How to Run with a Naked Werewolf (14 page)

My fickle brain immediately went to Caleb. And I told my brain to mind its own business.

“Anyway, the good news is that you’re nowhere near that area now, and looking for you in a state that big is like looking for a needle in a . . . really large haystack with very few needles.”

I snickered. “Didn’t think that metaphor through, huh?”

“Nope.”

Red-burn assured me that the Network was using every resource it had to get me reestablished. We ended
the call with promises that she would send me e-mails regardless of new developments. I just had to stay safe and be patient.

I felt I had staying safe covered, particularly after Caleb sewed a special pocket in the lining of my coat so I would have “my baton” on hand anytime I needed it. (A werewolf with seamstress skills—who knew?) But patience was a little more complicated. I knew I was falling too easily into this routine. I got used to sharing motel rooms. I got used to sharing tiny, dingy bathrooms with a man so tall he could brush his teeth behind me and still see himself in the mirror over my head. I got used to sharing greasy meals over sticky diner tables and rickety in-room dinette sets. I got used to sleeping in a bed warmed by a large body, a definite bonus considering the daily drop in temperature as we rounded the corner into October.

I learned little things, some that endeared me to Caleb, others that made me want to throw all of his Garth Brooks CDs out of the truck window. I learned that Caleb liked having his back rubbed as we fell asleep. I learned that violin music made him edgy. Like most men, he insisted that he didn’t need directions, but I insisted even more forcefully that we keep track of our progress on a map.

Without mentioning them, he obviously was learning little things about me, too. He noticed the titles I liked to read and would pick up a mystery or romance paperback for me whenever he found a store that sold books. He would take the tomatoes off of my sandwiches without my having to say how much I hated
them. He knew how to adjust the heat vents in the truck so that I stayed warm but not too hot.

I knew it would only last until I relocated, but it started to feel something like a normal existence. What could life be like if we were staying in one place? Would we become bored with each other? Would he realize that there were much more attractive, less emotionally damaged girls out there with whom he could make beautiful wolf-babies?

I wasn’t happy that it was taking so long to reach my destination, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. For now, I tried to enjoy traveling with Caleb.

Of course, there were nights when I would wake up with a warm, firm body curled around mine, and I would flinch, flipping onto my back and scooting across the bed. Caleb’s arm would wrap around my waist, his grip unrelenting despite my mattress gymnastics.

Once my sleep-sluggish brain realized I was with Caleb, I would settle down almost immediately. Caleb’s physical presence was like a magnet, constantly drawing me. No matter where he was in the room, I could feel the warmth of his skin radiating out and reaching for me.

He was deliberately giving me space, which I appreciated. I knew it was probably difficult for him. Were-creatures were demonstrative folk, reveling in public displays of affection where maybe only a handshake was called for. They maintained intimacy, from friendship to epic soul-mate romance, through touch. It was as though skin-to-skin contact confirmed the connection, a sort of unwritten, unspoken,
I still love you enough to tolerate your questionable hand-washing practices
memo.

It was diametrically opposed to his nature to avoid touching me, particularly, I suspect, after getting so cozy with me that first night. I appreciated his efforts, but at the same time, I felt more than a little frustrated by the situation. I was trusting Caleb more each day, growing more attracted to him, and he now seemed content to be snuggle-buddies.

And it was slowly driving me insane.

Sex was serious business for werewolves. I knew that in most cases, it meant lifelong commitment and off-spring and all that. Part of me hoped that Caleb was the rare exception who could slip on a steel-belted-radial condom and have his way with a girl he just liked a lot.

It was a long shot.

Then again, did the committed-werewolf-sex issue mean that Caleb had never had sex?

Werewolves were basically breeding themselves out of existence with their mated-for-life policies. Once a male impregnated a female, his DNA wouldn’t mix with any other’s. The same went for were-females—once they had children with a male, there were no other connections to be made. It was why divorce was almost nonexistent, and widows rarely remarried within the pack. Most males didn’t want to give up their chance of having children. Maggie’s cousin Samson was a fantastic exception to this rule. He had adopted his wife Alicia’s children as his own and was in the process of turning them into miniature knuckle-headed versions of himself.

Generally, werewolves tried to marry other werewolves, so they would be able to pass on their genes
and produce little werewolves. But because of geography and the limited population, more and more wolves were marrying humans, and that resulted in more “dead-liners,” humans who shared all the same genes as werewolves but had none of the wolf magic. They couldn’t phase and lacked the werewolves’ special senses. They weren’t included in pack business. Some packs considered them a source of shame, as if the diluted werewolf genes were a sign of weakness, but the Graham pack loved their dead-liners as much as they loved any relative.

Most females wouldn’t risk premating sex, because they didn’t want to risk being tied to someone they didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives with. Some males did play “sex roulette,” as Maggie called it, and sometimes they lost, meaning they impregnated unsuitable females and were stuck with them for life. Maggie’s stance on this unfortunate practice was “If you don’t want to pay, don’t play.”

Maggie was terribly pragmatic about this sort of thing.

It was difficult to imagine someone like Caleb as a thirty-something-year-old virgin. But I didn’t know if I was ready for that responsibility, to initiate someone into sex. Not because I was nervous about sex. I used to be not really wild but on the more adventurous side of the spectrum. I went out with my girlfriends, enjoyed the occasional protected one-night stand. But that was then. Now I was no one’s idea of an ideal first time.

Unless, of course, he came out of the bathroom wearing
only
a towel again—then all bets were off.

We had been
driving for hours. The last time I could remember feeling my own butt was sometime before lunch. Even Caleb was starting to show some wear, hunching over the wheel and occasionally rolling his neck back and forth to hear the snap of realigning vertebrae. I reached across the seat, pleased that I could touch him so casually, rubbing the thick hair at the crown of his head, down to the nape of his neck. He leaned into the caress, a pleased chuffing noise emanating from his chest.

“Sore?”

He nodded.

I rubbed the back of his neck, pressing my fingers deeper into the muscle tissue, feeling for knots. Tracing his hairline with my fingertips, massaging his scalp, rubbing my fingers along the tips of his ears, which I’d heard was an acupressure point for dogs. He turned his head to rub his cheek against my knuckles. I scooted a little closer, rubbing those knuckles along the line of
his cheekbone. He turned his head slightly, pulling one of my fingertips into his mouth. He nipped at it with his blunter front teeth before wrapping his tongue around it, running his tongue along the ridges of my fingerprints. A hot flash ran from my chest to my belly and settled between my thighs. Old, lovely, familiar sensations—lust, excitement, giddy teenage zeal—had me squirming in my seat. My eyes widened at the strength and dexterity of his tongue as he moved it over my skin. If he could do that to a fingertip, what could he do to my—

I was jolted out of this rather indecent speculation by Caleb’s suddenly veering off the road and throwing the truck into park. My seatbelt seemed to melt away, and Caleb was climbing across the seat.

His mouth. My God, his mouth was hot and so very wet against mine. He wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing me back against the seat and grinding his thick, solid, denim-covered erection against me.

I moaned into his mouth, threading my fingers through his hair with one hand and clinging to his neck with the other. His hands spanned the width of my waist, sliding down the front of my jeans and yanking them open. The dark depth of his eyes melted away and gave way to predatory gold. Pressing his mouth to my palm, he untangled my arms from his neck and had me lie back as he pulled my jeans and panties down. His warm, thick fingers slid smoothly inside me. He moved in and out, teasing me with an achingly slow rhythm as his thumb rubbed at my sensitive folds.

He grinned when I made a desperate whimper and crooked his fingers—

I bolted up
in my truck seat, disoriented and dizzy as I watched the scenery speed by. Caleb was driving, of course, and watching me with a little smirk on his face.

“Hey there, Rabbit,” he said, jostling my shoulder gently. “You having another nightmare? You were moaning in your sleep.”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shifting in my seat to alleviate the full, tingling sensation of my damp jeans pressing against me.

Why was he smirking at me? Had I said anything in my sleep? I’d never been much of a sleep-talker. I squirmed in my seat, trying subtly to move my uncomfortably wet panties—

Oh, hell.

With a cringe, I realized that he could probably smell that I was definitely not having a
bad
dream. He was teasing me. Stupid werewolf supersenses.

My face went warm, and I nudged his hand away. I grabbed a bottle of water from my cupholder and took a very long, very cold drink.

We’d been driving for three days and had already managed to collect on two relatively minor cases: a guy who passed bad checks in Healy and a woman who was a serial identity thief. I was amazed at how much Caleb managed to accomplish, tracking down about a dozen cases in the few weeks I traveled with him. He worked multiple cases at once, trying to track down several geographically convenient ne’er-do-wells, whether they were wanted by the authorities or . . . other people with less actual authority but more money.

Occasionally, it was as easy as calling the target’s
mom and telling her to drag her son to the nearest sheriff’s office, where Caleb was waiting. (It actually worked twice.) Others put up more of a fight, which was why—given the Jerry debacle—Caleb tried to keep me as far from actual clients as possible.

At least, he did until Suds called him about the Mort Johanssen case sometime in our second week together. According to the e-mail, Mort Johanssen was a match to his twin brother, a seafood magnate who needed a kidney. Merl Johanssen was getting increasingly desperate and offered Caleb an obscene amount of money to track down his wayward brother, a Delta Junction resident who hadn’t spoken to his twin in years because of a dispute over their mother’s will.

We sat at a sticky diner table, munching on waffles. Caleb handed me the paperwork Suds had passed on from an investigator in Kodiak. “Merl’s got a huge fleet of crab boats and owns shares in most of the fleets in Alaska. If you’ve had crabs, it’s more than likely Merl’s had his hand in it.” He pulled an uncomfortable face. “That sounded better in my head.”

I snorted into my orange juice. “I sure hope so.”

I read over the medical report and saw that Merl’s renal failure was attributed to damage from a bad reaction to an antibiotic called streptomycin. Generally, when a patient had kidney problems, treating the cause could alleviate the symptoms. But it was difficult to restore damaged tissue. Merl wasn’t responding to treatment, and his creatinine levels and glomerular filtration rates were getting progressively worse.

I looked up to see that Caleb was watching me read
the doctor’s notes. I smiled and flipped over to the mug shot of Mort, a stubby, round-cheeked man with thinning red hair. He looked like a hungover Cupid. “Do they both look like this?”

Caleb nodded. “Identical. Mort took a test showing him to be a match just before their mom died. Merl was executor of her will and took some family hunting property that Mort thought should go to him. Angry words were exchanged. Mort declared he was keeping his blankety-blank kidney and stopped taking Merl’s calls. But Merl’s condition is getting worse, and he would like someone to find Mort and persuade him to come back. See, it’s almost humanitarian. We’re helping to save a life.”

“Wait, so we’re tracking someone down so he can have a kidney removed by force? Why don’t we just get a Coleman cooler and yank the sucker out ourselves?”

“I’ve never been that good with anatomy.” When Caleb saw my distressed expression, he added, “I’m just kidding!”

“No, you’re not.”

“Fifty-fifty,” he admitted, waggling his hand. “Look, all we have to do is walk in there, talk him into the car, and drive him to the airfield.”

“Where twenty-four hours from now, he’ll wake up in a tub full of ice with a mysterious pain in his side.”

“No,” Caleb said, indignant. “He’ll be flown to Portland for the procedure. As long as he’s in reasonably good health, he’ll be in and out in no time.”

“OK, I’ve been a little wishy-washy in voicing my disapproval for your job in the past couple of weeks,
but let me spell it out for you. We can’t do this. We cannot use another human being for spare parts,” I told him, lowering my voice when I realized the waitress was staring at me. “It’s ghoulish.”

“Don’t you think Merl should have a shot at living?” he asked.

“I just think Mort should be able to make the decision for himself.” I sighed.

“Come on, Rabbit,” he said, jostling my shoulder. I glowered at him. “If it makes you feel any better, Merl promised that if Mort donates his kidney, he’ll pay about twenty thousand dollars in back child support to Mort’s ex. See? It’s a win-win.”