Hunted (Riley Cray) (7 page)

“I guess so.”

The door creaked open just wide enough for Holbrook to slip into the room, his tall frame making the space appear even smaller. Somewhere deep inside the wolf lifted her head, hackles rising at the claustrophobic closeness of the room. We knew that Holbrook was there to help us, protect us, but the sight of him looming over the tub when we were already so vulnerable had her snapping her jaws defensively. The wolf didn’t like to be trapped, and right now my entire life felt like a prison cell, the walls closing in around me, suffocating me.

As if sensing my internal struggle he lowered the lid on the toilet and perched on the edge, making himself seem smaller, non-threatening. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was impressed, but all I could focus on at that moment was how tired and afraid I was. Propping his elbows on his knees he leaned over, appearing even smaller to help the wolf calm down a little more.

“You planning on staying in there all night?” he asked, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards in the beginnings of a smile.

“Maybe,” I replied, sniffling as I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, but made no move to get out of the tub.

“So, Eeyore huh?” he asked with a faint grin. His eyes settled on the small tattoo on my right shoulder, definitely not focusing on any of my naked bits.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said with a shrug, my words broken by the fierce shivers wracking my body. I’d gotten it in my freshman year of college with my roommate Emma, before Samson, and all the ugliness he had wrought in my life.

“I was always partial to Grumpy myself,” he said leaning back to push down the waist of his jeans a few inches to reveal a small tattoo of the sour faced dwarf. Both the wolf and I licked our lips at the swath of bronzed skin stretched taunt across his hip bone. I wondered if he had any tan lines, and if so, how far down they went.

“So, how about we get you out of there before you’re as blue as Eeyore?” he asked, disrupting my speculations.

I uncurled from my hunched position in the tub, wincing as my cold and stiff limbs moved sluggishly, sending resistant tremors of pain through my body. Holbrook leaned close as he reached past me to turn off the water, the motion revealing the long line of his throat, already showing the beginnings of dark stubble. Letting the wolf float up to the surface, I drowned in the scent of him, sun warmed molasses lingering beneath the woody, earthy tones of his cologne, and beneath it all, thumping in the vein in his throat, the sharp coppery scent of blood.

Both the wolf and I wanted to grasp the skin of his neck in our teeth to mark him as ours. But he wasn’t ours; I’d only just met him, and yet I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. I couldn’t figure out what it was about him that was inspiring such reckless feelings in me. I’d never been so strongly swayed by someone before; even the hormone driven attractions of youth hadn’t ever left me so enraptured.

Pulling back, his eyes met mine, heat swimming up through the forest green depths to burn bright, sweeping away any trace of reservation I might have had.

Fuck it. I need this. I need his lips, his hands, to chase away the darkness.

A shuddering breath flowed out of me seconds before his lips smashed into mine. Electricity arced through me, making my lips tingle and my toes curl. Large hands wrapped around my waist, lifting me out of the bathtub, leaving trails of dancing energy across my skin. The water dripping from my skin soaked through the cotton of his t-shirt, plastering it to the hard planes of his chest. Being pressed against him was like standing too close to an overhead power line, his energy thrumming in my veins as if someone had struck a chord deep inside me.

It had been a long time since I’d been intimate with anyone, my last romantic interlude consisting of an ill-conceived tryst with a young bartender at the local bar in Leadville. It had been a quick, awkward, and unsatisfying experience that I had gone out of my way not to repeat. Needless to say, my sex life over the last couple of years had consisted of a box of AA batteries and a neon pink monstrosity I had ordered online in a moment of weakness.

My hands shook with excitement and nervousness when they slid across his chest, his heart thumping beneath my fingers. I was as giddy as a teenager sneaking her first kiss in a darkened corner of the auditorium, and at the same time was all but vibrating with the desire to ride him like a pony.

Yee haw!

Relishing the tingling sensation of his lips slanted across mine, I grasped the front of his soaked shirt and pulled him tight against me, the warmth of him almost painful next to my chilled skin. And yet I couldn’t pull away, didn’t want to.

“What’s going on in there?” Johnson asked on the other side of the door, his voice as gruff as ever.

Good to know some things never change.

For a moment Holbrook looked like he was going to pull away, but after a long pause he replied, “Everything’s fine. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

I thought I heard Johnson snort, but he just said, “Take your time. I’m going to my room to make some calls.” A moment later I caught the muffled thud of the door closing.

Confident in the knowledge that we were alone, I let a low growl bloom in the back of my throat, the wolf rising close to the surface. In that moment her needs were the same as mine. We needed to feel muscles moving liquid beneath bare skin, hands roaming our body, stroking the fire of our shared desire. We knew as surely as we knew that the sky is blue, that only his touch could chase away the ghosts of our memories and fears.

My hands slid up to the firm muscles of his shoulders, skimming along them until I found the naked skin of his neck, the flutter of his heart beat dancing beneath my fingertips. Resisting the wolf’s urge to sink my teeth into that fluttering pulse, I instead swept the flat of my tongue across it in a single broad stroke before peppering the column of his throat with kisses.

A mischievous smile curved my lips at the feeling of his hands sliding down my back to cup my ass, lifting me off my feet as he kicked the door open and took several awkward steps backwards into the room. Wrapping my legs around his waist I tangled my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and steered him towards the bed.

Although Johnson was gone, the pervasive cigarette stink of him lingered in the room, but even that couldn’t douse the heat building between Holbrook and me. Disentangling my legs from around his waist, I stepped back to regard him with my hands on my hips. His face was flushed, the deep red in his cheeks emphasizing the forest green of his eyes that shone with the same need burning inside me. I felt powerful and sexy as his eyes tracked the motion of my breasts, the last traces of my fear drifting away, forgotten.

“Like what you see?” I asked, titling one hip towards him.

Instead of answering he extended a hand towards me, his fingers barely brushing against my arm as I laughed and danced back out of his reach, daring him to chase me. His rich and melodic laughter joined mine as he reached for me again, missing by a mile.

“You’ll have to be faster than that, Agent,” I teased, easily eluding him as I jumped onto the bed.

“Troublesome woman,” he said, shaking his head though his eyes still sparkled with laughter and heat.

With a playful growl I launched myself at him, twisting him around to ride him down to the mattress, straddling his hips. I finally let myself succumb to the urge to have the hot, fragrant skin of his neck between my teeth, and latched onto him, reveling in his sharp gasp. Sliding my hand down between us, I grinned against his throat, his hissing exhalation flowing hot and moist against my ear, but I cared little for his pleas for more. I wanted to mark him, stake my claim, and show the world that he belonged to me.

CHAPTER SIX

THE CLOSE DARKNESS of the forest surrounded me, filling me with the scent of pine and the dark, damp earth. These woods were familiar to me, I had run through the Rio Grande National Forest as a young wolf, one with the mind of the pack. That was before that asshole Jonathan Stone ousted me, saying I was too unstable to be around his ‘family’.

What the hell did he know?

The darkness was soothing, lulling me with its quiet breath. I could hear it in the sleepy rustling of the forest’s inhabitants curled up for the night. Come morning the trees would be filled with the endless chatter of birds, but for now the air remained still. My steps were slow and silent as I moved through the trees, drawn towards some unknown point as if on an invisible thread. It wasn’t until I caught the scent of dollar store soap and gun oil that I realized what had called out to me.

Footsteps crunched on the packed snow and gravel in the small clearing as three middle-aged men in an absurd amount of camouflage clothing hauled their gear out of the back of a silver pick-up truck.

“Did you remember the beer this time, Dale?” the eldest of the group called to one of the other men.

“Yeah, Tim. I’ve got it right here,” the tallest man replied in a nasal whine, pulling a blue cooler out of the bed of the truck.

The last of the threesome, looking younger, and not as soft around the middle as the others, was busy checking the gear in his backpack. Crouched near the tree line, his back to his friends, he was the first to notice me. The startled cry of a lark gave away my position as it went careening into the sky, screaming its warning. Raising his eyes to see what had scared the bird, his eyes fell on me, widening in surprise even as his hand reached for the rifle leaning against the tree beside him.

Baring my teeth in an excited grin, I let him get the rifle up to his shoulder before I burst out of the brush, hitting him like a ton of bricks, and knocking him flat on his back. The thunder crack of the rifle going off next to my ear was jarring, but it didn’t slow me down. Blood spurted, hot and sweet with fear, from the jagged gash in his neck, covering my muzzle with gore. A gurgling cry was all he managed before he went still, eyes staring unblinking at the dark sky. Back by the truck, his friends scrambled for their own guns.

In his haste and fear, Tim dropped his rifle at his feet, gnarled hands shaking as he reached for it. His fingers didn’t even brush the smooth wood of the stock before I slammed into him, driving him back into the side of the truck where his head impacted with a meaty thump. I watched as his limbs went limp and he flopped down to the ground, listing to one side.

I smelled the powdery fragrance of Dale’s cheap soap before I even heard the grate of gravel beneath his shuffling steps. “G-get away from him,” he stammered, his nasally voice shaking with fear. “Get away or I’ll shoot!”

Turning, I rounded on him with a wide toothy grin, delighting in the way the color drained from his face at the same time a dark spot grew on the front of his camouflage pants. The air was suddenly redolent with the bitter scent of his piss.

“I’ll do it, I’ll shoot!” he threatened, though his hands shook so violently I doubted he’d have been able to hit the broad side of a barn. “I’ll do it! I swear I will!”

Growing tired of his chatter, I leapt at him, knocking him to the ground. The rifle fell from his slack hands before he could get off a shot, tumbling away out of reach. I stood over him, my breath ruffling the salt and pepper hair clinging to his sweaty brow, and studied the fearful glint in his eyes.

I’d wondered a dozen times what it would be like to be on that side of the eternal struggle between hunter and hunted. Did his heart pound out a furious rhythm in his chest like mine did? Did time seem to stop, becoming crystalline and immaterial as the world narrowed down to a single moment?

I could have shifted back to human to ask him, but the hunger was too great, I needed to have his blood, hot and full of life, against my tongue, needed to experience his death. I needed it to quiet the frenzy in my mind and soul. Rearing back to strike, I was stopped by a burning pain in my shoulder, the force of the stinging impact rocking me back several steps.

Snarling, I turned in the direction of the shot to see Tim still slumped against the side of the truck, fumbling to work the bolt on his rifle, tears hanging in his rheumy eyes. A well placed paw left Dale clutching at the ruin of his throat, blood bubbling up between his grasping fingers as he fought for breath that wouldn’t come.

I stalked towards the older man, letting the sound of each languorous step seep into his brain, ratcheting up his fear until the air was perfumed with it, and I was all but drunk on its intoxicating aroma. The sound of his scream was music to my ears, full of agony and terror. His death was the sweetest, the wide arc of blood splattering down around us like scarlet rain, painting the snow crimson. His scream continued on, echoing amongst the trees as it drifted up to the wide open sky, fading into a bright melodic trill...

The insistent, high pitched jingle of a phone on the nightstand cut through the silence, rousing me from dark and violent dreams before it fell silent again. Swimming up into consciousness, I drew a deep breath, drawing in the scent of warm molasses and bare skin. The steady thump of Holbrook’s heart was a comforting beat against my ear as I nestled deeper into the crook of his shoulder, seeking out his warmth to chase away the ugly remnants of my dreams.

Cracking my eyes open, I squinted against the pale early morning light slanting in through the thin curtains. The first few golden tendrils of dawn crept across the other bed before landing on the man sleeping beside me, caressing his bare skin just as I had done the night before. His dark stubble shone red and gold where the sunlight touched him, revealing a small white scar on the underside of his chin.