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  Unleashing the Animal

  J L Taft

  Blair gets the shock of her life when she finds out the big black wolf stalking her cabin and her sexy, rude neighbor are one and the same. He awakens her animal passions like no man before and satisfies her every carnal desire. Luckily he’s there to help when she unexpectedly discovers that she, too, is a shapeshifter.

  Shane is tired of waiting for the mate he’s sure is out there. Helping his hot neighbor learn how to deal with her newfound Shifter form, he can’t wait to see how her inner animal emerges. And when it does, his own inner wolf drives his lust, demanding he claim her body and heart for his own.

  A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Unleashing the Animal

  J L Taft

  Chapter One

  The first time she heard it, it sent shivers down her back and caused sweat to break out on her brow. She was in the big bed alone and she regretted not leaving one small light on. Shivering under the covers, she began to relax with the silence but then it came again. A long, mournful howl that suddenly sounded closer than it did the first time.

  Blair told herself to be logical—there weren’t any wolves in this part of New York State—but as she heard the howl again she wasn’t comforted. It certainly sounded like a wolf, a sad wolf. But that was silly, wolves couldn’t be sad. Or could they?

  She lay there perfectly still, listening to the deep, long howls getting closer. They would stop for a full minute and then start again, until they sounded as if they were coming from the front yard of the little cabin.

  This was not what she had in mind when she bought this little place by the lake this fall. She dreamed of relaxing days spent painting and peaceful nights, the quiet lap of the waves of the lake and the array of autumn colors surrounding her.

  Instead she had spent the whole first day trying to figure out how to get the fireplace, her only source of heat, to keep burning, only to realize hours later she had never opened the damper on the chimney pipe. The little cabin had filled with smoke faster than she thought possible, pouring out the quickly opened windows and doors until she had heard the unmistakable sound of sirens in the distance.

  It made her wonder who had called the fire department, but then she figured the smoke could be seen from some distance.

  Fortunately the helpful firefighters had shown her how to use the damper and assured her she would get the hang of it before they drove off. They had treated her like a normal person, there were no sympathetic stares and they just trusted that she was fine. It was something she had longed for—to be unknown.

  One of them had even gone so far as to tell her a quick story about how he had done the same thing himself once.

  Looking at the clock, Blair saw it was after midnight. She was officially on day two. If this was any indication of how her new life was going to turn out, maybe she should just listen to her parents and go back to the city. Her mind instantly rebelled at the thought. There was no way she was giving up.

  This was her home now and damned if she was going to cower in bed while some wild creature ran around her yard. She had moved out here with the vow to herself that she would take charge of her life. Make her own meals and wash her own clothes.

  After all, wolves were supposed to be more afraid of humans than humans were of them, she hoped. Tossing back the covers, she threw on her robe and crept out through the darkened living room, noticing the fire was out again.

  Heaving a sigh, she opened the heavy front door a crack so she could peer out into the darkness. The moon was an almost perfect circle glowing brightly in the sky and it illuminated the yard and some of the woods in the distance. The sight held her spellbound, beautiful in its clarity, and she opened the door wider to get a better view, almost forgetting about the wolf until he stepped from the shelter of trees.

  They stared at each other, both of them wary. But he seemed to belong there, standing in the moonlight. The sudden urge to paint the scene made her fingers itch for her paintbrush.

  Stepping onto the porch, she moved slowly, not wanting to startle the animal but wanting a better look at him. His shiny coat was jet-black and bushy along his back and tail. Taking another step closer, she stopped when he gave a low growl.

  She had always wanted a big dog as a child but her parents could not be persuaded to get her one. Instead she had sneaked off to volunteer at the local animal shelter. Cleaning cages had been a small price to pay to be able to spend time with those dogs. Even the most miserable of them would calm in her presence and she wondered why the wolf was different.

  She had never had a normal fear of animals. Other volunteers had always been commenting about how she seemed to have a kinship with them. It was something she had always been proud of. Something special, all her own.

  He was facing her now, his ears perked and his glowing green eyes never wavering from her. Blair held her body still even as her mind was screaming, Run! She sucked in a breath as the big wolf began to pace in the yard, back and forth, staring.

  It took her a few moments to realize that as he paced he was getting closer to where she stood. Taking a small step backward, she heard the low growl again. Curious now, she took a small step forward only to be met with another growl. Apparently it wanted her to stay where she was.

  Well, she wasn’t going to stand here all night and wait for the dang thing to attack her. Looking back at the open door, she mustered up her courage and, putting her hands on her hips, she quickly stepped down the three porch stairs to the ground.

  “What do you want?” she yelled at him.

  His ears went back with surprise and he hung his head. Blair waited, not knowing what to expect but getting tired of waiting. Suddenly he trotted forward, right toward her, and stopped about ten paces away. Blair froze, unexpected fear shivering down her back.

  He was even bigger up close, watching her so intently the hair on the back of her neck stood up and she shuddered. But she wasn’t cold. She abruptly felt incredibly stupid, out here in the middle of the night, staring down a wolf. After all, there was a big difference between a domesticated dog and a wild wolf.

  Without taking her eyes off him, she moved back up one of the stairs and then another. But the wolf matched her steps, keeping the distance between them the same. Not stopping, Blair kept on with her retreat until she felt the wall next to the door at her back.

  The wolf was now at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at her as if she were the one who was out of place.

  “I am going back to bed now. Would you please stop making all that racket?”

  It was strange but the wolf cocked his head to the side, almost as if he understood her. Backing into the house slowly, she took one final look at him, still at the bottom of the stairs, and then closed the door.

  Anxiety overtook her and she leaned heavily on the door for a minute before hurrying to her room to take one of her pills. She was taking them less and less but the stress of the move must have caught up with her, she figured, feeling her heart rate slow within seconds of taking the medicine.

  Climbing back in bed, too tired to mess with relighting the fire, she waited for the howling of the wolf to start again but it never did.

  Chapter Two

  Blair woke refreshed and ready to start her new, independent life. It was chilly and she lit a fire while her coffee brewed, pleased she got it going on the first try. At least it wasn’t the dead of winter, otherwise she might have frozen to death.

  Deciding to set up her easel at the wide front window, she got busy dragging in boxes from her jeep. She looked longingly at the ones that held her paints but she knew better than to even open them yet or it could be days before she got to other things, like unpacking h
er clothes and buying groceries.

  She already knew what she was going to paint first—her midnight visitor standing in the moonlight. Thinking about it now, it didn’t feel as strange. It couldn’t have happened like she remembered.

  Putting in several good, productive hours of housework, Blair decided she needed a walk. The leaves were just beginning to change color and the birds were flocking up and hitting the skies in great, fast-moving clouds. Grabbing a light jacket, she took a deep breath of the crisp air as she got to the yard.

  If she went straight, the yard gently sloped to meet the lake. The town and a few other houses were miles to her left, so she turned and headed right into the woods. Looking for signs of the wolf in the dirt patches, she didn’t find any. But about where she figured he had come out of the woods, there was a little dirt path.

  Taking it, she followed as it meandered through the trees. She wasn’t sure how far she had gone but she could still hear the lap of waves against the rock shore in the distance. Pausing, she closed her eyes and breathed in the musty, cool air scented with falling leaves and the dark soil under her feet.

  She kept her eyes peeled, hoping and not hoping she would see her visitor from last night again, if only to assure herself she wasn’t crazy. She had been called that enough times in her life to doubt her own mind.

  But she breathed a sigh of relief that she no longer had to listen to her parents going on about her “illness”. Yeah, she had some anxiety and maybe she had a few angry outbursts as a teen, but she had never really agreed with the doctors. She was just peachy.

  She felt better than ever now that she was out of her parents’ house and she was far enough away that they couldn’t stop in unexpectedly, she hoped. All she wanted was a quiet place to paint and to make her own decisions. She was twenty-eight, for pity’s sake, and she didn’t need anyone telling her what to do.

  She had a hard time dating and her parents had found major flaws in the two men she had dared to bring home. After they saw how her parents treated her like a child, they had moved on anyway. She was tired of it and she wanted to meet a man someday and have him like her for who she was. Without any influence from her interfering mother.

  Lost in thought, she didn’t see the wolf until she was almost on top of him. She must have startled him because he took off running in the direction she had been walking. Not pausing to think about it, she took off after him. Her feet pounded in the dirt as she ran but the wolf was soon out of sight. Her speed was no match for his.

  Blair didn’t let up and kept running, her long auburn hair streaming out behind her. Coming around a bend in the trail, she came to a stop, her chest heaving as she stared.

  The trail stopped at the edge of an open field and she could just make out the roof of a house on the other side, smoke coming from the chimney. She could see where the wolf had gone toward the house. The tall grass was parted. She hoped he wasn’t dangerous but she figured she should warn the occupant of the house.

  Taking off through the grass, she followed the path the wolf had left until she came to what she thought was intended to be a yard, an unmown, overgrown yard. The house was really a cabin, not much different from hers, but this one had a bigger porch that was the full length of the front, overlooking the lake. It also had another building off to the left that looked like a barn.

  Walking to the front door, she rapped lightly, her eyes taking in the beautiful view, and she briefly wondered if the person living here would let her paint it. No response came from her first knock so she rapped again, this time much harder.

  The door jerked open and she took a step back in surprise. He was tall, with close-cropped dark hair and the greenest eyes she had ever seen. He was rough around the edges and had a thin white scar that started by his eye and came down his cheek. He wore a faded t-shirt and jeans, his work boots untied.

  “Yeah?” His voice was impatient and she knew without a doubt he wasn’t happy about her being on his porch.

  “I’m Blair Sanford, I just moved into the cabin over there?” She pointed in the general direction of where she had come.

  “Yeah? And?”

  Boy was he rude! Blair had come from an upper-class family where manners were everything and she hadn’t had the chance to meet someone who obviously didn’t share the sentiment.

  “Well, I just wanted to let you know I saw a big black wolf and thought you should be warned about his presence.”

  His eyes narrowed and he stepped out on to the porch, making her retreat even farther.

  “Warned, huh?” he said, crossing his arms over his big chest.

  “Umm, yes, I wanted to warn you,” she said, nodding.

  “Do you have reason to believe the animal is dangerous?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then why warn me?”

  “I…” Her reasoning in the woods left her. “I’ve seen him twice and he doesn’t seem to be afraid of humans.”

  “How do you know it’s a male?”

  “I don’t know, I just assumed it was.”

  He took a step toward her and this time she refused to back up. “So let me get this straight, you trespassed on my land to warn me about an animal that isn’t dangerous?”

  When he put it like that, she did sound a bit crazy.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was trespassing.”

  “Well, you are,” he growled as he stepped closer and loomed over her.

  She didn’t know what to say, her mind a blank as she stared in his deep-green eyes. They looked familiar but she was sure she would remember if she had met him before. Suddenly and irrationally she wondered what he would look like naked.

  He leaned down until his face was mere inches from hers. Close enough to feel the breath rushing from his lips.

  He spoke low and gravelly, “Get. Off. My. Land.”

  She needed no further prompting, turning and jumping down the steps and running as fast as her legs would carry her back through the field and down the trail, finally stopping when she could no longer catch her breath.

  Chapter Three

  Shane Rivers mentally kicked himself all the way to his workshop in the barn. Not only could he look like an animal but apparently he acted like one too. Whatever had possessed him to scare the shit out of a beautiful woman and send her running off his property?

  A great-smelling woman at that.

  He had immediately wanted to lick the side of her neck so he could get that taste in his mouth and not just in his nose. He didn’t think she wore perfume but her soap was flowery. He liked it.

  Having her catch him off guard in his wolf form while on his afternoon run probably had something to do with it. That had never happened before. He always knew someone was there way before they saw him. But she had been so quiet walking through the woods he had just gotten a whiff of her seconds before she was there.

  If he didn’t know any better he would have thought she was a cat slinking between the trees. He shook that thought off. There was no reason to get his hopes up. He hadn’t seen another Shifter in years. They rarely congregated in numbers unless there was some dire emergency, choosing to live in secret among the ignorant human race.

  Besides, she was way too old to be going through the change and that special sixth sense telling him what she was had been missing. Any Shifter could feel another within a ten-mile radius, territorial instincts taking over.

  Shane hadn’t felt that from her. He wasn’t saying he hadn’t felt anything at all because he sure had felt a swift punch of lust. But that was probably because he didn’t go out much, preferring to stick to his own company. He liked things uncomplicated. It was easier even if it left him lonely.

  Looking over the half-finished flat-bottom wooden boat he was building for some hotshot in the city, he couldn’t shake the image of his new neighbor’s face as she fled. He had to admit she was pretty fast for a human.

  Shit. He knew he should go and apologize but he wasn’t good at that and he had
a feeling he would only make it worse.

  He would check on her later when he could do it as a wolf and then his big mouth couldn’t get him into trouble.

  Blair refused to let her new, sexy neighbor get under her skin. So he was a jerk. Nothing new there, she knew plenty.

  She was quite proud of herself for not taking one of her pills when she got back to the cabin. She really did hate relying on them. He had upset her and she felt that familiar shaking feeling but a few deep breaths of fresh air had done a world of good. But at least now she had a choice. Her mother wasn’t here to force them on her.

  Spending the rest of the day unpacking and cleaning up, she was shocked to realize it was already after five.

  It seemed a quick trip to the grocery store was out of the question. It took her forty-five minutes just to find it. But she was happy everything was all in one place and she got all the stuff she needed.

  It was getting dark by the time she drove down the tree-lined drive leading back to her cabin. Damn. She had forgotten to leave the outside light on. Filling her arms full of grocery bags, she stuck her keys in her mouth and headed for the front door.

  It was very dark. The moon was hidden tonight behind large black rain clouds.

  She heard him before she saw him, the low bark stopping her in her tracks. The delay on her headlights chose that moment to go dark. Her arms were full and she couldn’t even tell the dang thing to go away without dropping her keys.

  But she couldn’t stand here all night either. Suddenly the clouds floated away from the moon and provided her with enough light to see.

  The wolf was sitting not three feet from her stairs. He was watching her but she didn’t feel threatened.

  Moving slowly, she passed by him and went up the stairs and to the door. Using one bag of groceries to prop open the screen door, she unlocked the other and shoved it open.