Chapter Healing from the Heat
Spider Monkey’s POV
Arrowhead Pack House
I went with Vic to welcome Maria and Lance back with their guards. I was worried about Maria; she was so young, and I didn’t know how she would handle selecting Lance as a baby daddy. Hell, I didn’t know how Lance would act now that he’d spent two days screwing her silly.
We were waiting in the lobby of the Pack Clinic since Doc wanted to check on them after their return. Chase, Doc Olson, and Possum were standing with us. The medical staff was still learning about werejaguar heats, and Doc wanted to get blood tests and a physical exam once it was over. “They just came through the front gate,” Vic told me after getting the link. “I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
A minute later, Lance brought his SUV to a stop outside the clinic doors. Chase went to the driver’s side door; when Lance opened it, it smelled like sex. Doc Olson was at the other side, gently waking up Maria. I did a double-take when Possum pushed a wheelchair over to her door. “Seriously?”
Chase helped Lance step out, and he looked exhausted and sore. I could see deep scratches on his arms, and he groaned in pain as he stood up. He walked slowly and painfully towards the entrance, his face betraying the pain.
Maria wasn’t any better. She moaned in pain as they moved her into the chair, her arms wrapped around her waist. I could see bites around the back of her neck, and she wasn’t able to sit up. “Damn, girl! Are you all right?”
Maria gave me a quick smile. “I’ll recover. Neither of us knew just how intense this weekend would be.”
I followed the group into the treatment room, where Doc insisted she shower before he did the exam. Possum helped me get her undressed and cleaned up; her wounds were superficial, but her body had taken a (literal) pounding. I did her hair while Possum cleaned her body. “How was Lance? Was he good to you?”
“Lance was perfect,” she said as she sucked in a breath. I could see bruises on her from her butt down to her thighs. Her lady bits were swollen and red, and Possum had to be gentle around her. Possum stepped out to get douche supplies, as Lance’s seed was still oozing out. “I never believed such pleasure was possible! No wonder Mom always looked forward to it.”
“Two days of hormone-fueled continuous sex? I’m up for that.”
“I need some recovery time.” She told us some stories as we finished up, then we put her in a gown and settled her on the examination table. “I was worried about being a virgin, but that pain only lasted a few seconds. I was so damn horny, I didn’t care, and then I couldn’t think straight. I’m glad this only comes a couple of times a year, or it would kill me!”
“I’m glad Lance took good care of you,” I told her. “Maritza missed you, but we kept her busy. She’s taking her nap now.”
“I need the hot tub, Spider. Muscles I didn’t know I had are sore.”
Possum brought Doc Olson in, and we put her in the stirrups. Doc applied some analgesic cream to her lady bits, bringing her some immediate relief. “As I expected, you have swelling and irritation of your labia and vagina.” He walked over to the office refrigerator and returned with what looked like a popsicle. “I’ll give Spider Monkey the rest of these and the molds to make more. They are just frozen water; use them inside and outside for a few minutes, as long as you can stand, then let yourself warm up and do it again. Repeat every four hours until the swelling is gone. Here, try it.”
I’d never been fucked so hard I needed a frozen dildo for relief, but I’d never been a werecat in heat. It had to be cold as hell as she moved it around and in, but I could see how it would help. I would keep some in the freezer for those times Vic gave my ass a good pounding. “Use that in the hot tub and let the water fight over you,” I teased her.
“Can I use the hot tub, Doc?”
“I suppose you can, but I’d wait until later. You look like you could use some sleep, but you need to eat first.” Doc handed me a bag with the cream, the popsicle supplies, and some Aleve while Possum helped Maria back in the wheelchair. “Spider, you’ll need to treat her every four hours. Ice her down, then apply the cream.”
“I’ll take care of her,” I promised.
I asked the million-dollar question. “When do we know if it worked?”
“Pregnancy test would be in ten to fourteen days. I know our kind often finds out when the wolf refuses to shift, but I never asked about jaguars.”
“We can shift while pregnant,” Maria replied. “Mom told me the baby shifts shapes as we do. It gets pretty uncomfortable to shift after about six months, though. She stopped with me at four months.” It was another advantage her kind had over werewolves; she wouldn’t be helpless while pregnant.
“No bleeding or issues while shifting?” Doc was interested in this, as both Rori and Heather remained in wolf form because of miscarriage risk.
“Our bodies are stretchy, I guess. Jaguar mothers sometimes spend the entire pregnancy in cat form if they feel safer that way.”
Vic came in to help her back to her room. “How is Lance doing?”
“He’ll be fine in a week. He didn’t lose ALL the layers of skin on his dick.” I snorted as we left the room; the other exam room door was still closed.
“Can I talk to Lance?” Maria was looking nervously at the door. The last thing she wanted was for him to get hurt.
“He’s fine. He’s talking with the Alphas now,” Vic said. “He got the same tube of cream, but he gets to sit in a tub of ice water instead.” I snorted, and Maria looked at him to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. “I think he’s going straight to bed and will wake up tomorrow.”
“Can you tell him thank you from me, and I’ll see him tomorrow?” Vic passed the message along.
The kitchen was ready for us, feeding Maria a lunch high in protein and carbs. She smiled at the Pack members and guests around; thank God the pheromones were gone! Ten minutes later, she was snoring away in the guest room of our house, and I was back in my office. “Anything new, Brian?”
Brian Steele was working the secondary hacking computer. “Just filling in blanks and adding information,” he said. We’d been expanding the social networking analysis of the Sons of Tezcatlipoca organization started by the FBI task force. It was a daunting project, and it wasn’t easy to get the information. With almost all active members dead or in prison, we were grasping at straws. Julio had at least one accomplice willing to assassinate the President of the United States, but who could it be? A widow of a member? Girlfriend? Hangaround? Someone outside the Club?
They had to know it was a suicide pact to go after Kettering, and they did it anyway. That level of commitment didn’t just show up out of the blue.
“What do you have for me?” Brian sent me a file of credit card transactions from the Denver clubhouse bar. I sent the information to a spreadsheet and started mining the data. Booze, beer, and food weren’t free, and the bar often operated as a money-making venture for the Club. Friends, hang arounds (bikers interested in the Club who hadn’t started prospecting yet), and sweetbutts (club sluts hoping to hook an Old Man) might have found their way in here if they didn’t pay cash.
The records went back five years. Since the data included names, it was easy to sort. I started matching records up with the list of associates we already identified, deleting data blocks as duplicates got eliminated. After my first time through the data, I found 87 new names.
Now the fun began. I sorted by the number of records, figuring the most active were the closest to the membership. I sat back when I ran the name of one Leo Daniel Woodley, and his arrest history started churning out. He was fifty-six years old and had been an outlaw biker since he was eighteen, half of that in the Sons of Tezcatlipoca. His list of priors was a page long and included arrests for drug smuggling, assault, armed robbery, attempted murder, and manslaughter. If I hacked his juvenile record, I bet I’d find more.
So how come he didn’t show up on our lists?
Leo wasn't an active member. He’d been a guest of the Colorado Bureau of Prisons for the last three years, serving half of his six-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer. From the news article on him, he fired a pistol at a pursuing cruiser while fleeing police. Prison overcrowding probably helped him out, as he somehow behaved enough not to ruin his chances at parole. He got out two months ago and promptly skipped out on probation, so there was a bench warrant out on him.
Could he be our guy? “Brian, can you ask Vic and the Alphas to come in here? I might have something.”