This Strange Addiction - Julie Steimle (book recommendations based on other books .TXT) 📗

had not met Daisy. He liked Rick well enough. He and his father always said they were civilized werewolves. But Joshua did not trust the civility of any other roaming wolf, especially one rumored to have seduced Rick.

“When will Tom be back from California?” Joshua asked Matthew.

Matthew cringed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Tom’s Mom is leaving prison soon, and he wants her safe. He thinks the CIA are going to try to use her against him, so he is frantic to prevent that.”

“And they’re not using his new girlfriend against him?” Joshua asked with a smirk.

Matthew laughed. “Piranha is not his new girlfriend.”

“I beg to differ.” Joshua looked away and snorted.

“She’s still in high school,” Matthew retorted, rising from his seat. “Besides, that’s not a topic for discussion. We need to focus on the case. We need a strategy to find Tricia Garland.”

“And that she-wolf Daisy.”

Turning to Randon, Matthew said, “Not so difficult. That she-wolf has one goal. She will be stalking Rick.”

*

The window was always left open. Rick had done it to bring in other smells besides Daisy’s scent which had been all over his room since he got those condolence gifts. He had tried washing her smell off the tables and walls with bleach, laundering all his clothes that she had touched. He even scrubbed his skin down with that strong lye soap he and his father used for emergencies when they needed to rid themselves of intense odors and oils they were allergic to. But when he was faced with throwing away all the scented things Daisy had sent him, he could not make himself do it. Not all of them.

He loved her smell. He hated her smell. Her smell was passion. It was also slavery. He never got around to telling his father that all the sympathy gifts had come from her once he had figured it out. He knew if he told his father about it, all the gifts from Daisy would be burned, just like all her letters had. And that dug in him. Truthfully, he was of a dual mind. Half of him wanted to seek her out and become all wolf with her—forget humanity. The other half screamed for help, begging him to move in with Andrew so when if she came around, his friends would kill the she-wolf and end this addiction… though he chastened himself for that cruel thought. Daisy was only acting out of survival. He could not entirely blame her.

He knew she had not given up, though she no longer had that Brooklyn apartment for them to meet. He was glad. He was glad he had been followed by Randon. It gave him hope that he could get over this. But she still haunted his thoughts. And he was unable to sleep most nights, dealing with withdrawals as dreams of her haunted him. Besides, she knew where he was. She just had not be able to tell him where she was yet. Once she did, he was sure to visit her and start the pattern all over again. Part of him eagerly anticipated it. The other part dreaded it.

His addiction for Daisy was going to destroy him. He knew it.

And with the knowledge that Audry was safe from him in Africa—her engagement with Hogan broken, Rick realized he didn’t want to have this affair with Daisy. It was messing his life up. He wanted the same break. He wanted to be worthy of a woman like Audry—even though he knew he wasn’t and probably never would be. Vincent’s glares at him were clear enough on that point. He was scum.

The window creaked, opening wider.

Rick opened his eyes, looking to it.

A pale, honey-colored wolf climbed onto the windowsill, her eyes reflecting the light.  

Rick sat up, staring at her. Her scent floated in like sweet spring water, filling his senses. His heart pounded, yet he froze, watching her.

The she-wolf climbed in and down into the room then crawled onto the bed, climbing paws over the sheets to him. His heart thundered as the she-wolf pawed her way to his chest, licked his nose then pulled herself into human form, crouching over him in all her natural bare glory—shaking off her fur. She kissed him tenderly on the lips.

“I missed you,” she said when she pulled back.

His heart boomed now as if it would go out his chest. There was no escaping her. She would hunt him down if he didn’t come to her.

As she crawled under the sheets with him, her bare skin against him, her scent was all he could smell now. He hardly resisted when she slipped her hands underneath his shirt and lifted it off, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the floor. Her fingers traced his scars as she pressed her breasts against him, kissing him deeply. As she pulled off his pants and climbed on top of him to get him excited, it was impossible to resist the rest. And when they were done making love and she lay upon him, gently tracing the scars on his skin with tickling fingers, she breathed out, “You wanted this. I know you’ve missed this. Why do you keep running?”

“Because this isn’t love…” Rick murmured, breathless and flushed. It had taken a lot out of him as she demanded everything from him during intercourse. He was sure that she had to be pregnant by now. They had been having regular sex for nearly a month—not quite every day, but close to it. There was no time for a condom. She didn’t want him to wear one anyway. He knew a baby was her goal. He felt trapped. Unable to fight, feeling so weak against her wishes. But she owned him. He knew if he locked the window the next night, trapped in her renewed smell, all she had to do was scratch on the glass and he would automatically get up like a zombie and open it for her. His body would want her while his mind would be screaming.

“Love is for children,” Daisy whispered. “We are moon bonded. It is what we are.”

Grief filled Rick’s chest. He did not want to believe that one bit. Love was not ‘for children’. That was such an awful idea. Love was what made life sweet. It was what made living through the hell of all the hunts and persecution worth it. It was his main motivator for life. And he wasn’t thinking about the romantic stuff, which he found cute but not real. Love, actual love, had substance. He loved his friends. Cherished them. They were precious to him. He loved his family dearly, from all his half siblings, mother and father, to his step-father. Love was respect. Love was sacrifice. Love was giving up what he wanted for himself for the safety of those he cared about. Love was watching them succeed and be happy.

And though he liked a great many people, he realized he didn’t actually like Daisy. Yes, she was sexy. Yes, she really turned him on and her scent drove him wild. And yes, sex with her was such a mind-bending, heart pounding experience that he never wanted it to stop. But she had trapped him. She owned him like a slave. She bullied him. She was his drug. And no matter how he tried, he could not get away from her. Not forever. He closed his eyes in his grief, wondering when he would have to accept that Daisy was his mate… when everyone would have to accept it.

 

When he opened his eyes the next morning, Daisy was gone. Her absence made the night before feel like he had just had an incredibly intense Daisy-dream. But lying naked in the bed, his cast off clothing on the floor, and the marks of her claws on his desk were proof that she had indeed been there.

 After clothing himself, he spent the entire day in a fog, going through his routine, trying to focus on his studies while he wondered once again if the night before with Daisy had been real at all. He actually hoped it wasn’t. He honestly hoped that she had been a hallucination. Daisy was a curse. She had never brought any good to his life.

But after classes, after research, paper writing, and lights out, Rick waited with his eyes on his open window, waiting for the she-wolf to return—hoping she wouldn’t.

Nine o’clock, and the dorms were still noisy. And no she-wolf.

Nine-thirty, some people were going to bed as they had early starts the next day. Still no she-wolf.

Around ten, no she-wolf. His heart started pound a little.

Ten-thirty, more people had settled down. And people were calling for lights-out at eleven. He could feel his beating chest get tight, his breathing shallow.

After eleven, the shadow of the she-wolf came into the window.

He drew in a breath as his heart boomed. She was real. It had not been a dream.

And once more, climbing into his room and bed. Daisy greeted him with a wolf lick and again with tender lips as she helped him undress.

It didn’t take much for her to induce him into making love to her. A touch. A kiss. Her scent. A breath near his ear and neck. Her hands stroking him with teasing fingers. Her own bare skin against his.

And she was gone again the following morning.

Rick stared at the ceiling, his eyes tracing the light patterns that reflected off things as the wind blew the curtains, realizing that Daisy was not going to give him a new address to find her. She was going to come to him from now on. Sitting up in his bed with his heart pounding, Rick reached for his cellphone. He pulled up one of his friend’s numbers to text, but hesitated. He needed help. But if he texted his friends, the passion would all be over. All of it. Did he really want it to stop? Though his head said ‘yes’, the rest of him was in revolt.

Setting his phone aside, Rick went to his dresser so he could get ready for class.

His mind was distracted the entire day, thinking only of Daisy. One of his professors called him out. And he had an embarrassing moment of walking into a pole while distracted in his thoughts while walking through campus.

That night, he was afraid to go to his dorm. He knew she would come, and he was sure she would keep coming until she finally convinced him to abandon his life and go back with her to Wolverton. He had to decide if he really wanted to continue this or stop it once and for all. He asked himself all day, ‘What did he really want out of life?’ And he delayed going home.

So when he walked into his building well past midnight, having stalled that long, and when he opened his dorm room and saw her there lying naked in his bed, waiting for him, he froze.

“Come on,” Daisy beckoned from the bed. “Close the door.”

Obeying, he did, setting his cellphone on the dresser, pressing send to the text he had just been writing.

“Come on, lover,” she said, “Don’t be shy. We can try doggy style tonight, if you want?”

He swallowed, tensing.

But then she pulled into wolf shape, dropping on all fours before him in her beautiful fur. Turning, she flicked her fluffy tail to the side, flagging and preparing to be mounted—which for a wolf’s brain was incredibly sexy. His wolf nose could smell the odor of a she-wolf in heat, which honestly aroused him to no end, causing his eyes to shift from their human shape into wolf shape. Human intimacy was one thing—so passionate and personal. But wolf copulating was quite another—passionate in ways he could not describe but often yearned for since the first time he had mated with Daisy the she-wolf under the full moon.

Taking off his clothes as quickly as possible, Rick’s fur filled out as he dropped on