AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then again, did the committed-werewolf-sex issue mean that Caleb had never had sex?
Werewolves were basically breeding themselves out of existence with their mated-for-life policies. Once a male impregnated a female, his DNA wouldn’t mix with any other’s. The same went for were-females—once they had children with a male, there were no other connections to be made. It was why divorce was almost nonexistent, and widows rarely remarried within the pack. Most males didn’t want to give up their chance of having children. Maggie’s cousin Samson was a fantastic exception to this rule. He had adopted his wife Alicia’s children as his own and was in the process of turning them into miniature knuckle-headed versions of himself.
Generally, werewolves tried to marry other werewolves, so they would be able to pass on their genes and produce little werewolves. But because of geography and the limited population, more and more wolves were marrying humans, and that resulted in more “dead-liners,” humans who shared all the same genes as werewolves but had none of the wolf magic. They couldn’t phase and lacked the werewolves’ special senses. They weren’t included in pack business. Some packs considered them a source of shame, as if the diluted werewolf genes were a sign of weakness, but the Graham pack loved their dead-liners as much as they loved any relative.
Most females wouldn’t risk premating sex, because they didn’t want to risk being tied to someone they didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives with. Some males did play “sex roulette,” as Maggie called it, and sometimes they lost, meaning they impregnated unsuitable females and were stuck with them for life. Maggie’s stance on this unfortunate practice was “If you don’t want to pay, don’t play.”
Maggie was terribly pragmatic about this sort of thing.
It was difficult to imagine someone like Caleb as a thirty-something-year-old virgin. But I didn’t know if I was ready for that responsibility, to initiate someone into sex. Not because I was nervous about sex. I used to be not really wild but on the more adventurous side of the spectrum. I went out with my girlfriends, enjoyed the occasional protected one-night stand. But that was then. Now I was no one’s idea of an ideal first time.
Unless, of course, he came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel again—then all bets were off.
7
Ethical Organ Thievery
We had been driving for hours. The last time I could remember feeling my own butt was sometime before lunch. Even Caleb was starting to show some wear, hunching over the wheel and occasionally rolling his neck back and forth to hear the snap of realigning vertebrae. I reached across the seat, pleased that I could touch him so casually, rubbing the thick hair at the crown of his head, down to the nape of his neck. He leaned into the caress, a pleased chuffing noise emanating from his chest.
“Sore?”
He nodded.
I rubbed the back of his neck, pressing my fingers deeper into the muscle tissue, feeling for knots. Tracing his hairline with my fingertips, massaging his scalp, rubbing my fingers along the tips of his ears, which I’d heard was an acupressure point for dogs. He turned his head to rub his cheek against my knuckles. I scooted a little closer, rubbing those knuckles along the line of his cheekbone. He turned his head slightly, pulling one of my fingertips into his mouth. He nipped at it with his blunter front teeth before wrapping his tongue around it, running his tongue along the ridges of my fingerprints. A hot flash ran from my chest to my belly and settled between my thighs. Old, lovely, familiar sensations—lust, excitement, giddy teenage zeal—had me squirming in my seat. My eyes widened at the strength and dexterity of his tongue as he moved it over my skin. If he could do that to a fingertip, what could he do to my—
I was jolted out of this rather indecent speculation by Caleb’s suddenly veering off the road and throwing the truck into park. My seatbelt seemed to melt away, and Caleb was climbing across the seat.
His mouth. My God, his mouth was hot and so very wet against mine. He wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing me back against the seat and grinding his thick, solid, denim-covered erection against me.
I moaned into his mouth, threading my fingers through his hair with one hand and clinging to his neck with the other. His hands spanned the width of my waist, sliding down the front of my jeans and yanking them open. The dark depth of his eyes melted away and gave way to predatory gold. Pressing his mouth to my palm, he untangled my arms from his neck and had me lie back as he pulled my jeans and panties down. His warm, thick fingers slid smoothly inside me. He moved in and out, teasing me with an achingly slow rhythm as his thumb rubbed at my sensitive folds.
He grinned when I made a desperate whimper and crooked his fingers—
I bolted up in my truck seat, disoriented and dizzy as I watched the scenery speed by. Caleb was driving, of course, and watching me with a little smirk on his face.
“Hey there, Rabbit,” he said, jostling my shoulder gently. “You having another nightmare? You were moaning in your sleep.”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shifting in my seat to alleviate the full, tingling sensation of my damp jeans pressing against me.
Why was he smirking at me? Had I said anything in my sleep? I’d never been much of a sleep-talker. I squirmed in my seat, trying subtly to move my uncomfortably wet panties—
Oh, hell.
With a cringe, I realized that he could probably smell that I was definitely not having a bad dream. He was teasing me. Stupid werewolf supersenses.
My face went warm, and I nudged his hand away. I grabbed a bottle of water from my cupholder and took a very long, very cold drink.
We’d been driving for three days and had already managed to collect on two relatively minor cases: a guy who passed bad checks in Healy and a woman who was a serial identity thief. I was amazed at how much Caleb managed to accomplish, tracking down about a dozen cases in the few weeks I traveled with him. He worked multiple cases at once, trying to track down several geographically convenient ne’er-do-wells, whether they were wanted by the authorities or . . . other people with less actual authority but more money.
Occasionally, it was as easy as calling the target’s mom and telling her to drag her son to the nearest sheriff’s office, where Caleb was waiting. (It actually worked twice.) Others put up more of a fight, which was why—given the Jerry debacle—Caleb tried to keep me as far from actual clients as possible.
At least, he did until Suds called him about the Mort Johanssen case sometime in our second week together. According to the e-mail, Mort Johanssen was a match to his twin brother, a seafood magnate who needed a kidney. Merl Johanssen was getting increasingly desperate and offered Caleb an obscene amount of money to track down his wayward brother, a Delta Junction resident who hadn’t spoken to his twin in years because of a dispute over their mother’s will.
We sat at a sticky diner table, munching on waffles. Caleb handed me the paperwork Suds had passed on from an investigator in Kodiak. “Merl’s got a huge fleet of crab boats and owns shares in most of the fleets in Alaska. If you’ve had crabs, it’s more than likely Merl’s had his hand in it.” He pulled an uncomfortable face. “That sounded better in my head.”
I snorted into my orange juice. “I sure hope so.”
I read over the medical report and saw that Merl’s renal failure was attributed to damage from a bad reaction to an antibiotic called streptomycin. Generally, when a patient had kidney problems, treating the cause could alleviate the symptoms. But it was difficult to restore damaged tissue. Merl wasn’t responding to treatment, and his creatinine levels and glomerular filtration rates were getting progressively worse.
