Author's note: this chapter does not contain any erotic elements.
10.
Closure
Sam didn't sleep a wink that night. She was too tense, too wired, too anxious at the coming of the full moon. Sex with Wren while he kept on his fur coat had proved to be an unexpected delight, but carnal pleasures would only distract her for so long.
By the time they ran back to the pack house, it was well into the late night hours. Bubba and Susie were gone, leaving Sam and Wren with the place to themselves. The small diner was somehow quite cozy when it was just the two of them--with one exception.
"All this showering is going to be
murder
on my hair," Sam said, grumbling as she turned on the tap again. She gave Wren a dirty look, albeit one with a playful edge, to where he stood in the mud room door, tall, naked and handsome. "I should just shave it all off."
"Hooo, shit-fire no," he said, crossing his arms. "Not if
I
get a vote."
"Do you
want
to have a vote?" Sam squeezed a healthy amount of soap into her hands and began lathering herself up again, only this time she had to start below the waist.
Wren gave her a funny look. "Well...reckon I think I'd like to, sure."
"Then what're you standing out
there
for?"
His look of surprise was funny enough. When Sam saw a renewed shine of hunger in his eyes as he followed her into the shower, she started laughing again.
"I ain't
that
funny, Sam," he objected as he wrapped his arms around her.
"Funny enough from where I'm standing," she said, smirking up at him. She pushed up onto his tiptoes and kissed his chin. "Nothing wrong with making a girl laugh, Cowboy, is there?"
"I s'pose not."
The water was hot as it poured down over both of them. Between that and the look in his eyes, Sam was feeling very,
very
warm indeed.
Wren licked his lips. He seemed tense, and she could sense his worry and fear--not the sort of emotions she'd anticipated at a moment like that. "Sam?"
"Yes, Warren?"
He smirked. "You ain't never called me that before."
"Glad you noticed." She pushed up higher on her toes, kissing his neck and under his jaw as she let a hand rest between his legs, cupping his warm, softened cock. "You can ask me anything you want--just not about tonight."
His hesitation confirmed that her guess was right on the money. "But what about--"
"Shhh." She shushed him with a nuzzling of her nose to his neck and a slow squeeze of his dick in her fingers. "If I think about it, I'll start obsessing and I won't be able to think about anything else." She kissed further down his neck and along his collarbone, which allowed her to stand flatfooted again. "I want to
relax
for now, Cowboy." She looked up into his eyes. "Think that you can help me do that?"
It almost seemed like he'd lost track of his own thoughts for a moment before he blinked and opened his eyes again, focusing on her face. "Yeah, Sam. I can do that."
--
The relaxing didn't last long enough to suit Sam, but then, it never did anyway. The pair ended curled up in an easy chair, dozing off somewhere before dawn. Sam got a few hours of hard-fought, restless sleep before a bit of sunshine woke her up later that morning.
Wren was still asleep, so Sam took the opportunity to ease out of his arms, slide back onto four legs and slipped out the back on her own. Part of her wanted to wake Wren up and make him come with her, but it felt cruel to rouse him up just because she was needy. Sam had to be stronger than that. She had to be.
She started running. The ground was cold and hard underfoot; the shadows were still long and thick, even while the sunshine was bright and shining. It was cold on that December morning. Part of her hoped that she'd survive to see Christmas. Then she realized she needed to get Phil a gift--but what was she supposed to buy a man she still hardly even knew? She was getting ready to take on the fight of her life for him and a bunch of strangers. She didn't have time to be distracted about Christmas.
Sam hadn't been running for long, but her senses came alive--there was more out there with her than the trees. She caught a whiff of something dark and undeniably male in the wind--and more than one. It was a smell she immediately recognized.
Slowing her run, Sam stopped and slid back into her bare skin near the middle of an empty clearing. The sunlight was little more than an illusion, a cold glare that made her break out in gooseflesh. But she faced the direction of the harsh scent, peering through the trees. "I can
smell
you," she said, her heart pounding, mouth going dry.
Two pairs of dark figures came bounding through the trees. As they approached, all of them slid from four legs up to two--it was Tennessee Watkins, Dez and Jefferson, and behind them came Rebecca; the skinny blonde looked comically out of place beside the disfigured giant and his pair of goons. All four of them were naked, in their bare skin. The moon couldn't decide whether to make Sam excited at their nudity or excited at the idea of cutting them open and bathing in their blood.
"Well,
lookie heah
, the girl's nose works after all." Tennessee grinned, showing his teeth, or the ones he still had left. "Where's yer Daddy, darlin'? Did I scare 'im off?"
Sam crossed her arms and fought to keep herself composed, in spite of the sweat clinging to the back of her neck. She could feel Tennessee and his squad as easily as any of the others: he was alert and quite pleased at finding her, while Rebecca was panicked and nervous; the other men were relaxed, yet also excited as though in anticipation of something--Sam's impending beating, most likely.
Sam was still learning, still discovering things about what being a Dominant meant--Tennessee and Rebecca felt
different
from Dez and Jefferson, as though their emotions had different scents or were colored differently; her brain was still struggling over how to process that. She shook her head and pushed past such things. "You know fucking well enough why he isn't here." The four of them didn't get any closer, so she kept her feet planted and focused on breathing low and slow. "You also know the Meet isn't until tonight."
