Special Thursday Flashback Post

For those who came in late, i.e., after Monday: I found the chapter of the other (abandoned) story, the part that proves Ewan Carter works for Dante. The gang is holed up at the Rocky Top Motel out by the exit, the place where Hoover works. He's probably the one who spotted the hunters and sent Dante the head's-up.

At any rate, here's the revised book version of the flash scene I posted last year. Enjoy the smut. If you'd rather look at dirty pictures, see Rebecca's post.

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

“So stop reading,” Ewan advised. “Those are things you’re never gonna do anyway. Why torture yourself?”

Because when you had your ass parked in Dante’s outer office, waiting for an audience with Damien Hancock’s renegade alpha son, there wasn’t much else you could do but stare at the walls and contemplate your sins. For Ewan, sinful contemplation was a professional sport, often a spectator sport. The more conservative Dale preferred to keep his sins to himself. If everybody did that, the world would be a better place.

He crossed his left leg over his right, then crossed them back again. The walls had no clock to scowl at, so he settled for scowling at the pages he held. Naturally he’d tried to read through them, so he could give a comprehensive report to Dante. Unfortunately, Ewan had snatched a description of two people doing stuff better left in private, and doing it enthusiastically. And one of them was supposed to be dead.

Dale shot a sour glance at Ewan. His best bud was currently up to his dirty eyeballs in the paperback Chloe had left behind. That had turned out to be one of those filthy boy books, where two men—or more, Lupa help them all—wasted their skills on each other. Who the hell wrote stuff like that, much less put it out in public? 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, according to Ewan. Ewan had sisters, so he’d know. If Dale lived to be as old as the bats in this story, he knew he’d never figure it out.

Or her. Chloe. The human author of this laundry list of scuzz. Figuring her out was part of his job. Dante had tasked his lower ranks with keeping a surreptitious eye on all humans new to Talbot’s Peak. When Dale saw a newbie taking notes, he had to know what those notes were saying.

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

Dale uncrushed the offensive pages and gingerly smoothed them out on his thigh. Forget the content, he told himself. Focus on the handwriting. Theory was, you could tell a ton about a person by how they formed their letters. Chloe wrote in a loopy scrawl that missed the line as often as it hit it. Scribbled blotches marked the spots where she’d changed her mind about a word or phrase. She didn’t just cross out sentences; she annihilated them. Girl had a killer instinct in her. Great in a wolf, bad in a human. Especially bad for the wolf.

He could picture her with ease as she’d been in the coffee shop: eyeing up the customers over the rim of her mug, then dipping her head to jot notes. There’d been periods of blank, introspective stares while she gazed out the window. These had become shorter and less frequent as her writing picked up speed. Toward the end that pen had been flying over the paper faster than human or even shifterly possible. He marveled he could even read what she’d written, while at the same time wishing he couldn’t.

She’d put him in there. On the page he was a vampire with ocean-dark eyes and, apparently, a never-ending hard-on, but other than that it was him. He recognized the description of his hair, which “tumbled from beneath his Stetson in a riot of auburn locks,” and the unique tooling on his boots. The “unexpected dimples,” “manly cleft chin,” and “cheekbones sharp enough to slash flesh” came as a surprise. He’d never really given his cheekbones a thought.

Barely two sentences after meeting the girl, “Dale” 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 in Dale’s favorite dress-up boots.

The rest of the pages went into lush, lurid descriptions of all the things “Dale” did to “Chloe,” 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 forced his mind off that dangerous game trail and back to the matter at hand. Yeah, she’d been staring out the window, but she could have been staring at them. He and Ewan had been sitting by the window. She’d sure been writing in a hurry, trying to squeeze as much on the page as she could, as quick as she could. Just what a spy would do. Whether a spy would give a man slashly cheekbones and have him 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 he couldn’t get her off his mind 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 if I wasn’t so impatient.”

Dale’s mouth twisted. “Put that away.”

“I got a better idea. You take it.” He thrust the paperback at Dale. “Maybe you can pick up some pointers. Chaos knows you need ‘em.”

Dale jerked back like the book was going to bite him. “I ain’t interested in two he-dogs humping each other’s legs.”

“They ride a lot more than legs in here. You should see the one chapter. Where is it?”

Thankfully, the office door opened before Ewan could finish his page-flipping. Dante stepped into the outer office. Both wolves sprang to their feet. Ewan shoved the paperback into his pocket. They stood straight but with eyes lowered and necks exposed in respect.

“At ease, boys,” Dante said with a chuckle. For a wolf from a tight-assed pack and an even tighter-assed sire, Dante was an easy-going alpha 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,” Dante said, abruptly all business. “What’s this about you two assaulting a human she at Java Joe’s?”

Instantly Ewan slid a half-step back and became invisible. He had this coyote trick of fading into the background whenever the scat hit the fan. As usual, Dale had to step up. “It wasn’t assault. We were scouting a new human female in town, like you told us to. She was watching everybody and taking 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 broke in. 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 certainly 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 one hell of an imagination, that’s for damn sure. Unfortunately for us, there’s no such thing as a harmless writer. They see plots everywhere, and they never stop watching.” His steady gaze flicked from Ewan to Dale. “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 reluctant hand. “Otherwise she’ll go poking around looking for them. We don’t want her poking the wrong bear. Or tiger.” He paused to let that one sink in. “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,” Ewan said. “Finally, this job’s got some fun to it.”

Lupa bite his dangly bits, the damn mutt sounded eager. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“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. 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, dog. It’s just a human she. She didn’t even get our species right.” He leered at Dale. “How much of your humping habits did she get right?”

“Bite me.”

“You need to get that knot out of your tail. We get to be spies. Poking around after beautiful women. This’ll be a roll in the grass.”

With a human involved? More like a fall into brambles. Dale considered mentioning that, but decided against it. If the chance for a romp presented itself, Ewan would be there with both heads held high. All Dale could do was stick close and be ready when disaster hit.