Moon Dance (20 page)

God, that was pretty much
the hottest thing she’d ever said to him. He complied, wrapping his
hand around the base.

She nodded. “Good.” Her
fingers darted underneath the t-shirt, between her legs.

He watched as she began to rub herself
there.

And he began to drag his
hand over his shaft.

She locked eyes with him. Her breath
quickened.

Yeah, she hated him all
right.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dana was sleeping. Well, she
was half awake now, but she had been sleeping. She curled up into
Cole
’s body, her face pressed into his
chest, and his arms were around her. She felt safe and quiet here.
It was the same tranquility she felt when she was the wolf, running
under the trees in the forest.

His lips whispered over her
forehead. “Wake up, beautiful.”

She didn’t think she wanted
to. It was easier if she stayed like this, and it felt nicer. If
she woke up, she was going to have to think about everything that
had happened. And if she thought about it, it was going to hurt.
She was going to remember how much he’d hurt her.

She stirred a little bit, and her
fingers went to the scar on her belly. She touched the puckered
skin.

“
Dana?” His voice was low
and rumbling.

She lifted her face to look
up at him. He was so enticing to her, and she knew it didn’t make
any sense.

“
What are you doing?” He
sounded amused.

Oh, he thought she was
touching herself again. He didn’t realize her hand was on the
scar.

He looked down, and then he
did.

He sighed.

Then his fingers were there
too, tracing the place where he’d marked her. “God, Dana, I’m
sorry.”

She butted her face into his chest
again, rubbing against him, breathing in his scent. They were in a
jumble here, a tangle of limbs and warmth, like a pile of wolf
pups.

His fingers moved, trailing
away from her belly and resting on her bare hip.

Cole hurt her. He always hurt
her.

And she kept wanting him
through all of it. She shouldn’t. Why couldn’t she stop? “I wish
I
did
hate you,”
she muttered.

His hand slid up her back,
pulling her tight against him. “I don’t.”

They lay like that for several more
moments. She liked the heat of him, their skin only separated by
fabric. She liked his smell. She liked the way she could hear his
heart thudding inside him.

“
We should go now,” he said.
“But you need better clothes.”

Go. Yes, they needed to do
that. She and Cole would leave, and they’d tell the SF about Enoch.
The SF would come and get him. She’d go back to Avery…

She felt ill. She didn’t
want to think about Avery. If she did, she’d realize just how
screwed up everything was. She knew what Avery would think of what
had happened to her. If he knew, he’d kill Cole. Rip him into
pieces.

It would have to be one more thing she
never told him.

“
Can we take the women?” she
asked.

“
What women?”

“
The ones chained up in the
basement of the burned-out farmhouse. They’re hurting them, Cole,
and I told them the SF was coming—”

“
Enoch got rid of my phone,”
said Cole. “No one’s coming.”

She’d figured something like
that must have happened.

Cole groaned, rolling over
onto his back. “I fucked this all up so bad.”

She sat up. “We were both
stupid about it. We wanted to be together. And King was desperate.
That’s the only reason she would have agreed to let us do something
so idiotic.”

He smiled at her wryly. “You
wanted to be with me?”

“
Always. Apparently, I’m a
masochist.”

He sat up too. “What do you
think it is, this thing with us?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Yeah.” He studied his
hands. “I don’t know either.”

They were silent.

Cole cleared his throat. “We
can’t take the women. I don’t know how we’d get them all out. The
best thing we can do is get word to the SF as soon as we can.
They’ll save them.”

She guessed she’d figured
that would be the case too. She nodded. “Okay.”

Cole got up. He opened up a
small closet next to the bed and began pulling things out of it.
Bed sheets. Towels. Several mens’ t-shirts. “There’s no fucking
clothes in here, and you need something else. You don’t even have
shoes.”

“
I’ll be okay,” she
said.

“
Damn it.” He turned back to
her. Caressed her face.

She flinched. The wolf bond had flared
a little bit.

He pulled his hand back.
“Sorry.”

The bond was so
inconsistent. She remembered that from when she was mated to Cole
and trying to make out with Avery. Sometimes certain actions
triggered it, sometimes they didn’t. Why a caress did, when
cuddling with him on the bed didn’t, she wasn’t sure.

Cole turned away, clenching
both his hands into fists. “I really am sorry, Dana. I didn’t want
you to get hurt.”

She believed him. It didn’t
matter, anyway. Even if he had wanted to hurt her, it wouldn’t have
changed things. She climbed off the bed.

“
You can’t go without
shoes,” he said.

“
I can’t stay here,” she
said. “God knows what else you’d do to me if I did.”

His turn to flinch. There
was a cubby above the bed. He yanked that open and began to pull
things out of it, too. He tossed out a first aid kit, then a string
of interconnected condoms.

She made a face.

Cole looked at them. “Look,
don’t worry. I didn’t—”

“
I know,” she said. She
would have felt it if he’d come inside her. He hadn’t.

She remembered being angry
with him before, yelling at him that he never used protection when
they had sex. She’d been worried about getting pregnant, and the
ironic thing about it was that it had happened. Wolves almost never
got pregnant, and she and Cole had
one
bareback ride on a counter in a
trailer—her in a flimsy white robe, him with his pants unzipped—and
it had happened.

It was kind of a running
theme for them, wasn’t it? She was always hardly dressed, and he
was always forcing himself on her.

He pulled a pair of flip
flops out of the cubby. “I guess these are better than
nothing.”

She took them from him and
put them on her feet. They were too big. But he was right. Better
than nothing.

“
I’m sorry you don’t have
pants,” he said. “Do you want… do you want my boxers? Just so
you’re not… bare down there?”

She thought about it. It
might be nice, actually. She wouldn’t feel so exposed. But if Cole
was going to do that, then he’d have to take off his pants, and
then—

“
It’s fine,” she
said.

Cole squared his shoulders.
“Stay close to me, okay?”

She nodded. Did he think she
was going to run off from him once they were out of the trailer? If
she had any sense, she would. But she didn’t. Have sense, that is.
Cole made her stupid.

He opened the door of the
RV.

She waited behind him. She could hear
insects in the distance, smell the grass and night air.

He crept silently down the
stairs.

She followed.

Outside, it was dark and still. The RVs
were all dark. A fire pit in front of one of them glowed faintly
with dying embers.

Cole shut the door to the
RV.

She heard it click shut and waited to
see if the sound was loud enough to bring anyone.

But their voices inside the
RV had probably been louder than that click.

Cole stole forward, staying close to
the RV.

She went after him, her flip
flops slapping against the ground. They were loud! She tried to
move more quietly, but that only seemed to make them slap
louder.

If Cole noticed, he didn’t
let on. He walked around the nose of the RV.

The grass under her feet
didn’t even look green in the darkness. It was almost black. She
could barely make out the individual blades.

She and Cole moved past the
RV. Now they were outside the semi-circle of the camp. Ahead of
them, a dark plain stretched out. Far in the distance, she could
see trees. Maybe it was a forest. Maybe it was only a strip of
foliage.

They started to walk.

She stared ahead at the
trees, willing them to get larger. Stubbornly, they stayed tiny and
distant.

They walked. Her next to
Cole, the breeze blowing underneath the t-shirt she wore, dancing
against her inner thighs. She wished she’d taken Cole up on the
offer of boxers after all.

The insects sang to each
other. The stars twinkled above them. The grass rustled in the
breeze, still green-black and indistinguishable.

And they walked.

It seemed like they walked
for hours, but it couldn’t have been that long, because
occasionally, she looked over her shoulder and saw that the RV camp
wasn’t that far back.

No matter how far they walked, it
barely seemed to make the trees look closer.

She began to wonder if that
was because she was staring at them the whole time, so each change
in perspective was incremental. The trees were getting slowly
closer, but because she was watching, she couldn’t tell.

She tried to stop looking at
them. She looked at her feet instead, at her toes against the dark
grass. The grass was getting taller, she noticed. This grass must
have been trampled down by cars or feet. But as they were getting
further away from the camp, the grass was getting taller. Soon, it
would cover her feet, and she wouldn’t even be able to see her
toes.

Crack!

The sound of a gunshot,
echoing through the night air.

“
Cole!” screamed a male
voice behind them. “You fucking bastard traitor!”

She and Cole both whirled.

Enoch (at least she thought
it was Enoch. It was dark and tough to tell) was standing at the
edge of the RV camp, a shotgun in one hand. His chest was bare, and
it gleamed in the moonlight. “Where the hell do you think you’re
going?” he yelled.

Cole was stripping off his
shirt. “Shift, Dana. Shift.”

Dana yanked her own t-shirt
off, letting the wolf scramble up her spine and down over her body.
The change flowed over her like a waterfall. Her wolf muscles
sprang to life, her paws hit the ground.

And she was running.

She could smell Cole—sense
Cole. He was a wolf too, and he was running with her.

Gunshots behind them, sailing over
their heads.

They dove into the taller grass, and it
brushed against their pelts. If they put down their heads, it
closed over them as they ran. The breeze picked up, rustling the
grass, hiding their movements.

They were free.

And they were part of
nature, which was part of them, secreting them away from Enoch,
obscuring them and swallowing them up.

Dana’s heart swelled, and
she sprinted through the grass, feeling Cole beside her.

She’d never felt more at
home than at this moment.

* * *

They ran under the moon,
darting between trees, under branches, through bushes, and Cole
felt free and alive
—at peace. It had been
quite a long time since he’d been the wolf, and it was
good
now, like being back
to his true self.

Enoch sent wolves after
them. Cole could hear them in the distance behind them, howling and
barking, crashing through the grass.

But he and Dana had a head
start, and the other wolves were too human to be any match for
them. There was something in the way they moved that betrayed it.
They were using their human instincts to to pursue, and humans were
no match for true wolves—pure wolves.

Back when Cole had still
been working with Enoch, he had been a leader in the group, almost
equal to Enoch. He’d tried to teach the wolves how to merge with
their truest selves, but they were resistant. It wasn’t until he
found Dana that he had his best pupil. She had truly made the
transition. He could sense it from her as they moved
together.

So, it wasn’t long before
they had lost the other wolves, left them far behind.

But even with no one
pursuing them, he and Dana still ran. Their sleek, furry bodies
streaked through the silvery moonlight. They surged across the
countryside, drunk on freedom, drunk on running, the movement in
their muscles, the way they careened over the landscape. They ran
and ran and ran.