“Come on, love,” Alex coaxed.
I slid my legs out of bed but clung to the edge of the mattress with white-knuckled fists.
“That’s it. Now stand up.”
I tried to scream, but all that emerged was a whimper. I pushed off of the bed.
“There’s my girl. Come on, Grace. Out the door. Come out to me.”
On shaking legs, I walked to the door. Screams died in my throat as pathetic whines. I fought to turn back, to resist his command, but my legs carried me into the hall.
“Please no,” I begged, but the words emerged only as hissed breaths. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. I reached the top of the stairs. My feet shuffled on the hardwood planks as I fought not to descend. But my will was no match for Alex's. I took one wobbly step, and then another.
I tried to take a third step, but I was trapped in place. My feet slid uselessly over the smooth floorboards, bringing me nowhere.
“Come outside, Grace. Come to me.” Alex's voice echoed in my mind at the same time as another man’s voice sounded in my ear.
“Wake up. Grace. Stop fighting me—ouch! Grace, wake up. Grace. Grace!”
I blinked and, suddenly, there was Caleb. His big hands had my shoulders pinned against the stairwell wall.
“Caleb?” The tension immediately ebbed from my body, the compulsion releasing me.
He was standing so close, his big hands pinning my shoulders to the wall. His face, so starkly, ruggedly appealing, was close enough to mine that I could see each individual eyelash framing his dark, hooded eyes.
I reached up and pressed my palm to his cheek, reassuring myself that he was actually there, that I wasn’t still trapped in a dream. He sighed, his eyelids falling closed.
“You’re here,” I rasped through a throat sore from trying to scream. His skin was hot against my palm, his beard coarse.
His eyes opened. They were pale as amber.
“Are you a werewolf?” I asked.
Caleb said nothing, just watched me.
“Tell me I’m imagining things,” I pleaded. “There’s no such thing as werewolves. Tell me I’m recovering from a traumatic—”
He kissed me. His mouth was hot and hard. His beard scraped against my skin. I slid my hand from his cheek to clutch the back of his neck. His arms encircled me, hauling my body flush against his.
“You’re imagining things,” he growled against my mouth. His tongue traced the seam of my lips, and I opened for him, tasted him. He broke away from me. “You’re recovering from a traumatic experience.” And then he was kissing me again. His lips trailed hotly along my jaw, my neck, my throat. “There’s no such thing as werewolves,” he said, before taking my mouth again, using his big body to pin me against the wall.
Once again, his heat sank into me, melting the ice, turning it into steam. I clutched him, pressing my body against his. I needed that heat, needed him to burn away the cold forever. He nipped my bottom lip, my jaw, my throat. He bit down on the muscle between my shoulder and my neck, the pressure just shy of really hurting.
“Wait—” I gasped.
His teeth released me, and I felt the touch of his tongue soothing the spot he’d bitten.
“Hang on—” I pushed at his shoulders.
He drew back, watching me with that unusual golden gaze.
I frowned. “You don’t like me.”
He grinned. “Aw, Gracie, come on. You can figure out werewolves, but you can’t figure this out?”
“You were a jerk tonight.”
His smile faded. “I—” He hesitated. His jaw clenched with resolve. “I was jealous,” he said flatly. “You were dancing with every man in the room, but you ran from me like—”
“You make me nervous,” I blurted.
His wicked grin returned. He bent forward suddenly, catching me behind the knees, and scooped me up into his arms.
“Ack! Caleb!”
He carried me down the hall.
“What are you—where are we—”
He carried me past my room, to his own. He nudged his door open with his foot and brought me inside.
“Your room?”
“Relax.” He dropped me onto his bed like an armful of laundry. “I’m not going to do anything to you. You need to sleep. And I need you to do it where I can keep an eye on you.”
“Why?”
The golden gleam in his eyes was receding, returning to his usual midnight gaze. “Because apparently you’re a sleepwalker. And that’s a real liability when there’s a predator roaming around.” He caught the edge of the comforter and flipped it over me. “Get some sleep. I won’t touch you.”
He settled into the armchair next to his dresser, sinking deeply against the backrest and toeing his boots off. Somehow, we’d gone from making out against the wall to some kind of sexless sleepover. Or so I thought. As I settled back against his pillows, I became aware of his scent surrounding me. My face burned pleasantly where his beard had rasped against me. He was on the other side of the room, but I could almost feel the warmth of his body enveloping me.
He watched me shift beneath the covers, his gaze feverishly intent. I heard a sound so low, I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t imagining it—a rolling growl, resonating deep in his chest. When I looked back up at him, the growl died away.
“Go to sleep, Grace,” he commanded. His voice rasped over my skin like calloused hands. A delicious shiver chased up my spine. I turned away from his heated gaze before I did something really stupid.
Before I knew it, the comfort of his scent and the warmth of his bed had lulled me. I fell asleep.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up the next morning in my own bed. I lifted my t-shirt to my face, inhaling deeply. There was no scent of Caleb. My cheeks and neck were cool and smooth, with no beard burn. My door was locked from the inside.
Had I dreamt it all? Alex and Caleb? The werewolf conversation?
As soon as the word “werewolf” crossed my mind, I laughed at myself. Of course it had been a dream. If Caleb kissing me and bringing me into his room weren’t fantastical enough, the absurdity of werewolves certainly brought reality crashing down.
Damn. I slid out of bed, smiling ruefully. Even in my dreams, I wasn’t getting laid. Dream Caleb had been a perfect gentleman, dozing in his chair while I slept in his bed. In the dream, his room had been tidy and sparse, with a green and blue quilt on the bed. Unlike the irregular shape of my room, his had been a perfect rectangle. Just like mine, the ledge below his window was stuffed with books. In the dark, I hadn’t been able to read most of the spines, but I’d noticed a copy of Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars and a big hardcover entitled Montezuma. Clearly, the sight of him reading had left a big imprint on my subconscious.
When I made my way down to the dining room, half of the town seemed to be packed in there. Every head swiveled towards me. I froze in the doorway, midstep.
“Alright, alright,” Harry Lance’s voice cut through the buzz of conversation, impatient and gruff. “Leave the girl alone. She just wants some breakfast.” He leaned away from the counter, waving me over. “Come on, Grace. Get some food in your belly.”
I moved as if in a dream. Was that really Harry being protective of me?
There was an open seat at the counter between Jess and Wade. It had to have been intentionally saved for me, judging by the crowd in the dining room. Every other seat was occupied, with spare, mismatched chairs having been pulled out of storage and crowded around tables.
“Hey, Grace.” Jess nudged her shoulder against mine.
“Morning,” Wade said, giving my forearm a friendly squeeze.
I hadn’t been sitting for even thirty seconds when a deep male bass rumbled behind me, “Grace.” I turned to see Arthur. Before I could speak, he pulled me into a lung-crushing hug. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely, crushing me even tighter. “You saved her.”
“No I didn’t,” I wheezed. “I couldn’t get to her.”
Arthur released me
, only to grab my shoulders. Holding me at arm’s length, he looked fiercely into my eyes. “If it hadn’t been for you, we’d have lost Tasha.” He looked stricken. “You were brave and selfless and I owe you my life.”
“Arthur, no you don’t,” I mumbled, embarrassed.
“I do.” He held my gaze for a moment, then clapped me on the shoulders and released me. Natasha emerged from the kitchen’s swinging door and Arthur hurtled over the counter with astonishing grace, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her deeply. After a second of stiffened surprise, Natasha melted into his arms. When at last they broke apart, Arthur bent his head and bit at her shoulder playfully.
Hoots and wolf-whistles went up and down the length of the dining room. Natasha blushed like a schoolgirl, swatting at Arthur’s chest. “Go on, you,” she told him with an unconvincing attempt at sternness. “The water heater is still leaking.”
He flashed her a grin that nearly made me blush, and disappeared down the hall.
Natasha smoothed her hair, looking at a loss for just a second before she noticed me sitting at the counter. “Gracie! You need breakfast.” She pushed into the kitchen and reemerged a minute later with a heaping plate of eggs and fried caribou steak.
As I ate, people drifted over, one by one. They greeted me with little touches to the shoulder, squeezes on the arm. I’d gotten accustomed to those friendly touches from certain people, but it was strange to receive them from so many others. There was a vaguely ceremonial feel to the flow of people, touching me, greeting me, then leaving The Spruce. By the time I finished my breakfast, the dining room was mostly empty. Harry, Wade, Jess, Harlan, and Eric were the only remainders. I glanced at all the empty chairs.
On the far side of the dining room, the rear door opened. Natasha’s son Max stepped in.
Max spotted me and crossed the room immediately. He caught me by the arms, just as his father had done, and gazed down at me with grave intensity. “I didn’t get the chance to thank you last night.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. Really. Anybody—”
“Not anybody,” Max objected. “You. You risked your life to save my mom. Thank you, Grace.” He squeezed my arms and released me.
I suddenly noticed Caleb had entered behind him, dressed for the cold just as Max was.
“Oh. Caleb. Hi,” I said faintly, suddenly overwhelmed by the memories of last night’s too-real dream.
“Morning, Grace. You alright?”
I nodded. “You were out searching this morning?”
“We were out all night,” Max told me. “Caleb and I just got in. Could use a meal and some sleep.”
He’d been out all night. Any hope I’d harbored that last night hadn’t been a dream was instantly quashed.
“Sleep sounds good right now,” Caleb agreed, looking past me.
I swallowed, shoving away the disappointment. “Did you find anything?” I asked them both.
Max and Caleb exchanged another glance, this one grim. “Just prints that led nowhere,” Max said, disgusted. “No scent trail.”
“No scent trail?” I echoed suspiciously.
“Nothing for the dogs to pick up,” Caleb explained.
“Oh. Right. Of course.” I was truly going insane. I actually wanted Caleb to be a werewolf if it would mean that we’d kissed—that he’d spent the night guarding me. I was pathetic and delusional. “Well… get some rest.”
I spent the rest of the day sitting in the dining room and catching up on grading. Arthur hovered near Natasha all day. If she was in the kitchen, he needed to fix something on one of the faucets in there. If she was in the dining room, he needed to tighten the screws on the chairs and tables. She’d walked down the hall towards the short-stay rooms, and Arthur had dropped his wrench and cracked his head on the table before bounding after her.
Other people came and went, getting meals from Natasha, and dropping off bits of news—all of it inconclusive. They hadn’t found anything, nobody saw anything, the tracks just vanished, and there was no scent trail. Every time somebody new came to report, I couldn’t help but replay the events of the previous night. Hectic memories flashed in my mind, spliced together in a confusing, incomplete reel. Natasha being taken. A knife in my hand. So many wolves appearing from nowhere. Moonlight gleaming over the shadow attacker, revealing…Alex.
I flinched and shoved it all from my mind. That way lay madness.
Chapter Twenty
After the subdued tension of Sunday, Monday seemed largely back to normal. A late February snowfall was drifting down in big, fat flakes. The dining room was filled with the usual hum of conversation and the clatter of plates. Except for Jess and Connor, the usual regulars were in the dining room when I went down for breakfast. Arthur was sitting at the counter, pretending not to be guarding Natasha. I took the seat next to him. Without lifting his gaze from where Natasha was fiddling with the coffee maker, he reached over and gave my shoulder a brief squeeze.
“Morning, Arthur.”
“Morning. You tell your family what happened?” he asked, picking up his cup of coffee.
“No.” They wouldn’t care. If I’d been seriously hurt, they would’ve worried. But since I was fine, my mom would only be interested in hearing about the wolves, and my dad would just subside into one of his skeptical silences, the way he did whenever I’d tried to tell him something bad had happened to me. It wasn’t that he thought I was a liar. It was just that he was so low-key and unexcitable that he found it hard to believe that disasters and traumas actually did happen to people. Or so my mom said.
“You don’t want them to worry?” Arthur asked.
“They wouldn’t be worried.” I spoke before I realized how odd it would sound to someone like Arthur, whose love for his family radiated from him like a constant, calming glow.
He frowned at me. “Why wouldn’t they worry?”
I shrugged off the uncomfortable heaviness that had settled over me. “They’re pretty laid-back, I guess.”
Arthur’s thick, salt-and-pepper eyebrows climbed nearly to his hairline. “Laid-back?”
I shrugged again. Natasha appeared with a coffee carafe, and I tried to shift the conversation to her. “How are you doing?” I asked.
Her expression turned thunderous. “Nobody is allowed to ask me that question anymore! I am perfectly fine!”
I froze with my hand halfway to my coffee mug. “Oh. Uh. Glad to hear it.”
Arthur hid a grin with a sip of coffee.
Natasha softened as she searched my face. “And how are you, then?”
“No fair. You can ask me, but I can’t ask you?”
“A mother’s privilege.”
“I think that only applies to your own children.”
Natasha gave me an impatient look. “I am your Alaskan mother.”
“Sounds like she could use one,” Arthur muttered.
I flushed. “I’m fine,” I said firmly, to both of them.
I finished my breakfast without any more questions about my emotional state or my family issues. On the way out, I caught sight of Caleb sitting at a table with Harry Lance. He wasn’t as polished as he’d been the night of the party, but the brushed hair and the beard trim were very much in evidence, and they were doing the same things to me as they had two nights ago. Unfortunately, I had to walk past his table to get to the door. I straightened my shoulders and made myself go. As I passed by, he didn’t so much as glance in my direction.
Harry, on the other hand, said, “Morning, Grace.”
I faltered, caught off guard by his pleasantness. “Oh—uh, good morning, Harry.” I flicked a glance at Caleb. He was staring out the window, resolutely ignoring me.
Well fine, then.
I went out to the garage, started my truck, and headed to school. When I got to my classroom, I flipped on the light and froze in the doorway. My desk was covered—absolutely covered—in blue yarn. Everything on top of my desk was strapped down by crisscrossing wefts of yarn—my stapler, my
ceramic pen holder, the school laptop, my lamp. All the drawers were wrapped shut.
I stared at the mess with a slow smile spreading across my face. Cursing on a breath that came perilously close to a giggle, I crossed the room and began peeling the yarn off my desk. When my first period freshman started drifting in, I had a massive heap of tangled blue yarn sitting on my desktop, and I was trying to extract the laptop cord from it without making the tangle worse.
“Uh, Ms. Rossi? What’s this?” Leo Daaldinh asked.
“The work of a madman.” I gathered the whole heap and stuffed it into my bag. “Don’t worry, it’s not for class.”
The day passed so slowly, I thought I’d scream. Every time I glanced towards my bag and saw all that blue yarn overflowing the top, I thought of Caleb. I wondered when he’d done it. What he’d been thinking. Had he been smiling? Laughing? Is that why he wouldn’t look at me this morning?
When my last class emptied out, I gathered my things and all but sprinted to my truck. Snow had been falling steadily all day, and I had to put the Jimmy into four-wheel-drive to make it out of the parking lot. Once back at The Spruce, I found Arthur in the dining room, repairing a tabletop he’d cracked on Sunday. “Where’s Caleb? I saw his truck in the garage.”
Arthur shrugged. “He was helping with the searches this afternoon. He might still be out there. Otherwise, he’s probably in his room.”
I turned and bounded up the stairs. One flight. Two flights. I hit the landing on silent feet and stalked down the hallway. I dropped my bag by my door, fished the heap of yarn out, and then pounded on Caleb’s door.
A second later, it opened, revealing a sleep-mussed Caleb. I threw the yarn against his chest. He caught it, staring down in confusion. After a second, he looked up, comprehension in his eyes, something wicked in his smile.
“Where’d all this come from?” he asked innocently.
Before I even knew I was moving, I was on him. He met me halfway, hauling my body hard against his as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked his head back. And then we were kissing—really kissing. It was as good as it had been in my dream. Better, because this time it was real. The taste of him, the touch of his lips, the feel of his big hands running down my back—it was all real. His heat sank into me like a series of timed explosions, making me hotter and hungrier and more out of my mind with each stroke of his tongue, each nip from his teeth, each squeeze of his hands.
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 17
