Hell's Wolves MC: Complete Series Six Book Box Set

by J. L. Wilder

  Would he allow that? He wanted her mated, but maybe he would let her help decide who her mate was. She thought that was possible. Hadn’t Rita said that if she expressed a preference, Matthew would take it into consideration? Hazel had felt apathetic about the whole thing at the time, but she didn’t now.

  Would Matthew allow her to choose Emmett?

  That seemed far less likely.

  She knew what her alpha thought of wild wolves, and it was nothing good. Matthew would be appalled to hear of the way she’d been living since she’d been with Emmett. It wasn’t just the sex that would shock him—although, God, she hoped he’d never find out about that—but the dirty diners in which they’d eaten, the motels in which they’d stayed, the fact that she’d ridden through several states on the back of a motorcycle. Matthew would hate all those things, and she thought he might hate Emmett for introducing her to them.

  Just because we’re wolves, Matthew liked to say, doesn’t mean we have to be animals.

  But there was something so appealing about the animal side of her. It was something she’d never been able to explore until she’d been kidnapped. Pregnancy, she supposed, would bring out something a little more animal than what she was accustomed to. Motherhood would heighten her wolf instincts. But until now, her whole life had been extremely human.

  And this was just the tip of the iceberg. There wasn’t really anything very animalistic about eating in a diner, was there? That was only wild by Matthew’s uptight standards. Hazel wondered how truly wild Emmett could get. He’d mentioned hunting for his dinner. The idea frightened her, and yet, something about it spoke to her. Matthew would hate that too, she thought. He would call Emmett a beast.

  Emmett pulled the motorcycle over to the side of the road and dismounted. Hazel followed suit. “Are we taking a break?” she asked.

  “We’re taking a sleep break,” he said. “We’ve been riding for about twelve hours. We need to be fresh for tomorrow.”

  It hadn’t felt like twelve hours. It had felt more like two. Hazel couldn’t believe how fast time seemed to go by when she was riding with Emmett. She would have been happy to stay on the bike with him for hours more.

  Now, though, she looked around and felt baffled. “There’s not a motel here,” she said.

  “No,” he agreed. He took the bike by the handlebars and pushed it off the shoulder and into a cornfield by the side of the road.

  She followed. “There’s not anything here. Where are we supposed to sleep?”

  “We’ll crash here in the field,” he said. “It’s plenty safe.”

  “Last time we slept in a field, we were attacked!” she reminded him.

  “This time’s different,” he said. “The Rangers are west of us. They’re not going to find us here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure,” he said.

  “Can’t we get a motel?’

  “Not if we want to keep being able to eat,” he said. “I’m running low on funds.”

  “So, we’re just supposed to sleep here?” she asked. “On the ground?”

  “Haven’t you ever been camping?” The look on his face made it clear that he knew perfectly well that she hadn’t.

  “We don’t have a tent,” she pointed out. “How can you call it camping without a tent? Before, the night we got attacked, we at least had that tarp.”

  “There’s nothing like sleeping under the stars,” Emmett said, propping his bike up on its kickstand between two rows of corn. “Besides, it’s not cloudy or anything. It’s not going to rain on us. You’ll be fine. Come on, let’s find a good spot.”

  She followed him dubiously. “How are we going to know a good spot when we see one?”

  “This spot here looks pretty good,” he said, gesturing around.

  Hazel looked at the ground, then turned in a slow circle, taking stock of her surroundings. She couldn’t see how this patch of ground was any different than any other in the immediate area. “This isn’t some kind of practical joke, is it?” she asked weakly.

  He smiled. “Come on. You wanted to know what it was like to live like me, right? Well, this is how I spend most of my nights.” He took her hand and sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. “If it makes you more comfortable, we can shift and sleep in wolf form,” he said.

  She stared. “You can sleep in wolf form?”

  “Um. Of course?”

  “You don’t just shift back to human once you’re asleep?”

  “Why on earth would that happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only used my wolf form in training exercises.”

  “What training exercises?” He laid back and held out an arm and she leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder. “Is this something else Matthew came up with?”

  “I have no idea,” she admitted. “I always thought it was a normal thing.”

  “Well, what did you train to do?”

  “It wasn’t, like, to do anything,” she said. “Running, mostly. There were races in human form and races in wolf form. Men against men and women against women.”

  “Did you ever win?”

  She laughed. “Of course not. I’m not very fast. Besides, the others had things like gym memberships and daily jogs, and I was stuck in the house all the time. I never exactly had the chance to increase my fitness level.”

  “What was the point of these races?”

  “They were good for us,” she said, shrugging. “That’s what Matthew always said.”

  “Another healthy choice, huh?”

  “Just exactly what do you have against health?” she asked him.

  “Nothing,” he said. “But I do think that if you spend some time outside every once in a while, healthy choices happen naturally. You just end up running and walking. Matthew’s approach seems to have been to keep you indoors as much as possible and then to let you out for short stints and try to cram all your exercise in at once.”

  “He was just trying to keep me safe,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t answer, but she knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing he’d articulated to her back at the diner. Matthew had done a terrible job of keeping her safe. And once she’d been kidnapped, it seemed, he hadn’t really even tried to bring her home.

  She was beginning to feel as though everything she knew about her alpha was wrong.

  “You’re safe here,” Emmett said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She snuggled close to him and didn’t answer.

  “I know they found us the last time we were in a field,” he said. “But that was just a few miles from where they’d had you in that bunker. We’re hours away now from where we saw them last. Whole states away.”

  “Where are we?” she asked, tipping her head up to look at him.

  “Virginia.”

  “Virginia?” She frowned. “I thought we were in Ohio before. That’s what you said.”

  “I did. We were.”

  “I thought you said we were going back?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Virginia isn’t between Ohio and Rhode Island,” she said. “You took a detour, didn’t you?”

  “Okay. Yes. I did.”

  “You think they’re still following us?” A shudder ran through her.

  He pulled her close. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that. Not really.”

  “Not really? What does that mean?”

  He sighed. “I wanted another night with you,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to take you back. So, I convinced myself that we needed to take a detour, that it was the best way to get you back safely. The truth is that we probably didn’t need to do it at all. But I wanted to spend more time with you.” He looked at her. “Are you angry?”

  In answer, she craned her neck to meet his lips with hers. She felt the relief course through his body as he kissed her back, his arms circling her and holding her close.

  One more night, she thought, d
elirious with happiness. He wanted one more night together.

  Side by side, as if by unspoken agreement, they undressed. Hazel ran her hands all over Emmett’s naked body, moving slowly this time, luxuriating in the fact that they had nowhere to be and that their enemies were far away. They shouldn’t be doing this, she knew—there would be trouble if they were found out—but anyone who might want to stop them was also distant. Nobody knew where they were.

  “Go slow,” she whispered as he moved to enter her.

  He paused. “Did I hurt you last time?”

  “No. I just want to make it last.”

  He nodded, a small smile making its way onto his face. A moment later, Hazel felt that sense of perfect fullness again. She had been aching for this for a long time, she thought, craving this feeling. It was just that she had never quite known what she was missing until now.

  How much of her hunger for his body came from the fact that they were alpha and omega, and how much of it was just the fact that they were Emmett and Hazel? She knew their natures called to each other, that her body had been built for his in this way. But what about all the other things between them, the things that weren’t physical? What about the lightness she felt in her chest when he teased her, and what about the way he seemed almost willing to sacrifice his entire life to protect her? Those things weren’t biological.

  I might be falling in love, she thought, planting her feet on the earth, lifting her hips to take him more deeply inside of her, crying out with pleasure as he hit a spot that made her see stars.

  Somehow, they managed to pace themselves. Somehow, they managed to resist the overwhelming compulsion to move faster, to come together harder, to reach out for more and more and more of each other. Hazel thought Emmett deserved most of the credit. More than once, she tried to reach for him, to pull him closer, and he smiled and bent to kiss her and kept to his infuriatingly slow pace. She had never felt such a hunger in her life, had never wanted anything so purely and desperately.

  Now, his hands were moving over her body, and every inch of her skin felt so sensitive that she thought the slightest touch might set her ablaze. He trailed his fingers up the sides of her torso, dipped his thumb in the hollow of her clavicle, traced the shell of her ear, and she gasped with every touch. When his hands found her breasts, her eyes rolled back in her head and she thought she was going to die of pure bliss. When they moved on, she let out a moan that could probably be heard for miles around.

  His hand slipped between them, down between her legs, and brushed against her there.

  She cried out.

  He brought his thumb up and licked it slowly, his eyes holding hers captive, and then returned it to that spot.

  “Emmett—” she moaned, tossing her head back and forth on the ground. “Emmett—”

  Then he was fucking her furiously, hard, panting as though something inside him had snapped, his hand still working between their bodies, and she was grinding her hips into him as hard as she could, and as waves of pleasure crashed over her, she forgot where she was, forgot they were in a cornfield, forgot they were outdoors and might be heard, and she screamed his name to the heavens.

  When she came back to herself, he was lying on the ground behind her, one arm wrapped around her, one hand combing gently through her hair. “Emmett,” she breathed.

  He nodded. “That was intense.”

  “I can’t give you up,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to give you up.”

  “We’re just going to have to,” he said. “You know that.”

  “I don’t know how we’re ever going to be happy with anyone else.”

  He didn’t answer, just pressed a kiss into her shoulder blade.

  “I’m glad you gave us one more night,” she said. “It’s better than nothing.”

  “It’s better than most things,” he said, somewhat hoarsely.

  A smile passed across Hazel’s face, but it didn’t linger. She was finding it hard to hold onto happiness. What if that was their last time? What if nobody ever made her feel like that again? And how could anybody else make her feel the way Emmett did?

  “Would it be better if we’d never done it?” he asked her. “Would it be better if you could be mated to one of your packmates without knowing there was...more?”

  “No,” she said. It wasn’t even a question in her mind. “I’m glad I know. I’m glad I got to have it. Even if I can’t keep it.”

  He kissed her shoulder again.

  “I’m really going to miss you,” she said quietly. “And not just, you know, because of this.”

  “The sex?”

  “Right. I’m also going to miss talking to you.” She took a deep breath. “I really like you, Emmett.”

  “I like you too,” he said quietly.

  “Maybe more than I like anyone. I’m not close to the people in my pack. I kind of didn’t know people could...connect the way we have.”

  “That is about the sex,” he said with a little laugh.

  She reached back to swat him. “It’s not just that. I haven’t met anybody new in at least ten years. I didn’t realize I could make a friend who wasn’t already part of my family.”

  He held her a little tighter. “I didn’t realize I could...have feelings for a woman. It’s never been like this. It’s always been just sexual. But with you...I don’t want you to leave.”

  Then, because there was nothing more to say or do that they hadn’t said and done already, she turned to face him, kissed him deeply one last time, and closed her eyes, trying to sleep.

  Before long, she felt his breathing become deep and even. But Hazel lay awake. Tomorrow, she would have to return to her family. There was no more putting it off. Emmett would become a part of her past, a secret she would have to keep from her alpha and from her soon to be assigned mate. And because she would never be able to talk about him, eventually, he would become a distant memory. She would lose all but the rough outline of the man who currently lay in her arms. It was almost too tragic to be borne.

  Eventually, sleep crept up on her. The day had been long, and the exhaustion of her body overcame the activity of her mind. But just before she succumbed, the uncomfortable thought occurred to her that there was something—something of vital importance—she had forgotten.

  She was asleep before she could figure out what it was.

  Chapter Twelve

  EMMETT

  He awoke with a cold pit of dread in his stomach.

  Emmett was used to trusting his instincts, which had usually been good. Now, he rolled onto his stomach and pressed his toes and fingers into the earth, ready to come up fighting at the first sign of danger. Whatever had spooked him was bound to make itself known in a matter of moments.

  But nothing happened. The corn around them waved gently in the late afternoon breeze, but otherwise, it was perfectly still. Peering through the stalks, he could see the low sun glinting off the metal of the back of his bike. So that was still there. The only sound was that of a few birds far overhead, calling out their annoyance to one another.

  What had woken him?

  He looked over at Hazel. She was still asleep, her hair haloed around her head. She looked peaceful enough. Her eyes moved slightly, as if in a dream, and her cheeks were ever so slightly flushed. His gaze wandered to her breasts. Something about the way she was lying on her side, he guessed, made them appear even more full than usual, and he felt himself wake up a little more.

  He was going to have to take her home today. There could be no more putting it off. It had to be done, and the longer he delayed, the harder it would be. The more questions her pack would have, and his own pack too.

  Satisfied that they were in no immediate danger, he rolled over and sat up. He still felt edgy and uncomfortable, even though he was certain there was no threat. Something felt like it was looming over him. Something was wrong.

  It’s just the thought of letting Hazel go, he told himself firmly. You’re just dreadin
g doing that. But that didn’t feel right, somehow. Yes, he was dreading it, but that dread occupied a different place in his gut than this nameless anxiety. They were two different feelings.

  Don’t dwell on it. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you do.

  One of the birds overhead swooped low, and Emmett decided he wanted to hunt. It would be safe, he thought, as long as he stayed nearby. The corn would reveal any movement if anyone came near where Hazel slept. He slipped out of his clothes and shifted, welcoming in the familiar sensations that came with being in animal form. It had been too long, he thought, stretching his canine body and preparing to go to battle. Only a few days, really. But too long.

  He hunkered low and crept along the ground, ears laid back against his skull, eyes glued to the birds above him. There was a pattern to their flight. Circle, circle, circle, dive. They were dumb, he knew. They got themselves into flight patterns and then they just repeated them until something happened to distract them. Hunting birds was easy.

  Circle, circle, circle, dive.

  He waited until the next time the bird above him dove, then sprang into the air to meet it, catching it neatly in his teeth. The rest of the birds scattered, squawking angrily, and Emmett landed gently and laid his quarry on the ground. He resumed his human form and padded through the corn and back to Hazel’s side.

  She was sitting up and rubbing at her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “Bird.” He grabbed his pants and hauled them on. “Breakfast. Or dinner. whatever.”

  “Did you just find a dead bird on the ground?” She looked sick.

  “Of course not,” he said. “It was flying. I hunted it.”

  “You killed it?”

  “Yeah.” He watched her to see if that bothered her.

  It didn’t seem to. He set about plucking the feathers from the bird, and she watched and shredded a fallen leaf from a cornstalk between her fingers. “You’re not going to eat it raw, are you?”

  “No, we can make a little fire in between the rows of corn as long as we’re careful not to let it catch and spread. And there’s enough meat on this thing for both of us.”