Never Cry Wolf

by Patricia Rosemoor

  He made love to her mouth the way she was certain he would make love to her body.

  Tenderly. Aggressively. Seductively.

  Each time she grasped his rhythm, he surprised her, delighted her, overwhelmed her.

  She felt herself slipping, giving away control, longing to be dominated.

  Caught between a burgeoning desire and what little sense she had left, Laurel fought to keep from losing herself totally in a battle without clear-cut gains.

  Pulling away from Donovan, she gasped, “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” though her fractious body thought otherwise.

  His eyes narrowed and pierced her with their intensity. “You don’t feel a connection, then?”

  She caught a hint of disappointment…and she couldn’t lie.

  “I feel it.” And yet she rose from the couch to put some distance between them, the only way she could regain her bearings. “Maybe too much too soon.”

  So much more and so much sooner than she had with the imposter. She’d known him nearly two months before she’d entertained thoughts of intimacy…and yet she hadn’t known him at all. Besides, she’d never felt this raging passion for him that she did with Donovan. A passion she’d only read about until now. She’d known this man for only a few days…and yet she already felt as if she were a part of him and he of her.

  Crazy…how crazy…what was she thinking?

  More distance, that’s what she needed.

  She bent over the table to gather the mugs so she could take them to the sink. Suddenly, Donovan was directly behind her, so that when she straightened, they were touching, her back to his front.

  “If something’s right, it’s right,” he murmured into her hair.

  Right or wrong…nothing in between.

  “How do you know if it’s right?” she whispered.

  He nuzzled the back of her neck. Heat flushed through her, making her weak-kneed. If he let go, she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own. She gripped the mugs more tightly.

  “What if you’re mistaken?”

  “No mistake.” He slid both hands over her hips and snugged her to him. “I want you.”

  She could hardly breathe. She certainly couldn’t speak. She definitely could feel how much he wanted her, though, as he moved his hips seductively against her bottom.

  “Tell me you want me, too. You know you do, Laurel. I know you do.”

  He urged her thighs apart with an insistent knee. The pressure…such sweet pressure…she couldn’t resist responding, tilting herself against it.

  Closing her eyes, Laurel prayed she wouldn’t be sorry. “Yes, I do want you.”

  His hand slid over her collarbone to her neck, then up to her face, where he applied the slightest of pressure along her jaw. She turned her head as urged and, his body still enveloped around hers from behind, he caught her bottom lip with his teeth.

  A sigh escaped her and she sought his mouth. He teased her with his lips and hands, keeping both moving, giving satisfaction with neither.

  Smoothing his palms against her bare thighs, he slowly, torturously pushed the T-shirt out of the way. Her fingers flexed and the mugs crashed to the floor. He didn’t seem to notice.

  She was exposed to him. Naked soul, naked body, naked heart. He could do anything to her.

  And he did.

  He touched…and probed…and teased.

  She was fast spinning toward a point of no return, and still Donovan wouldn’t let her pivot in his arms. He wouldn’t take her. Or take his pleasure of her.

  Accepting that, Laurel encouraged him with moans and cries, and boldly slid her hands behind her until she found the placket of his jeans. She unhooked and unzipped them and found hot skin beneath.

  His turn to moan.

  His reaction shuddering gratification through her.

  She freed him from the jeans and stroked his smooth, hot flesh as he did hers. For a moment, his fingers became more intense and less focused. His breathing deepened and became ragged and in sync with hers.

  But in the end, he dominated, anointing her with her own slick dampness until she clung to him, forgetting to move, forgetting everything but the sweet sensation that tilted her center to his hand, that took her higher and him deeper until she thought she’d exhausted the pleasure.

  But the pleasure had only begun.

  The moment his other hand traded her hip for her breast, she cried out. He tightened his fingers around her nipple and rolled it in the same rhythm as he did her more tender flesh.

  The quake started deep inside her, perhaps somewhere in her belly. It spread quickly… savagely…acutely. It left her limp and satiated, pulsing and wanting more.

  He gave that to her, too.

  In one smooth motion, he turned her and lay her on the couch. Then he was atop her…astride her…in her…at one with her at last.

  WOLVES INCREASING MENACE headlined the front page of Tuesday’s Herald.

  Finishing a fast breakfast at his mother’s café before they headed for the landing strip, Donovan scanned the lead story for any references to his father. They came mostly as a rehashed version of what Gault had already printed in the weekend edition. He’d gathered a few new comments from hospital personnel attesting to the fact that the congressman’s neck probably had been savaged by a wolf.

  But the main thrust of the article centered around Andrew Deterline’s losses, concentrating on the latest livestock kill. No mention of feral dogs or coyotes. Not when Gault had his own agenda.

  “If he faked those chest pains to get new information on your father, at least he didn’t succeed.”

  Glancing up at Laurel, Donovan realized she was reading the paper over his shoulder. A new intimacy. He leaned back so he was touching her more fully.

  “Whatever his goals,” he told her in a voice low enough for her ears only, “he didn’t succeed.”

  He’d shared with her his worry that Gault might be the one after his father. The newspaperman certainly had had the opportunity.

  Not that he would be allowed another one, not with Skelly playing watchdog at the hospital.

  And not that Donovan wanted the word spreading without proof. He already had enough townspeople angry at him. One couple had confronted him earlier, before he and Laurel could get inside. And several sets of hostile eyes in the café watched his every move. Small-town people were close-knit, and even though he’d grown up here and his mother was accepted, he was treated like an outsider.

  Which normally was just fine with him.

  “Did you make your phone call?” he asked.

  Laurel made a face. “No answer. Either Rebecca Kinder’s life is so full that she doesn’t have time to return her calls…or she’s out of town.”

  “Or she has reason not to want to.”

  “Or that.” She plunked herself down on the counter stool next to him. “I feel so useless.”

  “I have uses for you we haven’t even explored yet”

  To his satisfaction, they’d done plenty of exploring the night before.

  Cheeks blooming with color, Laurel ignored his teasing. “The one piece of information I could get…I can’t get. Damn!”

  “Maybe she’ll call today.”

  “Who’s that?” Josh asked. Having just come into the café, he commandeered the stool on Donovan’s left.

  “A woman who might be able to identify the bastard who put Donovan’s father in the hospital.”

  “Really.” Josh’s smile stretched thin. “And how is the congressman?”

  “Better,” Laurel said. “He’s coming out of the coma.”

  “That so.” The older man immediately stiffened but managed to keep his comment on the light side.

  Still, Donovan didn’t miss the telling sign of jealousy.

  Josh ended the conversation by calling, “Hey, Ronnie, honey, can I have a cup of java?”

  “Coming up.”

  And when his mother set the coffee before the man, Donovan couldn’t miss her te
nse expression.

  “Thanks, honey. How about we make some plans for this evening?”

  “Elvira said she’d come in for me again today after lunch. I thought I’d go to the hospital then. I’m not really sure I can say when I’ll be back.”

  “I see.”

  But Donovan could tell he didn’t see at all.

  And when his mother asked what he wanted for breakfast, Josh said, “I won’t be staying long enough to eat. Just thought I’d stop by, is all.”

  “Everyone’s so busy,” his mother said brightly. “What about you, Donny?”

  “I’m going up. Telemetry day.” They used a small plane to track the wolves. “First thing is to make certain that wolf I collared yesterday is getting along all right. But I will get to the hospital,” he promised. “I just can’t say what time.”

  “Your being there at all is the important thing. Raymond will appreciate it.”

  “If he even remembers who any of you are,” Josh said, his tone dire. “Loss of memory is to be expected with a head wound.”

  “We’re hoping for the best.”

  “So am I.”

  Nervously wiping her hands on her apron, his mother moved away to take care of some new customers. And Donovan couldn’t miss the way Josh angrily swigged down his coffee.

  “By the way, Donovan, someone’s been looking for you.”

  “Deterline again?”

  “Karen Tobin.”

  The name put him on alert. “She’s back in town?”

  “At Lemley’s old place.”

  “You saw her this morning?”

  “Last evening, actually. She stopped by the store for a bottle of windshield wiper fluid. Asked if you were around or at the hospital.”

  Interesting. “Any clue as to why she’d want to see me?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.” Josh craned around toward Laurel, saying, “She said to tell you she needs to see you alone.” He slid off his stool. “Gotta run.”

  “Thanks, Josh.”

  Laurel waited only until the man was out of earshot before asking, “How would she know you might be at the hospital?”

  “I was wondering that myself.” He lowered his voice. “Kind of adds validity into my theory.”

  “Do you think he’s here with her?”

  If Donovan didn’t catch the tremble in her voice and her strained expression, he might be jealous himself. He wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her. But that would have to wait until they were alone.

  “No one’s going to hurt you, Laurel.” Not while he was around.

  While they were expected out at the airstrip shortly, he couldn’t pass up this opportunity to probe Karen Tobin’s motives. Not that he thought he could make her confess to anything. But his gut had a way of getting him to the truth of things.

  “Wait for me here while I see what the widow Tobin wants.”

  Laurel nodded her agreement, and he ran his knuckles along her cheek. Her eyes got that dreamy look…making him wish they were alone now. He’d never thought a woman could have such an effect on him. And he had certainly never thought that he’d ever find a woman who would accept both him and his wolves. He had never felt so connected to another human being, and that both pleased him…and scared him.

  “I won’t be too long,” he promised.

  WHILE MATTHEW LEMLEY had chosen to live hand in glove with Mother Nature, he’d never let go of the old Victorian his father had built. One of the finest homes in Iron Lake, the building had been maintained over the past several years as if its owner were expected to walk in the door at any moment. Which, indeed, was now the case.

  Karen Tobin answered the door so quickly, Donovan wondered if she hadn’t been watching for him.

  “Why, Mr. Wilde.” Her overly made-up eyes traveled down his person slowly. “How quaint. Come in.”

  Was she actually batting her false eyelashes at him?

  Donovan swept past the woman, who’d made the poor choice of coming to the door wearing a sheer lavender nightgown, topped by an equally sheer matching cover. He held his breath against her strong perfume. He liked his women smelling natural, as Laurel did.

  But then he liked everything about Laurel…though like was too benign a word to describe what he was feeling about the woman he’d made his the night before.

  He followed the widow Tobin into a parlor crowded with so many antiques that it made him think of a turn-of-the-century bordello. He doubted this had been old Matt Lemley’s doing.

  “I was told you wanted to see me.”

  She displayed herself against a deep red brocadeupholstered sofa. “From the first time we met, I felt we were simpatico.”

  Donovan merely raised an eyebrow. “Really?” Could have fooled him. She’d been a viper last he remembered.

  “A woman knows these things. Sit.” She patted the cushion next to her. “Can I get you a drink?”

  He took the chair opposite. “I have enough coffee in me now to keep percolating all day.”

  “I was thinking of something a little stronger.”

  He narrowed his gaze. Eight in the morning and she was decked out for a midnight rendevous. To impress him?

  “I’ll pass. What is it you want?”

  “I know how fond you must be of your wolves,” she began. “I have nothing against them. I mean, I’m not one of those people who wants to see them wiped off the face of the earth or anything. As a matter of fact, I’d like to help them.”

  “And how would you do that?”

  “Every wildlife program needs money. I’m thinking of making a generous contribution to the wolves…and letting you administrate it. How does a hundred thousand sound?”

  Now they were getting down to basics. Her legal maneuvers had gotten her nowhere, so she was trying a different approach.

  “Sounds like a pretty big bribe.”

  “Bribe? Why, Mr. Wilde, I am shocked you would think such a thing of me. Consider it…moving expenses.”

  “For me to move the wolves?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And once the wolves are gone, the land goes back to the estate…but wait…not until two years from now. What if another pack should settle in?”

  “I trust you’ll make certain that won’t happen.”

  “For a mere hundred thou? No bonus?”

  “Let’s not get greedy, Mr. Wilde. To a man of your means, a hundred thousand will go a long way.”

  Donovan laughed. “A man of my means. You don’t have a clue as to what that might be.”

  “But you live in that tacky little cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

  “So did your uncle, and he owned…” he looked around “…this, for one.”

  “Then what do you want, Mr. Wilde?”

  “Are you putting yourself on the block, Mrs. Tobin?”

  He could see her calculating…

  “Are you interested?”

  He had nothing against her age—she would be a good-looking woman without all the war paint—but her obviousness was another matter.

  “What would your son say?”

  Her eyes widened fractionally. “What does David have to do with this?”

  She was tense and trying not to show it, Donovan realized.

  “It is his inheritance, too. I remember your concern over that So, why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s far too busy with his campaign. He’s thrown his hat in the ring for state representative, you know.”

  “In Sheboygan?”

  “That is his home.”

  “Maybe we should call him. Ask his opinion on the matter.”

  “No! I mean, I don’t want to take his focus away from the work he’s doing.”

  Campaigning? Or trying to get rid of Donovan’s father?

  “Work,” he echoed, thinking he needed to alert Skelly. With his media contacts, his brother could get the lowdown on David Tobin and his campaign. And while he was at it, he could arrange to have both mother and son tailed. “I need
to get back to my own.”

  “But you didn’t give me your answer.”

  “You have your answer, Mrs. Tobin.” He started for the door, but paused to give her a menacing stare. “By the way, if anything happens to the wolves…I’ll know who to track down. Doesn’t take long at all to skin a skunk.”

  Despite the layers of makeup, Karen Tobin’s face was suddenly devoid of color.

  Chapter Eleven

  Unfortunately, no sign of Hopeful yet.

  Thrilled to be part of the chase, Laurel gazed down at the landscape below—mile after mile of snow-covered, rolling land covered with forest in some places, dotted with small stands of trees in others. So far, they’d tracked the movements of the alpha female, the other collared juvenile and the omega. The wolves had been unrecognizable by sight—merely small dark moving specks against a white background—but Donovan had been able to pin them from their transmitter frequencies.

  “I think I have something,” he suddenly said.

  She pressed her forehead against the window but saw nothing moving below.

  Smaller animals could be tracked on foot, but because of the wide range of a pack’s territory—in present-day Wisconsin, about fifty square miles—a small plane with an antenna attached to each wing was a necessity for research purposes. The pilot flew in circles, starting in the area where Donovan indicated the wolf had last been seen. Wearing earphones attached to a mobile receiver, he switched from one antenna to the other, hoping to pick up beeps transmitted from the wolf’s collar.

  “Straight,” Donovan said.

  Laurel knew he was still switching antennas, using the stronger signal to keep the plane on track. Eventually, both signals would be equally loud and they would head straight for Hopeful, pinning him as they had the other three.

  This would be one of those events she’d remember for always. In a matter of days, she’d gathered a lifetime of memories. Donovan howling with the black wolf…his work with Hopeful…and most of all, his making love to her.

  A lump stuck in her throat at the thought of leaving.

  But the congressman was coming out of his coma, and it looked like Donovan and Skelly would get the goods on Karen and David Tobin. Nothing left for her to do—her need to know why David had fooled her into thinking he was Donovan had waned.