Chapter One

From: samuel@rutledgesecurity.com
To: artemais@rutledgesecurity.com; william@rutledgesecurity.com; dominic@rutledgesecurity.com
Subject: Our brother—the budding writer!
Attach: (Untitled doc.)

Hey there, brothers mine.
Seems the youngest of us is trying to become a budding writer. I found this, left ever-so-stupidly, on an unsecured part of the computer while I was doing the routine security check on the work files.
See you tonight, wolf boy. Can’t wait to start ribbing you about this. Just had to share with our loving family.
Samuel

<Attachment included>

I feel her pull on me as She shines on my face through the open curtains. Even though it’s the night before She is Full, She retains this immense hold over me. After all these years, I still can’t figure out if Her hold on me is good or bad. She calls to me no matter how hard I try to hide. When I finally give in to her embrace I receive indescribable joy, passion, and freedom. I wonder again why I resist her call. Is it simply my desire to rule my own destiny? Or do I fight Her so hard each month simply from my own stubbornness? If so, then why would I always give in as She rises at dusk, full and rounded and far more beautiful than any woman I have ever come across?
Maybe my melancholy is from my weariness of the constant fucking. Seeing Artemais and William so sickeningly happy makes me wonder if there is more to women than simply bedding and shedding them the next morning. Yet the few times I tried forging deeper relationships they ended with female tears and recriminations. It makes one wonder what really does go on in the female mind.
The Mistress of the Moon I can understand. One night a month She compels my siblings and I, along with our pack, for her devotion, to worship her. Merely sitting here and thinking of the freedom, the scents, the hunt, and wild runs in the forest is enough to make my meat stand up at attention. While I might fuck in my other form occasionally, this boner isn’t a sexual one, it’s more standing to attention in respect for the One whom I must follow, the One whom I can’t resist. Why can’t I meet a woman like that? One I truly can’t resist.
Goddess knows I enjoy women. I love their hair, their scent, a million small things about them from their taste to their texture. Yet when I look at my mated brothers, have I ever truly felt that level of devotion, of adoration to anyone except the moon? It must be thoughts like this that make me wake restless and frustrated next to forgettable women each and every night. The eternal question, “Would I be upset if I never saw this woman again?” rocks around my head.
Both Art and Wills have told me separately that they would die a million deaths if anything happened to their mates. The fact I can wallow and momentarily forget my frustration in my casual women doesn’t answer the fact that they are all the same to me. All forgettable.
I care about them; I care that they reach their pleasure and enjoy their short time with me. But there have been so very many that they blur, much like those few seconds when I change from man to wolf.
I’m waiting for the punchline—when I wake up one morning beside a woman I realize I couldn’t possibly leave or let go of. Much like, resist as I do the desirable, full moon, I feel a constant ache in my heart when She finally falls beyond the horizon and dawn breaks, and I am once again left alone, to my endless fucking and searching. Tending to my rampant cock alone merely exasperates this loneliness, this frustration. As I pump myself to a heady release, the loss and frustration levels inside me mount.
I can tell it is the night before the full moon because I feel so melancholy tonight. My desire, even after spending three hours with the lusty brunette in my bed, Shawna I think her name is…even now, minutes after the attention of my own hand, my rampant cock is aroused again merely from the thoughts of tomorrow night, when I can run wild and free. Maybe I should go back to Shawna and—

Mary snapped back to attention. She turned quickly to double check her young cousin, Matthew, still paced on the other side of the room by the large window, and wasn’t reading the incredibly sexy, erotic, private thoughts she had stumbled onto over her shoulder.
Noting her attention on him, he halted a moment. “Have you untangled me yet?”
Typing a few quick keystrokes, Mary closed the email she had accidentally opened. Thinking it one of the portal exits she was searching for, she had at first been surprised to realize it was a saved email. Initially confused, she had quickly begun to scan the email. The depth of feeling in the emails words, the true and uncensored thoughts of the man who had written them had instantly snared her attention, capturing her as securely as her young cousin had been caught in the tricky trap laid out by the Security Company.
Thankfully, before she invaded Dominic Rutledge’s privacy too much, she had been recalled to her surroundings. She was not in some decadent bedroom, listening to that man whisper his secrets in her ear. She was here in her home office, trying to untangle her wretched cousin from his idiocy.
“Nearly. What the hell were you doing, hacking into a $security company of all things, Matthew? $Honestly. How many times do I have to tell you this isn’t some stupid game with no repercussions?”
Mary returned her attention back to the computer. Despite the hot feeling thrumming through her body, she forced her mind back to the task at hand. She must extract her eighteen-year-old cousin from the quagmire he’d created.
Matthew resumed his restless pacing, and Mary entered a few more keystrokes, silently cursing her over-enthusiastic cousin. The virus scan finished ten minutes later and she switched off the computer. She leaned back in her chair with a sigh.
“I swear, next time you use my computer, it had better be for those blasted killing games of yours, not this dumb hacker joke your friends keep on goading you into. It won’t be $them sitting in the jail cell I’ll have to bail out.” She held up her hand as Matthew opened his mouth to protest.
“And no, the nice police officers aren’t going to care for the excuse ’But they dared me!’ Matthew, you’re eighteen. I know you kick ass in the computer industry, but frankly a jail record will kill any hopes you have for $ever getting a decent job.”
Matthew scuffed one foot into her carpet, much like he had when caught stealing cookies from the jar when he was eight.
“I’m sorry, Mary. I’ll try not to let them goad me again. I proved I wasn’t good enough to get out. I could tell they were tracking me, though. Show me how you got us out.”
“What’s this ’us‘ business, buddy? You got yourself in, you can learn next time to get yourself out.” At Matthew’s pleading look, Mary relented.
Matthew and his older sister, Chloe, might technically be her cousins, but they were as close as siblings. Having been raised together, even annoyed as she was at Matthew’s delve into hacking, she knew she would eventually show him how she escaped the fierce clutches of the Rutledge Security Company. Flashing his most charming grin, Matthew sent her a cheerfully pleading look.
“Later, buddy. But no more hacking. You want to test out your skills, you wait for your college course to start, or better yet, get a $job.”
“Tonight, then?” At Mary’s raised eyebrow Matthew grumbled his assent. “Oh, all right. Thanks again.”
Mary returned his kiss on the cheek, and sat back in her chair as Matthew left her small home office. She thought back to the email she’d discovered accidentally.
Surely it was some sort of joke? It had to be some idiotic male prank? Switching her computer back on, she logged on the Internet and did a quick search.
$Well shit, there really is a Rutledge Security company! And in Montana of all places!
She lived on the border between Montana and North Dakota. From the look of things, Rutledge Security was situated up the northwest corner of Montana.
Mary searched a little deeper, and found the founders of the company were a group of four brothers. Artemais, William, Samuel, and Dominic Rutledge. $Not good, not good at all for my peace of mind.
It seemed as if Artemais, the eldest, pretty much ran the company, with a bit of help from his brothers. The picture under the “About Us” link showed four drop-dead gorgeous men. The men shown as Artemais and William appeared happily married with a number of kids between them. There were a lot of happy family snaps showing the beaming men with strong arms wrapped around very satisfied looking women.
Other photos showed the same men and women with happy, healthy looking kids. Samuel and Dominic, while shown playing with the kids, still cheekily winked out from the pictures, obviously single.
Surely if they were werewolves they couldn’t be happily married? Mary thought back to Dominic’s comments about Art and Wills being “happily mated” and “dying a thousand deaths if anything happened to their mates”.
For what felt like the first time ever, Mary had no idea what she wanted to do. Her initial impulse was to jump in her car and drive over to their company, beat down their door, and ask if her conclusions were accurate.
Sanity, however, remained to question that impulse. She couldn’t possibly appear on their doorstep and demand they tell her the “truth” purely to sate her curiosity.
Mary switched the screen of her computer off, to not distract her, and picked up her phone. She pressed the memory one button, and waited for Chloe to pick up.
Just as she started to wonder if her cousin had stepped out, Chloe answered. “Hello?”
Mary frowned, her cousin sounded distracted. “Hey, it’s me. Am I interrupting?”
“You’re welcome to. I’m trying my hand at painting, and—“
“Painting? I thought you had that job as a mechanic down at the garage?”
“Oh, I do. It’s just so unfeminine I wanted to try something else today. So I started this picture. It’s supposed to be a seascape—but it looks like a four-year-old’s finger painting session. I was just trying to think of what I’m missing when you called. What’s up?”
Briefly, Mary explained about Matthew’s foray into the world of hacking, and her subsequent rescue.
“Thank goodness he asked you to help. You know how terrible I am with computers. I would have made the mess worse. Are you hoping to get me to yell at him? I could, but I doubt he’d listen to me.”
“No, no. It’s something totally different. I accidentally opened an email. Matthew was stuck in a web and I mistook it for something else.”
“Yes? What about this email?”
“The email was from one of the four brothers who run the company. It was sent to the other brothers, and it was a section of one of their journals. It talked about the moon and its pull on him. About how they were all werewolves.”
There was a short pause on the other end.
“Are you sure it wasn’t creative writing? Sometimes when I’m trying to get into a character’s head I write stuff down as if I really were them, to set the mood and help me see things from their perspective better, you know?”
The fact that Chloe occasionally wrote came as no surprise to Mary. Chloe was a multitalented girl who had never settled in one area. She was smart—she just hadn’t found where her passion lay. Instead, she did whatever took her fancy, whenever the urge struck her. By no means was she selfish; she had a huge heart and was always there for those she loved. She just had a tendency to pick and discard working jobs with the ease some people chose hot dinners.
Mary shook herself and returned to the problem at hand.
“I don’t think so. Samuel sent the email out to his brothers with the object of teasing the youngest brother. He made a huge joke out of it, stating Dominic was keeping a journal, and then called him Wolf Boy. If it was make-believe, why would Samuel tease him like that? If it weren’t true, surely it wouldn’t be humorous?”
Mary chewed her lip thoughtfully. What she had told Chloe made perfect sense. The thought that the four of them really were werewolves made her nervous. Surely it was all just fairy tales to frighten children on stormy nights?
“You’re not going to be able to rest until you figure this out, are you?”
Mary smiled wryly. No one had ever accused Chloe of not being able to see through those she cared about. “Probably not.”
“Then go out there and see them for yourself. You mentioned this guy was complaining about the number of bed partners he slept with and then discarded, right?”
Mary furrowed her brow, not following Chloe’s train of thought. “Right.”
“Then go out there and seduce him.”
Mary’s eyes widened. “What?!”
She could practically see Chloe shrug her shoulders.
“You want some answers, and he sleeps with a different woman every night. Why not seduce him, sleep with him, and ask him those questions and get your answers. It’ll be a normal give and take. He gets extraordinary sex, you find out whether werewolves really exist. Seems like a fair trade to me.”
Mary blinked, totally stunned. Was this her little twenty-six-year-old cousin, giving $her, a mature thirty-five, $sexual advice?
“Chloe, you are $not giving me sex tips are you?”
“Of course not!” Mary wondered how Chloe seemed to appear both laughing at her and offended simply by the tone of her voice. “I’m just pointing out your options here. You called to ask for my advice, and now I’m giving it to you.”
Mary wondered when her young cousin had become so wise; the kid was twenty-six, for heaven’s sake. Mary rubbed her forehead, a headache beginning to pound.
“So let me get this straight. You, my baby cousin, think I should drive for hours on end, to the other side of the state, to seduce a man and blow his mind with orgasmic sex, then casually turn over afterwards and instead of playing with the usual post-coital bliss and teasing, I should just ask him if he’s a werewolf?”
Chloe laughed.
“You know, when you put it like that, it sounds stupid. I’m saying go with the flow, cousin. Maybe he’ll be the sort of guy you $can just look in the eye and say, ‘Hey, I heard you turn furry once a month. Any truth to that?’ or maybe you can kinda search his pockets or something for a Werewolves Anonymous card. I have no idea. All I know is you will sit out here and stew for months if you don’t go and do something. So go out and search for your answers.”
Mary smiled. Trust Chloe to make something as stupid as driving to the other side of the state seem simple and straightforward.
“You’d better keep an eye on that crazy brother of yours then. No telling what mess he’ll get into next time.”
“No problem. It’s about time someone other than me got itchy feet and decided to break out and try something new around here. Heaven knows Matthew will be glued to that computer of yours forever if we don’t pry him away, and it’s about time you went off and did something daring too.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “I do not need advice from a woman who refuses to hold a job for more than six months.”
Chloe laughed.
“At least I’m living my life. You just stay holed up in your office, doing your coding stuff and chatting to your online friends. I think it’s a good time for you to go on a personal road trip and explore what life has to offer. I was beginning to wonder if you had any life outside those IM rooms you stay in all night.”
Mary mulled it over. She wanted to go out there, so what was holding her back? Why $not just go with the flow for once? Making up her mind, Mary decided to act on her thoughts before she could talk herself out of them again. With that thought she decided to pack straight away.
“Okay. See you, Chloe. Keep an eye on Matthew. I’ll probably call you tomorrow before I leave.”
“No problem, hon. See you around.”
Mary hung up the phone with a feeling of total unreality. Somehow her cousin made it sound as if sleeping with a man and then asking him if he was a werewolf would be a rational course of action.
Turning back to her lowly humming computer, she turned the screen back on, determined to dig up as much information about the brothers as she could. Dominic in particular.
As she sifted through their website, this time at a much slower and more careful pace, she found interesting little pieces of information scattered through the text. She found it amazing how much information could be left in such blasé comments one would usually overlook on a first, more casual read through.
In their descriptions of themselves, Mary found with a bit of careful reading and piecing together, that the brothers all lived on the same piece of land on the edge of Glacier National Park. Exactly where around the enormous parkland she had no idea, but even having the Park as a reference point would be helpful.
Mary wrinkled her nose. The park was truly huge, so sifting through it looking for the right house, or houses, was totally out of the question. She smiled at the mental picture of herself knocking on each and every door asking if the Rutledge studs lived here. The police would arrest her—or the men in white coats would come for her before she had covered even a tenth of the Park.
The time passed quickly, and while Mary gathered a fair amount of detail, she couldn’t find anything concrete until she came across a fuzzy digital photo of the four brothers playing in a band. It had the title “The Howlers—Our Local Bar”.
$The Howlers? Either she possessed a more active imagination than she realized, or these Rutledge men had a wicked sense of humor. Mary downloaded the picture, then zoomed in and out of the digital image, determined to find a clue on their location.
Finally she caught sight of a banner, declaring “The Three Legged Stool Presents $The Howlers.”
$Local bar, hmm? Shouldn’t be too hard to find that place close to Glacier National Park.
Tomorrow was Friday. She could easily take the weekend off; she could even be able to stretch it to Monday, if she needed. She had plenty of annual leave stored up. The chances of finding Dominic at his local bar might be slim, but four brothers as studly as these should be well known.
It was possible a heap of people would know where they lived. It seemed like the next logical step into finding out about Dominic Rutledge.
Mary wrinkled her nose at her desperate thoughts. Maybe she was losing her mind. Calling out to Matthew that the computer was free, she left her study and climbed upstairs to her small bedroom.
Packing a light bag, making notes about groceries and last minute errands she didn’t want to forget, Mary felt strangely nervous and excited at the same time. Chloe was right, it $had been far too long since she had struck out and done something for herself simply for the fun of it.
She decided it was stupid to worry, when the worst-case scenario was that she’d waste a weekend looking for a man she couldn’t find. Or even embarrass herself in front of a man she would never see again. So what if she asked Dominic Rutledge if he was a werewolf and he thought she was insane? More likely than not, she would never see the man again, so who cared if she made a fool of herself?
So other than possible humiliation, or wasting her time, she had absolutely nothing to lose—and a potential weekend of hot sex and traveling through the state to gain.
Seemed like a fair deal to her. Particularly when she thought back to the brooding, sexy man labeled Dominic Rutledge, with the scorching blue eyes and shoulder length wavy dark brown hair. Even on a digital image, he fairly radiated sexual energy and allure. Jumping into bed with him would not be a problem, and she certainly wouldn’t have to fake anything.
Double-checking her packed bag, Mary determinedly left her room, intent on filling the rest of the day with cleaning until she could collapse in bed and sleep the hours away until she would leave. Even though she had made her decision, she didn’t want to lose her nerve by dwelling on what she was doing. Deep inside her something had clicked when she had seen the picture of Dominic.
Something about all the men had seemed feral yet restrained at the same time. As stupid as it seemed, she had no trouble at all believing these men could change into huge wolves once a month.
Her impulse might be bizarre and crazy, but something in Mary knew she would never rest until she had followed this, whatever it was, through. Sure, she might make a fool of herself, but at least she would get her answers and be able to let it rest.
A determined gleam in her eye, she grabbed the polish rag and headed into her living room to do some dusting.
* * * * *
Dominic madly typed at his keyboard, determined to catch the hacker who had been stupid enough to try and break his code. While there were no state or federal secrets inside their website, Rutledge Security $did pride themselves on having the best, the most up-to-date security and systems on hand. While nothing was hacker-proof, their systems and encryptions were as close as one could get. It was a source of incredible pride to Dominic.
Dominic’s instincts warned him that the talented, but obviously gauche, kid who had started hacking into the Rutledge Security files had called in extra fire power. The initial hacker had certainly been talented, but untrained—they hadn’t realized the careful snare Dom had set up and they had fallen into it like a ripe plum.
He grinned hugely at the shock and surprise the kid must have felt. The kid was good enough to break in, but not trained enough to know how to get out. Dom felt a momentary spurt of ego to know his personally created system worked.
There had been almost no action after the initial squirming, and then suddenly he was trying to follow a flurry of activity. To his well-trained eye, the new person was obviously a veteran. Slowly and meticulously the new person unwound the kid from the highly tricky snare.
Dominic unwillingly felt a rush of respect for the new person. Not only were they well-trained and quite talented, but patient as well. The confidence mixed with the patience made him wonder if the kid had called in a woman to help him. Many men would have taken the few deeper traps he set, appearing as quick-fix exits. The woman didn’t rise to any of his baits.
Dominic had purposely set the trap such, in the hopes of further trapping any hackers. Also, he needed to buy himself as much time as possible to track them down. Somehow it hadn’t fully worked this time.
Too busy trying to trace their Internet source and point of connection, Dominic hadn’t been fazed by the new arrival trying to un-pry themselves. But the speed with which they were becoming untangling, coupled with the thought it was a woman beating his system, set his teeth on edge.
Dominic tapped his foot impatiently and resisted the urge to pace like a caged animal.
Something about this hacker, this $woman, tugged at him. She pricked his pride, but more, she pricked his $interest, as few women ever had.
All the details would be collected on Samuel’s main computer back at Artemais’ house, so he couldn’t even read the data as it was collected and begin to collate it. He gave up his resistance and began to pace—restlessly, anxiously, feeling as if his hands were tied. The lack of control he held over the entire situation grated on him. It was a completely alien, strange feeling to him.
All sorts of scenarios from a kid’s prank to a hardened criminal flashed through his mind. The original hacker was almost certainly a kid. The lack of experience was obvious and easy to pick out—even over the web.
It was the new person who worried him. This $woman.
Dominic could feel himself getting closer and closer. The lady could evidently tell he was getting closer too. She now desperately struggled out of the code. Dominic felt thankful the hackers were far too busy untangling themselves to steal or read any private files. Everything was tightly locked down. Nothing had been tampered with.
The small numbers of files saved onto the communal access were nothing. They hadn’t been breeched for the most part, certainly nothing had been copied from what he could tell, but even so, Dominic felt no concern for anything in an insecure area. All the important files were so heavily secured he would certainly know if they were being opened or accessed.
Yet this was mild comfort to him. His precious security set up had been breeched. By a kid of all people!
Keeping a determined eye on the readouts flashing across his screen, Dominic was startled when an animated, voluptuous woman appeared on his screen. She was naked, with her back turned to him. Long red hair fell down to her shoulder blades, creamy white skin glowed in contrast to the silky-looking locks. Her naked ass swayed slightly as she turned to look at him.
Dominic felt his mouth dry out. $Oh man, the things I could do to that ass…
Dominic’s attention adhered to her rounded ass as it swayed. The animated woman was his every heated wet dream. Femininity incarnate. Dominic wondered if the whole set-up was some sort of insane joke from his brothers.
Stunned and completely turned on at the luscious animated figure pouting on his screen, Dominic simply stared at her. Wicked green eyes glinted as the female winked at him. Pouting her lips even more, the red beauty kissed her palm, and blew him the kiss. Then she teasingly slapped her wonderfully rounded ass—a perfect size to hold on to as a man plunged himself up to the balls—winked again, and then she was gone.
Cursing a blue streak, Dominic typed a few commands, and then sat back, grumpy and defeated. Whoever the hacker was, she was long gone. Dominic rubbed his eyes, trying to contain the howl of rage and frustration he felt building up inside himself. He couldn’t even explain to himself the fierce desire to catch this hacker. Something about the person who came to rescue the initial hacker had piqued his curiosity.
Now, not only was Dominic truly pissed at the knowledge that his sacred code had been broken into, but he also resented the huge hard-on he wore. The thrill of the chase, of the hunt, had sparked new life into his weary world. Other than his rampant cock, he couldn’t explain why this one hacker drew him, taunted him more than any other hacker wanna-be ever had.
He shut down his main computer, pounding the desk in his frustration and picked up the phone. Dialing a number without even glancing at the number pad, he turned back to his totally secure laptop, and continued to save, and make backups of all the data he had collected.
“Yo,” came the answer from the other end.
“Sam? What the hell are you doing there?”
“Well Dom, darling, tomorrow is the big birthday bash. We’re $all supposed to be down here. I presume you’re still off fucking your way through the town, hmm?”
“No such luck, brother dear, I’ve been defending the innocence of Rutledge Security. Can you log on to Art’s computer and save all the info I’ve sent over? We had a hacking attempt.”
“No shit? Hang on.”
Dominic smiled at the instant attention Samuel gave him. The surprise in his brother’s tone made Dominic smile. His grin stayed on his face as he double saved his information by burning them onto CDs, determined not to lose even a micron of his information.
“I stand corrected, brother mine. Looks like a kid, probably trying to prove his balls to his buddies. What do you think?”
“Probably, it’s the second hacker that came in to rescue him I wouldn’t mind speaking to. Patience of a saint, and obviously a pro. The character was hanging around somewhere, and the kid probably called him when he realized he was stuck. Maybe it was even his computer the kid was using, testing himself. Whatever, I’ll want to do the coordinates and double-checks tomorrow at the party. Can you just double save everything, in case the power goes down overnight?”
“No problem. You better not spend too much time in here, checking the details. Wills and Josie might castrate you if you’re not paying proper attention.”
Not only was this Sunday the full moon, but the weekend was his niece and nephew’s birthday party. Alexander and Samantha, his brother William and sister-in-law Josephine’s children were turning four. Plus Sophie, Art’s wife, was due any day now with their third child, and he wanted to be present at the birth again.
Sophie had been swearing up and down that she was having a break after this baby was born. Christiana, their oldest, was just over four and Theodore, their second child, had recently turned two. Sophie had been constantly grumbling throughout this third pregnancy that she had spent more than half of her marriage pregnant and sick, and she had had enough of it.
Art’s head was so swollen he could barely walk through the doors of the old house, and between raising and taking care of Christiana and Theodore, not to mention Alexander, Samantha Monique, and baby Julian, William’s kids, the house was never quiet, never clean, but always a lot of fun.
Dominic, as always, looked forward to returning home, not only to his small cabin on the edge of the Rutledge land, but also to his forest and family. Storing one copy of the disks safely in his desk, he carried the other set of disks into his bedroom, ready to pack for his weekend back home.
The house might always be a mess and loud, but it was still home. Art and Wills, their gorgeous wives and kids might often exasperate his loneliness, but this time would be different. This time he had a purpose, a quest, to find the hacker and hopefully the pro who not only set his teeth on edge, but also piqued his curiosity and interest as almost no one had in the last few years.
He loved his siblings and nieces and nephews, he loved his home, but the ache and frustration he often felt back there had driven him into the town on more than one occasion. This time, however, would be different. This time he had a puzzle to mull over and keep him happy and occupied.
He could hardly wait to get going.