Taming Heather [Cariboo Lunewulf 1]

Warning:

The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers.
Taming Heather
has been rated E–roti
c by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

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ensuous
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rotic
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Cariboo Lunewulf:

Taming Heather

Lorie O’Clare

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Suburban: General Motors Corporation

Chapter One

This was unbelievable.

Heather Graham lay on the ground, her heart pounding against her bra. The ground rubbed hard against her elbows while she fought to hold her mini-camcorder still. There was nothing she could do about it.

Her eyes were glued to the small square screen, the red light glowing in the corner, the letters REC a minor distraction.

Add this footage to the recordings she’d already made, and she would have the story of a lifetime. Her career as a reporter would hit the roof.
USA Today
, the
New York Times
, they would all want her.
Heather Graham says it’s so…
She liked the sound of that. Maybe that would be the name of her new column.

All she had to do was keep her wits about her, not do anything to fuck up this moment of a lifetime.

Lying in the woods, hidden by foliage, she hardly dared to breathe as she watched the scene in the clearing in front of her.

Creatures larger than any dog or wolf she’d ever seen or heard of moved around each other. A handful of them were half creature-half man, as if they hadn’t changed all the way. The creatures she’d studied for so long now formed a small circle, passing around a gold chalice, sipping from it.

“We honor our dead in human and werewolf form.” Their leader raised his arms to the full moon that glowed in the black sky.

Bodies changed and rippled before her eyes. Never had she seen anything like this. Or imagined it in her wildest dreams.

Unbelievable. Just fucking unbelievable.

Heather scanned her camera over the group of people. Some of them stood in human form, some had fur covering part of their bodies and others were almost completely changed into the beast that existed inside them.

There was no way not to react to seeing so many naked people. The glow of the moonlight outlined their sensual bodies, gleaming from sweat and stretched out to accentuate breasts on the women and the hard muscular chests of the men.

Of course the
lunewulf
would be have to be fit in their human form. Running like they did every night in their beast form had to keep them in excellent shape.

She had studied these werewolves, allowed them to consume her life. Just a few years ago she was like the rest of the world, believing werewolves to be nothing more than myth. But now, with them popping up all over the world, coming out of the closet so to speak, she wanted to know everything about them. Her article would enlighten the world, clear the fiction from the truth.

Long shadows and moon casting scattered light added to the setting before her. The group in the clearing continued with their ritual. After more recited words they let their heads fall back, raising their voices to the night sky. In unison they howled, the sound almost like music as it consumed the night.

Heather could hardly control her breathing as her heart raced in her chest. Watching through the small lens, doing her best to capture all of the ceremony, she almost envied this extreme minority race. Their traditions, their culture, the strong bond they appeared to have with each other. Everything she’d studied showed how tight a community they were, existing peacefully for the most part alongside humans.

What baffled Heather more than anything was that humans had lived among werewolves for centuries and never even known it. If the facts were true, and she tended to believe them, werewolves had always walked this planet. Now bringing them even more to life would help humans see how peaceful a people they actually were.

Several werewolves dropped to all fours while she recorded the metamorphosis. It was the first time she’d ever watched a human transform before her eyes and suddenly turn into something so incredible, more ferocious than a wolf. The creature she captured on film had to stand almost as tall as she did. Shiny white fur sprang from their skin until it covered them. Muscles grew, contorting, bulging and shaping. Their heads changed, their noses extending and widening, darkening until they were black against the white fur that now covered them completely. It amazed her, watching their tailbones extend, grow and bulge until they were long tails.

It had to hurt. Her hands shook while holding her camera, but for the life of her she couldn’t lose it and panic right now. Witnessing what quite possibly no human had seen before, she wouldn’t allow her emotions to overcome her. They continued to change, drop to all fours, while she recorded the scene. Amazed at how these werewolves’ bodies transformed, her mouth hung agape, her tongue so dry that it stuck to the roof of her mouth, but she wouldn’t swallow. She barely dared to breathe.

Before her, not more than twenty feet away, stood more than a dozen werewolves. They pranced around each other, apparently delighted to be in this form. Regardless of how she could imagine the pain in a body changing like that, they seemed very thrilled to be in their monstrous shape.

The scene before her blurred when her hands shook. She tried to work the zoom, wanting a closer shot of them, but she was so nervous, her hands soaked with sweat, that she almost dropped her camera.

A twig snapped close to Heather’s ear and she jumped, instinctively turning off the camcorder and shoving it into her jacket.

She barely had a chance to roll to her side when strong hands lifted her into the air.

Just as simply as that, lifted as if she weighed no more than a child. Landing hard on her feet, she stared up into intense blue eyes—that were raging with anger.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Marc McAllister placed the human woman down on the ground.

Fear filled the air around him, but he didn’t miss her aroused state. This human had been turned on watching them. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why some human would get her jollies watching werewolves during a funeral. Her fingers shook when she brushed a light red strand of hair behind her ear. But the defiant way she glared at him made him ache to teach her some manners.

The urge to send her sprawling through the woods had overcome him when he’d found her not only spying, but recording the private ritual. If she’d been werewolf he would have done exactly that. But her human scent surrounded her, weaker, fragile, less whole than a werewolf.

Already she’d zipped up her jacket, hiding her coveted evidence, proof of a lifestyle so foreign to anything humans had ever seen before.

“You have no right to talk to me like that.” It was all she could do to speak, her mouth was so dry.

Something other than panic surged through her though. The man who glared at her, standing bare-ass naked, looked like he could dismember her with one arm tied behind his back. Muscles corded and twisted under well-weathered skin sprinkled with the perfect amount of hair. He was damn near the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on. And she must be about ready for the loony bin.

She backed away from him, almost stumbling. Never had she stood so close to a naked man outside during the middle of the night. Not to mention a naked man she didn’t even know. Her heart beat hard against the hard plastic camcorder pressed against her breasts. Her nipples charged with an energy that sank deep between her legs. There was no way she could keep her gaze from lowering, from taking in all of the incredible man who stood in front of her.

“And you have no right to violate the sanctity of this ceremony.” He fisted his hands at his sides, aware of her drooling over him, indifferent to the fact that she disrespected him and his kind with her actions. “Would you have me parade through one of your funerals?”

That wasn’t what she’d been doing. She didn’t parade through anything. Somehow snapping back at him, saying just that, seemed a rather foolish move. This man was a stranger, but she wasn’t a stranger to men. He was furious, royally pissed off, reasoning with him right now wouldn’t work.

Heather backed away from him. His cock stiffened briefly when he snapped at her. His nudity made it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

“I’m leaving. No hard feelings.” She turned and hurried away from the man.

Not man…werewolf. And an incredibly outraged werewolf at that.

Chapter Two

Heather’s heart pounded in her chest. Her mouth went dry when she stopped at the red light, right behind the werewolf she’d seen the night before.

This was so insane. And it had been pure coincidence seeing him today, learning that he was a cop.

“He’s going to notice you following him,” she muttered, accelerating slowly and praying he wouldn’t focus on his rearview mirror and notice her.

By the time she’d reached the edge of town her palms were so sweaty they slid on the steering wheel. Something called her, made her move forward. She had to follow him, see what he would do.

When he pulled off the road and parked in a lot of an isolated park, she could hardly breathe. Circling around, her car seemed to be on autopilot when she came up on the park once again. His car sat in the darkness, appearing abandoned. He was nowhere around.

The cold Canadian night air wrapped around her. More than likely it was nerves that made her shake more than the cold though. After parking her car on the opposite side of the parking lot from his, and walking across the lot in the dark, she wasn’t so sure how smart it had been to come out here alone.

She was in an isolated part of town. No one knew she was here. And she was tracking a werewolf—a very large, dangerous, deadly werewolf.

If I get out of here alive, I swear I will never do anything so crazy again.

Heather’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Her palms were so wet it wasn’t even funny. But she couldn’t run. She couldn’t leave. Never in her life had she imagined she would be witnessing something like this. And it had her frozen where she stood, staring in disbelief and fascination.