslie were normally talkative with each other, Renee felt the silence more keenly. She would sense him looking at her, but when she turned around, he would be looking at his monitor again. Only the creak of the chair would indicate his pretence.
Still, she had more emails to wade through than she had expected, and she had to update the sanctuary website and blog and get back to the people who wanted to adopt dogs for Christmas. She apologised for it being last-minute to many of the potential adoptive parents, and they were mostly understanding, if a bit frazzled. She set up a few appointments and welcomed a few people the very next day.
Bri
tt, Jake, Malcolm and Max had kept the sanctuary running fairly well in her absence, although when Jake was not in the loft bedroom, she noticed that both he and Malcolm were a bit on edge. Jake dismissed it when she asked, but Malcolm got that look in his eyes that told her he was lying. However, none of them were telling her what was going on, so she knew it was not a problem with the sanctuary itself. She decided to leave it alone.
As the pack got used to her being with Grant as well as with them, they calmed down a little about it and stopped skirting around her as though she were going to transform on them by the power of sex alone. The fact that they regularly saw her with Britt as well reassured them that Renee was mostly the same Renee they knew.
* * * *
Jake had actually bought security cameras for the front gates while she’d been gone, an early Christmas present that had been installed the day before she’d come back. It was how he and Britt had known when Renee had returned.
She was not as shocked as she thought she should be when she saw a police car on the screen next to her computer. A plainclothes policeman was ringing the bell at the gate, and she could see that there was another person in the passenger seat. The man’s stance was too casual for Renee to be too concerned over the safety of the shapeshifters in the sanctuary, but there should not have been policemen at her gate at all.
Struggling to breathe slowly, she pressed the button to let them in, then pressed the button on the compound intercom.
“Roll call. Repeat, roll call.” It was one of the codes that she had developed, and it was one that she had never had to use before. She hoped they remembered what it meant. They had heard the gate bell, so they knew someone was coming, but ‘roll call’ meant that there was an outsider emergency, and they needed to act quickly to hide the presence of as many shapeshifters as she had in the sanctuary. Enough to qualify as workers and volunteers, nothing more. She had encouraged the shapeshifters who did not have identification to go canine so that they would not draw suspicion.
It was something that she wished she had never had to plan for, but even now she realised that they had not planned enough. There was the whole second barn set up for human comforts, and if they locked it up, it would look suspicious in the case of a search. As it was, she knew that the shapeshifters still in human form were hurriedly folding beds down and stacking them against the wall to look as though they were only brought out when necessary. But that wouldn’t hide the fact that there were that many beds in the first place, or that there was a kitchen in that barn, or that there were people out of their dog skin who no one knew were there in the first place. For someone already suspicious, the circumstances were a bit shady. Renee was not doing anything wrong, but she did not know whether a suspicious person would see it that way.
Renee pulled on her coat and went outside to meet the policemen. The dogs ran to greet her. Her heightened emotional state made them anxiously excited. Britt ran with the rest of the dogs as the malamute. Jake, Leslie and Malcolm came out of the cabin as their human selves, though, as they sometimes interacted or used to interact with the world. Jake’s and Malcolm’s faces looked grim, and Renee suspected that the thing they were not telling her might be what the policemen were coming up to investigate.
All Renee could hope was that Grant was hiding somewhere. The last thing she needed was Grant ringing alarm bells. Of course, this entire thing could just be routine, or maybe one of the policemen wanted a dog.
Renee snorted. Dare to dream, she thought. She gripped the edges of her coat. Britt bumped her cold nose against one of her hands, showing her canine support.
The police car drove up the steep incline. The snow was wet and the weather had gone uncommonly above freezing. Only by a few degrees, according to the porch thermometer, and it kept drifting under now and then, but at least it made getting to the compound a little easier for strangers. Renee wished it had been icier, but then they might have only tried harder.
The plainclothes cop got out of the car. He looked a bit like George C. Scott, in affect if not fully in appearance. The other policemen got out in full uniform, and Renee amended her initial assumption that she was a man. The woman looked young for her occupation—about Renee’s age. Renee did not recognise her, so she assumed that the woman had either not been raised in Antoine or that she was older than she looked. Their demeanours were not accusatory, and Renee’s panic about possible criminal activities from the sanctuary lessened, leaving only a marginal social anxiety.
“You’d be Ms Chambers, then,” the plainclothes cop said, holding out his hand. After some measure—and the encouragement of a cold dog nose—Renee took it and shook. “I’m Detective Ebon, and this is Detective Benoit.”
“Renee Chambers,” Renee said. “Jake, Leslie, Malcolm.”
Detective Ebon pointed at Leslie and said, “Leslie Cannon? I’ve read your book. Not bad at all. Good to meet you.”
He turned back to Renee, and while he put on a fairly affable expression, Renee was not sure what to make of the dark beadiness of his eyes. This was a man who could be on two levels at once, and that might mean that things could be worse than she thought, and she would not even know from looking at him.
“And of course, we know who you are and what you do,” he said. “We don’t want to make you more uncomfortable than you already are, so we’ll make this quick. The National Park Service has noticed some animal deaths that are, as they say, atypical in nature. They say that the animals are ripped apart, among other things. While they didn’t find any sign of rabies, they are worried about a wild animal that could be diseased. They hoped it would be taken care of in its own time, but no such luck. Since this is, after all, a dog sanctuary, we wanted to know whether you’ve had any similar experiences with strange animal deaths, or if one of your dogs has escaped.”
“You think it’s one of my dogs?” Renee asked.
The detective shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but we have to cover all the bases.” His words said one thing, but underneath, Renee swore she heard, “It’s a possibility, and that’s why we’re here and not calling you on the telephone.”
“I have over seventy dogs in the sanctuary, and we let them mostly run free,” Renee said, bristling. “But they can’t leave. The fences that run the circumference of our compound are specially built so that they can’t break through or jump over it. Even our Great Dane couldn’t make it out.”
But a shapeshifter could. Or a werewolf. The thought surfaced like a dead body, and Renee shuddered. She looked at Jake. What exactly were they not telling her because they thought she would be too sensitive about Grant?
“We each patrol part of the perimeter every week,” Jake said. Detective Ebon took a good look at him, as if taking in his size and the strength evident underneath his clothing. “We’ve had some strange deaths, but none of us have seen any broken fence. You can check it yourself if you would like, but we’re secure.”
“If you’re secure,” Ebon said, the mild expression belying the shrewdness in his eyes, “then why have you had a few animals torn apart on your property?”
“He means that our dogs are secure inside the sanctuary. They can’t get out,” Renee said. “We sometimes get deer stuck in the fences, and I’ve seen wolves right outside the perimeter, but we built the fences with even the biggest dogs we have in mind. Sometimes small animals get in, and anything that flies or climbs is a given. But whatever is killing those animals is either big enough or smart enough to scale the fence.”
“Yes, that’s what we thought, too,” Ebon replied. “All the same, if we checked your fences and brought in a tooth mould to compare to your bigger dogs, you wouldn’t mind, right?”
“Not at all,” Renee said. She knew they wouldn’t find anything wrong with the fences, and if they could indeed make a workable tooth mould from ravaged animals, they would not match any of her bigger dogs. But while she did not get the impression that Ebon suspected her of any wrongdoing—he was sharp, but not aggressive—she thou
ght that he suspected something.
“Very good.” Detective Ebon drew his coat closer around him. “And quite unrelated to this messy business, Ms Chambers, I do have a complaint from a few citizens in the city regarding poor animal treatment and threats directed at them.”
“Excuse me?” Renee was a little surprised by the iciness of her own voice, and if she was not mistaken, so was Detective Ebon. But no one accused her of being cruel to her dogs. She could be accused of a lot of things—some of them could even be illegal—but not of hurting her dogs. There were only a few people who would say something like that to spite her. “Josh and Marcus?”
“I do believe those are the concerned citizens, Ms Chambers.”
“They harassed me at my gate on my land, and yes, I threatened them. I threatened to protect my property and to protect my animals from them. I would never let them in this sanctuary for any reason.” Renee found the scruff of Britt’s neck and massaged it, feeling the fur between her fingers to calm herself down. “If they saw anything, which they didn’t, they would have been trespassing.”
“So people can get in and out,” Ebon said.
“They might have a few scratches and scrapes, but yes, people can climb over the fence if they know what they’re doing and put in enough effort. The fence is there to protect the dogs—it was not built to keep people out, although common courtesy should do that. We have had a few trespassers over the last few years, maybe one or two. They’ve all had a bite out of their ass for their troubles. I’ve had to put down two dogs because of two trespassers, and I don’t want to have to lose any dogs because of those inbred bastards.”
“Well,” Detective Ebon said, giving a hearty sniff from the cold weather. “We didn’t hold much stock to the claim, since you’ve got a better reputation here than those two boys. But we had to check anyway. Two birds, one stone. Or maybe it’s two in the bush.”
Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Page 25
