Authors: J. Rose Allister
“Don’t worry,” Nash spat back. “I don’t mind sharin’. You can have her when I’m finished.”
“You ain’t gonna
have
her.” Connor stepped forward, teeth clenched. “What you’re about to have is two fists full of trouble.”
Nash laughed and sat back on his haunches. “You couldn’t best me when we used to screw around wrestlin’ on the ranch. Don’t make me hurt you now.”
Connor shot him a tight smile. “A necessary ruse to keep up appearances. If you challenge me here, I think you’ll find I was holdin’ back quite a bit.”
The other man relinquished his seat on the bed. “I’m feelin’ inclined to test that claim.”
Connor gave a curt nod and stepped closer. “Terra,” he said calmly. “Leave now.”
“No way.” Nash sidestepped the other cowboy and shoved the door closed, which took a bit of doing since Connor’s forcible entry had splintered part of the frame. “Winner gets the woman.”
Connor’s response died when his face twisted in what appeared to be a grimace of pain. His hand flew to his stomach, and his voice took on a pensive, haunting quality. “Do you feel that, Nash? It’s the call of moonrise.” His eyes met Terra’s wide stare. “The game is about to get ugly.”
A hard knot flipped over in her stomach while she watched the sparkle in Connor’s eyes begin to undulate again. Nash stiffened as well, and then he sniffed the air sharply. His gaze fell to the fresh kill on the table, and a gruff, low growl came out of him that made Terra imagine him ripping the carcass apart with his bare hands. Her nails dug into the mattress as she inched slowly toward the edge. She paused when Nash started for the table, praying he wouldn’t notice one of her legs was now dangling over the far side. Sure enough, his eyes darted toward her, but just as he changed course, he stopped short and cried out.
“Shit!” he shouted, clutching his head in both hands. His eyes squinted shut in what appeared to be agony, and his cries now made his earlier moans sound tame by comparison. “Fuck, what’s happening to me?”
“First time’s the hardest,” Connor said.
Nash doubled over and then dropped to his knees. Terra used the moment’s distraction to jump off the bed, but she froze near the bathroom doorway at the sound of his bloodcurdling scream. The hairs on her arms stood on end while the sound morphed into something inhuman, a wail becoming a howl that she recognized.
She whipped around. “Oh, no,” she breathed.
Nash’s body began to quiver, not like the subtle vibration of a man shivering with cold, but a rolling, bone-rending quake like some kind of Hollywood special effect. His face elongated, and Terra’s hand flew over her mouth as she watched his head transform. The sickening sounds of his screams barely covered those of bones and ligaments popping and reforming. He seemed to collapse, an illusion caused by his body compressing downward. Then, the man was simply gone.
The black wolf in his place stood at stony attention, snarling at Connor with tail and neck fur bristling. Shiny saliva dripped off newly sprouted fangs. Terra had gone stiff, too, her hand still clamped over her mouth and breath stilled in her lungs.
“Terra!” Connor all but growled at her.
She snapped out of her daze to find Connor’s breathing was pained and his eyes were blazing gold again—this time with a note of pleading. He was losing control, too. She could see it.
His human form seemed to fall away as he dropped into the gray wolf. Then two fierce animals were circling one another in the dingy motel room, their lips curled and fangs bared in a snarling challenge she knew wouldn’t end quietly. With their bodies between her and the front door, there was just one thing to do. She raced inside the bathroom and slammed the door just as their growling standoff escalated into vicious barks and sounds of claws scraping against the thin carpet.
She turned the lock and stood there rigid while terrifying howls and feral rage painted ugly splotches of violent imagery over her view of the dingy, gray door. She tried to picture what was happening from the barks followed by snarls, growls by painful yelps. Something—one of the lamps, she guessed—crashed. A louder crash, perhaps the table, came moments later.
“Jesus, they’re killing each other,” she said, her voice echoing her distress around the empty bathroom. Her nails dug into her palms with a painful burn. Snarling sounds came closer, and then,
boom
! The bathroom door jolted as something solid crashed hard against it, sending her jumping back with a shriek. She spun around, frantically seeking another way out of the cramped room. The only window was over the bathtub, too small and high up to squeeze her body through.
She turned back to find a petrified stranger in the mirror, whose dishwater hair hung in limp strings around bugged-out eyes and tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t even realized she was crying. Her pupils were still wide and dark, though not as much as when she’d felt the giddy high while driving with Connor.
Another
bam
came as something bounced against the door, briefly bowing it inward and jarring her attention away from her reflection.
“Shit!” Terra flew backward to plaster herself against the back wall. There, she sank down on the floor with her head against her bent knees and her hands pressed tight against her ears to drown out the vicious cacophony of animal rage.
Hot tears flowed freely now, and her heartbeat thundered until she thought her eardrums would explode. If this was just a hallucinogenic nightmare, it was much more like a bad acid trip than the hazy shadows and twitching purple mice she vaguely recalled seeing skitter across the floor of her hospital room.
A tooth-grinding yelp shot through the muffled sounds penetrating her covered ears. Then, as abruptly as the vicious struggle had begun, a heavy and ominous silence fell.
Moments came and went with her folded up on the floor, waiting for evidence that the fight might still be going. Finally, she withdrew her hands from her ears and lifted her head, straining to hear any sound. The nothingness disturbed her almost as much as the violent noise of the battle.
When five minutes of absolute hush had ticked by on her slim gold wristwatch, she was ready to concede that the nightmare might finally be over. She crawled across the hard, cracked tile on hands and knees in order to get closer to the door. Perhaps the animals had run off to continue their terrorizing out in the woods. Maybe her delusions of gorgeous cowboys that turned into werewolves had faded.
Maybe they were lying in the other room, dead.
Guilt washed over her at the thought. After what Nash had done, or would have if Connor hadn’t returned, Terra should be glad to see the man go to hell. But the man hadn’t been in his right mind. He was deluded with fever—something that was apparently going around—and there were other forces at work that had clearly been cleaving him in two. And what of Connor? He’d warned her to stay away and told her he’d been trying to protect her. He’d proven it, too, by kicking down the locked door like an action hero in order to save her. Should his reward be to die in a cheap motel while the woman who’d stupidly ignored his warning cowered in the bathroom?
Scenarios of what she might find outside ran through her head, each contradicting the other until she couldn’t think anymore. She could sit tight until morning, wait until housekeeping came along. But who wanted a poor housekeeper to stumble over this disaster? And meanwhile, Connor’s life could be draining away into the carpet beneath them.
“Damn it.”
On shaking knees, Terra slowly rose to her feet. Her hand shook so hard she could barely turn the lock. She pressed her ear against the door for a long moment, praying for some warning noise to startle her out of this decision.
At last, she twisted the doorknob and sealed her fate.
Chapter Four
The
pop
as the door opened would surely bring wolves running, and Terra kept an iron grip on the knob while the palm of her other hand pressed firmly against the back of the door. At the first sign of a lunging canine, the wild dogs would get a door slammed on their snouts.
She heard the ragged panting of exertion even before she dared stick her head through the narrow opening. Someone was still breathing, at least. Two of them, judging by the staggered chorus of rapid air exchange. Then again, breathing didn’t necessarily mean healthy. She needed a better look.
Sucking in a breath to steel herself, she risked a peek through the narrow opening. The room looked like a war zone, but that’s not what shot her seeking eyes, not to mention the door, wider.
Both men, who had shifted back to human at some point, were naked and heaving together on the floor. Sweat glistened from every flexed, rippling muscle, and between the two of them there was plenty of it on display. Bloody punctures and scratch marks were scattered over their flesh, most of which were oozing red. Fresh reddish-purple bruises marred other sections of their bare bodies. Otherwise, they seemed all right. More than all right, considering what was going on.
Connor was bent over Nash, who was lying on his stomach with a leather strap—one of their belts, apparently—looped around his neck. The long end had been threaded back through the buckle, and Connor held it like a leash behind Nash’s head. Connor had his knee pressed against Nash’s back.
“Okay, boy,” Connor said through heavy breaths. “Up on your knees now. Nice and slow.”
As he twisted to remove his knee from the other man’s back, Terra caught sight of his cock and felt her jaw drop. Not only was it even larger than she’d guessed from her brief rub, but it was stiff enough to point straight ahead. Her head began a slow spin.
Somehow, she managed to tear her gaze away from his throbbing erection to notice another belt in his free hand. He tugged on the leash, and Nash pushed up onto his hands and knees. Jutting out from beneath him was a long, thick shaft that indicated he was just as aroused as Connor was.
What the hell was going on here? One minute they were tearing each other to shreds in a fight to the death, the next they looked like they were starring in a cowboys-in-bondage porno flick.
When Connor tossed his hair back from his still-golden eyes, he caught sight of Terra standing there, slack-jawed. “Not a great time for you to be out here yet,” he said.
Nash’s head shot around, and she stiffened at the wild yearning in his stare. His upper body fought against the leash as his every muscle strained toward her. Connor yanked back hard and used the belt in his other hand to deliver a loud
slap
to Nash’s round, pale ass cheek. The man jerked in surprise, though his cock gave a noticeable twitch.
“Stand the hell down,” Connor snapped. “You done fucked up royal with Terra. Is there somethin’ you need to say to her for that?”
The animal gaze wavered, darkening into something pensive, more human. “Very sorry, ma’am,” he ground out. She felt her grip tighten on the edge of the door she was still holding. “I didn’t know what I was doin’. I just wanted you so bad and—”
A sharp tug on the leash and another lash with the belt cut him off. “Shut up. Fuck your jackass excuses,” Connor snapped. “I done lived around one werewolf too many who treated women like raw meat with no will of their own. Vowed the next one who tried that shit around me would get a long, hard taste of how I feel about the subject.”
Nash’s head twisted to glimpse the man behind him. “It weren’t me,” he protested. “It was the animal drove me to it.”
The loud whipcrack sound on Nash’s ass this time made him cry out and Terra jerk. She folded her arms over her breasts as an angry red welt rose over the curve of his rear. It had to burn like hell, but Terra noticed the man’s erection didn’t flag. Not one bit.
Connor reined up on the leash and leaned over the man’s back. “Bullshit. The animal did nothin’ more than join hands with your own demons. You
can
control it, if you choose to do so. And you will.”
“I suppose,” Nash said, his voice a bit hoarse from Connor’s tight grip, “that you figure I’m gonna do what you say cuz you bested me in our little wolf contest.”
Slap!
came a sharp stroke on the man’s other buttock. “Shit, Connor!” Nash said between gritted teeth.