by Holley Trent
On that ring was apparently a key for the front door, another for the back, one for the mailbox, and she didn’t know what the small fourth one was. Arnold might have known, but she hadn’t seen Arnold in a day.
Asshole.
“Here.” Paul took the ring from her trembling hands and plugged the correct key into the slot on the first try. “I think you had the right one but didn’t turn it hard enough.”
“Twisting my arms hurts.”
“And that’s why you’re going to swallow the pills and go back to bed.”
“I don’t want to sleep the day away.”
“You don’t have a choice. Doctor’s orders.”
He pressed a palm to the small of her back and nudged her into the cool, dim house.
Mine.
She didn’t understand how the house was hers, but apparently it was—some agreement Alpha had made with the Viking queen.
“He doesn’t even collect dues,” she said softly.
“Pardon?” Paul looked up from the pill bottle he’d snatched up from the counter and quirked an eyebrow.
“Alpha. The wolves say he doesn’t collect dues.”
“Dues?” Paul turned her hand over and placed a painkiller onto her palm.
“All packs collect dues.”
“Like taxes?”
She cringed and limped around him to the sink. The pill was huge and chalky, and she didn’t think one cup of water would be enough. She put her mouth right to the tap and sucked down a good half gallon to force the pill down her throat. “No. Not like taxes,” she said, dragging her shirtsleeve across her lips. “Alpha’s pay. Never actually goes back to the pack, but the money is supposed to.”
“I can see how being a pack alpha could be a cushy job, then,” Paul said flatly. “Send your lieutenants door to door with a collection envelope and sit back with your feet up while everyone else suffers.”
“So you do know how the scheme works, then.”
“Systems like that have been in place forever. People have staged revolutions over them.” He canted his head toward the hallway. “Come on. Into bed you go.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Lie down anyway. Stop arguing.”
“Never gonna stop arguing. Got too much fight in me.”
“I don’t imagine you’re exaggerating, but do me the favor and follow instructions just for today. You can go back to being stubborn and difficult tomorrow. And besides—”
She didn’t want to move, but he got her moving anyway. When she dug in her heels, he grunted and then picked her up, carrying her against his chest as if she were a house cat and not an undomesticated werewolf.
“There are no witnesses,” he said. “No one has to know you actually behaved yourself for a couple of hours.”
“Shut up.”
He set her ever so gently onto the bed and pulled her boots off easily enough, seeing as how they weren’t laced. She didn’t know where her laces were. She’d had some before the accident.
“Where are my laces?” She rubbed her eyes and let out an indulgent exhalation when he kneaded the arches of her sore feet with his thumbs.
“Don’t know. Maybe the hospital threw them away. If they were bloody, they might have just trashed them. They’re cheap enough to replace.”
“They were the only ones I had.”
“I’ll get you some new ones.”
“You will?” She rubbed her eyes again and groaned when he made her shift away from the top of the covers so he could pull them down.
Someone had made the bed while she was out stalking the doctor.
She’d awakened groggily, alone in the room—her room—and she’d been afraid. She was rarely afraid, but the feeling had hit her like a sock full of nickels, and although her body had been unwilling, her brain had told her to get up and go.
She hadn’t known who she was looking for—hadn’t known who could make her stop being afraid—so she’d let her inner wolf’s instincts guide her.
The wolf had steered her into town. Her sensitive nose had guided her toward the scent of coffee and of a familiar man who’d walked the route just minutes before her.
Find him, the wolf had been thinking. The wolf wanted him, and the part of Petra that was just woman couldn’t say no.
She didn’t know what was happening with her inner wolf, but the wolf seemed to think Paul was safe, like Arnold. Few people had ever made her feel that way. Her mother had taught her to distrust men by default—she’d said that Petra should make them earn her trust, and to assume that no one ever would. That had always been the case.
Suddenly, it wasn’t.
“Are these clothes yours or Arnold’s?” Paul asked.
“Used to be his.”
“You should give them back to him.”
“He can’t fit them anymore.”
“Give them back anyway. Maybe he could use them as rags.”
She let out a quiet scoff and rubbed her eyes again. “Nobody cares what I’m wearing. Nobody ever looks at me.”
“I’m sure that’s the way you like it.”
“Bingo.”
“I need you to take off your pants.”
She lifted her arm from her face and squinted at him. “What?”
“I want to check your bones while I’m here. Easier if I can touch skin.”
“Oh. Right. Because you’re a doctor and not a pervert.” She unbuttoned her jeans and let down the fly.
He wriggled her pants down and draped them over the edge of the bed. “You heal faster than anyone I’ve ever met. No wonder the hospital in Oklahoma was so perplexed by you.” He rubbed his hands together and poised them over her shin, as if giving her a moment to brace herself either for his cool touch or the pain from the pressure.
She’d been doing her best not to think about the pain. She’d always been able to push the aches to the back of her mind and power through them, but never before had she been in such an accident.
No need to be a martyr, chick.
“All werewolves heal quickly, as far as I know,” she said. “Even the half-breeds like me. Arnold heals faster, though, when he shape-shifts.”
“I don’t think you’re as normal as you think. Adam doesn’t seem to think so.” Paul’s gentle touch started as a tickle against her tender flesh of her ankle, and then turned into a burn that made her lungs seize and her toes curl.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. His fingers were looped around her ankle, his thumb gently massaging the skin. “I’m barely touching you.”
“Maybe it’s just—scraped or something. Tender there.”
“Looks okay to me.”
“It does?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Ignore me, then. Go on with your exam.”
“You sure?”
She nodded, and gritted her teeth. She wasn’t a wimp, and he was barely touching her.
He continued searing up her leg, and the fire inside her was so hot, she feared inhaling would make the burn worse. So she lay very still with her eyes closed and her body shuddering and he leaned between her legs.
The wolf inside her was laying in wait, too, but not crippled by pain.
It’s not pain, the animal seemed to suggest. Not pain. Pleasure. Can’t you tell the difference?
“Obviously, I can’t,” Petra whispered.
Paul paused just over her right knee. “Pardon?”
“Ignore me. I was talking to the wolf in my head.”
“Yeah? Does the wolf in your head have any idea why the breaks I felt yesterday aren’t much more than hairline fractures now?”
She was able to swallow only because he pulled back his hand to lean on it. “Because of my grandfather, I guess.”
“Explain.”
“Strong wolf. He’s the only reason I’m anything at all.”
“I think you underestimate yourself.”
“I’m telling the truth. I know how the genetics go. My mother told me. Our women aren’t like yours. We
don’t get the lion’s share of the magic or the strength. We’re at our mates’ mercies. We’re nothing until we get our bites, and even then, most of us never amount to anything.”
“I don’t believe that. You have women in the pack here who don’t have bites but seem to be doing just fine.”
“They’re outliers.”
“And apparently you are, too.”
She draped an arm over her eyes and shrugged. “And I probably have an inner wolf who’s a little louder than most ladies’, even without the bite. Most aren’t so pushy. Mine is loud, like my mother’s.”
“What does your inner wolf want?”
“I don’t always know. She’s intelligent about things I’m not, and I can’t always understand what she’s telling me. And of course Arnold doesn’t know.”
“Because he’s a man?” Paul started the same slow examination of her left leg, and the burn returned, and Petra wondered if the wolf was right.
Her skin wasn’t tender. The heat wasn’t from pain. Her muscles were coiled tightly from tension—from uncertainty. She didn’t know how to interpret the signals her body was giving her. That didn’t mean they were bad.
Breathe, the wolf said, so Petra sucked in some air.
Deeper, the wolf said, so Petra tried again.
She concentrated on taking slow, deep, steadying breaths, and Paul’s hand pressed up the inside of her thigh.
Her core clenched and thighs clamped his hand tightly between her legs.
Silly girl, the wolf said.
“I’m a grown woman.”
Paul furrowed his brow and pushed his glasses up with his free hand.
Act like it.
“Are you talking to your wolf or to me?” he asked.
She forced a swallow down her tight, parched throat and squirmed under his touch. “You—you’re not in my head right now, are you? Not reading my thoughts?”
“No. I’m trying very hard not to, and I won’t unless you want me to.”
She certainly didn’t want him to do that—didn’t want to let him in to hear the chaotic chatter in her mind or to decide that, in spite of what she may have said, with some matters, she was more like a little girl than a woman. There were things she didn’t know. Experiences she hadn’t had, even at twenty-five.
The wolf part of her encouraged his touch, no matter the purpose. Touching was good. Touching forged bonds. The part of her that was just human didn’t know why that would matter.
Get out of the way, the wolf said. The animal inside Petra nudged at her seams, pushed back the careful human part of her. Made her stand back and watch a real woman at work.
She grabbed Paul by his wrists and gave him a gentle tug toward her, but he was too heavy to move. She may have been a wolf, but she wasn’t going to be able to manhandle a Viking.
“Was I hurting you?” he asked.
“No. You were done. I was telling you what to do next.” She hooked her feet around his sides and reached forward to grab the collar of his shirt.
“What should I be doing? I still need to check your hips.”
“My hips are fine.”
“So are you going to tell me what’s not?”
“Mm-hmm.” She tugged him forward by the shirt and leaned back.
He straddled her thighs and placed a bracing hand beside her shoulders.
Right over her. Staring down.
“Well?”
“You should check my ribs,” she said. “They’ve been aching.”
“Have they, now?”
“Mm-hmm. With every breath.”
“There’s not much I can do for a rib. Wrap you in heating blanket, maybe. Make you comfortable.”
“Don’t you want to be sure?” She planted one of his hands on her lower ribcage and, daring him with her gaze, slid his palm up to just beneath her breast.
Yeah, he’s gonna fall for that, the rational, cautious lady inside her said.
He dragged his thumb down her sternum, tracing along the arch of her ribs and back up to where her breast met her chest, and then beneath. He moved her breast aside and strummed the bony ridges beneath through her shirt.
“Maybe you should unbutton it,” she said.
“I don’t need to. Your ribs are fine.”
“They don’t feel fine. I don’t feel fine.”
“That’s probably just the painkiller making you dizzy. Give the feeling a few minutes to pass. You’ll probably be asleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
If the good doctor wasn’t going to respond to subtle clues, she figured she’d take matters into her own hands. Fingers, rather.
She started at her top button, and quickly worked her way to the bottom of the shirt placket.
“You said I should give the shirt back to Arnold anyway, right?” She shrugged out of the flannel and handed the shirt to Paul before lying back down. “There you go. Toss it toward his room, if you’d like.”
Paul flicked the garment to the floor, and didn’t even pretend to be only clinically interested in the form of her body. Hovering over, his gaze raked over her legs—crossed at the ankles—her boring white panties, her belly, and her bruised ribs.
Her breasts in the soft form bra that didn’t hide much of anything.
In the past, she might have been self-conscious about how visible her nipples were through the flimsy cotton. She would have tried to hide herself from the preying gazes of wolves and other predators.
Paul may have been a predator, of a sort, but he was no wolf.
Aren’t Vikings supposed to plunder? Perhaps he needs more inciting.
She raised herself onto her elbows dragged her knee along the inside of his leg, stopping just shy of his jewels. He couldn’t hide much in scrub pants.
“You nearly died last week,” he whispered. “Apparently, you need a reminder.”
“I’m trying to show you how alive I am. I don’t need a reminder about what happened.”
“I think you’re delirious.”
“You must be, too. Otherwise, you would have walked away.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Mm-hmm. All your fault.” She unsnapped the clasp at the front of her bra and let the garment hang open.
He didn’t look down. He kept his cool gaze locked on her eyes and gritted his teeth.
“I can smell you,” she whispered. “The pheromones. I may not look like a wolf right now, but I’ve got a wolf’s nose. You’re interested in me.”
He let out a dry scoff and turned his head toward the side of the bed, likely to the clock on the nightstand.
Because he’s a responsible adult and has to go to work.
And she was a distraction.
The part of her that was more human than beast swam back up through the murk in her brain momentarily, but the wolf pushed her back again.
Let me, the wolf said. Get out of the way, or you’ll ruin this. We’ll lose our shot.
Petra didn’t know what shot the wolf was talking about. She didn’t know what she was doing at all, but the wolf had never steered her wrong. The wolf had kept her alive for all those years—she’d told her to run when Arnold had left, and that staying would have meant abuse or worse.
“Don’t you want to touch me, Viking?” Petra could hardly recognize the words, or the husky voice they’d been delivered through. She could, though, recognize the look of lust on Paul’s face and predict that, adult though he was, he could be convinced to ignore his responsibilities on occasion.
“The question isn’t whether or not I want to,” he said. “It’s should I?”
“I’m asking you to.”
“Why, Petra? If you’d had the chance yesterday, you would have mauled me.”
“Can’t a girl change her mind?” She slid her knee into the crease between his thigh and balls and wriggled it gently.
His Adam’s apple bobbed with his loud swallow, and his breathing sped. Not with fear—she knew the sound of fear—but of indecisiveness.
“You want me,” she said. “Why’s that so bad? You’re not going to break me.”
“I’m not worried about breaking you. If a tree and truck couldn’t do the job, I doubt I could. Besides, there are rules in civilized societies, Petra. I shouldn’t touch you.”
“I’m not civilized. I’m a werewolf.”
Careful, the lady part of her warned the wolf.
That kind of talk was how her mother had run her father off. Her mother had been proud of what she was and hadn’t wanted to tamp down her fearsomeness for anyone, including the man she’d chosen to mate with.
“Take me or leave me,” she’d said.
He’d left.
Petra didn’t want Paul to leave. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to keep him.
“I want to make sure you’re thinking clearly,” Paul said. “That the medication isn’t making you loopy and that you’re thinking beyond instant gratification to consequences.”
“What could happen?”
“You tell me.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen.”
“You sure about that?”
Of course not. She was lying through her teeth.
The lady part of Petra didn’t understand the wolf’s motives, but she was going along for the ride just the same.
She leaned up and skimmed her lips along the stubble on his jaw, breathing in his crisp, male scent. Breathing in his warmth, his magic that she didn’t understand. She wanted to know all about his magic—everything about him, period.
She’d never had a man to keep before, and figured she should know something about him.
“I’m a grown woman,” she said.
He glided tickling fingertips up her ribs and spanned his large hand beneath her breast. “I haven’t forgotten.”
He pressed down on her nipple with his thumb, and little jolts of electricity coursed through her battered body.
Whoa.
“You act like I can’t see you—like I could be so cold that I’d ignore what was right in front of me, but you’re impossible to ignore, Petra.”
“Act like I am, then. Don’t just tell me. Show me.”
She lay back again and pulled him down with her, pressing his face to his chest, insinuating her breast near his smart mouth.
