Alpha Howl (A BBW Shifter Werewolf MC Romance) (Sons of Thunder MC: Book 2) (3 page)

“We’re on a beach, no one’s listening to us.”

My hand still lay in the ruins of his sand-pile. He ran his finger up my arm, then cupped my cheek.

“I like you Grace. I know you like me.” He drew my face towards his and my anger faded. But, I still had one more question.

“Wait.” I put my finger up. He still pulled me toward him, his brows lowering. “Stop,” I ordered. He froze like a deer in the headlights, frozen.

Well, his safeword works.

“Why are you so controlling?” I pushed my cheek into his open hand, nuzzling cat-like against his calloused palm. “Why do you like to…pinch me and bind me?” The last bit came out in a rush, my cheeks turning red. I’m not the type to ask questions about another person’s kinky stuff.

“Part of my curse.” He leaned back into the sand. “I can keep the change under control by playing with you. By teasing you.” He put his hand on my leg and squeezed. “Your pain gives me strength.”

His fingers bit into my inner thigh. I moaned.

Karl smiled, showing sharp canines. “And you seem to like it.”

“I do,” if my face was a fruit, it would be a Red Delicious Apple, crimson and shiny.

I noticed clovers under the beach grass, and picked one. Held sideways the clover leaf looked kind of like a woman’s posterior. I tapped my finger on the leaf like I was spanking that ass.

He growled then and leapt atop me, his lips finding mine.

A child’s giggled.

I peeked from behind Karl’s straw colored mane to meet a woman’s disapproving stare.

This is moving too fast. I push him away.

“We should wait.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Oh, I didn’t drive. I live just down the street.”

I froze. TMI! I didn’t mean to let him know I lived near here. Not yet.

“May I walk you home”?

I swallowed, blinking my eyes. When I closed them I saw a scene in my mind: a lamb inviting a wolf to her bed.

Me and my freaking imagination.

I could ignore his imploring question, or I could open myself, and heed his seductive request.

“Sure, that would be nice.”
I’d surrendered. When I gave him my number, I could have avoided his call. Sent him straight to voicemail.

But, I was letting him walk me home. Now I’d have to move to hide from him.

seven

I’m going to willingly sleep with a wolf freak!

No. A freak who turns into a wolf.

Worse.

The condo Leslie and I rent is in an antique building, built during the nineteen sixties. Things fall apart. We get leaks from the upstairs plumbing and the windows. The hurricane shutters are stuck half closed in my room.

Luckily, I like the shade.

“Our elevator’s busted. We’ll have to take the stairs,” my voiced cracked. I peeked at his thighs.
He’s built like Achilles.
The broken elevator wouldn’t slow him down.

“I think I can handle some steps.”

eight

I stood there clutching the doorknob, pressing my thighs together. I touched my chest. My heart thumped under my bones. Why does he affect me like this?

He wants me. Like I want him.

Karl was breathing hard, and not from the three flights of stairs. He said something about there being more steps than he’d expected. His voice washed over me. A sound like fine tequila. The kind you sip from shot glasses.

Karl smiled and lifted his eyebrows. I stared at him, my mouth open. I couldn’t think of an intelligent thing to say.

“Come on in.” My breath quickened when he crossed my threshold.

“Thanks.” He contemplated my condo, taking in my vintage terrazzo and Formica counters. My refrigerator with the chrome and the fins, like a car from a Springsteen song.

Walking in, fresh cinnamon and toasted sugar filled my nose. Leslie made the best Snickerdoodles, she must have just finished a batch. I hope she’s not here.

I called out, “I’m home.”

No answer. The door to her room stood open.

Karl regarded me with questioning eyes. “I have a roommate. Leslie. She’s not here.”

Grabbing two cookies from the plate I held one out.

“You have to try these, Leslie’s an artist.”

Karl smiled and took the cookie, consuming the morsel in one bite. Somehow he made the act graceful.

“Please,” I mumbled around a mouthful of sugary goodness, and gestured at the couch. I sat on my overstuffed lazy-boy’s arm. I wasn’t ready to co-habit the same couch with him.

“Grace.”
I love when says my name
. “I need to warn you.”

nine

He took my hand. A rush ran from my fingertips to my temple. Roaring in my head a sound like a freight train. A hundred thousand tons of steel, heading where? For the bottom of the canyon, or the Promised Land?

“I’m dangerous. You should avoid me.”
You came to my house to tell me to stay away from you?
There’s a comedy skit. It’s called
Really?

My face burned with a searing flush of rejection.

“You said I shouldn’t fear you at the beach. Now that you’ve planted your sandy butt on my couch, you say you’re dangerous?”

I leaned my head back.

Karl held out his hands. “I’m complicated.”

In my pocket, I kept my finger close to my phone’s number six key. It’s programmed to dial 911 with one push.

“Shit, Karl, murder me and take all my meat. I have some prime rib in the freezer. That’s what you wolves really want us for, right? Easy meat?”

His brows dove for the bridge of his nose and his top lip lifted like he might growl.

I laughed.

He laughed then too, and I knew I was safe. Serial killers never have a good sense of humor.

ten

“Look. You saved me. I guess you’re not going to kill me, or you would have left me out there, with those men.”

His eyes clouded and his brow furrowed.

“You don’t understand, Grace—”

“Karl,” I cut in, “I’m a big girl. I can handle you.”

“I’m different, Grace. I need things most people think are strange.”

“I know you’re strange. You like kinky sex and you turn into a were…a weir…a wolf-thing.” I stopped, out of breath. “I hope there isn’t something else I don’t know about you?”

He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t care. I never felt anything as good as last night.” My voice wavered and my hands trembled. “I like you.”

“I like you too.” My heart thumped, skipping. He said he liked me!

“Still, you would be safer if you stayed away from me.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, tousling the golden strands.

“My life is…trouble. Dangerous people are after me, and not all of them are actual people.”

He grimaced, showing deep lines I’d never noticed before around his eyes and his lips.

“I have enemies who live to warm their paws at my funeral pyre, and if you’re with me, you’ll have them too.”

Karl could have said a million things when I told him I liked him. The nice guys I usually dated would have made some silly joke. Telling me to stay away because he cared about me was not a line any guy tried on me before. I had to know more. I had to keep him around until I learned his secrets. All his secrets. Telling me about his powerful enemies just made me want to be with him more.

“I’m not scared, Karl. I can hold my own in a fight.”

Not really. Or maybe I can, but I’ve never had to. So, I have no idea. I definitely identify with girls who can, though.

If pressed, I would go all Viper of Dorn on whoever tried to hurt Karl.

eleven

“I’m sorry I left so abruptly last night.”

“You were smart to leave. Like I said, I’m bad news. A rough beast.”

Ok, that’s the third time.

“Slouching toward Bethlehem?”

He gave me a surprised look. “You know poetry?”

“Literature and technology are my two passions.”

He smiled. “Just two?”

“I’ve enough trouble satisfying those two.”

“So you are a woman of few passions, indulged deeply.”

“Sounds like a quote. I don’t know who by?”

“Quoted from the life works of Karl Norman. I haven’t written them yet, so I’ll forgive you for not recognizing the line.”

“You’re funny.” I leaned my head back and half shut my eyes, giving him the hairy eyeball. “So, just how bad news are you? Will you turn me into a were…thingy?”

“Nothing like that, no. I’m not going to change you into something else.”

Maybe not, but you have changed me into someone else. The Grace from a few days ago would never imagine herself sitting here with a man who shifts into a beast when he gets excited.

“I need you to sign an agreement before I tell you more.”

Time for the
Really?
show again.

Karl spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. I got the sense that he was not made helpless by much.

“Lawyers. Honestly, I think they invent these rules just to make themselves rich.” He pulled a folded piece paper from his jacket pocket.

My god he brought a legal agreement thing with him!

“Do you pull those out for all the girls?”

“I’m sorry, Grace. I’ve been sued before.”

Given his dominant attitude and his shocking secret, I’m surprised he hasn’t been miles more than sued. He probably left broken hearts lying around every day like other men leave tips.

“Just once?”

He frowned. “The experience wasn’t any fun for anyone. Except the lawyers. They enjoyed it, on both sides. When the process concluded, I fired my lawyer, after paying for his beach house. Then, I found a new one, and offered him one hundred thousand dollars a year.” Karl unfolded the paper.

“But I deduct five hundred dollars from his payment for every hour I have to talk to him.”

He brandished a pen. Covered with ebony, with silver inlays. The design depicted the moon, with shining rays streaming out, spiraling around the pen.

“You charge
him
?”

“Yes. From his retainer. I noticed that lawyers love to talk to me about all sorts of things not directly related to my case, for many hours, and charge me by the minute. This arrangement makes my current lawyer very efficient.”

The ant-march of semi-colon delimited sentence fragments gave me a headache. “I hate what lawyers do to words. Can you explain to me what this is for?”

“I have enemies, Grace. They’d love to uncover things about me. Some of them are good at getting people who know me to talk to them.” He smoothed the paper’s folds. “This says that you won’t.”

“I won’t talk about you?”

“If we become…friends.” He smiled and his eyes twinkled. The little boy he must have once been shone through his eyes. I wanted to kiss him.

“Is that what we are becoming?”

“I’d like to get to know you better.”

“But, you are bad news.”

“Yes, I am. And I have baggage. Like this agreement.”

“Hah. This doesn’t seem like more baggage than the way your teeth grow when you fuck.”

I stilled the hand that wanted to cover my mouth. I don’t curse. Karl woke the wild thing in me. Dirty language, and dirty feelings.

He smiled and leaned back, letting his document sit on the couch next to him. The lines of his thigh muscles bulged under his khaki pants. My hands itched to trace those lines to their source.

But there lay the paper, with its ant-tracks of legalese. The moon-kissed pen. Calling me to sign.

“What you know isn’t the worst thing about me, Grace. I’m not a good man for you.”

Every time he said that, I wanted him more.

Am I sick?

“You can save him. Reform him,” my angel cooed.

“You can fuck him silly. Enjoy yourself. Reach sexual nirvana.” My devil, of course. She shook her hips. “Rock his furry world.”

My angel huffed and disappeared in a cloudy puff. Devil-Grace kept dancing.

I’m bad with contracts. I usually have Leslie handle those after the time I signed one that forced me to work like a slave for a customer. Leslie pointed out how I had agreed to a number of social media posts in a week that meant I’d have to do one every five minutes, twenty hours a day to satisfy the agreement. I managed to fulfill the requirements by using a site where you can pay people five dollars to do just about anything. But, we lost money and I didn’t have fun.

Now, I’m about to sign a contract so I can be friends with Karl Norman. I must be desperate. But, he crouched here looking fly, and I hadn’t participated in so much as a kissing match with a man for months. Other than Mr. Norman.