Sporting Wood

  Sporting Wood

  Cindy Spencer Pape

  Part of the Immortal Cravings series.

  What happens when a werewolf and a dryad meet in the forest at night? For Cooper and Kyla, the result is smoldering-hot passion beyond anything they’ve ever known.

  Even though there’s no real future for a botany professor and a nymph who lives in a tree, Coop keeps returning, night after night, for the steamiest sex of his life. When their fiery passion turns to love, it seems hopeless, unless a determined Kyla can find a way to keep her man.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Sporting Wood

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Sporting Wood Copyright © 2010 Cindy Spencer Pape

  Edited by Mary Moran

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication August 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  SPORTING WOOD

  Cindy Spencer Pape

  Dedication

  This one is for the members of the Untitled Writers’ Group who presented the challenge by saying “A werewolf really shouldn’t be able to talk to trees”.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Thermos: Thermos, LLC

  Chapter One

  Coop trotted along in wolf form through the wooded grove. To a human, this area deep in the heart of the Olympic Peninsula’s temperate rain forest would seem impenetrably dark, but to his senses it was awash in the silvery light of the full moon. He’d never ventured this far into the forest before, but he knew he’d be back. There was something elementally soothing about this grove—as if it had never been touched by the hand of man. All the tension of his day slipped away, even more so than it always did when he was able to shift and run through the moonlight. Here in the forest, he wasn’t Professor Marceski, constantly worried about maintaining his grant funding or getting that next paper published, and he wasn’t even Cooper, the werewolf. He just was.

  He paused beside a particularly stunning red alder tree and lifted his leg.

  “Don’t even think about it, Fido.”

  That gave Cooper pause. He stood there, leg cocked, and studied the tree. Had it actually spoken to him, or was he more stressed-out than he’d realized after just finishing up his tenure approval?

  “You heard me. Shoo. Go piss on somebody else.”

  He yipped softly back, tipping his head from side to side.

  “I know what you are. If you want to talk to me, fine, just project your thoughts, dummy. But first, go over in the bushes and relieve yourself. Don’t get any of that nasty stuff on my bark.”

  The voice was decidedly feminine, if a little bit on the snarky side. Now that he thought about it, he could tell it was inside his head, not something he was hearing through his ears. Huh. Trees that could talk? While his scientific brain was processing the possibilities, he walked over to some huckleberry shrubs and took care of business. Then he went back and sat down in front of the alder tree.

  What are you? Trees couldn’t talk. He was a botanist, damn it. He knew that.

  A tree, you moron. You are a little slow, aren’t you?

  The scruff of Coop’s neck stood up. He was considered a genius in scientific circles. He’d almost perfected a vaccine against Dutch elm disease, a breakthrough that could save thousands if not millions of trees a year. He was not a moron.

  Really? Then why are you sitting on your butt, talking to a tree?

  The tree had a point, but Cooper shrugged it off. Do you have a name?

  You don’t know an alder when you see it?

  Another voice, also female, but a little—older? sharper?—chimed in. This one is a bright one, isn’t he? Why are you talking to him? Cooper looked around and placed this voice into a Douglass fir off to the left that had to be over two hundred feet tall. The alder, at maybe sixty feet, was positively dwarfed by her—its—neighbor.

  Sorry, ladies. I meant individual names, since clearly, each of you is unique.

  The fir laughed—at least Cooper could have sworn it did. How could a tree laugh? He’s a charmer, even if he isn’t too smart. I’m Xera.

  Kyla, said the alder, her psychic voice sweeter and more musical than the fir’s, even though she’d been kind of snotty at first. What’s yours?

  Cooper Marceski. He dipped his head in greeting to each tree.

  Cooper? Does that mean you make barrels? The alder—Kyla—sounded unimpressed.

  Cooper chuffed a laugh out his snout. No. It’s just the first name my parents gave me. I’m a teacher and scientist.

  Oh really? He could hear the skepticism in the voice of the fir. Scientist.

  Yes, Xera. I know you think I’m a little dim, but in human form, I’m a professor of botany. Which was probably why his mental breakdown took the form of talking to trees. The irony was by no means lost on him, even if he had cracked.

  You’re not crazy. Kyla’s tone was actually kind for a moment. If you believe in werewolves, why not talking trees?

  You’ve got me on that one. Hard to argue with the fact that if shapeshifters existed so did other things. Hell, his own cousin Jackson was married to a vampire. Only he’d come to accept his own species as a biological fact—an evolutionary offshoot of some sort, involving a shadowed, secondary double helix of DNA that was irreversibly intertwined with the first. Vampirism was some kind of viral DNA modification. Talking trees though? Those made no sense at all.

  So what are you doing this deep in the forest if you have to get up and go to work tomorrow? Xera asked.

  Just running. I don’t have any classes on Friday, so it seemed like a good chance to get in a nice long run. The weekend and the full moon didn’t always coincide, so he tried to take advantage of it when it did. While he didn’t have to shift at the full moon—honestly, he could shift whenever he wanted to—the lunar cycle did exert a pull, and the full moon made him tense, his skin tingling uncomfortably if he forced himself to stay in human form through the whole thing.

  Tonight though, it had felt so good to run that he had gone deeper into the forest than he ever had before. In fact, a glance up at the sky let him know dawn was just an hour or so away.

  I should be going. He nodded at each of the trees. Can I come back and talk to you some other time?

  Whatever, replied Xera.

  Sure, said Kyla. Damn, her voice was awfully sexy for being a tree. Coop wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that thought. Probably a good time to head out, before he
started trying to hump a knothole or something. This was getting weirder by the minute.

  Then good night, ladies. Cooper sprang to his feet, yipped a farewell and raced off toward home.

  ———

  You didn’t have to be so mean, Kyla groused to Xera after the werewolf had left. It was nice to have someone who could hear us stop and chat with us for a change.

  Honey, you need to get out of your tree more often. Xera’s soft-needled branches shook though there was very little wind—almost as if the tree were laughing. There’s usually a satyr or two around on Samhain, and that’s only a moon or so away. ’Cause, sister, you need to get out and get laid.

  You are such a nymph, Xera. If she’d been able to from inside her tree, Kyla would have stuck her tongue out. Stop thinking with your crotch. Sex isn’t the answer for everything.

  You’d be surprised, youngling. Besides, we are nymphs. That’s what a dryad is. Did you catch the stupidity virus from that fleabag or something?

  Oh, shut your knothole. With that, Kyla withdrew even deeper into her tree where she couldn’t see or hear. The sun was almost up. It was time for all good dryads to go to sleep.

  ———

  By Monday, Cooper had pretty much convinced himself that his encounter with the talking trees had been some kind of hallucination. All week long though, a strange restlessness plagued him, and he couldn’t wait until Thursday night. Normally, he could go weeks between a run, but now the crawling between his shoulder blades just didn’t seem to want to stop. As soon as his last class was over, he loaded up his backpack and headed for the forest.

  Coop covered the first few miles of trail on two feet rather than four. It was too easy to encounter other hikers on the edge of the woods, and he had a favorite spot he liked to leave his backpack and clothes. An abandoned fox den, the small hollow made a perfect concealment for the dun brown pack. Coop perched on a log and ate the dinner he’d packed—sandwiches and fruit, with a couple of chocolate bars and a big Thermos full of coffee. He’d planned to be out overnight, so he wanted to fuel up. While he could hunt in wolf form, it was messy, and he hated shifting back to find his face sticky with rabbit blood. He’d much rather grab brunch at the local pancake place on his way home tomorrow morning. Once his meal was finished, he carefully stripped, stashed his pack and allowed himself to shift.

  Oh yeah, this was what he’d been needing all week. Coop let out a happy yip and took off running, heading off the trail and deeper into the rain forest.

  Gods, he loved it here. Cooper was a transplant to Washington, but he’d come to think of it as home. Minnesota was fine, with plenty of woods for a wolf to run in, but something about the Olympic Mountains had called to him from the first time he’d been here, when he’d interviewed for his job at the university. Now that he had tenure, he was happily looking forward to spending many, many years in this place—maybe even one day finding a nice she-wolf to settle down with. One day though—not anytime soon. Right now, Coop was busy with his teaching and research. He was only a little over a hundred after all—practically a babe in the immortal world—and his life was just fine without a mate at the moment.

  A combination of memory and instinct urged him on, back to where he’d spoken to the trees. Just as twilight was falling—fairly early now since it was early October—he began to feel that sense of ancient calm, the same one he’d noticed before. This was a sacred grove, though he wasn’t sure to whom, or how, but somehow he knew there was something special about the place. Pausing, he bowed his head in respect to whatever deity called this place his own, and then walked toward the red alder and Douglass fir he’d been chatting with before.

  Cooper? The alder spoke first. What are you doing back here?

  I’m not sure. He plopped down on his haunches in front of the beautiful tree. Her trunk was straight and thick, her leaves just starting to turn an orange-red tipped with scarlet—almost exactly the colors of the sunset streaking the sky. Large rust-brown catkins hung heavy from her perfectly spaced branches.

  You think I’m pretty? Kyla’s voice in his head sounded startled.

  For a tree, yeah. Cooper needed to have his head examined. Weird, I know. I still can’t believe you can really talk to me. This is a sacred grove, isn’t it?

  Hey, came Xera’s rougher, drier voice. Maybe he isn’t as stupid as he looks.

  Coop barked a greeting, echoing it in his mind. Good evening, Xera.

  Hello, Rover. Come to fetch a stick?

  Yeah, how about one of your branches, he teased back, jumping when a low bough from the fir swatted him upside the head. So how come you trees can talk? I’ve never encountered that before.

  In front of his eyes, the alder seemed to shimmer. Then, from out of its trunk, a beautiful young woman stepped forward. “Because we’re dryads, silly.”

  Dryads? Cooper cocked his head, studying the nymph—and yeah, she sure as hell looked like something out of a Greek painting—who stood before him. Her hair was the same russet color as the catkins on the tree, streaked with the brown of the bark, her lips the scarlet of the autumn leaves while her eyes were the vibrant green of a fresh leaf in spring. Her long hair tumbled to her knees, hiding much of her curvaceous body, but even through that curtain Cooper could see she was stunning. Where before, his wolf had been itching to burst free and run, now it was the man inside the wolf’s skin who wanted to sit up and howl at the moon.

  And then she smiled.

  Oh hell, Cooper was a goner.

  Oh geez, get a room, you two!

  “Shut up, Xera!” Kyla—holy-shit-a-dryad Kyla—held out a hand to Coop. “Want to get out of here and talk face-to-face for a while? I know a glade where no nosy fir trees can see us.”

  Kyla held her breath as she waited for the werewolf’s response. It had been a long time since she’d stepped out of her tree for anything except the occasional grove ritual. She really couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been with a male of any species.

  Cooper stretched, and then before her eyes could take in the transformation, he stood there in his human form—his gloriously masculine human form. She blinked, but when she opened her eyes again, he was still gorgeous. His hair was dark, almost black, and just covered his ears and grazed his nape in back, showing a hint of a wave. His deep brown eyes were set in a strong, rough-hewn face with high cheekbones and dark stubble around his chin. Broad shoulders narrowed into a sculpted chest, lightly covered with a soft mat of hair and tapering down to an abdomen ridged with muscle. Her eyes dropped a little lower and she felt her cheeks flush. Oh my! He was a fine specimen indeed.

  Damn, he’s a hot one. Nice piece of timber he’s sporting. I could come out and make it a three-way. Xera cackled.

  Kyla tossed her head as Cooper smiled and took her hand. Get your own male, she thought back over her shoulder. Keep your twigs off mine.

  Works for me, gorgeous. A warm male chuckle laced itself through the thought.

  Kyla felt herself flush. She’d forgotten that Cooper wasn’t human and could hear her too.

  “It’s okay.” His fingers twined with hers. “You said you know a place that’s a little more private?” No offense, Xera, but I’m a one-at-a-time kind of guy. Besides, you sound kind of like my mother, which is not a turn-on.

  Xera laughed. Just be good to my girl or you’ll be finding needles in places you didn’t know you had, Fido.

  “Are you the only two dryads in this grove?” Cooper asked with a chuckle as Kyla led him toward the ritual glade. The sound of his husky laugh sent shivers down her spine. Body parts she could barely remember having were coming awake, demanding attention. “I can’t imagine having no one to talk to but Xera for years on end.”

  “No, there are a dozen or so of us left, I believe. But most of them choose not to talk, especially not to strangers. Most nights though, Xera and I chat with a few of the others.”

  “What do you mean left? Is your kind endangered?” He paused and used the hand
not holding hers to cup her chin and tip her gaze up to him. Goddess, but he was tall. “Once you said what you were, I’d sort of assumed that every tree has a dryad. Or at least ones of a given size.”

  “No. Only those in sacred groves. And once the grove or the tree is defiled by man, then the dryads can no longer stay.” She couldn’t stop staring into his eyes, the rich brown of the most nourishing soil.

  “Defiled? Am I causing you problems by visiting?” His deep voice was husky with concern.

  “No. Your kind is not truly human, and you brought with you none of the trappings of technology. It’s the touch of metal, of plastics, of man-made chemicals that destroys us. Once a tree has been touched by those, it can never house a dryad.”

  “So, if a branch is cut—the dryad dies?”

  She shrugged. Forcing herself to look away from him, she tugged on his hand to resume their walk. “Not always. If there is another tree of the right species—a sapling, perhaps—sometimes she can switch. Assuming it has not been touched as well. And we can only leave our trees at night. A dryad caught by sunlight can never go back to her tree. We become simple nymphs, with no attachment to a home. Most wither and die without them, though a few have made new lives for themselves, at least according to the legends.”

  “Then I’ll be very careful to have you home before sunrise.” He moved beside her with easy grace, as at home in the forest as she was. Unlike most humans she’d met—which wasn’t many, she had to admit—he also didn’t seem to care that he was naked. That was a situation she didn’t mind a bit. He was certainly pleasant to look at. She sniffed experimentally, using a sense she rarely was able to access from inside her tree. He even smelled wonderful—woodsy and a little sweaty, and very, very male. Her step stuttered as she squeezed her thighs together involuntarily, feeling the moisture that slicked the tops of them.