Bad Moon Rising (7 page)

He finally lost it when she claimed she couldn’t take anymore and started to cry. His wolf howled for release and giving it free reign, he flipped her over and pulled her to her knees. No longer aiming for restraint, he sunk into her, thrusting as deep as he could repeatedly. The wolf in full rut, he bit the back of her shoulder, only vaguely hearing her gasp of pain. He felt the metallic rush of her blood on his tongue and came with it.

They collapsed together on the bed and he drew her up in his arms.

He dropped a soft kiss on the mark he’d left on her. He’d given her no choice, and though he knew he should, felt no regret. Her breath deepened into that of sleep, and he held her there for several minutes. She was exhausted. Tomorrow would be soon enough to confess what he’d done. In the meantime, excitement sang through his veins.

He left the bed and reached for the jeans he tossed on the floor. In the kitchen he pulled out Tara’s left over steak and sat at the table, but looked up when a knock sounded on the kitchen door. He sighed.

Jackson.

“Hey,” Jackson said when he opened the door. “Midnight snack?”

“Is it midnight?” Trey asked dryly.

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Bad Moon Rising: Lunar Mates Book 2

Jackson laughed. “Nowhere near.” Turning grim, he added, “I heard what happened today.”

Trey grunted in response and speared a piece of steak with the fork. “Eric?”

“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Darius has apparently decided to tolerate me, but everything will come through his Beta, thank you very much.”

“You have to admit the situation is unusual. How would you feel if Darius suddenly showed up in your territory? Especially with council approval.” He noticed Jackson’s severe expression. “Exactly.”

“Fine. I get it,” he said watching Trey rinse the plate at the sink and shift on his feet. His eyes narrowed. “You look a little antsy. I can hang around if you want to go run it off.”

He put his arms up in the classic sign of surrender when Trey growled low in his throat.

“Hey man, I’m not after your woman. Her cousin maybe,” he added with a slight smile.

Trey clenched his jaw. “I know. And I think I will.” A run in wolf form sounded fantastic, just the thing to work off his surge of energy and think about his problems. It would have to be quick though. He suspected Tara wouldn’t sleep long.

Stripping off his jeans, he opened the door and dragged the verdant smell of the woods into his lungs. He left the door wide and shifted form as he leapt from the porch, landing on four paws.

He ran for an hour, dodging trees and jumping small gullies.

Eventually he worked his way back to his backyard and approached the house cautiously. The kitchen door still stood open, but the light looked different. He was at the door before he caught her scent mingled with the night and Jackson. She stood by the counter keeping a suspicious eye on Jackson. She looked up at his entrance and gasped. He sat on his haunches by the door, unsure of what to do. She needed in on this secret, and she wasn’t running in terror. Jackson looked back and forth between the two of them, obviously unsure how to proceed.

Finally the light in her eyes changed, and they narrowed. She 48

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cocked her head to the side and muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

Jackson choked back a laugh.

“You might as well come in,” she said and tossed him the jeans left by the table.

If the wolf could have arched an eyebrow he would have. He stood and entered slowly, pushing the door closed with his snout. He turned back to her, shifted into human form and pulled on his pants.

“You okay?”

“Okay? Oh yeah, sure. It’s everyday I find out I’ve been sleeping with a werewolf, you know?”

“You don’t seem surprised,” he said cautiously.

“Oh, but I am. I had no idea until you came to the door. I’m assuming it wasn’t you I saw this morning. No, of course not, you’re bigger.” She paused for a breath. “I’m going to kill Meg and Summer.

’Cause of course, Darius is one too, right? And you,” she said, looking at Jackson who nodded in response.

She narrowed her eyes at Trey. “You are not the Alpha.”

“No,” he said, giving into the urge to finally arch an eyebrow.

She sighed. “I already know, but go ahead and tell me anyway.”

“Tell you what?” he asked.

“Your role in the pack,” she said, waving a hand in the air.

“My role?”

“Who are you, Trey? What are you?”

“You know who I am,” he said with frustration. “I’m Trey Williams. Werewolf.”

“I think I’ll be going,” Jackson chimed in.

“That’s right,” she said snidely. “Cut and run.”

He stiffened. “Your mate needs a lesson in manners, Trey.”

He glared at Jackson then looked to her to diffuse the sudden tension. “You can’t talk to the Alpha of another pack like that, sweetheart.”

Her eyes narrowed on them both and she said tightly, “I will not be censored in my own house.”

“Your house?” Trey asked.

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“Shut up,” she said to him and turned to Jackson. “And if you think you’re getting anywhere with Summer, you might want to sit down and shut up too, before you waste a whole lot of time.”

Blinking, she turned back to Trey and lifted her hand to her shoulder. “He said mate! Things have changed so much that it’s no longer polite to ask?”

She sat down at the scarred table and put her face in her hands.

“Oh, God.”

Trey pulled at the chair next to her, flipped it around and sat.

“Maybe it would help if I knew what you already know. And how.”

She looked at him, tears pooling in her eyes. “Are you a Hunter?

That’s all I need to know.”

He froze. There was no way she could know so much and not be one of them. Cautiously he said, “I was a Hunter. I retired when Darius came down here.”

“I need to go home, Trey. Take me home.”

He shook his head in denial, closed his mind against the anger welling up. “You
are
home. The bonding is complete. You can’t leave me.

We’d both go crazy.”

“Yeah right.” She snorted. The room was uncomfortably silent for several minutes.

“My grandfather was a Hunter. I was fourteen the last time I saw him. It wasn’t a great loss. He was never around much anyway. But I will never forgive him for not coming home when Tinnie was dying. For not coming home when we buried her.”

She stared at the space above his head lost in thought, while he reeled. What were the chances that three cousins, the granddaughters of a werewolf, all were destined to be mated to weres? And how had he been able to leave his mate, by her account, for long periods of a time and ultimately forever? He looked to Jackson and saw his own shock reflected on his face. It just wasn’t done. Before tonight, he would have said it was impossible.

He took a deep breath and reached for her hands. “Listen, baby, it’s not like that. I don’t know what the story was with your grandparents, but 50

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I have never known a mated pair to be separated for more than a few nights, much less weeks. I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you, Tara.”

She looked at him with dull, distracted eyes. “Tinnie warned me.

She said there would be two Hunters. That one would try to take over my life, and one would try to end it. And here I am.”

“Look at me. Look at me, Tara.” He paused until she did. “I just want to share your life. There’s a part of me that’s…animal, yes, but I control that. I do not want to run your life. But I
will
be a part of it. Neither one of us has a choice about that anymore,” he said as he rubbed his mark on the back of her shoulder.

She looked at him with a remote sadness that tore at his heart.

“Why don’t you go back to bed? It’s been a difficult day and we can talk about it more tomorrow.”

Nodding, she stood and left the room. He waited until he heard the bedroom door close, then turned to study Jackson.

“I don’t think this needs to go beyond us and Darius. I’ll find out who the grandfather was before we consider notifying the Council.”

He nodded and rubbed a hand across his face. “Yeah. That works for me.”

“Good.”

Jackson looked at him. “Three granddaughters of a were, mated to weres. What are the odds?”

Trey shrugged. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Me either.” Jackson stood and said his goodbyes.

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Trey threw the fax onto his desk in a fit of frustration and dragged a hand over his eyes. Bradley Jones did not exist. He had no driver’s license, no birth certificate, no social security number, and no visible means of support. There was no record of him until he’d come to this town in 1991. Oddly, that happened to be the same year that Tara had last seen her grandfather.

He raised his gaze to the ceiling, wondering if it was too soon to wake her. The sun was not yet up, and he’d made love to her just a couple of hours ago. And at what point had he begun to think he was making love to her and not fucking her? He snarled. A question for another time.

Other issues pressed on him now. Who was Jones? Who was her grandfather? How to make her stay?

He needed a good run. Eric was whittling on the front porch, so it was safe enough to go out for a little while. He dropped his clothes by the desk and shifted on the way to the door. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, the wolf lifted his snout to catch its mate’s scent, and turned toward her.

Hoping to find her awake, he lightly padded through the open door. She was curled on her side facing him, and lazily opened her eyes.

Without stirring, she held out a hand in invitation. I In two leaps he was snuggling up beside her. She buried her nose in the fur at his nape and wrapped her arms around him with a contented sigh.

He shifted into human form and rolled her over, settling between 52

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her legs, her morning softness calling to him.

“Hey, I liked my wolf,” she said drowsily. “He was warm and cuddly.”

“Cuddly?” he asked in mock outrage, sliding into her. “Wolves are not cuddly.”

She smirked. “Mine is.”

The smirk became a groan of pleasure when he lifted her legs over his shoulders and thrust deep.

“Hmm,” he answered, nibbling her neck. “Accept the man, keep the wolf.”

It had become a game with them over the last week. Part of a complex truce. He came to her in the morning as the wolf. She welcomed it into the bed. He shifted. They fucked. Lots of complaints later about missing the wolf, they both had an orgasm that beat every one before it.

He almost snorted.
Cuddly
. He hadn’t been cuddly when he was a pup. It should have insulted his ego. He was a Hunter after all. Instead he was surprised to find it filled him with tenderness, an emotion he’d believed himself incapable of just months ago. She accepted the wolf. She was not certain about the man, but surely that would come.

She keened as she came and the sound, like music to balm his soul, pushed him over the edge with her. Collapsing on top of her, he slowly lowered her legs, trailing his fingertips down her calves as he did. She shivered in response and he rolled over, dragging her to spoon against him. Pulling the quilt up, he tucked it around her and waited for her breathing to deepen back to sleep.

The wolf padded back down the stairs and out the open kitchen door. He would take an hour and let his problems drift away. Jones. Tara.

Tara’s mysterious grandfather. Jackson and Darius sniffing around each other like a couple of untried pups. He snorted in disgust.

He loped off into the woods on the path that would take him to some warm springs he’d discovered. He shifted when he reached the small depression. Better than a Jacuzzi, they bubbled warmly around him, and he laid his head back against the mossy ground and gave into the sigh that welled up.

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He fully expected Tara to start in on him again about going back to work when he returned. And why not? There was no sign of Jones. He’d abandoned his new rental and hadn’t sought another. He hadn’t been heard from or spotted by anyone around town. He seemed to have dropped out of town as quickly and unexpectedly as he’d dropped in.

Arrangements would have to be made. There was no way Jones was gone. Jones was waiting him out. But the needs of one’s mate could not be ignored, and she needed to insure her business was flourishing as usual. Discrete guards could be put in place, schedules drawn up. It was not the same as the safety of the house, but he could make it work.

Decision made, he stood, shifting on the run, and returned to the house, hoping to find Tara still in bed.

* * * * *

She was going stir crazy. She understood the need for caution, but Trey was out of control. She couldn’t step out onto the porch without someone following her. The urge to sneak out had begun to creep up on her, and she felt like a teenager on a short leash. Just a little room to breathe. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently.

The bakery was in good hands. Milo and Jane were more than capable of running the show for a few days or weeks even, and Jane had brought her niece in to help out. Maybe that was the real problem. Her business was running perfectly well without her. She made a conscious effort to unclench her teeth.

If they didn’t find Bradley Jones soon, she was so out of here. There was another shocker. The mild mannered reclusive Jones was a werewolf?

And had targeted her for some reason. It didn’t make any sense. Trey was convinced it was because of him. For days she’d struggled to remember what she could of Jones. He’d been part of the local landscape for years, but never a member. Innocuous. Another case of her instincts failing her.

How could she have missed a werewolf all those years? Kind of like missing Trey.

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Snorting with disgust, she went to the kitchen. Her Gift at work.