Allister, J. Rose - Disowned Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

“Looked like you were up to your old tricks,” Kyle said.

Aimee frowned. “What old tricks?”

Dillon ignored the question. “Gettin’ hit by a truck wouldn’t exactly have served that purpose. It wasn’t even
painted
silver.”

“I know. I just reacted.” Kyle lifted his hand to the cut on his head, eyeing the blood that came away on his palm. He pressed this other hand flat against the side of his chest. “I think I cracked a damn rib.”

Dillon moved Kyle’s hand and replaced it with his own. “A couple, probably. You’re flarin’ a good amount of heat over this spot.” He sighed and lowered his hand. “That was quite a blow you took. Think we’ll be expectin’ a visit any time soon?”

Aimee frowned in confusion, but Kyle shook his head. “I shut it off as soon as it happened. Still blocking the pain as best as I can. The pack won’t realize I’m hurt.” Kyle eyed Dillon warily. “But next time, could you not sit in the middle of the damn street?”

“Why
were
you sitting in the middle of the street?” Aimee asked.

He shrugged. “Just a bit of wolf fun. I’d have moved before the truck got to me.”

Aimee gaped at him. “That’s your idea of fun? You’re a damn fool.”

His eyes flashed when he returned her glare. “Believe me, darlin’, my idea of full moon fun was a lot less tame when I was first made.”

“You’re still a damn fool,” Kyle said. “Why weren’t you up at the cave tonight?”

Dillon glanced at Aimee, then looked away. “What’s it matter anymore? I’m never gonna get better. I’m never gonna be enough.”

Aimee’s stomach fell at the way he said the last.

Kyle tried to scoot himself up in bed but stopped with a wince. “You obviously are gettin’ better if we’re havin’ this heartfelt little chat in the middle of your pity party. Or didn’t you notice that you shifted back human under a high full moon?”

Aimee’s eyes widened. The significance of his shift hadn’t even occurred to her.

Dillon blinked and glanced down at himself. “I didn’t have to think about it. It was just the only way I could help you.”

“He did it earlier today, too,” Aimee said. “When he was starting to change at the bar.”

“It wasn’t quite nightfall then,” he said, but she could hear the surprise in his voice.

“So stop feelin’ sorry for yourself,” Kyle said, “and get over this death wish.”

“Death wish?” Aimee asked.

Kyle glanced at her. “I told you when I first saw Dillon that I intended to kill him,” he said.

She nodded.

“This conversation is pointless,” Dillon said. “She don’t even want us. No need to bare our souls if we don’t got the coin to pay her to listen.”

Her chest flared with hot anger. “I happen to care about both of you, however badly you want to think of me, or how idiotic you can be sometimes.” She nodded to Kyle. “Go on.”

“I spotted Dillon trackin’ the huntress you came across in the woods. I assumed he was huntin’ her down to kill her, and I planned to take him out before he had a chance.”

She grunted. “So guns
can
kill you.”

Kyle shook his head. “Not just any gun. Silver is our weakness. A silver bullet, knife, or other weapon can kill our kind. It’s the only thing that can take down a werewolf, save for beheading.”

She shivered at the thought and cleared her throat. “So what happened?”

Kyle grunted. “I was crouched in a bush, gettin’ ready to spring. Then I realized Dillon wasn’t settin’ her up for a kill. He was trackin’ her to put himself right in her path. He jumped out in front of her and was gonna let her shoot him.”

Aimee’s heart stuttered. “Why?”

“I’ll admit I was in a bad place,” Dillon said, shifting his body on the bed to face her. “I’d lost my pack, and yet we were still bound to one another. We could feel each other’s despair, and it fed our own.” He glanced at her. “Plus Kade had claimed a mate that instinctively drew us all to her, but none of us could have her.”

She swallowed. “The woman you told me about in the parking lot.”

He nodded. “Lily was never mine. But in a were pack, when a mate is claimed by another, there is an automatic attraction for the others. Blaise’s obsession with her because of that was in part what got him killed.”

Her heart pounded in jealousy. The thought of him feeling the call of a different mate struck a distinctly unpleasant chord. How selfish was that, begrudging him when she herself was in possession of another man’s ring?

“I hated this curse and roamin’ the mountains alone,” he went on, “with no control over who I was and no place to go. I couldn’t go back to cowhand work because ranch animals don’t take to havin’ a predator around. I couldn’t hold down another kind of job for fear my nature might come out at the wrong moment. And I was sick of the memories of what Blaise had done, what the rest of us did under his orders. Other packs hated us for it, and the huntress haunts us for it. I thought maybe she was right, that the evil in our pack hadn’t died out with Blaise. It infected every one of us down to our gut, and the only way to purge it would be to destroy us all.”

Her heart twisted in sympathy. “You’re not evil,” she said, her throat thick with emotion. “Or you wouldn’t have cared enough about who you were to let her end you.”

“That’s what I told him,” Kyle said. “Later.”

She looked at him. “If you were planning on killing him anyway, why didn’t you just let her finish him off?”

Kyle sighed. “Sheer impulse. I saw her raise the gun at him, and before I knew what I’d done, I jumped out from the bush and knocked the woman off her feet. I grabbed the pistol in my teeth and flung it over the edge of the cliff. Then she ran off.”

She smiled. “You wolves really have a thing about tossing women’s stuff off the mountain.”

“I was damn pissed, watching that gun plunge into the night,” Dillon said. “I saw that as my only way out. I faced off with Kyle and was prepared to give him his fight to the death, only with me on the victorious side.”

She eyed Kyle, who shrugged. “Dillon and I stood there, baring fangs and snarling at one another. When I looked him in the eye, though, I couldn’t deny why I had really saved him. I felt the bond forming, molecule by molecule. I shifted human right under the full moon, and Dillon froze in shock. Anyone who thinks wolves aren’t capable of facial expressions didn’t see the look on his muzzle that night.”

Dillon snorted. “Caught me off guard. I wasn’t too familiar with weres who shifted at will on a high full moon night. I’d only encountered one pack before that could do it, and that was Kade and his partner, back before Kade became our alpha. I knew right then and there that it was a power I wanted. I knew that Kyle was the alpha I wanted.”

Kyle pushed himself upright, his jaw clenched right. The growl that came out of him had a distinct feral tone to it, and Aimee saw that his eyes were beginning to glow.

“Let’s throw you in a hot shower,” Dillon said to Kyle. He turned to her. “His body’s tryin’ to shift back, but his bones and all reshapin’ for a phase won’t exactly be a big party in his condition.”

She nodded. “Okay, but how will a shower help?”

“The hot water relaxes the joints and muscles, and also helps accelerate healin’ by bringin’ on more blood flow. Got any fresh, raw meat?”

Her brow shot up. “For the shower?”

“For him to eat. I’d rather not have to leave him and go out huntin’ just now.”

“Oh. I brought home some hamburger meat from the store earlier tonight.”

Dillon shook his head. “No good. Ground meat is handled and processed too much.”

She thought for a moment. “I picked up a New York steak, too.”

He smiled. “Now you’re talkin’.”

“Shall I cook it while you get him showered?”

“No. Just bring it to the shower raw.”

She tried not to make a face at the idea while Dillon gingerly helped Kyle to his feet. Well, at least the woman who wound up with these men would have no worries about cooking for them.

When she realized she was staring at the tight, perfectly round asses before her, she jumped up. “Bathroom’s through there.” She nodded to a door next to her closet. “I’ll just go get the meat.” And try to forget the exquisitely packaged meat she’d just been ogling.

Although she had seen both men naked on numerous occasions during their brief acquaintance, she paused when she came back with the Styrofoam tray of marbled steak. Somehow it seemed more intrusive to bust in on them in the shower, even though she’d watched the two of them do far more personal things to one another.

Steam rose from the tub shower, flushing her cheeks with damp heat when she entered the white tile bathroom. Kyle’s moan echoed through the small space, and she couldn’t quite decide whether he was in pain or feeling something else.

Her feet scuffed along the tile floor as she approached the men whose forms were distorted but visible through the sliding glass doors. With a brief hesitation, she yanked open the door farthest from the shower head and stuck the tray of meat inside. “Dinner’s served,” she said.

“Perfect, darlin’,” Dillon said. “Can you toss that tray and come hold the steak for him? My hands are a mite busy at the moment.”

That piqued her interest, and she couldn’t help but poke her head inside to see what was going on. Nothing as untoward as what she’d pictured, though. Dillon held Kyle against his chest, almost the way Aimee had leaned back on him in the bar bathroom earlier that day. He was helping rinse blood from the man’s hair.

“He’s still a little woozy,” Dillon said. “Bring that meat on in here and we’ll get him fixed up.”

“In there? With you?”

He gave her an amused glance. “Unless you’re plannin’ to stick the meat on the end of a long pole and hold it over his face.”

She sighed and kicked off her slippers. Her short gown would get wet, but there was no way she would be stripping down to get in that shower naked with them.

When she climbed in and slid the door closed, she sucked in a deep breath and held it. Kyle’s eyes lit up—literally—as soon as he saw the cold steak she raised in front of him. What she hadn’t been expecting was for his jaw to lengthen and sharp teeth to promptly emerge.

“Oh, God, you’re changing,” she said. She jerked away, but he took hold of her hand and kept it in place, then tore off a chunk of meat with his fangs. She continued to hold her breath while she watched him chew, surprised to note that his face returned to normal proportions and the glow in his eyes subsided once he’d bitten off the steak. So he wasn’t losing control, after all. He just needed his sharper teeth to rip off hunks of the thick, raw meat.

“Thanks,” he said to her after swallowing the mouthful.

She finally whooshed out her held breath. “You’re welcome. Is it helping?”

A faint but dangerous smile breached his stone-cold expression. “It’s all helpin’.”

He leaned in slower this time, and she watched in utter fascination as his eyes and face underwent enough of a change for his fangs to reappear. Her hand shook slightly as he ripped off another bite of steak. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips when he finished chewing. Raw, bloody juices mingled with droplets of water to slide down the front of his magnificent chest. Feeding him this way felt so primal, so decadent. Her heartbeat began a steady, heavy drumming.

Her eyes followed the trickles of reddish fluid dripping from his chin to land on the medallion he wore around his neck. She squinted at the image of a man’s profile embossed on the front and lifted the pendant with her free hand. “Who is this?”