Tempted by Renee Rose
13
LANDRY
Fates,the urge to mark Caitlyn was so strong. The lights in the room winked and spun as I came inside our sweet mate. Wade’s eyes glowed pure green, his wolf right on the surface, dying to claim our mate. I was sure mine were yellow. I’d felt the instant my canines had descended, ready to sink into her shoulder and permanently embed my scent—our shared scent—into her flesh.
She lay sprawled over Wade’s chest now, panting, eyes closed, lips parted, looking like a goddess.
I stroked her hair back from her shoulder and leaned forward to trail kisses along her back. “Are you okay, sugar?”
“Yes,” she murmured, the corners of her lips turning up, even though her lids remained closed.
“That was incredible,” I said.
“Yes, it was.” Now her lids fluttered open.
I eased out of her and went to ditch the condom and get a washcloth to clean her up. I waited until my eyes had changed back to brown before I returned. Wade had rolled them both to their sides and was holding her. I handed him the washcloth and lay down on her other side. I loved that she was between us. It had been a long three days without her. But her scent mixed with the musky tang of sex soothed me and my wolf—only a little bit because I longed to see my mark on her shoulder.
“Are you hungry, beautiful?” I asked.
“Mmm. Not yet.” She snuggled back against me, which only made me hard again, ready to take her once more.
Her phone rang from her purse in the living room and she sighed. “That’s the ringtone I have set for my parents,” she said.
“Do you need to get it?” She didn’t sound thrilled that they were calling.
Another sigh. “I should. I’ve been dodging them all week, and they get antsy about me going out in the field alone.”
Wade cleared his throat. “Alone?”
She ran her fingertips across the hair on Wade’s chest. “I haven’t talked to them since I was leaving for West Springs last weekend. They probably think I fell off a cliff or something at this point.”
The phone stopped ringing, then instantly started again. “Gah. I’d better answer that.”
I rolled off the bed so she could get up, and found her phone in her purse in the living room. “Catch.” I tossed it to her.
She caught it easily—our mate had excellent reflexes for a human—and answered it. “Hi, Mom.”
“Caitlyn! Where are you? We’ve been worried sick.” With my shifter hearing, it was easy to make out her mother’s voice on the other end. Not that our mate knew that.
“I’m up in West Springs, tagging wolves.”
I winced at the words tagging wolves. Just hearing it made my stomach roil. We had to get this thing sorted out right away. I couldn’t take another weekend of leading Caitlyn on a wild goose chase to not find wolves, nor could I allow her to find and tag any more.
“Well, I don’t like it. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Actually…” Caitlyn shot a glance at me. She looked so beautiful standing naked in Wade’s bedroom, her skin still flushed from sex, her chestnut hair wild. “I made some, um, friends up here.”
“Friends?” I mouthed indignantly, which made her smile.
Her mother didn’t like that either. “Well, be careful. How do you know they’re safe?”
Caitlyn gave a long-suffering sigh, and now I understood why she’d been avoiding calling her mom back. “They’re safe, Mom. I’m safe. Everything’s fine.”
“I ran into Dale Dickman the other day. You know, the principal of Oakview? The private school?”
“Uh huh.” Caitlyn rolled her eyes and I smirked.
“Caitlyn, he’s looking for a science teacher for this fall! He had to fire the last one, I guess the guy did something improper, I don’t know.”
Another eye roll. “And?”
“And?” her mother snapped, clearly offended. “You should apply! It has great benefits. It pays more than what you’re making there as a post-doc—I already found out.”
“Mom, teaching high school science is the last thing I’d ever do! I have a PhD!” Caitlyn paced away from me, giving me a view of that gorgeous little ass of hers. “My research is my life. Even if I had to do it for half the salary I’m making now, I would.”
“But we hate you being clear across the country. The things you do for those wolves are risky. Camping alone. What if you got attacked by one of them? Maybe you should carry a gun.”
I followed Caitlin back into the bedroom, shamelessly listening in on her conversation.
“I do carry a gun, Mom. A tranq gun.” She stopped, her shoulders dropping. “Listen, I need to get going, my friends are waiting for me.”
This time it was Wade who spread his hands and mouthed, “Friends?” with a WTF look.
“Well, be careful. Seriously. Call me when you’re back at your apartment this time. Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise. Love you, Mom. Tell Dad I love him, too.”
“I will. Love you, sweetie. Bye.”
“Bye, Mom.”
Caitlyn ended the call and tossed her phone on the bed. “I’m sorry about that. My parents haven’t realized I’m a grown-up. Only child.” She shrugged. “And they really hate that I study wolves. That I’m all the way out here in Wyoming when I could be safe in Connecticut. They just don’t understand why I’m so obsessed.”
She glanced from Wade to me. We didn’t say anything. It seemed Wade also wanted to hear her reasoning behind her obsession.
“I love that you guys get it. Those wolf pups we saw last weekend had me high all week.”
“We may understand even more than you think, sugar.” I shot a look at Wade. We needed to tell Caitlyn what we were, and I figured we’d won her trust and affection enough to lay it on her. We may not have marked her, but we’d claimed her as ours.
It would be a lot to digest, and the timing was still way too fast by human standards, but fuck, Wade and I had nearly marked her when we were having sex. We wouldn’t be able to hold off much longer. Besides, I couldn’t stand keeping up the farce about the wolves any longer.
Wade nodded, reading my mind.
Caitlyn started pulling on her clothes. “Really? What do you mean?”
“You know when you asked if West Springs was a weird religious cult?”
Caitlyn went still, one leg in her jeans. “Oh, no.”
I smiled and held a hand out. Laughed. “We’re not. Hell, no. But we are different.” I swallowed, said the words that would change everything. That gave away our very secret to a female who wasn’t marked, who wasn’t truly ours. Who was tracking and studying our species. “We’re wolf shifters.”
“I’m sorry?” She tilted her head like she had misunderstood. A frown marred her brow.
“Shapeshifters. Men who turn into wolves.”
She smiled and twisted to look over her shoulder at Wade, like it was some kind of joke. Like he’d say just kidding and laugh. When she turned, she found a huge black wolf on the bed, instead.
She screamed, flying backward. Since her foot was caught in her jeans, she tipped, right into my arms. I steadied her. “It’s okay, sugar.” She worked her feet to push the jeans off her leg, as if she needed to be free of them to run away. “That’s Wade. He’d never hurt you. It’s Wade,” I repeated, feeling her panic, hearing the franticness of her breathing.
“W-Wade?”
Her body trembled beneath my hands, and she was leaning toward the door like she wanted to escape.
“Please don’t run,” I said, trying to keep my voice low and soothing. “It’s just biology. Genetics, not some crazy disease you get from being bitten by a rabid wolf during the full moon. We’re a different species from you.”
She turned in my arms to look up at me, the shaking in her slight body growing stronger.
“Shift back,” I told Wade. “She’s freaking out.”
Wade shifted, and I turned her back around. “See? It’s Wade.” Fortunately, he was naked before he shifted, and we didn’t have to worry about tattered clothing. “You’re safe, sugar. We won’t shift again until you ask.”
She swallowed, staring at Wade with wide eyes. I saw the thrum of her heartbeat at her neck, like a hummingbird. “This is nuts,” she muttered. “Totally crazy.”
She blinked her eyes as if she’d been seeing things, or they didn’t work right.
“Nope, it’s just science,” Wade said, going with the same defense I’d used. “Not magic. Not supernatural. Our kind has hidden our existence from outsiders as a means of protection. But there’s nothing menacing about us. Nothing dangerous.”
She started to settle beneath my touch, and I could tell her brain was working overtime to assimilate it all.
Wade spread his hands. “You want to study wolf genetics? Study ours.”
She gasped, covering her mouth. “Those wolves I tagged last weekend—”
“Normal wolves,” I interrupted. “Not shapeshifters.”
“Oh.” She turned to me. “And you’re a wolf, too? May I see?”
I smiled. Her fear was already wearing off and interest was taking hold. “Sure. You won’t run off?”
She shook her head, although I didn’t take that as a guarantee. Still, I had to prove to her what we were. That I was telling the truth. I closed my eyes and willed the shift, dropping to four paws.
She took a few quick steps backward, then stopped. “Silver wolf.” Wonder echoed in her voice.
I lowered to my belly to appear less intimidating.
It worked. She immediately dropped to a crouch and reached the back of her hand toward me as if to let me sniff it. Like I didn’t already have her scent memorized and categorized as the best smell on Earth. I licked her fingers.
Wade chuckled from the bed. “Touch him. Don’t be afraid. He wants you to.”
She lowered to her knees and reached for my head. “My God,” she said with awe. “You’re huge. This is incredible. I can’t believe it. You’re really wolves? Both of you? This whole town?”
“Not the whole town. But the majority of us are,” Wade explained. “Our families were early settlers here. They got rich through silver mining back in the nineteenth century, and bought all this land for the pack. Room to roam. To have space to live our lives without suspicion. Free.”
“That’s why your cabin is on Landry’s land,” she said, putting it together.
Wade nodded. “Right. It’s not really Landry’s, except that his bloodline is alpha. His brother rules the pack.”
Caitlyn’s eyes lit with excitement now. She stood and turned. “May I see your wolf again? Now that I’m not so freaked out?”
Wade shifted to wolf form, and to ensure one of us was in human form with her while she assimilated, I changed back to answer questions.
Caitlyn walked to the bed and stroked Wade’s ears and neck. When he rolled to his back, she laughed and rubbed his belly. “Incredible. You’re so beautiful. This… it’s just amazing. I still can’t believe it.”
I wrapped my arm around her from behind. “It’s real, sugar.”
“So…” She leaned back against me and tipped her head to see my face. “Is the two-on-one thing related to being wolves? I mean, I don’t know any canis lupus variety that mates in pairs, but—”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “Most wolf shifter species mate singly—one male for one female for life. But our particular family line mates in pairs. Probably some evolutionary advantage when there weren’t enough females around, we surmise.”
“But you don’t still need to, right? I mean… is it a biological urge? To, um, mate two to one?”
“Yes,” I said simply. We were getting close to the part we needed her to hear. That she was our mate. The only female we’d ever touch, now that we’d scented her. The one we needed to mark with our teeth to claim as ours forever.
But I didn’t want to go too fast. Better to let her ask questions and arrive on her own time.
“That’s why you share? Because… um,” she bit her lower lip, considering, “is it better when you’re together? Even though you don’t get each other off? Or…”
“Exactly,” I replied. “It’s better when we’re together. And with you.” So much for letting her arrive there on her own.
Her eyes rounded. She blinked at me. “Me? As in a woman, or me as in me?”
“You,” I said. “You’re our mate—we know by your scent. You smell incredible to us. That’s why Wade waited to have sex with you until I could meet you, too. He knew you were the one.”
“The one?” she cocked her head. “That doesn’t sound like science.”
“It is,” I insisted. “Biology. There’s a perfect match for every pair. You’re ours. Meaning we want to mark you as our female, with our wolf teeth, and our dicks.”
