“No way, princess.” He pulled her away from the muggy geldings and guided her towards the house. “Let me toss these guys some hay and I’ll join you inside.” But her stubborn nature got the best of him when she dug the heels of her loafers into the gravel.
“Nope, I want to at least meet the mystery horse.”
“Gentleman George isn’t a mystery, he’s a cranky stallion. There’s a mare in heat on the next ridge and he knows it.” Red caved and tucked Celena under his arm as he walked towards the hay barn. Leaving her at the bottom of the ladder he quickly tossed down three bales. When he climbed back down he found Celena staring at the bales in confusion.
“How do you carry three? Can I carry one?” A gimlet eye took in her plaid skirt with jacket, knee high socks and shiny loafers. “Clothes do wash you know,” she huffed. He grinned at her sulky expression and tapping toe. All she ever had to do was dig in a little and he completely caved. Except for the day she thought they were going to explore the boardwalks at Audra State Park.
Watching her try to heft the bale of hay without getting it all over her clothes, he remembered the almost petulant look she aimed him that day as he hardened his heart and explained it would only be for a little while. He had every intention of walking up to his brother’s party and bowing out gracefully, but when the girls had converged on Lena and she’d left…events followed a different path. With an hour drive one way, Celena had voiced her suspicions that their plans were overturned but hadn’t pressed the issue. He’d patted the ring in his pocket and hoped she’d get over her mad on one of the walking trails. Only everything had gone horribly wrong.
Stopping at the fence, he dropped his bales, lifted the one from her struggling arms, and pitched it over the fence, his two closely following. Opening the gate, he invited her in. “I’m sorry we didn’t go walk the boardwalks that day.”
“Maybe we can go this summer,” she suggested, staring intently at George.
“Will you still be around then?” He didn’t think there was a place around that needed someone in her field, except maybe Morgantown or Pittsburgh to the north.
“Of course,” she answered, giving him a perplexed look that said ‘where else would I be you stupid man?’ “I told you, I’m here for the duration.” He hung his head and gave her a sideways look, but she was ignoring him, still focusing on George.
“He’s a red sorrel,” Red offered, trying to make conversation.
“I have no idea what that means,” she confessed. “I am absolutely horse illiterate. I just couldn’t figure out why he’s a stallion and these guys are gelded. They look so much alike.” Red laughed shaking hay on the ground as Butler and Prince nosed the drifts at each other hoping to regain her attention.
“Simple actually, these guys are carriers of equine EI and George isn’t.” That got her attention in a big way.
“Carriers of what?” Celena idly rubbed the noses of the snuffling drafts as they took turns eating and begging for attention.
“Equine Epitheliogenesis Imperfecta, it’s when a foal is born missing patches of skin or worse. A lot of breeders try to make sure not to breed a carrier stallion and a carrier mare because it guarantees that the foal will have to be put down. I took it a step further and had these guys neutered so the gene isn’t passed on in any case. George is clean and so is every mare that he breeds with.”
He turned to see why Celena was being so quiet but she was gone. Looking around, he found her midway between the geldings and George lugging the last hay bale.
“Hold on there princess, he’s not fit company. I just put his hay over the fence. Nine times out of ten he kicks it fluffy out of spite.” No sooner did he grab the hay and she was digging in a pocket for some electronic gizmo. Using a little stylus she typed fanatically.
“Madden, have you ever seen a foal born with equine EI?” Her brow puckered, as she concentrated on the words scrolling on the small screen.
“No, thank you very much. Do you have any idea how heartbreaking that would be?” Celena blinked in surprise and shook her head, looking like a snowy owl with her wide eyes. “Horses have a long gestation period, a little longer than people. Imagine waiting nearly a year and then when the big day comes the foal is missing swaths of skin, dental malformations and is in terrible pain. The mare is upset wanting her baby but instead you have to destroy it because if you don’t the disease progresses so fast that within hours it will die in extreme pain as the rest of its skin begins sloughing off.”
Celena looked at her pocket gizmo, tapped a few more keys half-heartedly and slid it out of sight. “I, uh, guess you really don’t want to know what I did for the last five of those ten years then.”
“You killed baby animals?” He was only half joking until he watched the life drain out of her eyes. “Lab animals?” he asked, but she wasn’t responding. The rest of the feeding passed in silence as Celena avoided his questions on her work. Red almost kicked himself. He wasn’t a total ass, he understood that she was a scientist that they used lab animals and did autopsies. But it didn’t explain why Celena was so touchy on the subject.
The sky was dark but for the pinpoint lights of the stars in the heavens by the time they walked into the house. It wasn’t anything special, a two-story farm house that had seen better days. The wide roofed porch held two big wooden swings to either side of the front door. Opening the door he reached inside, flipped on the light switch, and watched the pinched look fade from her face. Celena had always loved stained glass, said it was the only reason she liked sneaking into the big old Catholic Church in Farmington on Sundays. His parents had thought it foolish of him to invest in stained glass for the farmhouse but he’d done it remembering the way the different colors would play across her face as she sat enrapt in the church pews, ignoring the songs and prayers flowing past.
Celena walked up to the doorway and traced the delicate panes of glass. One side was lilies and butterflies, the other roses on the vine with fat honey bees. Pulling her through the door, he turned on the lights in the rest of the house, taking her from room to room showing her accent panels of random colors, flowers, birds, faces, and animals. The kitchen had glass in greens and gold showing off pears, apples and grapes, and the dining room had milky glass panes with wine bottles in parti-colored hues. He thought to save the best for last. Opening the door to his bedroom, he hit the switch for an accent light that lit up a huge arched pane of stained glass. It was a picture of a castle with dragon and treasure chest lined with crests and shields in different shapes and colors. But instead of being lit by the sun, the glass picture was a nightscape with purple sky and a fat full moon. She moved forward her fingers almost instinctively finding the small gray wolf tucked in the woods at the edge of the grounds.
“Oh, Madden, I’m so sorry for everything.” She turned, tears running down her face, and his heart nearly stopped. “I fainted and lost your ring, I never even got to see you in the hospital. No one would let me explain anything.”
“Hush honey, c’mere.” Red crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. “Sshh… it isn’t entirely your fault. A lot of things went wrong.” He held her close, rubbing her back as she sobbed painfully against his chest. All of her letters had been so determinedly upbeat, he hadn’t considered how much she must have been hurting despite ending each letter with, ‘hope to hear from you soon.’ The way she was crying she must have given up on that hope about the time she stopped writing eighteen months ago.
Swinging her into his arms, he sat on the bed and shushed her tears, pulling loose bits of straw from her hair and clothes. She looked too damned cute all wrinkled and rumpled, her nose red, and eyes wet. Giving in to the impulse, he captured her mouth. Just being near her made his blood sing, and kissing those lush lips was the closest thing to heaven he could imagine beyond laying between her thighs.
“I told you earlier, you didn’t lose my ring.” Digging in his pocket, he carefully pulled out the faded jewelers pouch holding the small go
ld band he’d slipped on her finger all those years ago. “I woke up looking at it in the hospital, I thought you’d changed your mind about me after seeing me change into the wolf.” His hand shook as he made to put it back on her finger. “I will always love you,” his voice broke as he slid the ring back into place.
“But--but why would you think that?” Celena was so confused. “All of those hours walking in the woods, helping you in both shapes, carrying your ruined clothes, trying not to peek as I helped you get dressed…” her voice trailed off as she remembered blushing under his dazed eyes as she tried to be adult about helping him slide his pants on before they staggered out of the woods. “The hours I talked myself hoarse telling you, you were the bravest guy ever.” She stared stupefied. All that and he thought she abandoned him the second she was out of sight? “After all we went through together, why would I reject you?”
Red closed his eyes ashamed. He didn’t remember much of what happened after shifting and fighting the mountain lion. “My memories of everything from the attack to when I woke up in the hospital are pretty messed up. All I remembered clearly was standing in the parking lot, biting your mom and you falling over. Her voice, screaming over and over, that I was nothing more than an animal.” Bitterness tinged his voice. “She had me arrested for assaulting her when she couldn’t get the hospital to agree that I raped you.”
“What?” Celena was glad she was sitting down because the room started spinning. “Stars and stones that woman is a nightmare walking.”
“What?” Now it was Red’s turn to be completely stymied. He’d read in her first letter that there had been a huge legal mess and that Celena had gotten emancipated to distance herself from Sandy Black.
“Remember how I got that scholarship for college? Well, there wasn’t any scholarship. It was some sort of twisted indentured servant thing. My ‘mom’ basically terminated her parental rights and gave me to these people. Told them how I was probably impregnated by a werewolf.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “She’d been watching your family for years.” Blinking back tears she remembered all the small home improvements Sandy would have done by Madden’s dad and uncle.
“Don’t you think that a company called Silver Bullet Builders was a bit of a tip off?” The joke was as weak as the strangled laugh that accompanied it. She shook her head. “Anyway, the damned plan was to get me pregnant and shipped off to California to these people. All the times she nagged me about, I thought she was obsessed with me doing what she did, you know getting pregnant in high school. Here, the truth was she needed to make sure we’d been fooling around.”
Red closed his eyes and rubbed her back. If he had only known, something could have been done to bring her home and keep her safe. “Who were these people, Lena?”
She sighed, a deep painful sound. “The Sabine Group headed by Jonathan Foster, a preeminent cryptozoologist.”
Chapter Twelve
Do Knot Disturb
Ashley lay on her stomach, enjoying the warm oil-slicked hands of her husband on her legs. So far they’d managed to have a whole ten hours of complete and utter peace, no cell phones, no knocks on the door of their hotel room, nothing but peace and quiet.
This is exactly what we needed; Ashley smiled remembering how chaotic their romance had been. He had seduced her with a single-minded pursuit that had been mind blowing, only to drop everything each time his man-wolf clan needed them. She wouldn’t have demanded the alone time if he hadn’t been so dominated by guilt and misplaced loyalty to the long dead Faustulus. It had nearly torn them apart, him being torn between his past and their future. As if sensing her unhappy memories, his fingers worked her muscles, chasing away the tension, banishing the pain.
“I think I like taking the scenic route, Lupercus,” she admitted as his hands slid over her butt. He stopped and she felt a warm drizzle of oil start mid-back raining heat in warm splashes over her tailbone to trace the lips of her exposed sex. “Oh yeah,” she moaned as his long fingers worked the oil into her skin. Restlessly she parted her legs anticipating his fingers on her sex when she heard something unexpected.
“Lupercus,” she growled, “what the hell is that?”
“My cell phone darling, ignore it, I am.” The amusement in his voice wasn’t lost on her.
“The Big Bad Wolf? Your phone doesn’t play music.” As she sat up, Lupercus paused and admired the clean sweep of her back with a hungry eye.
“Normally no, mia cara, it does not. Red never calls me so the joke was lost years ago.” He shrugged as she looked at him over a shoulder. “I am not answering as you can see.” She frowned and he smiled at her grumpy look masking both irritation and concern.
“No, you’re not answering,” belligerently she slid from the bed and stalked nude to his dresser, clicking the phone open with an irritable, “Yes?” Lupercus smiled and leaned back against the covers, stroking his chest and legs with his oiled hands.
Ashley watched hungrily as tanned fingers teased his flesh for her enjoyment. Still holding the phone to her ear she moved to stand near the bed, not wanting to miss an inch of his glorious hide despite the flood of words in her ear.
“Mmm…hmm…” she hummed into the receiver as she knelt on the bed, reaching to caress the slick hard body waiting very happily for her attention. Grinning like a sinner, Lupercus gripped her wrist and shook his head ‘no’ pantomiming for her to put the phone away. She held up her inquisitive finger begging a moment.
“Red Silvestri,” she interrupted his non-stop flow of words, “do you mean to tell me that you and the formidable Dr. Black can’t handle a jailed woman and a nosy zoo keeper?” Her mouth hung open as she stalled at something he said. Plush lips closed with an audible click as she scowled at the phone, “Yes, doctor, Google the woman for pity’s sake, she’s your friend. Lupercus is busy. You said you could handle this. Now, handle it.” With a decisive snap she closed the connection then pulled the battery. The phone sailed into one corner of the room and the batter the other.
“Now, my wolfy man, where were we?” Ashley slid into his arms with a hungry purr. “Rather, where are those hands supposed to be?”
****
“Ashley hung up on me.” The slack jawed look on Madden’s face was almost enough to make Celena laugh. She didn’t imagine that people hung up on him very often. “She told me to do something to you that sounded pretty kinky and then hung up on me.”
“She did?” Her cheeks flooded with color. Even as tired and sore as she was, the little taste of heaven she’d experienced in Madden’s arms hours ago was worth repeating and soon. He looked at his cell phone in confusion.
“Yeah, she said I should Google you. What the hell does that mean?” Celena couldn’t help it, she started laughing, deep and hard, rolling back against the pillows on his bed. It hurt to breathe so she rolled to all fours on the bed and looked at Madden as he stared at her like she was demented. It only made it worse and she collapsed face down, trying to smother the sound in the bedspread.
Hiccupping, she crawled to the edge of the bed and grabbed hold of his waist band. “Come here, hot stuff,” Tears ran down her face, this time from laughter, “let me show you how to Google someone.” For a second she forgot what she had planned looking at the dangerous glint in his eyes as he crawled onto the bed and loomed over her. Then she grinned, hooked a leg around his and twisted her hips.
“I knew I’d live long enough to regret teaching you basic wrestling moves,” he teased, tugging on a piece of hair.
“Please, if you weren’t willing to be violated, I couldn’t move you in a hundred years.” She dipped into her pocket and pulled out her Blackberry. “This is kind of hard to explain with such a small screen, but watch.” Using the stylus she maneuvered through a set of screens until the web browser was displayed. “Working for the government I got one of the better versions with all the bells and whistles. This,” she pointed at the screen, “is one of the most popular web search engines, it is called Google. Ashley
was telling you to look me up online.” Celena paused and looked at his face, he looked pained.
“I hate computers, Quint deals with the business stuff for Lupercus and I am more than glad to let him.”
“Wait a minute--I thought--the way it was explained this afternoon, that Quint was the central human-wolf in charge.” Now it was her turn to feel confused.
Red plucked the little device out of her hands and moved the stylus slowly over the tiny keyboard. “Nope, Quint and I are more like co-captains, I’m the muscle, and he’s the brains.” He clicked some more buttons and blinked a few times in surprise. “I take that back, Quint plays at being the brains, you’ve got him beat. Are all these articles yours?” He handed back the slim device awed. Celena merely looked over the first page, turned the machine off and nodded. “Well then,” he smiled working the zipper down on her skirt, “I guess we are equal to a few loony women and one crypto whatever.”
“Madden.” Was that her voice sounding so needy? Her mind marveled as it begged for a moment to explain the situation. The warmth of his hands on her lower back made her tremble.
“Talk to me,” he demanded.
“About what?” Oh yeah, that was her voice. She sounded like a phone sex girl. Celena cleared her throat and tried again as his thumb swept along her ribcage. “What do you want,” hard intake of air interrupted that thought as he teased her bra open and rubbed the irritated skin, “me to talk about?” It was getting hard to think about anything beyond the feel of his hands.
“Jonathan Foster.” He brushed her forehead with his lips and her leg tightened pulling them closer together.
“Right now?”
He felt the flutter of her heart underhand as he explored the soft skin of her middle back. “Yes, I have a habit of putting things off because of distractions.”
Celena froze in his arms. “A distraction?”
He cursed under his breath. She wasn’t a mere diversion—she was everything.
Forget Me Knot Page 12
