She squinted and a whispery moan escaped her clenched mouth.
“Grace, can you hear me?” Squatting beside her, he tucked a few wisps of blond hair behind her ear. A trickle of blood seeped from the half-dollar-sized knot forming along the hairline above her temple. “You’ve been in an accident.”
Her eyelids opened on a sigh and the clearest, darkest green eyes he’d ever seen peered at him.
Every cell in his body froze. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. Damn near couldn’t think. Nine months hadn’t been long enough to weaken the pull he felt toward her, but he was in a better place to resist it.
“Rafe? Rafe Wyatt?”
He nodded. She recognized him and remembered his name. That shouldn’t make him feel good, but it did.
“Oh, no! The wolf!” Her panicked gaze darted past him. “Did I hit him?”
Either the knock on the head had really messed her up, or she didn’t know the truth about the wolves in Walker’s Run.
He guessed the latter. If the pack’s Alphena-in-waiting, Cassie Walker, had not confided in her best friend, then Rafe wouldn’t be the one to let the wolf out of the bag.
“He’s fine, Grace. I checked him before I came to you.”
“What a relief.” The strain on her face eased and she finally seemed to see all of him. “For Pete’s sake. Why are you naked?”
He stared at the open moon roof above Grace’s head, willing his body, his mind, and his wolf to behave.
“Haven’t you heard the stories?” He put an edge in his voice, despite the smile scratching at the corners of his mouth as Grace covered her eyes like the see-no-evil monkey. “I run naked through the woods and howl at the full moon.”
“The moon isn’t full.”
Rafe was thankful it wasn’t. His attraction toward her was real, dangerous, and something he wanted to avoid like the mange. A full moon would only heighten his awareness of her and weaken his resistance.
He lowered his eyes to her pink tank top and pink bottoms covered with tiny cat faces.
She liked cats and the color of bubble gum. Two strikes. One more and maybe he could get her out of his head for good. “Why are you driving around in your pajamas?”
“No one was supposed to see me.” She peeked through her fingers. “Hey! Don’t stare.” She slapped her arms over her chest, then quickly uncrossed them to grab her head. “Oh, no! I’m going to be sick.”
Covering her mouth, she bumped past him. He followed her to the spot beside the road where she’d dropped to her knees. Her stomach heaved, but expelled nothing. The muscles in her back rippled beneath his touch. “Relax. Everything will be all right.” He slowly stroked along her spine. As his hand warmed from the friction, something ebbed into his being. Something soft and feminine. Something that intrigued man and wolf. Something that would upend his life and he’d suffered enough upheaval. He couldn’t endure any more.
Grace swayed as she stood.
“I got you.” He pulled her against him. Her soft curves flush against his hard planes opened up a deep-seated yearning he needed to keep buried. But damn, it had been so long since he’d held a woman, and since he’d almost died tonight, what harm could come from a little hug?
The lightness of her feminine scent filtered through him. His ears tuned to the quiet, rapid breaths she swallowed. Her cantering heartbeat, softly thumping against his chest, slowed until the pace matched his. The synchronicity sparked an excitement that skipped along his nerves, soothing as much as it ignited him.
“I feel dizzy.” Grace squeezed her eyes shut.
“Maybe you should sit down.” He scooped her into his arms.
“Hey, no funny stuff,” she warned meekly. “These hands are lethal weapons.”
She wiggled her finely boned fingers with painted pink nails. She was so dainty and feminine, he couldn’t imagine her swatting a fly.
“I’m terrified,” he said mildly, although his heart raced like a hunted wolf whose only options were capture or escape. He carried her toward the disabled car. From what he could see, the front passenger side had suffered the brunt of the collision. He would know more once he got the car into his repair shop.
“You should be terrified. I was trained by the best.” Grace’s eyelids slowly shut.
“Who?” he asked, tucking her into the driver’s seat.
“My dad. He’s a former Navy Seal.”
“Appreciate the warning,” Rafe said to be polite. He wasn’t going to give in to his attraction to Grace, so there would be no need to meet Daddy.
She nodded, then clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Try not to move. Inhale slowly, deeply. Good, now exhale.”
He waited for her to complete a few deep breaths.
“I’m going to reach for your phone to call for help. No funny stuff, I promise.” Holding his breath so he wouldn’t indulge in her intriguing scent, he leaned over her to grab the phone from the jumbled contents of her purse on the passenger floorboard.
“What the hell is your passcode?” he asked, unable to access the keypad.
Grace scrunched her eyes and her lips stretched tight in a seal across her mouth. She clutched the hand in which he held the phone and the jolt he got from the innocent contact nearly knocked him on his ass. At least, it felt like it did. He glanced down to make sure his backside hadn’t actually kissed the ground.
After she keyed in the numbers 0-2-2-7, he jerked his hand from hers and backed away. “I need to find a spot with clear reception. Don’t fall asleep, got it?”
She didn’t respond.
“Grace?” He didn’t want to touch her.
Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. He definitely wanted to touch her again, to indulge in her softness, to see if her heat would take the chill off the soul-aching loneliness he endured.
“Grace,” he said sternly. “Answer me.”
With painstakingly slow movements, she gave him a thumbs-up.
“I’ll be quick. Don’t fall asleep.” He paced about fifty feet from the car until the phone registered a signal. His thumb hesitated above the touch screen before he placed the call.
“There’s a wreck on the old highway behind the McAllister homestead,” Rafe barked before Doc had a chance to utter a groggy, “Hello.”
“Are you all right, son?” Dr. Harold Habersham’s strained voice cut Rafe to the quick.
Since sobering up, Rafe tried hard not to cause his adoptive human father more grief.
Still, it lingered. Just below the surface. The old man loved his son too much for his own good.
“I’m fine.” Rafe frowned at the disabled car. “But I need the Co-op responders to pick up Grace Olsen. She’s got a knot on her head and dry heaves. Could be her nerves. She’s coherent and her pupils aren’t unequally dilated.”
“If you wanted to be a doctor, you should’ve gone to medical school.”
“I hate hospitals.” Hated the smell of antiseptics, sickness and death as a child. Hated the restraints, the needles, the beep of the machines that haunted his dreams long after he recovered from the shooting.
“Yeah, yeah.” The rustle of clothes muffled Doc’s voice. “I’ll put in the emergency call and be there in ten. Make sure Grace stays conscious.”
Keeping Grace awake would be easier said than done, considering Rafe would need to nudge her whenever she started dozing off. A nudge meant touching, and he definitely needed to keep touching to a minimum.
Palms tingling, Rafe sprinted to the car. “EMS is on the way.”
Grace’s eyes were closed and her head had lolled to the side. Rafe’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Grace!”
Her shoulders twitched and her eyelids popped opened. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Same here, sweetheart.
“I thought you fell asleep.” He thumbed
her chin, tipping her face to see her eyes. Still clear and alert. Her blush-pink lips, full and luscious, dipped in a grimace.
“Nope, I was concentrating on not getting sick. The smell in here makes me want to—”
She gagged and Rafe didn’t think it was for mere effect.
“Makes me want to gag, too.” He lifted her from the car, carried her up the slight embankment and sat her against an old oak log. “What is that crap smeared in your car?”
“What’s left of a hot fudge sundae and French fries.”
Rafe’s stomach turned in a not-so-silent blech.
“Hey. It’s my favorite midnight snack.” She squinted up at him. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“I’ll pass.” Rafe was allergic to chocolate. Violently allergic. End-up-in-the-hospital allergic.
And Rafe was glad he was. It quelled his desire to kiss her. If she’d eaten one bite of the hot fudge, and his mouth and tongue touched hers, she wouldn’t be the only one headed to the emergency clinic.
“Can you move out of my line of vision?” She held her hand in front of her face. “Your family jewels are quite impressive, but I don’t want them dangling in my face. It’s distracting.”
A sharp, primal awareness pierced him. He glanced at his cock, going from semierect to fully erect in the span of a breath.
Damn.
He’d done fairly well at controlling his reaction until now.
Impressive and distracting. Her description made him proud and more than a little possessive.
He sat beside her, knee bent to cover his groin. “Better?”
Her pensive gaze dropped to his lap, then inched up his chest. “I would’ve preferred clothes.”
His clothes were miles away in his tow truck and he wouldn’t retrieve them if it meant leaving her out here alone.
After a few minutes of silence, Grace shivered. Against his better judgment, Rafe reached around her shoulders and drew her close.
“You’re nice and toasty,” she said, snuggling into his heat.
His body hummed from the contact and he realized he no longer wanted alcohol. What he craved was much more dangerous.
Chapter 3
What is that god-awful sound?
The incessant noise kept time with the pounding in Grace’s head.
She forced open her tired, scratchy eyes and sat up in the queen-size Murphy bed. The soft glow from the muted flat screen TV hanging on the left wall cast enough light that Grace didn’t feel entombed in a sarcophagus, but only barely.
Earlier, when she had woken up to use the bathroom and found the bedroom–living room area of Rafe’s micro-apartment consumed in utter blackness, a blood-curdling wail had exploded from her chest. Terror scaled her throat, tightening her windpipe around the scream until she ran out of air and could no longer breathe.
From out of the void Rafe had appeared, gathered her close and calmed her with his rock-solid presence. He probably thought a nightmare about the accident had incited her panic, when really she was simply afraid of the dark.
Being locked in a windowless basement for nearly a day when she was ten had instilled a debilitating fear of the dark and she was ashamed to have never outgrown it.
Beep...beep...beep...
The grating sound kicked up her headache several notches. Searching for the alarm clock, she glanced at the long wooden dresser centered beneath the TV. All that topped it were a video game console and one controller, the wires neatly wrapped around the middle. A cell phone, the TV remote, an orange prescription bottle and an empty water bottle were scattered across the coffee table.
Asleep on the brown leather couch, Rafe lay on his side with one arm crooked awkwardly behind his back.
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have gone home with a naked man encountered on the side of the road. Rafe, however, was the best friend of her best friend’s husband. If Cassie and Brice trusted Rafe, Grace would, too.
Last night, she hadn’t called Cassie from the hospital because it was after midnight and Grace didn’t want to worry her pregnant friend over a lousy bump on the head. Dr. Habersham would’ve made her stay overnight in an observation room if Rafe hadn’t volunteered to keep an eye on her.
Grace hadn’t known Rafe’s apartment was a windowless efficiency that he’d converted from the unused storage room connected to his automotive repair business. Still, being in a concrete box with him was better than being alone in the hospital.
Her gaze traced his lightly haired legs, sleek and powerful. A bunched white sheet disrupted the graceful lines of his hips and framed his exposed lower back. The smooth, muscled planes flexed as if she’d touched him. Head tucked beneath a pillow, he sighed a deep, low, guttural rumble that echoed through her body, heating her to the core.
Of course she’d have that reaction to him.
Out of all the men Cassie and Brice had introduced to her, Rafe had been the only one to spark any real interest. Rafe, on the other hand, had gone out of his way to ignore her after the initial introductions.
Until last night. When he’d shown up after the accident, his hair wild, his eyes fierce, his body dangerously naked.
She wouldn’t be able to unsee the vision of his perfectly sculpted form even if she used a bleach solvent on her brain. The memory had already been uploaded to every cell in her body like a rogue computer virus. The only way to get rid of the infection was to overwrite the code. Unfortunately, she sucked as a code writer.
The cold harsh truth would have to suffice in masking the easily recallable memory and her interest. For some reason, Rafe found her off-putting. She didn’t know why, and when she’d shown up at his business a few months back, hoping to bridge the chasm for Cassie and Brice’s sake, Rafe had flat out told Grace he wasn’t interested in being her friend.
Yep, the cold harsh truth. He didn’t like her.
She couldn’t understand his abrupt disregard and dismissal. She always made the effort to be kind, friendly and accepting of everyone. She didn’t judge, didn’t discriminate, she loved the uniqueness of each person.
Whatever the reason for his dislike, Rafe had shoved it aside last night and was there when she needed someone.
Right now, she needed him to shut off the freaking alarm before her head exploded.
“Rafe, wake up!”
He didn’t move, snort, or otherwise acknowledge her presence.
Grace eased off the Murphy bed, slid her feet into her pink slippers, and maneuvered between the coffee table and couch. She reached over Rafe to the alarm clock balanced on the top frame of the couch, the LED face flipped so that the time flashed into the cushion instead of into the room.
In a sudden whirl, she landed flat on her back on top of the couch seat cushions. Rafe’s steely fingers clamped around her wrists, pinning them over her head. She stared into icy, cobalt blue eyes that would’ve stolen her breath if she hadn’t lost all air when he plastered his hard, hot body onto hers.
The short crop of his auburn hair stuck out in different directions. A pillow crease cut across one high cheekbone and dipped into the reddish stubble dusting his strong jaw. His firm, full lips would look much more kissable if he smiled.
Squared shoulders rose above a sculpted chest swirled with soft tufts of hair, and a quarter-sized scar marred the taut, tan skin over his right ribs.
Her gaze slid over the ripples of his abs and the sharp indents of his hips. She couldn’t follow the treasure line that arrowed down from his belly button because he was lodged intimately against her pelvis.
A giddy heat rushed her body and struck her with the acute awareness of a virile man in his prime.
“Never sneak up on me, Grace.” Rafe’s laser-intense eyes burned holes straight through her body. “It’s dangerous.”
No doubt.
From his deeply etched scowl to h
is silent, panther-like movements, she needed no further warnings. He was dangerous on all levels.
“Shut off the damn alarm. My head is pounding and I can barely think.”
Without shifting his weight off her, he slapped the buttons of the alarm clock and silenced the wailing beep. The echo continued to throb inside Grace’s head. She shut her eyes, willing the pounding to stop and wanting to break the sizzling visual contact with Rafe.
He didn’t take the hint to move. Instead, his cheek grazed her jaw, his mouth forged a warm, breathy trail to the shell of her ear, and he gently nosed the dimple behind her ear. “God, you smell good.”
Her own senses drowned in his scent—clean, earthy, and deliciously male. Instinctively, her hips arched against his groin. Deep inside, her muscles clenched and a slow swirl centered low in her belly. “Hey, Wyatt. This isn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to get to know you at Brice’s party.”
Yeah? Who was she kidding?
Since her hands were still pinned above her head, her hips were plastered against his, and any perpendicular movement might’ve further compromised their position, Grace nipped his ear.
Rafe moved so quickly it took her a few blinks before her body registered the loss of his heat. She sat up, her arms folding across her chest to hold in the warmth.
“Get your stuff and I’ll drive you to the resort.” He bent over to snatch up the sheet that had fallen to the floor.
Don’t look at his ass. No, don’t.
Her eyes didn’t listen and her body rejoiced at the vision of the tightest, most perfectly shaped butt she’d ever seen. She’d bet the house that she could bounce a quarter to the ceiling off that ass.
Rafe snapped the sheet in the air, folded it precisely in half, matched all the edges and meticulously repeated the action until he’d formed a perfect square that he tucked in a dresser drawer. He turned to Grace.
Front side, back side, all sides in between—God, he was beautiful. Not in a GQ cover sort of way. The rugged angles and planes of his face gave him a less cultured, rawer sexual appeal.
Frowning as he was, he looked downright lethal and sexy, and so not amused with the smile she offered.
Rescued by the Wolf Page 2
