“I said we, Leigh. To hell with Japan. Stay here. Let’s give this a shot.” He pulled back to see her reaction.
Her eyes couldn’t go any wider. Knockout eyes, killer smile, a glow that lit her from the inside. He read her acceptance before her mouth could move.
And then he kissed her, deep, hard, gentle and coaxing. He kept his eyes shut tight so she wouldn’t see the wetness he felt. His hand found her wetness, stroked those velvet petals until they blossomed.
“Kurt,” she breathed in between kisses, “you know how to rock a girl’s world.”
He pressed his fingers into her, holding her deep, weeping channel. “Answer me, Leigh. I’ll even climb in your window.” Every week if he had to. He rubbed her until she caught her breath.
“Three years is a long time to be gone.”
He nuzzled her ear. “And this has been a long time coming for us. Try with me, Leigh.”
After her initial surprise, she leaned into him, angling her head for better contact. She reached around his back and held on, smoothing her hands across the mcles, heating him through.
Her scent rose, warm and flush and he laughed with the headiness. “Let me take you home, little girl,” he murmured.
Home. Home is where the heart is. And her heart had always been here. But with Kurt making it clear he didn’t want her, she’d forced herself to look for a future elsewhere.
“You’re serious? You want me to stay?”
“We’ll make a home together, a life in the house where it all started. I’ve never been more serious.”
She shook her head no. His eyes turned dark at the negative shake. Thunder gathered in his expression, until she realized he’d misinterpreted. “I’m shaking my head because I can’t believe it. You sent me away. I only left because I couldn’t bear to be here without you.”
“No Japan?”
“No Japan.”
With that, he laughed from the bottom of his barrel chest and lifted her into his arms for a deep bear hug and whispered the words she’d longed to hear. “I love you. I have for years.”
Her heart kicked back into even pumps. “Even when I was twelve?”
“Especially then. You were honest and funny and smart. The way you felt about me was written all over your face, all the time. But I was old enough to know the time wasn’t right for us.”
“So, you waited?”
“And waited, and waited. Then, when I heard about your promotion, I couldn’t wait any longer. I may have exaggerated Marion’s reaction to the move, but I had to take drastic measures.”
“But you said she cried.”
“She did. But I’m not sure she went to her sister’s for any reason other than to give us time alone.”
“Her sister was always fit and healthy so I wondered that, too.”
“But just in case this move is difficult for her, I plan to have her old home movies transferred to DVD. We’ll watch them together.”
“Oh, Kurt. That’s very sweet.” She slid her hand to his ready cock. He shuddered with the contact. She squeezed the length until he groaned with need. “You made me wait a long time. You deserve to be punished.” She squeezed him again and slid her hand up and down his stiff rod.
He kissed her deeply. “A long time …” He pulled her under him, eager and ready.
She opened her legs and felt the press of heated flesh between her moist lips and sighed with contentment as he slid inside. “But worth the wait.”
Wolf at the Door
Charlene Teglia
One
Karen Smith stopped on the last leg of the trail below the Sol Duc falls, sat on the unforgiving ground, and leaned her back against a convenient Sitka spruce. She pulled off boots that her aching calves swore weighed four pounds apiece and pulled a bandage from her backpack to cover the blister that had formed above one heel. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes, just for a minute.
Just a minute to rest and then she’d shove her swollen feet back into her hiking boots, and walk the rest of the way to her car. After hours on the trail, she’d earned a breather.
Something made her eyes come open, some sound or sense that told her she was no longer alone. What she saw made her freeze.
A huge grey wolf sat on its haunches on the far side of the trail. Watching her. It was as big as a Shetland pony, easily six feet in length, maybe more. It outweighed her, outmuscled her, and Karen didn’t doubt it could outrun her.
The sheer size told her what it was, but that was impossible. The Olympic grey timber wolves had been extinct since the 1920s. The impossibility combined with exhaustion made her blurt out loud, “You’re extinct. You don’t exist.”
The wolf stood, stretched, turned to display all sides of itself to her, then sat down again with a shrug of its massive shoulders, as if to say, don’t believe your eyes, then.
Maybe it was a spirit wolf, not a physical predator that couldn’t exist anyway. Karen shut her eyes. “You’re not real. I’m imagining you. Go away.”
Feet padded towards her. She kept her eyes shut and refused to move, retreating into the childhood defence against monsters. If you don’t see it, if you don’t move, it can’t see you. Fur brushed against her bare upper arm. A muzzle nosed against her cheek.
Oh, God, she wailed inside. But the physical contact soothed her and some inner certainty told her this wolf wouldn’t harm her.
The wolf’s breath huffed against her ear as it sniffed her. It gave her a gentle nudge. When she didn’t move, she felt teeth nip at the fabric of her tank top. Karen’s eyes flew wide open. Satisfied that it had her attention, the wolf grasped her boots in its jaws and dragged them to her. The action said, Hurry up. Get moving.
“You’re not a normal wolf.” Since she couldn’t win an argument with a figment of her imagination, Karen fumbled her socks on, then the boots. While she laced them up, the wolf let out a soft yip. “OK, OK. I know when I’m not wanted.”
The wolf gave her an indecipherable look and rubbed its great head against her bare leg. Then pushed her pack closer with its muzzle.
“So you don’t mind my company, but for some reason you want me to haul ass out of here.” Karen bent to pick up her backpack and slid it on again. She grimaced as she rotated her shoulders under the weight. “Fine. I’m going.”
Time to get moving anyway. Twilight had crept up on her. She’d stayed out later than she’d meant to. Soon the northern summer extended daylight would give way to the rising full moon. Her animal guide hurried and worried her all the way to her car, and then it kept to the shadows while she took out her keys, lowered the backpack, unlocked her trunk and dropped it in.
She closed the lid with a thunk then opened the driver’s side door. Habit made her scan the interior of the car for hidden dangers. Satisfied that no knife-wielding psychopath hid behind her seat, Karen gave the wolf a wave. “OK. Everything’s fine. You can go now.”
It let out a snarl that turned her blood to ice and launched itself towards her. No, not towards her, she realized, past her. Whirling to put her back to the car, Karen saw the wolf putting itself between her and the looming figures of five men. Where had they come from? She hadn’t seen anybody near her parked car. Had they been waiting for her? Was this what the wolf had come to warn her about?
The men scattered, but Karen didn’t wait to find out what they’d wanted. She jumped into the car, slammed the door shut and started the engine. By the time she had the car aimed down the road, the wolf and the men were gone. The only evidence that anything had happened was her pounding heart and the adrenaline that raced through her, fuelling the ancient reflex to fight or flee. Her feet voted on flight, since she was unarmed and outnumbered, and she let them carry her, stepping on the gas pedal and heading for home.
The invaders to his territory scattered and fled when he confronted them. He would have been content to watch and wait, to see why they’d come, what they wanted, but then he’d picked up the woman’s scent. His senses told him
what she was, if not who. And he hadn’t been able to stay hidden when his mate was in harm’s way. He’d shown himself to her, risking her terrified response. Counting on it to scare her into fleeing for safety. Because despite the undeniable instinct that identified her as his mate, she was human. Unchanged.
But she hadn’t run from him.
The memory warmed him. Her chestnut hair, cut short in layers, invited touching. Her clear hazel eyes, flecked with brown, had a steady look that pleased him. Her angular features gave her a distinctive beauty. The faint vanilla scent of her lingered with him. The softness of her skin and her leggy, lean form entranced him. He wanted a string of uninterrupted days and nights to explore and discover all of her. To claim her.
He’d have to find her first. And fast. Because the group of strange wolves he’d been tracking since they entered his territory had been lying in wait for her. As men, not in their animal forms. In his wolf form, Sam was faster, stronger. He could catch up to her car and see which way she turned. He’d follow. He already knew her licence plate number. He would learn her name and where she was staying. That should be easy enough. She was a newcomer here or he would have discovered her before.
The knowledge that his mate was so close, and in danger, drove him to tireless pursuit. When he learned where she lived, the irony that she’d been directly under his nose while he remained oblivious made him want to howl.
Karen parked by her cabin overlooking Lake Crescent and nearly ran from her car to the front porch. Once she had the heavy wooden door bolted behind her, she did a quick visual check of the cabin’s interior. The wood stove sat at the centre of the open floor plan. Her living space circled it, beginning with the kitchen area, which gave way to a trestle-style table with two benches on either side, then a faded couch next to two tall and overstuffed bookcases.
Nothing looked out of place. She checked the bathroom that was pretty much a closet on the far side of the kitchen, the only room with a door. It, too, was empty except for a small sink, toilet and shower stall.
She climbed the ladder up to the half-loft that served as her bedroom. The big log bed covered with a bright quilt, nightstand and dresser all looked just the way she’d left them before she’d headed out for a hike in an effort to find some peace or at least wear herself out. On impulse, she opened the deacon’s bench at the foot of the bed. Tucked under neatly stacked clean sheets and an extra quilt, an antique dagger rested. She covered it back up and closed the bench, exhaling relief.
The cabin and its contents had been left to her when her employer, an eccentric collector and historian, passed away. Jobless and bereft at the loss of the man who had been more like a grandfather than a boss, Karen had left Seattle for the rustic location to mourn and regroup.
When she’d taken possession, the post office had delivered the package they’d been holding for her. A package addressed by the man she’d just buried. She’d found the dagger inside, along with some notes about its history, which read like the wildest fantasy.
Maybe Cyril Foster had started to suffer some insidious erosion of his brilliant mind towards the end of his life. Or maybe he really had left a genuine bone-handled Damascus dagger from the 1500s that contained the soul of a mad German werewolf in her keeping.
Since he’d also promised her that she’d be protected by a wolf guardian and warned her of dark forces that had hunted the dagger through the centuries, Alzheimer’s seemed more likely. Except that she’d just been saved by a guardian wolf.
Coincidence? Maybe. But the odhone calls with nobody on the end of the line that ended with a disconnection, the men who had been waiting by her car and the frequent sensation of being watched that had dogged her since shortly after she’d arrived at the cabin meant something was going on, and that dagger was probably in the middle of it.
Cyril’s collection had been accounted for in his will. As his personal assistant, she’d helped catalogue it. This piece hadn’t been included. She’d seen the dagger for the first time when she’d opened the package Cyril had mailed to the cabin the week he died. If nobody knew he’d had it, who would come looking for it? Somebody who knew it was in his possession, somehow. A piece that old, with a history that colourful, somebody must have known something about it. Maybe somebody suspected Cyril had kept it hidden even after his death.
“If you’d bothered to explain any of this while you were alive, it would make my life so much easier,” Karen said out loud.
But he hadn’t, and now he was beyond reach. She couldn’t ask him to explain, couldn’t demand that he tell her what was really going on. All she could do was carry out his final instructions to her and keep the dagger hidden.
The incident in the parking lot made her wish she’d rented a safe deposit box to stash it in. It had seemed safe enough hidden at the cabin before, when she’d believed nobody else knew about it.
She regretted her failure to find a more secure hiding place even more when the sound of an engine outside was followed by the crunch of booted feet on gravel and a knock at her door.
Two
Alarm made her heart race. Had one of those men managed to follow her here?
“Stop being paranoid,” Karen muttered to herself. It was probably a neighbour.
Washington’s sparsely populated Olympic Peninsula wasn’t exactly the kind of place where she had to fear living alone. Still, she moved as quietly as she could coming down the ladder. She peeked out of the window to try to identify the visitor.
She didn’t recognize the mud-spattered pickup. She could tell it was one of the expensive ones, designed like a luxury car with four-wheel drive and a truck bed. She wasn’t sure if the evidence of money was a good sign or a bad one.
Her mysterious visitor knocked again, harder. “Miss Smith? Are you all right?”
The deep, throaty masculine voice was easy on her ears. If only it was equally easy on her nerves.
“Do you need assistance?” The voice took on a more urgent tone.
Karen hissed a short, foul word under her breath. Somebody must’ve seen her drive in like a bat out of hell and assumed she’d had an accident of some sort. If she didn’t want an ambulance to follow on this man’s boot heels, she’d better answer.
“I’m fine,” she called back, pitching her voice to carry. “Give me a second to get to the door.”
She eyed the safety chain on her door. If she undid the bolt, but left the chain on, it offered some measure of protection while she checked out her visitor. If he proved harmless, she could let him in. If he were a neighbour who just wanted to make sure she was all right, a glimpse would be enough to reassure him.
Karen unlocked the door and opened it the slight span allowed by the chain. “Hello.”
“You are all right, then.” The man on her front porch seemed to relax fractionally, but he didn’t smile. He ran his fingers through the rumpled length of wavy blond hair that hadn’t had a cut recently and regarded her with brown eyes that seemed to see too deeply into her. He had the kind of down-to-earth good looks that could have made w a movie star, but if he had been one, she would have recognized his face. He wore a short-sleeved white T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and muscular arms and chest before disappearing into the waistband of faded jeans. Cowboy boots completed the ensemble.
He wasn’t dressed like a thug, or wearing the kind of clothing that might mark him as a wealthy collector who might be trying to acquire a Damascus dagger. And he appeared to be near her age, late twenties to early thirties.
“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for checking.” Karen gave him a polite half-smile.
“So you’re the one who inherited this place from Cyril,” her mystery man went on. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Did you know him?” Karen asked, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck stirring in alarm. She’d worked for Cyril for ten years. That provided ample opportunities for her to get acquainted with his friends, family, peers, business associates. This man was a stranger to her.
>
“Not really,” the man said with a slight shake of his head. “We knew each other by reputation. And I knew the cabin was bequeathed to his long-time assistant. I got a letter from him asking me to keep an eye on the place.”
Cyril had been a busy man at the end of his life. Busy putting events in motion that he’d kept secret from her until after he was gone.
“I see,” Karen said, although she didn’t.
He motioned towards the door with one hand. “Since you’re all right, would you like to invite me in? I could use a cup of coffee.”
Not subtle. But if he was some sort of thug, he could threaten her with a weapon through the partial opening in the door. He could break a window to get inside. If he meant her harm, unchaining the door wouldn’t make matters much worse. And if he was even distantly familiar with Cyril, maybe he knew something that could help her put together the pieces of the puzzle she’d been left with.
“Sure.” She closed the door, removed the chain and opened it all the way. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Sam. Sam Owen.” He held out a hand, and Karen placed hers in it. As soon as she did, their hands gripped and a strange tingling buzz spread up her arm until her body seemed to vibrate with it. Her heart thudded unevenly in her chest. She stared into his eyes, unable to look away. Her breath seemed to stop.
His eyes darkened as he looked into hers. He stepped closer and raised his other hand to her hair. His fingers combed through the chunky layers, testing the texture before sliding down to curl under her chin. “Karen.” His voice went lower, dropping into a husky timbre that shivered down her spine. He made her name sound like a caress.
“Sam.” She said his name on a breath of sound and licked her lips in nervous reaction. What was wrong with her? She was holding on to his hand and staring at him like she’d never seen a man before. But she couldn’t let go or look away. She had to fight the urge to move closer, to run her hands through his hair the way he’d touched hers and then run them lower to trace the lines of his shoulders, the wall of his chest and abdomen.
The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance Page 25
