Love At First Gear Ch 05

This chapter has some violence... but it's a werewolf story, so it's only going to get worse! Sorry.

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Ashleigh looked down at her phone. Three hours had passed since Mack had disappeared, and she was exhausted. She tried to keep the little campfire going, but whatever fire magic he seemed to possess, she did not, and soon she was quietly chanting at one little log to burn. The fire sputtered and became nothing more than coals.

Exhausted, cold, and defeated, she climbed into the tent and silently prayed that Mack would return soon, that he hadn't met some kind of misfortune already, and that she wouldn't freeze to death before he came back to his senses.

Sleep was difficult to find. Even in the pile of sleeping bags and blankets her teeth chattered, from cold or fear she couldn't tell. Every time she drifted off to sleep she jolted awake, thinking of the fire, and then remembering it had gone out long ago. Sometimes she looked at the time on her phone. Four hours. Five. Only the cold light of the rising moon illuminated the lonely scene.

She had been so miserable for so long that when sleep finally stole over her Ashleigh had no awareness of it. She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when she awoke she first noticed the orange glow of the revived fire as it illuminated the inside of the tent. Ashleigh started to sit up but a heavy arm around her waist held her in place. The inside of the tent was almost warm and humid now, as their bodies and the fire worked together to finally produce comfort.

Slowly she lowered herself back down, afraid to look at Mack. Had he changed? Or was he the same sick man she was certain he really was? She rolled carefully over to face him, afraid of moving too much and waking him.

At last her eyes fell upon his face and she realized he hadn't been asleep at all. Two yellow-orange globes, their pupils almost slits, were fixed on her, unblinking. She started.

"Mack, oh my gosh," she whispered, clasping a hand to her heart, "you scared me." He rumbled something in response, but she couldn't make it out. The longer she looked at his face the more changes she discovered. He was still Mack, but... different. Had he done something to make himself look different so she would believe him? Could he have left to put on a costume and then return, suddenly a "werewolf"?

Timidly she ran a hand over his face. She couldn't stop herself from giving the fur that grew there now a little tug. He winced. "How..." she whispered.

"When are you going to believe me?" his voice was deep and rumbled like thunder from deep in his chest.

Ashleigh wiggled out from under his heavy arm and sat up, taking in his full form. "Show me," she said.

"Show you what?"

"Everything."

"It's late and you should sleep," he replied.

"No, I need to know. I need to see it with my own eyes." She sat waiting, unwilling to lie back down until he satisfied her curiosity.

With a sound like a sigh he sat up in the tent and began stripping all of his clothes off. Soon he sat in front of her completely naked, his wolf form on full display. He waited as she stared at him in the half-light of the fire.

"Wow," she sputtered. He was basically the same man he had always been, but his features were undeniably more wolf-ish, and the hair was hard to ignore. Short claws tipped each finger and toe, and his beautiful white teeth gleamed impossibly white and sharper than she remembered.

"It's not as bad as you thought it would be," she tried to sound encouraging.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice almost like a purr.

"You thought you would be all over me, but it actually seems to be better than before," she offered.

He pulled his hoodie over and held up a ripped sleeve. "I ran miles from the camp and I could still smell you. I finally realized it,

you

, you were on my clothes, on me... so I ripped off some fabric and stuffed it up my nose."

"Oh." She deflated. "Well..." she trailed off.

"What?" He continued staring at her, watching the firelight bounce off her pretty features.

"Maybe... you should just... pull it out."

His eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything.

"It might not be as bad as you think... and I might like it, anyway," she said as she blushed. "And maybe, after that, it wouldn't be so bad. Get it out of your system, you know?"

He continued staring at her, his breathing harder than it had been before, but he didn't say anything.

Slowly she unzipped her jacket that she had gone to sleep in. His eyes flashed as she discarded it into a tent corner. Her breath caught in her throat as she lifted her shirt over her head. Had she lost her mind? She heard him swallow as her hair came free of the shirt's neck opening, her hair swishing over her shoulders and down her back as she tossed the shirt to follow the coat.

"Ashleigh," he growled.

She rose onto her knees and unbuttoned her pants, sliding out of them as seductively as she could manage in the awkward confines of the small tent. Soon her undergarments joined the rest of her clothes in the corner of the tent as she sat back on her heels watching Mack for any sign of a reaction.

His nostrils flared, and she thought she saw a piece of fabric fall free from his nose.

In a flash he was on top of her knocking Ashleigh on her back into the pile of sleeping bags. She cried out in surprise as he grabbed her legs and pulled them apart, then lifted her into position. "Mack, slow down!" she panted as he wrestled her into his preferred position with her knees hooked over his shoulders. Her voice called some part of him back and he stopped, then knelt to taste her slit. Ashleigh cried out in surprise, her hands digging into the sleeping bags as her fingers curled with her pleasure. His tongue darted in and out of her opening until she cried out, her dampness finally flooding out of her and over his tongue.

His hands gripped her hips tighter, the short claws digging painfully into her soft skin. She could feel the tip of him sliding into position. Was she ready for him? Oh well, it was too late now.

Ashleigh soon discovered he wasn't lying when he said that his shift would make him bigger. She moaned loudly as he pushed his way into her, her moan only exciting him more. He moved faster, desperate to get fully inside. She squirmed as he pressed against her, making him dig his claws in deeper.

Ashleigh's moaning grew louder and louder, devolving as he plowed her into yelps, cries, even shrieks of pleasure. Finally he knew, it was time. He was close, and she needed all of him. One hand steadied her hips and the other reached down to spread her open for his knot.

I hope I'm doing this right

, he thought. Mack had never allowed himself the opportunity to knot someone before. He'd always isolated himself when he transformed, and the knot didn't stick around when he wasn't in wolf form. She pleaded between panting breaths, "be gentle, please, oh Mack," she cried out as he pushed and strained and finally, with a grunt, his knot slipped inside of her. She shouted, her fingernails digging into his arms, and he felt her clench the length of him, hot liquid gushing over him as she moaned and even

growled

between her clenched teeth. Travis' warning briefly flew threw his mind again, but he pushed it away.

He's wrong, anyway,

he told himself as he refocused his attention on Ashleigh's delightful body.

Her back arched, her whole body tense and rigid in his arms. With every thrust a new rush of heat coated him, and she babbled incoherently about what he was doing to her. She raked her hands through her own hair and clawed at the sleeping bags. He gave in fully to the animal within and, as promised, fucked her deeper and harder than ever before. In surprise he realized she was squirting. "I didn't know you could do that," he said appreciatively, but she only moaned louder in response. His rutting grew frantic, and he grew deaf to her panting and moans of pleasure.

He slammed her into the sleeping bags and gripped her shoulders, pinning her in place as the instinct to unload his seed took over. He surged into her and they both cried out as he filled her completely, his knot sealing her tight, wet passage and forcing every rope of his hot cum inside of her.

Completely spent, and satisfied in a way he'd never known before, he slumped down onto her, and she cradled him with her arms and legs wrapped around him. He panted against her in the dark as she whispered into his elongated ear that he was wrong and she could handle this side of him. Lazily Mack grasped the blankets and pulled them up around them both. The crackling of the fire and the soft sounds of the breeze moving through the red rocks lulled them both to sleep as they relaxed into the soft bedding, her face buried in the downy fur of his chest.

The steel door of the dealership garage swung open silently as he laid his hand on it. Ben peered into the darkened garage. He held his Glock steady in one hand and held the door open with the other. Satisfied that the garage was empty, he stepped inside and gently shut the door behind himself. The scents of motor oil and sawdust overwhelmed his senses, but nothing moved in the dark garage except for dust motes that danced in the shafts of moonlight beaming through the narrow windows of the roll-up doors.

He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He thought about the pair of werewolves he'd been tracking across the US, and wondered what Mack had on the dealership owner. Why would he be willing to help them sell off the semi they'd been driving and disappear into the New Mexican wilderness? He'd been following Mack for a while, but the girl-wolf was a new complication, and he'd never taken notice of the dealer before. He wondered how Mack found the girl. Had he just chanced upon her out on the road? It was unlikely. Mack's kind were more into arranged marriages and clan mergers than chance encounters. Perhaps he'd returned to his pack for a shotgun wedding, Ben mused.

His quick search around the perimeter of the dealership had revealed the emerald green custom truck was long gone. Likely already sold to another owner-operator, or OO, as they called them in the business. Some of them really liked pretty trucks, and Mack's truck had certainly been one of those.

Ben spotted a stack of paperwork sitting on a tool bench and began rifling through it in the dark. Perhaps in here he'd find the answer to what Mack was driving now, if he was driving at all. In all likelihood he'd run off to shift with his girl-wolf in the mountains somewhere. He'd be back in human form and ready to blend in as a reclusive truck driver again in another 4 or 5 days, Ben guessed. Just enough time for a dealer to find him a new truck.

"Didn't you read the sign?" a gruff voice sounded from behind him. Ben whirled around, his gun already raised at chest-height. He could vaguely make out the silhouette of a man against the weak light of the moon, but not quickly enough to stop what happened next. "The sign says 'No smoking,' asshole."

He couldn't see the enormous wrench coming in the darkness, so naturally he made no effort to block the impact. He crumpled at Travis' feet. "Dumbass," the dealer muttered to himself as he picked up the man's gun in one hand and grabbed the back of his shirt collar in the other, roughly dragging him across the stained concrete floor of the garage.

When Ben awoke the bright clear sunlight of desert morning shone on his face. He groaned. Everything was blurry, and in front of him stood two glowering dealers.

"I bet you got a touch of double-vision after the walloping I gave you this morning," the dealers barked in unison. He was vaguely aware of other men moving around the garage in the periphery of his vision. He groaned again, the dealer's loud voice vying for first place with the ringing in his ears.

"He's probably got a concussion, boss," he heard a younger man say, "you fucked 'im up good."

The older man laughed. "Did you go get that loaner car I told you to pick up?" he addressed the younger man.

"Yessir."

"Good. I need you to go in my office, call Mack, and once you get him on the line, bring me the phone."

"You got it," the young man said, and the banging of a door signaled he had left the garage.

The dealer pulled up a metal folding chair letting it painfully scrape across the garage floor, the sound making the concussed hunter wince, before he sat in it, arms folded over his chest.

"You got a lot of balls showing up here, hunter."

The other man jerked his head up and tried to meet his gaze. He winced and squinted, blood pooling in the eye Travis was pretty sure he'd destroyed with the wrench.

"Fuck off," was what he decided to say.

The dealer chuckled. "A lot of balls, but not a lot of brains. That's too bad." He reached over and pulled Ben's last cigarette from his breast pocket, along with his lighter. He lit it, took a drag, and then stuck it between Ben's bloodied lips.

"Smoke 'em if you got 'em," he laughed.

Ben muttered, "Why's that?"

Travis chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "You know, I've always heard you can't become a werewolf."

The other man laughed and sputtered blood. "Not for a long time, now. No alphas left, at least that's what they say," he coughed.

Travis sighed. "Well, there is one."

Ben laughed. "I knew it. You know about the girl, too?"

Travis frowned at him. "What?"

"That pretty little thang runnin' around with your boy," the bloodied man sputtered, "I know she's an alpha."

The dealer sat in puzzled silence and then laughed sharply. "You dumb son of a bitch, that girl isn't an alpha. I am," he growled.

Ben's head drooped and jerked as the dealer spoke. He locked eyes with the dealer and snapped, "what?"

"You might be about half braindead but you heard me," the dealer barked. "You really think just any human, or just any wolf, is out here helping wolves get into the trucking industry?" He laughed now, uproariously and maliciously, certain it made the other man's broken head ache.

"I gave that boy his first truck, right after he left his pack, right after he killed that fuckface Jeb and his pack turned on him."

Ben stared at him, the cigarette dropping from his lips.

Travis stomped it into the garage floor.

"And you just waltzed right into my garage, an alpha's garage, during the full moon." He snorted. "I'd have half a mind to turn you, except you don't look very useful, you're certainly not smart, and I have no use for disloyal, yellow-bellied hunter scum like you."

The young man returned and handed Travis the phone.

"Hey, Mack, we got a problem," the dealer said as he took the phone.

Ben couldn't hear the other side of the conversation through the piercing whine in his ears.

"I caught this old asshole, one of Jeb's pals, in my garage last night."

He waited.

"That's right, you know the one. Now, I'm gonna kill him as soon as I figure out who he's told about you and that girl, but you need to get a move-on, son."

Ben tried to focus on the younger man. He thought he could make out the flash of unnatural green eyes. Was Travis' whole crew made up of wolves? Had he been so cocky that he'd walked right into a den?

"Alright, listen here, I know you're not new to this but I just want to make sure we're on the same page," he hesitated. "Leave camp, don't tear it down. Leave it all and start hiking. I had one of the guys go get the car and hide it, it's too recognizable with the shop logo on it and I know they're looking for you, but I don't think they know where you went. Don't come back the way you left," the dealer paused to crush the cigarette Jeb had let drop on the floor. "If she's got a phone, dump it, and dump yours, too. Get as far as you can tonight and I'll reroute your new truck to the old garage." He waited. "That's the one. It's gonna be a long walk and I wish I could get you out of there, but I have some big problems to deal with here." He glared at the bloodied man in front of him.

"It should take you maybe 2, 3 days if you stop at night," he paused as Mack must have interrupted him. "Yeah, but she's not like you, she's gonna have to sleep, Mack. It's either that or you carry her the whole way."

His words might as well have been a slap in the face to the hunter. Mack's girl was a

human?

Even if he got out of here alive, he wasn't going to get the payday he'd been dreaming of when he caught what he thought was a mated pair of wolves. It would still be worth it,

if

he could get out of here.

"Alright," the older man finally said, "you know what to do, I know you do. I taught you everything I could to prepare you for this. I love ya, son. Be careful, and watch your back."

"He's your son?" Ben asked, confused. "Are you from the Cahaba clan?"

The dealer handed the phone back to the mechanic, who disappeared into the office again.

"No." He gestured around the garage at the mechanics working quietly around them. "All of these boys are mine. I found most of them, a few I turned because they're good boys. Another wolf I know found Mack hitchhiking, brought him here. He was one of the first of my 'lost boys,' as I call 'em. He's the closest thing I have to blood."

The hunter laughed bitterly. "I thought they were a mated pair."

Travis clicked his tongue. "So that's why you lost your head? Nah, they might fuck like rabbits but they're no mated pair." He held up the hunter's flip phone and showed him the recent calls, the only call he had made on it.

"Who does this number belong to?"

"I ain't tellin' you shit."

"That's fine, it's not hard to find out." The dealer passed the phone off to the mechanic that had gotten Mack on the phone. "You have two choices right now: One, you tell me what you know and I'll make your death as fast and painless as I can. Two, you don't tell me anything and I make it as slow and painful as possible."

"I'm not tellin' you shit about

my

boys."

Travis dropped his chin to his chest. "I guess you do have a little bit of loyalty. It's too bad I know about your, shall we call it, penchant?" The dealer pronounced the last word in his native Cajun patois.

The hunter narrowed his eyes. "What are you talkin' about?" he spat.

"Louisiana, summer of '93."

The hunter's eyes went wide.

"That's right. I know about you and your buddy Jeb and all those missing wolf-girls. What I always wondered was did you eat 'em, sell 'em, or fuck 'em yourselves?" He paused as the hunter snarled insults and swore at him as he writhed and struggled in the chair. "Whatever, I'll ask Ronnie whenever he shows up." Suddenly the hunter stilled. "That was Ronnie's phone number, right?" Travis laughed as the hunter began to writhe and curse again.

Suddenly Travis stood and kicked his own chair away. "Lock all the doors. Don't let any customers in the shop today," he barked at the mechanics. They nodded and moved about locking down the garage.

He turned back to the struggling man and glared down at him.

"I know as old and wicked as you are, you're gonna taste like shit, but I'm gonna enjoy this anyway."