by Tamara Hogan
Silence hummed while she filled the lamp with kerosene. “Gabe wants me to tell him how I feel, to share my emotions?” she grumbled. “Why was I practically the last person to find out what was wrong with his eyes?” Even Krispin Woolf had more information than she’d had, and that really chapped her ass. “He’s a fine one to talk. The one time I saw his wolf, he acted like it hadn’t happened at all.”
“You saw Gabe’s wolf?”
“I woke up to Gabe’s wolf,” she corrected. “Then I fell back asleep, and by the time I woke up again, he’d shifted back. Pretended nothing happened.” Then they’d made love, so slow and sweet that the memory of it still—
“You saw Gabe’s wolf,” Andi repeated.
“Yeah.” What was the big deal?
“Lorin, it’s been years since even his family has seen his wolf. I know for a fact that Kayla never did. She complained about it to anyone who’d listen. It was a sore spot in their relationship.”
“What a bitch,” she muttered. Gabe was well rid of a girlfriend who had such loose lips. “So he didn’t shift just because he was drunk?”
“Lorin, think. He’s so vulnerable when he shifts. No glasses, remember? He can’t see.” Andi paused, considering. “I think he felt safe with you.”
Something inside her warmed, stretched.
“Lorin, the man told you he loves you, and you haven’t said it back. Seems to me that he’s taking all the risks here.” She paused again. “Do you love him, Lorin?”
“I—”
“Jacoby told me what you said at the Council meeting, about tomorrow being promised to no one. Were they just empty words?”
No—and having nearly died herself, Andi had reason to know.
“He loves you, Lorin. You love him. What would your life be like without him in it?”
Empty. Lonely. “Damn it,” she whispered.
“Find your gonads and go get him, girl. Call me when you come up for air.” Andi hung up without bothering to say good-bye.
Sweat bloomed on her upper lip, and her stomach writhed like a clutch of garter snakes. Andi was right. She was being a coward. She loved Gabe, and the next move was hers.
If she could only figure out what that move should be.
***
Gabe backed away from the open window, leaning against the picnic table on the cabin’s deck. They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, but sometimes they do. Yeah, most people wouldn’t consider a muttered “damn it” a declaration of love, but he and Lorin weren’t most people.
He’d hurt her feelings by not telling her about his eyes, trying to shield her from the gory details.
The door suddenly opened. “Gabe.” Lorin stopped short, almost dropping the kerosene lamp she carried. She glanced at the open window, then back at him. “How long have you been standing out here?”
“Long enough.”
“Hmm.” She looked him up and down, taking in the T-shirt, loose sweatpants, and running shoes he’d changed into after his meeting with Julianna had ended. Lorin didn’t seem upset that her conversation might have been overheard. If anything, she looked relieved—or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Her expression seemed settled somehow, resolved, like she’d come to a decision of some sort.
When she sidled closer, he inhaled deeply. Her body’s scent was a rich, heady perfume he’d never get enough of.
“Looks like you’re dressed for a run.” The twist she put on the final word made his face flush, his body pulse.
She hurdled off the deck, shooting a naughty smile over her shoulder.
Chase. Taste. Take.
He leaped after her, every molecule howling.
She’d already opened up a lead, disappearing into the tree line. He heard her crashing through the woods over the sound of his own huffing breath, taking the trail to the dig site, a trail now so familiar to him that he could probably follow it without wearing his glasses.
He hoped to hell she had condoms with her, because he sure as hell didn’t.
His heart pounded in time with his shoes slapping against the dirt path. As he slowed to a quiet, stalking walk, opening up his senses, he glanced at the thunderheads towering in the sky to the west. He could carry her off to the petroglyph cave, get some shelter from the rain, because once he got his hands on her, he wasn’t going to let go—
A grunt from up ahead. The unmistakable smack of fists against skin.
The hair on the back of his neck lifted in primal warning as he approached the dig—and saw Lorin shoved to her knees, and a man holding a gun to the back of her head.
Chapter 18
“Where is the beacon? The cryotube? You will show me now.”
Lorin fought to control her breathing despite the adrenaline blasting through her system like an F5 tornado. Damn it, she knew better. She knew better than to lose awareness of her surroundings, but she’d been so focused on the chase, stripping off her T-shirt on the run, that she’d been easy pickings. She’d gotten one good punch in, but the weapon he held against her head was… persuasive.
Kicking the dropped kerosene lamp out of his way, he jammed the weapon into the notch at the bottom of her skull. His silky brown hair brushed against her bare shoulder. “Where is the ’tube?”
Vamp. Trained fighter. Paige’s vamp? His melodious baritone slipped and slithered, and she blinked hard against the pull of his glamour. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Something clicked, and the metal pressing against her head grew uncomfortably warm. Fighting not to flinch, she flicked her eyes to the trail. Stay back. She wouldn’t be able to take this guy down if she was worried about Gabe’s safety.
“The ship. Where is it?” he asked.
“Ship? Lake Superior’s a good sixty miles away from here.”
His big fist cracked against her cheekbone, rocking her head sideways. “The beacon blipped—here. Where’s the Arkapaedis? Pritchard’s box? The cryotube? I saw the ’tube with my own eyes, but now it’s gone. Where is it?”
Another fist to the face. She tasted blood.
Cold. No emotion. Trained interrogator? Paige might have let some information slip about the capsule Nathan had found, but she didn’t know anything about the box they suspected was Pritchard’s. And a beacon? What the hell?
“Talk.” Jerking back on her ponytail, he jabbed the barrel of the weapon under her chin. Another click.
“Shit,” she gasped. The weapon burned her skin like a lit cigar.
“Robert?” Paige stepped out of the gazebo, tugging earbuds out of her ears. “What on earth—”
Lorin threw her body against the vamp’s legs. The vamp pivoted, using her own momentum against her, sending her sprawling flat on her stomach. He dropped on top of her before she could scramble to her feet, his knees grinding her breasts into the dry, scrubby grass.
“Don’t do that again,” he said matter-of-factly, jamming the weapon against her right temple.
“Aah!” She smelled her own crisping skin.
“Come here, Paige.”
The vamp’s glamour eddied in waves. Paige approached jerkily, like a marionette on strings. Her eyes snapped with resistance and a dawning pain.
Fight, Paige. Fight.
“Up.” The vamp stood, yanking on her ponytail like reins on a horse. She scurried to her feet, gritting her teeth against the weapon’s crackling heat. His hot breath stung the burn already blistering on the back of her neck.
“Robert?” Paige said in a tiny voice as she approached.
Lorin shoved the searing pain to the back of her mind, waiting for her preternatural fighting equilibrium to kick in. Sooner or later, there’d be a split-second lapse in his grip, his focus. She just had to wait for it.
If the damn weapon didn’t burn her to ashes first.
There was a slight rustle at the trailhead. Shoving Lorin away, the vamp fired at a wolf, black and sleek, with Gabe’s squinting ice-blue eyes. The bright humming stream
nipped the tip of Gabe’s ear, showering sparks into the dry grass behind him. Gabe growled, baring his canines.
Her leg snapped up, kicking his weapon away. The vamp came at her quickly, tackling her to the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs. They rolled, over and over again. Time oozed like molasses, like it always did when she was fighting, pinning everyone else down but leaving her free to move. But the guy was fast. She dodged a fist the size of a Christmas ham with a sideways jerk of her head and heard him curse as his knuckles cracked into rocky soil instead of her face. He cursed again when her elbow slammed into his nose, crunching bone and cartilage, spraying her with his blood.
He manacled her wrists, pinning them to the ground. Smoke drifted into her nostrils as he ground her hips and tailbone into the dirt with his heavy body. Blood from his nose dripped onto her face in soft, wet splats. He was pulsing with glamour, and hugely erect.
She blinked again, fighting against the languor turning her body and will into mush.
He flicked his slick pink tongue against his upper lip, tasting his own blood. “A worthy opponent,” he murmured. His eyes, the color of bitter chocolate, assessed her abs, breasts, and arms like he was buying a cow at a stockyard before pausing at her throat.
Another flick of his tongue. His mouth—his ridiculously sensuous mouth—opened slowly, a drawbridge lowered on silent hinges. His fangs flashed. His head descended—slowly, so slowly.
Her instincts screamed at her to hunch her shoulders, to protect her vulnerable neck. Craning it instead, she drifted a hand over his muscled ass.
Wait. Wait.
Soft lips brushed against her neck—once, twice—before he settled in to suckle. She choked back a moan as his supple tongue licked and swirled, preparing her skin for his bite. There was a slight pause as he inhaled, positioning his fangs over her pulsing carotid. The slightest sting—
She drove her knee into his balls.
His high-pitched wheeze started before she shoved him off her body, tipping him to the ground, where he clutched his crotch and shriveled into a fetal curl. She scrabbled to her feet and scoured the tree line, searching for Gabe. He’d been hit. Her own wounds burned like hell on fire, and the vamp hadn’t even fired the weapon at her to inflict them.
A moan from the ground. Twitching feet, churning knees—the vamp was recovering quickly, and Paige was crawling to his aid. She needed some rope, fast.
She ran to the supply shed, scanning the cluttered shelves before snatching a handful of bungee cords. By the time she went back outside again, the vamp had pushed himself to his hands and knees, his head hanging down, shoulder blades heaving. He fought to his feet, shoving grass-flecked hair out of his face. After a slight stumble, he gained his balance and assumed a fighting stance.
Lorin dropped the bungee cords, freeing her hands. If looks could kill, she’d be a smear on the—
A blur of black fur exploded from the woods, taking the vamp down from behind.
“Robert!” Paige screamed.
Wolf and vamp rolled and writhed in a ball of fur, fabric, fists, fangs. Growls. Grunts. Groans. Gabe sank his teeth into the vamp’s calf, shaking his head to rip and tear, and soon the vamp’s shredded pants were wet, saturated with blood. The vamp kicked at Gabe with his uninjured leg, clubbing at him with joined fists.
Suddenly Paige was between them.
“Get back!” The minute Lorin hollered her warning, she realized it wasn’t necessary. Gabe now stood, panting, several feet away. His teeth and tongue were stained red.
With a sob, Paige slapped her hand over the vamp’s calf, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
The vamp grimaced and fumbled at his wrist. “Ta’al. Transport. Now!”
With a percussive pop and a flash of white light, they both shimmered away.
They’d vanished.
Lorin rushed to where they’d lain not seconds before. “Where are they?” she hollered at Gabe, waving her arms through the air. She sniffed, though her nose was nowhere near as sensitive as Gabe’s was. Flint? Ozone? The air felt crackly, oddly energized. She rubbed at the hair standing upright on her forearms.
Gabe sniffed the blood on the ground—blood that reassured her that she hadn’t been hallucinating—before trotting to the tree line.
No, this was no hallucination. There was the vamp’s weapon, dropped in the grass, gleaming in the fading daylight. Her knuckles were scuffed, her burns oozed, and blood from the nick of a fang trickled wetly down her neck. The scent of Gabe’s singed fur stung the air.
Standing by the trees, Gabe barked sharply.
Fire. Sparks crackled in the dry, scruffy grass, floating into the air. Greedy flames licked at the ground. If they made it to the tree line, they could gobble for miles. Running to the shed, she grabbed two fire extinguishers. She eyed the flames again.
They needed help.
Plucking her phone from the holder at her waistband, she hit autodial to call Mike. Nothing. No dial tone. She scowled at the display—the completely dark display. Dead battery. “You piece of shit.” Tossing the phone aside, she aimed the fire extinguisher at the flames nearest the tree line. “Gabe! Go to the bunkhouse and get—” She heard her truck barreling up the logging road. It careened into the clearing, with Nathan behind the wheel, Mike riding shotgun, and three or four crewmembers bouncing in the box.
“We smelled smoke,” Nathan called as he jumped out of the cab.
She pointed at the towering pines closest to the fire. “Start there,” she said as the rest of the crew spilled out of the truck. “Get more fire extinguishers from the shed. These are nearly empty.” The last thing they needed was for the fire to expand, bringing every well-meaning volunteer fire department in the Arrowhead to the dig. “Be careful. Don’t get closer to the fire than you have to.” Who knew what the hell the weapon had fired? The mere touch of the weapon’s barrel against her skin had left it seared and branded. The burns hurt like hell.
“Lorin, sit down,” Nathan said as he trotted by with fresh fire extinguishers. “We’ve got this.”
He was right. The fire was almost contained. As Gabe sniffed the tree line around the perimeter of the clearing, still trying to pick up Paige’s trail, Lorin grabbed an orange crate from a nearby pile of boxes and casually approached the weapon she’d kicked away from the vamp. About the length of her hand, gracefully curved and with no trigger that she could see, it glowed an otherworldly silvery green. Flipping the crate over, she placed it over the weapon, hiding it from view of the crew, and sat.
“Damn it,” she breathed, putting a hand on her twisting stomach. Where was Paige?
A snout nudged her hand. Gabe, done with his tree line reconnaissance, stood at her side, holding a wad of black fabric in his mouth. He dropped it in her lap with a growl and a glance back at the crew.
Her T-shirt. Luckily the crewmembers were so busy fighting the fire that they hadn’t asked her why she was wearing only a hot pink bra that was more lace than coverage. “Thanks,” she murmured as she tugged it over her head, wincing as the fabric scratched the burn at her temple.
She felt as much as heard the soft rumble from his throat before he lapped away the blood staining her face with delicate strokes of his tongue.
Why were her eyes stinging? Must be the smoke.
With a final lick, he moved back slightly, dropping to his haunches. Then he… shifted. Muscles wrenched. Ligaments and tendons snapped and popped. Paws and claws became hands and nails. His black pelt receded, leaving skin and his familiar sparse body hair in its wake. The shape of his face changed, rearranging into the features she recognized. Soon the man knelt at her side, breathing heavily, gleaming with sweat, and naked as the day he’d been born.
Gabe took her hand, raised her scuffed knuckles to his mouth, and suckled. “Looks like you got a few licks in.” He squinted at her burns. “I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
She stroked the singed hair, careful not to touch his blistered ear with her filthy hands
. “Where are your glasses?”
“Back on the trail with my clothes. Are you okay?” His voice was tight, controlled, but his eyes seethed like whitecaps on a lake. Still squinting, he brailled her for injuries, carefully skimming his fingertips over her forehead, cheekbones, and jawline, not touching her burns directly. He skated his big hands over her shoulders, down her arms and torso before peering myopically at her burns again. “Where’s the first aid kit?”
“He singed your skunk stripe,” she murmured.
“Huh?”
“The white patch of hair over your ear. It’s burned.”
“Forget my hair. Where’s the first aid kit?”
She gestured to the same storage shed she’d retrieved the bungee cords and fire extinguishers from. While Gabe retrieved the first aid kit, Gretchen and Ellenore emerged from the trail on foot, Ellenore carrying a bundle of clothing that had to belong to Gabe.
Gretchen ogled Gabe’s bare buns as he disappeared into the shed.
“Hey.” Lorin snapped her fingers to get her attention.
“Wow. Who knew Gabe looked so great naked?”
“I did. Eyes front, ladies.”
“Here.” Ellenore handed over the wad of fabric, gingerly extending Gabe’s glasses by a mangled bow. “Sorry, I think I stepped on these.”
“I probably broke them myself when I dropped them to the ground,” Gabe grumbled.
Whether by luck or design, Gabe carried the red plastic first aid kit in front of his groin, covering the essentials but no more. Disregarding the clothes, he examined his glasses instead. The lenses and right bow were intact, so he put them on. They listed drunkenly—adorably—on the bridge of his nose.
“Better than nothing,” he said with a shrug.
Lorin snatched the bundle of clothes from Ellenore and thrust it at him. “Get dressed.” Ignoring Gretchen’s “you go, girl” smirk, she stepped in front of Gabe, blocking their view as he dragged on his discarded underwear and sweatpants, shoved his feet back into his running shoes, and yanked his T-shirt over his head.
She wanted nothing more than to find some privacy and reverse the sequence, stripping him completely, carefully examining every inch to make sure he was okay before losing herself in him for hours.
