All of his looks were just as intrusive as his nose had been.
She carefully swung her feet to the floor and stood. Alternating her eyes among the three of them. The scarred wolf salivated and crouched as she stepped closer to the bedroom door. Chloe saw the smooth black hair on the back of his neck shift and rise at her movement and she froze. The brush of the alpha’s soft hair against the side of her leg as he passed her made her jump.
The alpha approached his scarred brother with his tail high and a cockiness to his walk. The scarred one stood his ground and Chloe thought she even saw him straighten his spine a bit, despite his being obviously reprimanded by his superior.
The alpha let out one long, low growl and Scar settled his rump back to the floor. The dogs stared at each other almost hatefully.
Chloe glanced over at the runt and smiled when the animal wagged his bushy tail at her and panted out a long pink tongue in greeting.
“Hey boy,” Chloe murmured as she kept her eyes on the adorable smaller dog and stepped to the door. The runt’s wagging grew more insistent and furious as she spoke to him. From the corner of her eye she could still see the alpha and his brother. Still engrossed in a silent, natural battle of dominance that could turn into necessary violence if the subordinate dog chose to push the matter. Chloe suspected the scar was the result of just such a test of placement in the pack.
Their preoccupation with their hierarchy allowed her time to reach behind the door and grip the smooth wooden stock. And it allowed her time to check the chamber.
The poor runt’s ignorance of her intentions and his enthusiasm for her human affection allowed her to set him right in her sights.
And it allowed her to place her shot exactly where it needed to be to take him down.
Chapter Two
Caine’s fist connecting with Luke’s jaw sounded like one of the willow pines cracking in the wind. Luke stumbled only slightly before bringing his own fist up to give his twin an equally snapping blow. The wet, creek side ground caught both of their still naked but now much less hairy bodies as they tumbled in a whir of animal passion and human rage and brotherly love and hatred.
“She’s got Lee!”
Caine could sense the severity of his brother’s feelings of injustice in his words and each time the man’s fist found flesh. His own fists were pummeling more in self-defense and the necessary infliction of pain than anger. Luke had to learn to wait his turn, regardless of the situation and regardless of his needs. He had to be taught that he mated only when and with whom Caine said. And it was Caine’s job to teach him this.
“You stood there and let her shoot him!”
Caine heard the words come from Luke’s mouth just as another angry blow came from his fist. The strike was barely deflected and Caine reached around to work his arm around Luke’s neck. A swift kick between the legs came as his reward.
Ugly human anger did cause Caine to hit his brother this time. And his words were the result of the same feelings of rage.
“This is your fault, Luke!”
Luke struggled to get his neck out of Caine’s grasp, but soon settled into a writhing mass of hateful muscle and unaccepted shame. He had never been able to beat his brother.
Not in a fight, at least.
Caine loosened his grip enough to allow his brother some air. Unfortunately, it allowed the man to speak.
“If you had fucked the bitch like you were supposed to, none of this would have happened.”
Caine fought the urge to snap his twin’s neck at the statement.
Which bitch was he talking about?
“She wasn’t ovulating yet,” Caine snapped and debated his next statement before making it. “And besides, she didn’t seem like the others,” Caine growled into his brother’s ear.
Luke blew out a grunt of disgust. “They never do in your opinion, do they, Caine?”
Caine’s grip tightened again but then released completely. He shoved Luke away from his body and wiped the trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
“We don’t always have to be complete animals,” he stated to the back of Luke’s head. “I don’t see why it has to be unpleasant for her, especially if she wouldn’t have conceived tonight. And I think if this one was given some time…”
He stopped because he couldn’t believe the words were coming from his own mouth. So soon after he’d sworn not to let history repeat itself, Caine was considering breaking yet another rule. And this was one that he himself had made. The urge he felt inside himself to let the woman in the cabin have a choice in what happened to her was stronger and more insistent than any he felt due to his animal ancestry.
“We can’t afford for you to be weak this time, Caine. You can’t feel compassion for this one,” Luke reminded. “You’ve said it a hundred times yourself. Compassion won’t fill the belly of a predator.”
He
had
used those very words. And Caine also knew that compassion wasn’t going to allow him or his brothers to breed as quickly and as often as they needed to in order to ensure their pack’s survival.
“I understand our situation and our needs,” Luke snapped, causing Caine to growl at his brother’s insolent tone. “And I would hope the alpha of our pack understood it as well.”
Caine stepped forward, causing Luke’s stance to falter just an inch or so. The brothers eyed one another. “I understand more than you’d like to think I do, Luke. I understand the bulk of our father’s ways. And I understand that I don’t care for them,” he stated. “The ways of our kind are dated and I believe that it’s time for some changes in the way the pack is run.”
“We’re animals, Caine…”
“But we’re part human as well,” Caine interrupted, earning him a grumble from his twin. He lowered his voice before posing his next question. “Don’t you ever crave things like compassion and love?” he asked. “Doesn’t the human side of you ever need anything?”
Luke scoffed and crossed his arms. “The only human emotions I crave are those of the cruelty and kindness that come with the taste of freshly spilled blood,” he growled. “We can’t afford the other emotions, Caine. Full blood humans have courts and laws that protect property,” he noted.
“We have only our pack.”
Caine knew this. And he knew that his pack was in danger of losing its territory. The realization that his brother was partially right in his way of thinking made Caine’s eyes swing around to meet his twin’s. The look on Luke’s face told Caine that his rage, the human emotion that had often been this wolf’s weakest trait, was still controlling him.
Luke nodded. “You think she understood us, don’t you?” he asked sarcastically. “You think that she somehow knew what we were.” He smiled before raising his eyebrow at his brother. “I’ll tell you what she understood, Caine. She understood that Lee was the most vulnerable. And she understood that we were too preoccupied with trying to piss on each other to see what she was doing with that gun.”
Caine shook his head but pulled his eyes to the side to look at his brother. “She won’t hurt him.”
Luke grunted a laugh. “You don’t know that.”
Caine shook his head harder this time. “She won’t.” Caine kept his eyes locked with his brother’s.
Luke motioned with his hands and shook his head.
“She shot him!”
“It was a tranquilizer gun,” Caine stated. Almost convincingly.
Luke seemed to hear the doubt. He grumbled and narrowed his eyes.
“You saw it?”
Caine shook his head.
“It sounded like an air rifle.” Caine shook his head again. “It wasn’t a real gun.”
“Caine, he dropped like a…”
“He’s all right, Luke!”
The men stared at each other with a hatred that only their love for one another could keep from killing them or driving them apart. Caine finally broke the silence again. Quietly this time. Attempting to soothe some of his twin’s rage. And his pain.
“He’s fine.”
He nodded and watched as Luke’s head slowly began to mimic his own.
“And I’m telling you, she somehow understood.”
Caine watched his brother’s face relax somewhat. A scary sight this soon after one of their battles. For Luke, the quiet always came after the storm. And when it happened this soon, it always led to more bad weather.
“Like Meagan knew,” Luke said calmly. “Like Meagan understood us, right?”
Caine cautiously kept his eyes on his brother at the mention of his late wife’s name. The smile that curled Luke’s lips caused the scar on his cheek to pucker and distort. The scar, or more precisely what it represented, and three minutes were the only things that had ever come between the men in the nearly thirty years they had lived.
Luke pointed to his scar. “You see this, Caine?
This
is what distinguishes the beta from the alpha in this pack.” Caine’s eyes avoided the scar. “And not a day goes by that I don’t thank God that you had the strength to do this to me.”
Caine’s eyes fought looking at his twin. Luke had earned his injury with his impatience to breed with Caine’s first bitch. And not a day went by that Caine hated the fact that he’d had to disfigure him in order to prevent him from ever posing as the alpha male again.
“
This
is what being the alpha is about,” Luke dragged his finger down the scar. “Doing whatever it takes to protect the pack,” he added. “Regardless of whatever human emotions that alpha feels.”
Luke’s words jarred Caine with their inaccuracy. Only occasionally did he admit to himself that his anger had been more over the possibility that Luke had made love to Meagan than because he’d gone against the rules of the pack.
“So, tell me, Caine,” Luke tightened his arms across his chest, “do you think this bitch is going to understand when you tell her that her job is to breed for us?” Luke snorted a laugh. “Think she’ll understand when you admit to her that we were both going to fuck her tonight regardless of whether or not she had been so understanding of us?” The chuckle that came from Luke’s throat was demonic.
“I think I’d save that minor revelation for the honeymoon, little brother.”
Caine found a place beside his brother’s gaze to watch. Three minutes and one woman. The only things that had ever come between them. Until now, it would seem. But Luke’s breathing told him that he wasn’t finished purging his pain and adding to that list of wedges yet.
“Think she’s going to understand when you flip her over and fuck her like she’s a German Shepherd? Or when you bite into her hard enough to draw blood when you come? And when you get aroused again by licking the very wound you inflicted upon her?”
Caine took deep breaths to keep his anger in check. He knew that power, true power at least, sometimes meant letting someone else appear to have it for moments in time. Caine knew this because he was the alpha. And he was the alpha because he knew it.
Human ego and rage, Caine could control. And this thought gave him hope in his battle against his other human weaknesses.
Like the ones coursing through his human heart and mind as he thought about the female he’d just pleased.
“Caine, do you honestly think the woman is not going to freak out when you tell her what we are?” His look questioned Caine as harshly as his words had. But Caine remained silent at his brother’s anger. “That wasn’t your wife underneath you. Finding a bitch who enjoys being fucked like Meagan enjoyed it isn’t going to happen again,” he grumbled. Caine’s continued silence seemed to force Luke to continue.
“We have to breed, Caine. And we have to breed soon,” Luke nodded. “The new packs are announcing every day that cubs have been conceived.” Caine saw from the corner of his eye that Luke was holding up his hand, all five fingers extended.
“Five months, Caine.” He nodded. “That smell has come down wind every four weeks for five months now and you still haven’t mounted her. I know you like the sickening, emotional aspects of mating, Caine, but we don’t have the luxury of waiting until you find another bitch who enjoys the way you like to fuck, little brother.”
Caine finally brought his eyes to meet his twin’s.
“She seemed to enjoy the way I fucked her tonight,” he stated with a growl. “How many other women do you know could come with a wolf grinding against her clit?”
Luke threw up his hands and shook his head, and then grinned a quiet, challenging grin at his superior.
“You know, I think you’re right, Caine. I think maybe she did know.”
The sarcastic tone of Luke’s voice made the human hair on Caine’s arms stand up. And it forced him to look back into his brother’s eyes just in time for him to finish his verbal assault. Luke cocked his head to the side and the scar puckered even more under the increased smile.
“Just like I happen to think that your wife knew exactly who fucked her that night.”
* * * * *
Did I finally score?
Lee opened his eyes just enough to see the tail of a housecoat. The fur throw underneath him was wet and his ass hurt like something really awful had just happened to him.
She was standing right next to him. He could smell her, although he couldn’t get his eyes to focus enough to see up her robe. So Lee closed his eyes and tried to remember what had happened to his poor ass. Her voice droned on in the background but he didn’t think she was talking to him. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, he decided.
He was still too stoned to answer even if she was.
“Yes, I checked him over thoroughly. Temp’s normal. No. No worms, no fleas. Nothing.”
Temp? Worms?
I didn’t score.
Lee let out a long doggy breath and rode the wave of teenage sexual energy and frustration that seemed to be very adept at getting him into trouble. Had he not been so enamored by her smile and voice when she’d spoken to him, he’d be at home in his bed right now. Looking at his nudie magazines with two good, clear, human teenager eyes. He could have transformed back into a boy, er…a man again and whacked off under the covers while he thought about her.
And his ass would most likely feel much less violated.
He grumbled and tried to raise his head.
“Yeah, he’s coming out of it now. I know. It pisses me off, too. I hate when people try and make them into pets. But at least they didn’t have him destroyed.”
Lee’s ears perked up and he managed to raise his head and look at her. That smile came back to him and he felt his fucking tail begin to wag.
There was no hope for him or his raging hormones.
“I don’t know where they came from. The collar on this one just says Barklee.”
Lee started to smile at the sound of his name in her voice, but then he remembered that she thought that he was a wolf.
And wolves don’t smile.
And wolves don’t whistle at pretty women or flirt with ladies almost old enough to be his mom no matter how damned good they smell or look or sound. And smart wolves especially don’t try once again to see up the robe of the woman his twenty-nine year old brother had fallen in love with just seconds after Lee himself had.
But of course, Lee had never been known for his intelligence. Or his impulse control.
His alpha brother, Damon Alexander Caine, Caine to his family and friends, was a horror writer. A brilliant author of fiction who had been on the best seller lists time and again without anyone ever knowing his true identity. His stories of werewolves and shapeshifters had been hailed as some of the greatest works of modern fiction ever produced with their mixture of erotic content and subtle natural explanations for situations that could have been made lurid. A fact that their entire family had always laughed about since Caine was simply writing down his family’s history and selling it to the public.
Caine was the alpha because he was smart like that. And cunning. And the most levelheaded, got-it-together man who had ever lived other than their father. Well, that and he was also the toughest son of a bitch who had ever lived. The only one who had ever come close to whipping him had been Lee’s oldest brother.
Lucius Bartholomew Caine.
Luke.
Psychopath by nature.
Cop by profession.
Best goddamned detective the police force had ever known. Could sniff out the week old trail of a child molester and then swear to Holy God that the guy’s neck was already in that shape when he found him.
For some reason, no one ever argued with his claim that child molesters were by nature self mutilators.
Meaner than a bag full of premenstrual rattlesnakes. And even less friendly to anyone other than one person as far as Lee could ever remember. A full blood, believe it or not. And the only human, full or mixed blood, he had ever loved.
His brother’s wife.
Lee sighed again as he thought about Meagan. Luke had loved her as much as Caine had. Hell, they’d all loved her.
Just like they would all end up loving this one, he suspected.
“No, I’ll just keep him here with me for now. I’m not going back into the city for another month or so.”
Lee smiled despite his telling his mouth not to. The bitch looked down at his expression and smiled back questioningly.
His tailed thumped in drunken appreciation against the hardwood floor.
“No, I’m not teaching this summer either. I have to be here when the wolf cubs are born so I can tag them and make sure they’re healthy.”
Cubs?
Lee watched her move to lean against the table behind her. He rolled over to his back and managed to get his head below the tail of her robe.
Bingo!
But then her foot. Oh God her foot! It came up and rubbed his belly…right…oh God!
Right there!
Lee couldn’t keep his eyes open to look. He was too busy feeling the happy spot on his belly that she teased with her toes as she stood talking on the phone.
Wolves don’t smile and wolves don’t whistle at pretty women.
But what nineteen-year-old human boy gets to do this?
Lee let his eyes roll back in his head and thought about all of the lectures he was going to get when Caine found out that he had allowed this to go on. It was worse than whacking off under the covers. It was more vile than sniffing Anita Jameson’s chair after third period English class.
This was the heroin of a dog’s world. The catnip of canines.
And Lee was acting like a total crack whore.
With his brother’s future bitch, no less.
He could see the scar across his boyishly gorgeous face now. Caine was going to be furious with him. And he would most likely put a beating on his poor, already violated ass like never before. Luke would even join in on this thrashing. It would most likely be worse than it had been when he’d announced his professional plans to his over-achieving, brilliant beyond any IQ test brothers.
William Barklee Caine was a drummer. In a rock band, of course. The Doggy Styles. Lee himself had come up with the name.
And he had finally managed to stop chewing up his drumsticks. Although Caine did still throw one occasionally to catch him off guard. Lee hated when the urge to fetch came out without his wanting it to. It was more embarrassing than morning wood at band camp.
But her toes made him forget about embarrassment or past pain suffered at the teeth and hands of his brothers. As well as the pain he would suffer at the end of his pleasure. Lee let her rub his belly as he listened to her conversation. And as he fought the urge to lean over and lick himself.
“No, we can’t use him. Even for stud.”
Yes you can! I’m a stud!
“No, we can’t. I don’t care how hard up we get. I’m not passing this defect along.”
Hey? What the…
“Yes, it will show up again. It’s genetic.”
Lee rolled over to his stomach, surprising even himself with the control he was learning over his pleasure urges. But his manhood or doghood or something to do with his sexual prowess was being questioned. And Caine would beat him even more severely for letting that go unchallenged.
“I may just take him home with me.”
Oh please, God! Oh yes!
“I’ll have to housebreak him though.”
Not a problem, babe.
“And he’ll have to have shots.”
Just stay away from my ass and we’re good. Okay?
And I’ll definitely have to have him neutered.”
Neu…
Her smile turned into a laugh.
“Maybe I’ll get it half price since there’s only one to cut off.”
Lee swallowed hard enough to pass a hairball.
“I know. An ascended testicle in a wolf is rare. Weird, isn’t it?”
No, it’s not weird! It’s huge! I didn’t need two of them! Dad told me that’s how I was supposed to be and that there was nothing for me to be ashamed of.
Her hand came down and scratched. Behind the ears. Lee knew that his wounded wolfish pride should have made him bite her fingers, but goddamn, this woman was good. And she knew so many great places to rub!
But now, she also knew things that Lee had never wanted anyone other than his family and his future wife to know.
He could see the Rolling Stone cover now.
Barklee Caine: Two Grammys, One Nut.
He lay down and whined at the thought. And then shivered in disgusted excitement when her fingers ran down his ribs and patted his rump.