Clay's Instinct (BBW Paranormal Romance) (Wolf Call) (3 page)

She shook her head. His grip on her arm was strong and even though it hurt a little, when he released her she missed his touch. Steeling herself, she got on all fours and crawled into the hole. When she was halfway inside, she was sure she could feel Clay's eyes on her ass but discarded the notion as ridiculous. The cave was much larger inside than it looked from outside, just as Clay had said, but beyond the dim light trickling in through the small opening, the place was in blackness. She got all the way in and sat against the cool rock wall, now feeling exhausted from the scramble up the mountain. And they had barely left town. Just how far was Clay going to take her?

That thought made her feel suddenly hot and she moved her face into the shadow so he couldn't see her as he crawled into the confined  space.

He put a finger to his lips and sat facing her. The cave might have been larger than it looked but it was still small enough that they were very close to each other. Lucinda felt a tightness in her throat as she felt Clay's eyes on her.

He smelled manly, a mixture of musk and nature, and she breathed him in as deep as she dared without being obvious. She guessed that since he was a shifter, his own sense of smell was heightened and wondered if he could smell the mix of fear and arousal she felt at this moment.

Stop thinking like that. He's a monster. A killer.

Yet so far he had done nothing but protect her
from
killers.

From outside the mouth of the cave came  sounds of men talking and moving through the undergrowth. Lucinda froze and closed her eyes, silently praying they wouldn't be found. She could feel Clay's body heat against her skin and hear her own heart tripping in her chest.

The sounds came closer and she tensed, ready to flee. But she was trapped in here. Trapped with a werewolf shifter like the one that had killed her parents. She wondered if she was on the menu to be Clay's next meal. That thought sent her mind down different roads and the shiver she felt in her body was nothing to do with the cold.

Get a hold of yourself. This is crazy.

Clay leaned forward and whispered in her ear. 'They're gone.'

She had been so preoccupied she hadn't even noticed the sounds outside receding into the distance.

'What now?' she whispered.

'Now we hole up for a few days.'

'In here?'

'No, there's a place I know. A cabin.'

'Well that all sounds wonderful but I need to get home.'

He shook his head. 'You're coming with me. I don't trust you enough to let you go.'

She felt heat on her cheeks. 'You don't trust me? What the hell...'

'You came to Faith to help them capture me. Why should I trust you to keep your mouth shut about where I'm going?'

'But I don't know where you're going!'

'I just told you I'm going to hide on the mountain in a cabin. They might think I've left the area, run away to another state. I can't risk you telling them otherwise.'

'Then why the hell did you tell me where you're going? You could have just gone and left me to go home.'

He shrugged. 'They took a shot at you, Lucinda. Do you really think you'll be safe if you go home?'

He had a point. But she didn't want to spend the rest of her life running from men with guns. She didn't want to spend a few days holed up in a cabin with a shifter either, no matter how good-looking and alluring he may be.

'You don't have a choice,' he said, as if reading her mind. 'You either come with me willingly or I'll take you there by force. There's no other option.'

'Because you don't trust me,' she said.

'That's right.'

He had a point there too. She had come here to be part of his capture. But knowing he didn't trust her made her feel worse than being on the run.

Finally she weighed up her possible courses of action. Go willingly with Clay and spend a couple of days hidden away in a cabin or try to run only to have him forcibly take her there. The thought of the second option made her feel hot inside.

'Okay, let's go,' she said, crawling for the tunnel mouth. If she got out first and he was still inside when she started to run...

There was no way she could outrun him was there? And if she did, he was probably right; she wouldn't be safe at home. The Temple had contacts and agents everywhere.

Still, she could go on the run and spend her time in hotels. Much better than a cabin in the middle of nowhere, even if she would be alone. 

Wriggling through the opening, she made up her mind. She was going to make a run for freedom. He could chase her down if he wanted to but she would at least be able to tell herself that she tried to escape.

The moment she got out of the small cave, she scrambled to her feet and started down the slope toward town. The descent made her run faster and she started pumping her legs and arms, letting gravity do most of the work as she flew along the leaf-covered trail. The ground was uneven and she had to mind her step as she ran but she didn't falter and she didn't fall.

She didn't slow at all until a pair of strong arms slid around her waist. She screamed with surprise. She hadn't heard him coming up behind her at all. He had been silent and fast.

Clay picked her up and hoisted her over his shoulder. Despite her weight, he handled her as if she were as light as a bag of feathers. 

'And you wonder why I can't trust you,' he said, carrying her back up along the trail.

She knew he was a lycan and had an inner wolf but the way he had caught her so quickly and silently, the strength with which he carried her, was more superhuman that she had thought possible.

'I won't run,' she said, 'just put me down.' Being carried was something she had never experienced before and she was sure no ordinary man would be able to handle her the way Clay handled her. She felt uneasy in this position, totally under his control and exposed.

Yet something about Clay's manhandling of her, the way he could so easily master her, made her body tingle excitedly.

She relaxed in his grip and let him take her wherever he wanted.

CHAPTER FOUR

Haven

After a half hour, Clay set Lucinda down and let her walk. They were so deep in the woods now, so far up the mountain, that she had nowhere to run to. As soon as her feet touched the ground and she stepped away, trying to get her legs to work properly after being carried for so long, Clay already missed the feel of her against him. During the walk here, he had let his heightened senses drink in the scent of her. The subtle tones of the pheromones on her skin sent a signal to his brain that Lucinda was aroused. In response, his body tightened and hardened, yearning for her. 

Fighting the need to throw her to the ground and mount her, he had gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the soft warm feeling of the back of her thigh beneath his hand. Even through the denim of her black jeans, he could feel her warmth. If he just slid his hand a few inches up, he would encounter the swell of her backside. 

Now she was walking ahead of him, striding on through the trees wordlessly. Clay watched the sway of her hips and the seductive movement of her thighs and ass through her clothing. The attraction he felt was purely animal lust but he knew there was something deeper at work, something more primal that aroused his wolf nature. The desires of his wolf nature were not something he could ignore for long. Eventually, they consumed him because the wolf part of him could be much stronger than the human part.

'Just over the next ridge,' he told her as they ascended a rocky slope.

Pretending to ignore him, she strode ahead. For a girl with curves, she was certainly fit. 

*

Lucinda reached the crest of the ridge, looked down at the view below, and gasped. A small clear lake sat nestled among the trees and next to the lake squatted a log cabin. Lucinda had to admit that the scene was idyllic. From her vantage point on the ridge, she could see the vista of mountains stretching away into the distance. She was always in awe when she saw rugged beauty like this. 

Clay came to a stop beside her and she felt herself falling for another kind of rugged beauty.

Stop that, she told herself, he's one of them. They killed your parents.

Ignoring Clay, she set off down the ridge toward the cabin.

She could sense him behind her and had that feeling again that his eyes were on her, roaming over her curves and seeing through her clothing. 

Probably sizing up his next meal, she thought. But Clay's eyes on her didn't worry her at all. As she scrambled down the pine-covered rocks toward the lake, she felt appreciated in a way that she had never felt in her entire life. 

Get a grip, Lucinda, she chided herself, then realized she needed to literally get a grip as her hand slipped from the rock she had been holding onto and she felt gravity pulling her downward to the rocks below. She barely had time to scream before she saw the world flicker and tumble in her vision. She was falling. Down a very steep rocky ridge. This was going to hurt.

The air was suddenly knocked out of her lungs as she landed on the dirt and she made a 'whoof'ing sound. Pain shot through her back. All she could see was rocks and pine needles and sky, tumbling and revolving before her eyes. She thought she heard Clay shout, 'Lucinda!' but she could have imagined that and it might be her own inner voice shouting at her. She wasn't sure of anything anymore. Everything was tumbling and spinning and she felt pain shoot along her back. Then she felt her head hit something solid and blackness crept into her vision and mind until it engulfed everything.

Awareness came back to her slowly. The first thing that came to her through the blackness was sound. Someone moving around close to her. She heard birds in the distance, singing happily while she lay here in total darkness. Her sense of smell came alive next and she recognized the bitter odour of coffee brewing. That was a happy smell which she associated with meeting friends at Starbucks. But she was outdoors, not at Starbucks, so how could she smell coffee? She remembered being on the ridge and falling.

The sounds became recognizable as liquid being poured into mugs and a spoon stirring, ringing out a metallic song as it hit the edge of the mug. It sounded better to Lucinda than the bird song because she associated that stirring sound with hot drinks, and hot drinks were comforting when you were hurt, when you had just fallen and banged your head.

She tried to move and groaned as pain lanced through her skull. 

'Try not to move,' came Clay Adams' voice through the blackness.

She opened her eyes slowly and realized she was in the log cabin. The smell of coffee was joined by the smell of age and an underlying scent of pine. She was lying on a bed, still fully clothed, with a bandage wrapped around her head and a cold wet compress applied to the back of her skull. As her senses returned, she felt a dull throbbing in the place the compress had been applied. 

The only other furnishing in the small room was a nightstand. Beyond the doorway, in the main part of the cabin, Clay stood by a stove and kettle. He was looking at her with concern.

'How are you feeling?' he asked.

'Not too bad considering I fell off a mountain.'

He brought her a mug of steaming black coffee and handed it to her. 'Don't drink it yet, it's too hot.'

She accepted it gratefully and sat up against the carved pine headboard. 'I guess you rescued me,' she observed. 'Thanks.'

He shrugged. 'I got to you before you went too far but you hit your head pretty bad.'

She knew he had only managed to get to her in time because of his powers, because he was one of them. A shifter. A killer.

'So what now?' she asked. 'You have me where you want me. I'm helpless and we're in the middle of nowhere. What happens now?'

'Now you rest,' he said, reaching behind her head to check the compress. 'You have a bump back there. You haven't vomited so I assume you don't have a concussion.' He looked at her eyes. 'No black eye. I think you'll recover quickly.'

'And what about you?' she nodded at his side. 'You took a bullet.' She almost added, 'for me' but stopped herself.

'I heal quickly,' he said. 'Now drink some coffee.'

She took a sip of the hot bitter liquid and felt it warm her inside. 'God that tastes good!' She looked around the room. 'What is this place?'

'It's an old hunter's cabin. I used to come up here all the time when I was a kid.'

'So it belongs to your parents?' Her reporter's curiosity was returning full force.

Clay looked at the walls as if recalling old memories. 'My adopted parents, yes.'

'You're adopted?'

He nodded. 'My parents found me out here by the cabin one day. I was four years old. The authorities reckoned I'd been wandering in the woods for days. Somehow I'd survived. Apart from scratches and cuts, the only other mark on me was a bite. Of unknown origin, was the official description of that bite.'

'If you were four, your real parents must have been missing you.'

'The police put out appeals on TV and in the local newspapers to find my parents but nobody came forward to claim me as their child.' He looked at the window and the trees beyond. 'I think the thing that bit me killed my parents. Their bodies are out there somewhere in the woods.'

'That's horrible!' she said. 

'I had a good life with my adopted parents. They raised me well. And when they found out about my secret, they kept it hidden from the rest of the community. They researched lycanthropy and helped me control it. That's why I wear this.' He reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a leather cord with a small silver amulet in the shape of a wolf's claw. 'Wearing this keeps me from turning uncontrollably during a full moon.' He let the amulet drop back against his skin. 'My parents' research also turned up some information on the Temple of Thul.' He looked at Lucinda accusingly. 'I assume that's who you work for.'