A Wolf’s Deception (Novella) (3 page)

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Seeing me has obviously upset you.’ She was looking at him again and he hardened his jaw so she wouldn’t see the tornado swirling inside. ‘You’re angry at me.’

‘I’m angry that I had to drive halfway across the country to do a job that should be your pack’s responsibility. I’m angry that some asshole is no doubt chasing us down as we speak. Anger towards you personally would require me to have some kind of deeper feelings. I have none, not where you’re concerned, unless you count pity.’

The silence that followed was charged. Then he felt it, goddammit, felt the wave of pain that flowed off her.

‘Right. You’re right.’ She undid her seatbelt. ‘I’m just going to climb in the back with Sawyer, make sure he knows I’m here when he wakes.’

Fuck.
Pull it the hell together.

He was behaving like a prized prick when she’d already been through enough. She didn’t need him adding to it.

They didn’t speak after that. A short time later he heard her breathing slow and even out. She must have felt at ease enough to sleep, to let her guard down like that, especially after the way he’d treated her. Shit, she trusted him. That realisation affected him more than he wanted to even admit to himself.

Idiot.
She’s exhausted. And why the hell was he even thinking like this?

But then a memory came out of nowhere, hammering in the back of his mind, the first time he’d seen Tressa. He’d finished work at the local mill, his Guardian training still several months off, and he’d looked rough as hell. He’d gone into town to grab food and a six-pack, and Tressa had been standing by the fridges. She’d been wearing frayed cut-off jeans, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, her feet bare, bright pink polish on her toes.

He’d nearly swallowed his tongue. She’d drawn him in without even looking his way, sucked him into her orbit and he’d been helpless, unable to fight the pull.

Gabe walked towards the girl, gaze moving over her from head to toe. Her jean shorts hugged her perfect little ass and, dammit, his cock stood up and took notice. He stopped behind her, drawing in her scent.

Unmated. Wolf.

Not a trace of anything else.

Just his shitty luck, the hybrid population around here was pitiful. He’d have to start going out of town if he wanted to get laid anytime soon. He took a step back, about to make a hasty retreat. The last thing he needed was to piss off some cranky alpha for daring to speak to one of theirs.

The female turned suddenly, and he realised how close he was when her tits brushed the top of his abs.

‘Oh! Sorry. I didn’t see you there.’ Dark eyes wide, she stared up at him.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

She swallowed hard and he watched the way her throat worked, the way her little pink tongue peeked out and swiped across her bottom lip.

She frowned. ‘You alright?’

Speak, you dick. Say something!

She bit her lip then shook her head. ‘Okay, well, whatever.’

She tried to sidestep him, since he had her backed up against the fridges.

‘I’m gonna need you to move.’

His arm shot up as if controlled by an invisible string and he blocked her way. Those dark eyes got a whole lot wider.

‘What are you doing?’

Say something. Shit, anything! ‘I—I’ve never seen you around here before. Do you come here often?’

No! Had he really just said that?

Suddenly, she didn’t look so worried anymore. She lifted her hand, covering her mouth, but she couldn’t hide her smile.

Heat hit his face and he groaned inwardly.

She dropped her hand then, not bothering to hide the way her full lips tilted up in a wicked smile. ‘Has that line ever worked for you?’

He winced, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Ah…can’t say I’ve ever used it before.’

She chuckled and held out her hand. ‘Tressa.’

He discreetly rubbed his sweaty palm on his jeans then wrapped his fingers around hers. ‘Gabe.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ She got up on her tiptoes and he froze as she lifted her hand to his hair, combing her fingers through the strands, brushing over it gently, that fucking sexy smile still on her exotic face. Sawdust fell to the floor around his feet.

‘You work at the mill?’

‘Yeah.’ That’s it? That’s all you can come up with?

‘Right, well…maybe I’ll see you around?’ She slid her hands in her pockets and edged away, eyes still on him as she backed up, the smile slipping from those fucking sexy lips the further she got from him.

Was he going to just stand there and let her walk away? Fuck.

‘Number?’ He blurted out.

The smile she’d given him when he’d asked for her number had near done him in. She’d grabbed a pen from the front counter then taken his hand in her smaller one, so soft as they wrapped around his work roughened fingers. Sparks of awareness had lit him up like petrol on a bonfire. She’d written her number on his palm then walked her denim-clad ass out the door.

He’d called her that night.

The next night he’d kissed her for the first time.

Stop.

He shoved it all from his mind. This was not the time for a trip down memory-fucking-lane.

The Harlow pack would be coming for her and it was his job to get her home safe. The past made no damn difference to the here and now. He shoved the memories back where they belonged and focused on what he had to do.

The males hunting them would know where he planned to take her and would be monitoring the most direct route, plus they’d seen his car.

Time for a detour.

Chapter 3

‘Ow! Shit.’ Tressa woke when her head cracked against the window. She glanced over at Sawyer. He was still out, his little chest rising and falling slow and easy, thumb in his mouth, cheeks flushed from sleep. Something dark was draped over him and she reached out to touch it. Denim. The scent coming off it was one she had never forgotten, even though she’d tried.

Her heart squeezed as she rubbed her nose against her son’s soft curls. How could she forget that scent when her son’s was so similar? Where Gabe’s was earthy, like the forest at night with an underlying note of leather, Sawyer’s was sweeter, with a hint of wild berry. It would become deeper as he got older, take on more earthy tones. It would become a scent all his own.

‘You’re awake.’ Gabe glanced at her in the rear-view mirror.

She ran her fingers through her hair. She must look like hell. ‘Looks that way.’

‘I guess you haven’t had much sleep the last few nights?’

‘Nope.’ She’d been too scared to close her eyes.

‘What happened back there, in that motel room?’ he said suddenly.

She shivered. His voice was deceptively casual, but she heard the danger beneath. Checking Sawyer was still asleep, she climbed through to the front seat and buckled up.

‘You know what happened.’

Aggression flowed from him, had been battering against her senses since she climbed in this car.

‘I killed that man.’

‘Don’t give me that shit. Start talking, Tressa,
now
.’

She barely recognised him. Sure, Gabe had always been rough around the edges, untamed. That’s what initially drew her to him. He’d always carried around this volatile kind of anger but he’d ever directed it at her, not once. Right now it felt like he wanted to wring her neck.

‘He thought a good exchange for fixing the thermostat on the air conditioning unit would be for me to strip naked and suck his dick. I disagreed.’

She could still taste his blood in her mouth. Her stomach lurched.

‘I thought he might hurt Sawyer and I…I snapped.’

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white.

‘You did the right thing.’

The words were pure gravel, laced with all that barely-controlled rage.

‘Any DNA they find will be wolf since you were in your shifted form and there are several wild packs in that area. Yeah, it’s unusual for them to come into built-up areas like that, but the cops will assume it was injured and hungry. The blanket covering him will remain a mystery, explained away. Not everyone likes to deal with the cops. It’ll be fine.’

She hadn’t even thought about the police, of what could happen to her or Sawyer. Jesus, she’d lost it, she’d risked losing the most important person in her world. She rubbed her hands over her face.

‘What if I left something behind, what if they…?’

He gripped her thigh hard. ‘How did you get to that motel?’

‘I stole a car from Dan’s brother then dumped it when I got to the nearest bus station.’

‘Dan?’

‘My…Dan was my mate.’ Even saying it now felt wrong.

His shoulders stiffened, but other than that he didn’t comment. And why would he? ‘So the car belonged to Mr Personality back there? The wolf driving the black SUV?’

‘No, that was Lance. He’s the youngest of the three brothers.’

It had been a crazy risk. Colt was one terrifying male, but his car had been right outside her place with the keys in the ignition. If it hadn’t been for the wad of cash stashed in the glove compartment, she and Sawyer would have been forced to sleep rough. She hadn’t had time to go to the bank after she ran and was afraid Lance would somehow track her that way.

His grip eased up and he released her. ‘Good thinking.’

‘No, I didn’t think. I’m such an idiot…I killed a man, Gabe…I…’

‘Stop.’

That one word sliced through the enclosed space, cutting her off mid-sentence. She looked up at him. His eyes had changed to that of his beast and his fingers had tightened on the steering wheel again, until it creaked under the strain.

‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’

It was a quietly spoken promise that had her pulse quickening and her stomach tightening. She didn’t know what to say, her vocal cords too tight to speak.

He glanced at her. ‘You wouldn’t have been the first female he tried to abuse and you wouldn’t have been the last. He deserved what he got.’

He looked away. ‘I would have made him suffer before he died. You did him a favour.’

Gabe would have done that for her. Even after everything she’d done…everything she’d said to him.

‘Plus, you used an alias. Right, Tressa?’

Oh God, he’d seen the alias.

He hadn’t said it directly, but she knew. How else would he have known what room she was in? Heat hit her skin and not just her face. She was in the throes of a full body blush.

‘Right, Tressa?’ he growled.

‘Yes.’ She couldn’t look at him.

When she’d walked into that place and that creep had asked for a name, Gabe’s had been the first to popped into her head. Just saying it had wrapped her in an invisible blanket of warmth and safety.

It was a stupid thing to do. And now it had backfired on her.

He was quiet after that, but the volatile emotionscoming from him didn’t let up. If anything they got more intense. Seeing him again, being this close to him was too much. So she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. She doubted he fell for it but he also didn’t call her on it.

A long time later, an hour at least, the SUV bumped over a rut in the road and she became aware of gravel crunching under the tyres.

She sat up straighter. ‘Where are we?’

‘You finished sleeping then?’

The corner of his mouth quirked up. Barely a grin, a mere shadow of the warm, sexy smiles he’d once given her, still it made her heart race a little faster.

‘Ah…yeah.’ Just then her stomach growled loudly.

The half-smile was gone just like that. He scowled over at her.

‘When did you last eat?’

‘A decent meal? Close to three days ago. The food I had I kept for Sawyer. I didn’t want to leave the motel and I didn’t know how long it’d take for someone to come for us.’

He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a couple of protein bars.

‘Eat these before you pass the hell out.’

He was pissed at her, again. She didn’t argue, too damn hungry to, and devoured both bars in a few minutes. ‘Thanks.’ She accepted the water bottle he handed her and drank deeply. ‘So, where are we?’

He barely glanced at her. ‘The back-blocks of Nowheres-ville. I didn’t think it’d be a great idea to go the expected route home. Members of your pack would’ve been waiting for us and I need to ditch my car. Any allies of the Harlow pack will have been given our descriptions. If it was just us I’d drive nonstop, maybe go off-road, but we can’t do that with Sawyer. If we carry on as we are, we may as well paint a target on the hood.’

‘They’re not my pack. Never have been. And if it was just me, I doubt they’d be chasing us. Lance wants Sawyer, not me. After Dan died…’ She shook her head, slammed on the brakes. She had no intention of going there, especially not with Gabe. ‘Anyway…he thinks his brother’s cub should be raised by his own pack.’

One of those big hands left the steering wheel and landed on her shoulder, she jumped, surprised by the gesture of comfort. But the rush of having his hand on her again only lasted a second because he shoved his fingers down the neck of her shirt and yanked the fabric to the side, revealing part of the mark on her shoulder. The mark Dan had given her the night of their forced mating. A rough finger grazed it, making her shiver, before he pulled his hand back as if he’d burned it.

‘That makes you a member of their pack, Tressa. That kid in the back seat even more so.’

She bit her lip before she said something she’d regret. ‘I didn’t belong there. I was never accepted. They could sense how much I wanted to leave.’

‘Yeah, why is that? Way I remember it, you couldn’t wait to leave.’ There was a sneer in his voice, an acerbic bite she’d never heard before.

‘I never wanted to leave Black Hills. Being Dan’s mate, being a part of the Harlow pack was a punishment, my father’s way of keeping me in line.’

Shit.
So much for keeping her mouth shut. But he had her off balance with his questions, his hostility.