Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels Read online

  Avery glanced at her and then looked back at the road. “Makes sense. And I guess Tom Hathaway wanted to enter the twenty-first century. Who could blame him?”

  “No one,” she said. “Well, I guess his father did.”

  “Yeah, see, but that was confusing, didn’t you think? Because the old guy said that going to the SF broke a bond between him and Tom, but that he was able to build it back up. But then he said that Cole Randall somehow made a bond with Tom.”

  “Oh, you’re right. And he also said that Cole came by the farm.”

  “We’re going to have to talk to Randall,” said Avery. “We have to know why he came here and what he did to Tom.”

  “I guess so. But who knows if he’ll even say anything.” Dana didn’t want to reveal that she’d confirmed that Cole did indeed remember Tom Hathaway and that he’d appeared shocked by the man’s death. Furthermore, he’d predicted correctly that the father would be the one who’d killed Tom.

  “He might talk to you,” said Avery. “Maybe we’ll have to get King to let you down there.”

  Dana didn’t say anything.

  “You’ve been doing better, right? You’d be okay seeing him?”

  “Um...” She had been seeing him. And she was pretty sure it was making everything worse. “I could talk to him.”

  Avery flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “You know you said before that at some point you might be able to talk about what happened with him.”

  She remembered that. Back when Avery was asking all those questions about sexual assault. “I did.”

  “Is that point now or is it still too soon?”

  She sighed. “Is this really what we should be focusing on right now?”

  “Guess it’s still too soon.”

  “Brooks, I’m just saying that we should be trying to figure out what Mr. Hathaway was talking about, not worrying about what happened between Cole and me.”

  Avery made a disbelieving snorting sound. “See, you make it sound like you went on a date with him or something. He chained you up in his basement and tried to kill you, Dana. You do realize that?”

  “He didn’t kill me,” she said. “He couldn’t kill me.”

  “So that makes him okay?” “No.” She glared out the window of the car. Outside, it was springtime, and the tiny leaves on the trees were bright, bright green. She looked back at Avery. “What do you think about the kind of stuff that Sullivan said in the beginning? Stuff about packs.”

  “Packs?” said Avery. “It’s bullshit. He thought of werewolves as inferior—little better than animals. He made that crap up to make us look like beasts.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? You’re changing the subject on me.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Tom’s dad said that Tom was bonded to Cole. Wouldn’t you say I’m bonded to him too?”

  Avery was quiet for a minute. “I guess so. But I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  “Maybe Sullivan wasn’t wrong. Maybe wolves do form packs, and those packs have bonds.”

  “No way, Gray. We live in the eastern regional SF headquarters, and there are more werewolves there than anywhere else. If we naturally formed into packs, don’t you think there would be packs? But I don’t have any otherworldly bonds to anyone else. And neither do you.”

  “I’ve got something with Cole. Something I don’t like. Something I don’t seem to be able to control.”

  “Yeah,” said Avery. “But you’re also mentally ill. I mean, no offense.”

  “Look, Sullivan said that packs were generally families. In rare cases, they weren’t related, but the wolves stayed close to the wolf that had bitten and changed them.”

  “Then you and I should be close to the wolf that bit us. We aren’t.”

  “What if the SF training does something that wipes out all those instincts? What if all the shifting into werewolf form that Cole made me do sort of... woke them back up again inside me?”

  “Cole didn’t bite you, though,” said Avery. “You’re drawn to him, but you aren’t related to him, and he didn’t bite you.”

  He was right. She bit her lip.

  “For that matter,” said Avery, “he didn’t bite Tom Hathaway either. And Tom isn’t related to him.”

  “No,” said Dana. “But it fits with what his father was saying. He said that he and Tom were bonded until the SF undid the bond. Then he said that Cole bonded to Tom. Somehow, Cole supplanted his natural bonding to his father. It’s like... like Cole’s an alpha wolf.”

  “You didn’t just say that,” said Avery.

  “He’s an alpha, and he’s making a pack,” said Dana.

  “And you’re in the pack?”

  “Maybe,” said Dana.

  “There are no alpha wolves. I mean, unless you’re talking about actual animals. We’re human. We’re not animals.”

  “Humans are animals, Brooks,” she said. “You’ve read all those studies about the similarities of chimps and people, right? I mean, is it really that crazy to think that werewolves might function like wild wolves?”

  “It’s insulting,” said Avery. “No one controls me. I control myself. I don’t have an alpha wolf keeping me in line.”

  “I don’t think it’s like that. Alphas can force betas to shift, and they can call members of their pack. I don’t think they can control anyone.”

  “You just said Cole was controlling you.”

  “I think he calls me,” she said. “Maybe that makes me want to be around him.”

  “Who says alphas can do this stuff?”

  “Fredrich Sullivan.”

  “Who’s been proved to be wrong by lots of people,” said Avery. “I just don’t think so, Gray. It’s too weird. Too far-fetched.”

  * * *

  The moon was full outside the window of Dana’s apartment. It was a big, round moon, hanging in the sky with its blank, white face. And the phones were silent.

  Silent.

  Dana couldn’t remember the last full moon in which nothing had happened.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It actually happened once or twice a year. There would be a random full moon in which there were no rogues, no new werewolves, and no one actually died. Everything was quiet.

  Generally speaking, Dana welcomed those rare, quiet full moons. It was usually a nice break in a stretch of busyness, a sort of gift from the universe, time to get everything squared away before things got crazy again.

  Avery certainly seemed to be looking at it that way. As each hour rolled by, he texted her celebratory updates. “Still no rogues. Yee-haw!” and various other sentiments.

  Dana didn’t want it to be quiet. She wanted it to be busy and crazy. She wanted there to be no time to think.

  Because Cole had told her to go to his house, to lie on his bed, and to...

  Oh, God.

  She wasn’t going to do it. It was stupid. It was embarrassing. It was gross. She didn’t do stuff like that.

  She kind of wanted to do it.

  Whenever she thought about it, her jeans started to feel pleasantly tight.

  Oh, God.

  Dana didn’t play sexy games. Honestly, she didn’t have a lot of time in her life for sex. She’d had five sexual partners in her life. (If you didn’t count Cole. And he didn’t count. Wolf sex was not actual sex. No way.) Three of them had been long-term relationships, but none of those relationships had been particularly centered on sex.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t do it. It was just that it wasn’t, you know... kinky. Or whatever.

  Sex had always happened at night before bed, between the sheets in someone’s bed. With the lights off. She liked doing it, but she didn’t like talking about it. Or really thinking about it all that often. Her whole life, she’d had trouble achieving orgasm from penetration alone, but it wasn’t something she brought up. She didn’t fake orgasms either. It was part of who she was.

  No one except Hollis had ever
even noticed, and he’d made it into a big deal. He wanted to be the guy who always got her off, every time. Which meant—and she wasn’t proud of it—she’d faked it a few times for him. Because he wouldn’t give up until she had an orgasm. The pressure he put on the whole thing was annoying.

  She often just waited until he was gone and finished herself off.

  Before Cole, she’d treated masturbation as a kind of necessary chore, kind of like taking out the garbage.

  Once or twice a month, she’d have a little urge. She knew what it meant. She had the equipment to take care of it—a tiny bullet vibrator she’d purchased online. She would turn the thing on, close her eyes, and wait until she came. That done, she could get back to her life.

  But in the past six months, after Cole, things had become more complicated. Her fantasies were more frequent and more detailed. Her urges and her releases were more intense. It disturbed her, but it also pleased her. She’d never experienced this before, and—though she knew that Cole was an inappropriate partner—the new sensations she’d experienced had been... fun.

  Thinking about it made Dana feel flushed and embarrassed, like a giggly girl.

  She was appalled at the idea of being asked to go someplace and touch herself.

  On the other hand, it excited her. It was another level of sensuality she’d never explored. Cole wouldn’t be there when she did it. (Not that she was going to do it.) She’d be alone. All on her own. But by suggesting it to her, he’d somehow become part of her own private, fantasy world. That aroused her.

  He wouldn’t actually take pleasure in what she was doing. He wouldn’t be there. But the thought of her pleasuring herself pleased him. That aroused her too.

  And it was very... take charge of him. He was trapped in a cell for God’s sake, but he still managed to have the upper hand here. He’d ordered her to do it.

  That really aroused her.

  But she couldn’t actually do it.

  Well, she could. She could drive out to Cole’s house. It wasn’t that far away. Even though he didn’t live there, all of his stuff would be there. His bed was still in the house. She could go there, slowly remove all of her clothing, and lie down in that bed.

  She bet it still smelled like him.

  He wouldn’t be there, but she could imagine what it might be like it if he were. What would he do to her?

  She thought of Cole’s hungry eyes on her body, the way he seemed mesmerized by the sight of her, the way he seemed desperate for her.

  Aroused was starting to be too mild of a term for it.

  She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.

  She peered out the window at the moon. It gazed down at her, cold, white, and smug, as if it had all the answers and knew she was helpless to resist.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dana’s eyes were closed. She was surrounded by puffy white bedcovers and pillows, sunk down into the most decadently soft bed she thought she’d ever lain on. It was cold inside the house, because the power had been turned off, and she was naked. But the blankets and her activity had warmed her, distracted her, so she didn’t notice the cold.

  Shocks traveled down her thighs. She squeezed her knees together, moaning, her voice like a howl to the full moon.

  Because when she opened her eyes, that was all she could see. The moon. The white, fat moon shown brilliant though the glass doors at the foot of Cole’s bed.

  She groaned, jolts of pleasure still surging through her.

  In a minute, she would feel ashamed. Embarrassed.

  But for right now, there was nothing but sheer goodness. Bursting. Exploding. Blooming. She breathed deep, enjoying it, closing her eyes again.

  She thought it was the shattering sound that let her know something was wrong. Cole’s double glass doors broke, and the noise must have alerted her.

  But it could have been something else. She could have smelled something. Heard something.

  The dark shape could have blocked out the light of the moon. She might have seen that even through closed eyelids.

  However she knew, it happened fast. The glass burst inward, and the wolf landed on the bed with her, snarling, teeth bared.

  At first she thought it was Cole. She thought he’d somehow got out of his cell, and that he’d sent her here on purpose. So that he could kill her.

  But she saw that the wolf was gray. It wasn’t Cole. And she could smell it. It didn’t have Cole’s smell.

  The wolf was huge compared to her small, naked body. It advanced on her, showing her its long, sharp teeth, its wet gums. Saliva dripped out of the edge of his mouth.

  Dana scrambled back up the bed. This was a werewolf, not an animal. She could smell the difference.

  She’d come into the house with nothing, chasing her idiotic lust. There was a tranquilizer gun in her car, but that didn’t do her much good here, did it?

  The wolf’s eyes met hers. It growled, a direct challenge.

  Dana didn’t understand it, but the wolf inside her did. Her wolf sprang forward, ready to fight, demanding that Dana let it out.

  And Dana didn’t fight the wolf this time. The only way she was going to survive this was to shift. She let the wolf out, and it felt... right.

  Generally, shifting was painful. All her bones seemed to snap into different places. Her internal organs mutated and shifted inside her. Fur pushed its way through her skin, sharp points of coarseness pricking her everywhere.

  But this time...

  It was like water, like the river surging downstream. The shift was a liquid force that washed over her, and in several fluid seconds, she was standing on the bed in wolf form, staring down the gray wolf.

  Like the time in Cole’s basement, she was utterly aware of herself. She knew what was happening. But her thoughts were wolf thoughts, not human thoughts.

  She sized up her attacker, looking for weaknesses. The gray wolf’s aggression wafted from its body. She smelled it. This wasn’t a warning, and it wasn’t playful. This wolf meant to kill her.

  That meant only one thing. Dana had to kill first.

  She began to circle the gray wolf, and it moved with her. The two maneuvered on Cole’s bed, stepping over the covers and pillows. They growled at each other. They took each other’s measure.

  The gray wolf moved. It sprang forward, leaping for Dana.

  Dana jumped off the bed, narrowly escaping its jaws.

  The wolf leapt after Dana, joining her on the floor.

  There wasn’t much room down here, and there were glass shards everywhere.

  Dana’s paw landed on one, and she recoiled, whimpering.

  The gray wolf pressed its advantage and tackled Dana.

  Caught off guard, Dana fell backward on her side. The sharp points of the gray wolf’s teeth pierced her shoulder.

  Dana yipped, flailing.

  The wolf’s teeth held fast.

  Dana used her back feet, clawing at the gray wolf, raking her claws over its belly.

  The wolf whined. Its grip loosened.

  Dana shook free. She leapt forward, jaws wide. Her teeth closed around the gray wolf’s neck.

  The wolf tried to move.

  But Dana was on top of it, holding the gray wolf in place. It was the most natural thing in the world to move her jaws, to snap the wolf’s neck.

  It hung lifeless from her mouth.

  She dropped it, victory bolting through her. Sweet, sweet victory. Relief and achievement all wrapped in one. Her wolf gloried in it.

  The gray wolf was shifting back to human, now that it was dead. Werewolves always did. Now she could see that it wasn’t a gray wolf anymore but instead a woman. The nude body sprawled on the carpet, amongst the shards of broken glass. The pale light of the moon reflected against her bare skin.

  To Dana, the body meant only one thing. Meat.

  Her wolf was hungry.

  * * *

  Dana was shaking too hard to drive, but she was sitting in the front seat of her car, gripping the ste
ering wheel.

  This couldn’t have happened.

  She tried to take deep breaths, to calm herself down, but it wasn’t happening. She couldn’t calm down after this.

  She had... eaten someone.

  Not all of the someone. Just... parts.

  Augh.

  She shook.

  This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

  No. No. No.

  “Calm down, Dana,” she said aloud to herself. Her voice sounded high-pitched and terrified. “You couldn’t help it. It’s a full moon. You ran into a rogue without a tranq gun. If you hadn’t shifted, you’d be dead. It was self-defense.”

  It wasn’t self-defense to eat someone, and she knew it.

  Dana let out a noise. It might have been a strangled sob. Or a hysterical laugh. She wasn’t quite sure.

  “Calm down,” she said to herself again. “You couldn’t help it. You didn’t mean it.”

  The worst of it was how much the wolf had loved it. And Dana could remember that joy, that sheer pleasure of sinking her mouth into flesh, juices spurting into her mouth.

  “Stop,” she said. She wouldn’t think about it. She just wouldn’t.

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck. What was she going to do?

  That woman had a family. They were going to be worried about her. Someone would eventually find the body, here in Cole’s house, and they would...

  Oh God.

  If she confessed what she’d done, everyone would know. They might understand that she’d done it in self-defense. They might even let the... eating slide. But all of that combined with the fact that she was in Cole Randall’s house unarmed? What were they going to think about that? How was she going to explain—

  Her cell phone rang.

  She shrieked.

  “Get yourself together, Gray,” she muttered. With trembling hands, she answered the phone.

  “Gray?”

  It was Avery. “I’m here.”