by V M Black
“This can’t turn into anything,” he said, trying to clear his mind, trying to remember why.
“So you’ve said. Repeatedly,” she said. “Were you lying to me?”
“What?”
“In the bathroom, back at the trailer. Were you lying to me?”
“I’ve never lied to you, Harper,” he said.
She gave a little sigh. “I was afraid of that,” she said, and she kissed him again.
He plucked the bag of trash from her unresisting hand and dropped it into the back, then he pulled her body more snugly against his. He should most definitely tell her to stop, some virtuous corner of his mind said. She was falling for him, and all he was going to do was break her heart, and she didn’t deserve that.
Because his own heart was most definitely not on the line, he told himself. Lone wolf for life. He had to be.
But her mouth tasted so incredibly good, and her body fit against his so perfectly, like it was made for him, and he couldn’t find the resolve within himself to do anything but kiss her back—kiss her back because it was most certainly her kissing him, because he’d sworn that he wasn’t going to be kissing her anymore, at least not like this.
And then she made a tiny little sound into his mouth, and he forgot every pretense and every lie he’d ever told himself.
He shifted his mouth, moving down to her jaw, her neck, the curve of her breasts above the top of her collar. When he pulled away, her eyes were screwed closed, like she was afraid to look at him, even as her hands threaded through his hair. And that made his lungs squeeze as he kissed her again, her lips parting under his.
Nothing would come of this. Nothing could. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
She was the one to break away. And then she did open her eyes and she said, “Dammit, Levi, why the hell do I like you so much?”
All the cocky, smartmouthed answers died half-formed. “We can stop. Any time you want. Just say when.”
“I tried that already,” she said.
“I know.”
“It didn’t work then.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why not? Why couldn’t you have left me the hell alone when I asked you to?”
Because I’m a damned wolf inside, when you dig deep enough, and wolves only want one thing, to hell with common sense or even self-preservation.
But what he said was, “I don’t know.”
“When I first saw you, do you know what I thought?” she said, running a finger along his cheek.
He shook his head under her hand.
“I thought that your jaw was so hard that I could break my heart on it,” she said lightly. “I thought it was a bit of a joke then, you know. Like a little crush. That’s all. Because that’s all I ever feel.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
Her chuckle had a catch to it. “Because you shouldn’t risk anything that you can’t afford to lose.”
Those words made something ache in his chest, an emptiness he tried to ignore. His own family lived in that dangerous place of things he cared too much about. Even the idea of forming bonds stronger than child-parent, brother-brother, made his body burn. It wouldn’t happen, because he wouldn’t let someone he loved be used like he’d been used—
He slammed a wall down on that memory. He never went there, not even in his dreams anymore. He never came close.
“Maybe we’re more alike than you think, Harper,” he said.
“I’m not going to sleep with you again,” she said then, blinking down at him with those big gray eyes.
“Who said anything about sleeping?” he quipped, then immediately, at her expression, he said, “Sorry. Bad joke. You’re right. You’re totally right that it’s a bad idea to get any more, uh, involved. And I agree, completely.” He was too close with her, too close to throwing ten years of caution to the wind.
“Right,” she said.
He wished they’d made that decision while she wasn’t straddling his lap, because it was very hard to inform his groin of the change in plans with her body pressed quite so warmly up against his. He decided that it’d be indelicate to draw attention to that fact, but it was making its opinion known quite clearly. So he was grateful when she scooted around the stick shift back onto her own seat.
“Good,” he said then.
“Good,” she echoed, staring straight out of the front window.
And it was good, so why did he feel like the biggest asshole in the world?
Chapter Four
Harper was conscious first of the breeze, fluttering across her face. With a little shiver, she opened her eyes to darkness, and she realized that her head was resting against something solid and warm….
“Rise and shine, babycakes.” The voice rumbled under her ear.
“Don’t call me that,” Harper said absently, tilting her head up to meet Levi’s eyes. She realized that the darkness wasn’t nearly as complete as she’d thought. The waxing moon of the night before was now completely full, and it gilded Levi’s golden features in a silvery glow.
She straightened, her muscles protesting slightly at the unnatural angle in which she’d been asleep, leaning against him across the center console. Levi’s jacket had been wrapped around her, and she was still sitting on her hoodie, which was tied at her waist.
She realized that the side of her face that had been resting against Levi’s shoulder was wet, and she scrubbed at it guiltily. There was a round, darker patch on his shirt. Her drool.
Nice, Harper.
“Sorry about that,” she said, looking at it. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“If I minded, I would have,” he said.
“Everybody minds drool,” she said, ignoring the little flutter those words sent through her. There was no way a comment like that was sexy. It had to be Levi, damn him. He could make anything sexy.
She shouldn’t have kissed him. She shouldn’t want to kiss him again.
He just smiled and cocked his head.
“Did you sleep, too?” she asked him as she dug in her purse for her packet of pills. Popping one out, she swallowed it quickly.
“Off and on,” he said. “You ever heard of semi-hemispheric sleep?”
“No,” she said. “Should I’ve?”
“It’s a werewolf trick,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so,” she said. She shivered as another night breeze slid across the open field. “Why didn’t you put up the top?”
“The keys were in your pocket. I figured you needed the sleep,” he said.
“Oh.” She fumbled for them, still clumsy with sleep, and slid them into the ignition.
“Let me drive,” he said.
“I’ve got it.” She frowned at him.
“Seriously, Harper, let me drive,” he said again. “I’m not asking.”
She blinked, trying to clear the last of the fog of sleep. “All right. You know where we’re going?”
He tapped his temple. “Memorized it,” he said. “We’ll get there long before morning, as long as Mortensen’s goons don’t find us.”
“But they can’t now, can they?” she asked. “The GPS tracker is gone.”
“They’ll be searching the roads.” He made an irritated noise. “I wish we could turn your phone back on and search the news sites, but if the police are looking for you, we might as well be sending them an engraved invitation.”
“I can turn off the GPS,” Harper said.
He shook his head. “That’s not how it works. The GPS on a cell phone only tells other people where you are if you let it through the cell data. It’s the phone service that’s the real problem. That bounces off the cell towers and triangulates you right away. If we don’t want people to know where you are, we can’t connect to the cell towers at all.”
“Oh,” Harper said, feeling a little stupid.
“Anyway, we’ll get another burner phone when we stop to fill up before we hit the border,” Levi continued, tapping the fuel gauge
. “I’ll call Beane and find out what’s going on. We’ll have to be lucky to avoid the police or Mortensen’s men before then. Not that there’s likely to be much of a distinction.”
Harper winced. “Can you please quit using that word? Lucky, I mean. It seems to keep getting us into trouble.”
Levi cracked a smile. “Sure thing.” He held out a hand. “Keys, Harper.”
With a sigh, she passed them over. “Fine.”
He opened his door and walked around the car as she scooted over the console and into the passenger’s seat.
“So, where is this Beane?” she asked as he shoved the keys into the ignition and punched the button to raise the roof.
“West Virginia,” he said, “Out in the Appalachians.”
“Yeah, you already said that,” she said. “I mean where, exactly.”
With the roof up, the car suddenly seemed much smaller, almost claustrophobic, a bubble in the wide, dark night.
Levi’s eyes flickered over to her as he put the little car in reverse, turning it in a tight arc to face back the way he’d come. “Beane’s a bit private about that information.”
“But you know,” she pointed out.
He gave a half-shrug. “He wouldn’t be happy about me telling you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re taking me there right now. It’s not like I’m not going to find out.”
“You’ll find out if we make it there,” he agreed evenly. “But what if we don’t? The less you know, the less you can tell.”
“It didn’t seem to me that Mortensen’s thugs were asking any questions,” she said tartly.
“If they got a chance, don’t think they’d pass it up.” The car dipped and bobbed as it went up the slight slope back onto the empty back road.
“Can you at least tell me how long it will take to get there?” she asked.
“Four hours, give or take.” Levi shrugged. “We’ll only want to cross state lines once—straight into West Virginia without cutting through Maryland. That’d be smarter.”
“That’s a long time,” Harper said.
“It is what it is.”
“Hey,” Harper said suddenly, realizing that they were still moving in darkness. “Aren’t you going to put on the headlights?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Levi accelerated to highway speed.
Harper gripped the molded armrest on the door.
“Okay,” she said carefully under the assumption that it was better to not upset the crazy person who was driving the car she was now in. “You realize that it won’t matter that we escape the vampires if we end up dead, right?”
“I’m a werewolf, Harper,” he said in a tone of patience.
“That’s nice. I’m not. I don’t know about you, but if this car gets squashed like the tin can it is, I die,” she said.
“The car’s not going to get squashed. I can see just fine. Werewolf, Harper. You know all the stories about wolves, nighttime, moon?”
Harper shook her head, remembering how easily he’d moved in the darkness before. It hadn’t occurred to her that it would transfer to driving, but of course it had to, didn’t it?
“Okay,” she said. “But other drivers won’t be able to see you.”
“That’s kind of the point,” he said. “I’ll be able to see them, but they won’t see me until I’m practically on top of them.”
“Won’t you, like, startle people?”
“Better startle a few people than stumble into a police blockade,” he said.
She shook her head. It still seemed ridiculously dangerous to her, but then again, she wasn’t the one who could see in the dark. But this wasn’t an argument she was going to win, not with him behind the wheel, so she decided to drop it—and raise the other question that had been bugging her.
“If you’re worried about being traced, do you think it’s still safe to use your prepaid debit card?”
“Still?” he repeated.
“Yeah. We used it at the first gas station, at the Wendy’s, at Walmart, at the travel plaza,” she said.
“I don’t remember saying you could use it at the travel plaza.”
“You didn’t think I’d use mine, did you?” she retorted. “Anyhow, you didn’t say I could use it at Walmart, either.”
Levi snorted. “If that one’s not burned now, it will be. I’ve got others in the wallet. Bought at different times, different places. Different brands, even.”
She held out her hand. “Okay. I need another one if I’m going to be getting a cell phone while you’re fueling up.”
After another long look at her, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Check the little pocket behind the cardholder.”
Harper poked through it until she found the spare cards, a Bluebird AmEx, a Chase Liquid, and a Western Union MasterCard.
“How much are on them?”
“Thinking of going on a spending spree?” he joked.
“Maybe I’m thinking of getting my car fixed,” she retorted, making a face at him.
“What about your insurance?” he asked. “Don’t have comprehensive?”
“It’s my Baby. Of course I have comprehensive. But they’ll call it totaled. I don’t want it totaled. I want it fixed,” she said. “Anyhow, there’s a thousand dollar deductible, and then there’s the fact that my car insurance will skyrocket, and the fact that they’ll only give me seven K for the car tops, and then I have to buy it back from them—and you’re still looking at a whole lot of money.”
“There’s a grand on each,” he said then.
“Yeah, not going to be enough,” she predicted.
“Probably not. All joking aside, Harper, I’ll get it fixed. Whatever it costs, if we make it through this and it’s physically possible to fix your car, I’ll make sure you end up with a big enough slice of the pie that you can pimp it out like Nightrider if you want to.”
“Nightrider,” she repeated. He kept making references to things she was only vaguely familiar with. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Really, you’re going to ask a question like that?” he returned. “I’m the fifth kid, Harper. Inherited most of my toys. And movies and TV shows.”
“You’re like thirty, aren’t you?” she pressed.
“Twenty-six, for your information,” he said. “But my oldest sister is forty-two, forty-three, something like that, and she had tons of hand-me-downs from all the cousins.”
“Just making sure I’m not hanging out with a cradle-robber,” she said.
“Yeah. You look robbed.” And even in the darkness, she felt the heat of his gaze.
Dammit.
“What’s your thing, anyway?” she asked. “You’re like the nicest douchebag or the jerkiest nice guy I’ve ever met. First you’re telling me that you think I’m awesome, then you’re telling me that this—” She pointed back and forth to him and herself. “—can’t be a thing, never mind the fact that you were telling me that it already was just minutes before. And then you go and say that you’ll fix my car. I mean, you definitely owe me that. But why? Why are you being so nice? Or so mean?” she added lamely.
“This is a fun little adventure to you, Harper,” Levi said, his voice tight. “A bit of spice and excitement. Well, to me, it’s my life, and the stakes are real. You’re having a great time playing at this now, at us now, but you have to understand that this isn’t how werewolves are made. Not for long, anyway.”
“Who said I was playing at anything?” she asked, stung—not in the least because it was more than a little true.
“You didn’t have to. Look, I can have a bit of fun just like anyone else, but if you don’t watch out, it’ll hit, and when it does, there’s no way out.” His gaze raked across her then, briefly, before turning back to the road. “You just about jumped me in the barn.”
“I don’t seem to remember you complaining about that,” she said, caught off guard by the apparent shift in subject.
“Yeah? Is it something you’re in the hab
it of doing?”
Harper was silent. He didn’t deserve to know that it wasn’t.
“Why do you think that happened, Harper? You think it’s kismet? Eyes across a crowded room?”
He paused, but Harper just pressed her lips together, refusing to respond to his scorn.
“It’s pheromones. Werewolf pheromones. It makes women like you a little crazy.”
Harper gaped. She’d thought more than once how damned good he’d smelled. But seriously? He’d been…drugging her with his armpits or something?
That was her first thought. And her second was, What a stupid, weaselly excuse.
“Pheromones, that’s you’re explanation? And what about you? Why were you so hot for it? Were you high on…on woman-stank or something?” She said the most ridiculous thing she could come up with.
“When werewolves are putting out those levels of pheromones, it’s usually because their wolf sides have decided they want something,” he said, ignoring her last question. Harper wished that she could see his face in the shadow, but she could make out only the vaguest silhouette. “Whatever their human brains think. And if a werewolf lets that go too far, well, then they’re playing for keeps.”
“For keeps,” she repeated.
“Forever.” He crosses two fingers, and she saw a flash of his teeth in the darkness as he grinned, though there was no humor in his voice. “Levi and Harper, sitting in a tree,” he said in a singsongy voice.
“God, yes, I get it, okay?” she retorted, flushing in irritation, attraction, and, unaccountably, real embarrassment.
“You’re worried about guys not caring enough? Well, there are only two options with me at this point, babycakes. Sayonara or till-death-do-we-part. Got the picture?”
“Fine, yes,” she muttered.
She’d been just fine with screwing him on the hood of her car and then him eating her out, but this—it was too much like something real, something more real than anything their bodies had done or could do, and she couldn’t even let herself think about it. It didn’t bear thinking about because that wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to Harper Bailey. Harper was the sort of girl who had a good time for a while. Never got too close to anyone. Let herself feel a little, just enough to be human, but not so much that she could get hurt.
