Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (24 page)

But Grant sounded civilised as he replied, “Why cut in? Who said we couldn’t share?”

Renee froze in the middle of the instrumental bridge.

“This is a dance floor, boy. You don’t cut in. You just dance.” Renee looked up to see his expression, and he was looking up at Josh with an almost predatory eye—different from the one he gave her, more like the way he looked at Jake. It wasn’t competition—he did not even dream that Jake was a worthy adversary, much less Josh.

Josh’s lips curled in reactionary disgust. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She doesn’t trust you. And she’s right. Ergo, I don’t want her with you. Alone.”

“But it’s okay for you to be alone with her. For ten minutes. In the girls’ bathroom,” Josh sneered.

“I’ll say,” Grant murmured against her cheek. He licked her with his strong tongue. Claiming her. Josh’s eyes almost bugged out, but Renee did not know whether he was turned on by what Grant was doing to her or whether he was surprised. Probably a combination.

“You afraid of me, boy?” Grant said. “Afraid to be caught dead by your boys dancing with the girl you want while she’s still with her man? This may be the closest you’ll ever be to her without her bitch with her. But you don’t get her all to yourself.”

“Why?”

“If she really wanted you, she would have spoken up by now and told me to take a walk. Instead, she’s still with me. Against me.” Grant was gloating, dangling her before Josh. And it was beginning to make Renee feel slimy. Dancing with Grant in front of everyone, letting them all see what they were doing and letting them guess… That was all right. But saying it out loud like that made it something else.

She ducked under his arm. “Stoplight. Enough.”

When she was finally able to see both of them, she saw the tail end of Josh’s smirk. “Just because I’m done with him doesn’t mean I’m interested in you. Not for a second.” She raised an eyebrow at Grant. “Are we finished?”

“Here?” Grant asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yes,” he replied.

“Wait,” Josh protested as Renee took the lead on the way out. Grant threw a few bills on the bar for Marie, not bothering to count out the money, but by the look on Marie’s face, she must have received a considerable tip.

“What’d you do?” Josh asked Grant. “How’d you prise open those legs? Didn’t the icicles get in the way?”

Grant’s smirk made Josh’s look like false confidence. “You really don’t know, do you? Maybe I just had a pair.”

Josh pushed his face into Grant’s, jutting his jaw in challenge. “You know, I was her first kiss.”

“Bravo. Quite a champion,” Grant said. “But I live in the here and now. And you’ll never know how wrong you are about her. That’s the victory. I’m the one screwing her.”

The punch hurt her hand. She must not have done it right, or maybe hitting that part of his jaw where the bone was strong was a bad idea. She was, however, irrationally pleased at the way Grant stumbled back. She didn’t know whether she had actually hurt him—whether anything hurt him—or whether she had just startled him enough for him to fall away.

“God, is this what happens when two men thinking themselves alpha males get together? It’s ridiculous,” Renee spat. “I’m here, Grant. With you. But I don’t have to be. One phone call.”

“Ouch, love.” Grant rubbed his jaw. He looked conspiratorially at Josh. “She’s got a lot of power for someone so little.”

“Quit while you’re ahead.” Renee started for the door without him. She stopped at the threshold. She had made it twenty feet and a right hook without feeling claustrophobic from the crowd or completely mesmerised by Grant’s overbearing personality.

But now that she’d realised it, she could not walk out of the bar. She always had to realise exactly what she was doing and count the ways that it was somehow wrong. All in a matter of seconds. The room was suddenly too small, but the world outside was too big. She stared at the wood grain until he was there behind her. Hot and aroused in a way that the dancing could not account for.

“Just push it open, and you’ll be out there. And I’ll be with you,” he whispered.

She pushed her way out into the cold. But she barely noticed it.

Chapter Nine

She was halfway to the car before she realised she had to wait for Grant because he had the truck key in his pocket. When he caught up to her in his own time, she thrust her hand into his pocket and grabbed them.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

“You drank half a bottle of whisky.”

“So did you. I’m not slurring. Am I?”

“No,” Grant said. “And you’re walking in a straight line. But you don’t know where we’re going.”

Renee opened the driver’s side and pulled herself in. “Then direct me.” She slammed her door and watched him through the glass. He shrugged before running around the front of the truck to the passenger’s side.

“Just keep going straight. There’s a motel where the street meets the interstate, about an hour west. We’ll stop there.”

* * * *

The motel was not prepossessing. Renee had read about ‘seedy motels’, but she had never seen one right in front of her before. The building looked solid—it had that going for it, at least. But the paint was peeling, and the structures themselves looked as though they were trapped in the previous century. They did not have the staying power for a retro label. If not for the cars outside the front office and a few lights on, she might have thought that the place had been abandoned and left to the trees.

Grant went to check them in, and Renee kept the car idling while she clutched her coat around her. She thought that this should be that time when she was wondering what she had got into and whether this was a good idea. After all, she was out of her sanctuary and away from friends, some of whom had always been fiercely protective enough that she had not had to worry about her safety. She was away from anything resembling a town, at a seedy highway motel in the middle of nowhere, with a man of questionable scruples, if any at all. But in spite of the fact that she knew the entire situation was grounds for a teen horror movie if she’d ever seen one, she could not bring herself to properly
feel
the concerns she should have been having.

He came out with a standard motel key and fob dangling from one finger. After he opened the passenger door, he knelt on the seat to retrieve their bags.

“Room one-oh-six,” Grant said, dropping the key in her lap.

The motel door needed a little shove before it unlocked, but when she opened it, she was pleasantly surprised that everything looked clean. The paint was old and faded, the print over the queen-sized bed was of a Santa Fe landscape and easily dismissed, and the carpet looked lightly stained, but not by anything recent—nothing a steamer and shampoo could not have fixed. The room would serve its purpose—a temporary place to stay, nothing more and nothing less. For sleeping, soaking, screwing, shooting up…whatever your peace or poison.

She was coming out of the bathroom when Grant threw their bags in a corner behind the small writing table. He grabbed her wrist to bring her against him in an impromptu kiss that felt that much different in these walls than it did in the bar, at the sanctuary. He was always different, but always all-consuming. She fisted his shirt, holding on for the ride and making sure he was as close as he could be. She touched his jaw, and he pulled away for a moment. She realised that it was the place she had hit him. It had not left a mark.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

“No.” Grant grinned. “I had just forgotten that you’d hit me there.”

Renee had not even known she was pouting until he sucked her lower lip into his mouth. His teeth were sharp for a moment. She whimpered as pleasure trickled slowly down her spine. She touched his jaw again where she had hit him, pressing.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he murmured against her cheek. “Just a little pressure. But it was good. What you did, it was good. The whole night, my dear.”

“It was inexcusable,” Renee said. “I shouldn’t have hit you.”

“But I deserved it?”

“But you deserved it.”

“The night wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be, was it?” Grant said.

“I wasn’t expecting anything,” Renee replied. “I didn’t know what was going to happen or where you’d take me.”

“When you were there, though…”

Renee sighed and leaned against the wide dresser.

“It wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Renee said. She had not been without Britt as a service animal for five years, and prior to that, she just had not left the sanctuary after her father had died. She’d had worse outings.

The expression on Grant’s face was neither a grin nor a smirk. It was quieter than that, which was unusual, and he took off one of her shoes, then the other. He slid his large hands up her bare legs until he found the edge of her skirt.

“In fact,” he murmured, “I think you were a proper little minx who knows how to put on a show. My God, woman, do you know the things that you did? In front of people who terrify you? Do you know that I can smell you right now?” He leaned in until she wrapped her legs around his and he loomed over her. She pressed her head back against the cheap dresser mirror. “My filthy girl. Braver women than you would never dream of being able to do the things that you did tonight.”

“I’m not a terrified little girl, you know. Not really,” Renee interrupted, pushing him enough that she could slide off the dresser and get between him and the door. “I’m nervous around people. I have a phobia of being in crowds. It’s irrational—that’s the definition of a phobia. But just because I’m afraid of people doesn’t mean I’m afraid of everything.”

“You did just fine in a crowd,” he said. Now he was smirking.

“When you were—”

“Distracting you.”

“Yes.”

“Protecting you.”

Renee did not have anything to say to that.

“That’s why you like the bitch to be with you,” Grant said, advancing on her. “She may just be a dog, but she’s large, and she almost looks…well, like a wolf. And you know that I’m a wolf. You feel safer. You feel safer with a little bit of teeth.”

Her back was against the door before she realised it.

“If you want to leave, Renee, you’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

She could smell the whisky just underneath his breath, and if she could smell it, he could probably smell it on her, too. “Then what do you want from this?”

There was no answer she could give.

“We’re away from anyone you could possibly know. In the middle of nowhere. The managers and our fellow transients are used to any sort of noise that could come out of this room. You can do anything you want here. Anything. No junior alpha to get in the way, no loyal bitch, no propriety, no rules.”

“Stop calling her that,” Renee said. Only part of the meaning was what Britt really was, and Renee could taste the sourness of the insult. Grant might have liked the quality in Britt, but that did not take away the taste.

“Calling her what she is?” he whispered before running his tongue over her neck.

“It’s not all she is,” she replied.

“It’s all she’s been to me.”

“Stop.”

“Make me.”

She almost hit him again. Her hand flew up and was inches from the side of his head before she stopped. She slowly lowered her raised hand onto his shoulder. His kisses on her neck paused.

“Why did you stop?” he asked.

“I’m not going to do it again.”

Grant laughed, drawing a growl from that deeper place inside him. He took her face in his hands, drawing his blunt nails over the skin lightly, suggestive of so much more he could do to her. “Silly girl. I want you to.”

His eyes were glowing in the lamplight, and she could not look away.

“Hit me,” he hissed. “Hit me, Renee. Just do it.”

He took her wrist in his hand and drew it up, as if she were a marionette with strings. Her fingers were limp, but she could feel the tension in her palm. The readiness, a subtle flex.

“Hit me. Claw at me. Bite me. Make me take you. Scream for me, my dear. Do anything you want. Just hit me.”

His grip grew harder, and her hand shook.

“Hit me, bitch!”

Her other hand, her weaker hand, shot up to punch him in his jaw on the other side. She heard the click of his teeth closing, and he actually shouted. He brought his hand to his mouth. Renee saw some blood as he brought it back—he had bitten his tongue. Grant smiled with his teeth stained red.

“There’s my girl. Hit me again. I know you want to.” His words were slightly slurred. She worried about how hard he had bitten himself.

As though he knew she was beginning to drown in her thoughts, he pulled his shirt over his head and came at her. His whole body language was menacing, predatory. She just reacted, shoving at his chest. It was like trying to move an oncoming car. They tumbled onto the bed. He shoved his hand under her skirt, fingers clumsy and forceful against her cunt.

“Love the easy access, by the way,” Grant said. “And I’m sure the rest of them loved to see what they were missing. What I have.”