I looked around me. I mean, what the hell was that all about? What had I done now?
Wheeling away, wrapping her arms around herself, pacing, she asked, “What the fuck did you come here for, to ruin my life?”
So, it’s safe to say, at this point, I was clueless. I said, “Come again?”
Amber spun on her little strappy shoes and said, “You think that’s funny?”
Come again...?
Okay, now I smiled. “Don’t tell me I made you come just by kissing you.”
Again, she turned.
I sniffed the air. “You did...?”
I had never made that good of an impression on a woman before. I would have thought it was a total crock, but she did smell different than she had when we’d first met.
“Don’t flatter yourself, asshole. It’s a drug I’m taking that does it to me.”
“Could I get some of those to go?” I thought cracking a joke at that juncture was about the only way out of there.
Amber didn’t think it was funny. She kept her gaze averted, but said, “Could you please refrain from any comments about me and Hood?”
I’m not ashamed to mention that I’d been glued in on her ass. Geez, I love a wide loaded back end. I kept imagining--never mind.
I’m a wolf. I like a girl butt-up. I like something to hold onto.
But her words jerked my chain well enough. “What? You and Hood are sleeping together?”
This was a problem. I mean, I was sniffing up L.I.’s favorite alley? Hood was L.I. personified and if he was fucking Amber, I was as good as dead--just for looking.
I didn’t wait for a response, “You could have warned me.” It pissed me off, actually. I advanced, accusing, “You told me to beg.”
She bowed her head.
Getting as close as I could without touching her, I asked, “You fucking bitch. Do you have any idea...?”
My hands itched, flat out. I flexed my fingers. I wanted to put my hands on her and spin her around, but self-preservation was edging out my wolf-ego. She did not need more of my smell on her.
Obviously, Giselle had been happy to scent her on me.
Oh. It started connecting. Giselle and Hood? Correction...Giselle wanted Hood?
Amber turned to face me. “
You
don’t have any idea.”
I was trying to figure it out, though. I looked at her face. So pretty to me. Nothing gaunt, or hollow. Like the heat in her eyes--she radiated energy, warmed me by her nearness. I wasn’t trying to think about sex, at that point, but blood pools there when I’m within sniffing range of Amber.
I whispered, “Tell me what--” To think. I never got it out.
She pushed against me, clutching my front, and kissed me.
So, I have no idea what this drug is being developed for. To help women with hormone and orgasmic problems? I liked the aggressiveness, but the minute our lips touched, I smelled the liquid heat between her legs. I pried her off me.
That was an exercise in self-control. I wanted to take it deeper. I wanted to bend down, reach under that lab coat, and feel the fishnets. I wanted to slide my hands up her thighs, maybe inside her legs....
She moaned against me. Must’ve been reading my damn unguarded thoughts again.
Maybe that was what got me thinking smarter. I mean, she was Hood’s woman. And, honestly, to know it was a drug making her achieve that little sexual success of orgasm, which she apparently was working up to a second--or was that third?--did nothing for my ego.
I let go of her, and put some distance between us. Rock hard, my cock needed readjusted in my pants. I said, “Fuck. If you’re with Hood, you have no business--”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” She reached down, lifted her coat and propped a leg on the closest chair.
No doubt about it. She was hot and ready. She pleasured herself--in about two seconds--while I watched.
I have never been the restrained type. I threw caution to the wind, too turned on by what she was doing. After all, my scent was on her already. I unzipped my pants, saying, “Fuck Hood,” and I stepped up.
Sliding into her lower folds was exquisite pleasure. I groaned, dipped my knees and pushed up into her, steadying myself by holding onto her hips. Knowing that Amber liked kissing, I went straight for that, too.
It didn’t take long.
To regret the act. When I exploded in her, to the feel of her inner muscles spasming--all I could do was hang on, and shudder into her with a few scooping thrusts.
We stood there, silently, me still inside her, for a minute, before she said, “Hood has cameras in every room.”
A self-deprecating laugh escaped my throat. “Figures.”
I released myself from her body, and looked down at my cock, full, and throbbing, a bubble of liquid sitting on the tip, white juice all over it. The smell of her rose up between us.
She corrected my thinking by saying, “Us. The smell of us.”
“Yeah.” I tucked myself back into my pants, and zipped up, feeling a little sick. It wasn’t like Hood didn’t already have a reason to be pissed at me--and mine.
Amber snagged a tissue from a nearby table and swabbed herself, saying with a chuckle, “What was that you said a minute ago?”
“What?” I watched what she was doing.
“Fuck Hood?”
What could I say? “Thanks for reminding us.”
Easily, she tossed the used tissues into a small wastebasket and said, “I say it all the time.”
I straightened my tie, and tucked my shirt. “Yeah, well, good for you.”
“I do it, too.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Please don’t bring it up to Giselle again. That’s why I brought you in here.”
“Really.”
She checked her lab coat to make sure it was in order. “Really.”
“Why?”
“She has a thing for Hood. I mean, they have a thing for each other.”
“But he still--”
Amber cut me off. “It’s complicated.”
“It just got more complicated. I have a feeling that Hood won’t like what we just did. If anything, he’s a territorial bastard.”
“Relax.”
That was easier said than done.
“They’ll smell what we’ve done.”
That’s the thing about wolves. They can tell by one whiff what you’ve been up to, if it’s sexual--unless you’ve showered, and women--they gotta douche, and sometimes that’s not enough because the smell of a wolf gets up inside and--seeps out the pores or something. Just helps you to know who belongs to whom.
Of course, libido rules us. We fuck ourselves regularly. Pun intended.
Amber said, “I’ll be going with you.”
“Where?”
“To Missouri.”
“I’m not going to Missouri.”
She frowned. “I thought you were.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” To tell the truth, I thought she was a squirrelly bitch, right then.
“Hood wants me to keep an eye on the investigation.”
“Hood wants what?”
Chapter Four
Amber lifted her chin. “What? You think I’m too--”
Her weight issue was between us. I didn’t have to read her mind to realize that she was assuming that I was instantly furious because Hood wanted me to take a fat lady on my investigation.
Missouri. What the hell had Bark been doing in Missouri?
I cut Amber off. “I think you’re Hood’s bed partner. You’ll report to him on my every move. I don’t need a spy.”
“You would have had no trouble taking me if you didn’t know I was sleeping with Hood?”
“Well--” She would be a distraction to me, either way.
“I’ve slept with you now.” She made a face. “Fucked you, anyway. That’s about all he and I do, too.”
“I don’t want to know.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “In fact, I want to forget this. Could you find a bathroom and wash--thoroughly?”
The odor of us filled the whole room now. I couldn’t think.
I added, “If he doesn’t have a camera in here, I would be happy to keep this between us.”
She harrumphed. “You don’t think Frank and Giselle aren’t gonna tell him?”
“Frank won’t say a word, and why would Giselle?”
Amber looked at me like I was stupid, and maybe I was. It took me a minute to say, “Where’s the men’s washroom?”
“Down the hall. The other way from where we brought you in.”
“So, we’ll go and wash. Right?”
“Sure.” She didn’t look happy, though.
I asked, “What are you mad about?”
“You want it to be a secret.”
“Call me crazy.”
She flinched.
“I like to stay breathing, if you don’t mind.” Hood was not known for great patience, any more than I was. And on his turf--I didn’t have a chance at survival if we got into it. At least, I didn’t think so. It just wouldn’t be smart to push my luck.
Maybe the second best, second son syndrome was working in my head. I had my place in the world, and it wasn’t sniffing up the Lobos ladder. Certainly wasn’t friggin’ pissin’ off the biggest boss I knew--in his own house, even.
Truth was, I was just holding the reins on Wolf E. until Bark resurfaced. I could think about killing him all I wanted, and in my dreams, but I had no real plans to do it. I was sure he’d have a good explanation for everything.
“You are shitty at guarding your thoughts.”
“I know.”
She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a pill. “Take one of these.”
It was a nothingness, looked like one of those salt tablets you dissolve under your tongue.
She prodded me. “Go ahead. It won’t kill you, I promise.”
“Sure it isn’t what you’re on?”
Smiling, Amber said, “I’m sure. Judging from the time it took for you to get--” She broke mid-sentence, noting that I was erect again. “You don’t need that.”
“Do you?”
Amber, irritable, said, “Just take the fucking thing before I hold you down and shove it--”
I popped it into my mouth. Part of me hoped it was a pain killer--or similar to a cyanide pill. I feared a little for Hood’s vengeance.
Out
would have been a nice finish to the day. I mean, what wolf didn’t want to screw right before he died?
Amber asked, “Is it that bad?”
Guess I made a face, and coupled with my thoughts--which she has no remorse in reading--I suppose she knew where I was at in my thinking. “You have no idea.”
She grinned. “We’re back to that again, are we? Come on.”
She led me out another door to the bathrooms. “That pill will work by the time you get yourself cleaned up.” Before she left me, she put her hand to my cheek, looked me in the eyes and asked, “Why haven’t you been to Lobos before?”
“I have, a few times.”
She said, “I would have smelled you. I would have remembered a scent like yours.”
She leaned in then, and ran her nose, a breath from my neck, up toward my ear, under my jaw line, over my chin and lips, and nose to nose to me, she said, “I know I would have remembered you.”
“We never met.” I was sure of it. I would have remembered her, too.
“Hm.” She didn’t back up.
I wanted to touch her again. I wanted her all over me--more than checking my scent. Just standing that close was a tease.
Abruptly, she asked, “Do you always go for large women?”
Trick question?
Honestly, I said, “I prefer them, but I go for anything in a skirt.”
Again, she said, “Hm.”
“What do you mean, Hm?”
“Hood knows what you like, I’ll bet.”
“How the hell would Hood know?”
I could see her mind clicking. “That bastard.” She smiled. “That dirty rotten son of a bitching bastard.”
With that, she was gone--into the ladies’ room. It took me a few minutes to move. And it took me a lot longer to clean up. I kept stopping, staring in the men’s room mirror, wondering what the hell I’d gotten in the middle of.
And wondering how the hell to get the scent of her off of me. In the end, I gave up on that. I washed my skin, but she was in my head, and on my clothes.
Frank found me when I was finishing up. He asked, “What the hell happened to you?”
I was leaning over the sink, splashing water on my face. “Nothing.”
He leaned against the wall by the door, and crossed his arms and his legs, watching me.
I looked into the mirror, and our eyes met. “What did Giselle have to say after I left?”
He countered with, “What did Amber have to say?”
I reached for a towel and dried my face. “Only that she’d like me
not
to mention that she and Hood have slept together--in front of Giselle again.”
“Yeah. Giselle didn’t like that much.”
“I got that.”
Frank said, “Looks like Amber has been hand-picked by Hood to go with us to Missouri.”
“That’s what she told me, too.”
A pause ensued. He asked, “Was it worth it?”
“What?” I played stupid.
“Compromising what faith Hood had in us...for some snatch...that you knew he was sniffing up.” Frank moved from the wall, advancing on me like a predator, his eyes skewered mine.
He surprised me by shifting as he moved, rising up into crinos before my eyes--and he’s one butt ugly crinosed wolf, let me tell ya that. More interesting, his clothes didn’t shred. They stretched with him. So, he was a crinos werewolf in clothing, with those damn black glasses and silly bow tie--in his fucking three piece suit. Almost looked civilized--if it weren’t for the flash of fangs he showed me.
I could have crinosed, too, and shown him how big I was like that. He’s seen me buffed up before, and I thought, briefly, that he might need a reminder.
Frank and I are from good bloodlines--despite how he looked. We shift easily, and don’t waste a lot of pain on it. He wasn’t looking for a fight, though.
He was angry, but not fighting mad. Just making a point. He got up in my face, his wolf nose breathing heavy on me, but he didn’t touch me. He said, “I’m gonna tell you one time, Mark. You fuck with Hood, and I’ll take you out myself.”
Now, that set me back on my heels. I don’t know what I was expecting, but loyalty to Hood?
Carefully, I said, “Back up, Frank.”
He didn’t give me an inch. He said, “Tell me you understand.”
Since he was dead serious, and not moving, I had a few choices. They whizzed through my brain. First, and obvious solution, crinos and see how it falls--but he could disembowel me with a talon to my gut, as close as we were standing. Second, give in and wait for him to turn his back, then rip him a new asshole.
Before I could get to a third option, he frowned. “I can’t read your mind.”
I smiled, showed him my fangs, let my wolf nose extend. In a husky hoarse dog laugh, I said, “Surprise.”
What I was really thinking at that moment was...I was gonna kiss Amber to death. She’d given me protection from Hood’s invasive brain works. Forget Frank.
Although, I still had to deal with him.
He said, “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. If he gets a whiff of your stupidity, you’re shit in a hole.”
“Frank, this is a new side of you.” Clever beyond numbers?
He shook his head--still so close to me. “No. You’re just opening your eyes.” He took a step away then and shrank down to his usual self, turning to the mirror to adjust his clothing.