Secret Wolf: A Steamy Werewolf Romance

by Dancer Vane

  Run harder. Live.

  Finally, finally, I saw the white shape of the house appear after a curve. Something, a tree limb, or a real hand, grabbed at the hair flying behind my back, and I jerked my head hard and kept running. The pain was nothing; the fear kept me moving even when my body begged for mercy.

  No way. Run.

  He tackled me just when I was about to throw myself at the bay window behind the house. I slammed into the stone floor, hard, his weight slamming into my back.

  Not as much weight as before, I noticed in the back of my mind. Or I had grown. I turned around, growling at him ferociously, wishing I were a wolf. I pictured myself as a wolf, rather than a rabbit, and I pushed him off ineffectively, but one of my knees connected and he let out a sharp curse and was distracted for a moment.

  I slipped from under him — almost — and struggled to touch the window. I almost made it; the tip of my fingers brushed the glass, without effect.

  He had a knife, and I knew he was so enraged he would use it; he was never one for self-control.

  Never mind that murder would bring him back to jail; he was enraged and not thinking. I had seen him like this many times, and often I had ended in an emergency room while my mother muttered some explanation to a stern-faced nurse.

  I had felt guilty, at the time; now I refused to feel anything. I kicked his wrist and he cried out, but didn’t let go of my ankle, and I could feel his bony hand hard as plastic ties on my leg. He reached out for my dress and grabbed my panties instead; he had enough breath to laugh at that. I inched forward but again, only the tip of my fingers brushed the glass.

  Blood was rushing in my head, making me deaf to anything but the pumping of my heart, the sheer panic. He yanked my hair back, hard, and I gasped. Then he was climbing over me, trying to pin me down using his weight, grabbing my throat and forcing me to rise. I couldn’t have stood, but he dragged me until I was kneeling, his knee at the small of my back, the knife steel cold under my neck.

  Then not cold anymore, as it bit sharply into my skin.

  I had to think now. Fast. He might still believe I was trying to run away; not to start the alarm. Of he might have tripped it two night before and knew it was…

  The knife blade cutting into my neck stopped short any thought.

  “You sure you want to struggle, sweetheart?”

  He spart the last word, jamming the edge of the blade against my skin. I couldn’t stop a whimper.

  “You sure? Or you going to be nice to daddy now?”

  I was a yard away from that bay window. I had to be nice until I could hurl myself into it.

  He was stronger than me, but now that he was keeping me against him, while I breathed in his stinky breath, I realised that things had changed. I wasn’t so easily overpowered as before, when I had been a kid. I wasn’t very strong, but I was stronger than I had been as a child. What made him so much more powerful than me right now was the knife jammed in my throat, and not much else.

  I grabbed his arms as if trying to free my throat, and then I jerked forward to throw him above my head.

  It didn’t even half-work; it started to work, and he was lifted from the ground, and at least the knife left my throat, and then his body went sideways, and he was thrown to the floor, but not nearly strong enough to have much effect.

  Except his foot collided with the glass.

  It didn’t break, barely gave a low “thump,” but the alarm started its welcome blaring.

  I took a deep breath.

  I wasn’t saved. The security guards could still find my dead body, or he would rape me and hide me somewhere when they came. Tell them I was his girlfriend. Whatever. I knew now that I wouldn’t let him hide it and grin at them and make friends. I would yell and struggle so much they would know there was something very, very wrong. Now I was trying to gain time for a reason. Gain time alive so somebody could come to help.

  It was tempting, for a minute, to stop struggling, to let him rape me, and then they would find him and he would go back to jail. Hopefully. Maybe. If I managed to prove anything.

  But adrenalin was coursing in my veins, and hate, and I was done letting him do anything at all. I wanted him gone, and I wanted him off my skin. If I had been the one with the knife, I wasn’t sure he would have survived. My heart was pumping hard, adrenalin and hatred a powerful mix — a poisonous one.

  He lunged at me with the knife first, and I sidestepped, my eyes raking the floor for a branch, anything. I grabbed one, but I had been distracted — the knife grazed my arm, a slicing pain, and I thrust the branch at him. It was more leaves than real wood, and he laughed as he jumped back.

  Could I make him step back to the lake? It wasn’t that far, but he might smell the water and not fall.

  The he lunged forward, and as I danced to the side none too gracefully, he grabbed my hair and I felt the knife under my ribs. “Now you’re…”

  A savaged growl, and something hot and furry and harsh brushed against my face. My father yelled and was thrown to the floor under a flurry of fur and snarling fangs. He yelled in panic, his shouts half-drowned by the blaring alarm; and for a second no thought could reach my brain, except that it was sweet to hear him scared. I had been scared so long.

  I tried to rise, but fell again. I knew I couldn’t sit next to the snarling ball of shouts and growls, I had to step back, not stay close to…

  He had a knife. The thought make me come back to my senses. This man that had come back from so far away, just to hurt me, he had a knife. And he was fighting with the wolf I loved.

  There was something slightly wrong with this sentence, but everything was so wrong with my life right then, I couldn’t care less.

  They were rolling together. The muzzle of the wolf was trying to bury into his neck; I wondered if he would kill him. I didn’t care either way. But I had to get the knife.

  I had no fucking idea how to get that knife.

  For a second, the arm that held it came near me, and I stepped on it, as strongly as I could, trying to get the wrist pinned to the floor.

  I didn’t want to touch the knife. I could see my father was going to die if he kept fighting the wolf, and I didn’t want my fingerprints on that knife. I stomped on his hand and he shrieked, the knife falling. I kicked it into the bushes.

  “Miss, step away from them.”

  Voices. Male voices. I didn’t hear a car. But then, I couldn’t hear anything but the snarls, the blaring alarm, and the blood rushing in my ears.

  A panicked voice, shouting from the same direction:

  “You can’t shoot, Earl, you’ll hurt that man.”

  “Don’t shoot!” My voice was so strong it almost startled myself. I almost panicked when I realised they had this wrong.

  “This man attacked me. The guard dog is defending me. He’s trained for that. Don’t shoot.”

  “This is no dog, ma’am.”

  “Please arrest this man, he tried to rape me, he tried to kill me…”

  One of them — the youngest, and now I recognised his face, he had been here a few nights before — stepped closer. Both their guns were pointed on the snarling mass on the floor, and both were trembling slightly. Private security. I didn’t expect they used their guns often.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got it. Who’s that?”

  I was about to say “Blake” and redirected the connections in my brain. “Some junkie. Attacked me outside the carriage house.”

  “Ah, fuck.” The other, the older one. “Going to look bad, that he managed to enter he property.”

  It took all I had not to beg them to shoot him; but I knew that wasn’t possible without hurting Blake.

  But they didn’t have to shoot. They could take him into custody, or whatever they did in movies.

  Once they were not fighting anymore, they could take my father away. He was the intruder. The dog was scaring them so much they didn’t get it right, but they would.

  I walked to the snarling, cursing ball
of fighters and I touched the wolf. His rump. The fur was thick and through it I could feel hard muscle.

  It stopped moving, for a second, and my father scrambled to escape. The low growl, that jaw close to his throat, made him freeze. Without a knife, he wasn’t brave.

  The wolf turned to me, watching me with golden eyes.

  “Baby, let them deal with him,” I murmured softly.

  It narrowed its golden eyes.

  “They’ll arrest him,” I insisted. “But they’re scared of you. They’ll shoot you if you don’t let him go. Baby, please.”

  They were scared, and kept their guns pointing on us. It says something about what I had just been through, that the gun seemed friendly to me.

  The wolf closed his eyes a second, then looked at the man trying to get free; and he ambled towards the bushes.

  My father scrambled to his feet, and into the arms of the two guards, who had moved closer; and thank fuck my father was too scared to realise they were not policemen, only private security guards. Being his normal self, he would have had a field day with that; but after fighting a wolf for his life, as adrenalin started to recede, he let himself be cuffed without much more than a glare in my direction.

  “You little slut. You’re the one who told the cops about me. You’re the reason I went to jail.”

  “What?”

  One of the guards let out a harsh laugh.

  “Yeah, blame the girl. Got a feeling you’re the kind to walk into a cell all by your lonesome. No help needed.”

  My father tried to head-butt him, but the other guard yanked him back. I could tell that they were nervous, though, the two of them. They had him “in custody,” sort of, cuffed with his hands behind his back, but they weren’t really controlling the situation.

  Then, when they had finished securing him and were clearly unsure what to do next, Blake walked out the bushes. His hair was wild and his shirt open on a smooth, chiseled chest, but he had managed to button his jeans. He looked disreputable, mess-up, a bit like he looked after sex.

  A lot like he looked after sex, actually.

  Or after a hard run at dawn in the mountain, when he arrived at the bakery smelling like the forest.

  “Gentlemen.”

  I realised he hadn’t neglected to button his shirt, as I had thought; rather, some of the buttons had been torn out and others hung limply on the threads. He was breathing hard. He kept his eyes on the two men, not looking at me.

  Avoiding to look at me, I thought. But why would he do that? He had just saved my life…

  “Oh shit,” one of the men gasped, startled at his voice. “Oh, sorry. You’re the owner of this place? Can I see some identification?”

  Blake ambled closer to them. “Gladly. But I want to make sure this piece of shit is not escaping, first.”

  The rude words sounded weird, spoken in his smooth, elegant voice. My father spat at him — and missed. Thank God. I might have scratched his eyes out otherwise.

  Blake must have seen me ready to jump, because he placed a hand on my wrist. The tip of his fingers, nothing more, and I must have a strange biology myself, because somehow it helped me breathe.

  “The dog,” one of the guards asked suddenly, panic rising in his voice. “Where is that dog?”

  “In the kennel,” replied Blake with calm certainty, and I saw the two men relax visibly. “It’s a guard dog. It’s now secured, you have nothing to fear.”

  “Geez, man, it’s a hell of a dog. Looked more like a wolf to me.”

  “Raised hackles,” shrugged Blake, as if that explained the size of the animal. “He saved my… friend’s life.”

  That echoed my comment about his …friends earlier.

  One of the guards called the police, while the other restrained my father, under Blake’s watchful eye. He didn’t get far from them; he hounded them, really, stalking them, just in case my father managed to escape from the guards and tried to run.

  “I think you should get inside,” Blake told me, without looking at me, his eyes still narrowed on my father. “These gentlemen have it under control.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “In a minute.”

  “Then I can stay.”

  This time he turned to me, and he looked tired. I guess we all have the same worn look when adrenalin fades and we’re confronted with the consequences of what we’ve done. But in his case, the consequences were that I was still alive. Unhurt.

  “Baby,” he murmured, with a thin smile. “Baby, go inside, please. You’ll be safe inside. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m sure the rat doesn’t scuttle off.”

  He came home a moment later. Came inside the house, I mean.

  Not that I was falling for his house; it still looked like a mausoleum. But as soon as he was inside, it felt like home.

  He found me standing in the kitchen, shivering, unable to decide what to do. I had cleaned the wound on my arm, and patted it dry with some paper towels.

  Still avoiding my gaze, he went to a cabinet under the sink and took out some antiseptic cream, some gauze. He took my limp wrist in his and and softly rubbed cream into the cut. It stung, and I winced, but I held still.

  “He’s in their car, restrained. The police will be here any minute. You have nothing to fear.”

  “You came earlier.”

  His voice was bland, his eyes on my arm, rubbing more cream. I had the distinct feeling he was avoiding to look up.

  “Damn right. As soon as Grant told me he was out of jail. I ran here. Flew. Whatever. I was afraid I would be too late…”

  His voice caught.

  I kept my arm still, but I still had one good hand. I ruffled his silky, crazy hair. It felt fine as silk between my fingers.

  “I’m glad you came. You saved my life.”

  I had no doubt my father would have killed me. He was going for rape, not for pleasure but to humiliate me, break me and force me to admit he was stronger. But the more I fought, the more enraged he got. He would have killed me.

  The knowledge seeped through my body, through the center of my bones, with a cold certainty. I had known it even as I fought him, but I had been too enraged myself, too sick of being scared, to let him do that to me.

  “I’m glad this dog saved you,” Blake said without looking up.

  No. No more of that. I fisted my hand in his hair and made him raise his head. This time he met my eyes.

  “No more of that,” I said. I meant to speak softly, but my voice was hoarse. “No more of that. I know who you are. I love who you are. And you just saved my life.” I added as an afterthought: “Baby.”

  He took a deep breath. Stood, with the same supple movement I always admired. Me, at that moment, if I had been crouching, there’s no way I could have come back to standing. I was resting on the side of the kitchen island, shivering helplessly on cotton legs, even if I didn’t feel cold.

  “Not scared?”

  I shook my head no.

  “It could be dangerous for you,” he said.

  “Fine. Rather facing danger with you than getting killed on my own.”

  He chuckled. Sort of. It was a bit strangled.

  He leaned into me. His lips soft and urgent on the side of my neck. I yelped when they met the cut the knife had made on my throat.

  “Fuck. I hadn’t seen that one.”

  His eyes were narrowed. He muttered something that seemed to include “should have torn his jugular the fuck out of his neck,” but I knew he would never have. Thought he would never have. The thought of more violence was sickening.

  “You need some antiseptic cream there.”

  “Later. I need a kiss first.”

  A lot of them. I felt like an old rag, torn and exhausted, still scared, as if the fear that had run in my veins had a hard time letting go. I leaned into his arms. His warmth. His chest felt good, and with my ear against it, I could hear his heart beating. A bit fast. But it was such a reassuring sound, I could have fallen asleep right there.
/>   “Hey. Careful. I’ll take you to bed if you want. But the police will probably want to talk to you.”

  “Let them come.” I made an awkward gesture that didn’t look as grand as I had meant it. “And then take me to bed.”

  His smile was predatory. The good kind.

  The police came, and asked questions. They told me my father had admitted to leaving the note that had so upset Blake.

  Not confessed, exactly, because he didn’t think there was anything wrong with leaving someone a note. He had a right to do it, a damn right, apparently, forgetting it was a private property.

  He told them he had seen us having sex (not the word he used) in the moonlight some night before, that I was underage and that he wanted to stop a fucking pedophile abusing his daughter.

  Stop him, or blackmail him, I completed in my head. But he must have been convincing, because the two policemen had their doubts.

  Blake fumed. I didn’t have the strength anymore to fume or stomp, so I was glad he was doing it for both of us.

  They were embarrassed as hell, I could tell, but they had to check. Thankfully, one of them went outside with Blake’s copy of my ID — the only good side of sleeping with one’s boss, he’s got your ID — and they sorted it out by radio, without asking anything else from me.

  I found glasses in a cabinet, opened the fridge, and served us both a Diet soda from a large bottle.

  “There’s beer as well,” I said, automatically.

  “Soda will be fine. Thank you.”

  I felt I was about to fall right where I was. Exhaustion, and a weird emptiness, had replaced the rage and the horror of being hunted, of knowing I was about to die. I had no energy left.

  The cop grabbed one of the high stools from the island and brought it behind me as I stumbled, and I managed to fall with my ass on the stool. He took the glass from my hand.

  “Easy, Ma’am. You must have had a fright. You can be thankful to your dog.”

  I was.

  “Although, that looked more like a wolf to me.”

  I looked up. “Don’t worry,” he said. His voice was calm. “That’s what I believed I saw, but it was very dark. And things are not always what they look like.”