The Name's Wolf. James Wolf.

“Lupa fuck me,” Dale Hancock groaned. “This thing is obscene.”

“So stop reading,” his buddy Ewan Carter advised. Ewan was currently up to his dirty eyeballs in one of those filthy boy books, where two men—or more, Lupa help them all—wasted their skills on each other. Not that this perverted tale the human she had concocted was any less disgusting.

Vampires. Vampires, for prey’s sake. Performing acts a dead body shouldn’t be able to handle. And women lapped this stuff up like cream off the top of the milk pail. If he lived to be as old as the bats in this story, he knew he’d never figure it out.

It was only two pages covered in a cursive scrawl, torn out of the human female’s notebook. Well, he’d wanted to know. Practically demanded to know. She’d been sitting in the coffee shop, studying each and every patron and furiously scribbling away. And she was human. She could have been anything—a hunter, a reporter, a spy. Dante had tasked Dale and Ewan with keeping a surreptitious eye on all humans new to Talbot’s Peak. When he saw one taking notes, he had to know what those notes were saying.

So far, they said the human was one randy, twisted she-bitch.

Worse yet, she’d put him in there. Only on the page his name was Pietro and he was a vampire with ocean-dark eyes and, apparently, a never-ending hard-on. Barely two sentences after meeting the girl—Aramilla, for crying out loud, who the fuck names their kid Aramilla?—and “Pietro” had her bent over backward with his teeth on her neck and his hands grasping “the glorious globes of her ass straining against the thinnest of silken panties.” The panties were gone by the next sentence. Ripped off, wadded up, and tossed aside by the undead horndog with Dale’s hair and features.

Ewan was in there too, but he didn’t seem to be taking part in the fun. She must not have had the chance to observe him for long.

The rest of the pages went into lush, lurid descriptions of all the things “Pietro” did to “Aramilla,” and everything she did in return. And then, right before the main event, it all stopped in the middle of a sentence. Ewan had only managed to snag the two pages. No matter how many times Dale poured over them, he would never know what happened next. Although he could hazard a guess.

He made himself focus on her handwriting. Theory was, you could tell a ton about a person by how they formed their letters. Hers were loopy and cramped. She’d been writing in a hurry, trying to squeeze as much on a line as she could, as quick as she could. Just what a spy would do. Whether a spy would have a man perform randy acrobatic sex acts with a she he’d known for less than five minutes, Dale didn’t know. Maybe this was written in some kind of human code. Lupa knew sex was all the monkeys ever had on their minds.

Why she was still on his mind he couldn’t figure out, and it pissed him off no end.

“Wooo-whee!” Ewan burst out. “Three straight pages of holding it in and then he comes like a rhino. I’d try that myself if I wasn’t so impatient.”

Dale made a face. “Put that away.”

He thrust it at Dale instead. “Take it. Maybe you can pick up some pointers. Chaos knows you need ‘em.”

Dale shrank back like the book had fangs. “I ain’t interested in two he-dogs humping each other’s legs.”

“They ride a lot more than legs in here. Where’s that one chapter?”

Thankfully, before Ewan could blast his sensibilities with the offending scene, the office door opened and Dante stepped into the vestibule. Both wolves sprang to their feet. Ewan shoved the paperback into his pocket. They stood straight but with eyes lowered in respect.

“At ease, boys,” Dante said with a chuckle. For an alpha from a tightassed pack, Dante was an easy-going wolf and a joy to take orders from. Dale didn’t mind at all being cousin to him, or doing surveillance work on behalf of him and the Peak. His hand crushed the pages and their sick insinuations. Up to this point, anyway.

“Now then,” his cuz said, abruptly all business. “What’s this about you two assaulting a human she in the coffee shop?”

Instantly Ewan slid a half-step back and became unnoticed. He had this coyote trick of fading into the background whenever the scat hit the fan. As usual, Dale stepped up. “It wasn’t assault. We were scouting a new human female in town, like you told us to. She was watching everybody and making notes. Ewan tried to chat her up, get a look at what she was writing. Things got out of hand.”

“Ah,” Dante said. Ewan just shrugged and grinned. “And that’s what got Sergei involved?”

“Sort’a.” Dale swallowed hard. Getting Sergei involved in anything was one of Dante’s no-nos. “He came to her rescue. You know him.”

“But we got what we needed,” Ewan piped up. He elbowed Dale. “Show him.”

At Dante’s expectant look Dale handed over the now sweat-smeared and crumpled pages. “Here’s what she wrote. But I gotta warn you, she put this, uh, unique spin on ‘em. I don’t know what it means.”

Dante scanned the pages. His eyebrows climbed higher and higher. Towards the end he made a little snort, either disgust or amusement. Dale never made snap guesses where Dante was concerned. “Well. That’s an interesting take. Not your usual sort of intel gathering.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Ewan said. He fished out the dirty boy-book and handed it over to Dante. “She had this on her, too. I think she’s just a harmless writer.”

Dante took a quick peek at the cover and returned the paperback to Ewan. “A writer, huh? She’s got an imagination, that’s for certain. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a harmless writer. They see plots everywhere, and they never stop watching. That’s why you two are going to keep an eye on her. Make sure fiction is all she writes, and all she knows about us.”

“But how are we supposed to—” Dale started.

“You can start by giving these back to her.” Dante stuffed the pages back into Dale’s hand. “Otherwise she’ll go poking around looking for them. We don’t want her poking the wrong bear. Or tiger. Then get to know her, see what she’s up to.” His lip curled wickedly. “Offer to read her book.”

“I’ll do that part,” Ewan said at Dale’s sick expression. “Some of us appreciate lit’rature.”

Dale wobbled out of Dante’s office in a daze, with Ewan ambling beside him. “Stalk a human she without her catching wise? How are we supposed to do that?”

“Stealthily.” Lupa bite his dangly bits, Ewan actually looked eager. “We go undercover. Two randy cowboys looking to show the new gal in town a good time. All the while we pump her for information. Like a spy movie. Maybe we can talk her into a romp. We already know she likes sex.”

“Sex between hes.” Dale gestured at the paperback, once more riding snugly in Ewan’s pocket. “That’s a lot more above and beyond than I’m willing to go.”

“Then I’ll handle that. You man the camera. C’mon, bud. It’s just a human she. She didn’t even get our species right. This’ll be a roll in the grass. What could go wrong?”

With a human involved? Dale considered listing the many possibilities, but decided against it. If the chance for a romp presented itself, Ewan would be there with both heads held high. All he could do was stick close and keep them both out of trouble. The pages seemed to burn in Dale’s vest pocket. Yeah, fat chance of that.