Change For Me (Werewolf Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (3 page)

Judging from the speed with which the wind came in, a storm was probably coming. Whenever it rains out here, it’s strange. We go so long without any that the ground gets too hard for the water to soak in very much, so it pounds off the cracked dirt, then pools up for a time and if there’s any left in the morning, it evaporates before it can do much. That’s storms anyway. Long, slow, patient rains, they make the desert come to life for a few short days.

“Where are you?” I said into the darkness. “Shouldn’t you be here by now?” My gaze fell on the spire-like plateau that grandpa pointed out as his words replayed in my mind.

There was something about it, how Carey’s Bluff just stuck out of the ground, defiant and proud. Then again, it was just a rock. A big one, sure, really big, but just a rock sticking out of the ground; there was no magic about it, no ley-lines or whatever... vortexes. None of the stuff they talked about on the radio show grandpa listens to every night.

Behind the plateau rose a hazy, fat moon. It was a little orange, the sort that always preceded a storm.

A shiver rolled through me. When I looked away for a moment, to check my buzzing phone, I thought I saw a shape climb the on the edge of my vision, but when I looked back it was gone.

Old wives’ tales and the weird, almost alien landscape went together perfectly. Although a wide ring of desert – ten miles or so – stretched past our house, it quickly turned to brush, then woods surrounding the mountain bluffs, the biggest of which was Carey’s.

Laying my head on the table, I felt the cool metal latticework press into my skin. Cold and biting, it gave me a little bit of a shock before I relaxed. I closed my eyes and let the whistling wind and the chimes in the background of my mind carry me away.

“What was that?” I started, first lifting my head and then standing and peering into the dark. “Someone there?”

It was something like a howl, but not like any I’d ever heard. Coyotes aren’t rare around here, and every now and then a pack of red wolves will lope along and carry on some before moving on to better parts. I looked all along the horizon. The moon rose higher, framing the top of Carey’s Bluff in a halo of pale yellow.

Something moved.

I squinted, leaning forward.

Nothing. When I stared directly, there was nothing to see. But then, the instant I looked away, to another of the rocky spires, I saw it again.

Movement. Something was moving, and I saw it.
That time, I saw it.

But still, I couldn’t focus. It was as though something purposefully blocked my sight. A hazy circle on top of Carey’s Bluff kept my attention.

Soul mates. The alpha has a mate that’s meant for him – and who he is meant for – and he searches far and wide until he finds her
.

The thought sent a hot wave snaking down my stomach. A brief sound pierced the night, somewhere between a cry and a screech. Briefly, I wondered if the stuff grandpa said might be true. How horrible, to be stuck partway between two lives, between two beings.

I shivered again, a chill rattling me all the way to my core, followed by a wave of warmth when another howl pierced me straight through.

“What
is
that?” I asked myself, clutching my arms around my chest. As the beast – or whatever it was – went on making that powerful, half-howl half-cry, I couldn’t help but envision the sort of mouth it must come from.

Half a man and half a wolf, Grandpa had said.

The images that came were horrible, but fascinating. Would this great monster be fully man, but with teeth like a wolf, and long, hard muscles like one? Or more bestial, with an elongated face and terrible teeth and dead, black eyes?

It howled again, and that time the warmth I felt was further down, in a place that made me first smile, and then blush, hoping that no one was around to notice.

The teeth, the claws, snapping and tearing and pulling, all took my imagination in a different direction. I imagined long, dagger-like teeth scraping my throat, then snapping shut inches from my face. Phantom claws painted a hot, red streak down my back as the beast, infuriated with lust, ripped my clothes, forcing me to the ground.

Whoa there, cowboy. That’s certainly a different thing to imagine. There’s a bunch of wolves on a bluff and the first thing you think is about one of them ravaging you? Time to go find myself a man, I guess.

I made a hollow laughing sound, the sort that a person makes when they want to convince themselves something is funny. Biting down on the wad of gum in my mouth, I noticed it had gotten hard with how long my mouth had hung open – apparently a whole lot longer than I realized.

After another few seconds spent staring at the figure on the bluff’s peak and having wave after wave of goosebumps and heat on my skin, the sound seemed to grow closer. That was impossible, the bluff was twenty, maybe thirty miles from where we lived, but even so, it just
felt
closer, like the wolf’s voice was carrying across the distance and stroking my face.

With that, I got up and went straight inside, fell on grandpa’s couch and wrapped myself in a red and black checked blanket so tightly that I couldn’t move.

I was vaguely aware of his voice, calling ‘goodnight, Leroy’ from down the hall, but I was so lost in my own head that I didn’t even think to respond. It was like some kind of a trance fell upon me as I closed my eyes.

I didn’t even
want
to close my eyes. They were forced down, as though something outside of me wanted me asleep.

“They choose their mates, soul mates, and they’ll go anywhere to find them,”
grandpa had said.

A shiver went through me and when it went, my consciousness shuddered. I felt myself sailing through the air on dream-wings that took me through the desert, over the top of raspy brush, then through a maze of trees that scraped my hanging feet.

“Open your eyes,” a distant, but strong and booming voice commanded. “Open your eyes, Lily.”

“What am I looking for?” I replied. “I can’t see. I’m groping in the dark.”

“Here,” the voice said as something moved under my hand. Hard, wiry fur, thick and heavy, pricked my palm and warmed my fingers. “My... my mate.”

With that, a dark spiral slid through my vision. All sight was gone, replaced with warmth and sensation. His fur in my hand, his hot breath caressing my sweaty chest, and those hard, sharp, dangerous teeth scraping their way down my arched neck to my collarbones.

When he moved against me, his skin on mine, his heat on me, all I could think is how badly I wanted this creature, whatever he was – beast or man, or something halfway between.

As strange as it was, the beast’s menace ravishing me gave me no sense of fear, rather I was overwhelmed with belonging, like I had been... claimed?

“Yes,” his voice was a whisper, but an urgent one, as he entered me in my dream. “Let me take you, let me have your everything.”

He shuddered against me, and in the dark of night, the dead dark of night, my muscles clenched. He groaned
“Lily”
in a seductive, desperate voice.

My breath quickened, my chest tightened, and the world exploded into a swirl of savage lust, uncontrollable desire. I clutched his back as he pushed against me with increasingly powerful, hard thrusts of his hips, his thickness stretching every inch of my constricting, tightening sex.

“I... yes!” I screamed. Grabbing handfuls of the monster’s fur and feeling it melt away in my palm until my hands rested on lean, hard muscle. “I’ve never felt anything like this, like you. I can’t... oh, oh yes, I’m...!”

As my climax shook me to the core, something bound us, holding our bodies tight against one another as he trembled. Only moments later, my legs collapsed to the ground of the bluff, but instead of hard packed dirt, I felt cushions.

“Huhn?” I opened my eyes, looking around in the dark, rubbing away the grogginess with the back of my hands.

For a moment, I lay in the still silence and listened to myself breathe in and out heavy, quick breaths. My clothes clinging to me, I threw back the blanket and peeled off my shirt, and my shorts, letting the overhead fan cool my skin as I massaged two sore spots deep between my legs.

When I drifted off the second time, I had no more wild dreams, no more crazy fantasies.

The last thing I remember before sleep completely overwhelmed me was looking out the big bay window across from the couch, through the slight part in the curtains, all the way to Carey’s Bluff.

“My mate,”
a voice that was too real to be a hallucination but too unbelievable to actually be real, said.
“Not long, and we’ll be one... forever.”

A howl somewhere far off in the distance rattled me.

Then sleep took me, warm and safe.

––––––––

“L
ily?”

A soft tapping sound, followed by another whisper, shook me out of troubled sleep. I rolled over and opened my eyes. “Dark! It’s... oh, the couch.” Pursing my lips, I wished that just for once I could wake up and not have a micro-panic to start the day.

Pulling my sweat-soaked shirt away from my chest – one of my other charming features was my ability to pour about four gallons of sweat during a night if I had a good enough dream – my eyes adjusted to the light.

“Lily?” Another knock. The voice was more urgent. “You in there?”

I sat up, board straight and looked around, front door, then back. No one was at either. Then I looked out the sliding glass door in front of me and screamed when a huge, looming figure with disheveled hair and a torn up jacket knocked again.

A gust of air from the fan hit my skin and shocked me with cold, which
of course
made my entire body bristle to life. I’m sure my disheveled visitor would’ve loved a glimpse of that, but I pulled my blanket around my shoulders and got a little closer.

As soon as I was able to process the voice I heard, my mind went in two directions. I’m usually pretty good about controlling my mood swings, but some people get me so worked up that my head gets all twisted up.

“Damon?” I said. “Is that you?”

My tentative steps got a lot quicker when I recognized my absconded ex-boyfriend looking like absolute hell on the porch landing. He was leaned on one of the chairs, heavily, as though he was supporting an injured knee or ankle with the chair. Both his pants legs were torn on the knee and one of them had a trickle of blood in the corner, soaking the cotton threads hanging down from the flap.

One of his jacket sleeves was ripped – no, not ripped, kind of split like it burst or something – and underneath his skin was scuffed with something akin to road rash. My first thought was that he was hot rodding like an idiot and wrecked the bike he just finished building. I should’ve known better though.

“Oh my God! Are you okay? What happened to you? Why weren’t you at graduation?” I reached through the door and grabbed his hand, pulling him inside. “Where were you? Everyone was asking about you, even my grandpa, sort of.”

He put his hands up like he was deflecting a punch. “Whoa, whoa,” he said with a laugh. “It’s... it’s nothing. How you doing, Lily? Long time no see, sort of.”

An easy grin spread across his bowed lips, just enough to make the dimple on his left cheek stand out.

“To tell the truth, I’ve had uh,” Damon looked down, indicating the laceration on his knee. “It’s been quite a time. Was Devin there? Devin Cline?”

I stared at him blankly for a second. “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t he? Everyone was there except for you. Are they even gonna let you graduate?”

Damon didn’t answer for just long enough for me to get uncomfortable.

“Want some coffee?” I’d already started on my way to the kitchen by the time he called out that he’d love some.

There was a fresh pot. Full, too, probably not even an hour old. Grandpa’s keys weren’t on his pegboard and when I looked out the window, the Bronco was gone. It wasn’t like him to leave and not say anything, even if I was asleep. Hell,
especially
if I was asleep and it was late, which, judging by the sun, it was.

“That’s weird,” I said out loud.

“What’s up?” Damon said, coming into the kitchen behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder. When he touched me, his fingers seemed to burn through the flimsy sheet. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“I... no, no,” I said, pulling away from that weirdly wonderful thrill his fingertips sent snaking along my spine. Even as I did, I kinda wanted to stay right there and let it get the rest of the way down.

That got me giggling first, and then almost immediately after, started blushing like an idiot.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked again, a little more pointedly. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” Damon had a smile in his voice, a little bit of a laugh. He was mocking my being dumb, but in an indescribably friendly way. “Thanks,” he said, taking the cup of hot coffee out of my left hand –
the one I got for myself! –
and smiled as he sipped.

“Two things,” I said. “First, that one was mine and I’m pretty sure you knew that since you looked in the cup and saw how much cream was in it.”

That got another grin.

“And the second?”

“What?” I said, staring.

Damon’s shoulders shook with laughter. “You said there were two things and then—”

“Ugh! How do you always do this to me?” I put my foot up on the table and leaned back, very thankful for my covering blanket. “It was just like this when we dated too. You’d always manage to show up at exactly the worst possible times, and get me all flustered. Then, like five minutes later, you had me wrapped around your finger.”

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he said. His voice was lower and serious. “Really, I didn’t mean to get you upset. I’ve just... missed you is all, I guess.”

“The second thing,” I said, nipping that right in the bud before he turned me into a puddle, “is that you still haven’t told me why you’re here. We haven’t really talked in months, and the first time we do, you show up all scraped up.  You wake me up at whatever time it is – the clock got stuck at quarter past three, I guess – and then you say a couple cryptic things and clam up.”