Bad Moon On The Rise (Sample)

CHAPTER 3

The air was already hot and humid, mosquitos drawling blood on her skin, when Leila opened her eyes on a bed of moss the next morning. She groaned and swatted at the infernal bugs biting her exposed skin. She decided that mosquitos most definitely had been a part of the original plague the Lord himself set upon the Egyptians after they had thoroughly pissed off the man above.

Dried blood, crusted and coated down her chin, neck, and chest just made her current situation even more uncomfortable, and her mood worse. Not that she often didn’t wake up coated in blood when her wolf took control, but really would it be too much ask for the beast inside her to go trapesing through some water after a kill?

The smell of death was in the air. Along with the smell of soured, brackish waters, decay, and rot from the swamplands all around her. Leila sat up and her eyes gravitated to the carcass lying less than twenty feet away from her naked body. It was hard to tell from the mangled flesh remaining and scraps of black furred hide, but it appeared to be a panther. It seemed as though her wolf had gone into a cat carb coma and crashed after feasting. Typical of both the wolf and woman herself, actually. Leila had always been a lightweight.

As Leila drug her naked, sweaty, mosquito bitten carcass through the swamplands in the direction of her apartment, she grumbled and not for the first time, why her wolf couldn’t be more considerate and end up closer to home. Even in her human skin, she had an excellent sense of direction and smell, both of which she implored now. She cursed more than once when her bare feet caught a sharp stick or her delicate flesh was snared by a thorny bramble. She swatted a mosquito the size of Texas on her left ass cheek, and screamed a line of obscenities that caused some birds to flee in terror. Hell hath no fury like a werewolf the morning after.

She doubted Sterling would find her so appealing now. It hadn’t been a trick of the light last night, the way his eyes had taken her in hungrily. He had wanted her last night. She had wanted him even more. It was probably a good thing she hadn’t acted on her carnal desires last night. She doubted Sterling could have survived her. Several of her toys certainly hadn’t made it through last night, and she had to flip over mattress to hide the claw marks.

Nearby, some green water stirred ominously, before a gator’s head broke the surface. The beast locked eyes with the swearing, blood stained woman walking along the water’s edge. It probably figured Leila looked like an appealing breakfast. A tasty snack.

Yes, that was true. Leila could be a tasty snack, if she was in the mood. Like she had been for that bartender back in Oklahoma (her first sexual encounter post her escape from the Blackwood Pack). She had relished in tequila and the freedom of fucking a man of her choosing, almost wishing that Ulric could watch her moment of triumph.

That bartender had removed her panties with his teeth. He had worked her up all night long, until she had practically begged him to take her fast and hard in the storeroom. He had slipped his fingers inside her, just after he removed her panties, and got her nice and wet and just to the edge. Then he popped the finger he had inside her, into his own mouth to savor the taste of her.

He left her panting, slick, and wanting to explode as his teeth grazed her erect nipples through the cotton of her t-shirt. But he refused to take her then. Instead, he continued to steal moments of stroking, whispering naughty things in her ear, as he pocketed her panties and made promises when the bar closed.

By that four am hour, Leila had feared she would be dripping down her legs. Neither one of them had made it out of the parking lot, after the pouring rain had made their clothes transparent. He took her in the backseat of his extended cab truck. They had fogged up the windows and her hand left prints on the glass.

But in the muggy swamplands of Southern Florida, naked, tired, thirsty, dirty, Leila had been a snack enough already to the seven billion mosquitos. Her eyes locked on the beast in the water, which was moving towards her with a hungry gleam in its eye. Her eyes flashed yellow-brown, and a growl escaped through her bared lips. The gator sank back beneath the opaque water with its tail between its legs and disappeared once more.