Big Bad Bite Read online

  Kelly O’Conner’s pale skin flushed in fury. The walls and floor of Adam’s house started to tremble, and one of the unknown wolves whined, not liking the sensation. “You will NOT take my daughter from me, Davies. Blood or no blood, I will keep her safe from anyone that becomes a danger to her. How dare you waltz back in after being absent for years. Dangling a new brother in front of her knowing she can’t resist that. Not to mention the fact that she’s only been out of my house for a week, and she already has this inexperienced Alpha obsessed with her. An obsession that you’re apparently approving of! How could you let something like that continue?”

  Jenna stilled in shock. Adam was obsessed with her? What did that mean? They weren’t talking about it in a manner that conveyed a regular crush between a man on a woman, or the unhealthy longing a killer had for his victim, but in the sense that it was a thing to be suffered or lived through, like a condition or disease. Like the symptoms of a harsh fever that helped you burn out the virus invading your body. Was Adam suffering in some way because of her? Had she inadvertently done something to him that she hadn’t known she could do?

  Uncle Owen looked downright annoyed at having his judgment questioned. “Adam is an exemplary Alpha, especially since he has achieved such status at a young age. I overlook his obsession because I know that it will ensure his need to make sure she is safe. What happens between the two of them from there is no one’s business but their own. If she chooses Adam, then what more could I ask for than an honorable man who would be devoted to my only niece? You must learn to let go a little, Kelly. Jenna has to learn how to survive in this world on her own. What if something were to happen to you, or me, or even Rick? Losing my brother should have taught you that.”

  The tremors from the house stopped, and Jenna’s mother looked somewhat chastened. Jenna was so shocked that someone had put her loveable Mama in her place, that she reached up and pinched her own arm to make sure it wasn’t a dream. When she felt the jarring pain, she couldn’t help but smile in awe at her Uncle. She wondered if Satan was handing out ice skates for his new frozen rinks in Hell.

  Uncle Owen ran a flustered hand through his hair. “Let’s all take a half hour break, calm our nerves a little, and then the necessary people meet back here.” Looking to Adam he added, “That includes you and your Beta now. Perhaps after a little refreshment we can all get through the rest of this meeting without slaughtering each other.” Walking over to Jenna’s Mama, he held out his elbow to escort her. “If you would spend the break with me Kelly, I’d be happy to fill in the necessary gaps so that there are no more hard feelings between us about my niece.”

  Kelly looked at the elbow as if it offended her tremendously. From the way she glared at it, you would have thought it was covered in a flesh eating slime. Her stubborn Mama finally sighed in resignation and accepted Uncle Owen’s elbow as if she were the freaking Queen of England. Of course, with the way Kent sent her a worshiping look, strangers might have thought she was royalty.

  The second her mother was out of sight Adam had his face buried in her neck, taking a deep breath. When he let loose a viscous snarl she knew she was in deep doo doo for something. Cause you know, fate hadn’t already jerked her around enough today. No, she had to have something else go wrong before she’d been tortured enough for one day. The last of the footsteps trailed out of the room, but she could sense Amy nearby. Probably hovering close to them out in the hallway. Adam’s nose trailed the length up her neck to her ear, as the hand he didn’t already have wrapped around her traveled down her ribs, and settled on her hip. He nipped her ear sharply with his teeth, causing her breath to hitch at the warmth it caused to spread down her body, settling on the southerly parts of her anatomy.

  With lips that never left contact on her ear, he rumbled, “Why do you stink so badly, my sweet tart?”

  Shocked all the way to her toes, she asked, “Sweet tart?”

  He moaned in assurance. “Yes. Sweet. Cause the first time I saw you, I thought, ‘She looks like a sweet woman who could never stand up to my wolf. Then you started your little staring contest, refusing to submit and look away. Determined to convey to me in every way you could from fifty feet away that you had enough moxie to stand up to me, my wolf, and my whole damn pack if you had too. You were telling me with those beautiful eyes of yours that you may look like a delicate, stunning creature that needs to be wrapped in cotton and protected at all costs on the outside, but on the inside you’re the kind of woman who would sooner cut off my balls than let me try to wrap you in that protective cotton. You’re like my own piece of living, breathing candy. I wonder if you’ll taste just as sweet and tangy as your confectionary nickname suggests. The problem is, I can’t taste you, and I can barely smell your sweet essence through that god awful striped fluff ball odor. Which is an odor that should not be all over you. Let’s remedy that now.”

  Before she could say a word, or even blink an eye, Adam had her in his arms and was zooming her to some unknown location. About three seconds later the blurring landscape stopped, and she was standing in a shower she’d never seen before. She turned her head in the cranky wolf’s direction to ask what the hell was going on, but ended up getting a mouth full of water for her effort since he’d turned the shower on to a freezing cold spray that pounded her with pressure and instantly soaked her to the bone.

  He barked a cross, “Wash it off”, before the shower curtain fluttered as he zoomed out of the bathroom.

  Jenna stood there, standing in the freezing water, shocked now mentally and physically from the cold, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Thankfully, someone showed up so that she could yell at them and ask why. Amy. She stood watching Jenna through the small sliver opening between the inside of the bathtub and the other side of the shower curtain.

  “What the fuck was that about?”

  “Well, you came home smelling like a stray cat or two. He considers you his – so he doesn’t like you smelling like any man but him. Hence the reason you resemble a soggy piece of laundry right now. I can understand you being a little surprised by his reaction to the smell on you, but if you didn’t know it by now, I’d hope like hell you just figured it out. Our males tend to be a bit possessive. You have no idea how amazed I’ve been by how patient Adam is being with you about all of this.”

  “Patient? Patient!” Jenna waved her arms in the space around her as she stood shivering and sputtered, “You call this patient? I haven’t even known him a week, and you think he’s being fucking patient?”

  Amy looked at her as if she ought to have her head examined. “Well, yeah.”

  *****

  Things were not going as planned, and that royally pissed him off. Normally he was flexible, willing to bend instead of break when he had to improvise to get what he wanted. In this instance though, he found himself much closer to breaking because the stakes had never been higher for what he was trying to achieve, which were two exceedingly crucial things. The first was his sanity. Obviously, that was an extremely beneficial thing to maintain if you expected to keep breathing. This was not a dog eat dog world. Reality was much harsher than that. This was a world were at the first sign of weakness, a pack of rabid wolves would hunt you down to tear you limb from bloody limb, leaving the scraps of your body left for the scavengers to consume.

  The reason he felt like he was on the brink of losing his sanity? Jenna. Who was the second thing he was trying to achieve. His entire life, Adam had fought to control his beast and to keep his life. It wasn’t exactly a secret being a shifter, and living among them, that if you were unable to keep your animal contained, you would be put down quickly and silently. The entire Other species as a whole had survived by keeping their anonymity.

  Sure, there had been slip ups in the history of the world. Random shifters, demons or vampires who had let their supernatural presence be known among the humans. Why else would there be so many stories or legends about them? Many of the older incidents ended up with that pa
rticular Other achieving Godlike like status, and becoming a deity among that race of humans. But for every instance of supernatural slip up in history, you had a thousand dead Others behind them to remind you why if you wanted to keep breathing, you needed to learn to play by the rules.

  The most fundamental rule of the shifter kind was keeping your shit together and not losing control. Adam was dangerously close to letting the chains slip and giving his wolf the freedom to go ape shit. Allowing that to happen would be a damn travesty since he’d managed since childhood to beat everyone’s expectations of failing with his wolf so close to his human surface. Most of his life he’d spent living under a microscope, constantly watched to make sure that his wolf was kept locked down, and using the developing power of his wolf’s dominance to help make them Alpha, and thereby keeping them alive. Adam McPhee could not allow himself to be a man who lost control of his wolf, which was what he was on the edge of doing at the moment.

  The trigger to his spiraling downfall was currently freezing her ass off and sputtering in his shower. No, Jenna had not set out to purposely rile his wolf, but she’d done so inadvertently by being so challenging and not submitting to his dominance, and in extension the hierarchy of the pack. From the second she’d refused to look away from him outside of the house her SWAT team had invaded to nab the man he’d sought to bring in for pack justice, she’d caught the interest of his wolf. His beast had finally understood why it had never been interested in keeping a constant bed partner or settling down with a mate, because none of the females he’d encountered had been strong enough for them.

  Whereas the human side of him had taken one look at her and seen a petite, dangerously curvy, potential bedmate that made him harder than stone, his wolf had finally seen the potential of a strong female to handle their domineering attitude without running away screaming in tears. That moment in time had become, what Adam realized now, the first break in his defenses of keeping his wolf locked down. With every minute spent in her presence since then, his wolf had become more and more approving of the strong female wolf. Determined that they alone, were strong enough to bring her to heel without breaking the fierce spirit that glowed within her. But Adam had been intensely skeptical at his wolf’s insistence of claiming and keeping, Jenna.

  His human side had tried to rationalize with his animal side that sure, she was insanely beautiful, and presented what could be one hell of a fun challenge, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to claim any woman as his mate. After all, he was only sixty or so in human years. Most of the Other species didn’t meet their mates so early on in their lives. They still had plenty of time to have fun before they settled down and started making pups. His wolf didn’t want to hear the human logic though. He didn’t want to hear Adam’s reluctance of taking a mate, or even his ideas of taking things slowly so the human half could be more sure of the animal half’s proclamations.

  The wolf’s obsession became stronger each day since they’d met her, and took considerable glee in pointing out what it considered to be all of the traits that made her the perfect mate for them. Not only was she strong in mind and body, but she was loyal to her family, which meant she’d be loyal to their pack. She was inexperienced, but passionate, the wolf whispered to him. She just needed someone to show her the joys of how and when the wolf liked to play.

  Above all else, she was a unique treasure. He didn’t need the wolf to show him that there would never be anyone quite like Jenna, due to her hybrid genetics. The fact that she was one of a kind in their supernatural world was a gift. To the wolf she was a priceless jewel that the wolf wanted to possess. To be the only one able to keep her all to themselves, always for them alone; protecting, loving and nurturing her till the end of their days.

  With every point the wolf made, he made a larger crack in the defenses Adam used to keep him under control. Jenna’s mother had been correct earlier when she had stated it was an obsession. It was something a shifter never wanted to be accused of. The idea that the animal half had become so infatuated with something that it threatened to break free and claim their possession, was damn near the beginnings of a death sentence among their kind. Adam’s wolf had become enamored with Jenna, and was on the warpath to either convince their human half that they had to have her, or the wolf would batter his fleshy cage walls until he emerged in control of them once and for all.

  The wolf told him that he would make Jenna theirs at all costs. Adam couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to end up costing them their lives. Now that Kelly O’Conner had announced to the others that Adam was indeed becoming obsessed with her daughter, he was going to have to throw aside his plans of wooing her slowly to keep her comfortable with what was happening between them. The eyes of his Pack, and worse yet, Pack Master Davies, would be inscrutably on him for the first sign of losing control. He was going to have to do his best impression of dating her in warp speed to show her that he and his wolf alone were the ones who could be her and her wolf’s partners for the rest of their days. He didn’t have much choice in the matter anymore, but to succeed in making her his mate as quickly as possible.

  Every day his wolf wasn’t able to touch her, hold her, to make her theirs, was a day closer to their doom. One day closer to Adam losing his sanity to the wolf’s attempts to break him in order to gain what he considered his. He didn’t have the option of failing because failing meant certain death in the claws and teeth of a pack of angry wolves.

  *****

  Jenna was muttering curses as she followed Amy, cold and naked, out of the bathroom she’d been dumped in by Adam, and into a bedroom that was undoubtedly his because it was saturated in his scent. The strong smell of the room alone almost made her knees buckle under a surge of arousal that hit her like a bullet striking its target. It was quick and deadly, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever recover from it. It took all she had to stop herself from dropping onto the man’s bed, rolling around in that luscious smell that was unique to him, and practically creaming herself over it. Amy was kind enough to pretend that she couldn’t smell Jenna’s arousal filling the room like a flippin’ perfume grenade had gone off.

  The gorgeous redhead walked over to her brother’s closet and pulled out one of Adam’s shirts to toss at her. As Jenna slipped the soft grey cotton t-shirt over her head, she saw Amy digging through a dresser for a moment until she pulled out a pair of navy blue sweat pants.

  “Here, these are the only pair he has left that still has the draw string in them. You know how people always say that their dryers steal their socks? Well apparently our dryer steals the strings out of Adam’s sweatpants, because they always go missing after he washes them a few times.”

  Jenna dragged the baggy pants up to her hips before pulling the string as tight as she could and tying it to keep them where they belonged. At her waist, not falling to her ankles like they were want to do if it wasn’t for the atrocious knots Jenna tied in the strings. She looked back at her friend to find Amy looking at her intently, if not a little worried. The last of her strength seemed to drain out of her, and she plopped her butt down on the end of Adam’s bed.

  “Can you explain what’s going on Amy? You obviously know something that I don’t about the way Adam’s acting, and to be really honest with you, I’ve had it up to here with surprises in my life and trying to figure them out.”

  Jenna held her hand in a flat imaginary line over her head to demonstrate her words. The infuriating Alpha’s sister nibbled on her bottom lip seemingly unsure if she should say anything.

  “I don’t know… maybe you should talk to Adam about this…”

  Like a rubber band that had been stretched too thin, Jenna’s temper finally snapped. “Don’t give me that shit, Amy. I know he’s your brother, but I kind of thought you were my friend now too. How much more shit should I have piled onto my life before everyone starts to think twice about adding one more problem to my growing list?”

  Amy bared her teeth as her canines started to elongate. “Yo
u have no idea what Adam’s going through right now! I might like you Jenna, we may be friends, but he’ll always be my brother, therefore Adam comes first. I know it’s not your fault, but you’re driving him crazy, and now I spend my days worrying if he’s going to lose control of his wolf and have to be put down. This situation he’s in is something you caused, whether you knew you did it or not.”

  She was flabbergasted. “How the hell is it my fault if Adam can’t control his wolf?”

  Running frustrated hands through her hair, she looked up to the ceiling before snarling, “There are times I’d really like to castrate your Uncle for your lack of knowledge of our kind. It’s ridiculous and dangerous.” Her hands fisted in the length of her hair as she started taking deep breaths to calm herself. Eventually she slowed her breathing, and then looked back to Jenna. “Did you hear your Mom accuse Adam of being obsessed with you?”

  Jenna shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s no big deal. Mama was just being her usual dramatic, overprotective self. It’s not like Adam is stalking me or anything.”

  The left side of Amy’s mouth tipped up in an ironic half grin. “No, he’s not stalking you. Yet. The problem is that you don’t understand what was really being said because you’re so in the dark. The fact that your family didn’t teach you these things while growing up is seriously insane girl. They left you at a severe disadvantage, even if they had the best intentions about it.”

  Amy walked over and sat next to Jenna on the bed, “You see the thing is, saying someone is obsessed in the human world you grew up in, and saying their obsessed in our world have a similar context, but run on drastically opposite sides of the scale. I’m sure you’ve seen a case or two being a cop where a man is infatuated with a woman, whether she returns his interest or not. Well, in Adam’s case, it’s a bit more dire. With shifters such as Adam, where his animal is much more powerful, dominant, and if not properly controlled, a danger to others, those animals can become attached to something or someone in a way the human side can’t manage. This kind of thing is so rare that many don’t know how to deal with it. There’s just something about you that Adam’s wolf has decided is perfect for him, whether Adam likes it or not.”