A bell chime sounded. “Oh, that means a new patient walked in – let me go see what they need,” Darlie said.
Virginia sat back and drank more coffee, and a minute later Darlie poked her head through the door.
“Hey, you’re lucky. You’ve got one more urgent case, and it’s an incredibly hot, sexy wolf.”
“Can’t be sexier than my husband, because that’s not possible,” Virginia said without thinking, then she nearly choked on her coffee. Had those words just come out of her mouth? They had. And it had felt so natural.
She really missed him, she realized. She missed him so much she could swear that she scented him there. In fact…
“Well, well, that just did my ego a world of good.” Carver was standing in the doorway with a huge grin on his face. “Of course, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
Virginia cleared her throat. “Carver! You startled me! I texted you to let you know where I was.” Then she glowered at Darlie. “Very funny. Now, he’ll be unbearably smug all day.”
“Ha! You two are adorable. I’m glad you made up.” Darlie beamed at them both happily. “You should take her to get something to eat,” Darlie said to Carver. “She did a lot of healing this morning. She was a healing maniac.”
“She’s a maniac, all right.” Carver walked over as Virginia stood. Her legs were shaky. “Whoa. You all right? You’re a little pale.”
She leaned on him as they walked out. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “My strength is coming back already.” It was. Carver was warm and smelled delicious and his energy and strength seemed to flow into her.
“I came to apologize,” Carver added.
“You did?” Virginia asked, surprised.
“Yes. I overreacted last night when you said you can take care of yourself. I snapped at you in front of a bunch of people, and actually, you should just punch me really hard right now. That was completely unacceptable of me.”
“I would if I thought it would hurt,” Virginia said regretfully, “but you’re just one big slab of muscle and I doubt you’d even feel it.”
“You could use a baseball bat or something. I’d feel that a little bit,” Carver suggested.
“No, I owe you an apology too. I shouldn’t have just snuck out without telling you where I was going. You’re right, it was rude. I wouldn’t do that to any of my friends. I guess I’m still just super sensitive because of my crazy family. I can’t believe they haven’t followed us here to spy on me.”
Carver steered her into the café. “You know, seriously, I can’t believe it,” she said. She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe it,” she mused. “They’re here somewhere. I know it.”
“Or you’re a crazy woman. I mean, you’re my crazy woman, and I love that about you,” Carver added hastily. “I mean they couldn’t be at the lodge, right? You’d have scented them or spotted them.”
“What about that couple who are staying in their room the whole time and never coming out?” she asked.
As Carver ordered for her, she called the lodge’s main office and spoke to Delores. “I’m just wondering, some friends of mine said they might come up here, but I haven’t seen them around,” she said, as Carver shook his head and rolled his eyes at her. “The people who were staying in that cabin and never coming out…is their last name Battle?”
“Oh, no. It’s Jorgennsen,” Delores said. “They’re from upstate New York.”
They could have used a fake name, she thought. “Is the guy a big, beefy-looking wolf?”
“Nope. Meek and mild-looking. He seems very nice. He and his wife are so in love, it just melts your heart.”
“Thank you,” Virginia said as the waitress set a basket of fresh, hot rolls in front of them. Carver was laughing at her.
“What?” she demanded. “You don’t know my family like I do. They may not be in that cabin, but they’re here somewhere.”
Virginia and Carver ended up heading back their cabin after they’d finished eating, at Darlie’s insistence. She promised she’d call Virginia if there were any emergencies, but she refused to take up any more time on their honeymoon, she said.
Virginia felt a strong sense of anticipation as Carver parked the car, a pulsing of desire that throbbed throughout her body and made it hard to concentrate. She wanted Carver. She wanted him badly. She’d promised him that they could be together as man and wife while they stayed there, and it was certainly important to keep a promise, wasn’t it? Very important.
In fact, it was so important that she should probably rip his clothes off as soon as they walked through the door. So that he could see that she was a woman who kept her promises.
Good God, she’d become so lust-crazed that she was babbling even in her private thoughts.
“No, that last bit was out loud,” Carver said, grinning hugely. “But I’d love to hear what you were saying in your head right before that.”
“Argh!” Her cheeks flamed red with embarrassment. “It was all that healing – it scrambled my brain!”
“Of course it did.”
Smug bastard. She shouldn’t have said he was sexier than anyone earlier. Now there’d be no living with him.
“The door is ajar,” Carver said as they walked towards the cabin. He stopped. “I smell it. Do you smell it?”
“Yes. That thing. Whatever it was. I smell it really strongly this time.” Alarm blossomed inside her. Damn Clifford and his ghost stories. “It’s been inside our cabin.”
Chapter Twelve
Fur shot through Carver’s skin, and a low growl rumbled up from his throat. It angered him on a primal level. Danger. Danger to his woman.
“Stay here,” he said brusquely. He flung the door open and walked in to the living room.
The scent hung heavy in the air, sharp and offensive to his nostrils. It was entirely unnatural. His natural instinct was to recoil, to move away from it, and he never recoiled from anything.
He stood and listened for a moment. He heard nothing; whatever had been there was almost certainly gone now.
Couch cushions had been tossed onto the floor and a vase from a side table had been knocked over. Other than that, nothing else was disturbed.
He walked into the bedroom, where he saw the comforter and pillows scattered on the floor and the nightstand lying on its side.
Nothing was disturbed in the kitchen or the bathroom – but on returning to the living room, he realized there was another smell there. It was the smell of a male wolf, and it was somehow familiar to him. He snarled instinctively; a male trespassing on his territory?
“You can come in,” he called to Virginia.
She walked in and slowly scanned the room, then walked around the cabin with him.
“I smell the creature, or creatures, but I also smell someone else,” he said. “A male wolf was here too.”
She nodded and sniffed, then confusion clouded her features. “I swear to God, I smell Edward,” she said.
“I think you’re right. I haven’t been around him as much as you, but I think you’re right. That little mutt just made a fatal error.”
Virginia winced. “Maybe you could just talk to him first.”
“After he broke in to my honeymoon suite looking for my wife?” Carver struggled to keep his rage down as his fur itched underneath his skin. He knew that Edward was absolutely no threat to him, but the insult, the offense of any wolf putting the moves on an Alpha’s wife…it was unforgiveable.
“I know, I know. It was a really stupid thing for him to do. I’d really appreciate it if you gave the pathetic little bastard one last chance,” she pleaded. “Only one, I swear, and then if he ever comes around again, he’s pretty much issued you a Death Challenge.”
“We’ll see.” That was the best he could offer, and it was a huge concession. Carver didn’t want to distress his bride, but he also didn’t know if he could keep his fury under control when he found Edward. And find the little weasel he would, no matter how l
ong it took.
Virginia looked around the room, puzzled. “You know, not that much is broken. The damage could be a lot worse. Given how…awful, how wrong, these things smell, I somehow would have expected the room to be completely destroyed.”
“True, but God only knows what those things would have done if you’d been here when they broke in. Let’s go back to the lodge where there’s more people, and then I’m going to do some tracking.”
When they told Clifford and Delores what had happened, they both burst out with exclamations of dismay.
“Nothing was stolen?” Delores asked, looking puzzled.
Virginia shook her head. “Nothing was stolen. A few things were knocked over. It’s very odd. Have the other guests mentioned anything?”
“No, and I’m sure they would have, but I’ll go start calling them all right now to make sure. And I’ll call the sheriff,” Delores said, and hurried behind the counter, where she grabbed the phone.
“Maybe we should have locked our doors,” Virginia mused.
“We’ll probably need to start doing that until this is resolved. We’ve never needed to before,” Clifford said. Shifters typically didn’t lock their doors. They lived in small towns; they all knew each other. If somebody was a bad apple, they were typically discovered pretty quickly and either moved on out or were culled from the pack. Shifter justice was harsh but efficient.
Carver growled impatiently. “I need to get out there and start tracking,” he said.
“The sheriff will be here in a few minutes,” Delores called from behind the desk. “He’s asking that you wait until he gets here.”
Carver nodded, stifling the urge to argue. He wanted to get out there right now, but he’d respect the local Alpha’s request. He and Virginia settled in to wait. Sheriff Peter Marsh, who arrived ten minutes later with five deputies, was also the local pack’s Alpha. He was a man in his fifties, his face lined and his hair shot through with gray. Privately, Carver immediately noticed that the man was one of the weaker Alphas he’d ever encountered, and he could sense it in the way his men behaved towards him. It wasn’t blatant, but they weren’t particularly deferential, interrupting him several times and shooting him looks of impatience as he slowly drawled his questions.
When the sheriff and his men went to Carver and Virginia’s cabin so they could pick up the scent, Sheriff Marsh stopped before they even walked through the front door. His jaw set with anger.
“That’s the same scent that I picked up at my sister’s home when it burned down ten years ago,” he said, his tone turned grim.
“I didn’t realize it was your sister and her family,” Carver said, nodding sympathetically. “My condolences.”
“My sister, her husband, their two children.” The sheriff’s face twitched in a grimace. “My son was born that year. He never even got to meet them.”
Carver felt the anger inside him swelling. Shifter women and cubs, murdered? Not even safe in their own homes? He wanted to get out there and rend flesh with his fangs. “Let’s go out and find these monsters and make sure they don’t hurt anybody else.”
* * *
“There they are,” Delores said. “All of them,” she added to Virginia, who let out a sigh of relief. Most of the male guests had joined the hunt, forming teams and fanning out over the countryside. Virginia and the other females had gathered inside the lodge and downed brandy and tried to distract themselves.
The men ran up to the front door in one big pack, shifted, and came inside the mud room entrance to get dressed. They didn’t look happy as they trooped into the living room.
But on the bright side, everyone was alive and nobody was bleeding, Virginia thought. She felt the tension inside her uncoil as Carver walked over to her and settled down next to her on the couch.
“We didn’t find anything,” Sheriff Marsh said, shaking his head. “We followed the scent, but they made it down to the river, where we lost them. We’re going to be stationing twenty of my pack out here around the clock until we catch those things. We’re also going to send patrols out into the woods every day.”
“Edward did the same thing – ran to the river, so we lost him,” Carver added, speaking quietly to Virginia.
She was actually relieved. She’d feel terrible if Carver killed Edward, and she couldn’t believe that Edward had been stupid enough to pursue a woman who had been claimed by an Alpha. Surely he didn’t think he could stand up against Carver in a fight? He wouldn’t last ten seconds.
“I understand, under the circumstances, if you want to end your stay here early. We’d issue refunds,” Clifford said to the assembled group.
“Hell, no. We’re not going to run out on you while you’re in danger,” Devon said, and the other shifters there nodded. Shifters might scrap with each other frequently, but when faced with a major threat, they always banded together.
“We’ll go out on patrol with you,” Carver agreed. “I do think that everyone should move to the main lodge, if you have enough room for us. Not quite as much privacy, but much safer.”
“Absolutely!” Delores said. “We’ll get your rooms ready immediately.”
Virginia and Carver hastily packed their clothes, wrinkling their noses at the bitter scent in the room, which lingered even though all the doors had been left open.
They were relocated to a room at the far end of the hallway on the first floor of the main lodge. It was a generously sized room, with a hot tub and a big, sturdy four-poster bed.
Delores confided that the loved-up couple in the far cabin had insisted that they would be fine, and refused to come to the main lodge. They’d promised that they would call if they heard or smelled anything suspicious.
“Isn’t that romantic,” she sighed dreamily. “Well, you two call if you need anything.” She shut the door and left them alone.
“Well, this honeymoon is turning out to be far more exciting than I expected,” Virginia sighed, setting her suitcase down by the closet.
“Hey!” Carver’s tone was indignant. “You thought a honeymoon with me was going to be boring? Okay, that just got added to the list.”
“List of what?” Virginia scoffed.
His lips curled in a slow, sensual grin that made her stomach flip-flop. “List of reasons that I’m going to spank your hot ass right now. Let’s see, didn’t tell me where you were going yesterday, thought our honeymoon would be boring, and generally gave me a hard time from the minute I first met you.” He rubbed his hands together. “You’re going to be sitting down very gingerly for the rest of the night.”
“Oh,” Virginia breathed, and she felt her nipples swell into tight little buds. Carver moved towards her slowly, with a feral gleam in his eyes. She met his gaze challengingly, leaning against the footboard of the bed.
“Tell you what. If you can catch me, you can spank – hey!” she shrieked as he grabbed her, sat down, and flipped her over so she was lying across his knees. It happened so fast she barely had time to catch her breath.
“You were saying?” he taunted as he yanked down her pants. She squirmed and kicked, but he just pinned her arm behind her back and ran his free hand lightly over the skin of her butt cheeks. “You sure didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“You son of a bitch!” How dare he mock her? She writhed, but he had her pinned and helpless, and she was panting so hard with desire that it made her dizzy.
“Time for your punishment. I’m thinking ten smacks on your delightful ass ought to do it. Then I’m going to make you beg me to let you come. And if I’m feeling generous, I might.”
“Screw you!”
“Okay, twelve smacks it is. Care to make it fifteen?”
She gritted her teeth and kept silent, tensing as she felt him raising his arm in the air.
Chapter Thirteen
The first blow wasn’t hard, just a light, brisk smack that warmed her bottom. She caught her breath and squirmed on his lap as he gently ran his hand over her buttock, kneading the flesh a
nd allowing his fingers to play over the slight tingling of her skin. Electrical impulses skittered up her spine and she wriggled again, feeling the pressure of his erect cock where he held her pinned over his lap.
“One,” he said, and raised his hand again.
She tensed with anticipation, giving an involuntary squeak when his hand landed on the lower slope of her ass cheek, spreading a light, sensual heat through her flesh. A trickle of arousal slicked her upper thighs and her pussy tingled. She could feel her nipples beading against the fabric of her bra, and her breathing came faster.
“Two.” Carver’s voice was low and commanding, and although part of her chafed at the control he was exerting over her – both emotional and physical – another part gloried in the sensation of being helpless in his arms, subject to his every sexual whim.
On the third blow the warmth spread, a delicious heat that radiated up her spine and down the backs of her thighs, making every inch of her skin feel sensitive and alive with nerve endings that sang beneath his touch. He stroked the flesh again, the slight roughness of his palm amplified by the heightened sensations.
The fourth blow stung – a kind of delicate pleasure-pain that made her gasp and bite her lip, aware of the trickle of moisture from her aching core. Her skin felt sore and hot, and though she wanted to cry out for him to stop, to soothe the tender flesh with soft kisses and whisper gentle words of reassurance to her, she also longed for the firm impact of his big hand on her helpless body.
She could feel the blood rushing to her head as she hung over his lap, making her feel intoxicated and strange. And she could feel blood, too, pooling in the sensitive tissues of her pussy as her clit throbbed and her folds became engorged and slick with desire.
With each successive blow, each ringing slap to her upturned ass, the heat intensified and a thrilling soreness began to blossom across her flesh. She found herself panting and whimpering, squirming on his lap, rubbing against his twitching erection. She tried to part her thighs, to urge him to touch her most intimate flesh, but her ankles were still tangled in her pants, holding her legs together.
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