THIRTY-FIVE
It wasn't a fair contest. I was smaller, weaker, new to this idea of running around on four legs. Magda was top dog. As Magda began to circle me, flanked by my faithless husband, I really missed the ability to form words. There had to be some way to communicate our feelings that didn't draw blood. Couldn't she just take Hunter, I'd take Red, and we could all go home and call it a day?
And that's what I told Magda. Or at least, that's what I thought at her. Out loud, what I said was, whimper, whimper.
Red looked at me, and his ears went back. Ears back—that's a signal. But what did it mean?
Magda lunged at me and inflicted a painful blow near my left shoulder that made me yip and dart away. Ears back meant protect yourself, I realized. Damn it, I knew that.
Magda stalked toward me, and as I moved toward the protection of a wall I felt someone behind me and skittered sideways a moment before my husband tried to take a bite out of my hindquarters. He had finally managed to get himself into full wolf form, although there was still something a little wonky about his hind legs.
I snarled at him, so incensed by his sneaking up on me that I missed Red's streaking out from my right side and grabbing Hunter right under the throat—a benefit of being smaller in stature. But Hunter swung his muzzle and knocked Red loose, and then Magda was on me, the ruff on the back of her neck sticking straight up, her head held low as she growled.
I didn't know exactly how I wound up on my belly on the floor. But then I rolled onto my back and began posturing faster than you can say “submissive.” Magda looked like she wasn't going to be having any of it. She and Hunter kept nosing at me, trying to get me to stand up and take it like a wolf. But I did not want those Alpha Female fangs ripping my beta throat out, and my current posture of abasement seemed to be inhibiting her from doing just that.
Red was walking back and forth, head held low, trying to figure out what to do now that his teammate had chosen to throw the game. And that's what I was doing, I realized. Letting that bitch win. No sooner had my thoughts turned aggressive than I found myself in motion, rolling off the floor and launching my attack on the male—I mean on Hunter—while Red came in to distract Magda, the more experienced fighter.
We did all right for a few moments, Red and I, holding the other two at bay. And then I heard a particularly painful yelp from Red. When I turned to look at him, I saw that Magda had torn a chunk from his ear. I think what happened next surprised even me. I leaped past Hunter onto Magda, my teeth going for her ear. I wasn't thinking biblically, I swear. It was a purely bloodthirsty moment, a moment in which I just saw a vulnerable spot and went for it. I had her ear in my jaws and her pain was music to my ears.
“Enough.” There was a woman underneath me. A wolf-woman. I couldn't understand it. And then I felt a man's hand on me, lifting my muzzle to face him.
“Abra.” It was the kind-eyed, smaller male. He looked at me as if he were trying to think of the right command to give me. There was no challenge in his gaze, but still, I looked away. There was blood dripping from the side of his head, and I wanted to taste it. “She's in trouble,” I heard the smaller human male say to the wolf-woman. “This was no way to come at a first change.”
“Take her out of my sight and out of my territory,” said the woman. “And stay out.” She also had a cut on the side of her head and looked very, very angry. There was another male with her, also human, but with a very canine scent. He was familiar, but when he looked at me, I caught a whiff of anger tinged with lust. The female scented it, too, and yelled again at my male. Something about getting me out. He said something back, about needing our clothes.
I felt the human male's hand on the scruff of my neck, and it was a comfort to me. He led me into the night, and then into a little metal room. A car: I remembered. He looked down at himself. He was bleeding from cuts on his side, ear, and forearm. I whimpered at him and he crouched down so I could reach him better. I licked the blood until it stopped flowing and then I licked the salt from the male's face. Red's face. I remembered that, too.
“Oh, Doc, if only you meant it.” The human hands rubbed and stroked the muscles of my shoulders and then caressed behind my ears. In my strange state of gray-toned vision and Technicolor smells, I could sense how Red was bonded to me, almost as a mate. I thought this one was a good one. We could form a new pack. I tried to tell him this, but he kept trying to pull some strange soft cloth over my head. At first, I tugged at it, thinking this was a game, but then I could see from Red's intent posture that this was an important submission for him. So I allowed the cloth and then when the cloth was on I felt different.
“Doc? Abra?”
I was human again, human enough to be embarrassed that I was naked from the waist down. The wound on my thigh had almost healed, however, and the little cuts and scrapes on my arms were closing up as I watched. Wo w. No wonder Malachy wanted to tinker with this virus.
“You with me, Abra?”
“Yes.”
Red drove the car onto the road, and then, to my surprise, he stopped the engine halfway up the hill. Without the dashboard lit up, I couldn't make out his features. Turning to me in the dark, Red paused, took a breath. “I have to get my things from my cabin now. By morning, she won't let me back. My place is too close to Hunter's property. She feels threatened by us now.”
“But it's your house. She can't just chase you off.”
Red looked at me strangely. “Of course she can,” he said.
It took me a moment. “Oh.”
“Won't take me long, Doc. You can wait in the car.”
“I can come with you. To get your stuff.” My voice sounded quite matter-of-fact, I was proud to note. We stepped outside and I stumbled. Red took my hand and I walked in his footsteps through the woods, and when we reached the cabin he released me and I went to sit on his bed on the floor. I tucked my legs underneath me and tried to pretend I wasn't cold and bare-ass naked.
Red moved efficiently from place to place, throwing some small bottles and the tarot cards into a backpack. There was also some sort of pelt, wrapped with cords and scrawled with purple symbols. “Won't be a minute.”
“Sure. Do you have a bathroom?” Because I hadn't seen one on my last, unofficial visit to his cabin.
The look on Red's face said it all. “The thing is, it's out back … I'm kind of off the grid here.”
“With a CD player?”
“Batteries. Listen, Abra, I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression. I mean, it is an out house, but it's clean.”
“To be honest … what I really need is running water. To wash.”
Red cleared his throat. “I have a sink here. I could pump some water …”
“We have to rush, don't we?”
“I think … as long as we leave to night …” Red's eyes dropped to my naked lap, then returned steadfastly to my face. “May I bathe you?”
Now I was blushing. “All right,” I said. I watched him as he threw some logs in a small black woodstove and then turned to the sink, where he primed the pump before working the level over the sink. The room began to warm as Red set some water to boil in a kettle on top of the cast-iron stove. He fetched what looked like a huge roasting pan from a closet and set it on the floor.
“Is that a bathtub?”
“Well, it's what I use for one.”
“I'm going to sit in that?”
“That's the idea.”
It was all very Little House on the Prairie. Except for the look in Red's eyes.
“You okay for a moment? I'll chop a little more wood.”
“I'm fine.”
And I was fine. I loved watching him. I loved the easy, economical grace of his movements, the loyal caring tilt of his eyes. I loved watching his lean hips inside his jeans as he walked outside, the play of muscles in his arms and back as he turned a small log into kindling.
“You making sure I don't chop off a hand?”
“I'm just watching.” How had I ever doubted his intelligence? He didn't need a PhD to prove himself to me. Red was wolf-smart, coyote-clever. He might read westerns and he might never impress my father discussing Hitchcockian suspense techniques, but if Armageddon arrived, Red would lead you to safety.
“Abra?” He was crouching by the bath, pouring in the water from the kettle. There wasn't more than a few inches.
“Yes.”
“The water's ready.”
“That's not a bath.”
“I'm in charge here, remember?”
I climbed in, still wearing the torn remnant of my shirt. Red removed it, and for a moment I just looked at him looking at my tightly beaded nipples.
“You sore?”
“No. I should be, but I'm not.”
“Unless we're really wounded mortally, the change tends to speed up the healing pro cess.” Red picked up a flannel washcloth. “May I?” I nodded and he began to wash my arms. I leaned my head back and then Red lifted my leg, using the flannel on my calf and thigh … and then higher. I gasped with the shock of sensation. No way we could pretend this was part of a sponge bath. Red glanced up at me.
“I'm sorry. I know the rules—you're not going to make love with me. Guess I'd better stop this.”
“Red, to night I changed,” I said.
“I know. I saw.”
“The other thing, too. The part about falling in love with you. I changed that way, too.”
Ah, the lovely light entering his eyes. “Abra.”
“Please. Show me what comes next.”
Red knelt beside the tin tub, his hands withdrawing from my flesh. “God, you have no idea how much I'd like to—but it's the first time you've changed and it's like you're drunk with it.”
I silenced his mouth with my hand. “I'm going to kiss you now.”
“And then there's the fighting …”
“We can do that, too.”
Red's hand gripped my wrist. “Abra, no. It's not you speaking, it's the hormones. And it's kind of like I'm your teacher here.”
I surged up and kissed him, ignoring the pain in my wrist. No, worse. Liking it. Liking the hint of something not so gentle in this gentle man. Maybe if I were not so gentle back, I thought. I could feel the heat between my naked breasts against his bare skin, my erect nipples brushing the furry mat of his chest hair.
“Abra.” He lifted me out of the tub and onto the bed and was on top of me before I could draw breath. His hands were in my hair, his thumb moving down to graze the corner of my mouth as he rained kisses on my lips, my jaw, the corners of my eyes. But what I was feeling had plunged straight past tender, and I pulled his hair until his head went back and bit him on the firm wedge of muscle between shoulder and neck. I felt the ripple of desire go through him.
“I don't know what this is. Help me.”
I watched his face change. “The moon's riding you. You need to change again.”
“Oh, hell no,” I said, recalling the agonizing pain.
“The second time's not so bad. And if it's the moon's pull, there are ways to make the pain …” He paused. “Pleasurable.”
I stood up on my knees, grabbed the back of his jeans, and pressed him against me so hard I made myself gasp. “Do it,” I said.
And then his eyes met mine and we kissed, a long, hungry, devouring kiss, a little too fierce, a little too desperate, conscious of the danger outside the door and the need to be quick.
Red seized my head in his hands, his teeth closing on my lower lip, then moving to claim the pulse beside my ear, and then down lower, to trace the pulse in my neck. I sank my fingers into his hair as he bent to taste the hollow of my collarbone, then the space between my breasts, his mouth closing over one nipple so gently I wanted to scream.
I wanted to say, No, not like that, not human and considerate, just take me, take me hard and lift me out of myself. But suddenly Red looked up and his eyes flared golden, and then his teeth closed down on a breast and he was suckling me, hard, and still this was not enough, there was a wolf inside me raging to be set free. I yanked at his hair and he looked up, face flushed and dazed with lust.
“What?”
“Help me!” And Red, my tender Red, tore open the buttons to his fly, and grabbed my wrists hard, and I spread my thighs wide so he could shove himself inside me.
We froze for a moment, staring at each other, a little stunned to be here at last. I couldn't believe how good he felt, just stretching me. And then, holding my gaze, Red thrust into me. Once, twice, deeper, so hard I knew it had to hurt him a little, too. He thrust again, the corner of his jeans getting in the way, his face intent, unguarded, and I closed my eyes, bracing my heels on the bed by his hips. The plea sure was awful. I wanted it to hurt more. I needed the pain to ride the awful plea sure. And then Red lifted my hips and slammed into me and I realized what Hunter had meant when he'd said, I could have hurt you. This was not just a strong man making love full tilt. This was someone who could shift down to his bones, and there was preternatural energy trembling up and down his arms.
“Wait, I have to get my jeans off. It hurts.” I watched him tug his pants down over his narrow thighs. Naked, he gave a shudder and closed his eyes as if he was fighting something back. “I can't—I can't keep going and not—you'd better turn over.”
I didn't want to. I wanted to watch him. At some point during this endless night, he had become so beautiful to me that I couldn't bear the thought of not watching him as he came.
“Abra, this first time, I can't control it. You have to turn over.”
“You don't have to control anything. Let go with me, Red.”
His pupils narrowed in the luminous circles of his irises, wolf eyes in a human face. I watched him set his jaw so tight that a muscle jumped high in his cheek. “Abra, I'm too close. I won't be able to hold back much longer, and if one of us changes before the other, what we'll be doing will be illegal in this state.”
“Oh.” I let him turn me over, the wool of his Indian bedspread rough against my belly. Red positioned himself behind me, lifting my hips, and then he entered me very slowly, his arms trembling on either side of me with the effort. It was then, not looking into his eyes, that I felt what was happening—the surge of heat, the loosening of bones. Except this time the pain was all caught up with the plea sure.
“Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse.
I opened my mouth and found I could not speak, so I tried to tell him with my body, arching my back.
“I don't want to scare you, Doc.”
I looked over my shoulder and met his eyes, and I could tell from his gasp that I looked the way I felt—already mindless, already somewhere where animal instinct ruled, except that down here where my muscles were reweaving themselves there was still the awareness that this was Red. Red, who loved me enough to fight for me.
Red cupped my chin in his hand and kissed me, a hard kiss, triumphant. “It's got to be now, Abra.” I was amazed he could still talk, and I wanted him to stop. No words. Words reminded me of Hunter. Red and I didn't require the crutch of words in bed.
I felt Red brace himself more firmly, thrust in, thrust out. I lost my bearings. Forgot about the bed, the cabin, the dangers outside. Red began to pound into me, a steady rhythm that stopped all thought, and then he shifted his hips and now his thrusts were reaching that spot high up inside me that brought the feeling everywhere at once, into my breasts and nipples and belly and heart, and it was too much to bear, I had to reach the top of this or fall apart. And then Red leaned down to bite me on the back of my neck and as his teeth turned to fangs we both arched with the savage joy of release.