Cry of the Wolf (2 page)

Chapter Four

Laura came back to the hospital around noon, carrying bags of clothes she’d bought for Michael. She’d gotten him two pairs of jeans, a few flannel shirts, a thick, gray, zip-up sweatshirt, some socks and underwear, a pair of running shoes, and a down jacket.

Last night as she’d followed the ambulance in her car, she’d been afraid for him—afraid the wound might be fatal, afraid that somehow people would discover what he was. And, she had to admit to herself, she wanted to be near him. Something about Michael tugged at her heart—and at other parts of her as well.

In the emergency room, Michael had worn her blanket around his shoulders—no way any of her tops would go over those broad shoulders of his—and a pair of her drawstring pants that ended well above his ankles, plus a pair of her socks. Even in that ridiculous outfit he’d somehow looked all male with his ruggedly handsome face and his strange, shaggy hair—gray and black with a little cream, like the coat of the wolf he’d been. His eyes were a pale, yellowish-green. No doubt the guy was gorgeous. She’d seen female doctors and nurses pause to give him a second look or go out of their way to check up on him as he lay in the cubical in the emergency room. At least he’d lost the impressive erection she hadn’t been able to help noticing when she tried to warm him with her body. She smiled to herself.

Then she told herself that the erection had been quite impersonal—any naked woman could have brought it on. A man—or whatever Michael was—as attractive as he could have his pick of women. No reason in the world he would have even the slightest interest in a little country mouse like herself.

She’d already spoken to the hospital staff and knew that although the operation had been successful and the bullet removed, he’d need to stay in the hospital for a few days to recover from his other injuries.

“I’m ready to go,” Michael said as she came into his room. He winced as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He shook his hair out of his eyes.

“The docs want you here for another couple days—”

“I only came here to have the bullet removed. It’s removed.”

“You still have an IV and they want to observe you. I see they taped your ribs—”

“That does make coughing much less painful.” He smiled at her and her heart did a little jig. She smiled back. “If you would be willing,” he said slowly, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Proposition?”

A pretty nurse, wearing tight, white pants and a close-fitting top with little hearts all over it, swept into the room.

“Now what are you doing sitting up?” She turned to Laura and looked her up and down appraisingly. “You his wife?”

“No, I’m just, um, a friend.” Laura said, forgetting that she had claimed to be Michael’s wife the night before.

“Okay, well give us a little room here.” The nurse pushed past Laura and lifted Michael’s legs back onto the bed. “Here,” she said, “I’ll raise the back so you can sit up and chat with your little friend.” She made “little friend” sound like a loathsome disease. She leaned across the bed, straightening the sheet, allowing her breasts to brush across Michael’s thighs.

Laura felt annoyed. She was even more annoyed when the young woman stretched, arms over her head, in front of Michael’s face, thrusting out her breasts and tossing back her blond hair.

To add to her irritation, Michael seemed to be enjoying the show. Of course a hunk like him would have women all over him all the time. Why did that annoy her? Just because she’d probably saved his life? Well, he’d almost lost his life saving her from the Coughlins. But did he have to look so appreciatively at the brazen hussy displaying herself like that?

She didn’t really have any right to be possessive…did she? She’d done her best to care for him. She’d even warmed him with her own body, she recalled, blushing. No, logically she really had no claim. Logic aside, however, she felt some powerful connection. Oh hell, she just plain wanted him. Fact of the matter was, he was the sexiest man she’d ever met—even if he wasn’t exactly a man.

Michael’s gaze left the nurse’s charms and looked at Laura and her heart did that flip-floppy thing again.

“Actually,” Laura said,” I’m taking him home today.”

The nurse turned to her. “Oh no, no, no. Doctor Cohen hasn’t discharged him. He’ll need a lot more care than you can possibly give him.” She patted Laura’s arm. “Don’t worry, I’m on for two shifts. I’ll keep a very close eye on him.”

Michael smiled at Laura. And there went her heart again. She’d fallen for a man she hardly knew—a man who less than twenty-four hours ago had been a wolf. It wasn’t her style to fall so hard and so fast, but she’d never met anyone like him—even without counting the wolf thing. She’d never felt so attracted to, so drawn to another human being. Or whatever he was.

“You’ve been great,” Michael said to the nurse. “Everyone here has been great, but I’m going to leave now.”

“You can’t,” said the nurse, “you haven’t been discharged. You still have a drip and you’ll need that bandage changed—”

“I know how to change a bandage,” he said, giving her a charming smile, “but I sure would appreciate it if you would remove the drip for me.

“I can’t do that unless the doctor orders it. You have to stay.”

“No,” Laura said, “it is up to him whether he goes or stays. I think he should follow doctor’s orders too, but as he wants to go, I’m taking him.”

“Here are some clothes.” Laura walked around the nurse, put the bags on the bed, and pulled out a shirt. She turned to the annoying flirt. “Can you get the go-ahead and remove the drip? Also could you find out if he needs any meds?”

“I’ll get the doctor.” She flounced out of the room.

Michael gazed up at Laura. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Repay me? You were injured helping me to get away from those two creeps. I’m the one who owes you.” She shivered slightly and wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t even like to think about what would have happened to me if you hadn’t come to my rescue.”

She didn’t say what she thought—that she wished they could repay each other by touching and kissing, by going to bed together and making love all night. She forced herself to stop thinking like that.

“Here’s the deal I’d like to offer you,” he said, wincing as he leaned back against the bed. “I know your farm; I’ve watched it many times.” He grinned. “I’ve watched you, too, coming and going, doing all the chores yourself, moving the sheep from pasture to pasture. I’ve watched you struggle with that barn door that needs repairing. I’ve seen you chase the chickens that got out of their coop; you patched the hole on the side but that isn’t how they’re getting out. I’ve watched your sheep and I know who steals the lambs—and it isn’t the wolves.” He looked sad as he looked away from her and sighed. She thought he must be remembering the gray bodies on the hillside above her house.

After a minute he looked back at her, his face pale, and said, “We took sheep from that big outfit down the road when we had to, when we couldn’t find deer and were starving, but we never took yours.

“Your neighbors, the guys who shot us, they’re the ones who took your lambs. The younger one poisoned your dogs. With no guard dog to keep watch, they helped themselves to your lambs, your chickens, and fruit from your orchard.” His voice softened. “I saw you weeping over the body of that little Australian sheepdog you had and how you tried to get that big, smart mutt you had before her to the vet, but I guess he never made it because you came back alone and your eyes were red.”

Laura nodded and felt the tears prickling her eyes. She’d loved those dogs. She needed a dog for the farm, but she hadn’t got another for fear that the same thing would happen.

“We scared those two guys away a good number of times,” he said.

“Is that why they hate the wolves so much?”

“Possibly. That’s why we sometimes took sheep—we spent a lot of time looking out for you and it cut into our hunting time.”

“Looking out for me?”

“Those neighbors of yours are getting bolder and bolder. I worry about your safety. I’ve seen them…” He hesitated and looked down.

“What?” she asked, “You’ve seen them what?”

“I’ve seen them watch you in the evening through those big windows in back of the house.”

She shuddered. “I often felt I was being watched, but it didn’t always feel like a bad thing.” She looked at him quizzically.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I watched you. I could see what you were. A nice woman who wanted to live in harmony with nature, a woman who’d turned her back on much that civilization has to offer. In some ways, you’re like a wild animal”

“I am?”

“Like a wild animal, you’re shy toward people and when your back is against the wall, you attack.” He grinned broadly. “You certainly took hold of the situation with that nurse.”

She smiled back. “She got on my nerves with her smugness and acting as though she owned you.”

He frowned. “No one can own me. No one can own anyone else.”

Laura nodded. Her gaze met his and then shyly slid away. Her desire for him made her unable to look him in the eye.

“So,” she said, changing the subject, “what’s the deal you had in mind?”

“In exchange for room and board, I’ll take care of things around the farm. For instance, you need new fencing—I can put it up. Plus, with me around, you could keep six times as many sheep. You’re set up for cows—there’s a big demand for organic milk and—”

“Yes,” she said, “I’d like to accept your offer.” Oh dear, she’d said yes before he even finished explaining. She’d been overly eager, showing how much she wanted this man around. And should she be making a deal with a man who only yesterday was a wolf? But it all felt so right. She shook her head, trying to make sense of it. It was impossible that he could be both a man and a wolf, that was the stuff of fairy tales. Yet she’d seen him change with her own eyes. It was unbelievable, yet it was true. Here she was, having a conversation with a man who was also a wolf.

Well, practically speaking, she certainly needed the help, and, to be honest, she didn’t want this man, this wolf, this whatever the hell he was, to disappear from her life. She wanted him right in the very center of it.

“That is, we could certainly try it,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “You could have the spare bedroom,” she added, just to make the sleeping arrangements clear. Did she say that for his benefit or her own?

The nurse came back and removed the intravenous tube from Michael’s hand. “Here, you have to sign this release. It says you decided to leave against doctor’s orders.” She turned to Laura. “Here’s his prescription,” she said coldly.

As the nurse left, Michael climbed out of bed and took off the hospital gown, revealing his massive upper chest, which was wrapped like a mummy, as well as the big bandage on his lower side. The biggest bruise Laura had ever seen decorated one hip. Despite his injuries, he was still gorgeous. Superbly muscled, olive skinned, wolfish hair falling into wolfish eyes above a mouth that promised long, sensual kisses. She longed to taste his mouth, to feel his lips on hers, to feel his lips on her…”

She made herself stop. Determined to avoid looking anywhere near his sex, she studied his hands intently. Desire immediately flooded through her again. She wanted those hands on her, caressing her, holding her tight, stroking her breasts… She shook her head. She had to stop this.

He seemed to be without shame or modesty—but then she’d already seen him nude, already held his body against her own nakedness. She blushed, remembering the feel of him cold and hard against her, remembering the intensity of his gaze on her. But that was then—what about now? What the hell could she be thinking, taking a stranger home to live with her—a stranger who was also a wolf? It was crazy; it made no sense that he could be both human and animal, yet he was. She’d have a man-wolf in her house. A damnably sexy man-wolf.

Chapter Five

Michael studied Laura as she drove. She did nothing to play up her looks. She wore her dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore a beat up-looking navy jacket that came down past her hips over a flannel shirt and down vest. Her jeans were on the baggy side and her boots, stained and worn, were the purely serviceable kind. But he knew what lay beneath those unflattering clothes, what had made him turn from wolf to man. He’d felt it start, the transition from beast to human, while she stroked him, but he’d managed to hold back, to stay wolf. Then the sight of her full breasts, her small waist, and curvaceous hips, and the black curls hiding her sex… He’d lost control. Now, he felt himself grow hard just thinking about her beautiful body and forced himself to stop. Instead he studied her face: The flawless skin devoid of powder or paint, the black lashes that surrounded dark blue eyes. The shine on her pretty, curvy lips probably came from ChapStick. Suddenly he wanted desperately to kiss those lips. He wanted to ask her to pull over to the side of the road so he could take her right there, in the front seat of her truck. He turned and looked out the window at the snow and reminded himself bitterly that she knew he was partly an animal and might never want him. But if he had any chance with her, any chance that she might come to want him, he wasn’t going to hurry her. He would wait and hang around and hope that someday she would be his. Damn if it wasn’t was hard, though.

Since he’d first seen her, he’d lost interest in other women. He’d watched and studied her for months, hungering for her, longing to make her his own, and that had been when he was wolf more than half the time. Now that he was all man and close to her, he could barely control his desire.

A month after he’d first seen her, his longing for her became intolerable. That evening, he transitioned into a man and pulled out the clothes and money he had stashed deep in the branches of a small evergreen tree. Thinking he could slake his thirst for her with some other woman, he’d gone to the big tavern out on the highway.

He’d drunk too much and danced for hours, feeling up several of his all-too-willing dance partners. He’d gone to the motel next door with a couple of women. They’d giggled when he asked them to go with him, saying that they never thought they’d do a threesome, but they’d gone with him just the same.

In the room they’d pushed him onto the bed and been all over him, tearing off their own clothes and his, touching him, kissing him everywhere, clawing at him. But in spite of being drunk and hard, he’d realized this wasn’t what he wanted. That kind of sex suddenly seemed intolerably tawdry. He knew what he wanted and this was no substitute. He wanted that pretty woman on that farm. He didn’t know what exactly it was about her that drew him to her. He knew only that she was what he wanted, what he needed.

He’d pushed the women gently aside. Apologized. Naked, he’d staggered into the night, into the nearby wooded area and changed to wolf. In his drunkenness he’d somehow found his way to the hillside behind Laura’s house and howled at the crescent moon until the wolf pack came to him, but when they smelled his breath, they’d backed away from him, snarling. Then he—the alpha, the leader—stumbled after them into the woods.

He let go of his memories and broke the silence. “What’s your story, Laura?” Even her name felt sensual on his lips. He must have whispered it to himself a thousand times since he’d learned it. “What brought you here?”

She glanced at him and then back at the icy road.

“I’m city born and bred,” she said, “but the only times I remember being truly happy were when we visited my uncle’s place—now my place—up here. I loved having the animals and the woods close by. I felt free here, free to be myself in a way I never felt in the city. Now that I think about it, you’re right—I suppose on some level I am a wild child.”

“Has it worked out well for you here?’

“The first year everything went great—I mean, the work was hard and I had so much to learn, but I loved waking up to silence except for the sound of birds or, in winter, the whoosh of snow falling off the roof. I loved the way the migrating ducks would stop and rest on my pond. Sometimes I’d hear the wolves.” He saw that she blushed slightly. “That seemed very thrilling, very sexy somehow.”

“And now you have a wolf in your car.” The car wavered slightly. They were both silent until he said, “You were doing okay until the Coughlins moved in next door to you.”

She nodded. “Billy Coughlin came first—what a horrible man—helping himself from my orchard, hunting on my land. When Joel was released from jail and came to live with him, the unpleasantness went into overdrive. I didn’t know the dogs and the lambs were his doing. But there’d been other stuff, like obscene and threatening phone calls. I knew it was him—Joel—on the phone. He scared me. He’d shoot the ducks on my pond and when I told him to leave he’d laugh and say things like ‘go ahead, make me,’ or that he’d go as soon as I, um, had sex with him. The way he looked at me made me afraid. His dad frightened me too. Such a creep—every time he saw me he’d stare and rub his crotch. Ugh, those two are so gross.”

“I think that will all stop if I’m around.”
Damn straight it will stop
.
While I’m around no one is going to mess with Laura.

“That would be wonderful,” she said. Then the color rose in her cheeks as though she were embarrassed at sounding enthusiastic. “Anyway, enough about me. Your story is probably much more interesting than mine.”

“Don’t know about that.”

“Please tell me.”

“I grew up a pretty normal country kid with decent adoptive parents. Pretty good in school. Kinda shy and protective of my space—like a wolf.” He shrugged. “Yeah, I liked to go outside and wander about a bit, but nothing really out of the ordinary. As I became an adult, the full moon began to affect me more strongly. I’d feel that I had to go out into the woods, that something out there was calling me. I felt trapped by four walls, by the closeness of other people. I bought camping stuff and went camping a lot.

“Then one night when the moon was full, I took a dip in a stream and I heard the wolves talking—howling. The next thing I knew, I was able to understand the meaning of what they were saying. When I got out of the water to go after them I became excruciatingly uncomfortable. Every bone in my body hurt. After a few minutes the pain stopped and I found myself dropping to four feet. Although I kept tripping over my own paws at first, I managed to follow the sound. I finally caught up with them and I tried to join the pack.”

“Tried?”

“They wouldn’t have me—chased me off. Wolves have their own way of doing things, their own rules of behavior, and I did absolutely everything wrong. Luckily they didn’t kill me.

“That year I learned how to transition from man to wolf at will. I thought I pretty much had control of the process until I saw you…” Should he actually say that it was the sight of her naked body that made him transform? He saw a faint blush color her cheeks. “But as last night proves, I don’t have total control.

“I studied up on wolves and learned how they operate. A wild wolf pack is usually made up of a mated pair and their children. Those parents are the alpha animals and they make all the important decisions. I took to following packs around at a respectful distance, learning how they do things, learning how to be a wolf. Not one of them would accept me.”

“But you were with a pack…”

“I found I liked my life as a wolf more than my life as a man and so I stayed in my wolf form and roamed alone for years. Then I chanced on a young she-wolf and we, um, became a pair.”

“You actually mated physically?”

He wanted to be truthful with her, but wondered how she would take it.

“During the weeks she was in heat each year we mated often.” He looked over at her as her gaze remained on the road. Was it his imagination or had she paled slightly? He prayed after all they’d been through that he wasn’t going to lose her over this. “I was more animal than human during that period. I had lived uninterruptedly as a wolf for several years. My mind had become like a wolf’s—I was no longer a man, I was a beast.

“She never had any pups or little man-wolves or shape-shifters or whatever the hell I am—I suppose I’m sterile, at least with a wolf mate. We formed a pack with some strays whose parents, the alpha wolves of their pack, had been killed, and she and I became the alphas, the leaders. I was reasonably content with my wolf life, except that when the moon was just a sliver, I’d feel the pull to return to my human form. I resisted, though, and as the years went by doing so became easier.

“Then a few years ago my mate was shot and badly wounded and there was nothing I could do for her, neither as a wolf nor as a man. I watched her suffer for days.” He paused and looked down at his hands, which were in two tight fists. “When she died, I mourned, and I swore I would find the men who shot her and kill them. Joel and Billy Coughlin were those men and now they’ve slaughtered two others of my pack.” His voice was harsh. “If Joel hadn’t shot me, Billy would be dead.” Michael slammed his fist into his palm. “The time will come when I will kill them both.”