Grayslake: Furrever Yours (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)

“Kiss my furry ass. Is that better?” she snapped. “Don’t forget, my grandfather was human. I know of plenty of successful, happy human-shifter matings. I knew you’d run into her at the hospital. I kept waiting for you to ask her out on a date, and you didn’t. So I was planning on getting you two together at the music festival, but now I won’t have to.”

“Aunt Olive, do you understand how much danger you put her in? That’s why I never asked her out. For me to get serious with her, I’d have to tell her what I am, and then she’d immediately have to agree to be my mate – or be put down. I could never risk that. If anything happened to her, it would kill me.”

“But everything will work out, of course. You’re fated mates. And you’re welcome, by the way,” Olive said with maddening smugness.

“I refer to shifts like these as the days of whine and roses,” Heather said to Kerry. It was 11 p.m., an hour after Kerry’s shift started. There were half a dozen people sitting in the waiting room who thought that their sniffles meant the doctors should stop attending the heart attack victim in the E.R. and run to help them immediately.

“Very poetic.” Kerry nodded approvingly. Was there a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth? Would that count as a smile? Probably not.

Kerry directed a severe look at the heavyset man with the blotchy, blistered hand who was pouting at her.

“Sir, my nurse’s aide told you five times, and I will tell you right now,” Kerry said. “It’s not first come, first served here. We treat people depending on the seriousness of their condition. The doctor will be with you as soon as he can.”

The man scowled and shoved his hand out at her. “It’s an emergency.”

“It’s a rash.” Kerry looked closer. “Poison ivy. You’ll probably live.”

Then, as she and Heather headed back to the E.R., she muttered under her breath, “Unfortunately.”

“Kerry, was that an attempt at humor? I think you just made a joke.”

“At work? Perish the thought.”

Kerry headed back to the nurse’s station, and Heather was about to make her rounds from room to room when she heard a familiar voice. Knox and his deputy Clarence had just walked in.

“You’re here,” Knox said to Heather, striding up to her with a worried frown wrinkling his forehead.

“Imagine that,” she said. “Finding me at the place where I work, during my regularly scheduled shift.”

Knox glanced at Clarence. “I’ll be right back,” the Beta said.

“We need to talk,” Knox said to Heather, and led her to the break room. He shut the door behind them.

“Heather,” he said in a low voice. “I need you to come back to my house with me when your shift is over. You aren’t safe in your own home right now. We’ve got it cleaned up and I have one of my men watching it, but it’s still not safe for you. There are bad people looking for Margaret, and there’s also a lot that I need to explain to you about werewolves.”

She nodded. “All right.”

“All right?” he said with surprise. Obviously he’d expected more of a fight.

She gave him a resigned look. “Yes, you heard me. All right. I will. There are a couple of scary-looking guys in the parking lot who watched me walk into the hospital at the beginning of my shift, and I’m lucky there were a bunch of other people there at the time, or I feel like they might have tried something. One of them came in afterwards and was sitting in the emergency room pretending to wait for a patient, until security went and demanded the name of the patient and he couldn’t answer, so they escorted him out.”

Knox nodded. “They’re from Eugene’s pack. Eugene is the father of the man who is supposed to marry Margaret. They’re crawling all over this town looking for her, and there’s not much I can do about it, unfortunately. Eugene ranks above my pay grade.”

She shook her head. “Great.”

“So you swear to me that you will come home with me at the end of your shift?”

“I, Heather Appleby, do solemnly swear I will go back to your pack property. Obviously those people know where I live and where I work, and I realize they’re more than I can handle. I’m not one of those TSTL chicks from a serial-killer movie.”

“TSTL?” He looked puzzled.

“Too Stupid To Live. You know, the one who’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a serial killer after me, and I hear a noise out in the shed, let me go investigate all by myself.’”

“You did come down into the kitchen by yourself,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I had a gun. And now that I know what I’m up against, I am willing to accept your help.” She looked up at him, and loved the way he was looking at her. There was a hungry gleam in his eyes, and his sensual lips were quirked in a smile. “And I do want to get to know you and your world better.”

“I want that too.” His voice went low and rough, and he brushed a tendril of hair from her face, letting his hand linger in a slow caress. She felt her skin flushing with arousal. “And lots of other things, believe me.”

“You’re making me blush,” she murmured.

“I know.” His grin spread wider. “I like it. It’s a good look on you.” Then he dropped his hand and tried to look serious. “We do need to discuss what happened back at your house. You handcuffed me.”

She sighed. “If you’re waiting for an apology, I’m sorry, but it’s going to be a long wait. I did what was best for Margaret.”

“You left and picked her up from wherever you’d sent her to hide, and then you dropped her off somewhere. Where is she?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, Knox. If I go to your place, and meet your family, and get a better idea of how things work with you people, I might trust you enough to tell you. But not before then.”

He frowned. “That’ll have to do for now. All right, I can’t hang out at the hospital all night long without attracting attention, but I’m going to be patrolling nearby, and I told Rocky to keep an eye out for you.”

Rocky was a big, burly nurse practitioner who worked in the E.R. “He’s a member of my pack,” he said. “He won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Good God. How many shifters work here?” she asked.

“A couple dozen. A doctor, some nurses, nurse’s aides, a few people in human resources. In any town that has shifters, we make sure some of our people are working in strategic positions, so that we can ensure our safety. Hospitals, police department, fire department, city hall.”

“Fascinating,” she marveled as she followed him back out.

“Hey,” Clarence said to her in a low voice, as she and Knox joined him by the exit door. “That nurse, Kerry. What’s her story?”

“Uh, single, if that’s what you mean,” Heather said. “Husband ran out on her a few years ago. Hard worker, ferocious advocate for her staff. Why do you ask?”

“Not you too,” Knox muttered at Clarence. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Just asking,” Clarence said in a wounded voice. “Doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?”

“No, it hurts to want what you can’t have. Just think before you leap,” Knox said. Then he smiled and winked at Heather. “Of course, sometimes you get really, really lucky and all the pain is worth it.”

* * * * *

After work, Heather got in her car and followed Knox back to his home in Sugar Creek County.

Now she realized that he didn’t just live with his family – he lived with his pack. There was a big main house at the end of a long dirt road, and a scattering of other houses near the main house, and a small dairy farm, which was the family business.

The main house was a two-story Colonial-era house built in the early Classical revival style. There was a main entryway with four two-story-high columns under a triangular gable. A porch wrapped around the house, and there was a porch on the second floor as well, also supported by round white columns. Magnolia trees with fat white blossoms perfumed the air, and orange and yellow and pink bougainvillea twined up trellises near the house. There was a lush undergrowth of flowering bushes around the house, which was set among towering oak trees.

He took her into the huge kitchen, which had two gas stoves and a wood stove and three refrigerators and a walk-in freezer. The pack was gathered around waiting for her, most of them looking eager and excited. He began introducing her to pack members.

She’d already met Clarence, who apparently was not just his deputy but his Beta. There was his Aunt Janet, his Uncle Wilfred, and their teenaged daughter Lark; they ran the dairy farm. There were about a dozen other people there whose names Heather struggled to remember. Then there was a woman named Sasha whose name Heather would definitely remember, because she glared at her with more hatred than Heather had ever seen in a person’s eyes before.

Sasha stood with a dour-looking older couple and a tall, sullen-looking young man. She was slender, and had bleached blonde hair and eyebrows plucked to thin, perfect arches. Knox introduced the young man as Peter, Sasha’s brother. Nathanial and Louise, the older couple, were her parents.

“May I speak to you alone?” Sasha said to Knox, raising her voice to be heard as pack members crowded around Heather and offered her trays of appetizers.

“No, you may speak to me right here,” Knox said. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say to Heather as well.”

“Fine. She’s human. She’s not your mate. And you brought her back here,” she said to Knox, eyes sparking with hurt and fury.

An ex, then.

Peter nodded. “She’s right,” he said indignantly.

“Yes, your Alpha made the decision to bring her here. Do you have a problem with that?”

“You’re risking the lives of our entire pack,” Sasha said, her tone turned wheedling.

“She’s right,” Nathanial chimed in grimly. “And I own part interest in the dairy, so I have a say in who’s allowed on our property. This doesn’t just affect you, it affects all of us – every man, woman and child who lives here.”

“Do you think that I would ever put my own personal interests ahead of the pack’s?” Knox snapped. “I know this woman. She would never reveal our secrets, and she would never threaten us.”

“It’s true,” Heather said, speaking up quickly. The last thing she wanted was to cause tension in his pack. “I would never do anything to hurt Knox or anyone in his family. I found out about shifters yesterday, and I certainly had the opportunity to say something, and I never did. And I never will.”

“Nobody asked you,
skin
,” Sasha said, her eyes glowing a terrifying gold. “You’re not one of us, so—”

Knox spun to face her and let out a howl of fury. She let out a gasp of fear and cowered behind her brother, who flashed Knox a quick glare of anger before bowing his head with reluctance.

“Shut the hell up while you still have vocal cords in your throat,” Knox snarled. “You’re all evicted from the main house. You’ll move in to the Turner Cottage at the back of the property, and you are banned from pack gatherings and this house for the next month. If I ever hear you speak to Heather with disrespect again, you can find a new pack.”

“I own property here…” Nathaniel repeated faintly.

“And we can buy out your interest if necessary. Go pack. Now.”

Tears ran down Sasha’s cheeks as they stormed out of the kitchen.

Knox glanced at the assembled pack members, who were watching the scene with dismay.

“All right, party’s over,” he growled. “Me and my mayyy— Uh, me and Heather are going to go get her settled in. Because she’s not going anywhere.”

Heather’s room was connected to Knox’s bedroom by a doorway. It was decorated in a rustic style with a cherry wood sleigh bed and matching chest of drawers, and paintings of country scenes in early American primitive style on the wall.

Heather’s books were already put away on the bookshelves that stood on either side of the bed, and her toiletries were neatly arranged on the vanity.

“My stuff is here,” she said in surprise.

“Yes, I sent my pack to bring it here. Your clothes are in the closet. Olive let them in,” he said.

“She did?”

“She’s my great-aunt,” he said. “Long story. I’ll tell you when you wake up. I see you yawning.”

She nodded. “Long shift,” she mumbled.

Knox left her to sleep, and she crawled onto the softest bed she’d ever felt and passed out. In her dreams, wolves chased her through the forest and howled at the moon.

He let her sleep ’til early afternoon. Thankfully, she had the night off.

After she’d showered and dressed, she went downstairs to help with dinner. The kitchen was an absolute chef’s dream. Without Sasha there, the atmosphere was considerably more relaxed.

Heather helped make fresh rolls to go with the pot roast. They taught her how to churn butter, which she’d never done before.

“We make our own ice cream too,” Lark told her eagerly. “We sell it at the grocery store in town.”

“Oh, I would love to learn how to make ice cream,” Heather said. “Will you teach me how?”

“I get to teach the Alpha’s mate?” Lark cried excitedly. She beamed with pride.

“Now, now, dear, that’s between Knox and her,” Janet chided her.

After dinner, Heather went upstairs to brush her teeth. Knox had offered to give her a tour of the property.

When she walked down the back staircase, looking for him, she spotted him on the back porch, standing close to one of his packmates. She strained her ears to hear what he was saying.

“Have you thought this through?” the packmate was asking. “Does she understand what would happen to her if she doesn’t agree to be your mate?”

“No, and don’t say anything to her. That’s between me and her.” That came out in a growl.

What
would
happen to her?

Her veins turned to ice. What was Knox keeping from her? He was asking her to trust him, and change her entire life, and he was keeping secrets?

Furious, she headed back upstairs, grabbed her purse, and then went back downstairs and slipped out the side door. She glanced around to make sure that nobody was there, and then began jogging through the woods towards the highway, way off in the distance.

The sun was setting, but it wasn’t completely dark yet. She had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do. This wasn’t a problem she could run away from, especially with Margaret hiding out in a cave in Grayslake, waiting for Heather to bring her food and smuggle her out of the state as soon as it was safe.

Soon, she heard the rustling of underbrush, and realized she was being followed.

A big wolf was keeping pace with her. She could just make out its dark form through the trees.

She stopped and turned to yell at it.

“You suck at being stealthy!”

There was a pause, and then after a minute, Knox came trotting out of the bushes. Stark naked. She swallowed and stared up at the treetops.

“Heather, what are you doing?”

She looked down and met his gaze. “I heard you talking to Clarence. So, what would happen to me if I didn’t agree to be your mate?”

He drew in a sharp breath, looking away for a moment. “Shifter law says that a human who knows about our existence has to be one of our mates…or has to be eliminated. Now do you understand why I never pursued a relationship with you?”

“Eliminated?” She fell back a step.

“I would never let that happen to you,” he said quickly, holding his hands up, palms out. “If you didn’t want me, you and I would go on the run, and I’d take you somewhere that nobody could ever find you. Nobody is hurting you, ever, whether you choose to be with me or not.”

He’d give up everything for her. Looking into his eyes, she absolutely believed that.

“But I do want you,” she protested faintly. “I have for the past year. Every time I see you, it makes my heart beat faster. I have highly embarrassing X-rated dreams about you, most nights of the week.”

“Tell me more.” His eyes gleamed with hunger, and he moved closer. “What am I doing to you in these dreams?”

Then he jerked around and sniffed at the air.

“Everything okay?” a woman’s voice called.

He looked back and saw Sasha standing at a distance.

“I saw her sneak out of the house!” she yelled. “You know she was going to tell people about us! Do you need any help? Let me challenge her!”

Fur covered Knox’s face in an instant. “Get away from us, now, or I’ll rip your hide off!”

Sasha shifted into a lean gray wolf and ran off, tail tucked between her legs, ears flattened against her narrow skull.

Knox returned his attention to Heather. He took a step closer to her. She dared to let her gaze wander; he was rock hard. She could see the vein standing out in relief against his thick cock, and the purplish head, and she let out a low moan of desire.

“Where were we?” Knox growled, walking until he was right up against her.

“Uh, I was totally embarrassing myself.”

“No you weren’t. You were totally making me crazy. Now I’m trying to imagine all of the things I want to do to you.”

“If…if we were going to be together, how exactly would you do that?”

“I would claim you. While we were having sex, I would bite you on the neck or the shoulder, and that mark would show that you’re mine.”

“That…that sounds extremely hot,” she murmured.

He moved closer. “You could…you could do it now,” she mumbled, flushing.

“No, I want you to get to know us a little better first. So you can be fully informed when you make the decision,” he said. “Soon, but not now. What I want right now is for you to tell me one thing you want me to do to you.”

She hesitated, not because she didn’t know what she wanted, but because she wanted so much. She wanted it all. She felt like a kid in a candy store, being offered any sweet treat that tickled her fancy. And Knox looked simply delicious. All hard muscle, power, and smooth, soft skin. She wanted to lick him all over.

Vivid images flashed through her mind. Knox taking her nipple in his mouth, grazing the rosy, sensitive bud between his sharp, white teeth. She could almost feel the pressure of his fingers against her breast as he fondled the soft globe. Her panties dampened. Knox prising her thighs apart with his big, strong hands, pushing his thick fingers into her sopping channel, working them back and forth, in and out until she cried out wordlessly. Knox massaging the tingling bud between her slick pussy lips with the pad of his thumb, working her steadily, relentlessly towards a mind-shattering climax. Knox moving down her body, dipping his tongue into her belly button, kissing the soft lower slope of her belly, nuzzling the soft nest of curls at the juncture of her thighs, fragrant with her arousal, and then…

She had to bite her lip to keep back the whimper of desire. Her voice was shaky when she replied, husky with arousal and sounding utterly unlike her. “I want you to…to taste me.”

He gave a lustful, possessive growl and stepped towards her, wrapping his strong, muscular arms around her and dipping his head to take her mouth in a deep, demanding kiss. She felt the hot, rigid length of his cock pressing against her hips and sighed, parting her lips to allow him to probe and explore with his quick, clever tongue. He held her tightly against his broad chest, and with each inhalation she felt it expand. She tasted the warmth of each exhalation as their breath mingled. His scent surrounded her – musky, masculine and wild. His heart beat against her breasts with a strong, steady rhythm, and she realized hers was tripping frantically in her ribcage. If this was how she reacted to him kissing her, what would it feel like to have him above her, inside her, thrusting into her wet, willing body with each flex of his hips?

Feeling shameless and wanton, she ran her hands down the smooth skin of his strong back and squeezed the taut globes of his ass, pulling him against her, showing him what her body craved. Knox moved forward, half lifting, half pushing her until he’d backed her up against a tree. He rolled his hips, growling low in his throat at the friction of his dick against her denim-clad hip, then released her and stepped back for a moment. He ran his eyes down over her body, his gaze lingering on her breasts, her belly, her rounded hips. Heather’s body ached for him, with a hungry, yearning
need
that was close to pain. She could see he felt the same way from the dilation of his pupils. She could get drunk on those whisky-colored eyes of his. Could drown in them.

Knox popped the first button of her blouse free, then moved his fingers down to the second. His fingertip skated softly against her skin, making her shiver. When she raised her hands to help him, wanting to be free of her clothes, eager to feel the heat of his naked skin on hers, he gently knocked them away with a soft admonition. “No, let me.”

She obeyed him, standing still with her hands by her sides as he slowly undressed her, peeling away her blouse, then unclipping her bra and discarding the frothy fabric. She was motionless…except for the way she squeezed her hands open and closed at her sides, battling the urge to clutch him and pull him against her; except for the way she was trembling all over as waves of goosebumps washed over her skin and tension wound tight between her thighs, making her pussy clench. It was so hard to restrain herself from tearing away her clothes, from reaching out to stroke and fondle Knox’s gloriously naked body, that she could feel her fingernails making crescent-shaped marks against her palms as she clenched her fists. But she stayed still. She didn’t even breathe.

Knox groaned as her plump, full breasts swung free, and ducked his head for a moment to kiss and lick the rosy peaks. Her nipples hardened to needy points, inviting his touch. He swirled his tongue around one, then the other, and excitement washed through her body, making her breasts feel tender and heavy and setting up an insistent throbbing between her thighs. Heather stifled a whimper as he pulled away again and unbuttoned her jeans, drawing them down her rounded thighs along with her panties. She toed off her shoes, and he prompted her to lift first one foot, then the other, helping her to step out of her jeans.

And then she was standing completely naked, the bark of the tree rough against her shoulder blades and buttocks, toes sinking into the soft layers of old leaves on the forest floor. And Knox was kneeling at her feet, just as naked as she was. His erection looked dark and engorged, pointing insistently at the object of his desire – her. He gazed up at her with an expression that reminded her of what he really was. A wolf. And he was going to eat her all up.

He ran his hands up the insides of her calves, dipping his fingers into the sensitive hollows behind her knees. He continued upwards, squeezing her soft flesh, urging her to part her legs. The rough, callused skin on his fingertips left tingling trails of sensation up the satiny skin of her inner thighs, and she let out a soft moan, grateful for the support of the tree trunk at her back.

Her heart stuttered and she froze, trembling, her breath trapped in her chest as his warm mouth covered her mound. She allowed her hands to drift up and settle on his head, winding her fingers into his thick, dark hair.

Knox used his fingers to part her slick lips, French-kissing her pussy, tonguing her slit and drawing her clit between his lips before releasing it again. He lapped at her cleft, running his tongue between her tingling folds to gather up the sticky moisture, and Heather groaned and parted her thighs further still, grinding against his eager mouth and urging him on with harsh pants and helpless, meaningless, wordless noises of pleasure.

Knox lifted her leg at the knee, urging her to drape her calf over his muscular shoulder. The position opened her wider to him, and he took advantage of it to push his rigid tongue into her sopping channel, making her groan with surprise and arousal. She tangled her fingers more firmly in his hair, pulling him against her, and Knox gave a grunt of satisfaction and began to tongue-fuck her, pushing in and out, massaging her G-spot and flicking the tip of his tongue over her singing clit with each withdrawal.

She threw her head back, squeezing her eyes closed and watching the fireworks exploding in brightly colored starbursts behind her eyelids. With each touch of his mouth, the tension between her thighs wound higher and tighter. Erotic vibrations shuddered through her core and her limbs, each wave overlapping the last, flooding her body until she tensed up and cried out. Her pussy clenched in greedy spasms against his mouth and she thrashed her head from side to side. She yanked at his hair, trying to pull his head away, the sensation more intense than she could bear.

But Knox was relentless. He pushed the flat of his tongue against her pulsating clit and pressed against it in a firm, undulating rhythm. The steady, pulsing pressure drove her wild, and she almost screamed as he pushed her over the precipice and she tumbled into an orgasm that made her feel as though she’d shattered into a million sparkling pieces, each one a shard of unspeakable physical bliss.