Beast in Me (The Divination Falls Trilogy) (4 page)

Chapter Six

He went out the back door. The whole group of them had suddenly receded like a human tide, leaving him to his own thoughts and wits. Eliot and Slaughter would come back to get him at 11. Then they’d take him on a tour of where beasties had been spotted.

What the fuck am I supposed to do about tentacle creatures? he wondered. Space octopuses … Octopi?

He shook his head in frustration and followed the stone under his feet to a small back door. Three stone steps led him up into a courtyard thick with vegetation. Not a single gravestone to be found. It had that cemetery feel, though.

The wind tossed his hair and brought the smell of approaching fall. It was high August, usually hotter than fuck, but here in Divination Falls, it seemed to be a good ten to twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the country. It was nice. To see the thick green vegetation of summer without feeling like you were going to melt.

He followed a trail of wildflowers and thick bushes to a stone path and then followed that. You could get lost in this place, just in the beauty of it.

Not a lick of lightning in the sky. No grey clouds. Nothing to make him tense or wary. It was nice; maybe Brother Lightning was giving him a reprieve. When he pondered it, he realised the longest he’d gone with no interaction with weather and energy was a week. Maybe he could have a week of nothing – a little vacation granted by Great Spirit.

Cameron didn’t realised how
much
he wished for that until he thought it. The yearning that filled his chest made it ache. He was exhausted.

A dragonfly zipped past and Cam watched it go. What next? Bluebirds and butterflies and singing cartoon woodland animals? It was all too nice, too perfect … Surreal.

‘You OK?’ The voice was deep and dark and full of secrets. That was his first impression.

Cameron jumped, clutched at his pounding chest. Inside his heart was going berserk and he felt a little lightheaded with it.

‘I was. Jesus Christ, you scared me.’

Trace grinned with half his mouth. Somehow that little smirk made Cameron think of the big bad wolf. Made him flash back to that body sprawled, lean and powerful, over a small, lumpy bed. Made him remember one of those huge hands on a powerful, hard cock. He licked his lips.

‘Careful, lightning rider. I can smell your emotions.’ Then the wolf chuckled, bending to tie his work boot.

‘I – I’m sorry I spied on you.’ It was all Cameron could think to say.

Trace shrugged. Cameron watched his big shoulders flex with power. He was stunning with his huge body, big, fat attitude, and purple eyes. Just being so close to him made Cameron feel slow-witted and thick-tongued.

‘It was the most excitement I’ve had in ages,’ the wolf said and started to walk.

Cameron watched him go off, his heart sinking. He wanted the man to take his apology seriously. He also admitted to himself he wanted to be close to the wolf. There was no hope of anything happening between them. There was very little hope of anything happening for Cam with anyone. He’d come to terms with that long ago. But still, he could just be near Trace. Remembering the sight of his body and the sound of his voice just outside Cam’s barricaded bedroom door as he brought himself off.

Wolf at the door, he thought, and then shook it off.

Fifty feet away, Trace stopped, and Cameron felt his spine go rigid, his pulse pick up. The man turned to him and shielded his eyes from a bright beam of sunlight between the thick tree branches. ‘You gonna stand there all day admiring my ass, or are you coming?’

Cameron blinked, feeling a wild urge to laugh but pushing it away. ‘Yes! Right!’ he called, bouncing on his toes like one of those perky, hyper dogs. He blushed, but refused to let himself feel silly or embarrassed. He very much wanted to go along.

He hurried along the path until he was almost even with the wolf. Then Trace turned and continued to walk, Cameron right on his heels.

‘Why are you here?’ Trace asked.

The question stunned Cameron but he swallowed hard and tried to focus enough to answer. ‘Good question. I … work with weather. Lightning to be specific. I guess the best way to put it is I was nudged here.’

‘Like with voltage?’ Trace asked with a gruff laugh.

‘Yeah. Sadly, I do get nudged with voltage.’

The wolf turned those deep purple eyes on Cameron and said, ‘What for? What’s here?’

How did eyes get that colour? Cam wondered. Had he been born with them or was it a shifter thing? He had no idea; all he knew was they were the most amazing eyes he’d ever seen. And they were attached to one of the most amazing bodies he’d ever seen.

Trace cocked his head, giving a half grin. ‘Hello?’

‘Sorry! I was just looking –’ He flushed, caught in the act. ‘Your eyes, they’re amazing.’

That closed the bigger man down. He’d had a nice amused and open expression on his handsome face and that fast, it shut down like someone turning the lights off in an empty house. ‘Thanks. I guess. They’re the product of a very bad infection when I was a kid.’ He turned on his heels and kept walking without further explanation.

Cameron had to force himself to swallow. He had just complimented the first man he’d lusted after in goodness knew how many years on some sort of mutation? Something that clearly upset him when discussed. Good going, dumbass!

Cameron hurried along the patch, ducking reaching branches and praying there was no poison ivy to be found here in Divination Falls. ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t know. And I don’t know what’s here. Or why I am,’ he gasped, finally catching up.

The wolf shrugged. He shot Cameron a sideways glance and said, ‘Why would you know what’s here?’ He stopped fast and Cam found himself almost crying out from the sudden shift in motion. ‘As for why
you’re
here, how could you not know that?’

‘I never really know until it’s revealed,’ Cameron said. He kept his gaze pinned at Trace’s chin so he wouldn’t get mesmerized by those stunning eyes that clearly upset the custodian.

‘Was it me, maybe?’ Trace asked, his lips twisting into a grin. ‘Was it secretly watching me jack off? Was that your big mission?’ He took a step toward Cameron which forced the lightning rider to step back. Or get crushed against an angry wolf.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cam breathed. ‘It wasn’t my intention and then I couldn’t …’ He shook his head. His skin was tingling and he wondered if he was going to get struck. Or worse yet, if Trace would strike him. ‘You might want to step back,’ he said without thinking.

‘Why is that?’ the wolf asked, taking a step forward. ‘Am I invading your space?’

‘I get it,’ Cam stammered. ‘I invaded your privacy. I’m no better than a pervert. I know! But you could get …’

The wind kicked up. It often did when he was frightened or excited and his blood leapt in his veins and his heart beat fast with arousal. His last lover had been zinged by energy one too many times and when some of his hair had actually caught fire, he’d bailed. Calling Cameron a freak in the process. Cam wasn’t up for either Trace being hurt or thinking him a freak.

‘I might get what? And it’s OK – you invaded my privacy, now give me an excuse to invade yours.’ He pushed his face closer and Cameron caught a flickering of animal shine in the man’s eyes. They turned golden around the very iris and a fast, steady pulse beat at the base of Trace’s neck. When he took Cameron’s wrist in his big hand and squeezed, Cam felt the air rush out of him. His cock pressed eagerly to his jeans and he tried his best to focus on something –
anything!
 – besides the wolf so maybe his hard-on would abate. No such luck because Trace took his warm hand and very briefly cupped the evidence of arousal in Cam’s pants. ‘Looks like you’re still a bit worked up from last night.’

‘You were watching me in wolf form.’

‘I was.’

‘You heard me.’ It wasn’t a question. Very briefly, Cam wished for Trace to put his hand back. To touch him.

‘I did. I also smelled you and tasted you on the wind. Do you know when you come your breath does this shuddery little sigh thing?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it does.’

A gust of wind licked along Trace’s dark hair. For an instant that chocolate brown hair covered his eyes but then the wind changed direction and blew it back off his face. His face was handsome and secretive and somewhat sober. In Cameron’s heart of hearts, he wished the man would kiss him. Fuck the lightning.

‘You might want to step back,’ he said again.

‘And again, I’ll ask you why?’ Trace grinned and captured Cam’s other wrist. He tugged him in with one hard motion and they were suddenly crushed together. Cock to cock, belly to belly, chest to chest.

Cameron felt lightheaded with his sudden need. But fear overwhelmed him and he opened his mouth to warn the wolf off. Trace took it for an invitation and moved in to kiss him. His tongue was hot and sweet and tasted of coffee as it swept over Cameron’s. Cameron felt the finer bones in his wrist grind, felt his knees go saggy, felt his cock swell with expectation. His heart was a runaway force in his chest and he thought he might pass out, which was fine as long as this man kept kissing him. He had contact. He was being kissed. Skin was touching his skin and if all was right in the world, time would freeze and he could get laid.

The kiss was a little messy, clutching and desperate, and Cameron felt utterly out of his element, but he didn’t care. When the wolf released his wrists, he held onto Trace’s biceps and took every wet thrust of the wolf’s tongue. He smelled so fucking good, sunshine and the smell of the forest mixed with cinnamon and campfire. He’d always wondered what a werewolf smelled like.

He never imagined one smelled like this man.

A tingling licked at his heels and he tried to break free, but Trace walked him back so his back hit a large oak trunk. The bark bit at his exposed neck and elbows, but my God, the thrill of the roughness shot through him as fast and intense as Brother Lightning. Lust and eagerness streaked around inside him and the feel of this man – this animal – rubbing his cock against Cameron’s own had Cam feeling dizzy. But blissed out too; he could not remember the last time he’d felt so happy.

‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Trace asked, breaking the kiss just long enough to lick a hot line down Cam’s neck. It made him shiver. It made him desperate for more.

‘No.’

‘You should be. There’s a beast in me, electric boy,’ the wolf said, grinning broadly.

Cameron could see the danger there. The animal that lurked inside the man. He should have felt afraid, but he just felt drawn. He touched Trace a bit more gently than intended and he watched the man’s look shift again. Open and playful to guarded and shut down.

Cam made a bold move. He moved his hand, shaking as it was, down between their bodies and found the long, hard ridge of Trace’s cock. And he squeezed. Those amazing eyes went feral again, animal shine lighting up Trace’s gaze. ‘I have a beast in me too,’ Cameron said.

The wolf leered, shoved his body roughly against Cam’s and moved in to take his mouth again. He felt dizzy, like the earth was moving.

Trace growled at him, ‘Not yet, you don’t, but if you keep touching me like that you wi –’

That’s when the bolt hit them.

Chapter Seven

‘What the fuck?’ Trace was rubbing his hair, which had a definite static electricity about it, and wincing.

‘I’m sorry. That’s
my
beast. I can’t … Sometimes it comes when I get worked up. And I haven’t …’ Cameron sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands. This was atrocious.

‘You don’t have much of a sex life, do you?’ Trace asked.

‘No,’ Cam barked, taken off guard by the comment. The nearly hysterical laughter that flowed out of him was unsettling. It was frustrating, having put himself off in that department for so long, and now finally –
finally
! – being attracted to someone enough to make himself vulnerable and his element wanted to fry the guy.

However, Cameron noticed the wolf didn’t look too worse for wear. His eyes skittered down to find that wonderful hard-on still intact and a when he looked up Trace gave him a sly grin. The wolf shine in his eyes made Cameron’s heart skip a beat. Literally. It felt like a rabbit kicking in his chest.

‘I don’t give up easily,’ Trace said.

He moved forward again – surged, really, a wave of flesh and blood and heated skin. He crushed Cameron to the tree trunk and kissed him, shoving a hand down into Cam’s pants to find his erection. The fingers that wrapped around him were not gentle but they were skilled.

‘I –’

‘Don’t talk,’ the wolf said. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘How long?’ He couldn’t help himself. When Trace’s teeth nipped at his tongue, Cameron felt shaky with lust. He wanted so badly for this man to just turn him and take him. He didn’t care where he was or why he’d been led here. He simply wanted it to be all about him for just 20 fucking minutes.

‘Hush.’

‘How long?’ he gasped, as that rough hand slid up and down his length and Trace drove his body hard against Cam. Cameron could feel the wolf’s cock rubbing against his leg. Could feel the hot breath and muggy desire coming off him in waves.

Cameron felt utterly out of control, in the best possible way. Not like when lightning forged his path, but the way he felt when he was running really fast and the wind felt like it could possibly lift him off his feet and he could fly.

Trace pulled back to look at him, his eyes a lighter shade of lavender. Just as they’d been the night before in the storm when he’d been watching Cam through the window.

‘Thirteen years.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Shut up.’

The wolf’s eyes narrowed and Cameron realised his error. He pressed a trembling hand against Trace’s chest.

‘You beat me by three years,’ he said and watched the realisation hit the bigger man.

‘Ten?’

‘Yep.’

‘Why?’ Trace asked, moving against him once more. Curious, unafraid of the lightning and still aroused.

‘Does it matter?’

‘No,’ Trace said. ‘And neither does mine.’ He brought his mouth down over Cameron’s, licked his tongue along Cam’s willing lips. When Trace pushed his tongue deep into Cam’s mouth, Cam gave himself over to the kiss, the moment and the realisation that Brother Lightning might be back any moment. And the even stranger knowledge that Trace didn’t seem to care.

‘Will you fuck me?’ he asked. His voice was soft and shy but he’d made himself say it and that was what mattered.

Trace worked Cam’s button and slid down his zipper. He had Cameron’s jeans down to his knees in about three seconds and his own down even faster. He nipped with sharp teeth at Cameron’s throat and then said, ‘No. Now shut up.’

Cameron braced himself quickly, hands smashed to the bark of the tree behind him, when the wolf gripped his big hand around them both. Pressed cock to cock, hot flesh to hot flesh, when he started to move his hand, it was bliss. Cameron’s knees felt spongy and his breath caught in his throat. The friction was joyously unbearable. Every stroke of the big, calloused hand along his length – pressing him securely to Trace’s erection – was enough to make his head swimmy.

‘I wasn’t lying,’ Cam managed. ‘This will be a three-second jerk-off.’

‘Hush now, Lightning Boy. It’s fine. It is what it is.’

Cameron nodded as Trace clamped his free hand onto his shoulder. The fingers that dug into his flesh made him feel grounded and somehow secure. As if the bigger man were holding him tethered to earth.

He had a brief, panicky moment where he feared that lightning would strike now at the most inopportune time, but he pushed it back. It would be how it would be. And he forgot to worry when Trace leant in and kissed him, tugging his lower lip out and clamping down so that pain danced along his mouth and speared into his blood. Cameron gasped and took the tongue that was thrust against his own.

Trace’s hand squeezed and worked and stroked until Cameron found himself thrusting up into that grip and Trace was doing the same. Driving themselves together, tangled up in that kiss, there was a moment of perfect suspended time and then Cameron broke first. Shuddering shamelessly and thoroughly against the oak and grasping Trace’s hip to keep from melting into the ground.

The wolf lasted long enough to gather the slippery, opalescent evidence of Cam’s pleasure and use it as lube. A moment later, lavender eyes locked on the still-stunned Cameron, and Trace came. The growl that emerged from him set the fine hairs on Cam’s scalp on end.

The wolf turned toward the path as if he heard something, and then he pulled away and started to button up. ‘Hurry up and put yourself together,’ he said. ‘They’re coming for you.’

‘Oh,’ Cam said, exhaling finally. He’d been holding his breath.

Trace glanced at him. ‘Is that it?’

Cameron nodded, making sure his pants were zipped and he didn’t look as flustered and – fuck it – happy as he felt. ‘Yeah. They’re going to show me where the bleed-throughs happened.’

‘Hunh.’ The wolf leant against the tree and waited.

Footfalls finally started to sound along the path. Cam could only marvel at this man’s hearing. And strength. And yes, hotness factor. He smiled, but turned his head so Trace wouldn’t see.

‘Hunh? What does hunh mean?’

Another lazy shrug of big, broad shoulders. Cameron couldn’t help but stare at Trace’s hands as he rested them against his work pants. One of those hands had just been on him – gripping him tight and holding his cock flush to this other man’s – and it had been good.

‘Hello?’ Trace called softly.

Cam’s head snapped up and he tried to laugh it off. ‘Yeah. Sorry. My mind wandered. You were going to say?’

‘I was going to say, when they’re done with you, you come find me.’

‘Oh, is that –?’

Trace’s purple eyes narrowed and a low growl tore out of him. ‘No. That was a one-time thing. That was … I shouldn’t have done that,’ he snapped. ‘But come find me. I’ll show you where
my
bleed-through happened.’

Cameron swallowed his disappointment. He didn’t even want to allow himself to feel the regret that filled his centre. ‘Oh –’

That was as far as he got when Sheriff Slaughter and Eliot came running up. ‘Did you feel it?’ she asked.

‘See anything?’ the sheriff blurted.

‘We … No,’ Cameron said, and he felt more than saw the wolf smirk.

‘You didn’t feel that tremor?’ Eliot yelped.

‘I did. I just –’

‘It was so light,’ Trace interrupted. ‘We weren’t sure we felt what we felt.’

Well, that was a loaded statement, Cam thought. I certainly felt what I felt.

He pressed his lips together and refused to look at Trace. He finally gets contact with another man, a man he actually finds intriguing and handsome and, yes, just plain fuckable, and the guy’s denying the chemistry five minutes later. Is this what wolves were like?

‘Tremor,’ the sheriff said, nodding. He cocked his head and studied them, but at the last minute said nothing, just pressed his lips tight and tried not to smile.

‘I’m off to fix that fence,’ Trace said. ‘See you back at the good father’s home for wayward freaks,’ he said to Cameron and off he went.

Cameron rubbed his forehead hard and tried not to scream. Frustration didn’t come close to covering how he felt.

‘Did the tremor have any significance?’ Then it hit him: when the tremor hit, when he felt as if the earth was moving, the lightning had hit. But he’d been too busy getting his rocks off and so what? So what if he let it be about him for five whole minutes?

He gritted his teeth against his internal temper tantrum and waited for them to explain.

‘It hit and we got a call from up at the Simon place that someone saw a bleed-through.’

‘Tentacles?’ he asked, feeling suddenly exhausted.

‘More like claws and wings.’

Cameron shivered a bit. This was very much like a waking nightmare.

‘But everyone’s OK?’ he ask. When he bent to tie his shoe, a minor shock rolled through his fingers. The wolf had not reacted to the blast from Brother Lightning. If anything it amused him. My God, was there hope for –?

‘Everyone’s fine,’ Eliot said. She cocked her head. ‘Are you?’ His eyes only darted toward the path once, but he’d forgotten, just for a minute, that she was an empath. ‘Oh honey, he’s a hard case. He has a really … terrible background.’

Cameron looked up swiftly. ‘What do you mean?’

She sighed. ‘Not for me to say. Let’s just say, someone he cared for was hurt long ago. He blames himself and he’s locked himself away in that church for over a damn decade. And the Father watches over him. When he called it a place for freaks, he meant himself. He didn’t really mean you.’

‘But I’m a freak,’ Cam said, laughing. He meant for it to sound self-mocking. Instead, it sounded dreadful.

Eliot shook her head. ‘You’re not, and neither is he, for God’s sake.’

‘Back to the tremor,’ Slaughter said. ‘Sorry to be a jerk about it, but –’

Cameron shook his head. ‘No, no. That’s what matters. Do you want to walk me to the closest? Or the first?’

‘The first makes sense,’ Eliot said.

‘When was it?’ He followed them back the way he’d already walked, ducking the same branches, stumbling over the same roots.

‘Not long after the events at the tavern,’ Slaughter said. ‘About a month and a half ago.’

‘Do tremors always come before?’

Eliot looked at the sheriff and something passed between them. She finally looked at Cam and answered. ‘Well, the first time, we weren’t really sure that we’d felt a tremor. We thought it was maybe a low-passing military plane or an explosion out in town – or …’ She shrugged. ‘Something.’

‘But?’ he asked, trying to keep from falling and breaking his damn neck.

‘But every time it happens, we get another one, and they’re getting –’

‘They’re getting stronger,’ the sheriff said, cutting her off. ‘We don’t know, but we’re afraid that’s because the creatures are getting stronger.’

‘Or figuring out how to get in,’ Eliot said.