Caleb frowned down at me, the heat in his gaze cooling to confusion. “Margaret said you don’t belong here?”
“She said that there are certain things you guys don’t discuss with outsiders. I know I’m an outsider. I can do the math.”
“You don’t have to be an outsider,” he said softly, dipping down to kiss me again. This one was soft, gentle. “The pack would take you in.”
“The pack?”
“Goddamn it, Grace! Quit using your feminine wiles to pull information out of me.”
“I’m just laying here!”
“And you’re very good at it.” He lowered his body to mine, letting all of his weight press me into the mattress. I savored the pleasant crush of his powerful body, wrapping my arms around his neck and arching my hips against his. There was a big pink elephant in the room—it was covered in fur and looked a lot like a wolf—and without a word, we agreed to ignore it.
I reached for the hem of Caleb’s shirt and pulled it up, pressing my hands against the taut skin on his pelvis, roving higher, over a hard stomach and a broad chest, exploring all that hot skin and thick muscle. Caleb made a pleasured sound deep in his throat—a sort of groan-growl-sigh. He pushed up, taking his weight off of me so that he could yank his shirt over his head and fling it to the floor, laying his glorious torso bare for my eyes and hands.
“Your turn,” he growled, reaching for the hem of my sweater. I lifted my arms and let him pull my sweater up. My camisole came with it, leaving me in just my bra.
“Ah,” Caleb breathed, his gleaming eyes arrested by the sight of my breasts overflowing my slightly-too-small bra. After a few months of good meals, I was filling my clothes back out—some places more than others. He leaned in, pressing his lips to the soft upper curve of one breast, then the other. His touch felt so good, so warm, so electric. I reached for the clasp and tugged my bra off. Caleb’s lips went immediately to one peaked, aching nipple and sucked.
“Oh!” My hands fisted in his hair, clutching him to me.
He laughed softly, a low rumble against my skin, and turned his attention to the other nipple.
“Mmmm… Caleb…” I arched against him, helpless under the onslaught of delicious sensations sparking through my body. His teeth closed around my nipple, and a jolt of pleasure nearly tipped me into orgasm, even though I hadn’t even taken my pants off yet. “God, I want you inside me,” I gasped.
My words clearly unleashed whatever restraint Caleb had been imposing on himself. He ripped my jeans off my legs like a magician doing the tablecloth trick. My panties came next. He shoved his own jeans down his hips, and then he was between my thighs, his cock pressed against me, hard and hot and big. Taking himself in hand, he swiped the head of his cock through my folds and I moaned as he glided over my clit.
“Oh, god, Grace. You’re so wet for me.”
“Caleb—I need—”
He dropped his weight back down on me, and then the blunt pressure of his cock was pressing inside of me, stretching me. I was soaking wet, but it’d been a while since I’d had sex, and Caleb was not a small man.
“Oh!” I flinched as the stretch became too painful. “Just, wait a second… Eeeeee—nope, wait—”
Caleb held stock still, panting against my ear. “It’s alright, Grace, we can stop. I can—”
I wrapped my legs around his waist. “I don’t want to stop. I just need a second.” I froze. “Unless you want to stop?”
A pained laugh escaped him. “Would rather not—but if you’re hurting…”
“I’m okay.” I flexed my legs wider, rolled my hips. He slipped deeper inside me, just an inch, but it felt like a yard. We both groaned, bodies trembling.
“You alright?” Caleb asked raggedly.
I nodded. “Go a little deeper.”
He shifted his hips carefully, pressing another thick inch inside of me. I felt my inner muscles relaxing, yielding. He gained another inch. And then another. And another, until he was buried all the way inside of me, filling me so good my head lolled back and my hips rocked up.
“Jesus, Gracie,” he moaned, his mouth moving hotly against my ear. “Fuck, you feel so good. Can I move? Please tell me—”
“Move,” I urged, rocking against him.
He drew back slowly and pushed back in with the same trembling restraint. “Okay?” he asked.
“So good,” I breathed, tightening my legs around his waist. “Faster.”
He gave me swift, shallow strokes, his breath coming in grunts with each thrust.
“Harder,” I gasped.
He made a pained sound in his throat, but his body was eager to obey, thrusting into me with a hard, fast, punishing tempo that matched the ragged beat of our breaths. I clung to him, hips rolling to meet his, riding the powerful movements of his body. He was on top of me, fucking me hard, but I felt like the conquerer—the one who’d taken a powerful beast and bent him to her will. He was so big and strong, but he was giving me exactly what I wanted, paying such careful attention to the cues of my breathing and the shift of my body. I wanted to ride him all night, use him, enjoy him, stretch out this heady pleasure for hours, but I could feel the strain in his clenched muscles, the fine tremors in his arms. He needed to come, but he was waiting for me. I reached my hand between us and circled my clit with one finger.
“Oh, fuck, Grace. Yes. Touch yourself. Let me see you come. Please—”
I was so close to the edge and his ragged pleas tipped me over. My legs tightened like a vise on his big, charging body, and I shook and trembled as my climax seized me. Caleb growled in my ear, thrusting desperately, losing his rhythm, giving me a few more surging thrusts, until he shuddered hard. He groaned like a dying beast as his cock pulsed inside of me and I felt the hot flood of his release.
He collapsed on top of me. His weight was… well, it was a lot. But I liked the heavy, warm crush of him. I kept my arms and legs wrapped tightly around him as we both gasped for breath. When he was able to move again, his cock had begun to soften inside of me. He pulled out gently and lay beside me, his face pressed into my hair, inhaling deeply.
“Are you smelling me?” I asked.
“Can’t help it if you smell so fucking good,” he answered, sounding a bit annoyed.
I smiled. A moment later, panic hit me. “We didn’t use any protection!”
Caleb’s hand slid to my arm, giving me a comforting squeeze. “I can’t carry anything you have to be worried about,” he said. “Can’t catch it, can’t pass it along.”
Is that a werewolf thing? I almost asked, before I realized that first of all, he couldn’t tell me if it was, and second of all, of course it fucking was. Every weird thing about the Teekkonlit Valley was a werewolf thing.
“Oh,” I said, relaxing. I knew I could believe him, even if the answer made no logical sense. “Well, I’ve got an IUD, so you don’t have to worry about a surprise in nine months.”
“I wouldn’t be worried,” Caleb said quietly.
That was a conversational avenue that I wasn’t even close to ready to discuss. So I changed the topic in the easiest way possible—I turned to face Caleb, wrapping my arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Several hours later, we’d missed dinner, but we’d made each other come three more times. We lay drowsily in bed together, neither one of us talking. I was content with the silence. It felt good. And besides, talking meant asking—and answering—uncomfortable questions. Like what are we doing? Where is this going? Things had changed between us. But how much they had changed, and how exactly, was a question I was too scared to ask. So instead, I lay quietly with Caleb’s strong arms wrapped around me, pressed against his heavy, warm body.
“Gracie,” Caleb said, late in the evening, sounding contemplative.
“Hm?” I tried not to tense. There was a big question coming, I could feel it. But I didn’t know if I was ready to answer it.
“We should—”
A scream shattered through the peaceful sil
ence of the night. Caleb and I sat bolt upright. He went to the window, staring down at the street. In a flash, he was off the bed.
“What’s going on?” I looked out the window. A huddled mass lay in the middle of the street, dark and unmoving.
“I don’t know. Stay here.” He ripped the door open and vanished into the hall, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The huddled shape in the middle of the street was Elena Morris. She was naked, splashed with gore, and as still as death. By the time I made it outside, a small crowd had gathered around her. I reached them in time to see Max Freeman gather her into his arms and lift her limp body from the street. The snow-packed street was splashed with vivid red where she’d been laying. That same red—shiny and slick and still steaming in the frigid air—coated the front of her naked body.
Caleb, Jess, and Connor were in the process of peeling off their jackets. I stared, dumbfounded as they dumped them on the ground and began pulling off their shirts as well.
Caleb stiffened suddenly, turning to face me. His face blanched, and he surged towards me. “Get inside, Grace. Hurry.” He caught me around the waist and all but carried me back into The Spruce.
“Caleb, what’s—”
“I can’t explain right now. But I need you to stay inside, okay?” He carried me across the threshold of The Spruce and deposited back on my feet, visibly relaxing. “Tell me you’ll stay inside.”
“I’ll stay inside,” I told him, a frisson of fear winding up my spine. “Just tell me—”
“You wouldn’t believe me. Stay inside and I’ll explain when I get back, okay? And if any strangers come to The Spruce, asking to be let in—do not let them in. Even if they’re injured, or freezing, or begging for help. Even if it’s a child. Do not invite them in.”
“What if they just walk in?” The entry doors to The Spruce were never locked, as far as I knew.
He held my gaze, a grim apology in his expression. “They won’t. Not without an invitation.”
I stared at him, horrified by the dawning realization of what he was telling me.
“I have to go.” He frowned, his gaze searching mine worriedly. “Stay inside,” he said one last time.
I nodded, still speechless. Caleb went back outside, and the door thudded heavily in his wake.
Had Caleb been trying to warn me about a… vampire? I’d already accepted the existence of werewolves, why should vampires be any harder to believe? And more importantly—why did the word tickle at my mind in a strange way? It was like a whisper of a memory I couldn’t quite recall.
I turned away from the door. Max was carrying Elena down the hall towards the guest rooms. I followed, swinging into the room as Max laid her in the bed. Natasha was there with a heap of towels, wiping gently at her skin. I hurried over. Her throat was a torn mess, her normally warm tan skin bleached of color.
“She needs a doctor,” I said, feeling faint at the sight of the gristle of her throat. “Is she even—”
“She’s alive,” Max said grimly. He looked to his mother. “I have to go. Grace shouldn’t be here, in case she…”
In case I… what? Or did he mean Elena? In case she… died?
“Go,” Natasha told him. “I will take care of them both.”
“She needs a doctor!” I objected as Max strode from the room. “Look at her. We need to get Harlan or—”
“Anna is on her way,” Natasha said calmly.
Anna Daaldinh was the other doctor at the Valley clinics. I’d never met her, since she tended to rotate her time between Eagle Ridge and the villages while Harlan mostly remained in Longtooth. But I knew she’d been practicing medicine in Longtooth since the early eighties, and had attended almost every birth in the Valley since then.
I hovered nervously while Natasha gently cleaned blood off of Elena. Her chest moved with shallow, rapid breaths. “God, her throat,” I said fretfully.
“It looks worse than it is,” Natasha said calmly.
“Is there something I can do to help?”
“You should go knock on the doors upstairs and make sure everybody knows not to leave The Spruce.”
I nodded. It was clear Natasha wanted me out of the room. I turned to leave when something caught my attention—a twinkling diamond ring on Elena’s left ring finger. I’d never seen her wear jewelry before. But more alarmingly, I recognized the ring.
The diamond was a small tear-drop shape, not even half a carat, flanked on each side by tiny opals. The band was yellow gold, with a thin channel engraved along the center.
My grandmother’s wedding ring.
I’d forgotten how brutal the cold inside of me had been. Over the last few months in Longtooth, I’d been slowly thawing without even realizing it. But now, at the sight of Grandma’s ring on Elena’s blood-soaked hand, ice splintered through me with such force that I doubled over. It was so cold it burned. My bones became brittle as glass. Burning-cold knives stabbed at my skin.
“Gracie?” Natasha turned to me, alarmed.
“Her hand—the ring—”
Natasha looked down and frowned. She reached for it.
“No!”
She recoiled, looking to me with wide eyes.
“Gracie, what—”
“He found me,” I told her hoarsely. The last time I’d seen the ring, it’d been in the chest with all my other mementos—including Freya’s collar and my middle school friendship bracelet.
“Who?” Natasha asked.
“Alex. He did this.” I went to the bed and gently removed the ring from Elena’s finger. Her hand was cold and stiff, and I nervously felt for a pulse. Thready, faint, but still there.
“Who’s Alex?”
“He’s the reason I came to Longtooth. I was in a relationship with him, and I tried to end it. But he wouldn’t let me go. So I ran away.” I spoke flatly, feeling oddly detached as I examined the bloodied ring in my fingers. “This was my grandmother’s wedding ring. He stole it from me.” The ring was a message. Alex was telling me that he had found me. The dreams were real. And if I didn’t come to him, he would hurt the people I cared for.
Natasha was quiet for a moment. Finally, she said, “You should go tell the others they need to stay inside.”
I nodded. My blood turned to solid ice in my veins. “Okay.”
I stayed up late into the night, sitting on the edge of my bed and staring out my window at the street. Elena’s blood was a scarlet flag. Grandma’s ring bit into my palm, clutched in my shaking fist. My entire body trembled with the painful cold. I hunched over until my forehead rested against the wooden sill.
I wanted to go downstairs and ask how Elena was doing, but both Max and Natasha had told me to leave the room. As well they should have. It was my fault. Elena was hurt because of me.
“Gracie.” The voice sounded like it came from inside my own head, but when I looked up, Alex was perched on the Juliet balcony outside my window. His beautiful golden face was taut with grief, his glacial blue eyes bleak with sorrow.
Alex. My lips moved around the shape of his name, but no sound came out.
He smiled sadly. “Will you come to me now, Grace?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“I didn’t want it to come to this. I tried asking nicely.”
I nodded. Tears welled in my eyes. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“I would never hurt you, Grace. You’re mine,” he said earnestly. “Forever mine. Put the ring on, love.”
I slid it on my left ring finger. Elena’s blood streaked my skin.
“There you go. Now, come outside. Don’t let anybody see you.”
I got up without a fight. I slipped my boots and my jacket on. I turned back to the window. Alex was watching me intently.
“Will Elena be okay?”
“Probably,” he said with a note of disdain in his voice. “Their kind are hardy. Now, come outside, darling.”
My body moved at Alex's c
ommand, and I didn’t resist. It felt like I was observing myself from the outside as I opened my door and walked quietly down the hall. At the bottom of the stairs, I stood still, listening. There was only silence. Moving quickly, quietly, I crossed the dining room and went to the back door. Easing the door open gently so that the hinge wouldn’t squeak, I slipped out into the cold.
“Into the woods,” Alex's voice guided me. He was nowhere in sight. I shivered and followed his directions. I walked along the edge of the garage, keeping to the shadows so anybody looking out their windows in The Spruce would be unlikely to notice me. I reached the edge of the forest on legs shaking so badly, I could hardly walk.
“Just a little further, Grace. I’m waiting for you.”
I stumbled in the deep snow, crossing into the cover of the pines. The snow-covered boughs blocked the moonlight, plunging me into total darkness. I groped blindly, feeling my way between needled branches. I was strangely unaffected—my pulse was steady, my breathing even.
“Almost there, Grace.”
The tree cover thinned and I stepped into a rocky clearing. I stood blinking in the moonlight, letting my eyes adjust. Slowly, a figure on the opposite side of the clearing came into focus—a shadow in the form of a man. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew now. There was no way to rationalize it away anymore.
“Hello, Alex.”
I walked towards him, but the shadow would not show his face.
“I told you to come alone, Grace.” His voice echoed inside my skull, foreboding and impatient.
“I did.” The words emerged as a soundless puff of vapor. Tears spilled from my eyes, freezing to my cheeks.
“You were followed.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. “No.” My voice was a croak. “I—”
A deep, animalistic growl reverberated through the clearing. I stiffened as a massive silver-gray wolf emerged from behind me. That menacing growl continued to rumble in his chest as he positioned himself between me and Alex.
Alex sighed. “Grace.” His voice was heavy with accusation.
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 19
