Moon Dance (21 page)

Near dawn, they stopped—both
at the same time as if by mutual consent. They were under the cover
of trees, deep in the woods where it was still dark. But Cole could
feel the sun coming up like an itch behind his eyes, and he knew
Dana sensed it too.

They both halted, panting and
grinning.

He rubbed his muzzle into her fur,
taking in the scent of her.

It was pungent and
overpowering. The Dana smell.
His
Dana.

Except she wasn’t his. Now
that they were in wolf form, he could smell the other wolf on
her—her mate. That scent was woven into her own. He didn’t like it.
He wanted his scent woven in there. He wanted to claim her again.
She belonged to him, after all.

The urge to mate with her
came over him—strong and insistent. The wolf wanted her.

But human Cole had made
promises. He knew that the wolf wouldn’t be able to resist her,
however, not if he stayed in this form. So, he shifted
back.

These days, it was always
easier to go from human to wolf than to go from wolf to human. The
former shift was so natural, a rippling change like sinking down
into water. The latter change was more difficult. Forming back all
his human features—his thumbs, his nose, his ankles—was more
arduous. It took longer. It hurt.

Cole writhed on the forest
floor, sucking back in the fur, feeling his bones shift and crack.
He groaned. But it was only a minute or so before he was fully
human again, bent down on all fours, totally naked. He rolled over
onto his back, taking deep breaths. It still hurt.

Dana was still a wolf. She
sniffed him, butting her head against him.

He reached up to run his
fingers through her fur. He’d never touched her this way. Not with
her a wolf and him a human. It was strange.

But then she was shifting
too. Her change seemed to go easier than his—faster. Perhaps she
was still more human than he was. Maybe he was slowly losing his
humanity, vanishing into the wolf as time passed. If he was, he
wasn’t sure he cared.

Dana collapsed next to him
in human form.

She was breathless and
smiling. “We got away.”

“
Yeah.” He couldn’t help but
smile too.

She rolled over onto her
side to look at him. “It’s good to run.”

“
Yeah.” He kissed her. She
was beautiful in that moment, her skin flushed, joy radiating all
over her, and he couldn’t help himself.

She responded eagerly for a moment, and
then a tremor went through her, and she whimpered.

Fucking wolf bond.

He let go of her. He
staggered to his feet. “We need to find someplace. We need clothes.
We need shelter.”

She looked up at him. “Let’s
just shift back. We can sleep here. Who needs clothes when you have
fur?”

“
No,” he said. “My wolf
wants your wolf, and I’m not breaking your alpha bond.”

“
Oh.” She sat up, suddenly
drawing her body up to cover her nakedness, hiding everything from
him.

It was funny, because until
she did that, he hadn’t even really noticed her nudity as something
sexual. It had just been something that existed, something natural
and normal. But once she hid it, he was reminded that he was
supposed
to find it
sexual, and so he did.

He sighed. “Come on. Let’s
go look for some kind of shelter.”

She looked up at him. There was fear in
her eyes.

The fear turned him on even
more. He was starting to get hard, and there was no way to hide
that. “Dana. We need to get dressed.”

She was staring at his thickening
penis, and she still looked frightened.

“
Dana, get up.”

“
You liked it, didn’t you?”
she said quietly. She wasn’t looking him in the eye. She was still
watching his crotch.

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“
I could hear it in your
voice,” she said. “When you told Enoch that you wanted to hurt me.
You liked it.”

He didn’t say
anything.

“
Are you going to do it
again?” She looked up at him then.

“
No,” he said. “No, it was
only because Enoch wouldn’t back down. I didn’t know how else to
convince him and get the information.”

“
You don’t care about the
information. You don’t care about the SF.”

He licked his lips. “I’m not
going to do it again.”

“
I don’t know if I believe
you. I think you liked doing it, and I think you used the
information thing as an excuse.”

“
No,” he said.
“I
didn’t
like
it.”

She laughed harshly. “Stop
lying to me, Cole.”

“
I was trying to protect
you.”

“
Protect
me?” She was incredulous. She got to her feet and
glared at him, eye to eye.

“
It was the lesser of two
evils. There was nothing else I could do. If I didn’t convince
Enoch that I was on his side, then he would have done something
worse to both of us.” He looked down at his feet. “It would have
happened to you, anyway. But it would have been worse. There would
have been more of them, and they wouldn’t have been me, and I… I
tried not to drag it out, so—”

She slapped him.

He grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t—”

And she looked afraid
again.

He let go of her. He looked
at his feet again. “I’m sorry.”

“
Yeah, you keep saying
that.”

“
Because I am. I don’t like
hurting you.”

“
Yes, you do.”

“
No, I…” He lifted his gaze,
and saw the fierce anger in her eyes. “Maybe I… Not that hurt,
okay? I was scared afterward. I don’t like it when you
cry.”

She took a deep breath. “You
know what? Whatever. Let’s not do this. You’re right. Let’s find
shelter. Maybe a phone. We need to call the SF. And I need to get
away from you. Because you confuse the hell out of me.” She started
off into the woods.

He waited for a couple of seconds, and
then he went after her.

* * *

Walking through the woods in
human form was not nearly as easy as in wolf
form
—especially considering she was
barefoot and naked—and Dana found herself wishing that they’d just
shift back already. She didn’t want Cole to mate with her, and she
knew that his excuse for staying in human form was a good one. But
all the thorns and briars seemed attracted to her vulnerable flesh.
When she was a wolf, she seemed to fit into the natural world
better. She knew how to move amongst the foliage. As a human, she
didn’t seem to feel that.

She found herself musing
over it as she walked. Which had come first—civilization or humans’
weak bodies? Had humans adapted their environment to suit their
vulnerabilities or had they simply lost their claws because they
didn’t need them anymore? She had to admit her mind boggled at the
thought of billions of years of adaptation and change. Where did
werewolves fit into all of that? Had they simply always been? She
knew that ancient societies had attributed the wolfmen to the
meddling of the gods. In Greek mythology, Zeus had punished a man
by cursing him to be a wolf. But she didn’t feel punished to be the
wolf—not anymore. She felt blessed and eager.

And anyway, there were
people studying the lupine virus—if it even was a virus. It was
communicable, passed on by bites, by sexual contact, passed from
mothers to their children. So that made it seem like a disease. But
it didn’t quite behave that way. If it was a virus, it was
invisible in blood. There were no tests for it. And why was it tied
to the moon?

Luckily, she was saved from
further thought when they found a hunting cabin. She wasn’t going
to figure it out, after all. People had been studying it for the
better part of a century, and no one had yet cracked the secret of
werewolves. It wasn’t likely she was going to discover the secrets
out here in the woods.

The hunting cabin was small.
It was only one room. It had a bed and a rickety table. The wind
blew in through the cracks in the wooden walls. But it wasn’t cold
outside, so it wasn’t a hardship. Still, there weren’t any clothes.
The bed had blankets on it, though. As the day wore on, it would
get warmer, and the blankets wouldn’t be necessary, but for now, in
the morning chill, Dana was glad of them.

She climbed into the bed, exhausted,
and Cole came with her.

Of course he did. Cole
wasn’t a gentleman. She was fairly sure that offering to sleep on
the floor hadn’t even occurred to him.

She could insist on it, she
supposed, but what did it matter? She didn’t mind his closeness,
not truly.

She rolled over on her side,
facing the wall, and Cole melded his body around hers, spooning
with her. She didn’t stop that either. Between the warmth of his
skin and the blanket, she felt safe and protected. Odd, she mused,
that Cole could produce such warring feelings within her. That he
could frighten her and make her feel safe.

There wasn’t a phone in the
hunting cabin, so there was no way to contact the SF. Dana was
worried about that. Enoch knew that she and Cole had escaped, and
she was afraid that he’d move his camp now. The SF wasn’t going to
be able to find him after all. Still, at least they knew the date
of the attack. If she could get that information to Ursula, maybe
they could protect the SF.

Thinking about the SF made
her think of home, and home made her think of Piper. She wondered
what her daughter was doing right now. The sun was struggling into
the sky, so Piper would definitely be awake. Was she having fun
with her babysitter?

Dana suddenly felt the absence of the
little girl like a gaping hole inside her. She never should have
left her. She missed her daughter acutely.

Tears sprang to her eyes,
and she began to sob softly.

Cole stirred behind her.
“Dana?”

“
It’s nothing,” she
muttered, trying to choke down her tears.

“
Is it bad that I’m…? I
could sleep on the floor.”

That made her laugh a little
bit. Maybe there was a gentleman in Cole somewhere, struggling to
find its way out. “It’s not about you.”

“
Then what? Don’t cry.
Please.”

“
I miss Piper.”

He was quiet for a minute.
Then, “Your daughter?”

Of course Cole wouldn’t have
remembered Piper’s name. She meant nothing to him. He didn’t know…
She started to cry even harder, because suddenly everything seemed
so hopeless. She and this man had created a life together, a tiny,
beautiful little girl. But Cole wasn’t… right. He was missing
things, important, human things, and he didn’t understand how to
love or how to care. She was drawn to him, somehow hopelessly
intertwined with him, though. She had tried to make the right
choice—the choice that would bring her happiness and safety. She’d
married Avery. But now, here she was, ravaged again by Cole, afraid
of him and attracted to him, and her whole life had never seemed
like such a mess to her.

“
Hey.” Cole was moving her,
turning her to face him. He wiped tears away from her cheeks. “I’m
going to get you back to her. I swear. You’ll go back to your
family, and you can forget all this.”

“
No,” she said. “I don’t
think I can forget.”

“
You can.” He pulled her
close, his hands smoothing over her hair. “You need to forget it.
You don’t belong here, Dana. You deserve better than
this.”

“
Deserve?” She lifted
her face to look at him. “I don’t think so, Cole. I’m cheating on
my husband, and I’m barely even thinking about my daughter. And…
damn it, right before we left, I killed those fucking campers. I
think I’m getting
exactly
what I deserve.”

“
You’re not cheating,” he
said. “We’re not doing anything.”

“
We had sex,
Cole.”

“
No, it wasn’t like that.”
He shook his head. “I had sex. You were there, but you didn’t want
to. That’s not your fault. It’s my fault.”

It
was
his fault. And she was letting
him comfort her anyway. She rolled away from him. “Maybe you
should
sleep on the
floor.”

* * *

They awoke in the late afternoon. Dana
had kicked the covers away in the heat of the day, and she lay
sprawled out on the bed, her body sticky from dried
sweat.

Cole was stretching on the
floor, and she felt suddenly caught by the sight of the muscles in
his back, rippling and moving under his skin.

Then her stomach growled.

He turned to her. His gaze
traveled over her nude body. She could feel his eyes on her hips
and breasts.

“
Hungry?” he
said.

She was starving. She didn’t
know the last time she’d eaten. It had to have been more than a
day. Funny that she hadn’t thought of it until now. The danger and
excitement had driven the idea of food from her brain. She got up
off the bed, doing a little stretching of her own. “It’ll be easier
to shift and catch something.”