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  Alex stood and placed his hands on the back of the couch, one on either side of her head, and leaned in and crushed his lips against hers, wanting to devour her essence. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and she met his probing kiss.

  The feel of her lips, the scent of her, the sounds of her soft moans, were more intoxicating than he could have imagined and the intimacy of it nearly overwhelmed him. It had been so long since he had thought of a woman as something other than a receptacle for his needs. Long-buried emotions bubbled to the surface along with his desire.

  He dropped his hand from the back of the couch and slid it behind her head. Her hair felt like silk. His cock stiffened and he pushed her onto her back, mindless of her injury until she whimpered in pain. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, then resituated himself to take the pressure off her swollen ankle.

  Gwen pulled his mouth back to hers in a silent show of forgiveness and he slid his hand under her shirt and kneaded her full breast. The nipple hardened under his palm. He could feel her pulse not just where their bodies touched, but all around him, thudding into him like the bass at a rock concert.

  The sweet aroma of her arousal fell over him and he could imagine how she would taste. He wanted to lick every inch of her plump body. He dropped his other hand between her legs and massaged the fleshy mound through the heavy denim. A new wave of delicious juices flowed from her and the sweetness wafted up to his nose.

  She was writhing beneath him, meeting his lips and hands, pressing back against him as if she could not get close enough. He yanked at the brass button of her jeans, pulling so hard that her hips lifted from the cushion. When he thrust into her panties and probed the wet folds of her lower lips, she moaned and ground against his hand. Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he sucked her juices and reveled in the sweetness.

  Sliding his hand between her legs again, he kissed her so she could taste it too. He pushed one finger and then another inside her slick opening. Her pussy was wet and tight and when he massaged her clit with his thumb, she pushed back against him and sucked on his tongue. Her response nearly sent him over the edge.

  Never taking her mouth from his, she reached between them, opened his jeans and freed his engorged shaft. She touched and stroked him as if she knew exactly what he liked—as if they’d been together forever. He moaned as she dragged a nail up the length of his erection, then traced the deep ridge behind the head before wrapping her fingers around his cock and pumping with just the right amount of pressure. She pressed her thumb against the slit, lubricating it with the bead of cum that had escaped, and massaged the engorged flesh. He was so hard that he ached and he longed for the warm comfort of her pussy.

  When he pulled back and stared down at her, a wicked grin passed over her lips. “My, what a big cock you have, Doctor McKenzie,” she purred.

  He chuckled at her playfulness. “All the better to fuck you with, my dear,” he whispered and bent to kiss her again.

  After helping her out of her shirt and bra, and easing off her jeans and panties, Alex swept his gaze over her naked body. He thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful, and yet every curve seemed somehow familiar. Grasping his cock, he slid it up and down her slick divide then positioned the head at her opening and prepared to push inside. Gwen’s breath hitched as if she were bracing herself. He would go slowly, until he was buried to the hilt and then he would…

  His body began to quake and itch and he could feel the coarse fur pushing out beneath his skin. Fuck! He was shifting. Alex shot to his feet and glared down at her, his chest heaving. The look in her eyes was a maddening combination of lust and confusion.

  The world took on a red tint and Alex felt his self control slipping away. He wanted to sink his teeth into her soft flesh and fuck her hard. A growl gathered in his chest and he bit down on his tongue to suppress it.

  Air. He needed air and he needed to get out of here as soon as possible. Without a word, he yanked up his jeans and bolted out the front door into the night. As he ran, he looked up at the sky and watched the clouds slide past the pale crescent above. The moon was barely three quarters. Why had he reacted like that? He’d never shifted outside of the one-week window.

  Alex stopped just inside the tree line and took deep breaths, willing his heart rate to slow. What the hell? An involuntary howl erupted from him and he clutched the sides of his head, desperately trying to keep the wolf inside. He concentrated on his breathing until the prickling sensation subsided and he felt the fur retreat deep within his body. Feeling suffocated by panic and confusion, Alex shook himself like a dog just out of the lake and took off running again. For the first time in years, he regretted becoming a werewolf.

  Gwen lay on the couch in stunned silence for a moment before propping herself up on her elbows and staring out the open front door.

  What the hell?

  When she tried to sit up, a wave of dizziness washed over her and the room seemed to tilt. Flopping back on the cushions, she closed her eyes and slung one arm across her face. Though the painkiller he’d given her at the clinic, and the beer she’d had with dinner, had long since worn off, Gwen still felt drugged. She tried to reason that it was a combination of fatigue, adrenaline and arousal, but she knew the only thing she was high on was Alex. From the moment he’d kissed her, she’d been hooked. Every place their skin touched had vibrated with an exhilarating energy that still lingered.

  He’d brought her to the brink before abruptly stopping and bolting from the cabin and she was still hot and tingling from his touch. Reaching between her legs, Gwen massaged the wet and throbbing mound, trying to relieve the ache Alex had left behind.

  The memory of his mouth, his hands—and that cock—flooded her senses. She ran her fingertip over the slick divide then plunged between the lips and rubbed her engorged clit. Alex, she whispered, imagining that it was him teasing her toward orgasm. With her other hand, she kneaded her breast and pinched her hardened nipple, trying to mimic his movements. She spread her legs and fingered herself, wishing he was pushing inside her. Her climax was building. So close…

  A long howl from the woods brought Gwen back to reality. She shot upright, pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and wrapped it around her naked body. When her dizziness passed, she used the fireplace poker as a cane and hobbled across the room to shut and lock the door, and made her way back to the sofa. As she untangled her wadded-up clothing then got dressed, the reality of his hasty exit crashed over her and her longing was smothered by rejection and embarrassment.

  Her attraction to him had been so immediate and intense that it frightened her. She thought he felt the same way until he bolted out the door like the place was on fire. It was so humiliating that Gwen began to wonder how long it would take to sell Chaney Acres. She hoped she would never have to see Alex McKenzie again, but thought she might just die if she didn’t.

  Chapter Six

  Three Years Ago

  The last day Alex was fully human had been just as crappy as the one before. The blender sprayed his breakfast smoothie all over his last clean shirt and when he stooped to wipe up the floor, his thick eyeglasses slid off his face and one of the stems snapped off. It had taken him twenty minutes to fish it out from under the stove and find a paperclip to fashion into a temporary hinge.

  After digging a marginally clean polo from the hamper, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, smoothed his thinning hair into a ponytail and reminded himself to stand up straight. People were always on him about his posture and he was so skinny that a college professor once told him that, in profile, he looked like a question mark.

  He was late for his first appointment and plenty frazzled when he glanced up from the chart. Alex knew that the shitzu’s owner had been flirting with him. Miss Jenkins was pretty made up for a Saturday morning visit to the veterinarian’s office. “Please, Doctor McKenzie, call me Tonya,” she’d insisted.

  Her bleached-blonde hair
looked ready for a shampoo commercial and her breasts were overflowing her tight, low-cut shirt. She’d made a point of telling him that she thought that Mitzie’s recent behavior problem—shredding the bed pillows—was because the little dog was upset that Miss Jenkins—Tonya—had recently broken up with her boyfriend. She punctuated the last little tidbit by dipping her head and looking up and batting her eyelashes.

  Alex was pretty sure that if he lifted Tonya Jenkins up on the stainless steel exam table, she would have been more than willing to do just about anything he could dream up. Instead, he prescribed a daily walk to relieve Mitzie’s stress. “It’ll be good for her to burn off some energy and who knows, maybe you’ll even find your next boyfriend at the park.”

  Miss Jenkins scooped up Mitzie, coolly thanked Alex for the advice and stormed out of the room. Alex leaned back against the table and watched her go, admiring her long legs and swinging hips as she clicked down the hall. He tossed the chart on the desk and let out a long, defeated sigh.

  Alex wasn’t oblivious to the advances of beautiful women, just terrified by them. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t want a relationship. He just couldn’t seem to get out of the gate. In their presence, his heart raced, his palms sweated, and his mouth would go so dry it was as if he’d been sucking on a leaf blower.

  This fear of the opposite sex had been with him since the first hints of puberty. It seemed that one day Alex was playing kickball with the neighborhood girls in blissful ignorance and the next day they had become intimidating alien creatures. Except for Sam. She’d been his best friend since Alex was old enough to know what a best friend was and, once the hormones kicked in, she was the only girl Alex could be around without turning into a blushing, stammering idiot.

  They had been inseparable. Sam’s house was kitty-corner through the back yards from Alex’s in an old south Minneapolis neighborhood with oversized lots and turn-of-the-century houses. The two would spend summer afternoons building forts and shooting Sam’s neglected dolls off the fence with a slingshot.

  He’d often wondered why all girls couldn’t be like Sam. While she was content playing crazy eights, most of the other females he encountered just wanted to play doctor—and the prospect terrified him. Maybe that was why he’d channeled his interest in medicine into the care of animals rather than humans.

  The day Tonya Jenkins walked into his office on the make and walked out all pissed off was just the latest in a long string of miscues. He got it—nobody liked to be rejected. It hadn’t been the first time Alex had gone down that road, but he was determined it would be the last. The decisions he made in the next twenty-four hours would change his life forever—for better and for worse.

  * * * * *

  Alex couldn’t get his run-in with Tonya Jenkins out of his mind. He moped around his apartment all afternoon trying to distract himself from yet another embarrassing failure with the opposite sex. He needed a change of scenery. Grabbing his truck keys, he held open the front door. “C’mon, Bob, let’s go for a ride.”

  Sam and Diana had an open-door policy. Alex didn’t abuse the privilege, but that night he found himself, unannounced, on the front porch of their bungalow ringing the bell. Diana had him in a bear hug before Alex could manage, “hello.”

  “Alex! Baby doll! How have you been?” Diana didn’t given him a chance to answer the question. She loosened her hug grabbed him by hand and dragged him through the house. “C’mon, lovey, we’re in the back.”

  Alex had followed Diana through the impeccably restored house. It had taken the women nearly four years to bring the plaster walls, hardwood floors and heavy wood moldings back to their 1920s glory. As they headed toward the patio, Alex watched Diana’s round hips roll seductively under her long, bohemian skirt. His gaze moved up to the wild salt-and-pepper curls bouncing to her mid-back. An aromatic cloud of lavender and cedar trailed out behind her. She was the real deal—a twenty-first-century hippie without a pretentious bone in her curvy, Earth-mamma bod.

  On the way through the kitchen, Diana snagged a wineglass from the cupboard. She swung open the creaky screen door to the backyard and announced, “Sammy, you’ll never guess!”

  Sam looked around her partner and when she saw their guest her face contorted into her famous, goofy, sideways grin. “Where’s Bob?” she asked. Not, “Hi, Alex. How’s it going, Alex? What’s new, Alex?” No, she wanted to know about the dog.

  When Alex told her he was in the back of the truck where he’d been told to stay, Diana placed one hand on her generous hip and with the other pointed toward the gate in the privacy fence. Alex rolled his eyes, trudged to the side of the house, opened the gate and called, “Okay, Bob. Come on!”

  He was answered by a joyful bark, then a HUMPH as his oversized black Lab jumped out of the pickup bed and bolted through the back gate. By the time Alex made it back to the seating area, Diana had settled into her favorite chair and Bob was sitting at her knee, his big noggin on her lap, looking up at her lovingly. Alex sat down in the rattan loveseat opposite the women and Bob, without moving his head, rolled one eye to look his way. Alex supposed Bob was ticked that he’d been left in the truck when he knew Alex was going to see two of his favorite people.

  Diana plucked a cube of cheese from a tray on the low table between them and held it inches from Bob’s quivering nose. “There you go, Sugar.” Bob gingerly took the treat, swallowed it whole, then flopped down at Diana’s feet. Alex watched him put his snout on his paws. He would always remember wondering at that moment exactly what the dog must be thinking. Alex was a student of animal behavior, but when all was said and done, he really didn’t have clue what made them tick.

  With her four-legged guest served, Diana poured Alex a glass of wine. “So, lovey, what gives?” Sam lit a cigarette and narrowed her eyes at him as she blew out the smoke. “Girl trouble,” Sam answered for him.

  Diana pawed the air in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, how do you know?”

  Sam laughed, “Uh, because it’s Alex. It’s nine-thirty on a Saturday night and he’s sitting on our patio.”

  Diana returned the laugh. “Yeah, I see your point.”

  “Spill,” Sam demanded.

  Alex told them about the appointment with Tonya Jenkins. They’d heard him tell similar tales before, but tonight it was different. It was, Alex supposed, his rock bottom. He told them that he didn’t want to be alone anymore and the minute he said that out loud he was embarrassed to feel his throat tighten and his eyes burn.

  Sam got up from her chair, ground out her cigarette and joined him on the loveseat. She put her arm around his shoulders and kissed him hard on the cheek. She gave him a squeeze.

  “It’ll happen, Alex. When it’s time, it’ll happen.”

  Alex just shook his head. “Yeah? When? I’m a grown man. By most accounts I’m successful.”

  “Very,” Diana interjected.

  “I’m not bad looking.”

  “Gorgeous,” Diana amended.

  “I’m a decent guy.”

  “The best, darling,” Diana murmured.

  “It’s me. I have some sort of defect. What the hell is wrong with me? I get around women and turn stupid. I can’t talk. I can’t think. And I certainly can’t ask one out.”

  “You go out,” Sam offered, her tone hinting that even she knew she was stretching.

  Alex smirked. “Let’s examine the last three dates, shall we? There was the veterinary pharmaceutical rep. She cried the entire night about her ex-boyfriend. There was the checkout girl from the grocery store who, when I dropped her off at the end of the night, told me to be quiet so I wouldn’t wake her folks, then got around to telling him she was only nineteen. Then, there was the one from my health club—the nympho. First—and last—date she attacked me. She wouldn’t let me out of her apartment for twelve hours.”

  “See? You go out!” Sam said, and burst out laughing.

  “Samantha,” Diana chastised.

  “And you know what all those dates
had in common—besides being complete disasters?” Alex mused. “In every case, they asked me out. They made the first move.”

  There was a long silence. Sam studied her wineglass and Diana stared at some unknown thing in the distance. These two women knew him and his history. One had known him since childhood. They certainly knew that everything Alex had said was true. They also knew that Alex had read every book out there. The bookshelves in his downtown Minneapolis loft held two genres—veterinary medicine and self-help. The latter category was dominated by books on how to talk, flirt and generally interact with the opposite sex. Alex had bought most of them on the internet and would have returned each one for a refund if he hadn’t been so embarrassed to need them in the first place.

  Diana was the first to break the silence. “You know, honey, there are…alternatives.” Her voice was serious, her words heavy with significance.

  Sam and Alex both looked up. Diana was backlit by the glow of the full moon and it made her wild head of curls stand out in silhouette like a wispy halo. Sam rose, poured herself another glass of wine and settled back into her own chair. She looked at him then Diana, lit another cigarette and tucked her long, thin legs up under herself.

  It seemed Alex was the only one without a clue about the “alternatives”. “Well?” he finally asked.

  Diana smiled and leaned forward, as if by asking her to explain, he’d agreed to take action. Somewhere deep inside, he guessed he knew that he had.