PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  "Yes I need to know why—why you left the way you did last week. "

  The only reaction to her question was a sudden hooding of his eyes, a deepening of the lines between his dark brows. She knew with inward certainty that he had been waiting for that question, he raised his head and stared down at her almost fiercely. "I can't tell you that."

  "Can't—or won't?" she challenged. There was a long moment when their wills clashed as gazes locked, a silent battle that was not the first of its kind between them. Joey knew it would not likely be the last, even when he was, again, the first to drop his eyes.

  "I can't." It came out almost as a growl, angry and defensive. His broad shoulders were hunched, and tension radiated from his body as surely as if it had taken solid form. Then, all at once, the tense posture dissolved. He straightened slowly, looking up from under his brows. "It doesn't matter anymore." His tone had changed from growl to purr, and Joey found her own annoyance draining away.

  "If it doesn't matter, does that mean you'll help me?" She was hardly satisfied with his answer, but on her list of priorities the most important thing was still clear. She pushed the memory of their kiss and its bizarre aftermath from her mind.

  Luke left the fireside and covered the space between them in one long stride. Joey found herself pressing back into the sofa. He seemed huge standing there before her, all restrained power and unpredictability. Tilting her head back to face him, she repeated stubbornly, "Will you help me, Luke?"

  The muscles of his face stiffened and relaxed, but his eyes remained fixed on hers ."I will."

  Closing her eyes briefly, Joey heard the words and felt her muscles loosen. "Thank you."

  The simple exchange seemed to release something in both of them, for Luke suddenly smiled—as close to a real smile as he usually came. Joey suspected genuine warmth in it, and she met it with one of her own. Before, she'd let her unrestrained joy at his offer of help push her to incautious behavior, and that wasn't going to happen again. But her relief and gratitude were very real nevertheless, she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them with a sigh of contentment.

  Once again they let the deep silence lie. In spite of her pleasant drowsiness Joey found herself watching Luke with that same unwilling fascination as he paced restlessly before the hearth. There was nothing in his walk, or in any of the restrained motions of his body, that was not graceful. She reflected idly that it must come from living in the wild, he was a woodsman, well versed in the ways of Nature. Perhaps his growing up here, on the edge of civilization, accounted for the strangeness that both piqued and intrigued her in spite of herself.

  It was easy to allow her thoughts to drift from idle speculation to admiration and then to recent memories. And to dreams. All at once Joey was remembering things she had tried to push away, distracting images that had no place in the scheme of her plans. She remembered the feel of Luke's body against her back when she had touched the music box, and days ago when—She tried to shut away the rush of sensation that came to her with the memories, but it suddenly gripped her with absolute and uncanny power.

  Her face was suddenly far hotter than the fire warranted. She cast the blanket aside and shivered with something distinctly other than cold. Closing her eyes did not keep the images away. Luke with his powerful arms locking her in an embrace she had no wish to escape, his lips on hers, all of her careful control utterly abandoned. That had been reality. For those moments in the meadow the entirety of the world had been a kiss unlike any she had ever known.

  And then the dreams: they were worse. In the dreams she was lost utterly, completely vulnerable. The first dreams had brought fear, but since the kiss they had been so compellingly erotic that Joey had forcibly locked them away where they could not interfere, could not destroy her best-laid plans.

  Until now. Now she was here alone in a cabin with Luke, aware of him in ways she had no ability to dismiss. Imagination took on greater power than she had believed it could—that she had not experienced since childhood, when she had learned how overwhelming reality could be and gave up dreaming.

  Until now.

  Now a new tension was building in her, wiping away the weariness and contentment as if it had never existed. She told herself it was irrational and worse to believe that Luke would be able to feel it, to sense the crumbling of her defenses. But when he met her eyes, again and again with increasing frequency as he paced about the room, she was almost sure he did. He had to know. He had been waiting for this moment. Whatever had prompted his inexplicable behavior after the kiss in the meadow, it no longer mattered.

  Joey made one last bid to shore up her emotional walls and build them anew with purposeful rationality. She knew she had failed as soon as she began.

  She watched him as he crouched before the fire, reflected light glinting off the chiseled planes of his face, the layered, rough texture of his hair. His worn jeans pulled taut across his thighs as he pushed a new log into the flames, she bit her lip and tried to ignore the tingling in the pit of her stomach. God, he was magnificent! The old plaid shirt he wore did very little to conceal the breadth of his shoulders, or the sleek, powerful muscle of his arms. She remembered that all too well, from her very thorough view of him on the lake shore.

  She had wanted to stay away from men. She had expected to meet her goals without emotional complications. She had determined to keep control and keep Luke Gévaudan where she wanted him. She had lost herself once already. And none of that mattered.

  Watching him in firelight—at this moment, suddenly—she wanted him more than she could have believed possible.

  He turned abruptly from the fire and looked directly into her eyes. The green-gold of them was briefly eclipsed by a glow of red, like an animal's eyes in the flash of a camera. For a moment her heart was in her throat. That wildness about him—the way he crouched there, alert and wary. The smooth glide of his movements. The fierce intensity in his gaze. That gaze was locked on hers now, unwavering, challenging.

  She was being sucked into those eyes, pulled out of herself. And still he did not look away. It was impossible, impossible to concentrate or to have any hope of fighting it. His eyes glittered, but not the slightest shift in their gaze warned her of his intent. Before she could take another breath Luke was on his feet, moving toward her with a swiftness that held her rigid with startlement.

  In another instant he was before her, his powerful hands locked on her upper arms, face inches from her own. His warm breath bathed her face. She could see the pupils of his eyes dilating, feel the quickening of her own pulse to the flutter of a trapped rabbit. Fear, shock, and desire struggled for dominance. Looking into eyes hot with emotions she suddenly understood, she knew too late she was completely out of her depth.

  His grip tightened, drawing from her throat an involuntary gasp. The smell of him was wild and potent, and she felt the pressure of his fingers like burning brands on her arms. The dreams and the vivid memory of his kiss destroyed the last of her defenses.

  Suddenly it was hot, far too hot, her clothes seemed like smothering bonds. She made a weak gesture to reach for the buttons of her shirt, to free herself. Free. The moan that escaped her seemed to come from some other throat. His face drew closer, her lips parted in delirious welcome. From somewhere far away she heard a deep rumbling, like the contented purr of some huge cat, but underlined with some subtle threat. His eyes were almost black now, all pupil, the powerful rush of his desire merged with her own. And then she could bear it no longer and shut her eyes in surrender, flinging her head back with a cry. Lips brushed against her throat, then the gentle pressure of teeth. It excited her beyond reason. She had left reason far behind.

  His lips traveled over her throat, and his tongue, hot and slightly rough, stroked across her chin. Eyes tightly shut, she searched blindly for his mouth with her own. She was burning, burning with unrelenting heat, from within and without. His teeth caught her lower lip between them, tugging gently, and then his tongue fo
llowed to soothe where they had passed.

  And then, at last, his lips were on hers, hard and yet incredibly mobile, dominating her as his eyes had done moments—ages—before. The rumble of a throaty growl vibrated against her as his tongue slipped into her mouth. Somehow his hands had left her arms and were around her, trapping her into immobility. His body was a lean, solid, supple cage from which she had no hope of escape. The pulse in her throat beat an irregular tattoo as his kiss deepened, claiming the innermost part of her, muffling her soft, urgent cries.

  His hands were moving over her now, pulling at her shirt, tugging it from the loose waistband of her jeans. Her urge to help him was impeded by the pressure of his body against hers, but she cooperated fervently as the force of his lips eased, peppering his mouth and rough chin with tiny kisses. His fingers found the bare flesh of her back, stroked down, pushed the jeans around her hips. She managed to free one hand long enough to unsnap the front of them, hardly aware of what she was doing. She was all instinct now, and her instincts wanted only one thing.

  In one smooth movement he eased her back onto the sofa, freeing her hands at last to tangle in his shirt, which had come half-undone. Trembling fingers worked at the buttons, brushed over the fine, mingled dark and pale hair of his chest. She pushed the shirt back from his shoulders, and he shrugged out of it as if it were an unwanted second skin. Her own shirt was trapped under her, open to expose her breasts to the heavy air, in spite of the heat, her nipples hardened almost painfully. His gaze—black, intense, unreadable in a way that should have frightened her—swept once over her body. It was as if his mouth and hands had touched every part of her.

  For a long, agonizing moment he paused above her, his power like a storm on the verge of breaking. And then his lips came down on hers again, trapping the cry that rose to meet them.

  There was no gentleness in him now as his mouth possessed hers. It was all raging passion released in a torrent, and it swept away the last fragments of Joeys rationality. With the freedom of primitive, unrestrained lust. Joey accepted his ferocity and met it with her own.

  Her tongue teased his and stroked over his lips, but he allowed her little chance to explore the limits of her own passion. Pinning her arms against her sides, his lips and tongue tasted her cheeks and chin, sliding down her neck with tiny nips and bites that made her writhe in pleasure.

  When Luke's mouth found her breasts, Joey felt herself dissolve into a world of sensation unlike any she had ever known. One of his hands released her arm and covered one breast as his lips and tongue explored the other, his fingers were hot and callused as they kneaded and stroked her burning skin. His tongue trailed in circles over the soft swell until they reached the nipple, when he took it at last into his mouth, Joey arched her back with a cry that came out as a whisper. He teased her nipples, one after the other, until she was tossing her head in abandon, and only then did he grant her mercy and slide his lips down to taste the underside of her breasts, licking the hollows and moving to the taut sensitivity of her belly.

  Joey's hands clenched and loosened in rhythm to his soft bites and kisses as he passed inexorably downward, circling each of her hipbones with teeth and tongue. His fingers found the center of her heat before his mouth did, they stroked over the acutely sensitive softness as she strained upward with breathless, soundless cries. From some distant place she could hear his breath coming harsh and fast, could feel his need like a living thing. He released her other arm and pressed his palms against her breasts as his mouth replaced his fingers, she reached down to tangle her own hands in his hair. He teased and caressed her, pulled her to the brink of fulfillment and then withdrew, again and again until she was sobbing with delicious agony.

  For an instant his hard body pulled away from her, as his hands fumbled with the zipper of his jeans. The sudden break in unrelenting sensation brought Joey back to herself, her hands were shaking as she moved to help him. Their eyes locked for the first time since they had begun, and there seemed to be nothing rational or human at all in Luke's, they echoed what she herself had become.

  When Luke was free of the restraints of his clothing, Joey's hands were there to take his hard length, stroking it with the same fierce desperation she had felt in his caresses. He stiffened, half-crouched above her, and for the first time he was as lost as she. He was fire and untamed masculine power in her hands, and she wanted that fire and power inside her to meet the burning of her own desire.

  His breath came in audible rasps now, vibrating in time to the stroking of her hand. Without any agreement but one forged of instinct and need, she dropped her hand, and he positioned himself against her. The heavy shaft pressed her inner thigh, slid without hindrance along the slick softness of her skin, poised at yielding wetness. Joey lifted her hips to take him in, felt the delicious pressure as he prepared to enter.

  And then it stopped. Joey opened eyes squeezed shut in unbearable anticipation and tried to focus on Luke where he lay, absolutely still, agonizingly motionless as his pale, wild eyes locked on hers again. Her body was taut with need for him, for his body on hers, for him inside of her—and he did nothing. She wanted to scream, to howl in frustration. There was no reasoning with her body now, or with his. With a moan she reached down for his hardness, wanting what only he could give, knowing he wanted it, too.

  He finally moved then, a jerk as if he'd been struck. The wordless cry he uttered was hoarse and harsh with denial, almost a snarl, his teeth bared in a grimace of rage and pain. Joey flinched and stared up at him, frozen in midmovement. His pupils had abruptly gone to pinpricks of shock. She stared in incomprehension as he flung back his head and made a sound of strangled, unmistakable agony.

  And then, in defiance of human limitations and her own intense need, he was suddenly gone from above her. In the space of an instant she was left bereft, alone and abruptly, unbearably cold. Dazed, she turned her head weakly against the worn cushions, searching. He was there, in the darkest corner of the room, hunched and naked, only his eyes burning from the shadows in reflected firelight. Staring at her, staring, as he had before, but now with the bleak coldness of a stranger. Cold.

  Joey shivered and plucked at the edges of her shirt, pulling it over her chest. Naked, suddenly vulnerable and frightened, she buttoned the shirt with fingers shaking now from reaction and returning sanity. Her jeans lay somewhere out of sight on the floor, to get them she'd have to sit up. Her eyes flickered again to the motionless shadow among the shadows. He was still staring, but his gaze seemed unfocused now. Closed off from her. She rolled upright and found her discarded jeans, moving as little as necessary to pull them back on. Again and again she glanced up to gaze blankly at the man she had desired beyond all reason, uneasy and frightened beyond comprehension. There was no desire left now—none but the last wisps of sensation fading from her sensitized body. She shuddered. It was so cold, colder than she would have thought possible. It felt as if she would never be warm again.

  He shuddered. He shivered with emotion and need so far beyond control that there was no hope of relief. In the pitiful concealment of the shadows, Luke fought a compulsion so powerful that it took every ounce of strength he possessed not to become something that would destroy him. And her.

  The small, weak part of his being that still possessed the ability to think berated him in an endless litany of contempt. He had known the risk and had chosen to ignore it. He had known from the moment he had kissed her and felt her passion flare to meet his own. His pride had told him he would have her and be damned to the consequences. His mind had been determined to control his body, but his body had betrayed him.

  He was still heavy with desire for her, and the only heat in his body seemed centered in the one place that could bring no ease. Every primitive instinct screamed for him to finish what he had started, but he could not do it. In the mass of contradictions that were his emotions, it was supreme irony that though his body had betrayed him, it was his mind that kept him now from completing the bet
rayal.

  Turning inward, Luke gave himself to the interior battle and pushed the sight and smell and feel of her from his consciousness. She did not exist. She was not here. He was alone as he had always been. Only that nonsensical repetition allowed him to keep a grip on sanity and bring him back to some semblance of what he had been before.

  When the chill in his soul had become no more than a tiny sharp point of pain and his body felt a cold that was of the purely physical realm, he found the world again. His eyes moved to the dying fire, little more than embers, around the familiar solid comfort of the cabin and, at last, to the form huddled on the sofa.

  Joey lay where he had left her. She was dressed again and had managed to pull the edges of the blanket up around herself, he could see by the steady rise and fall of her chest and by the soft looseness of her body that she slept, a small mercy granted to them both.

  It took all his will to compel his stiff body into motion, to toss more wood mechanically into the embers so that they would not die entirely by sunrise. It was morning already, he tilted his head with awareness of the coming day, though it was still several hours from dawn. Time enough, perhaps, for her to recover and for him to lock himself away beyond any hope of succumbing to her again.

  He stopped above her, hovering there and regarding her with forced dispassion. The soft hills and valleys of her body, which he had begun to discover and explore, were forever barred to him. The gentleness of her features in repose, all the serious care and determined pride eased away by sleep, had become no more than another pretty face. The sweet mystery that Joelle Randall might have been to him would remain unsolved.

  Luke bent down and gathered her into his arms, not smelling her or hearing her breathing or feeling her softness. He carried her across the bleak silence of the cabin and into the last room leading off the kitchen, where his bed lay. He undressed her carefully, wrapping her in a faded nightgown, folded and long unused, gleaned from one of the drawers. Her exhaustion was such that she did not waken, he could not have borne that when it took every ounce of strength he possessed to ignore her sweet, fragile nakedness under his hands.