A Werewolf's Valentine: BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  Kesley’s present (as a new rich bride) to McKenzi as maid of honor had been a new stove to replace the fifty-year-old clunker she’d had before. McKenzi no longer had to do her baking in Kesley’s cottage. She pulled out some buttermilk and whipped up a batch of scones. As soon as they were done baking, she switched the laundry to the dryer, set out the scones to cool, then tiptoed back to the bedroom, and was in the process of slipping back into bed when West stirred, turned over, and when his eyes opened, he smiled.

  Her world turned to summer. She slid the rest of the way in, and he kissed her, then said, “The mural. It’s real, isn’t it? I mean, the animals. This town is full of shifters?”

  McKenzi blinked, a lifetime of habit keeping her from answering. Talking about her own family violated no promises, especially given what he’d done for Rolf. But the town secret? “No one has ever asked that,” she said slowly.

  He leaned up on an elbow. “I’ve never found a whole community of shifters before. Or if I did, I didn’t know it. Passed right on through.” After a hesitation, he said, in a cool, light tone, “You don’t have to answer.”

  Just like that, they’d come to one of those turning points that McKenzi had promised herself her easy lifestyle would always avoid. She felt her cat stirring inside her, making her feel itchy inside.

  It’s about trust, she thought. And in a rush, “Jeremiah Upson, who started this town and named it after himself, was a dragon. A nasty one. He collected shifters to work on his estate. He wanted to be a king back then. He got in a dragon fight, and lost. Hoard taken, house burned down. The former bond servants stayed, and kept the name because ‘Downs’ had taken on new meaning when they watched him fall out of the sky, crash into his mansion, and burn up. And, well, it’s been a secret ever since.”

  He said, “I’m sure the town has a mayor, a human. Is there a shifter header?”

  She shook her head, then paused. “Well, Kesley’s new husband is a kind of alpha.”

  “Kind of?”

  “He’s new to the town. Anyway, they’re gone for a few months. It’s not like we’ve gotten used to having him around. Why do you ask?” She drew in a breath. “This is about Rolf, isn’t it?”

  “I never thought of myself as an alpha,” West said. “I lost my pack as a kid—I don’t have a first name because I don’t remember mine. I was just ‘little buddy’ and ‘the cub.’ Not proper names for the authorities.”

  “But you remembered Weston?”

  He shook his head. “It was marked on a label in indelible ink inside the jacket I was wearing when I was found.”

  “No first name?”

  “No first name. So various cities’ Social Services tried to issue me a new first name. Let’s see, I’ve been Jason, Mark, Billy, Lester, Eric. Those are the ones I remember.”

  “You didn’t like any of those names?”

  He shrugged as he took her hand and stroked his rough, callused thumb over her wrist. “None of them stuck because I never stayed long enough anywhere to learn to answer to them. All I knew was, none of ‘em were my name. My family knew my name, and I meant to find them. Spent years looking for them when I finally ran. Got used to being alone.”

  He shook his head and rolled his shoulders, a little like a wolf giving his fur a shake, as if shedding water, or grass, or emotions he didn’t want clinging to him. “So no wolf packs, or dog packs, no alpha I can talk to about him? I don’t have a clue to where to go from here, but I don’t want to abandon the kid, especially one who shifted so late.”

  “I don’t know much about canine shifters. Well, nothing,” McKenzi said. “But this much I know. The older you are when you shift, the tougher it can be.”

  “Yep.” West’s hair in the pure, bright morning light looked like spun silver—like his wolf coat. “That’s what I’ve heard. Where do I go from here? I’m sure as hell not running off with someone’s kid,” he said. “I don’t know if it would be better to take off now or wait until he’s gotten used to having me around. This is new territory for me.”

  “I think it’s safe to say it is for everybody in the family,” she said, breathing past the sudden ball of pain inside at the idea of West taking off. “Look, I know what we agreed about expectations and the rest of it, but . . . this is Saturday, so Rolf is home and my dad and uncle are off today. I’ll bet you they’re all over there in a cat huddle, trying to figure out what to do next. They might want to talk to an actual wolf. Or is that an intimidating thought?”

  “Family talk is new territory, too,” he said. “As for wolf talk, pretty much all I know I picked up as a loner on the road.”

  The ball of pain turned into something she didn’t recognize, except as a different sort of pain, only felt on his behalf, and not on her own. It curled her cat up into a tiny ball right under her heart. “How young were you? Was foster care that horrible?”

  “Some were, some weren’t,” he said, shrugging. “The only consistent thing was, the best ones turned out to be in large cities. I kept trying to stay human. When I couldn’t fight off the need to shift, there was nowhere to run except as far outside the city as I could get. And of course I was always looking for my pack. Whenever I did a run like that I got caught pretty much soon as I found open land. Never dared tell anyone I was a shifter, so I got written off as an incorrigible runaway.” He lifted his shoulder. “They began putting me in stricter situations. You can imagine how successful that was when I got to my teens. Finally ran for good after six really bad places in a row.”

  He flexed his hands, his long eyelashes sweeping his lean cheek as he looked down at one of the older scars on his arm. “Anyway, I’m here now, and I want to do right by the cub. But I’m not sure where to go from here.”

  She touched his hand. “How about deciding after breakfast? I made scones. They should be about perfect right now.”

  His face lit up as if she’d handed him a gift of gold.

  A few minutes later they sat together at her table, he wearing her robe. He’d given her that special smile when she’d told him his clothes were drying. “I suppose they were pretty ripe,” he said.

  “Smelled great to me,” she said, and gave him a cat growl in the back of her throat. “But who likes the feeling of gritty jeans? And I have some stuff I got for my favorite purse, that’s great for cleaning leather. I’d love to furbish up that awesome coat. Where did you get it, anyway? It has to have cost a fortune.”

  “It might have, but someone gave it to me after I filled in for a band member who took off, one autumn when I found myself in Kodak, Tennessee. There was this bluegrass festival.” He took her hands. “I can’t read music, but they had me come in to jam with their fiddler. He was an old timer whose music came to him pretty much the same way mine does. I appreciate all this, but you didn’t have to.”

  “I wanted to,” she said, thinking, I’d do anything for another of those smiles.

  And inside, her cat gave a small but definite, purr.

  She served up a plate of scones, set out some of her mom’s good honey from her beekeeper cousin, and while he devoured those, whipped up some eggs and bacon. While she did these things that she never did for her . . . pick-ups . . . dates . . . she balked at both those words, as he was more than a pick-up, but they hadn’t really dated. Lover?

  Don’t jinx this by putting a label on it, she told herself, and set plates before them both.

  They talked about food as they ate breakfast, and music, and their favorite seasons. All easy stuff.

  She whipped up a second batch of scones while West took a shower. The clothes had finished, and he was drying off when the door banged open, and Rolf appeared.

  McKenzi paused in the middle of dishing out hot scones, and sighed. “Rolf, I’m glad to see you, but could you not bang the door?”

  “It bangs itself,” he said with an impatient shrug at this triviality. “Aunt Doris says, can you come over?” Rolf turned from her to West.

  He turned from Rolf to McKen
zi, then back again. “Sure. Let me finish my breakfast first, okay?”

  Rolf brightened with the sort of smile McKenzi hadn’t seen since he was a kid of ten, and only rarely then.

  He let the door bang—again—as he ran off. McKenzi turned to West, remembering that he had never actually answered her sideways-question about dealing with her family. “Are you okay with this?”

  He paused in buttering a scone and set his knife and fork down carefully, as if placement of them was a matter of national security, then met her gaze, his own questioning. “If you are,” he said.

  That surprised her. But then everything in the past couple of days had been a surprise. “I’m good,” she said, reaching inside herself and finding that that was the truth. “And hey, if they get to be too much, we can always come back here and lock the door.”

  His lips curved, and he said in that low, rough, panty-melting voice, “I was kinda hoping we could do that anyway.”

  Heat flashed right through her. Wow. But now was not the time. She took a deep breath to banish it. “Okay. While you eat those scones, I’ll give you a rundown on who’s who. Starting with Grandma Enkel, who escaped from East Germany with Great-Aunt Gretel back in the bad old Iron Curtain days, leaving behind my great-uncle, who was a bat. They shifted to cat form, and walked over the border during a blizzard . . .”

  She was glad she’d taken the time to introduce them when they walked up to the ranch house just before noon, and found them all sitting in a row on the couch, like a panel of Olympic judges. But the second West walked in the door, McKenzi was relieved to see them all smile. Even Uncle Lee, though it was a typically sad, bloodhound sort of smile.

  McKenzi saw her family giving each other glances, and could feel their invisible cat tails twitching at the ends, the fur ridging over their backs. Not that they were mad—far from it—but she could see at a glance that she wasn’t the only one feeling like she’d just set her paws into newly sprayed water.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is West, who travels around as a musician. He’s also a wolf shifter, and he understands about keeping the town’s secret. So we can skip the third degree, right?”

  Her mom said, “We just wanted to know where he’s from?”

  McKenzi felt the unasked question hovering in the air: and where he’s going?

  Before anyone could say anything awkward, she blurted, “He writes songs about his travel. West, maybe you’d like to sing one?”

  Rolf turned toward Uncle Lee. “Dad, you should play, too.”

  “We now have two instruments. I brought a guitar,” McKenzi said.

  West’s expression didn’t change much—McKenzi had learned by now that he was habitually too wary for that—but the tension went out of him as he smiled at Uncle Lee. “I’d be happy to jam with you.”

  Uncle Lee’s expression was closer to a real smile than McKenzi had seen for a long time. By the time McKenzi had fetched the banjo and guitar and the two guys had gotten them tuned again, the sky was clouding up for another band of rain. Her mom set a fire going in the fireplace, and from the smell, Grandma set about making her famous Apfelstrudel as West and Uncle Lee made the transition from the twang-twang of testing single strings to strumming chords.

  Uncle Lee said, “You know any Jimmy Rodgers, or Bill Monroe?”

  West said, “I like to jam—I’m pretty good at that—but songs, I don’t know anyone’s but my own.”

  Uncle Lee said, “You sing what you want. I’ll just feel my way. It’s been a while.”

  West dipped his chin in a nod, and began to play, and then to sing.

  Uncle Lee listened at first, then began tentatively, then with more assurance, playing a counterpoint to West’s melodies.

  McKenzi watched her mother, grandmother, and great-aunt all get caught by the smoke and whisky of his voice as West sang about the road, then segued into ballads that told stories about various people he’d met on the road. First was one about an old woman and the Dust Bowl that made grandma stop making pastry and sit down to listen. That was followed by a funny one about an ornery old geezer somewhere in the Appalachians who everybody kept trying to make wear shoes, but he wouldn’t, then finally he turned into a crow and flew away.

  West sang a sad song about the cages of city life, then one about the open road. The next was about desert wanderers, followed by one about the lights of Los Angeles. And then, to McKenzi’s total surprise, he began strumming the intro to a familiar melody, and he sang “Las Positas Motel,” which had been all over the radio the previous summer.

  It was word for word the same song, only sung in his low, rough voice instead of Anessa Noel’s famous soprano, backed by a rock band—until the very last verse, which was new. The minor key ballad was about a woman who searched for love, but every lover turned out to want something other than love, and it had been a huge hit. That last verse changed the entire song, turning the meaning inside out: the love those unsuccessful lovers offered was never enough.

  West finished, and strummed as if nothing had happened, apparently unaware of the stares his way. Even McKenzi’s mom and dad had heard the song wafting through the air through the cottage windows as Kesley was painting.

  Rolf burst out, “I thought you didn’t sing other people’s stuff.”

  “I don’t,” West said, glancing his way in question.

  “But ‘Las Positas Motel’ is on Anessa Noel’s album.”

  West looked surprised, then lifted a shoulder. “I gave her that song. It was a parting gift. Beautiful voice, but she didn’t have any of her own music in her.” His voice was mild.

  “Her CD doesn’t have that last verse,” McKenzi said.

  “No?” He flashed a smile at her. “Not surprised.” But he didn’t say anything more, just launched into another song, this one about a truck driver driving up and down the Colorado River.

  A couple more and Grandma said, “Lunch is ready. West, would you like to eat with us?”

  He thanked her, set aside the guitar, and slid into Kesley’s place at the table. McKenzi was amazed to see him there, a wolf among cats. And yet he wasn’t the only canine. And he fit in so easily.

  The conversation stayed general, and the food, as always, was great. McKenzi divided her attention between West, watching for clues that he was uncomfortable or wary, and Rolf, whose typical fourteen-year-old total lack of subtlety made it really clear that he had something on his mind, and he was only waiting to get his relatives safely shuffled out of the way before he would spill it.

  When lunch was over, sure enough, he followed McKenzi and West back to the cottage. As soon as they reached it, he got it out in a rush. “West, I practiced those basic stances. Will you teach me some stuff? About fighting? Before the Valentine’s Dance?”

  “I can teach you a little about self-defense,” West said. “But you can’t learn much more in two days than maybe getting someone off-balance enough so you can run. If you want to get a fight going, that isn’t going to help you.”

  Rolf flushed. “I don’t want a fight. But Jeff Olsen always does. I know he’s mad that LaShawna asked me to the dance, after she turned him down.”

  West looked outside, then at Rolf, and said, “Is this dance that important? Can’t you skip it and go with your girl to a movie?”

  “Everybody will be at the Valentine’s Day dance,” Rolf said. “A girl asked me! And if I wimp out, Jeff will think I was too wimpy to show up, and LaShawna said she has a new dress . . .”

  “Got it,” West said. “It’s important.”

  For all the wrong reasons, McKenzi thought. But at fourteen, what were the right reasons?

  West said, “Self-defense it is. We can get a start on that when McKenzi has to go to work, okay?”

  “Thanks!” Rolf took off, as usual banging the door behind him.

  West said to McKenzi, “I wasn’t sure what to say there.”

  McKenzi said, “I was all ready to add that to the Valentine’s Day hate list, but it would
be true for any dance. And it’s not all about impressing a girl. Yeah, he’s been getting into trouble, but mostly with his temper, and he did get into a shoving fight with a friend. But this Olsen kid is different. His dad used to hassle Uncle Lee back in their high school days, I know that much. And from everything Rolf has said, his kid sounds like a dedicated bully.”

  “That kind is usually motivated by anger,” West said. “And under that, as often as not, pain. If they aren’t mean by nature.”

  “I don’t know what the Olsens’ issues are. But I’d like to thank you in my own way. And as for work, I’ve got four hours, thirty minutes, and . . . twenty seconds?”

  His eyes widened, and glowed.

  The space around them seemed to shrink to its own world—no, it expanded all the way to the edge of the universe, all heat and light, thrumming to the syncopated beat of their hearts. She spread her fingers, wanting to touch all of him as her questions vanished like smoke. He was life, and all life was him—

  She arched as his hands cupped and kneaded her breasts, then stroked down over the softness of her belly to her hips. She’d always been content in her body—any guy who didn’t like her size was an instant turnoff—but with West she felt beautiful, every contour radiant from the tender savoring of his touch.

  His hot breath scorched her lips before they came together in a shaking, devouring kiss, annihilating space and time. No boundary existed between them; every communication, every negotiation, carried out in the dance of press, release, demand, surrender: tongues and fingers, lips and teeth, his two-day stubble and her long hair, each sparked sensations that added to the conflagration burning in her core higher, and yet impossibly higher, as she whimpered with want, far beyond mere words.

  That was when he slid his fingers up between her legs, pausing to caress, ever so slowly, the tender skin inside her thighs. When he finally cupped her hot, throbbing sex, her core had become the pulse point of the entire world.

  As she opened to him, his thumb found her clit. Again he sent her shooting skyward into blinding ecstasy. He took her from behind, and then she rode him, and finally they finished in the shower, and stumbled to the bed, boneless with contentment.