Howling Mad: A paranormal wolf shifter romance (Badlands Book 2) (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Byron’s hair was shorn into a choppy crop. He kept running his hands through it, unused to the short length, which made it stand on end in all directions. It was oddly endearing. And as beautiful as his long hair had been, framing his face and curling against his collarbone, the new haircut suited him. It drew attention to the sharp angles of his cheekbones and the amused, sensual tilt of his lips. Without his long hair softening his features, his pale eyes stood out even more in his face, framed by those dark lashes. He looked starkly beautiful and dangerous, like a bad angel.

She caught herself staring and looked away.

The motel bathroom was just as run-down and dingy as Naomi had expected – offcuts of linoleum on the floor, chipped porcelain, rust marks in the tub. The single towel, wrapped around her and barely covering her, was worn so thin she could have read a newspaper through it. Not that she’d want to, when there’d probably be a picture of her right underneath the headline.

Especially if anyone saw this. The towel, the linoleum, the tiles and the tub were streaked and smeared with red hair dye. Her hands were covered with red hair dye. Byron has smears of crimson on his chest and arms. It looked like the scene of a very messy murder.

She touched her hair, which she’d rinsed thoroughly, squeezed dry and knotted on the top of her head.

“Do you really think it’ll work? I mean, all I’ve done is change the color of my hair. I don’t think Jimmy would feel threatened by my uncanny chameleon-like powers of disguise.”

The dye splashed and smeared all over the bathroom reminded her of an art therapy session with the difficult teen, when they’d been messing around with poster paints. He’d played invisibly around the room leaving an indigo handprint there and a vivid smear of crimson there – even dotting the end of Naomi’s nose with blue paint – until they’d both been giggling helplessly and he’d finally agreed to come out of hiding. She’d felt she was making real progress with him. That had been only a few days ago. How had she ended up here, on the run with a wild Alpha wolf?

Byron stripped off the flimsy plastic gloves that had come with the box of hair dye and balled them up. “Trust me. Most people make terrible eye witnesses. They’ll be looking for a guy in an orange jumpsuit and a girl with dark hair, and when we don’t fit that description, they’ll look right past us.”

She decided not to think about how he knew that, just sudsed up a sponge and knelt to tackle the stains on the floor around the tub. “Even so, we’d better clean this up. Even the kid at the front desk could probably join the dots to work out someone’s dyed their hair in here. And you need to get some shades. Your eyes are too distinctive.”

Byron leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his naked chest. “If we’re disguising distinctive features,” he said, critically assessing the view of her backside pointing towards him, “what are we going to do about that delicious heart-shaped a—”

He spluttered as the wet, soapy sponge hit him smack in the face.

Naomi scrambled to her feet, grinning, then squealed as he lunged towards her, seizing her by the waist and swinging her towards him. Riots and newscasts and stolen motorcycles fled from her head as she struggled in his arms. He sat on the edge of the tub, manhandled her across his lap, and held her there, wriggling fiercely and trying to catch her breath between fits of mirth.

As well as being thin and worn, the towel was too small, and in the undignified position Byron had wrestled her into, it left her backside exposed. She gasped as Byron flirted his fingers over the pink petals of her sex, then cried out in shock when he drew back his hand and brought it down with a sharp
smack
on her bare bottom.

“Ow!” she protested. “Let go of me, you animal.” But it was half-hearted. The fact was, the spreading warmth where his palm had struck her was doing strange things to her, setting up a fluttering in her lower belly. Slippery juices trickled from her core, and he dipped his fingers between her lips, bringing them to his mouth and sucking the honey from them. She was very aware of the eagerness of his thick erection where it dug into her belly.

“Animal, is it?” he chided her. “I'm not the one who needs a lesson in playing nicely.” And he smacked her bottom again, then ran his palm over the singing flesh and down to her pussy, where he pushed two fingers inside her. She was soaking wet with arousal and desire, and he worked them easily back and forth. She groaned and pushed back against his hand, eager for more, and he growled and shifted restlessly beneath her.

He pulled her upright, yanking her back against him so his lips were beside her ear, and he growled, “Do you want to see how much of an animal I can be?” It was a promise, not a threat.

“Oh god, yes.” She yanked at the towel and let it drop away.

She moaned helplessly, panting with desire as he pushed her down to the floor, positioning her on her hands and knees, presenting her wet pink sex to him.

When he entered her, it wasn’t gentle. It was hard, and fierce, and possessive, and everything she needed. He covered her spine with his warm body, rolling his hips as he pushed into her over and over again. Each thrust jerked her forward, and she braced herself with her hands, absorbing every impact of his body and moaning her encouragement each time he buried himself deep inside her. She arched her back, pushing her sex back against him, changing the angle so his cock was drawn against her G-spot every time he withdrew. Each time he thrust forward, he rocked her to the core.

He growled as she tightened around him and reared back, gripping her hips so he could plunge into her harder and faster.

As she spasmed around him, shaking with the force of her orgasm, he pulled her back against him and clapped his hand over her mouth, muffling her cries of release. She felt his heart thundering against her back as he came too, muting his long, toe-curling growl against her naked shoulder.

Chapter Eight

Byron had found an open-air market in a dubious part of town, where he’d got chatting to an old guy called Clem, whose lingering looks towards the bar had got more and more frequent as the morning had worn on. His florist stall wasn’t exactly doing roaring business – probably because of the smell of whisky leaking out of his pores and overwhelming the more delicate scents of his wares – so when Byron offered to mind the stall for a few minutes while he used the facilities, he quickly accepted.

“I don’t know about this,” Naomi said as the old guy strode unsteadily away in the direction of the bar. “What can we do in ten minutes anyway?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Byron reminded her. “We’re out of cash, and we can’t use your cards. You’re on the run too, now. We need money to survive until I can get us somewhere safe, where we can lie low and work out what to do next.” He nodded towards the bar. “Besides, he’ll be gone for hours – probably all day. He’ll be back when his money’s gone or his liver gives out, whichever comes first.”

“I guess…I guess I thought you wouldn’t have any compunction about just taking what we needed.” She hastily added, “Sorry. It’s just…”

“I know,” he replied. “Criminal. Kidnapper. On the run from the forces of justice and goodness and flowers and baby bunnies. I guess this is where you find out my terrible secret. I don’t steal unless I have no choice, I don’t rob banks, and I don’t mug little old ladies. I actually have some moral standards.”

Naomi knew her face must be red enough to clash with her new hair color. She felt horrible. He’d laughed it off, but she thought she’d seen a flash of hurt deep in those unearthly silver-blue eyes of his. But what on earth was she supposed to think? This was a guy so mad, bad and dangerous that the wardens just knew him as Byron. He’d kidnapped her from a secure facility during a prison riot.

But the way he’d touched her…

There was a long moment of awkward silence, during which Naomi sold a bunch of carnations to a dapper-looking elderly gentleman, who handed over his money with palsied fingers. She looked around for somewhere to put the bill, and settled for tucking it underneath an enormous tub of rather sad, blowsy-looking roses.

“Besides,” Byron continued, “it’s much more fun this way, and nobody gets cheated who doesn’t deserve it. Just wait – you’ll see.” He grinned wickedly at her, spread his arms wide, and said, “Laaaadies and gentlemen! Gather round for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get your hands on a dose of Doctor Dash’s medicinal marvel…”

He went into a line of patter that tripped off his tongue as though he hadn’t spent the last three years being shuttled between solitary confinement and the high-security wing, where he’d snarled at anyone who approached. He’d barely spoken a dozen words during his time at the Dynamic Earth facility, but now he was a showman, dizzying in his roguish charm.

“Not you, madam,” he said to an elderly lady who’d wandered up and was listening intently to his patter, though her rheumy eyes were a little confused. “A lady as beautiful as you doesn’t need pills or potions.” He handed her a flower from Clem’s stall with a bow and a flourish, and she accepted it with a smiling blush that made her look twenty years younger.

He resumed his sales pitch, quick-witted and fascinating and so obviously a scoundrel. And to her astonishment, people
listened
. He wasn’t selling snake-oil, he told them. He wasn’t peddling panaceas or placebos.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, everything I have here today has been rigorously tested and proved to work in clinical trials identical to those demanded by the FDA.
And they
believed
him.

And what’s more, it was true. Because what he was selling was baby aspirin.

And his customers, she noticed after watching him for a while, selected themselves. Teenage boys out to impress their girlfriends were gently ushered away with their egos intact. The merely curious were diverted and sent away laughing.

As for the serious customers…there was a certain kind of person who wanted the berserker strength and superhuman healing abilities he hinted his pills would provide, while never actually saying it. Large, scarred types in expensive-looking suits that must have been hand-tailored to accommodate their steroid-swollen muscles. Ferrety, shifty-eyed types whose furtive attitudes screamed that whatever they intended to do with their new-found strength, it would be illegal and deeply unpleasant.

They were being cheated, yes, but she couldn’t help feeling that the world would be a better place for the fact that all the pills would do for them was cure a headache. And the money kept mounting up.

Byron had just completed an exchange with a narrow-eyed man with tattoos that marked him out as part of the Jackal Mafia, and who was going to be able to treat minor pain and low-grade fever in any number of his goons, when he whirled around and his hand shot out.

He was holding a skinny, dishevelled girl by the wrist. She wriggled and tried to get free. She had a hard little face and there was a blankness behind her eyes that made Naomi shiver with misery. She was about to step forward, but Byron whipped up the girl’s sleeve, exposing an ugly patchwork of bruises that extended up her arm. He growled, but it was obvious his anger was not directed at the child. He gentled his grip and crouched down in front of her.

“It’s okay, he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. You were trying to pick my pocket.”

“I wasn’t!” she protested, but when he released her wrist she didn’t run. She looked down at her feet and kicked the dirt. “It’s okay for you,” she said. “You’re big and strong already. You don’t need any magic potion.”

Byron studied the little girl seriously. She didn’t look away. “I’m big and strong,” he agreed. “But I remember what it’s like to be little and scared. Who hurt you?”

She shrugged.

“Your dad?”

She looked away.

“Okay,” Byron said, and his voice was low and soothing. “Listen to me. The pills I’ve got won’t make you strong or keep you safe. But I know some people who’ll stick up for you and make sure nobody ever hurts you again.”

He pulled a wad of notes from inside his jacket and handed it to the child, folding her hands around it. It probably represented half of what he’d made. “Tuck this away somewhere safe. Safe! There are pickpockets around.” He grinned that heart-melting grin of his, and the girl gave him a tremulous smile in response. “There’s a bus station a couple of streets over. You need to get a bus over to Greenville, and when you get there, you ask for Mae and James, got it?”

She nodded.

“Good. The people there will keep you safe, find you somewhere to live. Some of them are kind of strange-looking.” He thought for a moment. “Also you’ll learn some really bad language. But they won’t hurt you, and they’ll make sure nobody else does either. Okay?”

The little girl searched his face, as if trying to decide whether she could trust him. Naomi had no doubt she’d been caught picking pockets before, and she’d expected a curse or a blow. Not…this.

Byron took her by the shoulders, turned her around firmly and gave her a shove. “Off you go!” he said.

She darted away in the direction of the bus station and disappeared into the crowd.

And then he slipped back into the persona of Doctor Dash as though it had been nothing.

“Just who
are
you?” Naomi muttered under her breath.

By the end of the day, they had enough money to stay on the run…and Naomi no longer knew whether she believed Byron should turn himself in, even if she could clear her name. He wasn’t the person she’d thought he was. The person she’d been told he was.

Clem would return to his stall to find enough money to pickle himself for a week – some of it even from Naomi’s attempts to sell his flowers.

The girl was on her way somewhere safe, even if it sounded an
unconventional
kind of safe.

Byron picked her up and twirled her around, laughing, exhilarated by his performance, and she shrieked with delight.

Byron the loner, Byron the lover, Byron the showman…which one was the real him?