Virgin Wolf II Read online

  Virgin Wolf II

  Mellizo Wolves

  Copyright © July 2011, Lynde Lakes

  Cover art by For the Muse Designs © July 2011

  Amira Press

  Charlotte, NC 28227

  www.amirapress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-936279-95-1

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and e-mail, without prior written permission from Amira Press.

  Dedication

  To my dear friend, Winona Prette, my publisher, Yvette Lynn,

  my coordinator, Dahlia Rose, my cover artist, Elaina Lee,

  and my editor, Brieanna Robertson

  Chapter One

  Afternoon darkness wrapped a malevolent mist around the towers of the historic mansion nestled below Mt. Baldy. Angela Ward-Lamont had barely stepped into the foyer and heard the latch click before the December storm broke. Thunder echoed around her and reverberated through the drafty rooms, sending tremors through her. She looked around the unsettling sanctuary she now shared with her new husband, Damon. Another tremor slid down her back as an icy essence drifted over her. She felt like Little Red Riding Hood who, after escaping a fierce storm, found herself in the wolf’s den. Yet, more frightening than her daunting surroundings were the Lamont family’s undying secrets. What if within this mansion, with its soaring towers, there were dark, undiscovered rooms and twisting tunnels? The prickling hairs at the back of her neck warned that lurking within the darkness behind the walls were dusty dregs of evil. Although Reeves was dead and his ashes scattered behind the mansion, she had an eerie sense of his presence. She looked around, expecting someone or something to be there, but she was alone.

  A log shifted in the fireplace. She jumped. It was then she noticed that Kyle Cooper, their new houseman, had a crackling fire in the living room fireplace waiting for her.

  Touched by his thoughtfulness, she hurried to the hearth and stood there a few moments until she felt warm enough to remove her coat. She hung the brown leather garment in the entry closet. The sole dim light from the lamp table flickered off and, for a moment, the house lost power—and then it blinked back on. That was all she needed in her skittish mood. She rubbed her arms. I won’t let this mansion spook me. I have enough worries.

  The rain pelting the windows with angry force drew her closer. She’d hate to be on the road now. Her saliva tasted metallic, and her steps were slow, hesitant. She shivered and rubbed her arms. The rain bombarding the glass matched her tumultuous mood. Yet the unnerving tempest raging outside was mild compared to her internal turmoil—she’d almost lost her life—and Damon. Those two harsh realities contributed to her belief that through their struggles, they’d earned a deep, durable love and a safe world. Believing in their future to the depths of her soul, she’d let him persuade her to run away to Las Vegas. Now, with the gynecologist’s report in her trembling hands, she felt a shiver of foreboding and wondered if the curse was really over. Dr. Lopez had used the word mellizo, twins. Dear God, Damon’s sperm could’ve fertilized my eggs before Madam Nola released the curses.

  I need to talk to him. She frowned. He didn’t greet me when I came in. For a moment, she felt neglected, then childish. She had no right to feel ignored. No man had ever doted on his wife more. Probably the storm had drowned out the sound of her Camry coming up the drive.

  She thought she heard a file drawer open in the den. He had a deadline at work and was probably slaving away, trying to get it done. She should be grateful that he did most of his work at home. She definitely wouldn’t want him on the roads in this storm.

  She paced a few steps. Perhaps facing him right now wasn’t a good idea. How would she break the unnerving news? Rather than brooding, she needed to do something constructive to elude her fears for awhile. She got out the folder with her sketch board, switched the table lamp to bright, and tried to lay out ideas for redecorating the manor for the coming Christmas holidays. After thirty minutes of mostly erasing, she tossed the folder aside and picked up the large manila envelope with the doctor’s report. She reread it and returned to her pacing. Maybe she should wait until after dinner when they were relaxing together by the fire. She tried to read a book, but the pages blurred before her. The dreary day descended into late afternoon.

  Darn. This is his problem, too. Just march in there and tell him. She paused, took a deep breath, and entered the den. Damon looked totally absorbed in his work. She stared at him. The glow of the bright desk lamp emphasized his strong features. She yearned to sit on his lap and run her fingers through that familiar black hair, alive with blue glints. She caught a whiff of woodsy shaving lotion. He’d shaved this morning, but now stubble faintly shadowed his jaw. This morning, in the early hazy dawn light, he’d been gorgeous in nothing but his sexy grin. How wonderful his lips had tasted…how marvelous his strong arms had felt around her…how intoxicating his male scent….

  Without or with clothes, the man took her breath away. Now he looked devastatingly handsome in his tailor-fitted gray trousers and matching pullover cashmere sweater. The soft wool added a layer of pillowy bulk to his already impressive shoulders. She yearned to rest her head there and forget her troubles. He looked up from the stack of business correspondence with a glint of joy in his brown eyes. His smile sent quivers down her spine to her knees.

  He glanced at his Rolex. “How long have you been home, Hot Stuff?” he asked in a deep, feral voice that unfailingly liquefied her core.

  She toyed with a strand of long auburn hair. “A couple of hours, I guess.”

  He’d started calling her Hot Stuff in private on their honeymoon. She called him her alpha hero. Although he was no longer affected by the natural rhythm of the moon, the feral lust he brought to their lovemaking, along with tremendous tenderness, was an explosive combination. Whether alpha werewolf or alpha man, Damon was an expert at giving pleasure. While in the throes of passion, the nickname Alpha Hero sounded hot. She shivered. Now, the wolf ramification brought her fears to full bore.

  He stood, met her halfway, put his arms around her, and nuzzled her neck. The shadows in the room shifted with the movement. “Want to go upstairs, or shall I just shut the den door?”

  She backed up a step and looked up at him. She couldn’t stop a small, wistful smile.

  Their honeymoon, though short, was all she’d ever dreamed of. “First, we need to talk,” she said, feeling the pressure of emotions rising in her throat.

  He gave a wry grin. “I don’t like the sound of that, or that stubborn look in those moss-green eyes of yours.”

  She forced firmness into her tone. “We have to discuss this. Even before we left for Vegas I had concerns.”

  His searching eyes were guarded. “About marrying me?”

  She held her eyes steady on his. “About timing. Finally, I went to an appointment with Dr. Lopez.” She held back that it was a positive pregnancy test that finally sent her flying to his office. It wasn’t the possibility of pregnancy that concerned her—it was the date of conception.

  Damon visibly stiffened, and his gaze bore into hers. “Why? Are you sick?”

  “No, but I missed a couple of menstrual periods,” she said, barely above a whisper. “After we returned from our short honeymoon, my usual time for menstruation came and went.” She had told herself the absence of her period was due to the changes in her body when she morphed into a wolf. But if she told him that, he’d think he’d married an idiot.

  He raked his hand through his hair, and his forehead wrinkled. “You’re complaining about the short honeymoon or your lack of a period?”

  She wanted to just blurt it out, but— “Darn it, Damon, just listen. Fearing I might be pregnant, I did
the dumb thing and ignored it, as if it would magically disappear.”

  His gaze burned hers with probing intensity. “Let me get this straight, you’re pregnant—and you want the pregnancy to disappear?”

  She swallowed. Her throat was as dry as the vineyards below Mt. Baldy in a Santa Ana wind. “No, that’s not what I’m trying to say. Dr. Lopez gave me a complete workup and I got the results today.” She gestured with the report and sonogram pictures with a trembling hand. “I’m about three months pregnant with twin girls.”

  Damon leaned his head back and laughed with a deep, joyful tone. “Surely you weren’t afraid that I wouldn’t be pleased?” He picked her up by her waist and swung her around. “It’s sensational news. Now we have everything we ever wanted—a solid marriage and a family. Halleluiah. Twin girls. I’m delirious.”

  When her feet touched the floor again, she said, “You didn’t let me finish. Dr. Lopez estimates my delivery date to be sometime in July.”

  Damon shook his head, his expression puzzled. “So? July’s a great month. And I’ll have a fantastic reason to set off fireworks.”

  Her throat constricted. She swallowed, and with a tremor in her voice said, “Maybe you don’t understand the ramifications of what I just told you.” She pulled away and met his intense gaze with narrowed eyes. “Three months pregnant means you could’ve discharged your werewolf sperm into me before Madam Nola lifted the curse.”

  “Werewolf sperm?” Damon threw his hands in the air. “Sometimes your tendency to dramatize drives me nuts. What if you did get pregnant before the ritual? It doesn’t mean—”

  “Can you guarantee our twins won’t inherit one or both of our afflictions?” She felt her frustration building again. “What if we’re the only ones free of the curse?”

  “If the curse passes to our girls, we’ll ask Madam Nola—our trusty li’l curse-chaser—to shift any curses they might inherit onto me.”

  Angela went to the window and rested her forehead against the cool glass, feeling a twinge of guilt. Madam Nola had lifted the Landau family curse onto Damon. But it was the deep love she shared with him that actually banished the curses. There was no guarantee it would work like that with their girls. Still, Damon’s offer softened her heart. “That’s generous and loving of you, but I feel deep in my bones the answer can’t be that easy.” She paced the den lit only by shadow-inducing late afternoon lamplight. Thunder broke right over the mansion. She clamped eyes closed to fight the edginess that gripped her. It had been a stormy night when her birth mother committed suicide years ago. She paused at the window and stared out through the pelting raindrops, still consumed by negative thoughts and icy fear. “I want to talk to Madam Nola now—I need to know if she can help us.”

  Damon came up behind Angela and wrapped his arms around her again. His clean, manly scent floated around her. “Come on, Angela. Don’t brood about something that’ll probably never happen—”

  “But what if it does?”

  “If it’ll make you feel better, we can talk to Madam Nola tomorrow.”

  Angela lifted her chin. “Let’s call her now!”

  Damon glanced out the window at the raging storm. He met her gaze with searching eyes for several seconds, and then shrugged. “All right, if the phone still works.” He put the receiver to his ear and smiled. “It’s okay. I got a dial tone. Don’t worry. That pint-sized spiritualist came through for us before and, for her usual hefty fee, she’ll do it again.” He exchanged pleasantries with the psychic for a few seconds while Angela shifted from foot to foot, and then he finally asked for an appointment. He hung up, grinning. “She can see us at two tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you explain the problem?”

  “We don’t have a problem. And we may never have a problem. Let’s just feel her out on generalities. You know how she is when she smells the scent of money.”

  Angela felt the warmth and strength of his hands as he massaged her back, then he turned her to face him and kissed her forehead. “With that settled, have you thought anymore about how you want to decorate this old mausoleum for the holidays?”

  This would be their first Christmas together, a time of joy and celebration. She jumped when a clap of thunder broke nearby. A bolt of lightning followed, arcing and illuminating the den, with its sliding walls that concealed filing cabinets. For all she knew it even hid entrances to secret tunnels. She thought of her earlier sensation of evil hovering nearby when she entered the mansion, and the creepy feeling she’d had in the past that the eyes in the master bedroom portraits were moving, watching.

  Damon swept her from her feet and headed up to the master bedroom. “In case we lose the electricity, we’ll be better off upstairs. I’ll build a couple of fires…one in the fireplace…” He winked down at her. “…and one in our bed.”

  She laughed and felt her heart lighten. Everything was going to be all right. Together, they would see to it.

  Upstairs, as they entered their suite-sized master bedroom with its window coverings and bedspread fabrics woven into intricate patterns of redwoods and caves, she relived her usual feeling of dropping into a forest. A large Indian rug partially covered the smooth, flat, and polished deep-emerald terrazzo floor. A tapestry of a hunting scene hung on the wall. The heavily-constructed dresser, bureau, desk, headboard, and two chairs exhibited hand-carved wood with lupine designs. The fierce open-mouthed carvings were much like those etched into the entry doors. Nothing about the primitive decor alerted prickly survival senses. But when Damon lowered her to the cushions still on the floor from their morning lovemaking, the position placed her in a direct descending line below his parents’ portrait. Their stern eyes seemed to shift down at her. The hairs on her neck prickled. It had to be merely the movement of shadows in the dim lamplight. Still… She glared up at it, noticing that the woman wore a pentagram necklace, a five pointed star. Was that to protect her from her husband’s lupine demons? “Would you please put a towel over that thing?”

  He tossed a cloth over it. “I’m starting to think you don’t like my parents.”

  She thought of the bedroom terrace that overlooked a rose garden…and a cemetery with at least a dozen gravestones. Probably his parents were buried among the markers, names worn away by the Santa Ana winds—or by design. “Even though I never had the pleasure of meeting your folks, I’m sure I’d adore them. But I wonder if they’d like me.”

  “Of course they would. Angela, you lose all sense of reality in storms. But I think I can give you a dose of some hot reality to fix that.”

  She couldn’t miss the glint of playful seduction in his eyes. “Oh yeah?” she said throatily, laughing and forcing her worries to the back of her mind. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, stud?” She feigned disinterest as she re-lit the two lilac-scented candles, still nearby from their morning play, eagerly setting the stage for another sizzling romp.

  Damon turned away as if he’d lost interest as well. But she knew better. Within minutes, he had a low, crackling fire in the hearth. He put in a few CD’s. “Classical piano, okay?”

  “Perfect,” she said in a breathy voice, her mind definitely not on music.

  He grinned and knelt beside her. She drew him roughly on top of her. His glinting gaze met hers. It registered surprise, and then he looked deep into her eyes, searching a moment. Finally, his lips descended to hers, his mouth open, moist and faintly tasting of coffee. He sought her tongue. His heat surrounded her, seeping into her bones, spreading waves of flames until every inch of flesh was on fire and begging for release. The satanic tempo of the Mephisto Waltz speeded, intensified, growing thunderous and igniting something highly-emotional and wild within her. “Damon, I don’t want the slow seduction—I need you inside me, thrusting fast and hard. Now! Send such ecstasy to my brain that I can’t think…can’t worry…and can only feel.”

  He slipped inside, filling her with heat and driving power. Eyes brimming with unshed tears, she writhed and moaned in pleas
ure as the hard plane of his sculpted body rose again and again above her in thrusting arches of urgency. She slipped her hand down his muscled length and dug her fingers into his buttocks and drew him closer…harder.

  Later, as she softly floated down from soaring into the wilds of sexual and emotional release, she kissed his glistening chest. The air smelled of lilacs, bodies, and sex. He touched her forehead with his lips so tenderly that his show of love overwhelmed her, and she could no longer restrain the pool of unshed tears.

  When they overflowed and trickled down her flaming cheeks, he said, “Honey, are you all right?” His husky voice resonated with concern.

  Her throat constricted, and she could only nod.

  He lowered himself beside her and drew her close. It was then she realized that was what she really wanted—simply to be held close by the love of her life.

  Exhausted and spent, she recalled her childhood and mused about how wrong youthful impressions could be. Damon was this heroic, caring man—and nothing like the rumors claimed.

  She had just entered the third grade when she began hearing the horror stories about him and his family. In the years that followed, she acquired this macabre fascination with the mansion with its dark, jetting towers, especially around Halloween when half-truths and titillating hysteria ran rampant. Few, if any, of the community had ever seen the original owner or the grandson, Damon. But longtime residents claimed both were quite mad. Some speculated that the grandson had massacred his sister and grandfather and now lived there alone with a gimpy, hunchback servant and a pack of wolves. Little did anyone know that the real evil in the mansion was Damon’s butler, Raymond Reeves.

  She’d learned only recently that he was also a werewolf and Damon’s illegitimate half-brother. He’d killed their sister, Damon’s maintenance man Hugo—also a werewolf and another of Damon’s illegitimate half-brothers—and then Reeves slaughtered dozens of the local women. And he’d almost killed her and her best friend, Katrina. But Damon had saved them and an untold number of community women from Reeves’s reign of terror.