Werewolves of Forever 06 - Wild Lust

to Shatland.
    She had no other choice. She was going to have to walk home. Grabbing her cap, she pulled it down over her face and glanced at her tiny arsenal in the space behind the seat. Should she take the rifle or, if anyone did happen by, would they think it strange to see an armed woman hiking down the road? But she didn’t like the idea of leaving the gun with the pickup either.
    Then there was the matter of the stakes she’d stuffed under the seat. She glanced at the sun high in the sky and tried to calculate the time it would take for her to get home. If she made it back to the rental house before dark, she wouldn’t need to take the stakes. It was better to leave them where they were.
    The last option was to call Shannon for help. She had no doubt her sister would pick her up. But would Shannon come alone even if she asked her to? Or would she have the two werewolf men along for the ride?
    In the end, she stuffed her phone into her back pocket, checked the rifle to see if it was loaded, then held it in the crook of her right arm. She grabbed the water bottle that was only half-full, took one last look back the way she’d come, and started walking.
    Texas could get hot year round. She’d known that from her research. Yet living with air conditioning and getting out for only brief periods of time hadn’t let her experience just how scorching the sun could be. Within a few minutes, sweat trickled down her spine and dotted her forehead. But she kept walking.
    She trudged on, tormented on one side from the relentless sun and on the other from the heat filtering up from the black pavement. Her feet ached and her arm hurt from carrying the gun. Passing by cattle, horses, and crops she didn’t know the name of, she trudged on, muttering to herself to sue the rental company for renting her a broken-down wreck of a pickup.
    She was squinting at a cow in the pasture next to the road and not paying attention to where she was going when she stumbled into a small pothole and fell. She landed flat on her face and cussed her head off.
    “Shit! I swear, if I ever get out of this hellhole of a state, I’m going back to Boston and staying in civilization forever. No more cowboys, no more pickups, and no more walking.”
    She pushed up then checked her hands and arms for scrapes. Although her hands had taken the brunt of the fall, they weren’t too bad. Still, she wouldn’t have sneered at a little antiseptic and water, but at least she’d had the gun’s safety on. Taking off her cap, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and saw it.
    Like a mirage in the middle of the desert, the manmade pond glistened under the sunlight, beckoning her to scale the fence and dive into it. She let out a breath then pushed the gun and her now-empty water bottle under the lowest rung of the fence. She was up and over the fence in three quick moves. Snatching up the bottle and rifle, she hurried to the edge of the pond.
    She stared at the water and frowned. Although she’d known not to expect the ocean-blue water of the Caribbean where a person could see fish swimming by just under the surface, the pond water was anything but inviting up close.
    “Eck. I guess it’s true what they say about the red dirt coloring the water.”
    She could see a fish or two if she looked really hard, but the murkiness obscured everything else. But water was water and, hopefully, it was cool. She laid her rifle on the ground and inched closer to the edge. Squatting down, she dragged the bottle through the murky liquid then held it up and examined the contents.
    “No way am I drinking that stuff.” She shook the bottle as though that would clear out the bits and pieces of whatever-the-gunk-was. She poured a little over her hand, and, although it wasn’t very cool, she judged it good enough to ease a little of the heat suffocating her.
    She checked around her, saw that she was still the only one around, and pulled off her cap and tossed it on the ground next to her rifle. She tugged off her T-shirt, leaving on only her lacy bra, then pulled the scrunchie off her ponytail. Shaking her hair free, she dumped the contents of the bottle over her head and tried not to think about the gunk.
    Relief swamped her. The water was far from appealing, but it did cool her off. She dipped the bottle again and, once more, dumped the water over her head.
    “That was good even if it is dirty.”
    She studied the muck again and decided it was worth whatever she might