“Lydia—”

  As he glanced over, his wolven was tossing her bottoms away like they were on fire, and then she grabbed for him, yanking him off-balance—

  Daniel went right back to where he’d been—except this time, there was nothing between them and he had something he could work with. He wasn’t even worried it wasn’t as stiff or as thick as it had been before. He was a miserable beggar who was not going to be choosy about this gift.

  “I love you,” he said as he went for her mouth.

  “Daniel, I love you, too—”

  He true-north’d himself with his hand, and the instant her wet heat registered on the tip of his erection, he shook with anticipation. He was a virgin all over again, while also knowing what his woman liked and needed—the best of both worlds?

  Sure as fuck was.

  His hips knew exactly what their one job was, and before he could think of anything else, he thrust into her sex—

  They both cried out, and he might have teared up a little. He didn’t know, he didn’t care. He was pumping now, deep and deeper still, in a rush, in a panic—because what if this ended—

  “Daniel—I’m coming, oh, Daniel—”

  From a distance, he heard his wolven cry out again, but he was too busy going into himself, measuring the crest of an orgasm as it intensified, feeling the sensations of pressure in his sack, hinging his lower spine so he could move faster and faster still. He was aware that his lungs were burning, but it was anticipation—

  And fear.

  Fucking please, he prayed. If he never asked for another thing in his life, ever, just let him come. He wanted to be in this moment once again with the woman he loved, to share the carnal so they could both go to the divine, to transcend the earthly suffering he had been wallowing in and fly, freely—

  And that was when it happened.

  Her sex contracted around his, pulling at him, milking him, and he had a moment of infinity, a suspension between everything that was so frantic, and hungry, and needy, and desperate—and the float that was on the other side of the rise.

  He needed this like he needed the cure that wasn’t coming for him.

  That he wasn’t going to get—

  The first ejaculation racked him, whipping his body straight, every muscle in him seizing up—and then the next came. And the next—

  He started crying.

  As his body did what it had been built to do, as he filled his female up, he squeezed his eyes shut, buried his face in her fragrant neck, and let the life inside of him go into her. Was it joy? Yes. And sorrow, too.

  But mostly… it was gratitude.

  For one prayer finally being answered.

  * * *

  Underneath her man, Lydia dug her nails into Daniel’s back. The feeling of fullness, of completion, was overwhelming, and so was the release she was finding—and continued to find—because he was coming inside of her. And as he lowered his head into her, she smelled his tears and held on even tighter.

  It was all so unexpected.

  Closing her eyes, she arched up into his chest. She was naked except for her socks—because why bother with them—and he still had his hoodie on and the strings in front were digging into her breasts and she didn’t care in the slightest.

  The union was everything in the whole world, the surging of his body into her own, the stretching sensation of his erection going deep, the way her thighs were spread open and he was between them and they were—

  Her orgasm kept rolling, and she went with it, trying to record every single slide and penetration, the way he kicked in her, the gasping—hers, the moaning—his…

  This was a gift she had never dared ask for because he had been enough for her, just the way he was.

  When they finally stilled, Daniel rolled to the side and took her with him, and he hugged her close, his hand stroking down her spine and cupping her hip, locking them together like he didn’t want them ever to part. She knew how that felt.

  He lifted his head and wiped his face. “Sorry I’m sloppy—”

  Lydia smiled and kissed him, tasting the salt. “Never apologize. Especially not after that.”

  They were still joined, and she moved her leg up a little higher so that the fit was even better. In response, he kissed her, stroking her lips with his own. Then kissed her even more deeply. As his tongue entered her, she sighed and gave herself up to the sensations.

  After a little while, he eased back. “I don’t think I’ve got a second round in me. But considering the first was a shocking surprise, I’ll take what I was given and be grateful for it.”

  “Well, I’m grateful for having been taken.”

  He laughed. “Are you now.”

  The good ol’ days, she thought. This was… like it had been.

  The temptation to get lost in sadness vibrated under the bubble of her happiness, but she tamped the darkness down, praying that her will to hold it in place was strong enough.

  She smiled into his eyes. Such beautiful eyes, she thought.

  “You are quite a man,” she murmured.

  “Am I now.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  They lay there for what felt like an eternity, and the peacefulness was a water level nourishing a dry lake bed.

  “Hey,” he whispered, “can I ask you something?”

  Lydia nodded. “Anything.”

  “Will you marry me?” As she felt herself jerk in surprise, he shrugged. “I know that I’m supposed to be on one knee, and it’s supposed to be at sunset, and we’re supposed to have a photograph so you can post online—”

  Lydia kissed him and said yes at the same time, and then they were laughing.

  “It’s why I took you to the apple orchard,” he said. “I thought it was pretty romantic. I don’t know, we don’t have beaches up here, and even if we did, November is November. But those trees, you know. I thought in the spring when you went by them they’d be in bloom and you’d remember that I loved you.”

  Lydia’s smile slipped a little. Slipped a lot. “I will always know you love me. Always.”

  “My wolf… my beautiful wolf.”

  They kissed again, but this was different. It was a vow, not a start of something sexual or a way to finish off a session of making love.

  “I should get you a ring,” he murmured.

  “I don’t wear them?” She flared out one of her hands. “I like to be able to change at will, and I would hate to lose it.”

  “I know something else then. We can go—”

  The knock on the door was not shy. And then a familiar voice: “You guys up? I need to talk to Daniel.”

  As Daniel sat forward, Lydia tucked the covers under her armpits and did the same. “Gus—”

  “Gus?”

  The door opened wide and there the doctor was, up on his feet, dressed in blue surgical scrubs, looking like himself. Well, almost himself. The swelling and the bruising were still on his face, and he hung on to the doorjamb like he was not completely sure of his ability to stay standing.

  Daniel yanked the duvet over his naked body. “Hey, are you okay—”

  Gus put an arm over his eyes. “Jesus, when am I going to learn not to walk in on people—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Lydia said. “But why are you out of bed?”

  “Does everybody have to ask that?” the guy muttered. “And I’m sorry I interrupted—”

  “What do you need,” Daniel demanded. “Whatever it is, I’m there.”

  Gus lowered his arm, looked at them both, and then focused on Daniel. “I need you to teach me how to shoot a gun.”

  Lydia lifted her eyebrows. “Why would you…”

  But then she looked at the side of his neck, where there was a burn mark—and figured, maybe it was for personal protection. And who could blame the man?

  “Yeah,” Daniel said grimly. “I can do that.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS RIGHT at dawn that Daniel stepped out the back of Phalen’s house. As he took a deep breath, his lungs threatened to cough on him, but he exhaled quick and told himself not to get ahead of things. Then again, it was in the nature of knuckleheaded men to bust a nut and feel like Paul Bunyan.

  Which would make him a model for paper towels, he supposed.

  But come on, it had been how long?

  “You ready,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder.

  Gus St. Claire didn’t look all that ready. The guy had on a black parka from the stock the guards used, and it was okay in the shoulders, too short in the arms. His boots were likewise on the lend from the supply closet, and as he stepped out onto the back terrace, he lifted them up funny, like a dog with booties strapped on its paws.

  “Yeah, of course.” Gus zipped the puffy jacket up his chest to his chin. “I was born ready.”

  The way his eyes bounced around the back forty suggested he was in an internal debate with himself to the contrary, but it was hard to know whether he was worried about being out in the open or if it was more what they were about to do.

  Maybe it was that he was counting down to a departure from this fortress of relative safety—and was uneasy about it.

  Leaving was a dumb idea, of course. But hey, stones and glass houses and all that: Daniel wasn’t exactly a poster boy for being sensible. Otherwise he wouldn’t be out here in the cold with his lungs, would he.

  “Come on, Doc,” he said as he started off. “We’ll take it slow.”

  Not that there was an option to go fast-wheeling. Both of them were dragging, and though Daniel wouldn’t have wished so much as a hangnail on Gus, it was nice to not feel like he had to apologize for his own snail’s pace.

  After they crossed the flagstone terrace, they hit the dead lawn and rounded the winterized swimming pool. On the far side, they started into the meadow. The thing had been mowed one last time before the frosts had started, so short of watching out for gopher holes, the going wasn’t so bad.

  Overhead, the sky was a dull gray, and the gathering light of day wasn’t making much of a difference when it came to illuminating the landscape. Daniel didn’t mind the relative darkness at all. He preferred the shadows, and instinctively, he searched the pines in the distance, and the open field, and the house behind. He’d made it clear to the guards that they were going out together, and explained what they were going to do. The uniformed types hadn’t liked it. He didn’t like it.

  But there wasn’t a gun range inside the house or the lab, and Gus was determined to go home—and maybe this little tiptoe into the world of firearms would prove to the guy exactly how foolhardy it was for him to leave right now. Did the doctor really think he could come out here, shoot at a couple of tree trunks, and be qualified when it came to self-defense? No fucking way. Hopefully how hard it was going to be would make Gus change his mind.

  And as for security, there were cameras everywhere, guards on standby—and outposts in the forest that were manned. They would be safe…

  Fine, safe-ish. And if this kept Gus on-site? The roll of the dice was worth it.

  “So this is where you came out to smoke?” Gus asked as they continued tromping through the short field grass.

  “Ah…” Daniel glanced over, and as he flushed, he thought it was amazing how you could be a full-ass grown man and still feel sheepish when you got caught doing dumb shit. “How’d you know.”

  “Lydia told me about it.” The doctor nodded to the forest line that was still a ways off. “I figure out here is the only place you’d get any privacy—plus you seem to know exactly where we’re going.”

  “It was stupid.”

  “Quality of life, not quantity.”

  Daniel laughed in a hard burst. “I coughed the whole time, so it was neither of those.”

  “Old habits die hard. You don’t need to apologize to me.”

  “Even though I gave myself lung cancer?”

  “I don’t judge.” The man shook his head, his dark eyes shifting over. “Your DNA let you down against an environmental toxin that, yes, is avoidable, but plenty of people get cancer without engaging in risk factors, and plenty of people engage in risk factors and live to be ninety-five. It’s just the luck of the draw. Like everything.”

  “You’re a wise man, Doc.”

  The grunt that came back at him could have meant a lot of things: pain from walking, stress from everything, modest agreement that he was a Mensa candidate.

  When they reached the trees, Daniel entered the way he had before, through a natural gap between a stand of birches and two oaks. The going got easier because the underbrush was kept in strict control during the growth season so that the monitoring of the property was more effective.

  The navigational props he’d set for himself were intact, the sticks that were crossed or laid at specific angles on the ground, the branches that were hung in the V’s of trunks, the rock that was set in the cradle of a root, all precisely where he’d left them last. He tracked the directional cues on a parallel process, part of his mind making sure he didn’t trip and fall with his unreliable feet, the other half ticking off the progression of markers.

  Gus was talking the whole time, his chatter a release of nerves, and who could blame him. Fortunately, the conversation—about the weather, and the college football playoffs that were approaching in a month, and what he liked with his Thanksgiving turkey—was not the kind of thing that required robust responses.

  Meanwhile, Daniel was looking for signs of disturbance. Footprints. A pattern of broken branches. His makeshift trinket map fucked up because the points of orientation had been so subtle that they wouldn’t have been noticed and avoided.

  There was none of that.

  But come on, like whoever had abducted Gus wasn’t savvy enough to camo their presence?

  The fucker had been here already, though. Had to have been.

  It’s what Daniel always did before infiltrating a site.

  “Here we go,” he announced as they stepped out into a clearing of sorts.

  There was a fallen maple right down the center of the break in the trees, and he remembered sitting on the downed trunk and trying to smoke and drink a little Jack. Really pathetic, if you thought about it.

  “Have you ever held a gun before?” he asked, even though he guessed the answer.

  Gus shook his head. “Not unless an arcade counts.”

  “It doesn’t. Okay, let’s start from the beginning.” Daniel unholstered his nine millimeter. “There are three rules. One, assume all guns are loaded. Two, don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. And three, don’t point a gun at anything you aren’t ready to destroy.”

  Gus glanced down at the weapon. Looked back up.

  “Repeat what I just said,” Daniel prompted.

  “Am I being graded?”

  “Yup, and the F gets me shot while I’m trying to teach you.”

  The three rules were spit back at him like Gus had had them drilled into him all night long. Then again, the guy was a genius, right?

  “Good.” Daniel put the weapon flat in his own palm. “This is a nine millimeter Glock seventeen, Gen five. There are seventeen rounds in the magazine—”

  “Wait, can you show me first? Like how it works?”

  Daniel nodded, slipped off the safety, and front-sight-focused on a tree trunk about twenty yards outside the clearing. As he inserted his forefinger and found the trigger wall, he took a slow, easy breath. Settling a little deeper into his stance, he drew in another relaxed inhale.

  Then he swiveled his head toward Gus, met the guy’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. The pop and thwack were a quick one-two, and the doctor’s mouth went slack.

  “How did you do that?”

  Daniel lowered his arms. “Practice and muscle control—”

  “Whatthefuckisthat—oh, shit—”

  As Gus recoiled and jumped back, Daniel wheeled around and pointed the gun in the direction of whatever had gotten the man’s attention—but when he saw the pair of glowing yellow eyes, he immediately slipped the safety back into place and returned his weapon to its holster.

  “It’s a g-g-goddamn wolf,” Gus sputtered. “What are you doing—shoot it!”

  “No,” Daniel murmured as he got down on his haunches. “We do not shoot wolves in my family.”

  As soon as he lowered himself, the beautiful gray and brown female broke her hiding spot and trotted over, and God, he could feel himself smiling throughout his whole body as he held his arms wide.

  He should have known his Lydia would watch over them.

  His female was protective that way.

  * * *

  Confronted with the prospect of being eaten by a wild animal, Gus was kinda done with the whole shitting-in-his-pants-terrified thing. In fact, he’d been born un-ready for the sort of adrenal assaults he’d been enduring lately. A man of science, who liked controls and facts, was notfuckingequippedtodealwithgettingtornapartbya—

  As Daniel went down close to the ground, like he wanted to make things easier on the wolf when it turned him into a Big Mac, the massive, one-hundred-twenty-pound predator… trotted over like a pet, ears floppy, jowls loose, tail swinging back and forth. And when that idiot opened his arms, the predator went right to him, rubbing its face on his chest, in his neck, on top of his head.

  “What… the…”

  On his side, Daniel was all about the Steve Irwin, stroking the powerful flanks, sinking his fingers into the fur, smiling like the pair were all reunited-and-it-feels-so-good.

  “… fuck,” Gus finished.

  “She’s here to protect us.” Daniel looked up from the animal. “She’s our best line of defense. With her nose and her ears, we have nothing to fear out here.”

  At which point, the wolf angled “her” head toward Gus. With that tongue lolling out of those fangs, it was hard to reconcile the I’ma-eat-you with the lapdog routine—but you couldn’t argue with the fact that the animal had had more than ample opportunity to chew Daniel’s face off. And his arm.