Cry Wolf (12 page)

“I’d say you were joking, but I can’t imagine you are,” Malcolm said. “What does it mean?” he asked, stroking it.

“I know what it means now,” Kelly said. “I think I was acknowledging my magic before I knew what it was. The design came to me in a prophetic dream. Thankfully not in a blackout. The image was much kinder than that, no headache.”

“It suits you,” Malcolm said. “They all do. I never thought much of tattoos, but on you it’s like they’re part of your skin. They don’t even look like they’ve faded.”

He stroked the scrollwork that began a few inches above her navel and curled up her breastbone in delicate black filigree, separating at the top to brush under her collarbone.

“Another dream,” she said, “but this time during a blackout. It’s more complicated than it looks. The tattoo artist was thankful he didn’t have to create it from scratch. I think there are words in it, if you look at it just the right way. It’s a puzzle of a riddle. I’ll figure it out one day.”

“The snake?” he asked. He traced the thick, beautiful body of the giant albino python that began on her left hip and reached all the way down her left thigh. Its sleek head rested calmly above her knee.

“The serpent means understanding. Wisdom and life and sexual power,” Kelly replied.

She was unsurprised when Malcolm’s partially erect cock twitched against it, nor was she surprised when he pressed a kiss to her shoulder where the roses tangled down her arms and over her shoulder blades.

“The flowers?”

“Someone once called me a child of the earth,” Kelly said, lightly touching the place where Malcolm had kissed her. “The idea stuck with me.”

Their lips met, and this time their leisurely kiss didn’t ignite anything too much for Kelly to bear. Malcolm reluctantly broke the kiss to roll an obliging Kelly onto her stomach. He kissed down her spine, where she had an illusion tattoo of corset ties over her vertebrae, black leather woven through thick, silver rings in her skin.

“That, perhaps, needs no explanation,” Kelly said, her cheek resting on her arms to look back at him.

“And the ones on your feet?” Malcolm asked.

“Tarot moon on my right foot,” she replied, wiggling it but not making him move from rubbing the muscles of her shoulders and kissing her spine. “Wolf skull silhouette on my left. I don’t need too much to remind me what I am. I’m not likely to forget. But I wanted some representation of them once I’d accepted what they allow me to be.”

“You missed a few spots,” Malcolm said.

This time she didn’t have to see the grin to know that it was there.

“I didn’t want it done all at once,” Kelly said. She closed her eyes and saw the tattoo parlour against her eyelids, bright, glaring and garish, yet her own private sanctuary, as much a place of peace for her as this land was for Renee. “I still have a lot of life left. You never know when I might need the pain again or when the magic might tell me something new.”

She spread her legs obediently for Malcolm as he covered her. She smiled into the crook of her elbow, because this time he bit her shoulder.

After they had both finished their second climax—Kelly first because he didn’t stop himself from hurting her this time—he stayed above her, moving only slightly to the side so that she had some breathing room.

“I’ve seen tattoos like these before, but never with this detail,” Malcolm said, panting heavily but still curious now that his arousal was finally sated. “It’s like they’re real.”

“You have to pay through the nose for that kind of dimensionality,” Kelly said. “It was worth it for what they mean to me.”

“But it’s so vivid. And it’s intact. With all the fighting…”

“Magic,” Kelly replied. “The same magic that makes them disappear into my wolf skin and reappear unmarred in my human skin. You say they look like they were meant for me. They were.”

“Why the piercings?” he asked.

“Because I knew they’d hurt,” Kelly said, turning over underneath him and running the smooth backs of her wolf claws over his cheek and down his neck before retracting them once more. “It was perfect. Didn’t last long enough.”

“I apologise for taking you in a way you didn’t like,” Malcolm said. He arranged the wild length of her hair over her and stroked it contemplatively from the crown of her head down to where it ended near her waist.

“I liked it,” Kelly said. “I’m just not used to it.”

“That was how I used to be with Ki,” he said. “And if I want to be with her again, if I want to be with the shapeshifters again, I wanted to know if I could control myself enough to be that man. If I even still want to be.”

“And?” Kelly asked.

“And I think I can,” Malcolm said.

“I’d let the wolf out first,” Kelly said. “Like you did tonight. Get as much of it out of your system as possible. But even so, it’ll be different with her than it is with me.”

“Why?” Malcolm asked, pulling back a little.

Kelly patted his arm. “I’m not attacking her, honey, saying that you’ll never have better than me. She puts up with you and she still wants you, so she’s a special kind of woman. But the difference is that if you get close enough to her, she’ll start to smell like prey. I’m confident that you can handle it.”

She pulled him back against her and tucked his head against her shoulder. His breath brushed over her breast.

“In such a short time, you’ve shown resilience for a new werewolf, probably because of your experience as a shapeshifter. But forewarned is forearmed. If you know what to expect, you won’t be caught off guard by your appetite.”

After a while, she thought he’d gone to sleep, but he asked, “Have you ever been?”

“Once,” Kelly replied quietly. “Don’t underestimate the wolf, Malcolm. You don’t want to live with blood on your hands.”

Although his breathing became slow and even, the moonbeams had moved to pour through the skylight by the time he finally slipped away. Kelly was still awake, and she stared up into the night sky.

It had taken the murder of one human being, one kill, for her to develop a taste for it. And for her to decide that she wanted no part of it, in spite of her nature and the nature of all the wolves around her. They’d eventually decided they didn’t care if she didn’t indulge as long as she didn’t stop them.

Kelly still wasn’t sure whether maybe
she
was the one who was in the wrong, denying herself the satisfaction of fulfilling her deepest, darkest desires, denying what she was made for.

She finally drifted into a dreamscape in which the taste of blood and flesh flooded her mouth, a completely different urge from her compulsion to mate. This was just the simple, powerful, carnal need to feed.

Kelly remembered the screams of the young man whose body she had consumed. And in her dreams, as in those moments before the horror had set in, she liked it.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Malcolm helped Ki clear up after breakfast and gently ousted her from the sink area so that he could clean the dishes.

This was clearly code of some kind, because Ki leaned against the counter and Malcolm kept glancing over at her as he worked, lathering up the soap bubbles and scrubbing with the same methodological diligence Kelly now recognised as part of Malcolm’s old personality.

Observing them from her place at the table, amused and wistful in turns, was a bit like watching a wildlife documentary—the mating habits of the shapeshifter and the solitary werewolf. Kelly could practically hear David Attenborough now— ‘
The female shows her availability with her elbows against the counter to display her breasts, hips thrust forward. Her demeanour is casual, but her eye contact suggests otherwise. Her pupils are dilated, her lips slightly parted. The male initiates the exchange by offering to alleviate the female’s workload. Doing the chore makes him seem dependable, prime mating material amongst the competition. His gaze smoulders between them. Although the male is already aroused, he must be patient if he is going to win the female over and succeed in his endeavour to copulate with her.
’

She smothered a grin, sipped at her hot chocolate and silently wished them well.

* * * *

When Kelly entered the greenhouse, she caught Renee working with uncharacteristic listlessness.

“Why did you make me drink all that whisky last night?” Renee asked.

“All my fault, I’m sure,” Kelly replied with a low chuckle.

Renee fell forward and hid her face in her arms, her red hair contrasting with the pale rosemary.

“You want me to make it go away?” Kelly asked.

“No,” Renee groaned. “Yes, but no. I need to remember that this is what happens when I don’t realise how much I drink and I have a lack tipsiness to tell me when to stop.”

“Check. Crushing guilt and regret in the form of a stomp team banging wildly behind your eye sockets,” Kelly said, moving past Renee to the shelves that had been cleared for Kelly’s herb garden.

“I shared more of the whisky last time I had it,” Renee muttered into her sleeve. When she straightened up again, wincing a little at the sunlight, her face was smudged with soil. For a girl who liked to be clean, she had an uncanny ability to get downright dirty in the greenhouse.

“Did you drink that
entire
bottle?” Kelly asked, incredulous.

“Except what you drank,” Renee replied.

“Oh, honey,” Kelly said.

“Yeah. Info assimilated. Drink in moderation, no matter how sober I am. Last time I did this, it was a bottle of vodka, but I don’t remember it being this bad.”

“Seriously, I can make the pain go away. It’s not hard,” Kelly said.

“That’s all right. I just need things to be quiet. And no sudden movements.”

Renee reapplied herself to trimming the rose bushes. Grinning, Kelly turned her attention to tending her own plants. She used a series of strings above her section for drying plant parts, and the area smelt like candles burning in an old library. It was her favourite smell.

Max leaned in the doorway. Kelly sensed him before he said anything. She pretended she didn’t and continued handling her fennel.

“Renee, you have dirt on your nose,” Max said.

Renee winced at the sound of his perfectly ordinary inside voice.

“Like, a lot.”

“You don’t say,” Renee replied. She took a washcloth from the scrap pile in a basket in a corner and wiped her face.

“Yeah, that didn’t help.”

“Do we want to have another talk about what you smell like when you come in from dog shit detail?”

“Touché, fearless leader,” Max said. “Kelly, can I talk to you?”

“Absolutely.” As she passed by Renee, she touched three fingers to Renee’s brow. She absorbed the headache before Renee could protest. Renee only appeared grateful.

Max led Kelly back into the kitchen and gestured her to one of the bar stools that surrounded the butcher island.

“Ki told me Malcolm wants some quality time with her tomorrow,” Max said.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Kelly asked. “I thought Malcolm had an arrangement.”

Max waved that away. “No, I don’t have a problem with Malcolm being with her.”

“But you’re wondering if it’s safe.”

“Partially,” he said. “I just didn’t know if you knew about it. I mean, I know the two of you have been… You know.”

Kelly raised an eyebrow.

He sighed. “He gets this look when he’s been satisfied, but it used to be a long time between those looks. Then again, it used to be a long time between his looking frustrated, and now that’s almost all the time.”

Kelly leaned her elbows on the counter. “Okay, spill. Something’s bothering you.”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew first,” Max said.

“Hard not to. They were practically yelling it during breakfast. It’s part of the reason he’s been having ‘you know’ with me in the first place, to see if he can still be with all of you, particularly with Ki.”

Max ran his hand through his shaggy blond hair. “Maybe I’m off base. I just thought I saw something between the two of you. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to hurt you if they got together again.”

Kelly touched her hand to her heart. “Why, Maxwell, I didn’t know you cared.”

He winced at his full name.

“No, really,” Kelly said. “Given this sanctuary’s experience with werewolves, I’m touched you’ve given some thought to my welfare. However, something else is percolating in that little skull of yours, and it’s less altruistic, yes?”

Max crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“It wasn’t an accusation, just stripping the meat to get to the bone. What are you afraid of?” Kelly asked.

“I love Ki,” Max said. He had none of the aversion to saying ‘love’ as he did to saying ‘sex’ in front of her. “I’m not like Jake and Britt and Renee, and I never have been. I don’t know how they manage to share each other’s time so well without it bothering the other one in their relationship.”

“How did you manage before?” Kelly asked. She played with the end section of her braid in the quiet that followed her question, giving Max the space he needed in order to confess to her.

“Like I said, Malcolm didn’t come around all that often,” Max said. “We shared the Chamberses’ old bedroom, because it’s the biggest and because it fit another bed in it for Malcolm. He didn’t mind Ki and me making love while he was there. He just turned around in bed and kept his back to us. Or he watched. I wasn’t threatened by that. Then Ki whispered in my ear one day asking if she could go over to his bed, and I said yes, thinking it would just be one time. Maybe I liked the idea of watching them. And then it started happening more than once.”

Max shrugged. “They seemed to have chemistry, and I think that’s the real reason I never said no. I saw that they meant something to each other, and sometimes I think he even looked my way to make sure that I was a part of it as well, although he’d never admit it out loud. But most of the time, he was all sanctuary business. He’d go to sleep in his own bed while Ki and I made whatever noises we wanted in ours. Then, when he wanted Ki, he made sure to take care of her. I appreciated that—and that it wasn’t often.”

“So what are you concerned about?” Kelly asked. “That his amped-up sex drive is going to cut into your time with Ki?”