by Selina Woods
He looked tired and pale lines of pain tight around his eyes and mouth. “The mechanic agreed to help,” he said, slumping to the couch that had only a thin covering over its springs. “He wants his family to go as well, and he says he has a big family.”
“That’s certainly fair enough,” I agreed. “Did he happen to have potential cars we can steal?”
Morgan nodded. “It appears he’s a very busy wolf, and Raphael’s enforcers have to leave their cars and trucks there until he can get to them.”
“So, he has the keys.”
“Right. We’re to meet him after dark to take him to the snowplows. Chad thinks they were used a few years ago, so they might not be in very bad shape.”
“I remember that.”
His hand rising to his wounded cheek, Morgan gave it a tentative rub and winced. “That aspirin didn’t do shit.”
“Be glad that we shifters heal fast. By tomorrow, you’ll be lots better.”
He grunted. “I need it to happen now.”
“How’s Jae?”
“Sends her love. Misses you. Typical new love crap.”
“Don’t be so crass.”
Morgan met my eyes and dipped his chin in a quick nod. “Sorry. I never dealt with pain with a good attitude.”
Reaching into his pocket, he tossed me some keys. “To her apartment. We’ll stay there tonight.”
“Is that smart?” I demanded. “We are separate so that Raphael doesn’t get wind of our relationship.”
“And the risk of hypothermia is greater if we try to stay in one of your holes again.”
Miffed, I snapped, “Those holes have kept me alive through winters worse than this one.”
“Maybe so, but if all Raphael knows about her is that she works at the bar, he doesn’t know where she lives. His focus is on you, not her.”
I paced to the broken window that looked out onto the street. Leaning against the wall, I asked, “Any ideas on why he is so focused on me?”
“I’m still of the opinion you left something with his corpse.”
“I didn’t.”
“Something you dropped from your pocket?”
“I picked Barry’s, and if I dropped anything, it would have been something of his.”
“It can’t be a coincidence.”
“I sure as shit didn’t leave a note on his body saying, ‘Yoo-hoo, I did it.’”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Morgan lean back on the couch and close his eyes. “I can’t figure it out, Declan. And I’m too sore to work it out. It’ll come to us, though.”
“If we’re gonna be out tonight, maybe you should get some sleep.”
“Okay.”
I don’t think he slept deeply, but I was sure he at least dozed as I kept watch for unusual interest in the house, or for carloads of enforcers to roll up with big guns in their hands. A few people from nearby homes came and went, but all lay cold and silent as the night’s darkness enclosed the city. The wind had quieted for once, but that only made the air seem colder.
Morgan woke shortly after night fell, and stood up, rubbing warmth back into his arms through his jacket. “We’re to meet the wolf at his shop,” he said, stretching some of the stiffness from his body. “He says the city plows are stored not far from there.”
“I know where the plows are,” I replied, heading for the door. “You’ll have to lead the way to this mechanic. Does he have a name?”
“Porter.”
Switching to our four-legged selves, I followed Morgan as he loped away from the house, past the Tiger’s Paw and toward downtown. I gazed longingly at the bar as we went past, physically aching to see Jae, to see her smile, to hear her voice. Even though it had been less than twenty-four hours since I had seen her last, it almost felt it had been a lifetime.
Determined to see her no matter what arrogant and obnoxious things Morgan had to say about it, I made mental plans to do so, even if it meant giving my bodyguard the slip. I still kept a sharp watch for predators as we traveled across town, suspecting Morgan’s pain might dull some of his instincts. Either through luck or the cold, we reached the wolf’s mechanic’s shop without seeing a single pack.
Porter was a husky alpha with sharp blue eyes and a mop of black hair, silver running through it. He eyed me closely as he let us both inside, then locked the door behind us. He eyed Morgan with concern. “You gonna be all right? You look worse than you did earlier.”
“I’ll be all right.”
The wolf looked at me. “You’re Declan?” he asked, his voice resonating with intelligence.
I shifted forms and shook his hand. “Yeah. We’ll steal enough vehicles and provisions for everyone you want to escape with us.”
He grinned. “I had been planning to get my family out for a while now, but couldn’t fit everything together. But when Chad asked, damn, it was like manna from heaven.”
“We also will be taking a human girl with us,” I told him as he showed us out the back door. “A friend.”
“All the better,” Porter said, shifting to his wolf as Morgan and I changed into lions. “I wish we could take the entire populace and leave Raphael to prey on his own enforcers.”
“I want to move fast,” Morgan said. “We now look like a pack of marauders. Others will leave us alone, so let’s stay in the open.”
He may have been right, for we saw no sign of other packs and trotted and loped by turns down the dark streets. Nor did we see any of Raphael’s enforcers. A few cars droned in the distance, but none came near us as we reached the big yard where the city’s snowplows were stored from before the wars. The high protective fence proved to be no problem as we entered the yard.
“How will you be able to tell which one might run?” I asked.
“I’ll just see if any of them simply need a jump start.”
Porter climbed into each cab as Morgan and I kept watch for trouble, turning the keys. “They all might simply have dead batteries,” he said, jumping back down. “I’ll lift the hoods and see what I find.”
His eyes must work well in the dark, for he toyed with three engines before deciding that the fourth would serve. “This one,” he said, lowering the hood but not slamming it. “I got a spark. Let’s go inside the shop and see if there’s a battery charger and fuel.”
Porter knew exactly what to look for. Lifting a box with cables, knobs, and dials, he said, “There’s electricity in this building. We’ll put this on the battery and let it charge the plow up.”
“Won’t someone notice?” I asked.
Porter shook his head. “Not many live down here, and we’ll put the hood back down to cover the charger. We’ll wind the cord around so it’s not obvious.”
He installed the charger, then climbed back into the cab. Leaning his arm out of the window, he grinned down at us. “We got juice. And the tank is nearly full. Someone is smiling down on us.”
“Glad to hear it,” Morgan replied, watching down one side of the street while I kept an eye on the other. “Do what you need, and then let’s go. I got a bad feeling.”
Chapter Twelve
As Porter quickly hid all traces of our activity, my nerves told me something was wrong. “I don’t see anything,” I muttered as we loped back down the street. “I don’t think we’re being followed.”
“Nor do I,” Morgan answered, leading the way toward Porter’s shop.
“I feel it,” Porter growled from my side. “I’m hearing cars now.”
Morgan stopped. “Where are they coming from?”
The wolf jerked his muzzle toward the east. “That way. They’re headed toward us.”
“We can’t run,” I told them. “We have to go. Now.”
“Where?” Porter asked. “All these structures are rubble.”
“That one isn’t,” I said, galloping toward the squat building that still had a roof. “We need to get up there.”
Morgan and Porter ran hard on my tail as I leaped piles of broken cement and scaled the ones t
oo tall to jump over. “They’ll follow our trail,” Porter said, scrambling over the chunks. “We can’t hide our scent.”
“Don’t give in so quick,” I replied with a grin. “I have ideas.”
“Listen to him,” Morgan said, “the kid’s smart.”
Behind us, the group of vehicles, headlights spearing the night, pulled to the curb behind us. Raphael’s goons. Whether they had a report of a pack roaming around, or somehow, they knew I was there, it didn’t matter. I had to kill our scent before the wolves in that outfit tracked us to our hiding spot. I sniffed for the right kind of odor in the alleys I led us through. The building we wanted to escape into loomed over us.
Though nothing helpfully dead presented itself, I found something almost as good. “Here we are, boys,” I said cheerfully, picking up the nearly full can. “Have a soak of this.”
Shocked, Porter stared at me. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Nope.”
“Declan,” Morgan said, his tone urgent, and maybe slightly scared, “we can’t soak ourselves in gasoline.”
“Sure, we can. Just don’t light a match.”
He and Porter gazed at one another and then at me. “That’s nuts, kid,” Morgan snapped. “The wolves will guess what we did and follow the scent of gas.”
“Not if all we do is leave behind the scent of gas.”
“What are you talking about?”
Instead of answering, I shifted forms and tipped the five gallon can, splashing the liquid on the ground. “Get your paws good and wet,” I ordered, going lion again and demonstrating.
Reluctant, hearing the voices and seeing the flashlights heading toward us, Morgan and Porter did as I said. “Now, we vanish.”
Leaping upward, I seized hold of the lowest rung of a fire escape with my jaws. From there, I climbed paw over paw and made my way steadily upward until I reached the mesh landing. I peered down. “What are you waiting for?”
Porter had the most difficulty as he wasn’t feline, but he struggled on up to my position, then leaped in through the nearest window as I watched Morgan climb.
“Kid, we’re leaving traces of gas wherever we go.”
“Yup.”
He growled. “So, this is hardly leaving no trace of ourselves.”
“Not yet.”
Morgan heaved himself, gasping for breath, onto the metal platform even as I made room for him by jumping into the building with Porter. “What now?” Morgan asked, following me.
“Now, we lose them.”
A quick glance out the window showed me the goons, most in their human forms, following the wolves toward the alley we just vacated. They stopped, talking amongst themselves as they spoke about the spilled gasoline even as a wolf sniffed the air, gazing up. “Here we go,” I said. “They’re following the scent of gas, right?”
Morgan and Porter exchanged a long glance. “Right.”
“When that odor ends here, they can’t follow us. Right?”
“Declan, I’m gonna bite you in about ten seconds,” Morgan growled.
I laughed. “Then watch.”
Ripping a strip of cloth from an old chair, I wrapped it in a piece of broken brick, then lit it on fire with a lighter in my pocket. “Bombs away.”
Dropping it out the window, I watched it tumble through space, shouts and yells of warning arriving too late. The flame lit the gas puddled at their feet. The resulting burst of fire sent the wolves and shifters in their human forms scattering in all directions.
“I think they lost our scent,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“The kid is crazy,” Porter muttered as the two of them followed me up to the roof.
“I’m beginning to believe that,” Morgan replied.
A quick glance over the edge revealed a marked lack of enthusiasm in the enforcers for following us. Below, the goons trailed back toward their cars, the sound of their voices drifting up to where I watched, grinning. “The gas on our feet confused them long enough to keep them put,” I explained, withdrawing back from the brink. “When I lit the fire, they decided they liked their health more than they liked chasing us.”
Morgan looked at Porter. “I told you the kid was smart.”
Determined to see Jae, I left Morgan sleeping on the couch in Jae’s apartment the next morning and crept silently out the door. Had he not been as badly hurt as he was, I’d never have gotten away with it. He’d have woken up the instant I tried to go through the door. Of course, the painkiller I slipped into his food may have helped to some extent.
Though I didn’t know exactly where Chad lived, I did know it wasn’t far from The Tiger’s Paw, and I knew what his truck looked like. Reaching his neighborhood an hour or so before the bar was to open, I walked around until I saw his truck. It was parked in front of a nice-looking bungalow amid several like it, all filled with families like Chad’s own.
He wouldn’t be too happy if I walked up and rang the bell, so I slipped into the rear seat of the cab and hid in the floorboards. I had written the note beforehand and left the small slip of paper on the front passenger seat. Waiting for perhaps thirty minutes, I heard the house’s door open and then close again, and Jae’s voice talking as she and Chad walked to the truck.
I listened as Jae opened the door and immediately saw the paper. It crackled in her hand as she picked it up, and as I had hoped, she said nothing of it as Chad climbed in behind the wheel. “When can I see Declan again?” she asked as Chad started the engine.
“I hope to talk to Porter today about the plows,” he answered, pulling away from the curb. “If he has one running, then we have to get our plans together. That’ll mean getting Declan and Morgan involved.”
“Are you going to drop me off and then go see Porter?”
“Yeah. Will you be all right alone for an hour or so?”
“Sure. I need to unpack the crates in the storeroom, get everything organized before we open.”
“Thanks. I hate being forced to separate you two, but it’s for the best right now.”
“I know.”
The truck vibrated uncomfortably under my body as Chad drove to the bar, the two of them talking about Chad’s mate and kids, what they would do when we all escaped to a safe city. Once I thought about Denver, the call in my blood returned in full force, pulling at me with a powerful voice I found difficult to resist. Leave me alone. It persisted the remainder of the way to The Tiger’s Paw, driving me nearly crazy with its strength.
Chad parked the truck and got out to open the bar for Jae. I slipped out silently, and, as there was nothing else in the alley to hide behind, lay under the truck. Chad’s legs stepped back toward it as the bar’s door opened, and Jae went inside.
“Be back in a while,” Chad told her.
“See you.”
He got in behind the wheel, started the engine, and rolled away, leaving me flat on my belly on the gravel and oily dirt of the alley. Jae burst out laughing as I got up, dusting myself off. “That was slick,” she said grinning. “Chad had no idea.”
I kissed her, then urged her inside and locked the door behind us. “Morgan will be pissed when he wakes up and realizes I gave him a knockout pill.”
Jae shrugged as she switched on lights. “He looked so bad yesterday; he’ll need the sleep. He should be grateful.”
“Somehow, I don’t think gratitude is in his genetic makeup.”
“I missed you so much,” Jae told me, taking me into her arms.
I held her close, breathing in the clean, delectable scent of her, her body pressed tightly to mine. “I love you, Jae.”
“Show me.”
“Huh?” I pulled away long enough to gaze, puzzled, into her laughing hazel eyes.
“Show me how much you love me,” she answered with a breathy giggle. “We don’t have much time. Morgan will probably come straight here looking for you.”
I glanced around the storeroom we stood in. “There’s nothing for us to lay on.”
“Who said anyt
hing about lying down?”
Jae unzipped my jeans as I fumbled with my coat, trying to take it off while kissing her. Both of us laughed, our excitement rising, trying to kiss while opening each other’s clothes. I pulled her jeans down around her ankles at the same time she stroked me to full erection. Jae pushed my pants open to expose me to her very talented hands and kicked aside her own.
Reaching down to her mound, my tongue in her mouth, I buried my fingers inside her, feeling her growing arousal. She spread her legs to invite me further, pulling her lips from mine. “Come on,” she muttered thickly. “Give it to me.”
“You’re not ready.”
“Oh, yes, I am.”
Pinning Jae against the wall, I picked her up with my hands under her thighs. Opening her legs wide, she wrapped them around my hips, her arms around my shoulders. In one quick thrust, I filled her with my staff. Jae gasped, clutching me frantically, her breath hot in my ear. Intense pleasure roared through me, my hips bucking as I pounded her slick, wet tunnel. My breath came and went quickly, and I shut my eyes to better feel the lusty sensations pouring through me.
“Yes, yes,” Jae moaned, her head falling back against the wall. “Don’t stop.”
Sweat trickled down my cheeks with the effort of both holding her up and driving my shaft ever deeper into her. Resting my forehead on her shoulder, I drew in ragged breaths of air, feeling my climax approaching fast. Wanting to bring her to her own orgasm before I did, I stroked out slowly, then rammed back into her hard.
“Oh, yes,” she hissed through her teeth, “I think I’m ready.”
I knew I was about to. Jae’s body quivered as she muttered, “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” her nails digging deep into my shoulders. Her mound undulated around my thick shaft even as she shook under the force of her orgasm. Unable to hold on any longer, I blasted my seed inside her, groaning under the sheer sensual pleasure that seemed to rip straight from my belly.
Slowing my thrusts, I sank deep into her, my erection deflating as the last of my climax drained away. Jae slid down my body to stand, her juices dripping down us both. We held each other for a while, catching our breath before the air became too uncomfortably cool to remain damp and naked.
