Dreams of Wolf [Half-breed Shifter Series Book 2] (3 page)

To be honest,
she envied the Griffins their picture-perfect life and three adorable toddlers.
But she loved the children fiercely, so that envy tilted a lot more toward
pride than spite. She’d been with the family since they were infants. For the
first four years, she’d been a live-in nanny.

But then she’d
met Donald.

For a while,
she thought he was the one. The two of them bought a place together across town
and set up house like any couple in love would. Jaycee assumed Donald would
propose someday, marry her, and start a family so they could raise their own
perfect little children, just like the Griffins. But six months ago, Jaycee
came home early from work to find Donald fucking one of her friends on the
kitchen counter.

Since then, she
went home alone and tried to keep up with all the mounting bills by herself.
Since then, she’d latched onto the triplets more intensely in order to drown
out her own loneliness. Since then, she’d felt like a complete failure.

Scaring off the
wolf was a huge triumph. For her.

Brightening,
she paused by the windows and glanced one last time toward the woods, glad the
beast had given her a moment of achievement. Then with a sigh, she turned away,
concentrating on feeding the kids.

*
* * * *

Knox stayed
hidden long after he watched the woman hurry inside, her healthy hips swinging
a luscious ass back and forth as she moved. He still couldn’t believe his ears.
There she’d stood in front of him, a female human, cowering and reeking of
fear. Her panicked blood rushed so fast and loudly through her system, he
would’ve guessed the noise came from a river flowing nearby if he hadn’t
already scouted out the area and knew better. She’d been scared shitless, and
yet she had still managed to make fun of her own weight.

He wouldn’t
have classified her as fat anyway, but maybe voluptuous with soft, womanly
flesh, ripe with curves in all the right places. She’d be like sinking into a
soft pillow. He would’ve been more prone to label her as scrumptious, though
actually eating her had been the last thing on his mind. He’d been leaning more
toward fucking her senseless when he’d first laid eyes on her.

True, it had
been the little kittens who had initially drawn him to the house. He’d smelled
the jaguar jamboree a couple miles away. Curious as to why a group of shifters
would reside so close to a human community, he’d been compelled to investigate.
Seeing the three young running around in their human form, playing with a human
woman who didn’t even smell like she was related, confused him.

He’d been on
his own for twenty years now, wandering the earth, scavenging for food, taking
care of himself, and he’d seen a lot of strange things in his day, but a trio
of shapeshifting cubs living like humans was a first.

But he forgot
all about the young as the human female captured his full attention.

She smelled
good.

She treated the
cubs as if they were her own, putting her life at risk before theirs. As scared
as she was, her bravery impressed him.

Knox had waited
for the cubs to explain he was like them, but the male cub met his gaze behind
her back only to hitch his chin toward the trees, telling Knox to move on. He
had to wonder if the female even realized the young she protected weren’t
entirely human themselves. Deciding he needed to do a little more undercover
investigation instead of displaying open curiosity, he backed toward the trees.

Slinking deeper
into the woods, Knox remained just enough out of reach that he could barely
hear the female voice inside the house as she corralled the cubs into chairs.
He shifted into his stag and returned to the edge of the lawn, staying out of
sight.

Her smell
continued to entice him, even in his stag form. She breathed hard,
half-hyperventilating as the alpha cub tried to soothe her.

“It’s okay,
Jaycee. Honest. He wasn’t going to hurt us.”

“Dane, that
animal wasn’t a dog. And he wasn’t tame.”

Outside, Knox
snorted. No, he was not—he fully agreed.

“He’s wild and
savage and probably had rabies. Something had to be wrong with him. I’ve never
seen a wolf approach humans like he did.”

“That’s because
he wasn’t—” One of the little female cubs started, only for her brother to
shush her.

“He wasn’t
what, honey?” the woman asked.

“Nothing,” the
girl mumbled.

“That’s it,”
the human said, sounding resolute. “We’re staying inside for the rest of the
day.”

The rest of the
day ended up being only about five minutes longer. As Knox loitered behind
their yard, he listened to the woman feed them their afternoon snack. They were
halfway through their milk and fruit slices when a minivan pulled into the
driveway outside.

The woman who
exited bore the smell of shapeshifter all over her. A jaguar. Knox dragged in
her scent to realize she was the cubs’ mother. He frowned. What the fuck was a
shapeshifter doing, driving a car, living in a human house, and leaving her
young alone with an unrelated female?

“I’m home,” she
called as she pulled open the front door. Her cubs clambered from the kitchen
to greet her. The first words out of their mouths were news of Knox’s
appearance.

“We saw a wolf.
He walked right into the backyard,” her cubs were eager to inform her.

“He wasn’t a
wolf
-wolf,”
one of the girls said under her breath.

The mother took
a moment to respond. Then she slowly said, “A wolf?”

“We didn’t get
to talk to him,” the other girl explained. “Jaycee frightened him off before he
could say anything.”

“It was the
scariest moment of my life,” the human murmured. “He stared at me, right in the
eye, for a full minute before turning and trotting off. Ooh. It still gives me shivers.”

Knox liked the
idea of giving her the shivers, except the shivers he wanted to deliver had
nothing to do with fear.

“I thought he
was going to kill us all.”

“I’m sure he
was merely curious,” the mother jaguar assured them, though Knox detected a note
of distrust in her voice, as if she wasn’t so certain of her own claim. “But
he’s no doubt long gone by now.”

“I hope you’re
right,” the human female answered. “I don’t fancy the idea of peeing my pants
more than once in my life.”

The jaguar
chuckled. “Regardless, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Wolves don’t generally
attack for no reason.”

As their
conversation turned away from him and the cubs went off to play upstairs, Knox
speculated about their mother. She hadn’t sounded very pleased about his appearance.
He wondered if she had a problem with all shapeshifters or wolves in general.
Jaguars weren’t his favorite species of shifter, but he’d never had a problem
with one before.

“Jaycee,” the
jaguar said, regaining his attention as she said the human female’s name.

Jaycee. He
liked her name. It would be easy to call out whenever he came inside her.

“I’ve been
thinking, and after discussing it with Shaw, I want you to know if you’d ever
like to move back into your old room here, we’d be happy to have you.”

Knox perked to
attention, curious about the jaguar’s invitation. It was strange enough to find
shifters living among humans, but to actually invite a human—who knew nothing
of their animagus side—to stay with them grew more and more puzzling.

“Oh.” The breath
whooshed from Jaycee’s lungs. Knox wished they were standing in front of a
window so he could see her expression. “Thank you,” she rushed the words, “but
I know you don’t need me here twenty-four hours a day anymore. With the
children sleeping through the night, there’s no need—”

“I know. I
just…I thought it might be easier for you. I know how difficult it must be to
maintain your bills all alone with Donald gone.”

The name Donald
sent a crackle of tense, electrical energy from the room that reached Knox a
hundred yards away. He pawed at the ground and thrashed his antlers,
irrationally jealous of whoever the fuck Donald was.

“Yeah,” Jaycee
muttered, her tone bitter. “Well, I’m getting by. Don’t worry about me, Riley.
I’m fine.”

“Are you?
Really? I’ve been meaning to ask you how things have been going since…since…”

“Since he
fucked Daria and I kicked him out?” Jaycee finished.

Riley chuckled.
“Yeah. Since then.”

“Well, I won’t
say it’s a hundred times better without him. But I haven’t come home to find my
boyfriend sticking his cock into one of my friends since he’s been gone. So,
there’s a plus.”

Riley laughed
again. “At least you have a good attitude about it.”

“Seriously,”
Jaycee said on a sigh. “The only thing I really miss is his penis. I’ve been so
horny lately, I think I’d sell my soul for some good old-fashioned hot, raunchy
sex.”

Outside, Knox’s
loins went heavy and hard. His dick pulsed, and he decided he’d have this
woman. Before the day was over, he’d get his own penis inside her and give her
some of the very good old-fashioned hot, raunchy sex she craved.

He’d never been
with a human before. But if the jaguar mother would play
homo sapiens
,
then by God, so could he.

Chapter Two

After Jaycee
left the Griffins’, she stopped by the grocery store on her way home. Once she
reached her house, she made herself a light supper and ate it on her wicker
furniture in her screened-in back porch, sipping wine with her meal and staring
sightlessly at the thick woods lining her backyard.

Throughout it
all, she felt eyes on her, watching her every move, making her skin tighten and
loosen as if a million insects were crawling on her. She glanced around a few
times, but other than some blurry, flashing images of a gray wolf, she caught
no one staring.

That damn wolf
had spooked her more than she thought.

If she didn’t
know any better, she’d swear it was stalking her. Outside the grocery store,
she’d glanced into the tree line and caught a glimpse of white, gray and dark
fur. But it was gone so quickly, she shook her head, telling herself she must
be mistaken. The beast had to be in another county by now. But on her walk
home, she’d felt the same stare, prickling the back of her neck.

After finishing
her supper, she carried her empty plate and glass inside and cleaned the
dishes. Eyeing the rest of the wine in the bottle, she resisted temptation and
put it away, deciding to retire for the night. Nothing was more pathetic than
getting drunk all by herself.

In her bedroom,
she stood alone in the dark, remembering so many nights she’d spent in that bed
with Donald. God, she should definitely redecorate. Except she didn’t have the
money.

She stripped
out of her clothes, slipping off her bra and panties. From his side of the bed,
Donald used to watch her undress with glittering eyes, making her think he
found her attractive. Then he’d go and make some kind of crack about her
weight, crumbling her self-confidence.

As she slid
naked under her covers and purposely scooted toward the center of the mattress,
Jaycee reminded herself that having no one around to call her fat was better
than having a worthless jerk in her bed.

She sighed.

Telling Riley
the only thing she missed was sex hadn’t been the full truth. Yes, she missed
Donny’s penis, as mediocre as it had been. But she also wanted someone to come
home to, to fall asleep with and wake up with.
Then
she wanted a nice,
thick, long cock lodged inside her because Bob was no longer doing it. Her
battery-operated boyfriend couldn’t touch her with warm, talented fingers, he
couldn’t whisper in her ear, couldn’t use his mouth in new and interesting
places. He just lay there and vibrated. No post-coital snuggling, no afterglow
conversations lasting late into the night.

“No lying,” she
added aloud. “No cheating on me with my gorgeous friend. No messing up my
bathroom, forgetting to put the seat down. No, ‘Hey, baby, what’re you cooking
tonight?’ God, Jaycee, what is wrong with you? If you want companionship that
bad, get a fucking dog.”

The face of the
wolf from the Griffin’s backyard flickered through her head.

“Maybe I’ll
adopt the wolf, and he can be my new pet.” Turning over onto her side, she
stared across her dark room and softly called under her breath, “Here wolfy,
wolfy, wolfy. I’ve got a nice, tasty treat for you.”

The mental
picture of that wild beast eagerly padding up to her, his tongue lolling out
the side of his mouth as he panted a happy greeting like some tame canine, made
her chuckle. “Damn, I’m losing my mind.”

She sighed
again and closed her eyes. Sleep stole into her system, relaxing her arms and
legs until she was out. When her body settled and her inner consciousness took
over, she dreamed of sex, of some man pressing close, the warm feel of his body
rubbing against her bare skin.

He worked her
masterfully, knowing exactly where to touch, where to suck and lick. Faceless
and nameless, he loved her and wanted her repeatedly, never tiring and always
delighting in her body.

She gasped
awake with her hand between her legs. Her fingers, wet from her own juices,
slid over her clit as it jerked in eager appreciation. Staring up at her
ceiling, she continued to fondle herself, feeling more alone now than when
she’d gone to sleep. Falling away from her pussy, her limp hand settled onto
her thigh, no longer interested in masturbating. What was the point? Not even
an orgasm could fill the empty void in her heart.

Sighing, she
stared up at the shadows on her ceiling as light spilled into her room from the
hallway.