KNUD, Her Big Bad Wolf: 50 Loving States, Kansas Read online

  “Drinking makes them worse, but sex helps?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sex helps. Tires me out, helps me sleep better so they don’t come.”

  “That is a wonderful side benefit to your leveled intercourse then. Is it always this…intense? With others?”

  No, his wolf answered with an adoring sigh, it’s never like this. But his guarded human was back in charge so he answered, “Like I said, there’s levels to it.”

  Then before she could make the conversation any more intimate than it already was, he said, “Maybe we can fuck again when we wake up. One for the road.”

  “One for the road,” she repeated, her accent back in full High Media-mode. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  But when he awoke, she wasn’t there.

  6

  Knight sat up in bed, looking around. The black sheets were still crumpled where she’d lain the night before. But…he sniffed the air. Her scent had gone stale which meant she was no longer in his apartment.

  She’s gone, his wolf whimpered inside his chest. Yeah, his human agreed, staying cool.

  But his wolf continued to whine like they’d lost something precious as Knight went through the motions of making his bed and picking out his clothes for work. This was why he didn’t fuck girls in wolf position.

  His human got it. How things needed to be to do his job, and live his life without letting the explosive anger that had nearly overshadowed his childhood take over. No attachments. No relationships. Just work, exercise, eat, fuck, repeat. Made total sense.

  But his wolf could be…sappy AF. His wolf was the reason why he’d gone from running black ops to fixing kids. And his wolf was the one who’d refused to let the one-night stand with Hot-but-Crazy Social Worker go, even though it was a sure bet he’d never see her again—

  There came the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the perfectly amalgamated scent of her expensive perfume drifted into his nose.

  Both his human and his wolf watched as Hot Social Worker let herself in with a bag of groceries tucked under one arm. Standing at alert, but for different reasons.

  “You took my keys,” Knight said as he saw her take them out of the pocket of her leather jacket and set them back on the kitchen counter where he’d left them.

  “Yes, I borrowed your keys so I could let myself back into your apartment,” she answered as she placed the bag of groceries down next to his keys. She was back in last night’s green sequin dress. But she wore it like it was a choice with her two bedtime braids and leather jacket, rather than like the “walk of shame” attire it should have been on a Sunday morning. “I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to make you breakfast as a thank you for hosting me last night.”

  “I don’t have anything in my fridge.”

  “I know. That refrigerator of yours is little more than a vintage stage prop. I wonder why you even have one?”

  “To keep my takeout leftovers in,” he answered honestly. “But I haven’t eaten here in a while because I’ve got crazy hours at the hospital.”

  “That sounds tough,” she said as she started opening and closing cabinets. “How unfortunate.”

  “You speak kind of fancy for a hot social worker.”

  “This is true but I’ll point out that your grammar isn’t all that great for a bad boy doctor.”

  “Yeah, I know. My mom’s always on me about that.”

  “Your mom who homeschooled you?” she guessed, obviously fishing.

  He crooked his head at her. “We exchanging history now?”

  She paused her search for a second and gave him a considering look before seeming to decide out loud, “You know what? Let’s not do that. You can be the bad boy doctor whose name I don’t remember, and I can be the Hot Social Worker whose name you never asked. That way we can remain the perfect example of a pornography scenario.”

  “Except you talk too much to ever be cast in anybody’s porno,” he pointed out.

  “Do I? Shoot, I’ll have to watch one and take notes.”

  “You seriously haven’t ever seen a porno?” he asked her.

  “You seriously don’t even have one pan for cooking?” she asked back.

  “Look in the cabinet down there…right next to the prop fridge.”

  She opened it and glanced in. Then let out a shout of triumph when she withdrew a large cast iron pan. But then her smile turned quizzical as she informed him, “This pan is covered in dust.”

  “You’re lucky I’ve got a pan. Some nurse I banged gave it to me as a house warming gift—an excuse to come back here.”

  “What a delightful bit of cunning,” she declared, going over to the sink to rinse the pan off. “Are bacon and eggs okay?” she asked.

  He hadn’t had a home cooked meal in…wow, he cut off his original month estimate when it started racking up into years. A long, long time. But even as his wolf salivated, his human answered with a lazy, “Sure. I’m not picky.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because my cooking skills are very basic. My roommate is in culinary school so I survive on her leftovers—darn it, more personal details.”

  “I’ll go grab a shower while you cook,” he told her. “Make it easier for you not to overshare.”

  “Good idea,” she answered, pulling a six pack of eggs out of the grocery bag. “And while you’re in there, I’ll work on being sultrier and quietly mysterious just in case I ever have to play a Hot Social Worker with a secret in a pornography movie.”

  And there it was again, the urge to laugh.

  He took the quickest shower he could. Not because he was eager to get back to her, he told himself and his wolf. But because he didn’t like the thought of leaving some crazy woman unattended in his apartment. Not that he had much for her to snoop through. He made sure to never keep any personal artifacts out in plain sight. And he didn’t keep family pics because they made him feel guilty. But still…he didn’t like the thought of it.

  “You’re right on time!” she said when he came out of the bathroom. Voice so bright, he had to wonder—like, really wonder, where the hell she came from.

  He thought about the guy from the club. The one she’d been arguing with. Now they looked like they could have been a perfect match, yet she’d come home with him. Why? He had the feeling it wasn’t because he was a better dancer. Though the girl’s worldview seemed seriously skewed. For all he knew, that might have been the exact reason.

  He didn’t have chairs or any kind of table so they ate breakfast standing up at the kitchen counter. And a cloud of uncomfortable silence soon rose up around them.

  But in what he was beginning to suspect might be a bone-deep bias toward contradiction she said, “I simply love this awkward silence between us. What happens next? Are you trying to figure out how to tell me I’ve overstayed my welcome?”

  She hit him with a look so eager he could practically hear her clapping like a happy toddler in anticipation of the treat of him kicking her out of his apartment.

  “Alright…yeah.” He clumsily grabbed onto his usual script. This girl was…so freaking weird. He’d been the coolest kid in the room pretty much since his birth, but she was seriously knocking him off his game. And not for the first time since he met her, it felt like he was stumbling several steps behind as he said, “Okay, thanks for breakfast but I’ve got to get to work, so…you should bounce.”

  “I will do that! I will bounce,” she agreed giving him two thumbs up. “Thank you again for the great sex. The experience was incredibly hot for me. I hope it was for you, as well.”

  Yeah, the sex had been great. And hot. As he watched her deposit their dishes in the sink, his body heated with the memory of how she’d responded to him. How easy it’d been to slip into her from behind when they’d been at the wall. Like she was the perfect height to receive him.

  “Hey, Hot Social Worker,” he said, suddenly fisting a hand around both her braids and pulling her back when she tried to move past him. “What level?”

  U
nlike him, she didn’t seem to have nearly as much trouble keeping up. “Ten—” she answered immediately, only to cut off when he yanked on her braids hard and took her mouth in an all-consuming kiss.

  The kiss was a surprise, too. Something else he didn’t do unless woman specifically requested it. But there was no hesitation at all with this girl. His tongue pushed into the wet heat of her mouth so hungrily that it felt like he was fucking her above the way he wanted to fuck her below.

  Sooner than he wanted, he was on the edge. Letting go of her braids, he kicked off the denim joggers he’d just put on for the trip into work and sheathed himself with the emergency wrapper in his wallet in record time. But to his wolf it still didn’t feel fast enough. He wanted inside her. To fuck her so hard.

  “Ten,” he reminded her on a barely contained growl.

  A warning of sorts, but that didn’t stop her gasp when he bent her over the counter and curved an arm around her neck, choking her as he pushed in from behind.

  He’d gone in without any foreplay on faith, suspecting the dirty and unexpected nature of the sudden chokehold would flood her in a way that a simple finger bang would not. He’d been right.

  He poured filthy words into her ears as he viciously took her. “You like that. You like getting choked as I fuck you from behind.” Facts. Not questions.

  He’d had morning sex before, usually because it was too late to send a woman home. Most often it felt like something he could do with the rest of his sexual energy before he got on with his day and forgot her name—if he’d ever known it in the first place. One more pump of the nozzle, like when he topped off the gas he still had to put in his manual truck.

  But this…this was different.

  If anything, the sex was more intense in the light of day. Because while his human filth-bombed her ear, his wolf kept urging him to do things to this woman that he’d never done before. Outrageous things: Claim her. Make her yours. Possess her. Coarse, ragged suggestions to go with his coarse, ragged breaths.

  But Knight kept going. Ignoring the wolf, losing himself in the woman. And then she came, her sex clenching around him tight as a fist, taking him right over the edge with the same weird synchronous feeling from last night.

  With his wolf still shouting in his ear, his cum filled up the wrapper, emptying everything he had as electric bolts of pleasure kicked up his spine.

  “By the Fenrir Wolf,” he muttered as his arm fell away, letting her out of the chokehold so he could use his hand to pull out.

  “What?” she asked, throwing him another quizzical smile over her shoulder.

  “Nothing,” he answered. It would be against the rules of the North American Lupine Council, and the rules of sanity, to try to explain to a one-night stand how he sometimes spewed ancient curses because he and his two brothers spent the first four years of their lives in Viking Age Norway.

  Instead, he focused on removing the condom and cleaning himself up. Then he tugged his pants up while she tugged her dress down.

  “That was truly wonderful,” she said on a sigh when they were both done making themselves look like they hadn’t just had a good morning fuck. “You are truly wonderful!”

  And hell, the way she smiled up at him as she said that, dazzling and bright. It made him want her all over again.

  Do it. Take her, said his wolf. Slowly this time. I want to taste her pussy. I want her to come from my mouth.

  “I’ve only got ten minutes before I have to leave for work,” he said.

  “I understand,” she answered, mistaking his reminder as a hint to get going.

  But when she tried to move away he braced a hand on either side of her, keeping her there at the counter. “Hold on. Hold on, Hot Social Worker.”

  She held on, her semi-permanent smile both curious and amused.

  “I’ve got to head to work in ten minutes,” he repeated. “And I don’t want a relationship.”

  “I don’t want a relationship either—” she started to say.

  “Shut up and let me finish, please.”

  She grinned and bit her lip, her eyes shining so bright he felt compelled to ask, “What?”

  “Nobody’s ever told me to shut up before, and you’ve done so two or three times already. It’s pretty delightful!”

  He crooked an eyebrow at her.

  “You don’t believe me,” she guessed.

  “Well, you do talk a lot.”

  “Yes, I am aware of that. But no one ever calls me on it or tells me not to interrupt them.”

  Another nudge of that strange curiosity he typically never felt with women. But instead of asking a follow up question he said, “Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time. And I don’t do relationships.”

  This time he gave her a hard warning look before she could pipe up again.

  And she made a zipping her mouth closed gesture which might have come off as more genuine if she wasn’t grinning so big. Seriously, his entire family probably didn’t smile as much in a year as she had in one fucking night.

  But despite that he said, “So yeah, I don’t do relationships or any kind of long-term shit, but I’m thinking we could hook up again. Like, not a regular thing. Just whenever one of us gets the itch.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you proposing we become sex buddies?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “If we’re keeping it real, I wouldn’t even call it ‘buddies.’ Because we don’t have to like each other to fuck. In fact, it’s better if we’re not friends. I’m talking about a no-strings-attached-ball-when-you-call kind of deal.”

  “But I don’t have bioware. How can we, as you put it, ball when we call?”

  “I don’t have bioware either,” he answered. Not an exact truth. But then his whole life in this human world down to the name on his business card wasn’t exactly true. He had bioware but turned it off when he left his black ops job behind. And now it had been dormant so long, he might as well not have it at all. Just like her.

  “But I’ve got a couple of pay-as-you-go phones we could use.”

  Her eyes narrowed over her ever-smiling lips. Probably because pay-as-you-go phones had been declared illegal a couple of years back, thanks to their near exclusive use by criminals. “Why do you…?” she started to ask.

  “The point is we can make this happen without exchanging names or personal details. We can keep it as anonymous as we want. When you get the itch, you text me. When I get the urge, I text you. What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” she repeated. “What do you think I think about having a no-strings-attached, sex-only relationship with a domineering guy whose name I can’t remember?”

  If she’d been a normal woman he’d suppose that she thought he was crazy for even asking. But because this was her he guessed, “Hell yeah?”

  “Heck yes!” she answered with another enthusiastic clap. “I can’t believe I’m going to be anonymous sex buddies with someone!”

  “Not buddies,” he reminded her. “We’re not friends.”

  “May I call you Buddy?”

  “No.”

  “It seems only fair since you’ve already given me a nickname, so I’ll take the liberty of calling you Buddy without your permission.”

  “Hot Social Worker,” he said, his human already starting to regret this even as his wolf cheered.

  “Yes, Buddy?”

  “Shut-up.”

  And before she could answer he sealed their new deal with a kiss.

  7

  Ever since I finally received a new phone a couple of weeks ago, both my parents have been insinuating the boyfriend who has yet to return even one of my calls is no good. But I don’t believe them.

  Not until I see him walk out of the hospital doors at the end of his shift, laughing and talking with a cute nurse. With my guards flanking me, I watch as they come to a stop in the middle of the hospital’s plaza square. And even though I’m standing about a hundred feet away, the plans they’re making to meet at
his bachelor pad apartment later tonight float back to my ears.

  “Would you like us to go get him for you, Shimmer?” Jared, my longtime guard, asks me. He’s joined by Santiago, a much younger guard who has recently worked his way up through our Texas compound’s security food chain to become a member of my family’s private service.

  “No,” I answer grimly, watching the way my boyfriend looks at the nurse with his head cocked to the side—just like he used to look at me. It truly feels like my brain is frying in a pan of indignant anger.

  I mean, yes, I’m aware he was a ladies’ man before we met, but it never occurred to me that the man I’d fallen in love with after a whirlwind courtship would betray me like this.

  And to think I honestly believed it was my father who’d been keeping us apart this whole time! Refusing to let him see me for reasons unknown.

  I’ve made up my mind. After a deep breath, I step out of the shadows into the light of the setting sun and start walking toward them. Like a cowboy boot-wearing version of the Terminator.

  The nurse visibly blanches. And as for my erstwhile boyfriend…

  He does an about-face and starts walking in the opposite direction. Toward the D2 station where he usually catches the subway home, but at such a fast clip, he might as well be running away. From me.

  I call his name. And to my disbelief, he actually breaks into a jog. I wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him given our many discussions about his hate/hate relationship with cardio.

  I dash after him in the muggy Dallas heat, unable to believe I’m actually chasing this man down. I call his name again. But he keeps running until I yell, “Stop running away from me! I’m pregnant with your baby.”

  That declaration stops him dead in his tracks.

  And he looks around. Probably scared someone heard me. “What do you mean you’re pregnant? With my baby?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see Jared extracting the nurse. No doubt he’ll take her back to the car we left idling at the edge of the hospital plaza, and she won’t be allowed to leave until she’s bio-signed a series of NDAs and received a hefty keep-your-mouth-closed payment along with some not-so-veiled threats on top of that.