Hunger Moon Rising Read online

  “No.” Dani shook her head. “I think there's another way. One that has nothing to do with science or gene therapy or any of that. But I need your help.”

  “My help? Why? What do you want me to do?” I spread my hands.

  “I can't tell you here.” Dani looked around the office as though there might be someone listening in. “And we can't do it here, either,” she said. “I've got McKinsey back at my place—that's where it has to be done.”

  “Where what has to be done?” I asked warily. “And do you mean to tell me you have that huge white wolf locked up in your condo?”

  “She's out in my back yard, and when I left she was being very good.”

  “But, Dani, she's a very large animal and your yard is tiny,” I objected. “Do you think that's safe?”

  Dani gestured impatiently. “She's fine—perfectly safe. But that's not the point.”

  “What's the point?” I asked her.

  “The point is will you help me or not?” She leaned forward and I breathed in the warm, secret scent of her skin. “Please, Ben, I can't do this without you. I really need your help here.”

  “Dani…” I didn't know what to say. I wanted to help her in any way I could, but the idea of going to her home and being alone with her felt dangerous. It made me sad to think about that because once I had spent as much time, if not more, at her place as I did at my own.

  Seeing the uncertainty in my face, Dani slid off the desk and sank to her knees in front of me. She put her hands on my thighs, and I felt the fire of our contact even through the material of my pants.

  “I'll beg if I have to,” she said in a low voice. She pressed forward, and I could feel the soft brush of her breasts against my legs.

  “You don't have to beg,” I said in a strangled voice. “Please, Dani, get up.” Just having her that close and in that submissive position, on her knees before me with her mouth almost at the level of my cock, made me rock hard all over again. I kept thinking of what it would feel like to have her soft, pink lips enclosing my aching hardness, the sweet, hot, wet sensation of sliding into her body. God! I fisted my hand on my thighs. I wanted to be inside her, claiming her all over again, leaving no doubt in her mind or mine that she belonged to me.

  “I won't get up until you promise to come to my house after work and help me with this.” Dani leaned forward, her hands sliding up my thighs and working their way dangerously close to my groin.

  “Dani,” I said, feeling like my self control was going to snap like a weak and rotten thread at any moment. “Dani, please get up. I don't…I can't…” I shook my head, unable to voice what I was feeling.

  “You don't want me? Or at least, not like this?” Dani's green eyes clouded with pain and she started to slide away from me.

  “No, God, no!” I grabbed her wrists, holding her in place. “No, Dani, I want you too much—that's the problem. I just…I don't trust myself right now. Not the way I'm feeling.” I lowered my eyes, unable to meet her searching gaze any more. “I hurt you once,” I told her. “I don't want to risk hurting you again.”

  “You won't hurt me,” she said softly. I dared to look at her, and her eyes were full. She blinked and a silvery tear slid down one flushed cheek. “Ben,” she whispered, “I trust you. Why can't you trust yourself?”

  “How can you ask me that after what happened?” I said. There was a hard, unyielding lump in my throat that I couldn't seem to swallow around. I let her go abruptly. “I don't even know what you want from me,” I said.

  “I want you to come to my place after work with an open mind,” she said, getting slowly to her feet. “Promise me, Ben. I know you won't break your word.”

  Dani could be relentless when she wanted something, and this was plainly something she wanted. And I had never been any good at saying no to her. I sighed deeply.

  “I'll be there,” I said. “What time?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dani

  I rushed around the house, making sure I had everything ready. The television had been pushed into another room, and the couch was up against the walls, leaving a large, empty space in the middle of my living room to work with. There were aromatherapy candles burning in the corners of the room, perfuming the air with a warm musk fragrance and massage oil warming in a bowl of hot water by the couch. I had even lit a small fire in the tiny fireplace that stood in the corner of the room. It had been a major selling point when I bought the condo, and I had used it exactly once. But there was a bite in the air and a frost of unease around my heart that seemed to warrant the effort.

  In front of the small fire were several thick quilts my grandmother had made for me before she passed away. I wasn't terribly close to my parents, but my grandma had been a pillar of strength and love for Tara and me in the dark days after they divorced. I needed things that made me feel loved around me now. The top quilt was a warm patchwork of soft red and gold squares that seemed to absorb the firelight and send it back to me, illuminating the entire room.

  A soft whine from behind the large sliding glass door that led from my living room out to the tiny, cramped space that was my lawn reminded me of the reason I was doing all this—or one of the reasons anyway. Parting the thick vertical shades that hung down over the glass, I peered out and saw the white wolf that was McKinsey Cullen pacing restlessly. She was showing anxiety, but no aggression. At least, I hoped pacing wasn't a sign of aggression in wolves. I've never been much of a dog person.

  When I had called Molly and asked her if my idea for changing McKinsey back had any merit, she had approved wholeheartedly and insisted on bringing the white wolf over to my condo at once. That had been Thursday night after Tara left—a long time for such a large animal to be confined in such a tiny space. But she hadn't tried to escape. And she had eaten the food I had put out for her. After much deliberation, I had given the wolf some chopped, cooked chicken because it didn't seem right to feed her dog food, and even though I knew wolves lived on raw meat, I couldn't bring myself to give her that either. So chicken it was and apparently she'd finished it off.

  I opened the sliding door a crack and put my face out, feeling the sharp bite of the wind that was ruffling the wolf's blond-white coat. “Hang in there, McKinsey,” I told her, feeling a little silly for talking to an animal. “I promise you I'm going to get you changed back into a girl pronto.”

  The wolf stopped whining and sat on its haunches to look at me with strangely human blue eyes. Suddenly I didn't feel so stupid for talking to an animal. I just hoped I could keep my promise to her. I thought of her father, tearing his heart out with grief, believing her to be dead or gone beyond his reach. I wanted to fix that too—he was a good man who deserved to have his daughter back. There were so many things I wanted to fix tonight—in my own life too.

  A swirl of chilly air skated through the narrow crack in the door and made me shiver, but McKinsey seemed unaffected. She lay down on the narrow strip of brownish grass and put her head on her paws, her pale, knowing eyes pointed up at me in mute hope. Apparently the cold wasn't affecting her much, but then, she had on a lot more than I did at the moment.

  I shut the door with a muted click and looked down at myself, wondering again if I was going overboard. Molly had recommended that I perform this ceremony skyclad, which is a nice Pagan word for naked, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. True, I had been nude on Mabon night, but I had also been possessed or “ridden” by the Goddess, according to Molly, which had lowered my inhibitions considerably. It also accounted for the tsunami orgasm and the feeling I had experienced of something or someone bigger than me taking pleasure in the act Ben and I had performed. But tonight I was the only one inside my skin, and I was shy.

  So instead of walking around in my birthday suit, I was wearing a long, slinky, black silk gown that had spaghetti straps and a row of mother of pearl buttons that started between my breasts and went all the way down to my ankles. I had unbuttoned the top three buttons so that the inner curves of