Howl for Me (10 page)

Halfway through egg number two, my phone buzzed. It was Jolie, my editor-slash-friend, from the
Times
.

“Hey!” I said, genuinely surprised to have her call.

“Listen, I’ve got a favor to ask,” she said, getting straight to the point. “I need some help.”

“Is everything okay?”

She sounded like she was about to panic. Coming from normally cheery, often wildly inappropriate Jolie, this was alarming.

“You don’t sound so good.” I said.

She sniffed, but not in a sad way – in a verge-of-sick way.

“Yeah, I guess. Sorry, I’ve got a cold brewing, and the paper’s editor is breathing down my neck, because I haven’t turned out any hits since your last story. Turns out, human interest stories are either super-tragic or super-boring or they’re yours. I don’t know how you do it, but I need something from you in a bad way.”

“Well,” I said, chewing my lip, to keep from laughing at a mattress squeak. “I’ve got some ideas. Or, actually I have one idea that I’ve already started working on.”

“There is only one thing you can say that will make me happier. Tell me it’s already finished. Tell me you’re about to email me one of your perfectly edited, gripping-yet-funny stories of love and mysticism and desert werewolves. Tell me that and I’ll send you a goddamn birthday cake. Unless you don’t like cake, then I can send you a fruit basket? Maybe a deli tray?”

I snorted a laugh.

“I could
tell
you that, but I don’t know what good bullshitting you will do.”

That got her to chuckle. Thank God, too, because she was about to get
my
nerves frazzled.

“None, I guess.” Jolie let out a long sigh. “But, what do you have for me? This thing you started as a retelling of your granddad’s fairy tales really has taken on a life of its own.”

Fairy tales
, I thought with a smile.
If only you knew.

“I’m thinking... well, basically, that stories have to end, right?”

“Generally,” she said. “Yes, that’s how they work. Unless you’re Dickens.”

“Yeah, good one.” I said, chuckling. “But my thought is, the myths I’ve been compiling and turning into modern day kind of stories, they all end the same way. There’s some huge battle between the pack and some imminent danger, but...”

“Sounds good to me,” Jolie said. “But what? Listen, like I said, I don’t know how you do it, and I have no idea where you get these stories from, but you can do whatever you want. Er, as long as it’s romantic, and there are lots of big, burly wolf-men, and it’s got the same witchy, crazy tone as the other ones.”

“I thought I was supposed to be a reporter?” I asked, with half a smile. “So you’re telling me you don’t think my stories actually happened?”

“Well,” Jolie said, “if they are, I need to move to the fuckin’ desert, I guess. I need a man like that. Wolf like that. Whatever. I need me one of them.”

She let out a drawn-out sigh, and then laughed.

“I could probably help you with that,” I said.

“Ha!” Jolie laughed. “Yeah, all right, miss matchmaker. You get me a story, I’ll run it. Then I’ll think about moving out there and getting a furry boyfriend.”

The mattress stopped squeaking.

“Lily?” she asked, jarring me back to the present.

My thoughts drifted to Damon, and I felt a weird twinge in the back of my mind.

“Yeah, sorry.” I said, snapping back. “When do you want it?”

“When can you finish it? When will you get your ending?”

I laughed softly. “Sooner than I want, I think.”

An awful sense of foreboding settled in, and a run of goosebumps went down my back.

“I can get you something in a couple weeks.” I looked back down the hall, expecting Hunter and Cat to emerge any second. “Is that okay?”

“Shit, I was afraid you were going to say a month. Do what you do, girly. I’ll be waiting.”

The squeaking mattress resumed immediately, and with a lot more vigor than before. It peaked, and then I heard a loud sigh, and then a giggle.

For a moment – a brief, tiny fraction of a second – I thought maybe my dumb visions were just my imagination. But then, I heard a crash.

“Gotta go – I’ll get it to you. Bye,” I said. I didn’t even hang up, I just dropped my phone. It bounced off the ottoman and fell to the floor.

I wanted to see Damon worse than anything in the world.

But not like this.

Damon pushed the door open so hard it knocked our single piece of hanging art crooked. He took two steps inside, and then immediately collapsed.

“Damon!” I screamed, rushing to his side and straining to roll his huge, prone body over onto his back. “Damon! Are you okay?”

His eyes fluttered open, and he flashed me one of his heart-stopping smiles.

“I am now,” he said in a hollow, exhausted voice. “I’ve needed to see you since I left. I’m so... Hunter?”

“Hey, bud,” Hunter said, as he stumbled out into the living room, shirtless and covered in sweat. “Glad you made it home.”

“Where’s Devin?” I asked, leaning close and whispering in Damon’s ear. “Cat’s here, so...”

Damon shook his head.

“Poko’s got him,” he answered. “It’s fine, I... I just needed to see you.”

A deep breath rattled inside his chest, and he coughed, in obvious agony.

“Oh, my God,” Cat said, coming out after Hunter. “Damon? Holy shit! How did... What happened?”

Damon laughed, and then coughed, and a little blood spattered on his lips.

“It was nothing,” he groaned, holding his ribs. “I fell down some stairs. Can you help me up?”

He stuck out a hand, and Hunter grabbed it. Both of them flexed their huge forearms, as Hunter heaved him to his feet. Damon wobbled, but propped himself up on the desk in our entryway, which of course, creaked under his weight.

“Hey, Cat?” Hunter asked as soon as Damon was standing on his own. “I’m pretty starving. Want to get something?”

“Yeah,” she answered in a hurry. “Yeah, of course, that sounds good.”

On their way out, she shot me a quick
I know what you’re going through
look. I stared at her for a moment, confused, then chewed my top lip and looked back to Damon.

As soon as the door closed, Damon grabbed me, rough and tight, and I almost melted in his arms.

He covered my cheeks in kisses, and then my neck, then made me swoon with a slow, patient circling of his tongue behind my ear.

“God, I missed you,” I managed to whimper. “You have no idea.”

He kissed me again, sucking my lip into his mouth and squeezing the small of my back in his huge hands. “I think I do,” he whispered.

It was like everything I wanted, everything I needed, had all happened at once. I just breathed him in for a second, letting his scent fill me. He smelled like leather, bike exhaust, and dust from the road. It was pure Damon, pure man, and he could have done, or said, anything in the world to me right then, and I wouldn’t have cared one bit.

He sucked a kiss behind my ear, slowly taking my earlobe into his mouth and swirling his tongue around for just a second, sending waves of heat radiating out from my core. Long, tantalizing shivers went up my back and down, over and over, making my nipples tingle and scratch, sweetly, against my shirt.

“How are you doing this?” I whispered as his hands slid under my shirt. “You just crashed through the door, collapsed on the floor and looked about like you were going to keel over dead. Now you’re ravishing me, and it’s like you never left.”

I looked up in his eyes – those burning, smoldering, gorgeous, green eyes – and they took me to another place. My spirit felt like it was soaring, my green-fringed vision tingling every inch of my body. But, I was right there, just standing in the living room, in my husband’s arms.

“All I need,” he said. “Is right here. I can be torn up, have a chest full of broken ribs, burns all over my arms, and just seeing you, feeling you against my skin, kissing your lips, tasting you... It’s all I need.”

As he spoke, I let my eyes drift down his face to his huge arms, where I saw the black burn marks that, I knew, only came from silver. Looking up at him, there was another around his neck.

“You were in a fight?” I asked. I touched the mark on his neck.

Damon shook his head. “Just a minor thing out in the desert.” He said, dismissively.

“Devin did this, didn’t he?”

I felt heat rise behind my eyes. I hated that son of a bitch, and I wasn’t going to stand for him hurting Damon. Not again.

“I’ll kill him,” I said. “I’ll—”

“Actually,” Damon said, “he saved me.”

“Wait, what?”

“Don’t get me wrong.” Damon let his shoulders relax slightly. “I found him half-dead on the side of a country road in Louisiana, and he didn’t make it easy to bring him back. And, yeah, we had a couple tussles. But this morning, we were ambushed by... You’ve probably heard this name – Joram Blight?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Yeah,” Damon whispered, rubbing his side. “It was him. He captured Devin somehow and then had some ghosts follow us.”

“Ghosts?”

He shrugged. “That’s the only way I can explain it. Illusions, maybe? They looked real enough. Certainly hurt enough when they hit me.” Damon let out a shallow laugh. “But yeah, it’s hard to explain.”

A shiver crept through me, and not the good kind.

“Blight,” I said, turning the subject back. “Poko told me some vague stuff about him. He also told me you were coming back with Devin.”

I ran my fingers down Damon’s arm, and then pushed his shirt up, kneeling to kiss his stomach. I tugged on his belt.

“Can this all wait?” I said, looking up at him. “I kinda,” I stopped and giggled. “There’s something I’ve really wanted to do, ever since you left.”

He brushed the hair back behind my ear. Then he grabbed my hand and lifted me off the ground.

“Me first,” he said, holding my hand, twirling me around, and lifting me off the ground. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do, and I’m stronger than you, so I get my way.”

Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around Damon’s neck and pulled myself up to his mouth, tasting him, breathing him in. Before I knew it, I was on the bed. I watched in awe as Damon grabbed the collar of his shirt and ripped it straight down the middle. When he fell on me, the heft of his body felt like home.

His hard, heavy heat against the inside of my thighs had me burning, aching, for his touch. He was kissing me, caressing me, so lightly, that it was like air licking my skin.

On the way down my neck, he swirled his tongue, then kissed, then sucked. Lower and lower he went, until making my whole body craved him. He only stopped for a moment, where my collarbones met, to unbutton the flannel shirt I’d worn to bed.

Damon’s lips never left my chest the whole time he was undoing my shirt, and when it fell open, letting a little of the cool air from the fan above lick my skin, I had no idea he was even undressing me.

He dragged a fingertip down my chest, from my chin to the top of my pajama pants, and hooked it there. He pulled the waistband just low enough that I felt the back of his finger against me, and shuddered.

“What would I do without you?” he asked. “Where would I be?”

“Right now, you’d probably be... in a cave... with your brother, and an old man,” I said, smiling up at him.

It was hard to talk with all the fluttering, light-as-anything kisses he was covering me with, but I did my best.

“Maybe,” he said, before lowering his head to kiss me again. “And, I also wouldn’t have had a visitor the other night? That
was
you, right? There I was, trying to be alert and ready for anything, and you make love to me in a dream.”

My cheeks burned with a red flush, and when he looked up and me, he laughed. “Oh, you’re embarrassed now?”

“Well,” I trailed off for a second. “I didn’t know you’d actually feel any of that. I thought I was just kinda doing it for myself.”

“How could I not feel you?” He stared straight into my eyes. “I spent that entire trip thinking about you. The two times my life flashed before my eyes, the only thing going through my head was how much I’d miss you.”

Damon slid his tongue between my breasts, kissing every half inch or so.

“What did it feel like?” I asked, as I ran my fingers through his thick, wavy hair.

Damon let out a soft groan. “While it was happening, it was just like a regular dream.” His tongue swirled over my nipple, teasing it to life, and then he went back to kissing down my chest. “Afterward though? It was just like I’d been with you. I felt that glow, that warmth only you give me. I knew it was you.”

His stubble pleased the soft skin around my belly button, and when he gave me a little nibble, I felt myself go warm for him.

“You did?”

“Well okay,” he whispered. “Not at first.”

He paused to kiss a little lower, pulling my panties down, inch by inch. When he was just above my sex, he kissed along the waistband, all the way to my hips. He went to one side, then the other, and then back to the center.

“I felt
something
, but I passed it off. It wasn’t until I was...”

He froze. It was like an alarm going off in my mind.

“What happened? Damon, you’ve got to tell me. And don’t try lying.”

Sitting up on his knees, Damon hooked his fingers under my waistband and pulled both pajamas, and panties, down to my knees, before I kicked them off.

“Talk,” I said, trying to sound serious, but almost swooning, when he kissed me again.

“When we were being attacked,” he said softly. “I was on the ground, and about to get run over.”

A finger slid along my folds, and them between them. I let my head fall backwards onto our deep, soft pillows, and drew a breath full of his leather and spice and manliness. The way he licked and curled his fingers in me got me almost squealing with delight.

He eased his tongue along my lines, and then settled on my most sensitive place. For a few seconds I relished his patient, circling strokes. But then what he said finally hit me.

“You were almost... Oh, wow, that feels good... You were almost run over?”