Cry Wolf (21 page)

Malcolm swallowed then continued, “You’d think that if a canine shapeshifter came to the sanctuary to be the dog more often, to embrace both of our natures, we’d be in dog skin more. But once I emerged as human, Max and Ki welcomed me just as much in that form. Leslie, Jake, Britt and Renee, all of them accepted me when Max and Ki brought me in. It was always so easy with them. Because the sanctuary was welcoming to dogs
and
shapeshifters, it was somehow much easier for me to be human again. I was never alone anymore. All that time in my own head, struggling for every last inch of my life, and suddenly I had pack that I didn’t have to fight to keep.

“Except now I do. I have to fight every second I’m with them, fight not to hurt them, fight not to attack them with my words, fight not to eat them, fight to belong with them again. That’s what Grant stole from me. That’s what being a werewolf takes from me.” He caressed her cheek with his thumb. “That’s why I need to try this Father guy. It’s not that you haven’t been endlessly patient, and I guess that werewolf pack seems halfway decent. But I already have pack. I’m exiled from it, but there’s still a space for me if I can get rid of this. This disease.”

Kelly kept her thoughts to herself about how things change and how those changes didn’t mean he had to relinquish pack or even friendship. To tell him that for the fifty thousandth time would be useless. Malcolm needed his last-ditch effort. He needed to go forward on his own to discover that the fantasy in front of him was a mirage. Nothing she said, nothing she prophesied, would change his mind.

She wanted desperately to tell him that Damien had welcomed him into the pack without Malcolm needing to prove himself worthy and how rare that was. She wanted to tell him that his relationship with the shapeshifters had irreparably altered, but that didn’t mean they loved him less, only that they couldn’t love him in the exact way they once had. She wanted to tell him that leaving them didn’t mean going back to being alone and hungry.

She wanted to tell him that she had grown to love him because he was a good wolf and could be a good man when the former no longer interfered with the latter—and that hurt just thinking about it, because it was dangerous to love someone who
wouldn’t
love her.

So Kelly kept her secrets.

“I know what it’s like to be alone,” Kelly said softly. “And how hard it is to let go of what you have once you have it. In my case, I probably should’ve let it go sooner.” She covered his mouth with her palm before he could protest. “Only in my case. It wasn’t a commentary on what you should do.”

His hands had moved farther down her hips to massage her buttocks and thighs, rubbing mostly uninked skin. A mixture of her juices and his semen dripped out of her now and onto his thighs. He leant forward and kissed her almost contemplatively before rolling them both over so that she was beneath him, pressed into the mattress.

“You mean your alpha from before?” he asked.

She nodded. “Believe it or not, being a werewolf doesn’t mean you have complete licence to be a prick. David wasn’t a prick all the time, but he really could be, like a lot of alphas. I lived with it. I didn’t have to.”

“You had a pack, though, and you liked having a pack.” Malcolm pushed himself down her body and off the bed. He used the top sheet to clean his stomach and thighs then tugged the sheet out from under her and tossed it to the floor. It thumped because of the harness and dildo wrapped inside it.

“I had a pack, but it was David’s pack, not mine.”

“But you like Damien,” Malcolm said.

“He’s good people,” Kelly replied softly. “And so is most of his pack.”

“Most?”

“I have history with the head bitch, but it’s not like she’s my arch enemy or anything,” Kelly said. “Do you get along with everyone in the sanctuary?”

“It’s pretty easy to stay out of people’s way if you don’t like each other,” Malcolm said, kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed. “I don’t think we’ve ever had an outright fight before. Most shifters who didn’t like the company just moved on, no questions asked. The rest of the time, we mostly keep to our respective packs.”

“You and Max never fought?” Kelly asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe on occasion,” Malcolm admitted.

“Werewolf packs are a little different,” Kelly conceded, “especially with emotions on edge. But most packs work surprisingly well. Like the dog shapeshifters, we move packs if we don’t fit. Dynamics change all the time. And Damien… Well, I don’t know how to explain it. You don’t have the history with all the packs that I have. Let’s just say he tossed convention out the window by compiling a pack out of a band of misfit toys.”

“And he’s inviting you,” Malcolm said.

“If I’m not a misfit toy, what am I?” Kelly asked. She spread her arms. “I’m an exiled werewolf who doesn’t eat humans, a witch who mostly does party tricks, not to mention a human pincushion.”

“Who has a very naughty drawer,” Malcolm added, stroking up her legs and spreading them slightly. He drew her down the bed closer to him.

“This is true.”

“I don’t think you got enough out of me,” Malcolm said. “I mean, all that punishment and you were satisfied only once while I got off twice? What manner of justice is this?”

Kelly propped herself on her elbows and looked down at where he had arranged himself between her legs. “It’s reprehensible,” she managed to say with a straight face.

“Still hungry?”

“Famished,” Kelly said.

“So am I,” he replied, and he hooked his arms under her legs, lifting her hips so that he could swipe his tongue through her wet folds, lapping at the aftermath of both of their pleasures. Cleaning the mess they had left behind seemed to be his aim with the way he lapped around everything but the place where she wanted it most. He pulled and sucked at her folds and dipped his tongue into her cunt until he finally deemed her taken care of—although ‘clean’ was hardly the word she would use, given his saliva and the new draught of arousal from his eager attentions.

“Have I mentioned lately,” he murmured against her inner thigh, “that I don’t appreciate you nearly as much as I should?”

“Not lately,” Kelly said. She brought her hands to her breasts and kneaded, the metal of her piercings caught between her fingers.

“The reason I told you about why I’m dragging you all the way to that ‘witch doctor’, as you call him, is because I don’t want you to think that I don’t like you or that you haven’t done enough,” Malcolm said, watching her intently. “You’ve been more than accommodating, above and beyond the call of duty. Hence, the continued apology. I may not have enough time in the weekend to finish apologising.”

“It’s truly been my pleasure,” Kelly said.

The last word had risen in a moan as Malcolm had resumed his erotic meal of her flesh.

Through gasps, she added, “If I thought it was going to be a chore, Malcolm, I wouldn’t have helped you at all. I’ll have you know I can be a real bitch.”

“Woman, I am trying to apologise,” Malcolm said, raising his head and mock-glaring at her for monologuing during his efforts at devastating cunnilingus.

Kelly twisted her nipples for his benefit and for the pleasure that it shot straight to her clit.

“My mistake,” Kelly said huskily. “Carry on.”

He had inserted a finger into her and was torturing her by moving his tongue back and forth over her hood piercing with enough pressure to titillate but not enough to help her come, when the pizza delivery guy knocked on the door.

“Oh God,” Kelly moaned when Malcolm paused. “Don’t you dare stop.”

“Are you serious?” Malcolm asked.

“You listen to me, pup, you are not going to stop now,” she growled.

He cautiously reapplied himself to his task.

Another knock.

“Come in!” she shouted. “It’s open.”

“Kelly?” Malcolm said.

“What?” she asked. “He’s legal.”

“You’re nuts, you know that?” But Malcolm showed how much he liked that by curling his finger against her G-spot. Kelly pinched her nipple and keened at the skylight just as the pizza guy came in with their order. It smelt absolutely divine, which only spurred Malcolm’s enthusiasm.

“Oh, oh shit, I’m sorry,” the college boy said. Kelly sat up, unconcerned by Malcolm’s or her naked state. Or the fact that the pizza guy had just walked in on Malcolm eating her out.

“No problem,” Kelly said, twitching as Malcolm dragged the flat of his tongue over the hood piercing, tugging it out to make her clit throb. “There’s fifty dollars—oh yes—on the counter. That should cover—mmm—the pizza and drinks, plus tip, since you’ve—fuck, ooooh, yes—been very understanding.”

She moaned high and tight in her throat as she fell back against the bed, arching her back while the pizza guy just gaped with the boxes in his hand. The finger inside her was joined by another, and Malcolm found a more forceful rhythm with his tongue slick and hot over her clit, over and over and over. Kelly blessed werewolf stamina.

“Yes, harder, fuck me,” she pleaded. She pounded the bed as he gave her what she asked for, filling her with his fingers and coaxing her orgasm from her. She trembled with the slow, intense pulse of it through her body.

As soon as Malcolm had brought her over her peak and into oversensitivity, he moved down from her clit to the lips of her cunt, lapping at her succulence as though she really were ripe fruit off the vine. She combed her fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp, encouraging him as he lapped through her aftershocks.

When she sat up again, Malcolm still licking her, she locked gazes with the pizza guy. Through him, she saw a cat-eyed Suicide Girl being pleasured, branded in his memory as something that just didn’t happen to guys like him. No one was going to believe him. It was too much like a porno, although in one of those, she would have asked him to join in. The bulge in his pants certainly suggested that he would very much like that idea.

But he had no way of knowing that even if Kelly wanted him—which she didn’t—she was way too much for a delicate human to handle. She hadn’t yet learned to soften her interests like Grant had, nor did she want to learn any time soon.

Malcolm pulled back and met her eyes with a smug grin. She guided him up on his knees so that she could kiss him, the scent of their pleasure all over his mouth. She sucked on his lips and his tongue with relish.

Malcolm stifled a laugh as she winked at him and got out of bed, not bothering to cover up. She walked over to the pizza delivery guy. His glasses were beginning to fog up.

“Sorry, just needed to finish up with that. Thank you for your patience,” Kelly said. She took the cardboard boxes from him.

He had already put the two-litre bottles on the counter next to the money, which he had left untouched. Kelly picked it up and tucked it into his left pocket. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“Have a good day.”

“Uh-huh,” was all the delivery guy could manage. It took Kelly opening the door for him to snap out of his waking fantasy. Kelly knew that the second he got back to his car, he was going to rub one off in less than a minute.

It was so easy to control young men like that, but Kelly still had a pleased sway to her walk as she put one of the sodas in the fridge then brought the other bottle and the two pizzas back to the bedroom. Everything was already filthy. They might as well eat before changing the rest of the sheets.

“That was unexpected,” Malcolm said. He took his box and joined her on the bed. “I wouldn’t have taken you for an exhibitionist.”

“It was a whim,” Kelly said. “And although we certainly gave an exhibition, I wasn’t doing it for him, so I’m not sure that qualifies as being an exhibitionist. I just didn’t mind him seeing. I wanted my pizza and I didn’t want to get up.”

“You realise you made that kid’s whole year, right?” Malcolm said.

She shrugged. “If you say so. He had food.”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “Yes, he did.”

So they stopped talking and instead devoted their attention to the respective boxes in their laps. Malcolm ate his whole pizza, and Kelly ate most of hers, humming with satisfaction as she closed her box and leant back.

“Just what I needed,” Kelly said. She opened the refrigerator and sent her pizza box towards it with magic.

“That’s just lazy,” Malcolm said.

“I don’t want to get up,” Kelly replied. “I’m good right here. By the way?”

“Yes?”

“Apology accepted.”

Chapter Eight

After a very satisfied sleep until dawn and another run, Kelly and Malcolm set off once more, although they had to stop at a diner for a hearty breakfast and again for more coffee. They arrived outside Hannibal, Missouri, where the GPS on her phone told her Salvation would be, in the late afternoon.

There was a large colonial on the top of the hill, with a sprawling lawn between the highway and the house. On the left side of the house was a cornfield, on the right some laconic cows that might get too tempting if she and Malcolm didn’t keep themselves fed. There was a lot of open land as well as farms along the highway, so staying out of sight while running in wolf skin would take a little extra effort, but it would be doable as long as they didn’t head into town.

As nervous as Kelly was when she stepped out of the truck onto the well-used, makeshift gravel parking lot, Malcolm was even shiftier.

Sunset was in about two hours. They had more than enough time to make it to the evening service. Even so, more than a few people were already milling about the giant, butter-coloured revival tent, setting up folding chairs, talking with each other, handing out literature, getting the barbecue ready. It was hard to mistake the dense, mouth-watering scent of humans here, not nearly diffused enough in the air.

“You want to go back to the trailer?” Kelly asked.

Malcolm nodded.

“When we attend the service, we’ll all be packed in,” Kelly said, unlocking her trailer door. “It’ll smell even stronger. Think you can handle it?”

“Just breathe it in and try to get used to it,” Malcolm said, repeating the mantra she had told him when he’d been overwhelmed by Ki’s dried blood scent.