Ruby (10 page)

~~~

Josh knew that something was wrong,
but for the life of him, he had no idea what it was. She wasn’t
distant from him so much as she was…it seemed to him she was sad.
And no matter what he did to cheer her up, she just got sadder
still.

“
I hurt you.” She looked
at him with that vacant stare that she’d had all evening. They were
in their hotel room now, and he was frustrated with himself for not
being able to make her happy. It was beginning to look as if he
would never make a woman happy again.

“
No, you didn’t.” He
nodded and she smiled. But even he could see that it didn’t reach
her eyes. “It was a blast. I’ve never been to a restaurant with
cloth napkins before. And that waiter was amazing. Who knew a
person could have that many things memorized that were just
desserts?”

“
I’m sure you have every
part of the body memorized. But you’re not happy. I may be simply a
human, but I can tell when someone isn’t happy.” His cell started
ringing, and he ignored it. This was simply too important to him.
“I want to know what it is I did to upset you.”

“
Answer the phone.” He
took it out of his pocket and tossed it into the living room. She
stared at it, then him. “You’re not going to see who it
is?”

“
It’s Lila. My old
secretary that I was telling you about. She had a meeting today.”
When Ruby started to stand up, he pushed her back down. “Answer
me.”

“
You didn’t have to come
here and do all this so you could run the fucking hospital. Now
answer the fucking phone.” He sat down on the bed beside her. “If
you don’t, so help me, I’m going to.”

It stopped ringing, and he stood up to
pace. “You think that…of course you do. You think that the only
reason I came here is because I needed you to do something for me.
I told them I’d take the job only if you did, not the other way
around. I can be a selfish prick, but I’m not going to lie to you.
The job has its perks, and one of them would have been to see you
all the time.”

“
You
made the bargain?” Josh nodded. “I thought that you only got
the job if I came back. They’re so short staffed right now that I
thought you were sent to plead for them.”

“
I could care less if you
ever worked again. But I also know that you have a passion for
being a doctor, and I’m thrilled to death to know that you love it
so much. I’m very proud of you.” He lay down on the bed beside her
and waited while she stretched out with him. “You should have asked
me.”

“
I should have.” He
snuggled into her back when she rolled over. “I’m not used to
people…men really…treating me as their equal.”

“
I’m not your equal.
You’re far superior to me.” She turned to look at him and he
smiled. “You have a doctorate, and I have barely a college
education. You hold people’s lives in your hands while I only try
to improve them. You can change into a wolf—which I’ve never seen,
by the way—and I can pee standing up. Not much to say for
myself.”

She got off the bed and pulled her
blouse over her head. As it dropped to the floor he started to
reach for her, but she backed up. As her bra came off and joined
the blouse, she started to explain what she was doing.

“
Don’t run. Understand?”
He nodded, not sure what she was talking about, but he was
extremely turned on right now. “I’m going to shift and if you run,
I’m going to want to chase you down. And this is not a place to do
it.”

“
You mean as a wolf.” She
nodded and let her skirt slide to the floor. “You have to be naked
to shift, I take it?”

“
Not necessary, but it
does save on clothing. If I’m going for a run, I’ll just wear
tear-away pants and an old tee-shirt. It frees me up for shifting
quickly if I want.” She stood before him in just her panties. Josh
swallowed twice when she asked him if he was ready. “Don’t freak
out.”

The shift from person to wolf was
quick. And it was everything he could do not to run. To see
this…this giant canine in the room terrified him beyond anything
he’d ever felt before. Yet he felt safe with her…he knew that she’d
never harm him for any reason.

You can talk to me this
way. Out loud or with your mind. Just think of me and we can
talk.
He nodded to everything, hearing her
really but not really sure he was understanding her.
You want me to get on the bed with
you?

“
No.” He cleared his
throat when he realized he’d screamed at her. “Not yet. I’m a
little…how big are your teeth?”

For an answer, she put her paws on the
bed and opened her mouth wide. Christ, they were as big as his
fingers. When she moved closer to him, Josh closed his eyes and
waited for her to bite him. He had no idea why he thought she was
going to, but when she laughed, he looked at her.

I’m not the big bad wolf,
Josh. I’m just me.
Sure she was, and this
monster of a wolf was just a stuffed toy.
You do know that I can read your mind, right?

“
Can you? Tell me, what
the fuck am I thinking right now?” He wasn’t mad, just nervous. And
when she got up on the bed he started to move, but she put her paw
on him. “Don’t cut me. I have no idea why you’re frightening me so
much when I know it’s you.”

My wolf wants to taste
you. Mark you as hers too
. That’s what he
was afraid of, and he told her that.
Not
like that. She’ll sink her teeth into you, but I swear to you it
will not hurt as badly as you think. And to taste you…I think she
wants to lick your cock.

“
My cock?” He felt himself
stretch. “You can’t be serious.” This time when she got closer to
him, he felt his cock thicken. Then when her massive head laid on
his thigh, Josh moaned.

Free your cock for
us.
Josh reached down to do as she’d
asked. He had no idea why he was going to do this, but the thought
of not doing it was making him dizzy. When his cock was freed, he
moved his pants off his body and dropped them on the
floor.

Josh reached up to the headboard of
the bed to hold on when she moved closer to him. His cock was
leaking now, and when she lapped at him, he nearly came up off the
bed.

“
Again.” She licked him
twice more before he felt his balls tighten up and his cum ready to
spew forward. Her tongue was curled around his crown when he
touched her for the first time. Digging his fingers into her fur,
Josh felt his climax take him.

He watched her. The wolf was purring
now as she cleaned him up. Then when he lay there panting and hard
again, she looked up at him. It was time. She wanted to mark him
now. With a short nod, the big wolf licked his thigh and then bit
him deeply.

She was right, it wasn’t nearly as
painful as he’d thought, and when she tore at him, Josh knew that
it would be a scar that he’d wear proudly. As soon as she lifted
her head and roared at him, Josh watched as the wolf shifted into
his Ruby.

“
Fuck me.” He moved to
take her even as she commanded him to for the second time. Rolling
her to her belly, Josh lifted her ass up and slammed his cock deep
into her pussy from behind. Ruby cried out, but he didn’t stop as
he continued to pound deep into her. Reaching to her pussy, Josh
leaned over her and, taking her like an animal, he cried out when
she tightened around him and emptied himself into her as he bit her
in her tender shoulder.

He lay atop her, panting and wondering
if they’d ever have enough of each other when what they’d just done
hit him. Christ, he’d just let a wolf bite him and have oral sex
with him. But he knew, for as long as he lived, this would be his
best memory of them together.

“
Could I do that to you if
I were a wolf?” He had no idea where the thought had come from, but
now that he’d asked her, he could think of nothing else. “I mean,
as a wolf, could I eat you that way?”

“
Yes.” He rolled her over.
“You want to be a wolf? Like me? It’s a painful process and without
the proper help, it can be dangerous.”

“
Yes. Yes I do. And I
trust you.” He did too. Josh had no idea, but he thought he might
trust her more than anyone he knew. “What do we have to
do?”

Chapter 7

“
I need to see you as soon
as possible. I can come there or you can come here. Either way,
when you get this, call me.” Dwight hung up the phone after leaving
the second message today on Josh’s phone. He looked over at Teri,
who was on the phone with one of their clients. And the way things
were going, maybe their only client. Their office had only the two
of them in it now.

“
I left a message,” he
told her when she hung up. “He should call me back any time
now.”

“
I just don’t understand
this. You said it would be a snap to make this work. That all we
had to do was continue what he’d been doing. What the fuck is
happening?” Dwight knew. He’d let Josh take all the clients he’d
recruited and had worked with on his own. Dwight had never realized
until that moment that Josh had been the only one working at the
business. “As far as a business goes, this one sucks the big one.
And I just heard that the plane I thought was the company’s is
actually Josh’s. What the hell are we going to do now? I need…we
need it to try and make that money back.”

“
I told you it might be
hard at first.” Teri glared at him. It wasn’t just hard. If they
kept going the way they were, in six to eight weeks they’d be
finished…maybe less. “He at least hasn’t opened up another
business. That would kill us.”

“
Oh well, that makes me
feel so much better. The great Josh Ewing is out of business so we
might be able to keep ours. What the fuck were you thinking? We
should have been more careful and waited until we had a better hold
on the company. I told you to be careful.” Yeah, Dwight thought,
hindsight and all that. But she’d been the one who had insisted
they fuck at his house. He thought now that she’d planned this
whole thing. It probably wasn’t all that fair of him, but
lately…well, lately he wasn’t sure of a lot of things. “We’re going
to lose it all if we don’t have him come back here and help us out.
Or at the very least give us some money to pay this shit off.”
She’d said give, not loan. That, too, bothered him every time she
said it. As if he owed them and not the other way
around.

“
I don’t think it’s going
to be that easy.” They’d really fucked him over. Not only had he
and Teri been seeing each other for months before he’d caught them,
but they’d been skimming money. Money that Dwight had used to buy
him out.

“
Did you happen to ask him
about the boxes?” He shook his head. That was another thing that
was going to take them under…the boxes. Not only had they lost
nearly everything so far, but the dealer’s money was in those
boxes. The drugs that didn’t belong to them and the money. And he
wanted it back with interest.

“
I didn’t know he was
going to take those.” Dwight was going to go away for a long time
the moment Josh realized what he’d taken. It wouldn’t matter at all
that all of the boxes were addressed to Josh. Their fingerprints,
his and Teri’s, were all over the stuff inside of them. They had
been the ones who had put in the flight plans. They had been on the
plane when it took off and landed. And he and Teri had brought all
the shit into the building with the surveillance cameras watching
them.

And now their supplier, Manson
Cartwright, wanted either his money or the drugs they’d sold to get
the money. But he preferred the money, more now than it had started
out being, or he was going to take it out of them one way or the
other. And Dwight was afraid of what he meant by that. But he was
reasonably sure that Teri knew.

“
Call him back. We need
this fixed. I’m not going to lose my things.” She stood up. “And
tell him he’s to give us forty million now so that we don’t fuck up
his name in this business. Because I will. There is no way this is
coming down on my head.”

Dwight waited until she left before he
sank down in his chair. He was so fucked right now and had no best
friend, not even a good friend, to talk to about it. He glanced at
the phone, willing it to ring, yet dreading that it might. The more
he thought about it, the more he realized that this was completely
her doing.

Also, Dwight had come to the
conclusion that he didn’t care all that much for Teri. She was
greedy and high maintenance, not to mention whiney and
self-absorbed. Not even the sex was all that good anymore. No
matter how much he tried to…well, he decided not to travel down
that road again.

“
What have I done?”
Everything that could be done to fuck up his life, he’d done it.
And as he had thought before, he had no one to talk to. The phone
ringing nearly had him reaching for it, but he knew that it was
either Manson, the supplier they’d been working with, or Josh. And
as much as he wanted to talk to his friend, he knew that he’d have
no idea what to say to him.

The whole thing, all of the shit going
down, was due to Teri, he thought again. Well, he thought, not all
of it, but at least ninety-five percent of it. She’d been dealing
the drugs before he’d come into her life. And she had increased her
activity once he mentioned that Josh had a plane he no longer used.
From there it was a free for all on how much money they could make,
and they had spent every dime of it too. It was what had made him
start skimming the accounts in the first place.