Turn back, turn back, turn back,I roar at myself.
But I keep driving down to the place I visited over a week ago now. It felt so much freer racing through the city as a wolf, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, certain in the knowledge that when I arrived, my prize would be waiting for me.
Now I don’t even know what I’m doing. I just keep driving, my cock so hard in my pants, burning precome leaking out of my engorged tip, my pulse so quick I know there’s some wolf in there, sprinting through my veins.
I end up outside her apartment building. It looks different from down here, sadder somehow.
The sun has set, but the sky’s cloudy, masking the moon.
“We’re not sure why the moon makes it harder to resist the change,”I remember Liam telling me, a seventeen-year-old kid who seemed like a grown man at the time.
In hindsight, he was so young. It’s incredible he was able to help so many of us.
“Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s some science we don’t understand yet. The point is, be careful when the moon’s out. Be extra alert.”
It’s good for me tonight. Normally, the moon doesn’t affect me; it hasn’t for years. But the added pressure of Ruby, of her body, begging to be touched, caressed, leaves me wanting her even more.
But only by me.
If somebody else touched her....
My thoughts brim with the hateful idea of another man leaning down and trying to kiss Ruby.
I laugh jaggedly, with no humor in it. Even I can hear the growl, deep from the back of my throat, bubbling up from inside of me.
As I crack the window, I will myself to stop. I will go back to my apartment and forget Ruby, as Liam advised.
But instead, I open it further and tilt my head, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.
Past all the street smells, the other humans, and the mayhem of life happening inside that building, I still scent her. I pick it up softly at first, as though pulling on a string, but then I grunt and inhale even harder.
She swirls through me, making me slump back in the seat, breathing through gritted teeth.
My balls swell, and I feel my seed trying to rush up my shaft, as though her scent alone is going to make me….
I can’t think it, not when I feel my hands tightening, the tell-tell tremor in my jaw, the pulsing in my eyes that tells me the hint of fire-red has returned.
Change, change, change, a chorus in my mind chants.Change and claim her. Change and take her. Change and make her yours.
My hand shakes as I reach for the button, closing the window, every instinct in my body telling me to open it again.
Except one.
The urge to keep Ruby safe at all costs.
From anybody who’d ever dream of hurting her. From any threat to her happiness, her comfort, her life.
Fromme.
CHAPTERNINE
Ruby
I may not be as paranoid as Mom, but I can’t shake the feeling somebody’s following me as I walk toward the bus stop.
It’s been two days since the Chinese takeout, two long days, and I still haven’t seen Ramsey.
That isn’t a surprise, since I went seven days before that without seeing him.