Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  They darted through the forest. New smells assaulted her, a new home, new territory. There was prey—not the best kind of prey, which would need to avoid and Kelly would have to help Malcolm with when the rest of the pack took one down. But for now, they didn’t want to hunt anything but each other. Together, they wove new paths in the underbrush, running until froth formed at the edges of their mouths. The moon shone on their backs like the sun on a warm day.

  They thundered like demigods against the earth, crossing each other’s tracks until they reached the edge of the territory. Kelly veered to the left and Malcolm followed her.

  Malcolm leapt into a moonbeam and slid over the dead leaves to spin around and face her. She halted at the edge of the light as though she hadn’t been running at all. They shifted back into human form.

  “Show-off,” Malcolm said as soon as his mouth and throat could form words.

  She stepped into the light, which turned her golden hair and pale skin silver. Malcolm’s eyes gleamed as she approached him. The heat emanating from their bodies formed a cocoon around them. Malcolm swayed towards her, but he waited, as she wanted him to.

  She flexed her knees and jumped up to grab a tree branch. The bark bit into her palms, but that didn’t bother her, nor did it break her grip. She locked her legs around Malcolm’s waist, pulling him against her and settling against his hips. He nuzzled her breasts, the stubble on his jaw a pleasant texture as he rubbed it against the heavy undersides. She released one hand to fist Malcolm’s hair, so much easier to hold than Ahmir’s more closely cropped hair.

  “Do you want me?” Kelly asked. She meant it as an invitation, but a touch of insecurity laced the question.

  “I’ve wanted you ever since I laid eyes on you and your scent came to me,” Malcolm replied. A purring growl edged his declaration. “I tried as hard as I could to run from you, but you were always the one I came back to.”

  Malcolm slid his hands over her buttocks, clenching the muscles firmly as he positioned her. The head of his cock probed at the entrance of her cunt, proving his words.

  “I don’t know how I feel about how strongly I want you. Especially since I think I’d beg Grant to bite me again if it meant I could have this last month with you all over again. All of it,” Malcolm murmured against her cheek before pressing a kiss to her neck.

  “Oh God,” Kelly moaned, and she lowered herself down over the full, beautiful length of his cock. His words and the run had gone to her head, filling it with mist even as her body seemed to come alive. Malcolm and Kelly groaned in unison as she slid him home.

  He buried his face between her breasts and kissed the valley there as she raised herself back up. His sounds were muffled against her chest, but she let the woods hear her—hear the truth in the words she couldn’t say, but she could let him know nevertheless how good he was inside her, around her, in places no one could reach on the physical plane.

  “You are beautiful and powerful, and I am yours,” he said. He followed each word with a kiss back up to her lips. That was when she let go of the branch, and he held her by his own strength. They were wrapped in silver light. He tightened his grip under her thighs and snapped his hips, thrusting his cock into her, taking her as she clung to him, their tongues tangling as though she were truly trying to become one with him.

  She wanted to sink into his mind like he sank into her body, but she would save that for another night. For now, she was more than content with his rough thrusts, his fingers creating fast-healing bruises on her thighs, and his confession that she guarded precious inside her.

  She was the one holding him, but it felt like he rode her instead, with all the strength and speed that his desire granted him. Although wind swirled around them, Malcolm lost none of his balance and endurance. Tears pricked the corners of Kelly’s eyes. Her skin burned hot with a fever of arousal so intense she thought she might burst. She clenched her muscles around him like a vice.

  “Malcolm,” she gasped. She did burst, or at least that’s what it felt like. She howled at the moon, soaking in the beams as though drinking power.

  Malcolm had no more words, just the never-ending rumble of his growl through her body that matched the rhythm of each penetration. Finally, he followed her over the edge of that cliff, falling to his knees but still managing to stay upright, at least until Kelly stretched her legs out and pulled him down to lie with her on the forest floor.

  Underneath her, the earth stirred with the reawakening of spring, the nutrients of the dead infusing the living with the ability to grow, to spread root, to drink in water, to turn the soil, to continue a cycle that had started millions of years before, reusing the same atoms and molecules of the past. That past seeped up into her skin, and the weight of the present settled over her—a warm body and a sweet, open, compliant, but not slavish heart.

  “Said the Witch, ‘Let us ride’,” she muttered. “Said the Wolf, ‘Let us run’. So they ran and they rode till the dawn.”

  “Hmmm?” Malcolm asked, but he was boneless and content over her, already half asleep.

  The poetry had just come to her, as true as any spell. It was not prophecy—it merely stated what they were and nothing more, marking the occasion like a baptism. Her magic crackled with the aftereffects of the pleasure that she and Malcolm had shared.

  Kelly couldn’t remember a time she had felt such…peace. At peace with her magic, at peace with her wolf, at peace with a man and at peace with herself. The sun would rise, and she would remember her sins, far greater than anything Ahmir had ever imagined for himself. She would crave flesh and blood, and she would sway Malcolm away from it as well as she could. They would fight. He would doubt himself. She would be at odds with the pack and ever be apart from them in her own way. She didn’t need a prophecy to know that the peace couldn’t last.

  But in spite of everything, maybe they could.

  Epilogue

  Kelly sat next to Malcolm, her arm outstretched where the new tattoo gleamed wetly on her wrist. It was comparably simple, just a black pentacle on her left inner wrist, acknowledging in stark ink what she was, for better or worse. But her magic had settled for a while, especially after the stinging of the needle that had left her more than a little buzzed.

  She reached across the aisle to hold Malcolm’s hand. Kelly had only needed to push up her sleeve for her tattoo, but Malcolm had had to take his shirt off. She felt so good at that moment that she wished she could climb in his lap and lick him from navel to sternum.

  His hand tightened in hers, grinding the bones. Kelly smiled as the blood drained from his face.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Kelly said, squeezing him back. “It’ll only hurt a little. I’ve done worse to you, you know.”

  Javier, her wonderful tattoo artist and piercer, glanced up with amusement dancing in his dark eyes. Why does that not surprise me? he asked himself, loud enough for Kelly to hear it.

  Kelly hadn’t yet been able to convince Malcolm to get a tattoo, something he had talked about but always balked at when it came to actually doing it. However, when she’d asked him if he would get a nipple ring for her, he’d gone quiet and the apples of his cheeks had grown rosy. He couldn’t hide from her the way it made his cock twitch. Kelly’s own piercings had been for her own pleasure, and so would this one, because he would be doing it for her, her mark of ownership upon him.

  “It’s just that I’ve never been one for holes where they don’t come about naturally,” Malcolm muttered, but he watched Javier with a kind of fascination as he rubbed disinfectant over Malcolm’s right nipple and prepared the curved needle. The titanium ring—different from her small bars—waited on a piece of cloth.

  “Just imagine how it’s going to feel,” Kelly murmured low and husky, “when it stings, moving inside you, pulling against the hard flesh, throbbing and…”

  “Okay, I get the picture,” Malcolm said. Without his shirt, he could do nothing to hide the bulge in his pants from Javier, who ignored it like the w
ell-inked and pierced gentleman that he was.

  Javier was an artist and an expert. He slid the hollow needle through and inserted the ring in a matter of seconds, only enough time for Malcolm to hiss at the sharp pain through his small, tightened nipple.

  “There you go,” Javier said, addressing both Malcolm and Kelly, as though he knew that the piercing was as much for her as it was for him. “I’ll leave you two to admire. Pay up front.”

  Kelly nodded, and as soon as Javier went behind the counter, she bent over and kissed Malcolm softly, her tongue teasing his lower lip like she was going to tease his new piercing as soon as it healed. And of course, it would heal fast. A little magic would ensure that it would remain in place before and after transformation, like hers.

  “Mine,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Yours,” he agreed.

  “You were very good,” she said. “I promise, Malcolm, that I’ll swallow down every drop of pain you might feel now.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered, shifting in his seat. “You know I have to walk out of here, right?”

  Kelly smiled and put her bandage over the tattoo. She technically didn’t need to, but Javier didn’t know that, so she would just wear it until they reached the trailer.

  “You know you love it,” Kelly replied.

  Malcolm winced as he pulled his shirt on, but the bulge in his pants didn’t diminish. She knew better. He had liked every second of the ring going through that piece of flesh nearly as much as he would like her mouth around his cock when they got home.

  She stared down at her arm, peering beyond the white bandage to the pentacle beneath.

  Illa habet potestatem, she thought. When she looked in the mirror, her eyes glowed green. I can live with that.

  “Let’s go,” she said softly.

  Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

  Gravedigger

  Aurelia T. Evans

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Ivory

  Franklin tickled the ivories of the piano. And near the piano, Ivory peered through the crowd to find someone worthy to tickle her.

  Lively music accompanied rich, boisterous laughter in the bright bordello. Shouts from testosterone-charged, rugged, rough and ready men drinking at the bar or clinking chips at the tables mingled with come-ons and purrs from the girls as their perfume of the night interwove with the sweat of the day.

  Men from around the whole county as well as those just travelling through all flocked to Ruby Rue’s every night. There was never a shortage of company. Ruby Rue—a ponderous woman who laughed with the men and could drink several of them under the table before offering them the services of her establishment—could afford to be particular with her girls. This was why the madam was known in all the territories of the Union and beyond for her discerning taste in a finer breed of whore. Reputation as much as happenstance brought curious men, young and old, through the swinging doors of Ruby Rue’s. No one left feeling short-changed, although they did leave with fewer coins or notes lining their pockets than when they entered—now tucked into corsets and garters and under pillows.

  Ivory had worked with Madam Rue for nine years, easily one of the odder additions to her eclectic collection of working women. Whereas most of the girls stuck together for safety and as a kind of patchwork family, Ivory kept to herself. She also rarely trolled the room for just any john that tripped into her bosom, instead preferring to stay in her corner by the piano. Franklin didn’t mind. Gave him something nice to look at while he had his back to the rest of the room.

  Ivory was very selective about the men she brought to her bed—it was considered a badge of honour as prestigious as a battle scar for Ivory to invite a man up. Some nights, she never moved from her chair. Many men swore she never even blinked, just sat still as a statue with her dark gaze considering the crowd, the skin she was named after scrubbed and matte pale, the generous dark curls of her hair pinned up and framing her face. Tonight, she had propped her boots up on an ottoman, the leather as black as her eyes—an impressive feat in a dusty town.

  Her gaze lit upon a dirty, scruffy newcomer striding through the doors. Just from the set of his hard, defined jaw and the scars and lines of his face, Ivory detected the kind of man that could nurse a grudge for decades, who would wait patiently for just the right moment to put a knife to the back or a bullet in the head. A gunslinger if she ever saw one, but not trouble of the bar-fight kind, which wasn’t the kind of brawny she was looking for.

  Determined, passionate, wicked, resourceful and unafraid of getting a little dirty. That was the kind of man she wanted in her bed tonight.

  “Leave ’im cross-eyed and bow-legged, Ivory,” Franklin called after her as she stood.

  “May you be as fleet-fingered on other instruments, Frank,” she replied, making him laugh. Ivory liked him. Most of the girls did. He enjoyed looking at them, but everyone knew he preferred saddle horns to stirrups. He was the only man allowed in Ruby Rue’s during the day because he had no use for women of the night.

  Ivory wound her way to the bar where her man swigged from a tumbler of whisky, and came up behind him. As was her trademark with a client, she said nothing, merely slid her hand down over his arm to where he held the tumbler. When the man turned around to see who had interrupted his drink, she plucked the glass from his hand. He stopped mid-snarl as he took her in, his blue eyes darting over her, clearly unable to find somewhere to linger with such a sumptuous feast before him. From the way he had nursed his whisky, company hadn’t been forefront in his mind after his journey, although Ivory was confident it would have become more important in the hours ahead after he’d imbibed sufficient alcohol.

  Ivory had better use for those hours.

  “What’s your name, tall, strong and handsome?” Ivory asked softly, the murmur of a city girl of a much higher station, her drawl less pronounced than her counterparts. It was one of her charms—cowboys stumbled from the whorehouse feeling like they bedded the finest lady, finer for her willingness to satisfy their quite ungentlemanly desires.

  “Wynn Rhodes, ma’am,” he replied, tipping his hat to her. “Just passing through.”

  “Where to?” Ivory asked.

  “Wherever my horse carries me,” Wynn said. “I got half a mind to be a lawman, if a town’ll take me.”

  “Tell ’em Ivory took you first,” she said, caressing his rough hand with her thin fingers. She never took her eyes from his, and eventually his hungry gaze couldn’t look anywhere else. “Any John Law’ll respect you then.”

  “I’m sure they would, ma’am.”

  “You come on up with me now,” Ivory said, easing the layered fabric of her skirts between his legs to press close. She stroked the dusty and sun-browned chest exposed above the buttons of his shirt.

  What would any red-blooded man say?

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  His drinking companions let out a shout and clapped him on the shoulder. He barely acknowledged the congratulations as Ivory hooked a finger in one of his belt loops. She drew him through the throng behind the train of her bright red satin dress, less gaudy than many of the other girls but fancy nonetheless. The skirts hid her legs but showed off the enticing curve of her hips and ass before flaring out in swirls of fabric like flame. The scarlet corset drew her waist in and displayed to full advantage the breasts spilling over it, barely encased by the rest of the satin bodice that pulled off her shoulders to reveal a generous expanse of unmarked cream-coloured skin.

  The staircase to the girls’ rooms was narrow, almost too narrow for Ivory’s skirts, but Ivory had practice navigating the staircase and the corridor. As they passed by other rooms, they heard creaking beds, rough grunts and high-pitched moans through the closed doors. Wynn became more impatient, barrelling them through until Ivory stopped in front of her door at the end of the hall.

  “I need to see payment, Wynn, before we proceed.”

  “How much?” Wynn asked, staring at
the way the dimmer gas light created deeper shadows around the curves of her body and between her breasts.

  “How much do you think?” Ivory asked, leaning against the door and cupping his cock through his pants. He thrust into her grip, but she pulled her hand back. He growled in frustration at her smile.

  Wynn pulled out a five-dollar note.

  “Very good, sir,” she crooned, taking the bill and opening her door.

  There wasn’t much room inside for anything other than a bed and a small desk, and that’s all there was, but that was all she needed. Even so, she had put her own unique touch on the décor. Ruby Rue’s was well-known for its crimson hues, but Ivory took that to the extreme with her red glass lamps, red-papered walls and dyed sheets.

  Ivory opened the window shutters, letting in the night air and giving them a view of the stars.

  “Don’t you want to keep everyone else from hearing?” Wynn asked.

  “Is that what you want?” Ivory asked. “Me, I have nothing to hide.”

  And she proved it by removing her corset as easily as if it were a simple panel of cloth. She folded the bill in with the corset when she discarded it to one side.

  “Yes,” Wynn growled, advancing on her like a bull, but somehow the slim, delicate woman sidestepped him and threw him down on the bed.

  He looked up at her in amusing confusion. Her men were always so bewildered when their brains weren’t getting any of the blood.

  She removed her bustle, then unbuttoned the front of her bodice to reveal how the hidden skin was just as unblemished as the rest. She wore no underclothing of any kind. Ivory could tell from his expression that it ignited Wynn’s blood to imagine that powdered white flesh accessible under her skirts. He could have flung her over a table downstairs, hitched up all that satin, and taken her for all and sundry to see.