Cunningham, Pat - Coyote Moon (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  “Y’know, darlin’, maybe you were right. Maybe we ought’a postpone dinner, or at least try somewhere else. This place looks plenty jammed—“

  “You should see it on Saturday. Anyway, we’re here now, and I could really go for a steak. I’m sorry about how I acted in the car. I get these mood swings…”

  If this room had a wolf prowling around in it, you wouldn’t know it by her. Maybe they’d left already. Cody took his seat and smiled and tried not to let on how fretty he was. “Then here we stay. Now tell me the tale of how you saved that Mustang from certain death.”

  They chatted until their food arrived. Cody split his attention between his thick t-bone, the ebb and flow of chow hounds in the dining room, and Willy. She tore into her steak like a starving wolf, with little muffled whimpers of joy. She had a beer but barely touched it. She seemed far more interested in the meaty juices running the width of her plate. She even ignored him for minutes at a stretch, and he’d’ve figured that for impossible.

  Wolf for sure. A wolf who’d never shifted. By now he was certain of that. Not good. You didn’t answer the blood, it’d boil over on you. If she couldn’t get a handle on her wolf side quick, she’d fly full-on into disaster.

  And speaking of disaster…

  There. Two of them, slouched at the counter by the Orders To Go sign. To ape eyes they’d look like a couple of brothers in their early thirties, with stocky builds, shaggy hair, rugged features and identical sharp noses. But their movements gave them away, at least to a nervous coyote. It showed in their preternatural alertness, their total awareness of their surroundings, the deliberate way they moved. They knew where a hungry shifter with a hankering for cooked meat would go. One studied the dining room with lupine intensity, while the other eyed the entrance to the bar.

  Stay put, Cody told himself. If he moved they’d zero in on him. Then they’d scent Willy, and that’d be that.

  Willy had her back to them. What with all the fried, charbroiled, and simian odors in here, she probably couldn’t even smell the perfume she’d dabbed on, let alone two wolves. Her movements were just ape enough to mask her from their eyes. C’mon, you suckers, leave.

  She noticed the sudden tightness of his mouth and eyes. Her chewing slowed. “Whupht’s wrng?”

  “Nothing, darlin’. I was just—”

  A waiter came up to the counter, bearing a big Styrofoam box. He handed it over to one of the wolves. The wolf dug a bill out of his pocket and threw it on the counter without looking at the ape. The two gave the room one final smell-over, wrinkled their noses, pulled back their lips in silent growls and hurried out of the restaurant.

  Cody swallowed his sigh of relief. “Just thinking how fine a big slice of lemon meringue would go down right now. You interested?”

  Willy nodded eagerly, with her mouth still stuffed with steak. She rarely had room for dessert, but tonight she felt as if she couldn’t get enough. Of anything. Cody kept looking hotter by the second, and she hadn’t even drunk half her beer. Had she really gone so long without a date? Her last had been…urm…um…jeez, it had been awhile.

  Long enough, apparently, for a dusty, poker playing wanderer to appeal to her. But he was nice, and funny, and cute, and not a deadbeat, and halfway decent when he cleaned up, and he…he…

  …smelled right.

  So did the pie when it arrived. She dug in gratefully. Think of the pie, she told herself, and nothing but the pie. By all means do not dwell on that other activity she also hadn’t done in a while.

  Cody picked up the check and wouldn’t hear any argument. Willy asserted her independence by taking care of the tip. Cody didn’t protest. He wanted them out of here and gone. The wolves had had enough time to move on, and he didn’t think he’d been spotted, but no point in taking any chances.

  Dodging them proved not so easy. He and Willy stepped outside, and straight into the wolves’ calling card. Cody sneezed violently, and Willy scrunched up her nose like she’d stepped in polecat. The sons of hounds, they’d marked their territory. Their signature ran the length of the bushes that ran the length of the restaurant’s eastern wall. A pungent warning to let a newcomer know he wasn’t the top dog in town.

  Willy pressed her hand against her nostrils. “Eww! What stinks?”

  “Dog,” Cody said promptly. “Must’ve used them bushes as a Port-o-Potty. Don’t you people have leash laws in this town?”

  “If enough people smell that, you bet we will.” She hurried toward the car.

  Cody’s heart soared. She wasn’t interested. Two wolf males left her an invite and she didn’t care for it in the least. She stuck by him and his coyote-aroma. He stuck just as tight to her, and hustled her into the limo and slammed the door and made sure to get the air switched on and the windows rolled up. No sense in pushing his luck.

  Willy also had grown tense, for a different reason. The limo felt suddenly stuffy and cramped, and her skin had tightened up and gone itchy, like a million tiny hairs writhed just under the surface and clamored to break out. She couldn’t get that awful canine urine stink out of her nose. It burned through her nostrils and into her brain and made her—of all things—horny as hell.

  And here sat a hot male right next to her. Cody didn’t say a word, didn’t make a single untoward move, but his scent was driving her crazy. She wanted to skim her tongue all over his body until they both whimpered for mercy. She wanted rough hands and teeth on her most sensitive parts. She scooched toward him—

  No. Any second now she’d crawl into his lap, and it would be prom night all over again. Including the ambulance, and the blood.

  She clawed at the door handle instead. “Stop the car. I need to get out. I need air.”

  Cody didn’t ask questions. He spoke to the driver, and the limo pulled to the curb. Cody got out, opened the door for Willy, and sent the driver on his way with a generous tip. “We’re not far from your house,” he said. “Straight there?”

  “Yes.” That would be best. She set a brisk pace, and tried not to glance toward the wooded hills, or at Cody.

  Neither proved easy. The clean night air had a tang of pine in it. The forest beckoned to her, promising warm, springy earth for her feet and a broad moonlit sky overhead. She had a belly full of hot, red meat and a delicious-smelling, willing male at her side. Temptation piled on top of temptation. Give in, the full moon urged. What would be the harm?

  Plenty. It had been plenty harmful for Connor Donnelly, her first high school crush. That mark she’d put on his neck had gone way beyond hickey. He still carried the scar, and still avoided her. Or Dean Matheson, her unfortunate prom date. He didn’t like hearing “no.” She doubted he’d liked his hospital stay any better. It had almost been a trip to the morgue.

  “Willy?”

  She cringed away from his hand. The beast in her only needed one touch. How had she ended up so far over the edge so fast? She had a vague suspicion it had something to do with that stench back at the restaurant. The odor had triggered some deep primal need, and Cody’s prairie musk had done the rest.

  She risked a glance at him. Poor guy, he didn’t look any better than she felt. Ruddy, fidgety, practically feverish. She looked into his eyes and decided she never wanted to see terror in them, or put it there. Regretfully, she turned her back on the woods. She’d deal with the frustration later. Over the years she’d grown expert at it. “No. Please. Just…no.”

  “Why not?”

  Because the last boy who tried it almost got his throat ripped out. Because something scary happens to me when the full moon comes out. Because I’m afraid I might hurt you. Or kill you. Because…because I don’t think I’m fully human.

  She swallowed around a hard lump in her throat. “Another time.”

  “No time like the present, I always say.”

  “Well, I don’t.” Oh God, she wasn’t going to make it. She would fling herself at him and sink her teeth into his shoulder. She could practically taste his hot, salty blood in her mout
h, feel the rough pawing of his hands on her. No. Don’t go there. Don’t go anywhere near there. She grabbed hold of her last shreds of rationality and stepped away from him.

  Cody bit down hard on his own frustration. Chaos take it, he’d meant to go slow and easy with her, but slow and easy wasn’t in the coyote dictionary. His patience was dang near shot. Her odor teased his nostrils, high and ripe as a peach. Didn’t she know what the smell of a she-wolf nigh on to heat could do to the male of the species? Especially the half-crazed male currently standing right next to her?

  She wanted to do this the ape way, fine. He could play that game. Even a Texan could only act the gentleman just so long.

  He caught her arm and felt her stiffen, heard the ghost of a growl on her breath. “You sure this is how you want it, darlin’? Do you even know what you want?”

  She couldn’t quite get her gaze up to his eyes. “I know I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

  “You won’t. I guarantee it.” And he hauled her up close and kissed her.

  Attack, her instincts prodded her. How dare he presume to initiate these maneuvers? That was her prerogative. Except his odor seeped into her nostrils and muddled up her responses. She knew she ought to seize the nape of his neck in her jaws and shake some respect into him. And she would. In a minute.

  When the kiss went on and she didn’t rip his head off, Cody figured he’d been given the go signal. He teased at her mouth until her lips parted and slid his tongue inside. Fresh and wild, just as he’d expected. A bit of an apish aftertaste, but not everyone could be perfect.

  This new reaction to a male—no blood or violence involved—both surprised Willy and elated her. Cody’s kiss made her dizzy, and hungry in a way no steak dinner could quell. The primitive in her rose up and bayed at the moon, even as Willy rose up to drag the sweetness from Cody’s mouth to satiate her raging blood.

  When they finally broke, long minutes later, both were flushed and panting. Cody’s eyes had taken on that dangerous gleam again. He didn’t move in for the kill, but he didn’t let go of her, either. “Your call, darlin’.”

  Willy’s eyes fastened on the pulse in his throat. Her tongue ached to lick it. Her breath hissed in and out. In half a second she’d hit the point of no return. “I…” she barely managed. “I—”

  Which is when the wolves sounded off.

  Not in the hills, either. The twin cry went off like a bomb right in the street, less than a block away. Back where the limo had stopped. It had a note of exultation in it, like the hunters had just stumbled across the trail of especially juicy prey.

  Cody’s wiry body went rigid. He clamped his arm around her shoulders and propelled her down the street, toward the house that suddenly seemed a hundred miles away. “Stay inside,” he rasped in her ear as they ran. “Lock all the doors. Don’t go outside, no matter how much you might want to.”

  He wasn’t scared, she realized. Not of the wolves. He was scared for her. “I won’t want to,” she assured him fervently. “They won’t attack us, will they? I thought wolves avoided people.”

  “These aren’t your average wolves.”

  The wolves howled again. Closer. Maybe half a block now. Willy’s hand shook so badly she couldn’t get her key in the lock. Tony’s warning about the coyote rang in her head. Once an animal loses its fear of humans, who knows what it will do? Especially if it’s been fed before. Or invited into the neighborhood by a stupid woman with overly-romantic delusions.

  At last, the lock clicked. She flung the door open and ducked inside and tried to drag Cody in after her. He shook her off. “Stay put. I’ll handle it.”

  “You’ll what? You don’t even—”

  She found herself talking to the door, which Cody had slammed in her face. She called him every name she could think of, and spared a few for the knob, which kept slipping out of her hands.

  Another howl, right outside the door. Tenor, shrill. The coyote. The wolves roared in response.

  Then silence.

  She wrenched at the knob. It turned so abruptly she almost lost her balance. She wrestled the door open and poked her head outside to an empty street. No Cody. No wolves.

  She would have dashed outside anyway, and damn the wolves, but something thumped upstairs. The something also swore. Beth chimed in a moment later, sounding excited, or scared.

  Willy shut the door. She couldn’t help Cody; she didn’t know where he’d gotten to. But her sister was right here, and not alone. A drift of male scent made her bristle. On the verge of calling out, she swallowed the words instead. If the wolves voiced any further howls, she didn’t notice.

  Silently she crept up the stairs.

  * * * *

  Catching the wolves’ attention wasn’t so big of a stretch. One howl and they latched onto his tail like a bear after honey. Cody took off into the woods, tearing at his clothes. He deliberately left them strewn behind him. By the time he’d shed enough to switch, the wolves had come on his shirt and socks. The murderous note in the resultant challenge told him how much mercy to expect.

  He dropped to all fours and shot off into the hills, with the wolves in determined pursuit. Getting them to follow him, not even close to a problem. Getting them to quit…well, worry about that later.

  As long as they came after him, and didn’t double back after Willy. That was all that mattered.

  He left them an easy trail, and stayed just far enough ahead to keep their anger hot. By now they’d left Coopersburg, and Willy, far enough in the dust to get his hopes up. Time to see what kind of burrs he had stuck to him. He swung back on his trail, did a loop out of habit, and doubled back to come up behind them.

  Chaos favored him. Only two, and they’d come for him and left Willy for later. He crept up and watched them try to puzzle out a kink in his trail any coyote pup could have solved by now. Wolves were more methodical, with less imagination but way bigger teeth. Favoring discretion, he moved to slip away.

  Damn that mouse. It would have to squeak as it dove into its hole.

  Both wolves spun, and spotted him. Instantly they leaped to flank him. Plenty of bristling and growling and teeth showing, but no direct attack. Not yet.

  Wolves and coyote exchanged silent signals through ears and tails and eyes. All three shifted at once.

  The pair from Cactus Pete’s confronted him. All muscle and teeth and plenty shaggy. Full of wolf arrogance, too. “Will you look at this,” the darker one said with a sneer. “It’s a scrawny little prairie wolf. This has the Chief all put out?”

  “Prairie dog,” his blond brother corrected. “Don’t dignify this mutt by calling him a wolf.” He took one menacing step toward Cody. “You’re off your turf, sonny boy.”

  Cody smiled, loose and easy, ready to bolt or attack as the occasion warranted. Him against two grown, seasoned wolves, well, it wouldn’t be pretty, but it could be done. “Last I heard, this was a free country.”

  The blond showed teeth. “Not this country.”

  “Lucky for you,” the other said, “we’re in a generous mood. Just hand over the she and we’ll only rough you up.”

  Cody blinked, the epitome of innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Scratch the scat, prairie dog. You were running with a she-wolf. A ripe one, by the smell of her. We want her.”

  Cody indicated his nakedness. “Do I look like I’m hiding anything? There’s no she-wolf here.”

  “Don’t get wise. I’ve got a nose. She’s here. She belongs with us.” The dark wolf started forward. “And you belong on the floor in some simian’s rec room. Or up on the wall in Cactus Pete’s.”

  “Yeah,” the blond agreed. “Try not to wreck his pelt. Bet we could get a good—”

  He probably meant to say “price,” but he switched too soon, and the last word got lost in a snarl. A second later his brother shifted, and the wolves closed in on Cody.

  Cody didn’t shift. He’d learned a trick or two by hanging out with apes. When the blond
wolf charged, Cody stepped to one side and stuck out his foot. All four legs got tangled up and the wolf went tumbling. Cody threw himself outside the path of the other wolf’s leap, and rolled himself toward one of several dead branches on the ground he’d marked during their brief conversation. The branch had a good heft and went up powerful hard between the wolf’s back legs. The wolf hit a note Beverly Sills would’ve wept for. Cody dropped the branch, shifted shape and hightailed it out of there.

  Not too far, though, just enough to get him out of sight. Then he shifted back and found himself a bushy pine with plenty of low-hanging branches, and exercised another skill he’d learned from his primate playmates. He swarmed up the branches and hid himself among the boughs.

  When the wolves arrived minutes later, red-eyed and fit to tear hide off a rhino, they found only a vanished trail. They cast around in widening circles, noses close to the ground. Finally they moved away. Because a wolf wouldn’t climb a tree, neither one thought to look up. Methodical and unimaginative, not to mention dim.

  Cody gave them time to set plenty of distance between them and him before he swung out of the tree. He hit the ground coyote and shot like a rocket for Coopersburg. He needed to get back to Willy before anything else went to hell.

  * * * *

  “I think somebody’s downstairs,” a male voice murmured. “Your sister?”

  She heard Beth snort. “Willy’s finally got a date. She won’t be back for days. Maybe you better go look.”

  Too late. Willy had already reached the doorway. Not to Beth’s room, either. Her own, with her own bed with her own sister in it with Andy Spangler without his trousers. Marking out her territory in the most blatant and insulting way possible.

  What the full moon hadn’t, what her boiling blood hadn’t, what the scent-drenching at the restaurant hadn’t accomplished, this did. The alpha she-wolf roared. There was nothing human in Willy when she lunged into the room at her sister.

  Except Andy got between them, more by accident than plan. He stank of sex and alcohol and a thick overlay of Beth. “Hey, Willy. Didn’t expect you back so soon. Whatcha mad about?”