Howlin' Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Howlin’

  ISBN 9781419913662

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Howlin’ Copyright © 2007 Allyson James

  Edited by Mary Altman.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication December 2007

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Howlin’

  Allyson James

  Chapter One

  Alain Dupree walked stark naked onto his back porch to watch the moon rise. Thick trees screened him from his neighbors, giving him privacy in this house built right on the bank of Oak Creek. This land had been his grandfather’s, then his father’s and now Alain’s.

  The moon rose above the trees, round and full. Its silver light traced shadows on Alain’s hard-muscled chest and picked out the sharp lines of the black tattoos that encircled his biceps. He could feel the vibrations of this place—what the New Agers called vortexes. A high concentration of magic lingered here, no matter what it was called, and it tingled and sang through Alain’s blood.

  He sniffed the wind, tilting his head back. He knew there was another werewolf out there, a female, but he didn’t know where. He’d sensed her when he arrived but hadn’t been able to pin her down. Yet.

  But he’d do it. He knew she was out there somewhere—he could scent her on the rising breeze. Time to find her and break the news.

  * * * * *

  Patrice Spencer was also naked, in the bathroom of her doublewide just inside the line of Yavapai County.

  I’m not going to change into a werewolf, she told her reflection. It’s ridiculous.

  Today, a man calling himself a shaman showed up at the police station, asked to see her, then said he’d been sent to warn her. Her parents, long dead, had been werewolves and Patrice would undergo her first change the full moon after she turned twenty-five.

  She’d turned twenty-five two weeks ago.

  Shaman. Right. He’d said his name was Jackson Gray, couldn’t have been more than thirty himself and wore jeans and an earth-colored Sedona t-shirt. The t-shirt stretched tight across honed pecs and broad shoulders. He had long black hair caught in a tail, and the liquid brown eyes of a Native American.

  Hubba hubba.

  He’d made himself right at home in her office, lounging on a hard chair like it was padded with eiderdown.

  “Hello, Patrice Spencer,” he said in a silken voice. “Guess what?”

  She’d never seen the man before. She knew most of the Native Americans in and around Sedona and Cottonwood, but not him. She’d have remembered him.

  He leaned forward and rested sun-bronzed arms on her desk, his eyes so dark she wanted to drown in them.

  “What?” she answered. And does it involve you slathering me with massage oil?

  He’d smiled until she wanted to melt into a puddle and then those brown eyes twinkled as he’d told Patrice she was a werewolf and needed to get used to it.

  “But don’t worry,” he said, sitting back, at his ease. “I’ll be around to help you. The first change is the hardest, not because your body has trouble changing to the wolf but because you have to integrate it into your life.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s hard up here, but I’ll be there for you. You have friends, Patrice.”

  This had to be a joke. Why did one of the most good-looking men she’d seen in ages have to be insane?

  She’d see another man just as handsome the other day, but only briefly, and she hadn’t encountered him again. Just her luck—she went for years without a real date, then encountered a hunk and a gorgeous, crazy Native American in the same week.

  “We do have programs to help people like you,” she said to Jackson. “The clerk can give you some phone numbers. I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of about a million reports.”

  Jackson stood up. He rested his fists on the desk and leaned to put his face close to hers. With any other walk-in, she’d have been on her feet telling him to back off. Instead she sat and let his warm breath touch her face, his smile heat her.

  “I will see you soon, Patrice.”

  He leaned even closer, flicked out his tongue to touch her upper lip, then turned and sauntered out of the room. She stifled a groan. Nice ass.

  She sat in a daze for a moment, then shot out of her office after him. Jackson was nowhere in sight.

  “Who was he?” she demanded as the clerk and dispatcher stared at her. “Anyone know him?”

  Susan Gonzalez, the dispatcher, looked puzzled. “Who was who?”

  “The man who just walked out of here.”

  Susan blinked, as did the clerk. “No one’s been in here all afternoon. You feeling all right?”

  Patrice gaped at them as Susan and the clerk exchanged a glance. Crazy gringo.

  She closed her mouth. “Fine.” She fled back into her office and closed the door, trying to ignore their looks.

  She finished her shift, her mind everywhere but on her job, then drove home, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who looked like Jackson. She admitted she’d been pretty tired lately. Maybe she’d fallen asleep and dreamed him.

  But as the sun went down, she found herself more and more nervous. She went into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes and examined herself in the mirror. She didn’t look any different.

  No way am I going to turn into a wolf.

  So why was she standing there naked in the bathroom, waiting to see what would happen when the moon came up?

  And why did she crave sex so much all of the sudden? She slid her fingers to her clit, sinking fingertips into the wet warmth she found there. Ahh. She moved her touch in a slow circle, watching in the mirror, eyes half closing. The hot tingle felt so good. She tilted her head back to enjoy it, the ends of her short hair tickling the base of her neck.

  Her nipples tightened and lifted, and she cupped her hand under her breast, thumb rolling across the areole. Her thoughts moved first to Jackson, then to her brief encounter—the man she’d seen coming out of a convenience store on Tuesday. He’d been tall and tight-bodied, and his ass had been just as fine as Jackson’s. She hadn’t been able to look at him fully—there’d been only a brush of bodies as he left and she entered—but she remembered the ass.

  The clerk inside had told her she’d just nearly bumped into Alain Dupree, come out here from back east because his father had passed away and he’d inherited the Dupree place in Oak Creek Canyon. Alain. Unusual name, but she liked it.

  She thought about Alain Dupree’s cute ass now, imagining herself sidling up behind him and rubbing herself on it. She also thought about Jackson Gray’s eyes, how they twinkled when he smiled.

  She moved her finger more quickly, back and forth, back and forth, as she imagined the friction of his jeans on her. Too bad she hadn’t looked up in time to see the other man’s face so she could fantasize about him turning around, smiling, sliding his fingers into her.

  Her thoughts went wilder still. She envisioned Jackson and the other man climbing into her SUV with her and driving out onto one of the back washerboard roads where no one came. She’d turn off her police radio and lock the doors while they helped each other strip her out of her uniform and lick her all the way down…

  Patrice gasped and jerked her fingers away from her body. What was she doing? She’d never in her life touched herself in a more than cursory way, never
masturbated. Her friends advocated it as a way to release tension and implied all healthy women did it, but Patrice had never been interested. Too busy and too stressed to think about it, probably.

  And now she craved sex like a woman on a restricted diet craved cake. She wanted it bad and was ready to stand here moaning in front of her own mirror to sate herself.

  Except it wasn’t working. She needed sex, real sex, a long cock sliding inside her and making her scream. The urge to mate burned through her body, so much that she rocked back and forth, arching as though a man held her and thrust into her.

  A tight-bodied man with a gorgeous backside plus one with black hair and beautiful eyes.

  The mating madness gripped her and her vision started to blur. She saw her bathroom, but in muted shades, as though she looked through opaque glass. In the mirror her eyes had gone round and icy, very different from her own soft green.

  Her body ached and stretched, hurting but not hurting, an orgasm overtaking her. She growled with it, reaching her arms above her head and then dropping to the floor…

  On all fours…

  Covered with fur…

  * * * * *

  Miles away, up the Oak Creek canyon, Jackson Gray folded his arms over his chest and leaned back to breathe the scent of the night. He was naked already, standing on the bank of the creek below the Dupree house, the moonlight on his body.

  Alain Dupree lingered on his back porch, bracing his cock with his hand, letting out a half-groan of pleasure as his fingers glided along it. He closed his eyes as he stroked himself and Jackson’s own cock rose in sympathy.

  Jackson gave himself a little stroke, loving the pent-up feeling of need. Tonight he’d start bringing these two together, the woman in pain and the man who needed her help. All in a night’s work for a demigod like Jackson.

  Meanwhile, he enjoyed watching Alain stroke himself. The man had a honed body, muscles thick like most werewolves’, his strength clear. Back and forth he moved his hand, a small grunt escaping his mouth as he climaxed, catching his seed in a towel he’d readied for that purpose.

  “Very nice,” Jackson said.

  Alain’s eyes popped open, silver and nearly glowing. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Your new best friend,” Jackson said. “Ready for the change?”

  Alain tossed the towel aside. “You’re not a werewolf. You smell wrong.”

  Jackson grinned. “Not wolf. Coyote.”

  “Coyotes are vermin.”

  Coyotes swarmed up and down these canyons, into the mountains above them and down into the deserts. They had learned to adapt to humans and so were numerous, while wolves had all but died out.

  “Be nice to me, wolf. I can save your life.”

  He sensed Alain’s body come alert, the wolf in him rising. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your dad was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. I’ll help you find out who killed him and keep him from doing the same to you.”

  Alain’s growl turned into a full snarl as his body swirled down to become a huge black wolf. He’d been a werewolf a while, Jackson saw—had gotten comfortable with the beast in him. He was savage yet controlled.

  “You know the werewolf hunter who did this?” Alain asked. He didn’t speak in words, in English, but Jackson spoke wolf quite well.

  “Not yet. I have some ideas. I also know the she-wolf is out there and she needs you.”

  Alain growled again, his fur bristling. He leapt off the porch and landed square in front of Jackson, his head as high as Jackson’s chest. “You know a lot about me.”

  “I’ve been watching you.” Jackson let his glance turn admiring. “I like what I see.”

  Alain made a noise of disgust, turned away and splashed into the creek.

  Jackson changed. Adrenaline rushed through his body, his already formidable strength increasing as he quickly morphed into his coyote form. His sense of hearing and smell sharpened and his vision showed him concave images with edges of sharp silver, black and white. He sniffed the wind, enjoying the tangy scents of the night before he threw back his head and let out a coyote howl.

  He heard the black wolf snarl deep in the shadows of the trees across the creek. Jackson chuckled to himself. Vermin, was he? The gods would love that.

  Still laughing, he splashed into the creek to follow Alain at a discreet distance. He was going to enjoy this.

  * * * * *

  I am not a wolf. It’s a trick. A hallucination.

  A pretty damn good hallucination. Patrice was running on all fours, her body lithe and lean and strong. She could see smells and hear sounds beyond the scope of human ears.

  The November wind was cold in her fur, but it exhilarated her. The darkness was not dark at all to her; she could see things she’d never noticed before. The need for sex hadn’t lessened, either—if anything, it had grown, which spurred her to run and run.

  She’d slunk out of her doublewide and down the street to where it ended in a dirt road. She tried to keep to thick stands of trees but Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek had become so developed that the trees tended to vanish into bare patches of land and parking lots. What used to be an easy walk into a canyon was now blocked by gated timeshare resorts.

  She finally made her way to the Oak Creek and started working her way upstream under the overhanging trees. The creek led through the center of town now, but traffic stayed high on the bridge, and in the darkness she doubted anyone would see her scuttling through the brush. If they did they’d think she was a large dog or coyote.

  Patrice felt…glorious. A splash of water was as loud as a gunshot, the smell of fish sharp and fresh, the scent of garbage from dumpsters close to the creek overwhelming. As she ran on up the canyon, the human smells gradually dissipated, the scents of cedar and river and red clay taking their place.

  She’d hiked these paths many times, but where her human body would have tired and turned back, her wolf body navigated quickly and easily. When space between houses became greater, she crossed the shallow river, loving the cool water in her hot fur.

  On the other side of the creek she shook herself out, finally understanding the joy dogs took in that simple act. A mountain rose before her, the canyon leading up to open wilderness. She sensed rabbits, squirrels, mountain goats, snakes hiding from the cold in their holes, birds huddled for warmth in trees and the faint and far away scent of a lone wildcat. An entire world was laid out for her, one so close to the fancy spas of Sedona, yet so different.

  She had run on a few miles, loving the freedom of it, when she realized she wasn’t alone. Every sense prickled—sight and hearing and scent, and another sense that she just thought of as “awareness”.

  Under the trees a few yards away, another shadow kept pace with her. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it turned when she turned, took the paths that she took.

  A wolf felt fear differently from a human, Patrice realized. No silent message in her head: I’m afraid. Just a spike in her adrenalin, an urge to run as fast as she could at the same time her instincts readied her to turn and fight.

  She effortlessly climbed a rocky path, dodging beneath hanging limbs of twisted juniper and piñon pines. The shadow kept pace with her without trouble. Patrice had lived in and hiked around Sedona for twenty years but she’d never been up here, never in this wild place unmarked by human passage. Whoever chased her obviously had, and he was herding her where he wanted to go. Time to turn and confront him.

  She stopped, pushing her paws into the earth and swinging around so abruptly that whatever followed her pulled up short. She watched the shadows under the trees for a few heartbeats, then a large black wolf walked slowly out of the darkness and sat on his haunches a few feet away.

  She could have “seen” him with scent even if the moon had not been so bright—he smelled clean and musky and very male. He was massive, high of shoulder, deep of chest, his thick black fur shining in the moonlight. Eyes of silver fixed on her and a small grow
l issued from his mouth. Otherwise he remained still, watching her.

  Patrice had no idea what to do. She’d run a long way, warming her already warm body, and embarrassingly, she began to pant.

  “Mine,” he said with finality.

  He hadn’t actually spoken, nor had he projected into her head like a voiceover in the movies. His wolf self had spoken, his body language conveying what it needed to. She tried to answer, but she only knew how to communicate in the human way, and she started to whine and yip.

  “It is difficult at first,” he said. “Give in to the wolf. It knows what to do.”

  Patrice growled and snarled while the black wolf sat and watched her. She had no idea who he was or why she’d not heard of a huge black wolf sighted in this area. Things like that got reported to the police, along with animal control. But no one had mentioned it.

  She liked the black wolf’s eyes, so purely silver, and she wondered if he was just as good-looking when he was a man. Exciting thought.

  Scary too. She took the measure of his scent, heard the breath move in and out of his nostrils, sensed his power.

  “Your what?” she asked.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You said mine. Your what?”

  The wolf growled, smile gone, but she sensed his glee. “My mate,” he announced and started for her.

  Chapter Two

  She was beautiful as a wolf—silver-furred and green-eyed—whoever she was. When they were human again, Alain would not be able to keep his hands off her. He looked forward to it.

  “Your mate?” she said incredulously in wolf. “You mean I have to have wolf sex?”

  “You will be my mate in all ways.”

  “Oh really?” she growled. “I’ve only been a wolf for a few hours. Give a woman time to adjust, will you?”

  Alain’s blood thrummed, every sense alive to her. “I can give you everything you need.”

  “Tell me who you are.”

  “Surrender to me. We’ll do formalities later.”