E.A. Price - Valentine's Wolf (Grey Wolf Pack #11) (6 page)

Delilah’s frostiness evaporated. “You too, it was really nice to meet you. Don’t be a stranger; I’m sure the sheriff would love to have you back. He’s a great guy, by the way.”

Val murmured a non-committal sound and quickly made her escape. Would the sheriff love to have her back? Did that mean he wanted to arrest her again?
Hell, why did she find that exciting?

One meeting with the sheriff and she had turned into a sex-mad loon. Perhaps it would be best to try and stay out of his way. Or maybe she should do something to get his attention. Aha! She should steal something from the local grocery shop.

Oh, god, no, that was a terrible idea!
Hell, what was wrong with her?

Chapter Six

Later that night, after having trawled through hours and hours of paperwork, Val was happily crawling into bed. She was staying in a guest cabin on the outskirts of town. The owners usually only opened them up to holidaymakers in the summer months, but they had agreed to give Val a special rate. It was actually quite roomy and contained a small kitchenette.
It was better than her first apartment.

She kind of thought that she was starting to make some headway with the paperwork Glenn had left behind, but not by much. She couldn’t make heads or tails of the architect’s plans for the hotel, and when she called the office she found out that Glenn hadn’t actually used one of the firm’s usual freelance architects. She had no idea where the plans came from; for all she knew Glenn had drawn them up himself!

Also, Glenn didn’t appear to have ordered enough materials for the job. He didn’t even appear to have ordered any bathroom fixtures.
You couldn’t have a hotel with toilets!

She needed to have another crack at things tomorrow. Or course, she might have gotten through more today if she hadn’t been arrested…

Oh, that damn sheriff! He was invading nearly every single one of her waking thoughts. It was so… so…
thoughtless!

How was she supposed to concentrate when he was strutting around town being all brusque and attractive and tall and muscular…?
Damn him!

Val punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape. Or maybe, she was just relieving sexual tension. It had been a while since she last had sex. Hell, it was before Christmas. She’d very stupidly fallen back into the arms of an ex-boyfriend at the office Christmas party because she was feeling lonely. She later discovered that he was getting married, and she was his last fling. Dick.

Yes, she was just horny. That’s what it was. It had nothing to do with the sheriff – it was all about her.
Yes…

Earlier she’d called her neighbor to check on Tumbles. She managed to get her 13-year-old neighbor Nancy to feed Tumbles for free. The kid loved animals. Apparently, Tumbles was enjoying being looked after by Nancy and the young girl gushed at how affectionate he was. Traitorous little hairball.
Tumbles that is, not Nancy.

She then called Hilary to let her know how it was going. She vented at how frustrating the whole situation was, and Hilary alternately soothed her and gave her a pep talk.
Her best friend was a one-woman cheer squad
. Hilary had asked whether there were any hot men in town and, lord help her, Val had immediately become tongue-tied, leading to cackles of laughter from Hilary and demands to know all the details. Val then proceeded to rant and rail about the sheriff, clearly a little too passionately, because when she was done, Hilary told her to go for it. Frustrated, Val ended the call with Hilary telling her not to do anything she wouldn’t do.
Not likely…

After that, Val gave up and decided to head back to her temporary home in her rental car. As she pulled up, her phone rang with an unknown number. Shrugging, she’d answered it, and it chilled her when Lester’s voice hissed down the line

“Where are you?”

She paled. “None of your…”

“You’re out of town. You can’t hide forever. I will find you, you dirty, filthy, half…”

She’d hung up at that point and swung around, wildly searching the surrounding woodland for unknown stalkers. She calmed down. Lester,
the freakazoid
, was back in Georgia, back in Ursa. He didn’t know where she was; she was safe.

She couldn’t understand his reaction. They had one date, and it did not go well. Was this all because she wouldn’t go on a second date with him? Would any man really be that desperate to spend time with her? It wasn’t a matter of self-esteem, but she seriously doubted any guy would like her enough to become a crazy stalker.
She just wasn’t the type to incite those kinds of feelings
.

She’d considered calling the Detective back in Ursa; she still had his card in her wallet. But, it was late, and she doubted the Detective could really do anything anyway at that moment. Plus, she was safe in Rose. She’d consider calling in the morning, when she was less tired.

At that moment, all she wanted to do was sleep, ignore the creeping suspicion that she was being watched, and pretend her muscles weren’t sore and achy. Instead, she focused on the much more desirable image of the sheriff and allowed slumber to take over.

*

Jake rubbed himself against the trees surrounding Val’s cabin.
Well, it was either that or pissing up against them, and he doubted she’d like that.

He’d finished the rest of his shift in a daze, not even caring about the insults Mrs. Martin was flinging at him and his department. Yep, there was only one woman he wanted to be insulted by, and he had taken to stalking her.

As soon as he could, he shifted to his wolf and prowled the edges of the construction site. He told himself he was doing it to make sure nothing else happened at the site, but deep down he knew the truth.
He just wanted to see her
. Everyone else had gone home, and Val had stayed and worked for hour after hour. He had huffed, puffed and growled. She shouldn’t work such long hours; it wasn’t healthy. The protective part of him wanted to burst right in there and drag her out, but the logical side of him realized that he really couldn’t do that. That would really make her mad, and as much as he enjoyed that side of her, he didn’t want to push her too far.

It had been a relief when she finally did leave. She didn’t see him, but he ran alongside her car, back to the cabin. He’d been a little disturbed when she arrived at the cabin and took a phone call. His hackles had risen as he smelt the fear suddenly emanating from her, and for a second, as her head whipped round searching the woods, he’d thought she knew he was there. But no, after a few seconds, she relaxed. He hadn’t heard that call, but he could tell it had upset her.

He had snarled lightly, irritated that he didn’t know what it was about and that he wasn’t in a position to find out.

He waited until all the lights went out in the cabin, and then waited another hour after that. By then, he was satisfied that she was asleep. Still a little disconcerted by her reaction to her phone call, he spread his scent around the area to ward off other predators, and went as far as to shift back to his human self and check all her windows and her door was locked. He wasn’t overly happy about leaving her, and would much prefer to take her back to his house, to his bed… but he really couldn’t do that.
Yet
.

For now, this would have to do.
But who knows what might happen tomorrow.

*

Val crossed her legs as the sheriff pushed open the door to her cell. His eyes raked over her body, lingering on her hips and breasts. She shuddered, and the corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.

Slowly, deliberately, he stalked towards her, never taking his eyes off her, lest she try to get away.
She was truly prey to his predator.

He flexed his muscles, and she clenched her thighs together harder, trying to hide the scent of her wet arousal. He sniffed the air and chuckled roughly. He knew she wanted him, and if the immensely huge bulge in the front of his trousers was anything to go by, he wanted her too.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Valentine,” he rumbled huskily.

Val bit her lip and blushed prettily. “Indeed I have.”

“What am I going to do with you?”

She ran a finger over the neckline of her dress. “Whatever you want.”

The sheriff let out a small growl and ate up the ground between them. Val squealed in delight as he grabbed her and pushed her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around him and clutched her small hands to his wide shoulders.

His mouth met hers; their tongues tangled ferociously, and she squeaked as she felt his hand dip into her thong. She wrenched her mouth from his.

“Sheriff, this is so sudden,” she panted excitedly as his fingers caressed her slit, bathing in her honey.

“No, I’ve been waiting for you my whole life,” he murmured.

With that, he thrust his fingers into her channel, and she came apart screaming for him.

*

Val trembled as the orgasm wracked her body. She sat up in bed, chest heaving and disorientated, she looked around the darkened room wildly. She calmed a little when she remembered where she was, but soon felt her chest tightening as she realized what had just happened.

Holy cow! She’d just had a sex dream about the sheriff and had come in her sleep!

Damn, she felt like a freaking teenager! Actually, no, even when she was a teenager she’d never orgasmed because of a dream. This was something new, and it was all because of that disgustingly sexy sheriff.
This was all his fault!
She tried to make herself feel annoyed at him, to blame him for her unexplainable attraction, but she couldn’t. She was annoyed at herself. She’d never felt anything like this for any man before – even the media mogul – and it had to be for a random wolf shifter in the middle of nowhere.
Completely unexplainable attraction!

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly unexplainable. There was his body, his face, his dominance, the power he exuded – she was a lowly human and even she could sense it! She imagined shifter women would fall all over their perfectly toned long legs just to see him smile at them.
Bitches! Val hated them all!

With alarm, she realized she was clenching her fists. What the heck was happening? She was getting angry over imaginary women being interested in her sheriff.
No, not her sheriff
. He didn’t belong to her… no, definitely not. She definitely didn’t want to be in relationship with him.
Nuh-uh, no way.
Just because dreaming of him had blessed her with the most intense climax she had ever been given, didn’t mean a thing. Just because thinking about him gave her more sexual satisfaction than all of her former partners put together…

Val let out a mewl of disgust as she realized her bed sheets were wet.
Ugh, she really was like a teenager!

She clambered out of bed and muttered angrily as she quickly changed her sheets. Thank heavens that the holiday cottage actually came equipped with its own washer dryer. She didn’t really want to explain this away to anyone in town.

She stripped off her nightshirt and threw it in the washer. She smoothed her hands over her skin and was shocked at how hot she was.

Stepping into the shower, she turned the water to as cold as she could stand, and rubbed body gel all over herself. Val moaned as her fingers brushed over her sensitive clit, and images of the handsome sheriff flashed before her.

Lord, she was horny again!

As frustrating as she found her current condition, she was a little relieved and surprised to find that her body felt fine. All the aches that had been plaguing her over the last few days had disappeared, and she felt great.

No, now she was assaulted by an ache of an altogether different kind.

*

Jake flicked through the channels on the TV, trying to find something to take his mind off a certain fiery woman. He settled on the news and dropped the remote on the coffee table.

He took over his house when he moved to the pack. It previously belonged to Felicity and Ford Carver’s parents. They retired to Florida, and Jake bought their house fully furnished. He wondered if Val would like his house? When he bought the house the Carvers had hinted at him finding a mate and raising a family there like they had… he hadn’t liked to disillusion the sweet couple, but neither of those things had ever been on his radar. He’d always thought that having a family was overrated.
Perhaps until now.

He wondered if Val wanted kids. His wolf panted at the thought. He’d never really cared about children before. They mostly just irritated him, but the thought of having his own kids, with Val, was different.

The TV caught his attention as his ex-wife sauntered on screen. Agent Robyn Foreman of the SEA. Yeah, for some reason she had chosen to keep his name.
He wondered about that, but never cared enough to ask.

He turned up the volume as she coldly, and professionally gave out details of a murder that had occurred in Ursa, Georgia. That was where she transferred after their divorce. She didn’t give out many details, the SEA tried to remain very tight-lipped where the public was concerned, but the victim was a shifter female, and they were asking for information.

Dang, it must have been bad if they were already trying to get the public involved. From experience, the tip line generally only invited nut jobs to make crazy reports about aliens. They only publically asked for tips if they were really stumped or if the murder was so horrific that they wanted it wrapped up because they feared another murder of the same ilk.

He flashed back to Morgan. The sick fucker had ritualistically killed eight people before Jake had shot him. Almost nine. It took a long time before Astrid could even step outside her front door without shaking after the hell Morgan put her through.

He should call Astrid tomorrow and see how she was getting on. They kept in touch as often as they could; he would tell her about life in the pack, and she would complain about her boss and boyfriend. Jake felt like her protective older brother and was always ready to rush to her to help her with her obnoxious boss or dumbass boyfriend. She always told him not to, of course, but Jake knew she just liked the fact that he cared enough to offer. Yes, he would call her tomorrow and see how she was getting on.