Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1) (10 page)

“You’re my bitch now,” she cooed, the cruel mirth dancing feral in her silken voice.

All the hands released Karly at the same time. Fury and humiliation helped her get up, and it was an ugly jeering cheer that ripped through the crowd when she stripped off her soiled shirt. She’d have taken her pants off too, but they weren’t as wet and didn’t smell as strongly of urine as her top did. And she still had some tattered shreds of pride left.

“Go,
chelovak
,” the blonde told her, waving dismissively as she turned away. “While you can still walk.”

Karly threw her urine-soaked shirt, hitting the blonde dead in the back of the head. She barely waited for her opponent to rip the shirt off her back before she charged. Dimly, she was aware of Maya laughing. It was still five against two, and she’d only just started her attack when the blonde snapped back around. The two women collided and although Karly had the advantage of momentum, the blonde still knocked her down, flat on her back this time. With three of her four friends landing quickly on top of Karly to help hold her down, she crawled up Karly’s frame, growling and drawing up a mouthful of snot to spit. Karly jerked up her knee, slamming with all the force she could muster and nailing a direct hit between the blonde’s splayed legs.

The force she’d used would have crippled a man, but the Deacon’s daughter, while hurt, was only stunned long enough for Karly to shove out from under her. She elbowed one woman in the neck and Maya knocked the other two off, pulling Karly free of the pile.

The blonde came up off the ground with teeth gritted and her eyes holding nothing but fury. “I am going to kill you,” she hissed.

Karly smirked. “You can try, anyway.”

“I think you must be insane,” Maya said, when Karly lined up alongside her for the next charge. “You do realize they were only playing with you before, yes?”

From the look on the blonde’s darkly seething face, playing wasn’t what they would be doing now. She erupted with another warrior’s bellow as she and her crew charged, and Karly knew a split second of exhilaration right before the bone-jarring impact knocked her flat on her back. She felt the punches then, the kicks and slaps, and then everything exploded into pain.

* * * * *

Mama Margo took Karly’s hand, turning it palm up and slapped a huge steak into it. The entire time she’d been at the cutting board, mercilessly tenderizing it with a mallet, rolling it in herbs and buttermilk and more herbs before beating it all over again, she hadn’t said a word. She didn’t say anything now, either. She just gave Karly a bemused look, her lined mouth curling at the corners, but there was a world of censure drifting through those aged eyes. Karly had never felt so scolded in all her life.

Herb-dotted buttermilk dripped between her fingers as Mama Margo pushed her hand and steak both up to her blackened eye. The left one now. Her lip was split in two places and she was hosting a world of bruises in hundreds of dully aching places that ran the gauntlet of her body from head to toes. Nothing was broken. At least, she was familiar enough with what past broken bones felt like that she didn’t think anything was now. She knew she’d been lucky. That, and she had a sneaking suspicion that, in spite of her obvious anger, the Deacon’s blonde daughter and her friends hadn’t had a chance to pummel her too long before the savage arrival of one very big, very black and very pissed-off wolf.

Snapping and snarling, Puppy launched himself into the fight like a massive, four-legged, pointy-eared and sharp-toothed knight to the rescue. His attack sent the blonde and her malicious friends scattering, though they didn’t go far.

“She’s
chelovak
!” the Deacon’s daughter snapped, as if Puppy would even care. He stood over her, head down, hackles up, every breath he took a seething in- and exhaling growl. Karly had never seen an animal look, act or sound more vicious. That he didn’t actually bite anyone only went to prove how truly gentle he was, despite his wolfish half. As she’d lain dazed and bleeding in the grass, fighting to keep her eyes open and focused, all Karly could do was reach up and twine her fingers in the soft fur of his neck ruff. She might have blacked out a little then, because the next thing she knew, suddenly there were snarling, snapping wolves all around her.

Who let the dogs out, her brain tried to sing. It was all she could do not to get stepped on as two grey wolves dashed in to nip at Puppy’s tail and flanks. Fighting to stay on top of her, covering as much of her prone body as he could, Puppy snapped back. A wolf grabbed her shoe, jerking hard as if to pull her out from under him, but Karly was instantly released when Puppy turned on him. But turning gave the two wolves at his back an opportunity for attack and they took it, snapping at his flanks all over again.

Karly tried to get up, to protect him from the teeth coming at them from every side, and suddenly it seemed the whole field exploded in growling, barking, and aggressive wolves. Two more, a grey and tan, charged through the hostile pack that surrounded them. They tore into the wolves nipping after Puppy, sinking teeth into fur and sending half the pack scrambling to break away. But, they didn’t flee very far. When they returned, they did so with reinforcements of their own.

Her head spinning, Karly tried to get up again but it was almost impossible with three wolves now standing on top of her, shielding her from the encroachment of hostile animals. She’d been too dazed back then to be scared, that had come later, only minutes later really, when she saw Margo walking through the thick of all that snapping and snarling, delivering cuffs and kicks, and one round-house slap to the muzzle of the blond wolf who dashed in to snatch at Karly’s shoe again, tugging and jerking to wrest her out from under her protectors. Mama Margo knocked that wolf belly-to-the-ground.

“Best behavior,” she shouted down at the grudgingly cowering wolf. When she turned sharp yellow eyes on the rest of the massive pack, they all fell silent. Many began slinking away. “I meant it when I said it, and I mean it still! Get off with ya! All of you!”

By the time she’d reached Karly’s side, Karly was feeling sick to her stomach. Her head wouldn’t stop spinning. She reached for a helping hand, except Mama Margo did not extend one.

“Get up,” she’d said instead, though not unkindly. “Follow me. Do it under your own power, or they’ll never respect you.”

She probably meant the townspeople, but all Karly could see around her were wolves. Then again, her eyes weren’t focusing well. At that point, it had been all that she could do just to get her feet under her and her legs solid enough to keep her steady. If Puppy hadn’t been right there, nuzzling her hip and offering his back for balance, she never would have made it more than a few steps.

Eventually the dizziness passed though, and when it did, Karly found herself being escorted through the parking lot and back down the road to Colton’s truck by dozens of—dare she say, friendly?—wolves. Of course, those wolves were followed the entire way by dozens and dozens, a veritable ocean of stalking and snarling unfriendly ones.

She had no idea where Colton had gone. The thick crowd that had been jeering and cheering just minutes ago had dispersed with the arrival of the wolves. At first, Karly thought she might have to walk all the way back to the fairground to find him, but each time she’d tried to turn around, Mama Margo had caught her arm and kept her moving. In the end, a car pulled up beside them.

“Get in,” McQueen said, leaning across the seat to shove the passenger door open.

“I have to wait for Colton.”

“You have to get home, right now,” Mama Margo corrected, frowning at Puppy and then at her. “I’m sure he’ll be by when he can.”

Her legs were so watery and her head was starting to pound. She wanted to turn around and walk back to the fairgrounds. The problem was, even if there hadn’t been so many vicious wolves skulking in cautious circles just beyond Mama Margo, Puppy and those two wolves who’d decided for no apparent reason to be her protectors, she physically didn’t think she could.

“Get in,” McQueen snapped again.

Unsure if she could keep walking, Karly started to, but Puppy muscled his way in first. He climbed onto the front seat, yellow eyes locked on the driver, growling the whole way.

“Mutts in back,” McQueen said, unimpressed.

Puppy not only sat between them on the front seat the entire way home, but he sat facing McQueen, his lupine stare fixed and unblinking. He didn’t stop growling once.

“I’m sorry about that,” Karly mumbled, feeling each of her teeth to make sure they were all still there and solid in her gums. Her lips felt thick. It made talking feel every bit as funny as it had after one of her husband’s attacks.

McQueen just drove, taking those unpaved roads slowly and trying to jostle her as little as possible when avoiding certain potholes became impossible. It was kind of sweet, actually. At that moment, it had been difficult for her to remember why she’d ever found him or his brothers to be such frightening individuals.

“Your breath stinks,” McQueen eventually said.

Karly didn’t for a second think he was talking to her, but she slung a companionable arm around Puppy’s bristling shoulders and said, “I’m sorry about that too.”

McQueen slid her a glance, but didn’t speak again until they’d passed the ramshackle homes he shared with his brothers and was almost to her driveway. “You’ve got balls,” he finally offered. “I like that in a woman.”

She’d probably been punched one too many times in the head, but for some reason, Karly found that too funny not to laugh. The act of smiling made the cuts in her lips split and bleed all over again and laughing hurt her jaw, but she couldn’t help it. She hugged her side and tried to protect her aching mouth, or at the very least, not to bleed all over McQueen’s car, until her giggles turned to groans and then to panting breaths that were just one errant giggle away from becoming laughter all over again. “Thanks.”

Eying her sideways, McQueen snorted once himself, but he didn’t say anything more until after he’d dropped her off at her porch. Mama Margo arrived just as McQueen was helping her up the steps. The adrenaline was starting to wear off now, and all her lumps, bumps and bruises were beginning to make themselves felt.

“Don’t come back to the field,” he told her, by way of goodbye.

If she could have walked, Karly’s instinct was to make her way immediately right back up to the Ridge. To strut her stuff, so to speak, and show that even as resoundingly bested as she’d just been, she was not beaten.

Several hours had passed since then. Now, sitting in her kitchen with a piece of herb-encrusted meat on her face and buttermilk dripping down her chin, in spite of feeling just a little bit foolish for how she’d behaved, mostly what Karly felt was empowered. She’d never stood up for herself like that before. She hadn’t won that fight, not by any means, but she was so proud of herself for being in it, that she felt good. No, better than good. Despite the pain, she felt great.

“Well,” Mama Margo asked, cleaning up what little mess she’d made in the preparation of her black-eye poultice. “What have you learned, then?”

“I don’t know.” Smiling still hurt like hell, but Karly couldn’t help it. “Do you think I taught her anything?”

“Do you mean like, crazy isn’t as easy to spot as black eyes and blonde hair?”

“I’m definitely going back up there tomorrow,” Karly said, laughing all over again when Mama Margo barked hard amusement toward the kitchen ceiling.

Puppy groaned.

“Poor Puppy,” Karly cooed, groaning now herself as she eased off the kitchen chair to sit on the floor beside him. She stroked his big head. “I’m making you work too hard, aren’t I?”

He didn’t look at her. She tried to make amends with scritches behind his alert ears and even bent to drop a kiss on top of his head.

Glancing from one to the other, Margo seemed to soften just a bit. It might have been a trick of the day’s fading sunlight though, because once she’d gathered her supplies to go, she was once again every bit the hardened deep-country woman Karly had come to know.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said gruffly, gesturing to the meat in Karly’s hand.

“Until what?” Karly wanted to get up and follow Margo to the front door. At the very least, that would have been good manners. But she just didn’t have the strength to get up off the floor, and Mama Margo didn’t seem inclined to wait for an escort.

“Until dinner,” the old woman called back over her shoulder on her way out the front door. “Steak’s damned expensive and it doesn’t do shit for black eyes. Eat it!”

CHAPTER TEN

That night, Karly dreamt that she was stiff and sore, dozing in and out of sleep in her bed while a spring storm raged outside. Lightning flashed and thunder rattled the windows, but it wasn’t Puppy lying beside her, keeping the nightmares at bay. It was Colton, and that’s how she knew it was a dream. He was naked, wearing only a flickering halo of blue-white lightning coming in through the open window curtains and the brand-new collar she’d had to buy for Puppy, because no matter how hard she looked, she just couldn’t find the old one. It had probably got hung up in the woods somewhere, snagged on a branch during his early morning wandering sessions. Or on his mad-dash run to rescue her on the field. How Puppy always seemed to know when she was in trouble, she just didn’t know.

Karly looked at Colton, and he, at her; for the longest moment, simply looking at one another. For the first time in a very long time, Karly wasn’t afraid. Not even when he raised his hand to touch her face, the feather-light caress of his fingertips brushing stray wisps of hair back from her bruised cheeks.

It felt so real—the realest dream she’d ever had, but that’s all it was. And dreams had a way of letting a girl do things she never would have had the courage to otherwise do.

Her hand didn’t even tremble when Karly touched him back, the hard angle of his cheek, the strong line of his jaw, down to his chin, up to his lips. He felt so warm. Soft in some places, and hard as rock in others. She lost the fight against an involuntary shiver when his hand moved to her shoulder, caressed down her side, settling at the small of her back where the tips of his fingers began to trace imaginary circles on her skin. When he leaned in to her, Karly didn’t even try to pull away. His lips provoked the sweetest of surrenders. She opened to him almost from the very start, and when he shifted, she rolled with him, welcoming the comfortable weight as he eased himself to lie on top of her.

His hands touched her everywhere, traced her everywhere. They followed all the lines of her, his kissing mouth never far behind as if he hungered to taste every inch of her—her neck, her shoulder, her waist. His tongue dipped, flicking twice at her navel before moving lower still. He took her underwear off with his teeth. No one had ever done that to her before, and just when he had her squirming and panting on the sheets, he shifted his direction, following the caress of his hands all the way down the outer line of her legs and all the way back up along the inner sloping curves. The soft pressure of his fingers coaxed her to open to him, until his hands were right there on the inner heat of her thighs, framing the liquid pulse of heat that was her sex.

“Oh my God!” she gasped when he fastened on her, grinding against the mattress, grabbing her pillow and her hair, pulling at both as she writhed to the suckling, lashing motions of his consuming mouth.

She was still married.

It wasn’t cheating if it was a dream.

And she was getting divorced anyway, so who the hell cared about Dan?

Karly moaned, undulating up into the pressure of his hot mouth, riding the sweeping lash of his restless tongue while the coils of pleasure rolled and tightened inside her. She arched, catching her breath, her belly tensing, her legs trembling.

“Oh my God!” she cried, and every taut nerve in her body erupted with a release so intense it was almost pain.

He forced her to ride the storm, one rippling, hip-bucking wave after another, until her gasps escalated into cries and suddenly he was climbing her, burning a path of suckling kisses into her as he rose—trailing up her stomach, to the stiffened peaks of each begging nipple, eventually conquering as far as her oh-so tender mouth—to drink her shrill gasp when she felt the solid heat of his erection settle directly against her wanton sex. He was not in her, but he thrust as if he were, dragging back and forth along her folds, letting her feel the length and hardness of him.

“Say my name,” he commanded.

God, he sounded so real. He felt so real. Why did this have to be a dream?

“Colton,” she first gasped and then shouted when in a single thrust he went from pressing against her to pushing up deep inside her. “Yes! Oh, please yes!”

He rocked the entire bed with the force of his possession, and she loved it. It had been so very long since she had felt the intensity of sex like this. She grabbed, catching his buttocks in both hands, capturing him in the wrap of both legs and pulling him as deeply into her as he would come.

“Please,” she begged, her whole body arching up into his next thrust when he growled—that low, delicious sound—into her hungry mouth. “Please!”

He caught her wrists and she didn’t mean to, but her nails raked him when he tore her hands from his ass and pinned them to the pillow above her head. The lamp on the bedside table rattled from the force of his pumping. His kisses became nips; her gasps, groans. It was a bad line in a comedy romance, but the headboard actually knocked against the wall and she was barely aware of it when the lamp fell off onto the floor. Every inch of her luxuriated in the feel of him, the dream of him, so fierce in his need of her that he was growling and his eyes were brightening. They were so yellow that she could see the glow of them in the dark.

A flickering flash of lightning briefly lit the room, casting him in a wash of ghostly white and illuminating the bump and grind where their bodies were so fiercely joined. She both saw and felt it when he pulled out of her. In the flicker of the lightning, she only caught a glimpse of her arousal glistening on his standing cock before the shadows reclaimed the room. His eyes stayed yellow though. His exhaling breath seared her shoulder, a lusty growl that made her sex spasm to hold him again.

He flipped her onto her belly, his warm hands scouring caresses up and down her body just before he bit the fleshy hills of her buttocks, first one and then the other. He threw his leg over both of hers and she gasped, arching into the unbelievable rightness of his tongue running up the length of her spine. She scrambled to get her hands and knees under her, to tip her hips back for him even as the burning heat of his cock burrowed between her legs.

Karly thrust her hand down, needing to touch him as he slid inside her again. They both groaned, guttural and raw. His fist locked in her hair, dragging her head back until his mouth claimed hers once more. He wasn’t just kissing her now— even passionate kisses were gentle. This was devouring. The steady slap of his hips spanked her ass, punctuating her moans and his growls. This wasn’t just sex, either. He was consuming her, possessing her one rigorous thrust at a time, as powerful and unstoppable as the rain that was beating down on the old tin roof. His strong arm around her waist kept her right where he needed her. Her hands twisted in the sheets, clawing as she strove for something grounding to cling to.

It all felt so real—from the shuddering force of the climax that ripped through her, to all the points of his teeth sinking into her shoulder blade as he used her flesh to muffle his escalating grunts before that final violent shove pushed her flat against the mattress. He ground into her, fighting to get as deep as he could. He shook and shook, shuddering out that long, last growl before he sagged on top of her. His breaths burned her throbbing shoulder. His sweat dripped and pooled, mingling with hers in the small of her back.

He felt so very, very real.

“You’re the best dream I’ve ever had,” she breathed as he rolled onto his back beside her to catch his breath. “I wish you were really here.”

He looked at her, the shadows of surprise illuminated by another flash of lightning already melting into quiet resignation. “Maybe tomorrow I will be.” He pulled her closer, tucking her in snug against his chest and wrapping her in arms that felt strong and warm and safe. He stroked her hair. “Sleep.”

Her sex pulsing—hot, wet and sated—her eyes drifted closed. She liked the way his breath felt brushing across her neck. The morning might erase it all away, but right here and now, all she felt was how good and right this was.

Somewhere outside, a lone wolf howled. She didn’t think it possible to sleep within a dream. She thought she felt it when Colton rolled his head to follow that sound, but by then, she was dozing in and out. His fingers caressed lightly through the tangles of her hair. He might even have kissed her on the forehead, but then he let her go and the mattress faintly jostled as he got up. Her eyelids felt almost too heavy to lift, but she managed to pry them open long enough to watch as, naked, he went to the window. He even looked like a dream: lean and strong and so…primal. His shoulders were so broad; his chest tapered to a narrow waist and lean hips. Muscle after hard muscle flexed as he parted the curtains, rippling in the eerie blue flash of another lightning strike as he peered outside.

He turned his head as that howl came again, closer this time. He listened a moment, then glanced back at her. The shadows must have hid her face better than it did his. Another flash of lightning, a rumble of distant thunder, and then he turned from the window. A strange, melting undulation hunched and twisted him, dropped him to the floor. And then it wasn’t Colton at all, but Puppy who trotted from the room on shadow-black and whisper-soft paws.

“You are so fucked,” Dan hissed in her ear.

Karly jerked upright, lurching backwards in an eruption of bedding and flailing limbs, her heart jumped up into her throat, colliding with the scream that choked her there as she fell right off Puppy’s side of the bed and landed with a graceless ‘whump!’ on the floor.

Night was gone. It wasn’t yet dawn, but there was just enough grayish pre-morning light for her to see she was alone in the room. Puppy was gone. There was no Colton standing naked at the window. Certainly there was no Dan crouched in the shadows at the head of her bed, but it still took a long time for her to calm down enough to stop hyperventilating. It was longer still before she stopped shaking. So much for last night’s feelings of empowerment, all she felt now was nervous and sore.

Huddled up against the wall under the window, Karly unfurled. Every single muscle in her body was protesting yesterday’s indiscretion and this morning’s fall. And where were her clothes? She looked all around the floor. The last time she had slept naked, it had been her third anniversary and not her choice. What a horrible way to end what had been, up until then, a nice, if inappropriate dream.

Picking herself up off the floor, Karly had to remake the bed before she found her nightshirt and discarded underwear wrapped up in the tussled sheets and blankets. The elastic scrape as she pulled her panties up her legs rekindled sleepy memories of how it had felt when Colton had dragged them off her. She’d never had a dream so vivid that she’d kicked her own clothes off before. She’d never had a dream so vivid, period. And her body had definitely reacted. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn she honestly had spent the night in Colton’s erotic embrace. Her thighs were still sticky and slick, and her shoulder…

Karly reached back, finding a tender spot high up on the back of her shoulder blade. She was tender everywhere though, which was probably why that bite had felt so vivid when she’d dreamed it. Every inch of her ached. Her brain must simply have converted the sensation to make her sleeping imagination all that much more realistic.

She managed to hold that thought right up until she’d made her way to the bathroom. Ugh, she looked awful. The bruise Dan had given her now stood out as old marks amidst all the fresh new cuts, scrapes and purpling weals. She tsked and turned, twisting and arching up on her tip toes in an effort to see as much of herself from behind as the short medicine cabinet would allow.

She had a massive purplish-red circle on the ball of her shoulder and down her arm where she must have blocked some kicks yesterday. A series of crusty scrapes down her spine reminded her of road rash that looked far worse than it actually felt. But then she saw the crescent of tooth-like marks that marred the slope of one shoulder blade. Practically hidden behind her cascade of blonde hair, it stood out against her pale skin in a place that was, as if by some grand design, remarkably void of injury.

Sweeping her hair back and twisting as far as she could, Karly craned to see it better. She tried to touch it, struggling to make out what that mark was, even as her startled brain supplied the ready answer: A love bite. Colton’s love bite.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered, her skin prickling at an echoing approximation of his hands locking in her hair, his five o’clock shadow scraping her flesh a half second before his teeth sank into her.

Her stomach fell all the way to her toes. It was the oddest sensation, that. Could someone have bitten her yesterday and she’d just not noticed at the time? They’d been kicking and pummeling her so ferociously, and she had lost consciousness ever so briefly. It was possible. But as she stared into her own wide eyes, she already knew that wasn’t what she believed. Except, what did that then mean? That her dream last night had been…real?

Karly cupped her forehead, stubbornly determined not to go there. Of all the possible explanations—not that there were many—that was the most ridiculous. Colton did not break into her house late last night, and not only slip past Puppy, but replace him in her bed. He certainly didn’t cuddle right up behind her, awakening her so erotically that she hadn’t startled or even thought it odd when he began to make love to her. And he absolutely did not do all that and then, what? Sneak back out again like some guilty morning-after attempt to flee any chance of commitment or entanglement?