Raw Heat Charlotte Stein Serena has spent her entire life in the underground, hiding with the rest of humanity from the werewolf plague above. Then she begins taking care of Connor—a werewolf the humans have captured to experiment on, in the hopes of uncovering a cure—and finds her entire belief system shaken. Connor isn’t a vicious animal, hell-bent on the destruction of the human race. He’s kind, thoughtful, and above all—absolutely delicious. The feelings he’s starting to inspire are sending Serena out of control…lewd, filthy, glorious feelings, which could cost her job as a nurse. Not to mention her life. Lust and love between a wolf and a human are strictly forbidden. But for Connor, Serena may be willing to break all the rules…
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Raw Heat ISBN 9781419937989 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Raw Heat Copyright © 2012 Charlotte Stein Edited by Grace Bradley Cover design by Kendra Egert Photography: Dreamstime.com Electronic book publication February 2012 The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. The publisher and author(s) acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks and word marks mentioned in this book. The publisher does not have any control over, and does not assume any responsibility for, author or third-party Web sites or their content.
RAW HEAT Charlotte Stein
Dedication To JS, who turned into AH.
Charlotte Stein
Chapter One She knew something was wrong before she’d even worked her way down his body to the tented place beneath the sheet. She could tell by his face—all taut with tension— and the way he was holding himself. Usually he watched her run the soapy cloth over his chest and shoulders and…other parts of him, but this time he’d turned his gaze away, and his shoulders seemed stiff. It didn’t take her long to figure out what he was doing. He’d pinched the sheet in with both of his arms so she couldn’t get beneath it. It was stupid of him, of course it was, but he’d done it anyway and now she had to either wrestle with him or act as though half a job was enough. She knew it wouldn’t be. Whatever they’d done to him this time—it had covered him in great streaks of brownish, crusted blood. And though the wounds that had leaked said blood were now completely gone, she had to get the remains of it off him. She had to. Werewolf healing didn’t make you magically clean and comfortable. And that was the real kicker. The thought of him being uncomfortable, of him festering in his bed all covered in the evidence of what they’d done, each wound like a push pin sticking into his skin with a note attached—Here’s where they hit me with a crowbar so hard it split the skin. Here’s where they made me roll in broken glass, then laughed to see my eyes blaze colorless, and my teeth bared like razorblades. Of course, he didn’t go over completely, when they did all of those things. But she’d seen the tapes and knew he got the eyes, the teeth, the stripe of fur and strange new cartilage down the length of his spine, like something out of a dinosaur’s graveyard. She’d seen him turn and stare up at the camera, that pale gaze searching and searching as though some part of his mind still understood, and could feel her watching him. 6
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It made her shiver. It made it hard to believe this man in front of her was the same creature. Even now, with something wrong burning down deep between them and his face turned away, she could see the great, gray stillness of his eyes, like pebbles at the bottom of a river. He’d pulled his lower lip almost completely into his mouth, too, which meant the razorblades weren’t there. If they had been, they’d have sliced that thing clean off. So why was her breath catching in her chest? Why could she hear her heart hammering and hammering in some impossible place, like her throat or behind her eyes or right out of her body and halfway down the hall? She kept making the slow circles, everything getting soapier and soapier, nothing any different than usual, not really, and yet the atmosphere kept getting heavier. She could almost feel it now, pressing down on her bent back. Something in her made her keep glancing at the door, though she couldn’t say why. They weren’t doing anything wrong. She was his pseudo-nurse and he was her pseudo-patient, and every day they did this very same thing. It didn’t matter if the ward now seemed dim and strange and empty, with him being the last Class One left and all the beds like markers, reminding them of the others who’d escaped or gone mad or worse. It didn’t matter if he’d called her Serena the other day instead of Nurse Kent or nothing at all. And it definitely didn’t matter that she’d called him Connor. Other nurses did it, she knew they did. Even the horrible one who liked sticking pins in wolves until they snarled and bucked against restraints that Conn never had to have—she called her patients by their names as though they were still human. It was just easier to say, Conn, can you turn over? Even though she knew the others never asked. Was that it? Was it the fact she’d asked instead of ordered him? And she hadn’t even gone with the usual thing she called him either. She’d said Connor instead, as though he really was still Connor Grayson somehow, a man with a human life and a
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family in some bunker or fortress somewhere, just waiting for him to return without that livid scar all over his shoulder. Too late, too late, she thought, because it was. One bite and you were gone forever, lost to the seething masses who now ruled the world above. Of course the doctors claimed it wasn’t true, that the world still belonged to humans and a cure was imminent, just around the corner—why, they made progress with the wolves every day, didn’t they? But then the ceiling groaned above their heads and a new breach took another hundred lives and who could believe they were telling the truth? She hardly saw anyone now, on her travels around the endless underground corridors. Really it was no wonder she’d started talking to Conn, actually talking to him about meaningless things like books he’d once read and places he remembered. His memory was just so vast and full of the time before and the world above, and if she was truly honest, his voice did weird things to her insides. It was like molten metal, pouring all over her. And it sounded that way now, when he told her she should stop in a tone so tight it practically hummed. Of course she knew she should obey him. If he was telling her do something, it had to be important. Wolves didn’t get to tell humans what to do, down here. Wolves did as they were told or else they got beaten, or drugged, or restrained. Sometimes they got all three just because it suited the doctors and their tests, so him speaking to her that way had to mean something. She wished she didn’t know what. She wished she hadn’t said to him, Oh Connor, the day before. It had sounded too warm, too full of the ache that had gone through her on seeing his broken body, and then he’d looked at her with something other than complete stillness. His eyes had blazed, briefly, and when she’d gone to give him the shot she’d stolen—just for the pain, didn’t he deserve something for this terrible, terrible pain?—
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he’d actually grabbed her wrist. Told her she’d be in trouble, that she shouldn’t, that he’d heal soon, he would, he just needed a bit of time. He just needed food, which she’d brought him. It had meant she’d gone hungry today, but what did it matter? What did it matter when she could count his ribs sometimes through the thick meat of his immense body, all six-foot-five of him just melting away right before her eyes? What did it matter when they’d lost the war— human beings had lost the war so who gave a fuck anymore. Who gave a fuck? She pulled the sheet away from him and he didn’t resist. He kept his gaze on nothing and clenched his jaw and breathed too hard, but he didn’t try to stop her. He just let her soak the cloth in the hot water again, then run it down over his heavy thighs as though really he didn’t have anything like an erection. No, no, no, nothing like that ever happened. Wolves didn’t have sex thoughts. Hell, humans barely had sex thoughts anymore either, and certainly not about their half-animal patients. Why, she’d not had a whole, complete sex thought in over a year—ever since the guy in the laundry room, spurting between her greedy fingers with his mouth on her neck and her head filled with weird thoughts. Weird thoughts like, If you were a wolf, you’d bite me now. Though she’d long since stopped thinking things like that. Since Connor had been assigned to her, she’d stopped thinking about a lot of things. She’d stopped thinking about how wet she sometimes felt between her legs, after she’d spent the day sliding a soapy cloth over his naked body. She’d stopped thinking about running through a forest with a wolf after her, because too often it was Connor and he didn’t bite her when he caught her. He moaned in her ear with that liquid-metal voice of his instead. He rocked between her legs and asked her if she still thought he was a man, if she still found him attractive even though she knew what he was underneath. She could never remember what she’d answered, in these dreams. But she knew what she’d say now if he asked. God yes. Yes, yes, a million times yes. It didn’t matter 9
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that he was a wolf—he made the guy in the laundry room look like a mutant. She knew he did. Before all of this he must have had girls falling all over him, girls prettier and sexier than her, girls with pouting lips and fine, straight hair, all ready to devour his perfect, lush mouth and his stormy eyes and that look about him, that hungry, ready-tofuck look. It was on him now, that look. She got to the bottom of his legs without glancing at his face, but once there she made the mistake of flicking her gaze up. And he was burning at her, just burning. He’d clenched his hands into fists at his side, which should have been threatening but wasn’t somehow. None of this was threatening, even though she could see his cock clearly, jutting up over his belly like a…like a… Jesus, she didn’t even know. Of course she’d known how big he was, there—she’d seen it often enough, thick and slumberous between his thighs—but close up like this and so stiff and swollen and ready to just do whatever it was he wanted to do… It felt very, very different. So much so that her nipples had stiffened underneath the cotton of her stupid toothin uniform, and she knew how slick her sex was. She’d soaked through the material of her panties, at the very least, and when she moved, things glided. It was mortifying. Not least of which because she knew one thing for certain—he’d be able to tell. He didn’t completely turn into a wolf, not ever, but he definitely had all of the senses. He was always sat up waiting for her, before she’d even opened the door and walked into the ward. He knew when she’d stopped washing her hair with the meager supply of shampoo and started in on the scrappy soap. He’d know this. He’d be able to smell it, hear it, feel it most likely. It was probably the reason for his immense erection—he’d gotten the scent of her ridiculous arousal and it had forced a completely unwanted reaction on him. She almost wanted to apologize, but it would just mean acknowledging what was going on. And that seemed like a bad, bad idea. Better just to keep soaping him until he 10
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started breathing in a completely unsettling and too rapid way, body minutely squirming and rocking against the bed, everything so hot and stifling and awful. When she dared to look at him again, he’d closed his eyes. He’d turned his head to one side, against the pillow, and it seemed for all the world as though he’d found himself in the middle of a troubling dream. His gleaming, parted lips aside, of course. They just looked like something she needed to touch, immediately. She couldn’t even see the sharp hint of his teeth, so it didn’t seem like too great a hardship to imagine sliding a finger inside or maybe…maybe she could just lean down and— She shook herself hard and kept on with it, teeth gritted, arms now soaped all the way up to the elbows. Everything would be okay if she just pretended all of this was normal, if she just continued washing him and studiously ignored his stiff cock. In a minute she could tell him she was done and he could clean that place himself. Hell, he could do other things to it, if he wanted. She would just turn her back and think of other things distant and far away, and he could stroke himself to orgasm while her sanity held on to itself by a thread. Something like that. Something that was not her running the back of her hand over the thick length of him, just to see him jerk and shiver. He didn’t move away though. He didn’t grab her wrist the way he’d done before, and he didn’t tell her to stop or anything like that. And when she did it again, firmer this time and with more intent, he opened his eyes. Looked right at her, almost feral but not quite, his entire body rippling with the tense breaths she could see him drawing in. She hardly dared move. Did he want her to? God, she didn’t even know what the want was, in that equation. She thought, blindly, of the guy in the laundry room and her hand on him, but it hardly seemed adequate in the face of Connor’s swollen cock and the arousal thrumming through her and fuck it, just fuck it. 11
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On the next pass over his body she tossed the cloth aside, halfway down. Then just let her bare, slick hand slide up, over the solid length of him, until he bucked and put a fist to his mouth and oh God that was a sweet sight. She could nearly hear the moan he’d pushed right into his clenched hand, and when she slid her tentative grip back down—almost like cleaning but not quite—she actually did hear him. He was loud, really loud—far louder than she’d ever expected in thoughts she absolutely hadn’t had. And he pushed into it too. He rocked his hips and came close to fucking her hand before she’d even gotten up a good stroke, but that was fine. That was okay. If they were doing this then she sure needed the help, because her brain had short-circuited five minutes ago and he felt like a liquid dream in her hand—so solid and thick and slippery. A pearl of pre-come had welled in the slit at the tip, and when she swiped her thumb over it he produced more—a fine trickle over her pumping fist. It was almost too much to bear, too much to take in, knowing he was going to climax so soon with her hand on him and her body over his and God, God. She squeezed her thighs together around the sweet ache there, but it only made things worse. Her clit felt immense, swollen, and every little movement chafed her uniform against her nipples. If he hadn’t been able to tell how aroused she was before, he’d definitely be able to detect it now, and the thought spurred her on, made her jerk at him quicker, harder. A groan escaped from between his lips, though she could hardly blame him. He looked dazed and lust-choked, mouth open and so slick-looking, head back, spine arched almost clear off the bed. She’d had no idea she could do this to someone—make them feel this abandoned, amidst the pain and the horror and everything pressing on them all of the time—but it couldn’t be denied. The sight of him coming, hard, all over her working fist and his tensing belly…it was enough to get her to accept it fully. She’d done this—made him spurt all over 12
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himself. And he was still shaking with it minutes later, breathing hard into a hand that now looked bloody, a fine coat of perspiration just visible below the streaks of soap and water. She looked at the glistening fluid that marked his stomach and could hardly believe what she’d done. It was on her too—between her fingers, slick and sticky—and though the urge to wipe it off surged through her, something else had hold of her at the same time. She wanted to lick it. Taste it. Taste him. He hadn’t moved and she felt almost certain he was drifting into sleep, so really, how much would he know if she just put a finger to her lips? How much would he know if she just slid her hand between her legs and rubbed over the swollen mound of her sex? It wouldn’t take long. A couple of firm strokes over her clit and she’d come just as he had, hard and too loud and then oh, the relief. That’s how he looked, she realized— like a weight had been lifted off him or some great pressure had eased. Would it really be so much to ask, to have him ease the pressure on her too? He could do it, she knew he could. He had such long, thick fingers and they’d feel so good sliding through her slick folds, so good grasping at her body and then maybe he could… She stood straight too quickly, before the idea could take hold. Before she went mad and just climbed on him and fucked a goddamn werewolf. Where was her mind—Jesus Christ! The door didn’t even have a lock on it and though no one ever came by it didn’t mean they wouldn’t, one day. It didn’t mean they couldn’t catch her, with his slippery come on her hand and her uniform all in disarray, face too hot, hair all a mess, everything looking as if she just needed to be fucked, right now. When she finished bundling together her tray—cloth, bowl full of soapy water, various pathetic medical instruments and vials—and turned, he’d opened his eyes. And she could see it in his gaze, how sluttish she appeared. She could see him burning still, hand almost out as though he wanted to grab something on her, pull her back. 13
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So she ran. She ran with the tray in her hands and the water sloshing over the front of her uniform, and him calling to her forever in her head—Serena, Serena, Serena. She realized then with a kind of pained clarity that she should never have told him her name.
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Chapter Two She tried not to think about it. She tried not to think about it in the canteen, while Tara droned on about her duties doubling and the stupid wolf she was having to deal with lately—he thinks he’s going to bite me with all his teeth pulled out!—and how much she hoped they would all die. She tried not to think about it while staring up at the ceiling in her tiny room, listening for every tiny creak and crack it made because sometimes, they broke through the brittle ground and got into the walls and then you just had to run and run and run. Would she have to run from Connor one day? He couldn’t possibly carry on living like this. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t tried to escape a thousand times already, when really he’d never even attempted it once. He just sat in his rusty, rickety old hospital bed, waiting for her to come to him and… She closed her eyes and forced the images away. Why had she done it, for God’s sake? It just seemed so impossible and insane whenever she let it slip into her ordinary, everyday thoughts. It seemed like something Tara would do, only in reverse. Tara would sneak in and stab him in the night, then get seven hundred demerits for her trouble. Tara would sneakily pull his hair or otherwise tamper with him, then laugh about it over potato soup in the canteen. Tara would not jerk a wolf off and then wonder what it would feel like to have him touch her in return. Maybe with his hands. Maybe with his mouth. An agitated sound burst out of her and she shoved herself up against the wall, back to the blanket darkness, fists pressed into her eyes. He was a wolf, a wolf, and she’d touched him so lewdly and wanted him more than she’d ever wanted any human and nothing in her could figure out why.
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Because he was handsome? Because he was big? None of those things tempted anyone else. And she’d seen other wolves just the same anyway, wolves that could still talk the charming talk and smile with all of their ordinary-looking teeth, before suddenly ripping off their man-skin to reveal the beast beneath. Connor had never tried to charm her. She knew he hadn’t. He barely talked and when he did it was careful, so careful, as though at any second she might pull out a pin and stick it in him. And when they’d finally started their little hesitant conversations, he’d seemed almost reluctant to offer his own lost loves. As though sharing the books he missed or the films he longed to see again meant he had to give away a piece of himself. As though she might tell him he was wrong for loving things the government hadn’t archived—like Near Dark or I Sing The Body Electric. He’d told her he remembered that one for the title, and then he’d seemed to pause, eyes so still and watchful, as though considering if he should go on. But he must have seen something in her face—something trustworthy—because he had continued. He’d told her that those words described how it felt, to go from a man to a wolf. Like my body is singing electric, he’d said, and maybe that was when she’d first fallen for him. Because she had, of course. She’d fallen for him, utterly. That’s what it meant, when you couldn’t think of anything else but another person—Tara had said so, and she knew better than anybody about love and sex and all of that stuff. Not that she could actually talk to her about it and confirm, however. Or she could—yeah, she could if she really wanted to. They could sit down and have a nice chat about her feelings for a fucking werewolf, and Tara would smile and nod and dispense truly excellent advice. Shortly before Serena found herself on a one-way trip to the incinerator, courtesy of her best friend in all the world.
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***** He called himself Commissioner Reddick, but he wasn’t really. She didn’t even know where he’d gotten the term “commissioner” from, though once—very early on, when it had still been a little startling to hear Connor suddenly speak—he’d told her it was from something called Batman in that cool, almost sardonic tone of his. Ever since, she’d wondered why on earth Commissioner Reddick thought of himself as a superhero made out of bats. He didn’t look like a bat, and there was nothing super about him, and when he demanded to know why she hadn’t been seeing to “the big one” she just wanted to stab him in the eye with a pencil. “I’ve been busy with other duties,” she squeezed out, and Reddick’s little round face became even smaller, and rounder. He had eyes like buttons, and when he got angry they seemed to lose all of their sheen. As though someone had turned a light out inside him. “I don’t see any extra duties on your rota, Nurse Kent,” he said. And, well, yeah. He had her there. Everyone was pulling extra time because of the ration bar shortage and the broth shortage and the general shortage of everything, but she was almost an actual, real nurse. She’d scored high enough in initial aptitude tests to garner her some proper training, and once you were properly trained no one wanted you slaving away in hydroponics or laundry. They wanted you to one day beat werewolves with lead pipes and then write the results down in a ledger. She’d already started writing proper reports about Connor for them, after all. Reports like, Today I couldn’t get his dislocated shoulder to go back in the socket. “I’ve been helping out in the Class Three ward,” she said. Which was a complete and total lie. The Class Three ward made her barf, but luckily Tara was only too happy to take on the mangled limbs and blood-red sheets. You know. For shits and giggles.
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And in exchange she’d taken on Connor, because Connor was boring and never screamed when people scored him with rusty nails. “I see. I see. Well, may I just remind you how important the big one is?” She thought of said big one’s face, so still and lovely. “It’s been a year and he’s shown no sign of rebellion, no change to a bestial form. He could be a halfway point.” How she hated Commissioner Reddick and his ridiculous, half-baked theories. Everyone knew there were plenty of wolves that didn’t change all the way. Everyone knew it, and still they battered him and electrocuted him and hosed him with ice-cold water, as though if they could only hurt him enough the human race would be proven superior. “Of course,” she said and nodded. “So if I hear you’re not visiting him every day, we’ll have to have another chat.” She tried not to close her eyes. He thought she was just shirking duties! God, if only he knew. If only he knew she had a truly excellent, excellent reason for not visiting Connor every single goddamn day. She didn’t even want to look him in the eye, for fuck’s sake. “You won’t have to have another chat with me, sir,” she said, and that much was true, at least. It was tough to have to go to him, but Lord it had been tougher to stay away. “I’m trusting you, Nurse Kent,” Reddick said, but he was a fool too. She couldn’t even trust herself.
***** When she first walked into the ward, she did her best not to look at his face. He was staring at her intently, she could tell, but if she could only keep her eyes on the tray in her two hands or on the clinical green of the floor or on nothing, nothing at all, everything would be okay.
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She was Nurse Kent, professional. He was a blank spot who needed cleaning and fixing. Lord, she didn’t know how she was going to get through this. Even if she managed to pretend he didn’t exist, somehow, at some point she was going to have to run her hands all over his naked body. And something about that just seemed desperately unfair. Who on earth had ever thought of this stupid practice? Couldn’t they clean themselves, for God’s sake? Well, the ones who no longer had hands probably couldn’t clean themselves, but as far as she knew Connor still totally had those two appendages. Unless they’d taken them on the day she’d been away from him. Oh God, what if they’d taken his hands or worse, his face, or even worse than that his gorgeous, amazing— She breathed out, long and slow. No, no, no—his hands and face were still there. And his…other thing was still there too. She could see it beneath the bed sheet, already too thick and probably halfway to hardness and oh this was all just a mess. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he said, which just made it even more of a mess. At least if he’d said something simple and straightforward like, Oh, I see my halfhard cock is making you wet again, she could have pretended there was just a weird sexual current between them. No deep sadness and sweet longing. No hearts and flowers and other things that probably didn’t even exist anymore, up there in the world she’d never seen. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your nurse.” There. That straightened things out. Now he could see what a professional she was, and absolutely nothing more. “Yeah, but last time you did things that most nurses—” “Let’s talk about something else!” she said, only it came out way too shrill. It almost sounded like the morning whistle blowing—that’s how shrill it was.
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But it made him quiet. She could hear him shifting on the bed, but that didn’t really count as noise. Her own tremulous breathing—that counted as noise. The way her own chest was rising and falling, and her uniform was chafing against her burning-hot body—that counted as noise. It sounded loud enough to block out rational thought in her head. “Well, I wasn’t going to mention it…” he started, and she willed him not to finish his sentence, oh how she willed him not to. “But then I realized how desperately aroused you are and it seemed sort of rude not to.” She whipped her gaze to his, immediately. Was he messing with her? Was that the ways things were now? She’d touched him intimately, so he got to make little barbed comments about her ridiculous horniness while his eyes fixed on her in some awful, hungry sort of way? She didn’t think so. Oh no, she didn’t think so. She snapped around and faced the little table by his bed, back almost to him. Hands busy with very important nursing kinds of things. And if her legs were sort of trembling as she did them, well, it didn’t mean anything. It just meant she’d had a hard, hungry day—because of him—and she had a tough, annoying task ahead of her—also because of him. If he didn’t want to do anything to make those problems better, he could just go screw. “Serena,” he said, which was almost as bad as the arousal comment. The urge to spit at him that he shouldn’t call her by her first name swelled up inside her, large and black and awful, just awful. But then, if she did he’d never call her by her first name again. If she snapped at him, he’d probably retreat and then what? They’d go all the way back to cold silences and empty nothingness, until one day some doctor would give her a card saying he’d died and she’d been moved to Ward Three.
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“Serena, I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said, because he was too good at this game. He was so good she didn’t even think it was a game. He’d long since passed the point where he could rip off his man-skin and surprise her with a claw to the face. “It’s just so hard for me, to have you come in here every day and know that you…to feel that you might…” When had she started trembling all over? She couldn’t remember. She could barely remember her own name, so recollecting details like minute body movements seemed like a Herculean chore. “I mean, I’ve never been sure…” He was lying. He had been sure, she knew he had. He’d smelled it on her all along. “But God, the other day when you came in it was like a wave coming over me—I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop myself—do you have any idea how long it’s been since—” She let herself look at him then. Just out of the corner of one eye—though out of the corner of one eye turned out to be more than enough. He’d put a fist to his mouth, like before when he’d tried to keep his own moans in, only this time…this time he was trying to keep something else in. Something like words he obviously didn’t want to say. Oh, how she longed to help him say them. He cleared his throat and when he continued, he seemed…calmer. Or at least calmer by comparison to the shaky heights his voice had gotten up to before. “I’m sorry. That was…inappropriate and irrelevant,” he said. She realized, then, that she’d clenched her hands into fists at her sides. That her fists were actually kind of shaking with the effort it took to keep her fingers closed and away from him. “I just wanted to explain why…it happened. And tell you that it won’t happen again. No matter how I imagine you feel, no matter how I respond to that or want you, I
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won’t ever let myself get into that state. I can control myself. I can always control myself.” Her voice came out different, when she finally managed to speak—like something far away and not related to her. As though something had broken inside her and could never be fixed again. “What if I can’t?” He looked confused. She could see it, even out of the corner of her eye. “I—” “What if I can’t control myself? What if all I can feel is this beating pulse between my legs?” Her voice was clearer now. Stronger. “I mean, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that it turns you on, to know that I’m excited. To know that I want you. And I do, God, I do. I don’t even know why I thought I could stand here and pretend.” “Serena,” he said, and she was sure he meant it as a scold. Unfortunately it came out rough and heated, and the pulse between her legs beat harder. “It isn’t just your body—though God knows it’s been a pleasure to run my hands all over that gorgeous thing—it’s the way you are too. You’ve been kinder to me than any other man, did you know that? I’ve never even dared to speak like this with anyone else, because I’m always afraid of what they’ll say. But I’m not afraid with you. Isn’t that funny? I’m never afraid with you.” She looked at him then. It was okay to look, now that she’d accepted everything— even though his eyes were burning bright and she could see the hint of teeth below his upper lip, and when he shifted on the bed it was obvious, so obvious that he had an erection. The beat between her legs became an ache, a long and insistent ache, and when he said, “You should be,” it only got worse. Not better, the way it was supposed to. It
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should have dried up completely, with words like those coming out of him and his body all tensed like that—as though ready to pounce on her at any moment. But it hadn’t. Instead she could feel herself getting wetter and wetter, and she could see him reacting to it in the way he’d probably always wanted to. Like a man halfcrazed with lust, after a hundred years of starving in the desert. It was intoxicating, unbelievable—so much so that she found herself scrabbling for the buttons on the front of her uniform. But he didn’t do what she expected once two of them were undone and a third had started buckling under her trembling fingers. She’d braced herself for grabbing or ripping—not violent exactly, but certainly forceful—and nothing of the kind came. He just looked stunned for a second, eyes never leaving her busy fingers, and then when he finally spoke it was only to ask a completely insane question. “Are you taking your clothes off?” She wasn’t sure what to say. Yes seemed too simple, no seemed like something a person would say if they’d completely misinterpreted the whole scenario. And oh God, she hoped it wasn’t the latter. It couldn’t be the latter, right? She could see his stiff cock beneath the sheet like an immense exclamation point, and he’d said all that stuff and she’d told him she wasn’t afraid and— “Oh…I thought…do you want me to keep it on?” “No, God no—I just didn’t think you’d want to be that close to me…with all of your skin…naked… Are we going to be naked?” “Of course I want to be that close to you—I mean, unless you want to do something else—” He ran two shaky hands through his hair, then glanced at the door. “Put something under the handle first. Just…put something up against it.” He was trying to keep his tone even and reasonable, but it wasn’t really hitting anywhere close. She couldn’t blame him, however. Her legs felt like water as she ran to
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the door and shoved some flimsy, nothing chair underneath the handle, just as he’d suggested. It wouldn’t make any difference, she knew. But that wasn’t the point, really. It wasn’t the thing that made her knees knock and her heart try to escape out of her body. No, her heart was trying to escape because they were actually going to do something that required a wedged-shut door. And when she turned back around to face him…Lord. He looked even better than when she’d first stepped away. He looked so good she could hardly make it back across the room, and her hands wouldn’t cooperate when she told them to finish unbuttoning her dress. She got to somewhere around the seventh button down, before he stopped her with hands that seemed too patient and too steady, and pulled her down to touch his mouth to hers. It wasn’t even like a kiss, really. It was like a try-out, a little brush of skin against skin, as though he wasn’t sure how scared she might be of the sharp points beyond his soft lips. And in truth, she wasn’t sure how scared she should be. If she pressed her mouth to his, suddenly, would that be enough to cut her? To turn her, forever? She didn’t know and found she hardly cared, when he moved his lips over hers like that and pushed his hand into her curly hair. He’d started unbuttoning the rest of her dress too. All the way down to the bottom and then oh, his hand slipped inside. Just over her stomach, but apparently her stomach had sprouted seven thousand extra nerve endings and all of them were jumping. Sizzling, in fact. Did he know how much she wanted to kiss him properly? She could feel the tentative flicker of his tongue, just every now and then, and when she parted her lips over his he didn’t pull away. But he didn’t push for something deeper, either, so maybe it wasn’t okay, maybe this slow slide back and forth was too much all on its own and he was going to…
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She froze when he pushed a hand between her legs. She didn’t mean to—he just did the whole thing so abruptly. One second they were making out politely like teenagers, the next he had a hand between her legs all lewd and rough, fingertips brushing over the place her panties should have been. Of course he must have known she was bare down there. He knew the difference between the smell of flesh clothed, and the smell of it unconfined. But she still appreciated his suddenly hot and panting breaths against her mouth, as though the idea excited him. As though he couldn’t get enough of her slippery pussy all exposed like this, beneath his softly stroking fingertips. And he did stroke softly. He didn’t shove right into her, or rub over her clit with a too-firm thumb. He just fondled, he just spread her open, fingers sliding slickly over her swollen lips and the stiff bud nestled between. She tried to get away after a second. It was just too much, far too much—it had been too long and him stroking her this way felt almost like pain. He had his finger right on the tip of her clit, just lightly, and in slow, torturous circles and oh dear God she couldn’t stand it. She had to do something, grab something on him, get him inside her all hard and fierce and fuck fuck fuck. But he just held her fast—one arm around her waist now. She wasn’t even sure why she’d been worrying about standing up on her own two wobbly legs, because he’d been holding her clear off the ground for the last who-knew-how-long. And he was whispering in her ear too, all hot and rough and breathy, that finger circling and circling while he told her that it was her turn now, that she’d made him come so hard the other day and he wanted her to feel the exact same way. “Like my body’s singing electric for you,” he said, and she could feel it surging up. She couldn’t remember ever coming this quickly—not even under her own hand—but it was almost on her anyway. Her sex felt like one, long, shivering pulse, and oh God her clit was so swollen beneath his working fingers. So swollen and sharp with sensation, so ready to turn her inside out. 25
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She knew now why he’d put his fist to his mouth. She had to do the same, only his immense body seemed to be in the way. Her hand was somewhere underneath his massive left arm—the one he’d used to keep her in place—and she had to keep the other one on the back of his wrist. She had to. If she didn’t he was going to do something even more maddening to her clit, he was going to rub it right on the sensitive underside or maybe push two fingers inside her as he stroked and fuck, she couldn’t stand it. Which is how she found herself with her mouth on his shoulder—right over his scar, God, right over his scar—biting down hard to stop the moan bubbling up and out of her. But it was okay, it was fine, because the moment she did so obscene a thing he made a sound right into her hair, a choked, thoroughly pleasure-spiked sound, as though she’d done the most erotic thing a person could possibly do. And then he pressed down hard on her clit and she bucked, and held on tight to nothing and came in great surging waves, all over his hand.
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Chapter Three It felt like a thousand years since she’d last been sensible of anything. She couldn’t even be sure if she was sensible of anything right now, with her head on his shoulder and her hands making long, languorous circles all over his gigantic back. Everything in her seemed to have turned to syrup, and though he was breathing all hard and shaky, and she could feel his probably immense erection sort of brushing against her belly, she couldn’t work up the wherewithal to do anything about it. Until he started re-buttoning her uniform. Then she could do something about it. Then it seemed like the utmost importance to do something, immediately, before she found herself completely dressed again and no reciprocation took place. He did understand that she wanted to reciprocate, right? He did get that this was all just stupendous-orgasm-laziness and she was on the case, she was in business—in truth she couldn’t wait to get her hands on him in some completely allowed, non-illicit sort of fashion. But he just said, “No, no—we’ve been too long already.” Even though that was a total lie. She’d gone off in about thirty seconds. Hell, if he went at her again she felt pretty sure she’d go off in less time than that. Nerve endings were jangling. Things were buzzing. Why was he pushing her away? “We have to do this in stages—slowly, okay?” She wasn’t even sure if she still understood what the word slowly meant. “But…you…” “Slowly,” he said, and somehow he’d gotten her entire uniform buttoned up and closed back together. “Come back tomorrow.”
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“Well, of course I will—but…” “Go on. I’ll be fine. I’ve waited to touch you for a year. I can wait another day.” He sounded sincere. He really did. Strange thing was, however, he didn’t look sincere. He looked in agony and most of him was juddering like a broken-down washing machine, and when she finally sighed and turned and picked up her tray, she could see he’d pulled his lower lip right into his mouth. The way he did when he was in pain. “Are you sure I can’t—” “Go, before someone realizes you’re missing.” She went. Though doing so posed several problems she hadn’t really thought about until she got out of the door and started walking down the narrow corridor to the lab. The first being that she couldn’t really walk properly. He’d destroyed her major motor functions. Her body kept sort of sloping to the left, and everything between her legs still felt hot and swollen and slick. Too hot and swollen and slick. She was almost certain people could tell. She only passed two people on the way to the lab and then back, in the direction of her room, but even so those two people definitely knew something was up. Her face felt hot and her hair felt all coming out of her ponytail on one side where he’d pushed his hand, and all she could think was, I wish I’d touched him in return. I wish I’d taken him in my mouth or in my cunt, then fucked him until he burst. I wish it I wish it I wish— “Hey, Serena, you okay? You look like you’re…straining.” Oh God no. Tara. Tara coming down the corridor from the canteen, as she tried to actively run toward the living quarters. “Yeah, I’m totally fine,” she said, but there were two things wrong with doing so. Number one—she’d shouted the words over her shoulder as she got up a mild jog. Number two—she’d used the word “totally”.
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Nobody said totally unless they really meant I’ve just let a werewolf bring me to a fantastic, incredible orgasm and now I’m thinking about fucking him and fucking him until he dies. Though she had to say, Tara would probably appreciate the last part of that equation. Serena wondered if her friend knew she had blood in her blonde hair. Or if she understood she was looking more and more insane lately, like a person on the edge of doing something terrible. Eating a werewolf, perhaps. “Slow down then, for goodness sake! I wanted to talk to you about this one wolf, who—” “I really have to get to my room, Tara. I’m so tired—the big werewolf is a lot of work, you know.” Boy, was he ever. “Oh my God, has he actually started reacting to stuff? Because when I did stuff to him he barely made a sound. Kind of like he was asleep, even when he looked awake.” God, God, she didn’t want to hear this now. Hell, she hadn’t wanted to hear it before, so Tara trying to tell her tales of torturing Connor after she’d just had his mouth on hers and his hands…there…it just wasn’t kosher. It wasn’t something her soul could reasonably take. “Tara, seriously—I’m exhausted,” she said, as she ground to a reluctant halt by her quarters. “You look it. Jesus. Have you got a temperature? Because this fortress in quadrant five got struck down by a re-emergence of bubonic plague—did you hear? So you know, if you’re feeling sick you should really report—” “I will. I swear to God I will.” She opened the door to her room, and when she stepped inside she made damn sure there was no room for Tara to sneak in. It wasn’t
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really that hard to achieve, however. Her room was the size of a shoebox. “After I’ve been asleep for a thousand years.” And then she closed the door in Tara’s face and slumped against the back of it.
***** “I think we should just talk,” he said, which sounded perfectly normal and reasonable. Most girls loved to just talk, she knew. Like Tara, who’d spent the entire day trying to talk to her about this one wolf who’d started crying and begging for his mommy when she burned him with little white-hot wires. But apparently, Serena didn’t like to talk all that much. Because when he sort of pushed her away a little and said those words, she found several things wrong with them. There was the fact that he’d spent the day before kissing and touching her and enjoying all of the above. There were the words he’d spoken, about wanting her and arousal and all of that stuff. And then there was his big, uncomfortable-looking erection, pressing up against the sheet. When she’d first come into the room she’d even seen him sort of bumping his hips, as though the feel of the material all taut over his swollen hard-on felt amazing. Or unbearable. One or the other. “Don’t you want to feel good?” “Of course I do. But I also…want to respect you. As a person.” Where was he getting this stuff from? They’d spent a year talking and respecting each other. In fact, they’d spent a year respecting each other so painfully that it made her wild just thinking about it. Those barriers were gone now. They’d been blown up. He’d blown them up when he’d let her touch him and told her how much he wanted her and Lord, had she just imagined it all? “I thought…you wanted me.”
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It sounded terrible in her head and even worse coming out. And he just looked wretched after she said it, as though it destroyed him to have to tell her that actually, he’d just been glad of some random female company. He’d just been happy to get anything he could and now, in the cold light of day, he could see she wasn’t really worthy of him. Other girls—hell, even werewolf-hating girls—would probably be willing, if she was. If one nurse who had problems with him calling her by her first name was up for a fuck, then other nurses would be too. Hotter nurses. Hotter nurses like Tara, with her wires and her little shark’s teeth and her mean eyes. He probably liked that kind of stuff—meanness and torture and so on and so forth. He probably had all kinds of kinks she’d not even considered, when she’d sat by his bed and listened to him talk and talk about all the lovely stories he remembered, like the one about the glass slipper and the one about the trail of breadcrumbs and the one about the girl in the red hood… Wait, what was he saying now? “I don’t just want you, Serena. I love you.” Oh. That. “I love you.” That. His arms were kind of burning her hands, so she let them drop away from him. And then she stepped back, just for good measure. “Is that so terrible? I just thought if it was okay for us to kiss and touch…I thought it’d be okay for me to say…” He looked panicked, suddenly. Unbearably. “It is okay. It’s really okay. I’m just…” Shocked? Stunned? Happy. Happy. 31
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“You’re sort of smiling. Is that a good sign?” He had to know it was, even though she could feel herself trying to hold the corners of her mouth down and her whole face seemed to be kind of trembling and oh no, oh no, he was absolutely going to know how much she loved him too. Had he seen it on her face, the other day? The other day when she’d thought love love love a million times, like an idiot? And did it really matter, when he apparently loved her too? “Look, I’m completely aware of how insane this is, and I don’t expect to run off into the sunset with you forever or anything like—” She kissed him then. He needed kissing. She could feel his teeth like needles beneath the press of his lips, and he made a sound too—a little protesting sound—but she didn’t care. She didn’t care. “I want to run off into the sunset with you,” she said, though in truth she had little idea of what that actually meant. It just sounded good in between kisses all over his face and throat and everywhere, just everywhere. “Oh God, Serena, listen…” “I know you want me. I want you—so badly.” “Serena, seriously, seriously—we need to talk about this. I know I said I could control myself but the truth is, I don’t know if—” “I don’t care. Lord, you taste so good…” He grabbed a hold of her then. Hard. “Please don’t kiss me there, don’t!” And then quite suddenly she was on her back, on the bed, pinned there like a bug. Him over her, all tense-faced and feral-eyed, hands circling her wrists, body like an iron bar.
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Jesus, he was strong all right. Had she thought he’d be strong? Yeah, he was stronger than that. She’d barely even felt him move or push her…or anything at all, really. He’d just done it as though she weighed nothing and took no effort at all. And yet weirdly, she wanted to say something no sane person probably would. “It’s okay. I trust you.” His breathing slowed a little then. She could see the color blooming in his eyes, again. “I know you won’t hurt me. Is that what you’re worried about? That you’ll hurt me? I know you won’t,” she said, and in response he shuddered from head to toe. It felt sort of like she’d pressed herself up against some heavy machinery, when he did so. “You can’t know that. You don’t know what it’s like when you kiss me or touch me— I thought it would make things easier, make me relaxed around your arousal, but it doesn’t. It just makes things worse and I’m scared I’ll do something bad if you touch me there again.” He’d loosened his grip on her wrists, so it didn’t take much to just pull her hand free and run it over his scar, lightly. “You mean here?” His eyes turned to slits and he did something both thrilling and terrifying. He parted his lips in some kind of pretense at a bite, like an animal showing that it could, if it wanted to—like the motion of the thing without actually doing it. And his eyes looked suddenly pale again. Pale and unearthly. “Yes, there.” “Is it sensitive?” “God, very. Very. I think I could come just having you touch it like that.” “Like this?” “Mmmm, yes.”
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He made the little bite motion again, this time close to her stroking hand. And it felt awful to be so turned-on by him moving that way, by his body over hers and everything about him so suddenly animalistic, but it couldn’t be denied. She wanted the very thing the rest of her race so abhorred. “How about when I touch you here?” It was a joy and a pleasure to run her hand down over his body, truly it was. But God, the feeling that ran through her when she took hold of his stiff dick… The tip felt so slick—enough to make her wonder if maybe he’d had one go around already. If maybe he’d spent the time before she arrived stroking himself, or possibly rubbing himself against the mattress or his pillow or just anything, really, anything at all to make himself spurt like a fountain. The way he was probably going to right now. His flesh felt searing hot and so swollen, all the silky skin around his shaft as taut as a drum. And then he said, “Oh yes, fuck, fuck. Make me come—I don’t care. Make me come.” And she was lost, lost on a tide of him swearing and saying dirty words and begging her to do bad things. “Tell me you want me.” “I do. I do so much. Jesus.” “Tell me you want to be inside me,” she said, while stroking him just right, just enough to get him into that teeth-baring, red-faced, agonized sort of state. “Oh no, I can’t, we can’t—what if I hurt you? What if I bite you?” There was a little hesitation before the word bite—she could hear it, like the sound of someone swallowing something they didn’t want to eat. But all she could think about was the way it would feel—to have his teeth sinking into her flesh, and then to be electric the way he was—and none of it seemed so bad. None of it seemed like something she shouldn’t want.
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Which was how she found herself tugging him toward her aching sex, with nothing between them and him not stopping her at all. He didn’t seem capable of stopping her. “You won’t hurt me. Here, here, just like this,” she said, and then she’d gotten him right between her legs, and all she had to do was swipe the swollen head of his cock through her slick folds to make his body go taut all over. As though she’d plucked a too-tight string inside him. “That feel good?” she asked, but only because she knew it did. It felt glorious to rub him back and forth over her straining clit, and then back down, down—almost as though she was going to push him inside, but not quite. And all the while he twisted above her, face a glorious and tortured picture, sounds coming out of him like nothing she’d ever heard before. But he still resisted, she could see him resisting. “Don’t you want to do this?” she asked, and watched him wrestle with it. Sweat gleamed at his temples and it looked as though he was trying to grind his teeth together. “It’s not a good idea. If I come inside you it might turn you,” he said, but she could hear the little ring of playfulness behind his voice. A little hint of amusement— something he rarely let himself slip into. “You’re only saying that because you know I know it’s not true.” “I might give you a werewolf baby,” he said, and there was even more playfulness there, this time—and a real warring tension on his face too, as though he couldn’t decide between delight and agony. “Really? A werewolf baby?” she asked, then watched him bite at her again when he recognized the pretense at worry all over her face. “Oh no, oh no—oh wait. Wolves are sterile.” “You know that one too, huh?” “I do. You want to tell me you’re going to give me werewolf syphilis now?”
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“Oh…stop, don’t. Ohhh that’s really…this isn’t fair. Just…slow down…” “You told me we didn’t have much time,” she said, and he ground his teeth together harder. “I know what I told you.” “So what are you waiting for?” “My sanity to come back—ohhh, don’t do that. Just…here. Here. Get on me.” He moved too fast for her to check again, arm suddenly around her waist, lifting her. She almost lost her balance when he spread her over him. He was so big, too big really, to straddle—but he steadied her with those huge hands. He got her legs arranged in some good, solid position somewhere either side of him, cock so close to her cunt she could have kissed her clit to it, and then her hands on his…wait. Wait. What was he doing? “Hold my wrists. Hold my wrists like this—the way I was holding you.” He couldn’t be serious. “You want me to…pin you?” “Just hold my hands to the bed. Don’t let me up.” “Are you joking? I could be ten feet tall and six feet wide and I’d still be unable to hold you down. If you want to go for me you’re going to be able to go for me.” He looked wistful then, for a second. Sad, almost. “I know. But this at least gives me the illusion of safety.” It made her shiver, hearing him say something like that. But it made her shiver harder seeing him spread out beneath her, hands at the side of his head, pinned beneath hers. That broad, lightly furred chest of his so solid and hot and firm. It was incredible, unbelievable. Not just his frankly perfect body, but everything about the whole situation. She hadn’t even thought about the door with the flimsy chair she’d once again shoved underneath it for a whole five minutes. Nothing existed but this, and him. 36
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“I’m going to fuck you now,” she said, and felt his hips rock up at her. His cock slid messily between her legs, seeking heat. It didn’t take much to just slide down on him, inch by slick, delicious inch. And oh Lord, how it felt…how it sang through her entire body to finally have him inside her, so thick and insistent. She moaned aloud—couldn’t help it. But he moaned too, so really, what did it matter? If they were going to be incinerated, at least they’d be incinerated together. She’d have let them cut off her arms and legs before burning her alive, for the sight of his parted lips and his widening eyes, and those teeth flashing bright and sharp at her. “I love you,” she said, and meant it. It was terrifying and it probably would really lead them to their deaths—maybe not because of a too-loud sound, but due to something, a slip, anything—but she didn’t care. All the stillness in him had melted away and he looked up at her with such warmth, such feeling. “You don’t know how I’ve longed to hear you say something like that. Anything like that, anything at all. I like your hair today would have been more than welcomed.” She rolled her hips, taking him deeper. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I wish you’d told me.” “I couldn’t, you know I couldn’t. Ohhhh, that feels so…” “Amazing?” “Yes, yes—amazing. Keep doing that.” She had no idea what he was referring to. The way her sweaty hands were gripping his wrists? The way she’d started rocking in minute spirals, greedy for more but terrified of his size? She had to be honest—it felt kind of like she’d decided to fuck a flagpole. But it also felt nerve-jangling and delicious, and his wrists straining against the hand-manacles she’d clamped around them? Only made it sweeter.
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She imagined letting him go—just briefly, just a little taste of it before her mind’s eye—and him suddenly tearing at her, desperate, fucking that big thing into her until she could hardly stand it, and God it was good. It made great swells of pleasure surge through her just thinking about it, so hot and wet and if she could only grind that sweet spot inside her against his thick length, if she could catch it right and rub and rub… But quite suddenly she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to imagine or catch it just right, because he’d freed his hands and one of them was over her ass, squeezing and pushing her down and down onto his cock. And the other had hold of her uniform, ripping when it wouldn’t give, clawing at the front of it until he could get at her breasts, her stomach, and finally—the place that needed it most, between her legs. It took him no effort at all to find her clit. He seemed half-insensible with lust and unseeing, but oh he knew exactly where to go and what to do. It was just the thing. Just the thing she’d been thinking of all day and all night, in her bed with her hand over her swelling sex, stroking and sliding through all of her slickness, just longing for it to be his mouth, his hands, his cock. And now it was—she could feel him thrusting up into her hard, his thumb right over her clit, worrying and worrying at it. She grabbed a handful of his hair and tried to hold on, but it wasn’t possible. She could feel her orgasm welling up inside her from that firm, slick point beneath his working fingers, and he was panting things in her ear, terrible things like, That’s it, work your slick cunt on my cock, fuck me, fuck me, oh I don’t think I can stand it. I think I want to tear you apart. After which, she couldn’t stop herself from calling out. The pleasure was surging through her, thick and strong, and she could feel herself clenching around his cock, just clenching really hard in a way that made him choke out a noise, and then, “I’m coming, God, I’m coming!” It shoved through her, hard and unyielding—and it left her wasted, just as it had before. She hardly registered him pushing her back onto the bed, his hands suddenly rough and tense everywhere he touched. 38
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Though somewhere, dimly, she knew he was too far gone. His eyes had no color at all. When he snarled at her and slammed into her still-clenching and shivering pussy, she could only see his fangs, glinting sharp in the dim light. The hands that clasped at her thigh and her wrist—shoving her into the mattress until she knew there’d be bruises—had sprouted talons, thornier and more lethal than she’d ever imagined. It seemed almost mad that she still didn’t feel afraid. Instead she put a hand to his face, to let him know. She wanted him to know that it was okay, that it was good, that he still looked like Connor Grayson—because he did. When he moaned, it was with his own voice. When he pushed into her, it was with the same body she felt so familiar with—the same muscles flexing under her one free hand, and the same glow all over his gorgeous, honeyed skin. And when he shoved his face into the crook of her neck and kissed the sweat-slicked skin there, the push of his soft lips felt the same too. And even though she knew that this was it, that he was probably going to bite her right now on this creaking bed in this silent ward, she didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t scream the way she’d always dreamed she would, in her worst nightmares of forests and running wolves and one of them finally, finally running her down. She just closed her eyes and held on to him tight, and waited, and waited. He thrust into her hard one final time, his cock pulsing inside her, a groan burring its way through his entire body in a way that made her shake too. And when he did it, she felt his teeth glance her skin. She felt them come so close, so close it was as if the pain really existed, it was really burning into her and she’d have to run with him forever now, through the forests of the night. And then he finally pulled away—a softly relieved look on his half-tortured face— and she realized he hadn’t bitten down. He hadn’t done it. Instead, she was going to have to get up and walk out of the ward and leave him behind. All of her still human and still herself, and worst of all—still living this endless life of empty nothingness. 39
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Chapter Four When the breach alarm first sounded, she didn’t think anything normal or usual— like, Oh God, now I’m going to be killed by a thousand marauding werewolves. She didn’t even think about Tara, or any other human beings in the underground. Instead, she thought of him. Immediately—and quite frankly, irrationally. After all, Connor would be okay. If the alarm wasn’t a false one, he could just have a party with his lost-long buddies. Only they weren’t his buddies anymore. She knew they weren’t. The wolves ran free and fierce on the surface of the earth, while he spent his days in cages, being tortured. If they came below that’s all they would see—a pathetically cowed creature who no longer resembled them. And so they’d just leave him there, to starve behind the bars. They wouldn’t think of whatever had been done to him—and by God that encompassed a lot, when she really thought about it—and eventually he would perish, along with the people who’d hurt him. Unless they smelled a human all over him. And then maybe something else would happen altogether. She leapt out of bed, on that last thought. Not because she particularly wanted to, or thought it was a great idea to run in a different direction to all of her screaming colleagues and supposed friends. No, she did it because something got her by the throat and forced her to. She didn’t even stop to put on shoes, and she always stopped to put on shoes. You had to, because that was the thing the wolves always went for first. They got you around the ankles and dragged you back screaming into the darkness, or maybe took off a foot or two, because you’d been too stupid to take some basic safety measures. 40
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But somehow, it didn’t seem to matter now. She could feel her heart beating in her head. She wasn’t dressed for the outside, wasn’t aware of the throng of frantic people around her. She was only aware of Connor, and what the wolves would do to a humanlover, if they found one. “Serena!” She pretended she couldn’t hear the shouting as she pushed her way through the stream of bodies. The stream was getting thin, however—much thinner than it had been the last time the alarm sounded—which was both good and bad. Good because it meant she could get through easy enough. Bad because it meant their numbers were dwindling. And also bad because Tara would absolutely know she was ignoring her, while going in the wrong direction. Her friend couldn’t fail to spot it. She’d just shoved a guy against the sandy wall to get through faster, for God’s sake. Though while doing so she hadn’t considered one important thing. What if the wolves were coming in from the direction of the labs? It seemed like a reasonable assumption, considering everyone was running away from that place. And she’d left her only weapon back in her room too—though doing so was an easier thing to fathom. Her weapon was a silver-striped machete that cut through werewolf flesh and bone like a sizzling hot poker through ice. And when she thought of it now, all she could see was Connor without an arm. Connor without a leg. Connor chopped into two pieces like she’d done to the wolf who’d cornered her and the little girl whose name she’d never actually found out. You had to, that was the thing. You had to when they were coming at you, because they wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop, the way Connor had. The way he absolutely had even though he’d been given every reason to bite down hard. Was he just different? Different, like Reddick claimed? She didn’t know, and now Tara was shouting and shouting after her and any second she was going to follow her to the labs and— 41
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“Fuck you then, you maniac!” Or maybe not. Thank God, maybe not. Weird, that she couldn’t stop thinking thank God over her best friend leaving her to die and calling her a maniac, but there it was. Only Connor mattered now. She wrenched open the door to the lab thinking two terrible things—the first being, It’s been shut and locked, as though there are already things in there, waiting for me. And the other was just the image of Dr. Philips using his tranq-gun to put a dart in Connor’s eye. Like a final fuck you to the wolves, before he fled his lab forever. Would a dart kill him? Loaded with nightshade, most probably. And when she did get in there, heart trying to rip out of her body and everything in her screaming run, run, it was so dark she couldn’t tell a thing. She couldn’t tell if she was going to get a wolf to the face any second. She couldn’t hear anything because of the alarm that hadn’t stopped wailing and wailing. All she knew for certain was the sound of her own panicky breathing and the smell of horrible things burning and darkness, darkness everywhere. She stepped forward and knocked into something loud and clattering, then slapped her hands tight over her mouth. If anything was in here—anything that had escaped or breached its way in—it wouldn’t do to scream. The stench of blood and sweat and burned flesh in here might keep a wolf off her scent. But a scream would surely draw it. God, how she wished she’d brought her machete. Not bringing it just seemed so soft-hearted and ridiculous now. Connor would probably call her soft-hearted and ridiculous, for God’s sake. She’d seen him tear apart another wolf when it threatened him. He knew the score. Even while probably full of nightshade and likely dead, he knew the score.
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She tried not to sob into her hand, but several things made it hard. Like trying to remember if she’d ever felt this strongly about anyone in her entire life, so strong it was making her weak and flail-y in the darkness. She couldn’t recall ever feeling this way about her mother, and had never known her father. All her friends were disgusting sociopaths. Who did that realistically leave? Commissioner Reddick? She reached out through the dense blackness again, searching for the completely dead control panel. For the cages, maybe—but then again, if she got too close something could leap at the bars and get her. Something far more bestial than Connor. Though as she searched, she realized something pretty fundamental—that being attacked by a beast in a cage was the least of her worries. Actually finding the cages was more of a concern, in blackness thick as tar. She stumbled into things without meaning to, hands running over objects that could have been anything in the dark. A console. A chair. A wolf, eight feet tall and ten feet across. Mouth like a shark’s. Eyes glowing and glowing and just waiting for her to spot it, skulking in the thick shadows. “Serena?” She almost screamed. Her brain turned the voice into a wolf’s roar without her permission, and some silly sound just threatened to burst right out of her. Only clutching on to something crazy—like her own hair—kept it in, and even then she knew she was whimpering. She actually stood in this darkness, bleating like a sheep. It didn’t shock her that embarrassment was her primary emotion, when Connor quite suddenly spoke. “Serena, it’s okay, it’s okay. Come toward my voice.” Her immediate instinct was to hold down the relief that bloomed inside her— because really what if it wasn’t him? What if her mind was just playing tricks or even
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worse—what if the wolves had somehow gained the ability to mimic each other? He sounded so cool and measured and yes, true, there was the hint of that rich-chocolate warmth in there. There was a hint of Connor. But how could she really know for sure? “I have twenty-twenty night vision. I can see you freaking out over there.” Though the touch of deadpan in his words was something of a clue. “Are you okay?” she asked and oh it was mortifying how waver-y the words came out. All up and down and full of more whimpering, while he somehow managed to sound so unruffled. Even when he went with some really painful sentences, he sounded unruffled. “I have three nails in my left shoulder, but I’ll live.” She fumbled toward him, arms out. “Watch the chair Dr. Philips overturned in his haste to flee.” Oh, definitely Connor. No doubt about it. “Can you really see everything perfectly?” “You know I can. A little to your left—don’t go too fast, you’re almost at the bars.” He didn’t have to tell her, however. The smell of blood had gotten strong enough to gag her. “Are you hurt anywhere else? It stinks like a fucking slaughterhouse in here.” “They cut one of my fingers off.” He even said a thing like that in a glassy, reasonable voice. As though he’d just told her what the weather was like in France. “Jesus Christ,” she managed to get out, but the sob couldn’t be held back this time. It strangled her words into submission, then kicked dirt over their graves. She wrapped her hands around the oily bars and tried to just shake them.
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“It’s fine. It grew back,” he said, and she knew it was true because his hands went over hers. Sticky, but complete with all possible fingers. “Yeah, that makes it okay.” “It makes it okay when you say things like that sarcastically,” he said. She could feel him stroking over the backs of her hands. Feel him leaning down to kiss her through the bars. It made her weak, even under these circumstances. “I need to get you out of here. I mean, I know the wolves might ignore you but even so—” “There aren’t any wolves. It’s a corridor collapse down by Ward Two.” He was still stroking her hands. And when she went still and didn’t quite know what to say, he kissed her mouth again. Wetter this time. A little deeper—or as deep as the bars would allow. She could taste blood, though it didn’t scare her. Only a bite could turn you—no blood, no semen. Though she suddenly found herself wondering what would happen if she bit him. “How do you know?” she asked, then cursed her stupid voice for sounding so breathless. They were in mortal danger, in the dark, in a death lab. Snogging through the bars did not seem like an ideal use of time. “I can smell an intruder wolf a mile away. I can smell an intruder wolf in the fortress five miles from here. And I heard the crash too. Termites, I think.” She could feel him standing straight, suddenly, before turning a little. As though he was looking at the door and seeing beyond it, to the heap of rubble. To the fortress on the hill. “Still, I should let you out. Just to—” His attention snapped back to her, immediately.
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“You can’t let me out, Serena. The lights will be back on any minute and then people will return to their stations. How would you answer Dr. Philips if he asked you why you’d opened my cage?” “With a dirty limerick?” “Be serious. Go back to your room. I’ll see you later, all right?” She paused before speaking. It wasn’t that big a deal, really, what she wanted to say. He had to know it was coming, reasonably. And yet it took some getting out, anyway. “I don’t want to wait until later. I don’t want to see you in installments anymore, Conn. Those days are over.” His pause was just as long and pregnant as hers had been. And he sounded different when he finally said something. Looser, somehow. Crazier. “If you don’t go I’ll do something stupid.” “Pffft. Like what?” “These nails are really deep in my shoulder.” One of his hands left hers and even though most of her didn’t really suspect he could ever do something like the thing he was absolutely going to do, she had the urge to hold on to him. Just grab one of his fingers, maybe, and cling. “If I just twist one of them it really—” Something cracked. It actually cracked, and squelched, and he made a sound like nothing on earth. “Oh God no, no! Stop it! Are you fucking nuts? No, no, I’ll go, I’ll go!” He didn’t say what she expected, however. Though after the whole nail in the shoulder stunt she wasn’t sure what “expected” actually was. “You really care about me that much, huh?” “Was that a test of how much I may or may not care?” she asked, too incredulous to make her voice normal. “Oh my God, I think I’m going to faint. Don’t twist things in your shoulder, okay? Don’t do that.” 46
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“It’s not a test, Serena. You just ran down a possibly wolf-infested corridor to come let me out. You’re standing here, as though waiting for them to come and find you. So I’m going to make this point very clear with a nail in my shoulder—don’t do that again.” She slapped a hand against the bars. “Don’t you fucking twist that nail again, Connor, I mean it! I won’t, I promise I won’t.” “You swear to me.” “I swear, you fucking masochist!” She took a step back, away from the bars—just as light suddenly flooded the room. Only once it had, everything just died in her mouth. All the words about him being an asshole for torturing her like this…they seemed pretty weak in the face of someone who’d actually been tortured. “Go,” he said, and pointed her in the direction of the door with his gaze. “You look like shit,” she said, because it was true. But also because it was the only thing she could get out without crying over it. “I’ll be fine, you’ll see.” “I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.” “You know, as much as I hate using my pain against you, I love knowing you care that much. I never thought anyone would ever care about me that much.” She couldn’t do anything but. There were great, livid bruises all down his left side—some of them swirling away into nothing even as she watched—and blackened burns across his face likes claw marks. He looked beaten and exhausted and bloody all over, and it made her wonder how anyone in the world could look at him and not care. Even when his face changed.
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It flattened out, went as smooth as glass. And when he spoke he sounded…actively cold. As though she’d done something wrong she couldn’t possibly know about. And even worse, “I don’t know where he is, Nurse Kent.” Though her stomach didn’t drop far before she realized he hadn’t suddenly stopped liking her. He hadn’t decided they should go back to formal titles on the spur of the moment. He’d just noticed Tara stood in the doorway. Tara, who’d been standing there for God only knew how long. She thought about what they’d said only seconds before. About the word caring and the word love and the word sorry. And then she turned briskly and plastered on a smile, just in time for the interrogation. “What did you come here for?” The question wasn’t as scary as it could have been. True, she didn’t have an answer. But at least Tara hadn’t said, You’re sorry a werewolf got beaten up? “The alarm goes off and you come here?” Her mind flicked to what Connor had just said—about not knowing where someone was, as cool and calm as anything. “I was looking for Dr. Philips,” she said, and it sounded plausible enough. It really did. Until she thought about how pathetic her relationship with Dr. Philips actually was. “You were looking for Dr. Philips. In the middle of a wolf attack.” Tara narrowed her eyes and that was that. She was cornered. She and Connor were doomed, doomed to the incinerator or worse. She could see it in Tara’s eyes—the girl knew. She just knew even though the whole scenario should have seemed impossible, insane, repugnant.
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Serena had to get her out of the lab, away from the pressure of Connor’s gaze. Out of this, whatever this was, and into some other ludicrous version of her life. Of course, doing so meant only one possible thing. She had to drag Tara into the corridor, and tell her something that made Serena want to throw up into her own hands. “Philips and I are sleeping together, okay? I just didn’t think. I went for him. And if you tell anyone I’ll…I’ll…I don’t even know what I’ll do. Got it?” She expected laughter. Laughter, as though no one could possibly believe that she was sleeping with Dr. Philips. Tiny, bug-eyed, reptilian Dr. Philips. But then Tara suddenly made a face—the one she’d expected after the realization that her best friend was fucking a wolf—and shrugged her off, and said the very best thing she could possibly say under these crazy parameters. “You’re fucking lizard-face Philips? Oh my God, you are desperate, Kent.” She backed away, shaking her head. Then seemed to consider, for a second. As though she’d just realized how mean it sounded, to call a “friend” desperate. “Well, you’ll find him in the south corridor laundry room. As soon as the alarm sounded he climbed into a washing machine and shut the door.” Yep. That was her dreamy guy, all right.
***** “You told her you were sleeping with him? My torturer? You told her you were sleeping with my sadistic torturer?” She gritted her teeth and pulled, but the nail wouldn’t come free. Much to his displeasure. “I’ll show you sadistic torturer in a second.” “Are you kidding? You’re not even twisting then pulling. You’re about as sadistic as a donut.”
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“Hey, don’t blame me for my lack of sadistic-ness. You’re the one who made me watch while you did that very thing just to make me do your evil bidding.” “You didn’t watch. It was dark. You just heard squelching. I could have been stomping on my torn-off finger.” “Gross, Conn. Really gross. And as for the other thing—you know I’m not actually sleeping with him, right? I just had to tell her something that would explain my running desperately to your rescue.” She put a hand on his back and tried to brace herself. The nail was coming, she could feel it. It was the last one and it was coming and once it was out they could stop trying to banter past horrible, grisly injuries. They could do something ordinary, instead. Like cuddle. “Did I mention how much I loved you running to my rescue?” “You might have said something—hold still.” “I can’t, it’s really—ah, Jesus!” “I’m sorry I’m sorry, oh fuck I’m so sorry!” And then the banter evaporated, and she was just blubbering into his bloodstreaked back. At least she had the nail—though what kind of victory that was she couldn’t say. Her entire body felt like a wet dishrag. She’d soaked her uniform, under her arms. Three nails, and she was out for the count. “Hey hey hey—it’s okay. I’m okay. I haven’t died.” But that wasn’t the point really, was it? When she ran her fingertips over the almost smooth marks where the nails had been, he still flinched. She could still feel the blood sliding thick and visceral beneath her touch. It had run all the way down his back to wet the sheets, and when she got the cloth and wiped and rinsed, wiped and rinsed, it turned the water a stormy red.
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“Scrub harder,” he said, so she did. She got the sooty trails off his arms and his face—not like before with the soft, sensuous strokes she’d fallen into over the year, but rough and hard and desperate. And the harder she scrubbed, the less he seemed appeased, until somehow he’d reached behind himself and crushed his hands over her ass, plastered her to him like maybe he could get rid of the blood and the pain by merging them into one person. Which seemed, frankly, insane. She’d just pulled nails out of him and he was groping her in a completely suggestive manner, and when she kissed the nape of his neck instead of pushing her face against it, he groaned too loudly. “Weren’t you in agony, three seconds earlier?” she asked, but he just laughed—a terrifying, full-throttle sound. She wasn’t even sure if she’d ever heard him make anything like it before. “I’m no longer completely sure I can tell the difference between pleasure and pain,” he said, and she thought of his scar, the way he’d reacted when she’d bitten him. The way she had reacted when she’d thought he was going to bite her. “I don’t think we have an entirely healthy relationship,” she said, though it kind of hurt to do it. Still, it felt a whole lot better when he didn’t respond with something like, Yeah, well, we’re a different species. “I spend half my life in a cage and you spend all of your life pretending you don’t mind. I think we’re long past healthy,” he said, then quite suddenly spread himself over and against her. It made the back of his head and the nape of his neck slot into the curve of her shoulder, and gave her a long, charged look at the entire length of his glorious body— golden again, now the pink of the scrubbing had left his skin. Nothing stuck, that was the thing with him. Nothing stuck, and he was just going to be ageless and flawless forever.
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Save for the scar. The one she couldn’t help tracing her fingers over—oh that branching, beautiful part of it like a twisted letter Y, so rough beneath her touch—on the way down his body, to the thick, insistent jut of his cock. “You know, I always thought I was the insatiable one,” she said, though the way it had really felt played on her mind. It played so hard she had to say it. “I thought I was going mad.” His eyes were half-slits. Most of him didn’t seem to care, but some of him apparently did. “Because I’m a wolf?” Oh yeah, some of him did. “Because I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. Because I think of it even in darkness, with bars between us.” “Think about what?” he asked, but she could see he had a pretty good idea. He’d turned his face to her throat now, and his mouth felt unbearably wet and hot. “Being with you. Having you inside me. I could still taste you all over me after…after you did those things to me. I could still smell you.” “And you thought about those things through the bars.” “I thought about there being no bars. I thought about leaving here with you—” He cut her off almost immediately. Like a reflex. “Don’t. Don’t,” he said, and she understood why. She really did. Outside he’d be safe, or as safe as anyone could get in this world. He’d be able to run with the wolves and challenge any that got in his way, and after a time maybe he’d even build one of the strange wooden cities people said they’d made. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t be safe. They’d eat her alive before she’d taken three steps out of the heavy metal bulkhead at the end of the south corridor, and they wouldn’t think twice about it.
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“It can only end up one way, you know—this thing we have,” she said, but she could tell he wasn’t thinking about anything like that anymore. It got hard to think when someone had their hands down over your body, sliding through a gloss of perspiration slow and easy, everything intent on making you feel good. And she was, she was, because stroking him was better than thoughts of burning or being torn apart or worse. Everything just washed away when she slid out from beneath the bulk of his body and laid slippery kisses over his chest, his stomach, and finally his stiff cock. Of course he reacted the strongest for that last one. She felt his hand go to her hair almost immediately, and though his hips bucked he didn’t try to force her to go on. Quite the contrary. “No, no—let’s not do that. Don’t…that.” “You missed a word,” she said, then licked over the straining curve of his shaft, nice and wet and slippery. He said things then, all right. But she couldn’t really count them as words. “Is that good?” she asked. In reply he squeezed the pillow behind his head. His cock twitched, as though maybe it could get at her mouth just by acting innocent and moving around a little. A little wasn’t going to cut it. “You know, I’ve never had a man in my mouth before,” she said, and he groaned harder for that one. Mumbled something about her not having to do it, if she didn’t really feel like it. “Have you ever…?” He opened his eyes then. They were still heavy-lidded, but his gaze lasered in on her with some precision. Her sex swelled in response, everything down there growing slick and ready to take him. “Once. Once. Maybe…forty years ago now.”
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Of course she’d seen his file. She knew he only looked in his late twenties. But still, it was sometimes a shock to hear him say how old he really was, out loud. To hear him talk about things she knew nothing about, having spent her whole life in this decaying rabbit warren humans now called home. “People used to drive around in little vehicles of their own—not like the big armored transports now. And I had one—a car. I had a girl too, though she was nothing like you. What we had was nothing like this. It was all just so…casual. Everything was casual then. I used to take her somewhere quiet in my car and then she’d put her mouth on me just…like…that.” She sucked him into her mouth, hard, caught somewhere between raging desire and twisting jealousy. But then the taste of him—so salt-sweet and good—flooded her, and the feel of him took the rest of her senses, and she forgot the little sting of resentment toward some other girl, long gone. Especially when his hand tightened in her hair, and he said so low and soft, “But it didn’t feel this way. Like I’m going to split apart if you carry on—God your mouth is so hot. So wet. Keep going like that, keep going.” She got a hand around him and rubbed as she tasted him, licking under the pronounced ridge beneath the head of his cock, flicking over the salty slit at the tip, sucking and sucking until his hips lifted off the bed. It felt so much better than she’d imagined, to bring someone pleasure with her mouth, so much hotter. He’d almost lost himself, and she’d barely done anything at all. “Turn around,” he said, in a voice so hoarse it was practically burned down to nothing. And when she did, when she twisted awkwardly on the bed until he could get at the aching place between her legs, he didn’t waste time. He didn’t even seem to care if she carried on sucking him—though she found it a fairly simple task to do so. It was less simple, however, when he slid a hand up over her thigh and pressed two fingers over her slit, suddenly, firmly. Said two fingers found it pretty easy, from there, to slither through her folds and find her clit. 54
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And then it was all just frantic stroking and even more frantic sucking, and every scrap of greed in the world rattling through her, too heady and strong to deny. She could feel her orgasm rising up already, though she knew it had a lot to do with the shaky breaths he was taking, and the moaning, and after a long, drawn-out moment he told her, “I’m close, don’t stop. Oh God don’t stop.” He actually said the words don’t stop. No resistance, no worry. It was almost as though they were normal, a real and normal couple just pleasuring each other with complete abandon, and if there was ever a time for Tara or Commissioner Reddick or anyone at all to just walk into the ward right then and there, this was it. But nobody did. Instead, she bristled from head to toe with that lovely, fizzing sensation, clit swelling beneath his busy fingers, body releasing and contracting under the pressure of orgasm. And when he blurted that he could feel her coming—shortly before flooding her mouth with hot, slippery fluid—the sensation twisted deeper, went on longer. It was blissful and impossibly perfect. And even better when he pulled her up to lay beside him, as though maybe they could just drift off to sleep now. Like real people. Though in truth he looked better than real, when he turned his head on the pillow and gazed at her. His eyes seemed a deeper color than usual—almost a blue—and those lids still hung heavy over his smoky gaze. It took her a moment to realize it, but then it came to her. He seemed relaxed. Utterly, lazily relaxed, as though nothing in the world could hurt or touch either of them. And he backed her theory up too, when he ran the back of his hand over the swell of her partially uncovered breast. Down over her side, so soft and unhurried. A caress, rather than a frantic stroke or grab. “Would you really leave here with me, if it came to it?” he asked, and though the mood remained slow and easy, she could feel her heart suddenly picking up the pace. “Are you serious?” 55
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He wouldn’t meet her gaze then. Just kept following the path his hand was winding over every bit of bare flesh he could find. “I don’t know. I’m just…talking. Idly.” She propped herself up a little, on her elbows. “So talk less idly. Ask me for real, and see what I say.” “There’s nowhere to go—you know that right?” She thought of the pictures some of the gunners had brought back once. Of a great field filled with a roiling, squirming maze of fur and teeth and blood. No wolf distinguishable from another one, everything nightmarish and strange. She thought of her dreams, so filled with running, endless running. “I don’t care.” “You would. Living in the shell of civilization up there, eating only what we’d managed to hunt down. Always scared the wolves would scent you out or worse…because you know the people here would look for you too. Maybe, in time, I could make the wolves stay away. But I could never stop whatever humans are left from shooting you down on sight.” She wanted to say he was crazy—that people had too many other concerns now. That time was running out and human beings were running low, and why would they bother coming after some feeble little traitor? But something in her knew he spoke the truth. They wouldn’t see her as little or feeble. They’d only see the word traitor in massive, blinding lights, and go after her with the same burning hatred destroying them now. “I’d rather be shot out there, than burned in here. I’d rather run with you and know we were both free just before we got eaten or sliced up or whatever else could possibly happen to us, than stay here like this.” He turned his head on the pillow, closed his eyes. Spoke in a low, grave voice, “You don’t know what you’re asking. God, you just don’t know.”
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Chapter Five He’d seemed pretty set on no, after their last talk. So set, in fact, that when he actually turned up in her room in the middle of the night, she felt sure she’d cracked her head on something and started hallucinating. She thought about her idea in the lab—of werewolves who could mimic each other. She thought about it long and hard as he shut the door behind himself and closed them both into utter blackness, leaving behind nothing of him and everything of some possible other creature. He could have been anyone or anything in the pitch black, and she didn’t know which was worse. Putting her little nightlight on to see if it was some other terrible thing instead, or keeping it off and sticking with the lack of surety. In the end, she went with the light. And there he was, just as bold as brass and twice as large, eyes gleaming with the now familiar sort of hunger—so much so that she had to wonder if he hadn’t come here to escape with her like some mental person. Maybe he’d done something even more mental, like turned up at her door wanting sex. “Are you insane? What are you doing here? Did you come all the way down here from the ward? Holy crap—I’m only surprised the combined hatred of a thousand people didn’t strike you dead as you flounced through the corridors.” “I didn’t flounce. I just walked. They don’t even lock the ward door anymore—they probably think I’m simple.” “They don’t think you’re simple, Connor, and they do lock that door. Did you bust it open? I can’t believe you busted it open.” “Listen. Serena—” But she had to interrupt. She had to. She’d just noticed something even more insane. 57
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“Oh my Christ, are you wearing pants? Where the fuck did you get pants? Oh they’ll just kill you if they catch you wearing clothes, they’ll kill you—” “Serena, I’m in your actual real, live room. I think we’re a little past clotheswearing.” She fell silent, then, because by God he was. And he looked so big in her tiny little space too, like a huge, impossible giant. He seemed to swell against the narrow line of her bed and the tiny cupboard she kept her few possessions in, head almost at the ceiling. Shoulders almost crowding things out. She didn’t know what to do or say on any level. Most of her wanted to reach out a hand and touch his immense chest, just to see if he was real. “We have to go,” he said, and she needed to check that out too. Were those the actual, honest-to-God words he’d honestly spoken? “But you said that—” “I know what I said. We have to go. Right now.” “You could have warned me you were going to change your mind in the middle of the night, Conn.” It sounded a bit mealy and petty coming out, even though she hadn’t intended it to be. This was all just so…and he just seemed so…well… He seemed pale, and harried. And when he almost put his back to her so he could start doing something ridiculous like rummaging through her cupboard, she could see all the hackles on the nape of his neck had risen in a weird, jagged line. “I haven’t changed my mind. We just have to go whether I want us to or not.” He passed her a jacket. The one she’d made out of seven other torn and ruined jackets some scavenger trip had brought back. “Here, put this on. It’s winter outside, and believe me winter is fucking cold.”
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There were still questions in her, but she didn’t find it odd that her hands wanted to obey him. Her hands wanted to pull on the trousers he offered her, and the half-woolen, half-something else sweater he rooted out, and then finally the jacket. “What’s going on? Have they—” “There’s going to be a breach. Very soon. A big one.” She watched him check the torch she had in there, though she couldn’t imagine why he’d need one. He could see in the dark, couldn’t he? But then she realized. Oh yeah, then she realized all right. He could see in the dark. But she couldn’t. And if anything should happen to him while they were making a run for it, what then? She’d be lost and alone in the pitch black world above, with no light and no weapon—or at least, she had no weapon in her imagination, until he told her to strap the machete over her back. “Do you have anything else? Guns, arrows—anything?” She didn’t know what was more disturbing—that she was shaking, or that he was too. “They don’t give us anything like that, Conn. Only the gunners have them. But just wait a second, okay, just wait.” She took a deep breath, while he tried to fit himself into the biggest item of clothing in her cupboard—a jersey made out of three other jerseys, all of them with the remnants of weird words all over them. Things like Harvard and University and State. “Are you absolutely positive this is what’s happening? You’ve never sensed a breach before—have you? God, I don’t know if you have or—” “No, I haven’t.” He swallowed thickly. “But this one’s different. Okay? This one’s different. It’s over. All of this—it’s over. It’s like a wall coming this way, too heavy and dark to stand, just too much…” It was to his credit, she felt, that he sounded remorseful about it. And the pain on his face looked so real and inescapable too, as though he had hold of her shoulders and
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was whispering in her ear, Even after everything they’ve done to me, I don’t want things to end this way for them. She loved him. God, she loved him. “Then let’s go. Go on. I’m with you.” Those words seemed to help him at least. He took her hand when she offered it and a great blurt of feeling went through her—stupidly, of course. Because really, who got so mushy over the first time they’d ever properly held hands, when wolves were probably about to burst through the ceiling and kill everyone? But she felt it anyway. And she squeezed him tight, so tight. And when he told her to stay close and then leaned down to kiss her, she kissed him back. Though when the door opened in a great rush to reveal Tara and Commissioner Reddick, she kind of wished she hadn’t. The hand holding and the fact that he was in her room was bad enough on its own. The kiss was just overkill, really.
***** The weirdest thing about the whole terrible mess was the fact that they let them continue to hold hands, all the way down the north corridor to the incinerator. Somehow, in all her imaginings about being burned alive and having to watch them cut Connor’s arms and legs off and so and so forth, she’d thought they’d keep them strictly apart. No final goodbyes. No touching of any kind. No acknowledgement of them as people with feelings. Though the spitting almost made up for the lack of enforced separation. And the jabbing too, the jabbing was awesome. If that guy in the mask behind her shoved his gun between her shoulder blades one more time, she was going to snarl at him. Never mind Connor. Who currently had the lock on sudden wild, unrestrained teeth baring at very nervous-looking human beings. 60
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Which was just another thing wrong with this familiar scenario. She realized she’d expected them to be mean-faced and full of all the power in the world, but even Tara seemed wary of them both. And when a gunner jabbed and Connor snarled at him over his shoulder again, she saw her once-was-friend shudder. It made her wonder if Tara had really given up Conn because she’d found him boring. Or if he’d just creeped her out with his immensity and his always still, calm form of animalism. Not that it really mattered now. Nothing mattered now. They were being marched to their deaths, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. Unless… “They’re coming, you know.” He said it calmly—the same way he said everything. But it had a creepy weight even she couldn’t get over, so really it was no surprise to see Commissioner Reddick react. He turned briefly in the middle of his brisk walk, face by turns disgusted and unnerved. And it got worse, when Connor continued. “The wolves are coming. Soon this place will be nothing but a hole in the ground. You should really evacuate now, and save yourselves.” She was glad he sounded like he didn’t mean the last part. They didn’t deserve it, after all. When they got to the trash room with its ever-smell of rancid meat and its dusty black walls, the fire at its center always burning and burning behind that steel door like a baleful eye, Tara clawed at her suddenly. Hissed in her ear that she’d known all along, because any decent person knew when they smelled a scummy, nasty little werewolf fucker. Serena didn’t let herself react. Her insides were collapsing and the metal eye was staring at her, but she didn’t give them anything. No crying, no screaming, no nothing.
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She squeezed Connor’s hand instead, and felt his flesh burning into hers. He looked so calm and still on the outside, so unperturbed, but inside she knew he was a raging fire, hotter than the one waiting for them. It made her frightened of what he might do, even as she recognized that his possible descent into madness was the only thing that might save them. “Do you have any last words?” Reddick asked, which seemed nice of him. Most of her had expected them to suddenly stab Connor through the neck on the way there, or worse. At the very least, she’d thought Reddick would tell them that scummy werewolf fuckers and their scummy werewolves didn’t get any last words. Just into the oven, like the story Connor had once told her. The one with the breadcrumbs… The breadcrumbs, and the wicked, wicked witch. Unfortunately, when words bubbled up inside her they were far less eloquent than anything Conn had ever said. “I hope the wolves eat your fucking face,” she spat, then turned to Tara, who stood by the incinerator with her hand on the crank. “And yours too.” The gunner behind her smacked his weapon into her back again, but really she had no idea why. Reddick looked kind of put off by her words, but Tara didn’t. Tara looked positively gleeful, and Serena understood the reason why. This was her big moment. She’d probably get a commendation for this, from a man who was currently standing there in what looked like a dressing gown, hair sticking up at the back, some shitty scrap of a rule book in his pudgy hands. “Well, then I suppose there’s nothing left to say but the condemnation,” Reddick said, and then he opened the book as though the book even meant anything. Serena knew that it didn’t. It was just a bunch of half-baked nonsense about never touching a wolf lest it make you unclean, as though this stupid thing had somehow become the new Bible. She supposed it would be, eventually. Unless the wolves killed everyone first.
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“And I must say, on a personal note,” he said, once he’d closed the book. “I’m very disappointed in you, Serena. I always thought you were a model citizen, and this is just very grave. Very grave indeed. It pains me to have to do this, but I’m sure you know we have no choice.” All lies, she knew. He’d always thought of her as someone who shirked her duties—not some model citizen. And it didn’t pain him, no sir, not at all. The only pain showing on his face was due to the unease Connor’s presence created. And it got worse when he suddenly turned his head and stared right at him, right into him, as steady as anything. “You shouldn’t look at me, wolf,” Reddick said, and his voice kind of wavered. As though he understood, but didn’t. He didn’t even understand when Connor said, “Will you be upset, if I kill them all?” Though she knew why. Because Connor spoke while looking right at Reddick, as though he was asking him. As though he was really asking him something so strange and impossible, when any fool would know what was actually happening. He was asking her. He was asking her, and her heart reached right up through her body and got her around the throat. Did he mean it? She couldn’t imagine he did—he simply wouldn’t have the time. They’d put a bullet in his back before he’d moved an inch, and the thought made her hold tight to his hand. Or at least, she did so until every light in the room quite suddenly went out. And then after that, she simply whispered into the darkness. “No.”
***** When they emerged into the corridor, the emergency lighting didn’t reveal anything good. He had blood all around his mouth and blood all down the front of the stupid mismatched jersey she’d given him, and he looked more animal than man, she 63
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had to say. He had hair where no hair had been before. He had rows of thorns on the backs of his hands. But she didn’t pull away when he grabbed hold of her, and forced her to run in the direction of the south entrance. He didn’t stop to ask her if she was okay, though she understood why. Her ears were ringing from gunfire and screams and that awful tearing sound, and something had grazed her ear and made it bleed, but she knew what kind of signals she was actually giving off. Relief-filled signals. Let’s-escape-before-the-wolves-come-in-and-get-us signals. She’d meant that no. She’d absolutely meant it. It had almost been satisfying to hear Tara beg for her life—for just that one short second before Connor had cut her short. And it was terrible, it really was, but some dark part of her had almost wished the lights had stayed on, so she could have seen him slice her in two. “Stop,” he said, and she did—pulling up short just before the intersection that led north, south, east and west. Somewhere far off she thought she could hear screaming, but it could have just been an echo left over from the trash room. It could have been anything, until Connor turned and grabbed her, suddenly. “Hold on to me,” he said—almost whispered, in fact—but she couldn’t fathom what he meant. Hold on? Hold on to what? And then suddenly they were moving up, actually upward toward the ceiling, and she didn’t have a choice about the holding on part. She just wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck, tightly, and watched him climb the wall in a blur of nails and pushing limbs and other things—all of them completely insane. She couldn’t even fathom how he’d managed it, not even with her back pressed to the actual ceiling and her gaze suddenly on the ground over his shoulder. Somehow, he’d pinned her to the thing most typically above their heads. Arms and legs shoved up against the walls to brace himself. Nothing about him suggesting that such a move put a strain on him. 64
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And then she saw the reason why he’d done it. She felt it, rushing by beneath them and just ever so slightly to their left. A great train of wolves, rolling and stampeding and snarling their way from east to west, stepping over each other and biting each other in an effort to get at whatever they were going to get at first. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Her stomach clenched around nothing and then even worse, oh most awful of all she felt the blood from her grazed ear start to wend its way down, down over her face. She couldn’t swipe it away. Both of her hands were needed to clutch on to him with every bit of strength in her body. And she couldn’t rub her face against something on him, like his shoulder, because moving her head made it trickle faster. So she just had to keep as still as her body would allow, fearing every tremble and every slick slide of that one little drop…until Connor turned his head—slowly, so slowly—and licked the blood from her face. One long swipe, almost sensuous in spite of the situation, so tender and full of a strange sort of caring. It made her think weird things—things that had started in the room of screaming and tearing and blood. Things like you are my mate. You are my wolf, always. And then she opened her eyes and took in the suddenly empty corridor below. Everything so still and silent, as though nothing had even happened. No wolves had come and left a bloody mosaic of paw prints on the dusty walls and floors. Connor hadn’t held her safe like this, while the beasts made their way down to the living quarters. Though she couldn’t deny that she heard screaming after a moment, somewhere off in the distance. Her stomach dropped as he slid them back down to the ground, though mainly because of the speed at which he did everything. He didn’t even stop long enough for her to catch her breath or check to see if anything was coming. He simply set her down, grabbed her hand, and went for the door at the end of the south corridor. 65
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Of course she saw wolves waiting for them in her mind’s eye, before they’d gotten close. Nothing could be this easy, and even when it turned out that way she couldn’t quite believe in it. Any moment, and something was going to spring out to stop them. It didn’t even have to be a wolf—she’d have settled for a desperate survivor, with a gun. But no one came. No survivors. No humans running for the door. Just an eerie silence, and the great metal door before them. “Jesus, they planned this well,” she said, but he didn’t answer. He looked high on something other than adrenaline and twice as anxious, resorting to actions rather than words. He shoved her behind him before he turned the two big wheels, metal grinding and creaking as though no one had been outside for days. Weeks, maybe. It made her wonder what on earth had been going on. Had things gotten so bad out there that scavenging runs and gunning runs and movement between the undergrounds and the fortresses had stopped? She didn’t know and by God it was too late to ask now. All she could do was hang on to his hand and plunge out into the black beyond, so full of everything she’d experienced in the last few hours that asking questions and finding answers seemed secondary. She was going outside, for the first time in her life. Actually outside, where the air felt like a knife in her throat and everything seemed dark and yet not, at the same time. Of course she’d seen pictures of the moon, and the stars, but in reality they were so much more than she’d ever imagined. They glowed. They made fingers of light come down on everything, and everything wasn’t what she’d expected at all. Was the world all forest now? She knew trees when she saw them, and they covered the landscape as far as the eye could see. They looked like a maze, like a great living beast, and when he pulled her down some gentle slope of soft stuff to the beginnings of this…thing, she tried to pull back for a second. But he kept hold of her hand. And he stopped long enough to look at her with eyes that seemed like his again—gray and stormy and full of a suddenly sparking life. 66
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“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s this way—we’re safe if we go this way.” And she believed him. She did. She believed him so much that she let him lead her into this living, breathing place, not looking back for a single second because God, she could hear people screaming now. She could hear snarling and that tearing and even though she didn’t love a single one of them, it was still terrible in its own way. Though there remained one thing good about it. One thing right. They were running together, hand in hand, nothing furtive or hidden about it. They’d evaded death and here they were, flying through an actual and real forest toward…toward… Anything, she thought, and oh how words like those filled her up. Anything was possible now, even when he stopped quite suddenly, panting and looking about them. And then he said, “They haven’t breached the fortress on the hill. Another couple of miles and we’ll be there.” As though…what? As though she was going to go up and knock on the door? Ask them to let her in with her werewolf boyfriend? She let her hand drop from his. “What? What’s wrong?” he asked, but she knew why. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it. “I’m not going to a fortress, Conn.” She could see his breath coming out into the air—so beautiful. In fact, all of him looked beautiful in this strange new light, with the shadows painted across his face and the red showing dark and bleak around his perfect mouth. “We’ll make it easily. Every wolf in the area is—” “No. No more humans. No more rules. You want to go there and…then what? Never see each other again? Or maybe I can take up with a scavenger crew and come out into the open every month, meet you on the edge of the forest. Something like that?” “Serena…”
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He glanced away at nothing. “Don’t you love me? Don’t you want to be with me?” When he snapped his gaze back to her it was dull, suddenly. And she could see even through the shadows that he’d set his jaw. “After a certain amount of time I’d just let them capture me, and then—” Oh good Lord, he couldn’t be serious. She wouldn’t let herself believe that he was serious. “Are you insane? What if they didn’t actually capture you? What if they killed you?” “What if the wolves kill you? Huh? What if I keep you out here with me and one day I wake up to find you gone?” It was the first time she’d ever heard him raise his voice, and it made her insides jump. But he looked so sick with it, so helpless in the face of this sudden death trap of decisions…she couldn’t hold it against him. “This is the best we can do,” he said, though she knew he didn’t believe that. He seemed uncomfortable inside his new clothes for a second, and when she finally responded he shook his head, tightly. As though he knew exactly what she meant. “You know it’s not.” “No,” he said. “No.” He sounded firm, but he was already losing the battle. “You know that I’ll never go to a fortress, or another underground. You’d be signing my death warrant anyway if you took me to one of those places, because the human race is done. This is it. It’s over.” He kept shaking his head, but now he just looked irrationally stubborn. It should have been her clinging on, but somehow it was him. He had hold with both hands, and he wasn’t letting go easy. “And even if it wasn’t…I don’t want to be human anymore.” 68
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He put his hands over his face. “Please don’t say that. Don’t say that.” “I can’t be human anymore. I’m not…inside. They mean nothing to me and I mean nothing to them.” When he dropped his hands, she understood why he’d covered his face. The anguish there twisted something inside her. “You’ve no idea what you’re asking. The pain alone is…” He glanced off at some unimaginable point, but this time he came back faster. She could see the idea taking root in him, like some terrible poison he just couldn’t help wanting to drink. “As bad as the pain you’ve just gone through? As bad as nails in your shoulder and broken bones and chopped-off fingers?” “It’s not the same.” “No, it’s not. I choose this. Everybody screaming back there—none of them get to choose. When they wanted to shove me in the incinerator, I didn’t get any say in the matter. But I get to choose this. I get to be with you, if I want to.” She knew she had him then. She could see it in his expression, as it slid from tight and tense to that faint disbelief she saw in him all the time. It had happened when she’d first kissed him. It had happened when she’d first said she loved him. And it happened now, right here, amidst the trees. Warmth seemed to flood through his every feature, so sweet and good she wanted to just go to him, then— though she held back. He had to make the move, if this was going to work. He had to let her know that it was okay. “You’d really do that to be with me?” Close, she thought. Almost close enough. “I’d do anything to be with you. Even something as dumb as letting myself be captured by humans, you massive idiot.” When he smiled, it was like the sun breaking through a cloud. Or so she’d heard. 69
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“Anything?” “Anything.” “And you know I’d do the same for you?” She thought of the nail, twisting in his flesh. “I do.” “I love you, Serena,” he said, but he put his hands in her hair as he did so. And she could feel his mouth suddenly hot against her temple, her cheek, working ever downward toward the place that took a bite best. “Don’t worry,” he said, as she stared up at the glorious, light-streaked sky. “I’ll keep the scar small.”
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Epilogue She looked on everything with her wolf’s eyes now, the memory of her human ones like a gray blot in the mist. Like nothing at all, like a dream of things she once knew, now gone forever. Her wolf’s eyes saw everything. A flicker of animal through the darkness that wasn’t really darkness, the curve of her best one’s face as he turned to her and said things in his good good voice. I can smell the hunt, he’d say, and then they’d run and run in their almost animal bodies, leaping over things in a way she’d never been able to leap as a human, watching as the forest blurred by in streamers of green and black and beautiful. The world was a forest now, and it was all theirs. All theirs. Every day they ran to the edge of the rocks that overlooked the newly growing trees, on the graves of something old. And the wind would blow in her face and toss her ever-growing hair back, and the scent of her brothers and sisters would roll up at her in a wave. They foraged and hunted and played in the valley below, and the moon came up full and bright, and everything was good. Everything was good when she looked out over the end of the human world, and the beginning of theirs. Oh yes, this was the beginning of theirs.
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About the Author Charlotte Stein has been writing for over ten years, and perving on hot dudes for even longer than that. However, it’s only recently that she’s had the courage to pair the two together and pen some critically acclaimed, steamy-hot erotic romances. She lives in Brit-land with her very own hunk of manbeef, and their imaginary dog. You can find her at www.themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com, usually in the middle of rambling about nonsense, squee-ing over her totally unexpected life as a writer, and generally lusting after seriously sexy men.
Charlotte welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Charlotte Stein All Other Things Closer Doubled Giving The Horizon
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