Secret Worlds (502 page)

That would have made her so sad, and Nana should never be sad.

My thoughts were spiraling away into hysteria, becoming as insubstantial as smoke, but I was too tired to try and reel them in. A rattling, wet sounding breath bubbled out of my throat and I tasted blood on my lips. My eyes were heavy and filled with dancing motes of darkness as I stared at the remnants of our dinner, wax coated cartons spilling lo mein and Mongolian beef across the carpet.

There goes my security deposit,
I thought, even as the effort of thinking began to be too much.

“Goodbye, Riley,” Samson whispered, leaning over to press bloody lips to my cheek in a sick facsimile of a kiss. I wanted to pull away but my limbs were leaden, too heavy to move. Pulling back slowly he left a smear of wetness across my cheek.

I watched, unable to look away, as Samson reared back, preparing to strike, and then froze, his head whipping around towards the door. His face contorted into an expression of fury, a thundering growl rumbling up out of his chest. I could hear voices and laughter in the hallway, but didn’t dare to breathe a sigh of relief. The voices stopped outside the door and, a key slid into the lock. Samson jumped up to his feet and darted across the room faster than my eyes could follow.

As my roommate and her boyfriend opened the door to our apartment the living room window exploded outwards. The sound of shattering glass was lost beneath Emma’s scream, and soon even that faded away as I closed my eyes and felt myself slip into the darkness.

***

I didn’t notice when the hot water ran out, but I was shivering beneath the deluge of cold water when a knock on the bathroom door broke through the maelstrom of my tortured memories.

“Riley? Are you all right?” Holbrook called through the flimsy door. Distantly I noticed that his accent thickened when his emotions ran high, and at that moment his voice was tinged with worry. “Riley?”

“I-I’m here.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I hiccupped, swiping at the tears streaming down my face, or maybe it was just the water from the shower. I couldn’t tell anymore.

“Can I come in?” he asked, concern creeping back into his tone, chased by a hint of, was that embarrassment?

“I guess so.”

The door creaked open as Holbrook slipped in, his presence filling the room and making the space feel even smaller. Somewhere deep inside the wolf lifted her head, hackles rising at the claustrophobic closeness of the room. We knew that Holbrook was there to help us, protect us, but his silhouette looming over the tub when we were already so vulnerable had her snapping her jaws defensively. The wolf didn’t like to be trapped, and right now my entire life felt like a prison cell, the walls closing in around me, suffocating me.

As if sensing my internal struggle, he lowered the lid on the toilet and perched on the edge, making himself seem smaller, non-threatening. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was impressed, but all I could focus on at that moment was how tired and afraid I was. Propping his elbows on his knees he leaned over and pulled the curtain back so he could see me.

“You planning on staying in there all night?” he asked, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards in the beginnings of a smile.

“Maybe,” I replied, sniffling as I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, but made no move to get out of the tub.

“So, Eeyore huh?” he asked with a faint grin. His eyes settled on the small tattoo on my right shoulder, definitely not focusing on any of my naked bits.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said with a shrug, my words broken by the fierce shivers wracking my body. I’d gotten it in my freshman year of college with my roommate Emma, before Samson, and all the ugliness he had wrought into my life.

“I was always partial to Grumpy myself,” he said leaning back to push down the waist of his jeans a few inches to reveal a small tattoo of the sour-faced dwarf. Both the wolf and I licked our lips at the swath of bronzed skin stretched taunt across his hip bone. I wondered if he had any tan lines, and if so, how far down they went.

“So, how about we get you out of there before you’re as blue as Eeyore?” he asked, disrupting my speculations.

I uncurled from my hunched position in the tub, wincing as my cold and stiff limbs moved sluggishly, sending resistant tremors of pain through my body. Holbrook leaned close as he reached past me to turn off the water, the motion revealing the long line of his throat, already showing the beginnings of dark stubble. Letting the wolf float up to the surface, I drowned in the scent of him: sun warmed molasses lingering beneath the woody, earthy tones of his cologne, and beneath it all, thumping in the vein in his throat, the coppery scent of blood.

Both the wolf and I wanted to grasp the skin of his neck in our teeth to mark him as ours. But he wasn’t ours; I’d only just met him, and yet I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I couldn’t figure out what it was about him that was inspiring such reckless feelings in me. I’d never been so strongly swayed by someone before; even the hormone-driven attractions of youth hadn’t left me so enraptured.

Pulling back, his eyes met mine, heat swimming up through the forest green depths to burn bright, sweeping away any trace of reservation I might have had.

Fuck it. I need this. I need his lips, his hands, to chase away the darkness.

A shuddering breath flowed out of me seconds before his lips smashed into mine. Electricity arced through me, making my lips tingle and my toes curl. Large hands wrapped around my waist, lifting me out of the bathtub, leaving trails of dancing energy across my skin. The water dripping from my skin soaked through the cotton of his t-shirt, plastering it to the hard planes of his chest. Being pressed against him was like standing too close to an overhead power line, his energy thrumming in my veins as if someone had struck a chord deep inside me.

It had been a long time since I’d been intimate with anyone. My last romantic interlude had consisted of an ill-conceived tryst with a young bartender at the local bar in Leadville. It had been a quick, awkward, and unsatisfying experience that I had gone out of my way not to repeat. Needless to say, my sex life over the last couple of years had consisted of a box of AA batteries and a neon pink monstrosity I had ordered online in a moment of weakness.

My hands shook with excitement and nervousness when they slid across his chest, his heart thumping beneath my fingers. I was as giddy as a teenager sneaking her first kiss in a darkened corner of the auditorium, and at the same time was all but vibrating with the desire to ride him like a pony.

Yee haw!

Relishing the tingling sensation of his lips pressing against mine, I grasped the front of his shirt and pulled him tight against me, the warmth of him almost painful next to my chilled skin. And yet I couldn’t pull away, didn’t want to.

“What’s going on in there?” Johnson asked on the other side of the door, his voice as gruff as ever.

Good to know some things never change.

For a moment Holbrook looked like he was going to pull away, but after a long pause he replied, “Everything’s fine. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

I thought I heard Johnson snort, but he just said, “Take your time. I’m going to my room to make some calls.” A moment later I caught the muffled thud of the door closing.

Confident in the knowledge that we were alone, I let a low growl bloom in the back of my throat, the wolf rising close to the surface. In that moment her needs were the same as mine. We needed to feel muscles moving beneath bare skin, hands roaming our body, stroking the fire of our shared desire. We knew—as surely as we knew that the sky is blue—that only his touch could chase away the ghosts of our memories and fears.

My hands slid up to the firm muscles of his shoulders, skimming along them until I found the naked skin of his neck, the flutter of his heartbeat dancing beneath my fingertips. Resisting the wolf’s urge to sink my teeth into that fluttering pulse, I instead swept the flat of my tongue across it in a single broad stroke before peppering the column of his throat with kisses.

A mischievous smile curved my lips at the feeling of his hands sliding down my back to cup my ass, lifting me off my feet as he kicked the door open and took several awkward steps backwards into the room. Wrapping my legs around his waist I tangled my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and steered him towards the bed.

Although Johnson was gone, the pervasive cigarette stink of him lingered in the room, but even that couldn’t douse the heat building between Holbrook and me. Disentangling my legs from around his waist, I stepped back to regard him with my hands on my hips. His face was flushed, the deep red in his cheeks emphasizing the forest green of his eyes that shone with the same need burning inside of me. I felt powerful and sexy as his gaze tracked the motion of my breasts, the last traces of my fear drifting away, forgotten.

“Like what you see?” I asked, titling one hip towards him.

Instead of answering he extended a hand towards me, his fingers barely brushing against my arm as I laughed and danced back out of his reach, daring him to chase me. His rich and melodic laughter joined mine as he reached for me again, missing by a mile.

“You’ll have to be faster than that, Agent,” I teased, easily eluding him as I jumped onto the bed.

“Troublesome woman,” he said, shaking his head though his eyes still sparkled with laughter and heat.

With a playful growl I launched myself at him, twisting him around to ride him down to the mattress, straddling his hips. I finally let myself succumb to the urge to have the hot, fragrant skin of his neck between my teeth, and latched onto him, reveling in his sharp gasp. Sliding my hand down between us, I grinned against his throat, his hissing exhalation flowing hot and moist against my ear, but I cared little for his pleas for more. I wanted to mark him, stake my claim, and show the world that he belonged to me.

THE COMFORTING SCENTS of the forest surrounded me in a heady mix of pine and damp earth. These woods were familiar to me
—
I had run through the Rio Grande National Forest as a young wolf with the pack. That was before that asshole Jonathan Stone ousted me, saying I was too unstable to be around his “family.”

What the hell did he know?

The darkness was soothing, lulling me with its quiet breath. I could hear it in the sleepy rustlings of the forest’s inhabitants curling up for the night. Come morning, the trees would be filled with the endless chatter of birds, but for now the air remained still. My steps were slow and silent as I moved through the trees, drawn towards some unknown point as if on an invisible thread. It wasn’t until I caught the scent of cheap soap and gun oil that I realized what had called out to me.

Footsteps crunched on the packed snow and gravel in the small clearing as three middle-aged men in an absurd amount of camouflage clothing hauled their gear out of the back of a silver pick-up truck.

“Did you remember the beer this time, Dale?” the eldest of the group called to one of the other men.

“Yeah, Tim. I’ve got it right here,” the tallest man replied in a nasal whine, pulling a blue cooler out of the bed of the truck.

The last of the threesome, younger looking and not as soft around the middle as the others, was busy checking the gear in his backpack. Crouched near the tree line, his back to his friends, he was the first to notice me. The startled cry of a lark gave away my position as it went careening into the sky, screaming its warning. Raising his eyes to see what had scared the bird, his eyes fell on me, widening in surprise even as his hand reached for the rifle leaning against the tree beside him.

Baring my teeth in an excited grin, I let him get the rifle up to his shoulder before I burst out of the brush, hitting him like a ton of bricks, and knocking him flat on his back. The thunder crack of the rifle going off next to my ear was jarring, but it didn’t slow me down. Blood spurted, hot and sweet with fear, from the jagged gash in his neck, covering my muzzle with gore. A gurgling cry was all he managed before he went still, eyes staring unblinking at the dark sky. Back by the truck, his friends scrambled for their own guns.

In his haste and fear, Tim dropped his rifle at his feet, gnarled hands shaking as he reached for it. His fingers didn’t even brush the smooth wood of the stock before I slammed into him, driving him back into the side of the truck where his head impacted with a meaty thump. I watched as his limbs went limp and he flopped down to the ground, listing to one side.

I smelled Dale’s cheap soap before I heard the grate of gravel beneath his shuffling steps. “G-get away from him,” he stammered, his nasally voice shaking with fear. “Get away or I’ll shoot!”

I rounded on him with a wide toothy grin, delighting in the way the color drained from his face just as a dark spot grew on the front of his camouflage pants. The air was suddenly redolent with the bitter scent of his piss.

“I’ll do it, I’ll shoot!” he threatened, though his hands shook so violently I doubted he’d have been able to hit the broad side of a barn. “I’ll do it! I swear I will!”

Tired of his chatter, I leapt at him, knocking him to the ground. The rifle fell from his slack hands before he could get off a shot, tumbling away out of reach. I stood over him, my breath ruffling the salt and pepper hair clinging to his sweaty brow, and studied the fearful glint in his eyes.

I’d wondered many times what it would be like to be on that side of the eternal struggle between hunter and hunted. Did his heart pound out a furious rhythm in his chest like mine did? Did time seem to stop, becoming crystalline and immaterial as the world narrowed down to a single moment?

I could have shifted back to human to ask him, but the hunger was too great, I
needed
to have his blood, hot and full of life, against my tongue, needed to experience his death. I needed it to quiet the frenzy in my mind and soul. Rearing back to strike, I was stopped by a burning pain in my shoulder, the force of the stinging impact rocking me back several steps while the thunder of the shot echoed in my ears.