White Wolf 2: The Call of a Soul (23 page)

“It’s a three-quarter moon tonight.” Mama wore a self-satisfied smile. “You’ll come into heat at full moon.”

Since she’d met Mike Dorland again, it seemed like self-combustion might turn into reality.

“That first heat can be scary. Exciting, but a little scary. You may have to tie Mike down.”

“I cannot believe I’m having this conversation with you, Mama.”

“I’m assuming I don’t have to have a birds-and-bees talk with you.”

She blushed all over again. “I think you’d have to do that at eleven these days, what with the Internet and all. No, no talk required.”

They fell silent for a bit.

“How could Mike hold himself responsible for his mother’s breakdown?”

“He’s an alpha. All alphas believe they should notice every detail of the pack. And not noticing his mother’s descent into a mental breakdown will probably always eat away at him. It was the same for your father. He blamed himself for not noticing Boyd’s frequent returns to town.”

“Boyd? Mike’s uncle?” Melanie frowned. “Why?”

“It was well-known that Boyd, though he didn’t have a wolf heritage, wanted the power of a black wolf. He lived for some time with a tribe that practiced the rituals.” Mama took a cookie from the plate on the table and bit.

Did Mike know of this? “I don’t understand.”

Mama swallowed before answering. “Your grandfather and father were descended from one of the original Ixota Migziwa. They were guardians of the earth and stood as protectors from the black wolf rage. It was their duty to keep the black wolves out of this area.”

“Area? Like the reservation? Or the town?”

“The tricounty area. When we moved here, that was the pact He Who Sees With Eagle Eyes made with the chief before Shuman. Once we settled in, he became preoccupied with teaching your grandmother how to block the calls and then your grandmother died and he went to the desert. When he was gone Bernie came to tell your father about Boyd.”

“Bernie? As in Mac and Bernie?” Surprise had her squeaking out the question.

“Bernie worked at the mill in the accounting department. He noticed one of his coworkers drinking with Boyd at a men’s club in Hurit County.” Mama said the words “men’s club” in obvious quotation marks.

“Who was the coworker?”

“I don’t know. I overheard your father and Bernie talking about it. They were planning to set a trap for Boyd.” Mama put her fingers to her lips. “Shush. Listen.”

“I had to do it, Susie, and that’s it. I don’t want to hear another word from you. You’re the one who behaved like an idiot following me like that.”

“Gray.” Mama stood.

“What was I supposed to do when I caught you taking that rifle from the shed?”

Rifle? Lord no. Please God, no.

“Susie. Let’s go let them in together.”

The sound of a deep engine purring drowned the eerie quiet. Melanie exchanged glances with her mother.

A car door slammed.

“Who the hell are you?” Gray’s bass voice reverberated.

“Drake Dorland.”

Melanie switched on the lights Mike had doused and marched to the front door. She turned the key in the lock and flicked the outside porch switch. “Will you three get inside here pronto?”

Susie, followed by a muttering Gray, tramped through the doorway with Drake on their heels.

“What were you doing at Cherise Bookman’s?” Drake, arms akimbo, went nose to nose with Gray.

“Cherise Bookman?” Mama sent Gray a you-are-dead-meat scowl. “Are you having an affair with a married woman?”

“No, Mama. I’m not. And I can’t believe you’d think that of me.” Gray shoved Drake’s chest. “Get out of my face.”

“Make me.”

“Enough. Simmer down, both of you. Gray, Susie—explain where you’ve been and why.” Mama pointed to the sofa. “Sit.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Drake, wearing a chastised expression, slumped into the chair on the left.

Gray didn’t sit but leaned a shoulder on the fireplace mantle. “Ever since Cherise’s husband disappeared, Sheriff Pincer’s been harassing her. She called me right as I was packing to leave. He was at her house. Said he had proof that her husband’s behind all the bear killings. She was in a panic.”

Melanie cringed and ground her teeth. “What did you do, Gray Theodore White?”

“You have so little belief in me, Sis.” Gray shook his head. “I went to her place. But Pincer had a car staked outside her house. I called Mike. I know my limits. Unlike some people.” Gray trained a testosterone-pissing-contest glare at Drake.

“We’ll see about that,” Drake mumbled.

“Wait a minute, how do you know Cherise Bookman?” Susie folded her arms.

“She’s tutoring Yvonne in calculus. I met with Yvonne earlier to teach her some self-defense moves.”

“Oh for the lord’s sake, Gray. That’s no explanation.”

Gray let out a heartfelt sigh. “Yvonne told me that her teacher was scared because someone’s been breaking into her house and she thought it was her ex-husband. Apparently that morning she found her cat mutilated on the front porch. Cherise came to get Yvonne for her lesson. One thing led to another.”

“Oh Gray. I’m so proud of you.” Melanie couldn’t get another word out. Her brother complained about her taking in the walking wounded but his protective streak made her look ruthless.

“And you had to take a rifle with you?” Mama raised both brows.

“Precisely my thoughts.” Susie glared at Gray.

“The rifle was a just-in-case kind of thing.” Gray rolled his eyes. “I know how to handle a gun. I just didn’t want to tango with Pincer. Not after the fingerprint crap.”

“I should’ve thrown that old rifle out years ago.” Mama scowled at everyone, but Gray in particular.

Melanie repressed a small smile. Mama was
so
back to normal. “What did Mike do? About Cherise, I mean?”

“Don’t know. He just said he’d handle Pincer and told me to get back here pronto. That’s when I bumped into Susie.”

“Mike called me. He wants us all to head out to the resort. He’ll join us as soon as he can. We need to leave right away.” Drake’s statement sent everyone into a flurry of activity.

By the time they arrived at the resort, Melanie wanted to brain both her brother and Drake. If it hadn’t been for Mama’s interference, the two men would have stopped in the middle of the road to settle who was more alpha.

Relief washed over Melanie after she unpacked her belongings and carted them to the cabin rented for her and Mike. Quaint, built of sweet-smelling pine logs, the furnishings and decorations shouted rustic charm. Melanie smiled when she found an old-fashioned footed tub in the bathroom. And what a bathroom. A huge bay window framed the length of the porcelain bath. The panoramic view showed that the cottage sat on a slight rise and that a large evergreen hedge fronted the dirt driveway leading to a lean-to garage.

A long soak held the appeal of postcoital Mike cuddling, but first she wanted to tackle the journal.

Melanie curled up on the sofa adjacent to a huge stone fireplace. She found the last paragraph she’d read and turned the page. Blank. Two more empty pages followed, and then another. Then on the fourth page, the journal began again, but the handwriting had changed, and so had the tone. The words were rushed now, and instead of legends, the paragraphs seemed more like quick summaries.

THE HUMAN POPULATION covered the earth, creeping across every available piece of land. The sun, earth, and water spirits no longer worked together. Bii’lingan fought the infringing human domination by building volcanoes deep in the oceans and unleashing them with greater and greater frequency. He cleaved an immense divide in Gaa’lingan’s vast land, and his waters separated the world.

Angered, the cunning O’aajiisi took a different strategy. He removed the power to shift from the entire wolf population. He sowed discontent among the wolves and gifted those who were disgruntled with great charisma and the power to cast a hypnotic spell over the humans. The dissatisfied wolves warred and ultimately turned on the one who had given them power, the sun spirit O’aajiisi.

I’naawsi, the moon spirit, saw a chance to win all the wolves to her side and returned the shifting power to all wolves, but only when she ruled the skies.

The great ancestor of the guardian white wolves, the first Ixota Migziwa, sought to make peace among all the warring tribes and to forge a treaty between the angry spirits. He called on Haa’lingan, the world creator, and asked Haa’lingan to save the planet that he’d built. The wise Haa’lingan realized that if all the spirits, all the humans, and the creatures that inhabited the oceans and the land fought each other and among themselves, nothing would remain.

Haa’lingan decided that since the world’s unraveling had begun with wolves, it must end with wolves, and gifted Ixota Migziwa and all his descendants with the power to envision what would come in the future.

Ixota Migziwa asked the warring wolves to surrender their shifting power. Some did. Some pretended to. Some refused and flaunted their powers. Those who paraded their shifting power gave rise to the myth of the werewolf and the black wolf. Many humans, especially those who craved power, revered the black wolves.

Melanie rubbed her eyes. Then she counted the pages left in the journal. She had read about three-quarters. Not a single mention of a maggishahwi. She sighed. While the information proved fascinating, she’d hoped to learn more about the call of a soul. Deliberately not allowing herself to think about Shuman’s last call, she set the journal on the coffee table and ran herself a bath. She was half dozing in the hot lavender-scented water in front of the enormous picture window when Mike’s pickup rumbled up to the cottage, gravel spitting and scrunching as he brought the vehicle to a halt. She lost sight of him when he hopped out of the passenger side and strode down the hill. Sighing, she lifted a shoulder from the foam just as the key turned in the lock. Mike must’ve gone to the front desk for a duplicate key.

His booted footsteps echoed in the quiet. She glanced at the doorway and smiled when he leaned against the frame. “Now this is what I want to come home to every night. You, naked and wet. Are you ready for me?”

“In more ways than one.” Where had this sexy Melanie come from? Wherever, she liked her more and more. “Why don’t you join me?”

“An invitation I have no intention of refusing.” Mike shucked his boots and began unbuttoning his shirt. “What do you know of Cherise Bookman? And her husband?”

“They moved to town about six months ago.” Melanie sighed in appreciation when Mike unbuckled his belt. “They ate at the Caboose a couple of times. Didn’t mix much. She was a substitute teacher. Taught throughout the county. I’m not sure what he did. He was gone a lot.”

The man had the most beautiful cock in the world, maybe the galaxy. “Don’t you ever wear underwear?”

“Not when I know I’m going to be around you. One less thing to take off.” Mike sat on the edge of the tub and worked on his socks. “How did Gray become her protector?”

Briefly Melanie related what her brother had told them earlier.

“Okay, no more business tonight.” He threw the socks to one side.

She eyed him when he stood big and bold and bronzed and then glanced at the tub. “We won’t fit.”

“Sure we will.” He reached into the water, and she squealed when he picked her up by the waist and looped her arms around his neck. Water sluiced everywhere, and he didn’t seem to care a bit. He stepped into the tub, sat, knees bent, and arranged her so she could rest on his thighs. His large hand and those calloused fingers slipped between their bodies and played with her folds. “You weren’t lying. Wet and ready for me. Lock your legs high around my waist.”

She obeyed him at once and moaned when he sank her down onto him. Leaned back a little to ease the intense pressure, and loosened her hold to slip down and fully sheath him. Clenched around the thick length of his wonderful penis and bit his nipple.

“Witch. This first one’s going to go down fast.”

Straddling him like that had her close to coming.

He toyed with her clit. “Spread for me, mate.”

“
Uffgh
.” He canted his hips up and forced her legs wide apart.

“Breasts. Hold them together.” Lordy, she loved him all wolf macho. The humid chamber exuded his musky arousal, and her sex spice mingled with his in the dense, heavy air.

She exploded when he dragged his teeth from one nipple to another, slurping and suckling, the sensation so potent, so sharp that the convulsions rippled one into the other. He pinched her clit, rolling his fingers and thumb in disparate motions. First the soft grazing of the pads, then the bite of his nails; she ground down on his hand, twisted side to side. He moved her hands to cup her breasts.

“Play for me. Make those nipples pout.”

The wanton in her, the Melanie who didn’t want to be a good girl, sang a stripper’s song. She played the ditty in her head, closed her eyes, and touched herself. Tugged on her big nipples, shuddered as another climax hit her, lost the rhythm, and he took over. Big hands gripped her hips and he drove into her, his pace rapid-fire, and each time he hit that bunch of nerves just there, she roared his name, until her cries grew hoarse and weak.

She collapsed on him, rasping, gasping, and tried to tangle her fingers in his chest hair, but he was too slippery and she gave up and rested her chin on the ridge of a pectoral muscle. Suds tickled her nose. She sneezed. An aftershock shuddered through her.

“Careful.” Mike lifted her head. “Don’t want you drinking soapy water and getting sick. This is only round one.”

Hours later Melanie wondered aloud. “Mama said my first heat could get scary. Why?”

“I wish I had answers, babe. I don’t know much about wolf lore or being a wolf. I’m hoping to learn more from your tribe, if they’ll accept our union. By the way, that implant you don’t have—you’re going to pay for that lie.”

“How?” She tried to imitate his eyebrow wiggle but was too lazy to put much effort into the gesture. “I mean, how did you find out?”

When Mike told her, she muttered, “I’ll get Gray for that one.”

“Witch. You meant how were you going to pay. Wild crazy woman, mine. I promise you’ll enjoy every minute.” His teeth grazed a new delicious spot on her shoulder.