Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction Page 9

  “Shayanne,” he demanded, using his command packed with alpha power. “Take me as your mate. Now.”

  Swallowing hard, she struck, sinking her teeth deep into his thick shoulder. As his blood trickled into her mouth, he moved his hips between her thighs and slid back inside her.

  They mated twice more while alone in the woods, each time easier and less painful then the last, before Grey deemed it time to return to the others and take part in the obligatory ceremony. Hand in hand, they walked back to their packs, where the wolves formed a circle around them. In their animal form, they howled and yipped at the moon as Grey took her roughly on her knees, his teeth sank into her back, in front of them all.

  When the humiliation was finally over, he grabbed her hand and thrust their joined hands into the air. “My mate!” he roared, and both packs growled and cheered in response.

  • • •

  Grey glanced across the cab of his pickup at his mate. After two hours of driving in silence, he couldn’t take much more. She hadn’t said one word to him, hadn’t asked a single question about where they were headed, about her new pack, or what her responsibilities would be. It was going to be one hell of a long ride back to New York if the female refused to speak, let alone look his way.

  He’d known she was opposed to the mating the minute she’d laid eyes on him, had seen the shock and horror she’d failed to hide at the sight of his face. Shayanne’s reaction had been a human one; there wasn’t a bitch out there who would have noticed his scars over the power of the alpha coursing through his body. Alphas were sought after, not run away from, and if she hadn’t immediately submitted, he would have worried that she’d been more human than bitch.

  Thankfully that wasn’t the case and he couldn’t be more pleased. She was beautiful; taking her would never be a chore, quite the opposite. She was young and full of energy, something she would need as female alpha. And she was fertile, he could smell it and thought proudly how he would be keeping her belly full of his seed. He’d been an only pup and had always wanted a large family to carry on the Nash line. The thought of Shayanne, her young body heavy with his pups, her breasts swollen with milk, had him growing hard yet again. Eager to get started on his family, he pulled the truck off the road and put it in park. Shayanne, who’d been staring out the window since they’d left her pack lands, didn’t seem to notice they’d stopped.

  “Mate,” he growled.

  Jumping, she turned toward him and began blinking rapidly.

  “Come here,” he said roughly, already unbuttoning his jeans. Her eyes shot to his lap and she swallowed audibly.

  “But . . . we’re on the side of the road,” she said timidly.

  Shocked and confused, he paused to stare at her. He’d just issued her a direct order and she hadn’t budged.

  “COME HERE!” he barked and her eyes grew wide. Scrambling into action, she immediately unbuckled her seat belt and practically leaped into his lap. He glared at her while she awkwardly attempted to situate herself above him, but when she made no move to take him inside her, he grew outright angry. Cursing, he lifted her dress and positioned himself at her entrance, and to his utter shock found she wasn’t ready for him, not at all.

  This was impossible. He’d mated her only hours ago; it should have forced her into her breeding cycle despite her young age. Bitches came into heat at twenty-one years of age unless mated; any female who had already hit puberty and was mated would begin heat.

  Not Shayanne. Her human half was stronger than he’d thought. Stronger than Careen had led him to believe. Worry settled heavy in the pit of his stomach.

  Cupping her neck, he licked her mating mark and rubbed himself between her legs. Nothing. Not even a whimper.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  She bit her lip and looked away from him. He’d issued a question, demanded an answer, and she’d looked away from him. An alpha. Her mate.

  “You feel nothing,” he whispered, shocked. “No compulsion to obey me.”

  Tears formed in her eyes and Grey watched in horror as she slowly shook her head. As he continued to stare at her, his hands fell limply to his sides.

  Shayanne immediately moved off his lap and scrambled to the far corner of the truck, her back pressed hard against the door as she watched him carefully, barely breathing.

  She was terrified of him.

  She didn’t want him.

  Not at all.

  Which meant what had happened in the woods had been . . .

  She’d been pretending submission and he’d . . .

  Grey suddenly felt sick.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SOMETHING?” he roared. He was furious with her, but more furious with himself for not realizing her submission had been merely an act. An alpha was only an alpha because he had not only the strength, but also the insight and knowledge that lesser wolves didn’t. What this development said about him, he couldn’t think about, not yet, not without losing his mind in a fit of rage.

  “My father,” she whispered frantically. “He told me to always obey, to follow his lead. That if I didn’t, I would have been kicked out of the pack or worse, put down.”

  Fucking hell. They weren’t even mated. She was more human than bitch, and wolves couldn’t bond with humans the way they bonded with each other. Bringing her home to his pack would do nothing but embarrass him. If he couldn’t control his own mate . . . He shuddered to think what his pack would think of him.

  “Go,” he said, leaning over her to grasp the handle and push the door open. “Go home.”

  Shayanne’s eyes widened in surprise but she didn’t hesitate. She shifted as much as she could and disappeared into the night.

  Grey slumped back in his seat. Careen would be punished for this, as would the female’s father. He had a reputation to uphold and now, goddamn it, a new mate to find.

  • • •

  Eight years later

  “Honey, you do realize it’s after five and Friday night, don’t you?”

  Shayanne glanced up from her computer at her boss and good friend, Brianna. A redheaded bombshell in her early thirties, Brianna was all legs and breasts and full, pouty lips. She loved to party and was always on Shayanne’s case about joining in.

  “A few of us are headed over to Hardware tonight. You should join us.”

  She sighed. She had other plans tonight. Ones she absolutely couldn’t ignore, only because the wolf inside her wouldn’t let her. It was the start of a full moon, the beginning of her heat. She would need to find a man to spend the next three days with or she’d be dealing with the pain that always came with unsatisfied heat. A bar was the perfect place to find a ready and willing man to take home and Hardware, a trendy restaurant and club, was infinitely better than the dives she usually frequented to find the cure to what ailed her.

  But did she really want her coworkers to see her leave with a stranger? Life Planning was a small health-care provider for inner city residents without health insurance, specializing in teen-pregnancy prevention and counseling. She was one of two counselors in a staff that totaled ten. If she took a stranger home, everyone would know.

  “Oh, come on, Lillian. You’re almost twenty-seven years old. You’ve had no boyfriend to speak of. You barely go out. I’m worried about you!”

  “Maybe,” she hedged.

  “Nic is coming,” Brianna said, dangling that little piece of info like a worm on a hook, knowing how attractive Shayanne found the new doctor. Born in Russia but raised in New York City, he looked like a Russian mob boss, yet held a PhD. Go figure. Regardless, he was hot. Ever since he’d started there, the local girls had been coming in twice as often, asking for condoms just to get a look at him.

  Shayanne thought it was good business. Who cared why they were coming in, as long as they were coming. The next time these girls found themselves getting down to business, they would have more than enough condoms on hand to prevent diseases and unwanted pregnancy.

  But knowing s
he was going into heat and spending the evening with a man she was not only attracted to but worked with . . .

  “Fine,” she said, scowling. “But only for an hour.”

  Grinning, Brianna skipped away.

  Rolling her eyes, Shayanne reached down and grabbed a pair of black pumps from her desk drawer and headed to the bathroom to freshen up.

  After washing her face and reapplying her makeup, she brushed out her white-blonde pixie-styled hair, slapped on some deodorant, and sprayed a touch of perfume.

  Off came her leggings and flip-flops.

  On went the pumps.

  Turning sideways, she checked out her figure in the mirror, smoothing the slight wrinkles in her minidress. She looked so different now, nothing like the terrified eighteen-year-old half-breed she’d been. It hadn’t been easy getting where she was today, but it had definitely been worth it. Human life agreed with her more than pack life ever had. True, she was still hiding, but having a false identity was a lot less stressful than worrying about whether you would be put out on the street or killed for being a lesser wolf.

  After Grey had freed her, she’d gone home and explained to her father what had happened. Afraid of what Careen would do to her, he’d given her his entire savings, which was a substantial amount of money, and told her to run.

  While counting out her money later inside a cheap motel, she’d found a small slip of paper with a Wyoming address on it. Lorelei and Walter Hunter. With nowhere else to go, she decided to chance fate and head to her grandparents’ ranch. The elderly couple took one look at her, the spitting image of her mother, and broke down in tears. After listening to her incredible story, about wolf shifters and half-breeds and forced matings, they’d invited her to stay with open arms.

  The first thing she’d done was to cut her long brown hair short and dye it blonde. Next was the purchase of colored contacts to make her blue eyes appear brown. She started wearing makeup as well, something she’d never bothered with before.

  It was Walter who sought out the connections to provide her with a new identity under the name Lillian Hunter. Using her mother’s middle and maiden name enabled her the freedom to live a relatively normal life. She spent two years in community college and two more in a university in Wyoming, arming herself with a degree in social work before leaving for New York City. After she’d settled down in Brooklyn, securing a good job and an escape plan if need be, she had finally started to relax.

  Until her first moon heat started. It had hit her later than purebred shifters and because of that, she’d thought she’d been in the clear.

  Shayanne realized then she’d never be able to live fully as a human because she wasn’t one. But she made it work and eventually accepted who and what she was. She was comfortable in her own skin. Gone was the shy and timid teenager. She was a woman now, proud of herself and her accomplishments.

  She still kept in constant contact with her grandparents, but she never did speak to her father again. There wasn’t a day that passed that she didn’t think of him, and wonder how he was doing. But she had promised him on that horrible day eight years ago that she wouldn’t try to contact him—would never go back—for her own safety.

  “Ready,” she grumbled, pushing open the bathroom door.

  “Nice,” Nic drawled, getting up from one of the waiting room’s hard plastic chairs. Brianna was nowhere to be found.

  Shayanne shook her head, smiling. What. A. Bitch.

  “Who knew you could go from work casual to sexy as hell in . . . oh,” Nic glanced down at his watch, “five minutes.”

  Grinning, she rolled her eyes. “I’m just that fabulous.”

  He ran his gaze up and down her body. “Yes, you are,” he murmured and Shayanne felt herself responding to his blatant sexuality, momentarily considering rubbing herself against his leg.

  Good Lord, she hated moon heat.

  She had until the moon rose to find a willing subject and get the hell back to her place. A willing subject who could absolutely not be Nic.

  Together they flipped off the lights and locked up for the weekend. Hardware was just a few blocks from the center so they walked, during which Nic surprised her by taking her hand in his. Awareness of his masculinity instantly began to ping-pong through her body as heat gathered low in her belly.

  She glanced at Nic, imagining him touching her, taking her, releasing inside of her to ease her body’s need for a child, over and over and over.

  Oh God, she had to get a grip on herself. There was no possible way she could spend three days of hot, crazy, full-moon sex with someone she worked with. She wasn’t much into kink unless she was in heat, and when she was in heat . . . damn, she always went more than a little crazy, willing to fulfill any sexual fantasy dreamed up by the man she was with. It always ended with complete and utter embarrassment and her absolute refusal to ever see the man again.

  Inside the bar, Shayanne went up on her tiptoes to peer over the many heads filling the small bar, and found Brianna standing on her chair, gesturing wildly at them.

  “Lil!” she shouted. “Over here!”

  “You go,” Nic said, releasing her hand. “I’ll get drinks.”

  She was weaving her way through the crowd toward Brianna’s table when a hand caught her elbow and roughly jerked her to the side. Spinning around, ready to give someone a piece of her mind, she froze instead.

  Wolf.

  Male.

  It wasn’t if she hadn’t encountered a single wolf since she’d left her pack. New York City had several packs, but she’d always made a point to avoid them. Especially during mating heat.

  “Female,” he growled. His big hands tightened on her arm, making his considerable muscles flex. “Come with me. Now.”

  She glanced up into his glaring yellow eyes and flaring nostrils, and her hormones did a happy dance. She was damn tempted; she was in heat, after all, and this was a good-looking wolf. In his early thirties, he had messy black hair and the broad, formidable features that were innate in most male wolves.

  The only problem? He was a wolf.

  If she mated with him during a full moon, there was a chance that in his excitement he would try to mark her. And if that weren’t bad enough, he would find out she was already marked, something that would confuse him. Marked and mated females, once in heat, couldn’t be scented by anyone but their mate. To be marked, supposedly mated, raging with heat and yet without a mate . . . well, that would generate questions, ones she didn’t want to answer.

  Despite the primitive appearance of the wolf culture, wolves were constantly in contact with one another, even other packs. If wolf justice had to be dealt with and meted out, then wolves needed to handle it, rather than chance humans discovering them. Accomplishing such tasks sometimes required the aid of another pack, hence outside pack matings. The more connections your pack made, the stronger you were.

  The Internet had nothing on wolves when it came to instant communication. This wolf would undoubtedly tell his alpha that he’d found a marked, unmated female gone rogue. That juicy tidbit would travel down the grapevine faster than any sordid story on Access Hollywood, spreading through the nation like wildfire and before she knew it, she’d have Careen at her doorstep trying to tear out her throat.

  “No!” She twisted in his iron grip. “Let me go!”

  His yellow eyes narrowed. “You need me. I can smell it and I’m ready for you. Let me ease you, female.”

  Ugh. Stupid wolves. All cock and no brains. Even so, she knew it wasn’t his fault he was being so aggressive. His body was naturally responding to hers. It was just the way of things.

  “I’ve got it covered,” she hissed. “Go away!”

  He pushed her back up against the wall, immediately pressing his big, hard body up against hers. She felt his erection grind into her stomach and whimpered in response, pushing back against him, damning the moon heat.

  “You need to come with me,” he growled. “Or I will take you where you stand.�
�

  Oh God. How could something sound so wonderful and horrible at the same time? It was times like this that she hated being half wolf, forced to succumb to her baser instincts.

  “Lillian?”

  Glancing over, she found Nic by her side with his mob face on, looking righteously pissed off as he held two beers in his hands. “What the fuck is going on? Do you know this man?”

  “No!” she shouted, twisting in the wolf’s grip again, and Nic shoved the beers into the hands of a man standing nearby. Clenching his hands into fists, Nic readied to throw a punch if need be. “Let her go,” he said darkly.

  The wolf looked back and forth between Nic and her, and she could tell the exact moment he decided dragging her out of the bar by her hair and forcefully taking her in an alleyway was probably not the best idea. The second he let go, Nic grabbed hold of her and shoved her behind him.

  “What’s your family name,” the wolf growled.

  “None of your business,” Nic shot back.

  If they had been anywhere other than a crowded public place, Nic would have gotten his ass kicked for mouthing off to the wolf. Instead, the wolf nodded once and walked off into the sea of people. Shayanne sighed in relief, yet at the same time felt compelled to run after him, his presence and his touch having spurred her oncoming moon heat into full-blown need, a need so strong she no longer cared who took her home.

  “Listen,” she said, grabbing Nic’s hand. “I’m not feeling very social tonight after all. I have beer at my place. Sound good?”

  Nic had her out of the bar and into a cab faster than that wolf would have.

  • • •

  “Was it her?”

  At his home on pack land in upstate New York, Grey Nash gripped his cell phone as he sat rigid at his kitchen table. His beta, Dase, was in New York City, following another one of the many leads he’d gotten during his eight-year search for Shayanne Halston.

  “Naw. Bitch was unmated and hanging with a human male. I offered myself and she denied me. I hate bitches that choose humans over wolves. But I followed her home, just to be sure.”

  “And?”