Red (26 page)

I tore my mouth from hers. “Stop.”

She tried to kiss me again, but I pressed my
forehead to hers. “Elodie, stop. We can’t.”

With a noise of frustration and a little
wiggle, she made it very clear that if I’d just shut up, we most
definitely could. I prayed for strength.

“
We’re not prepared for
this. I don’t have any kind of protection with me and despite the
fact that you’re prepared for nuclear winter with all your
provisions, you’re not prepared for this either.”

Elodie said nothing, but the breath that had
been hard and fast began to slow. She unwrapped her legs, and I
nearly choked on my own breath as she slipped back down to a less
precarious position.

“
Besides,” I choked out.
“If we do this now, before you shift, no matter what I’ve told you,
there will always be a part of you that wonders if I was
wrong.”

She pulled back and I let her go because I
didn’t trust myself to keep touching her. My body felt cold without
her pressed against it.

“
You’re right,” she said
quietly. “You’re right.” She took a breath and sank beneath the
water.

Nature’s cold shower
, I thought.

Nearly thirty seconds passed before I
started to worry when she hadn’t come back up. Then I heard the
splash well beyond the waterfall.

“
Elodie.”

I dove through the falls to go after her.
She was already halfway to shore.

“
Elodie, wait.”

But she didn’t slow. If anything she moved
faster. Before I reached the halfway point, she was scrambling up
the bank, grabbing her clothes and sprinting for the tent.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.
I should
have stopped us sooner. I should never have kissed her in the first
place while we were both wet and naked. She was too much
temptation. But she’d looked so beautiful in the flickering lights
beneath the waterfall and I just couldn’t resist.

I was the worst kind of ass. I’d promised
myself I wouldn’t put her in a compromising position. With the life
she’d led, she was beyond inexperienced, responding with instincts
and feelings she didn’t know what to do with yet.

And now she was upset.

Damn me.

I grabbed my wet shorts on my way out of the
lake and stopped to put them back on. Well that was all kinds of
uncomfortable. But no way was I going to make this situation any
worse than it already was. I took my time approaching the tent,
ears tuned for that hitch of breath that meant tears. Mostly I just
heard zippers and the sound of stuff brushing against nylon. Elodie
drying off and getting dressed probably.

When the sounds of movement stopped, I
spoke. “Elodie, I’m sorry. I—” What the hell did I need to
apologize for the most? Being the practical one? The voice of
reason? Taking advantage of her? Not saying no sooner? Did she
think I rejected her?

“
I don’t know how to fix
this,” I said miserably. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“
I’m not upset.” Her voice
was muffled somehow. Like it was pressed against a pillow or
something.

“
You’re not?” Could’ve
fooled me.

“
I’m—” The next word was
unintelligible.

“
You’re what?”

“
I’m
mortified
,” she
snarled.

Wait . . . this was all because she was
embarrassed?

“
But . . . why?” I
asked.

There was a muffled, double thump. Her fists
beating the sleeping bags? “Because I needed you to save me from
myself. Again.”

How the hell was I supposed to respond to
that?

I sank down cross-legged at the entrance of
the tent, feeling like a moron talking to her through zippered
nylon.

“
Which part of this bothers
you most—that you think you’re a danger to yourself or that all
this is happening so fast? Because we’ll slow down to a snail’s
pace if you want. I just got carried away.”

“
I think it’s very obvious
what I wanted.” Disgust dripped from her voice.

“
You say that like a bad
thing.”

“
You don’t
understand.”

“
So make me understand.
Explain it to me.”

Inside she moved. Rolling over, I guess,
because when she spoke again, her voice was clearer. “I always
thought they were stupid.”

Not what I expected her to lead with.
“Who?”

“
My ancestors. The long,
three hundred year line of idiot women who were driven by . . . I
don’t know . . . hormones and lust. Every last one of them did the
exact same thing. And I was
sure
that under the same
conditions, I’d be the smart one. The rational one. That I’d never
let myself get into that kind of trouble because I’m not an
animal,” she snarled it, like some kind of declaration. “But I was
wrong. Put me in that position and I act like nothing more than—”
She seemed to cast around for the right words. “Than a bitch in
heat.”

For a long moment I said nothing, too busy
wrestling with a speechless fury at her parents for helping foster
this kind of dysfunctional belief over perfectly normal, perfectly
natural behavior.

“
And what about me?” I
demanded. “I was right there with you. I want you. God knows, I
want you sometimes more than I want to breathe. You’re my mate, of
course, I do. Does that make me an animal?”

“
Then . . . how were you
able to stop?” She whispered it, and if not for my keen ears, I’m
not sure I’d have heard the question.

“
Because I love
you.”

Inside the tent there was a sharp
exhalation, like I’d sucker punched her. Okay, maybe too soon for
that too, but whatever. It was out now. I bulled on through.
“Because you needed me to. And that’s okay. I know it’s not what
you’re used to, but you have me now. You don’t
have
to be
the strong one all the time. That doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t
make you an animal. It makes you human.”

The silence stretched out, and I started
trying to figure out how to run damage control. Then the zipper
began to move behind me and the tent door slowly fell open. Elodie
sat, curled beside the door in shorts and a t-shirt, her hair still
wet and slicked back from her face, which was grave. She stared at
me long enough that I went back to my damage control planning. Then
she leaned forward and laid her cheek against my shoulder.

“
Thank you.”

Some knot inside me eased. I’d managed to
stumble into saying the right thing again.

“
You okay?”

She sighed. “Hard not to be. You’re
here.”

I tipped my head back, pressing my cheek to
her hair. “We’ll figure it out as we go. In the meantime, is there
another towel?”

Elodie laughed and tossed a towel and a pair
of shorts at my head, and I knew we were okay again.

~*~

Elodie

I didn’t sleep late. Beneath the July sun,
even under the canopy of trees at the edge of the lake, the tent
became an oven. Sawyer’s subzero sleeping bag didn’t help matters,
nor did the boy himself, who threw off body heat like my own
personal furnace. Not that I was complaining about being tucked
tight against him. It was comforting to know he wouldn’t let me go,
even in sleep. No matter how prudish, moronic, or otherwise
neurotic I managed to be in the span of twenty-four hours.

Because he loved me.

And that was some kind of miracle. That he
was here at all, that he’d come after me, risked his life, was like
something out of a dream. Only the fact that I was wrapped in his
warm, sleeping scent, his breath fluttering against my neck, let me
know that I was awake.

I love you.

I don’t know why I didn’t say it back last
night. It’s what I felt. It’s what I’d felt when I squared off
against Dad.
I won’t let you hurt him any more than Mom let my
grandfather hurt you.
Dad had known what I meant. But Sawyer
didn’t have that background knowledge of my family to read between
the lines. So why didn’t I say it for real?

I guess because I was too busy reeling from
his declaration and because I didn’t want it to sound like a
knee-jerk response. Like I was saying it because he’d said it.
Somehow it felt like it meant less that way. And maybe that was
stupid, but that’s kind of how it felt the last several years with
my dad. The letter had destroyed our easy affection. After that,
his response to my
I love you
s felt more like rote than
meant. I wasn’t going to do that with Sawyer. It was way too
important.

He moved in his sleep, nuzzling closer so
that his lips brushed the nape of my neck. My body coiled in
automatic response, but he settled back into even breathing. By
slow degrees, I relaxed again, wondering if he would always affect
me like this. The fact that I could even think in terms of always,
of having a future with him was another kind of miracle. It was one
thing to go through life, as I had, wanting to live but preparing
yourself to die for a greater good. It was another thing entirely
to have a real reason to live, to know that death was no longer
even on the table as an option. Except for that small matter that
someone was out to kill me.

I wanted a life with Sawyer.

And what if that meant I had to take
another?

In all my mistaken thoughts about what I
was, I was always the danger to others. The idea of killing someone
else because I couldn’t control the wolf terrified me. It had
always seemed like the braver, nobler option was to take myself out
of the equation. I’d never thought about it in terms of
self-defense. But wasn’t that what this would be? This hunter
wanted me dead. He probably wouldn’t hesitate to use the people I
loved against me in ways more gruesome than what he’d done to Rich.
Would I not be willing to kill to keep them alive and safe? To keep
myself
alive and safe for the chance at that future?

The obvious answer for anybody else would
be,
of course I would
. Straight up logic said the same. If
someone tried to hurt Sawyer, hurt Dad, I had no doubt I would rise
to defend them.

But what if I hesitated? What if my total
abhorrence of killing stopped me at a crucial moment? I mean, it
was one thing to say I’d do something, but you never really know
what you’ll do until you’re put in that situation.

I really didn’t want to find out. I didn’t
truly want to know that I was capable of killing another person. So
I hoped like hell that we found this cabin today and finally got
some answers so that we could turn the whole damn mess over to the
police.

It took some serious maneuvering to make it
free of Sawyer’s arms and out of the tent without waking him. I
hadn’t planned on an exercise in stealth, but it was good practice.
Once outside, I retrieved our food supply bag from the tree we’d
hung it in to protect it from bears and hauled the camp stove
closer to the lake. Coffee. Nothing said
I love you
to a
non-morning person like coffee when you wake up. That I could do.
And I’d fix his silly corned beef hash. Gag me. But first, nature
was calling.

Given it was broad day, the birds were
active, twittering in the trees as I picked may way through the
underbrush well away from camp. Something small skittered away as I
neared. Squirrel maybe or a rabbit. I didn’t manage to catch more
than a flash of motion and dun colored fur. Fail. I was a werewolf.
I should’ve been able to tune in better than that.

Coming to a halt, I closed my eyes and
inhaled. The dry, musty odor of deadfall. Dirt. The sweet green
scent of growing things. And . . . there. That trace of fear
overlaying the fading trail of a rabbit. I wondered if it would
have been as scared if I were human. My scent was changing. Sawyer
had said it was because the change was nearing. He hadn’t
said
that was something to worry about, and his explanation
for why it was happening so fast made logical sense, but I could
tell he was somewhat uneasy.

On my way back to camp, I circled around the
long way. I wanted to experiment with what Sawyer referred to as
calling my wolf. It was weird to me how he described it, almost as
if the wolf was a second spirit or persona, inhabiting the same
body. Sort of symbiotic but still separate in a sense. It was
getting easier to tell when the wolf was present. My vision
changed. The acuity was greater, the colors a little flatter than
normal. It took some concentration to bring it on when I wasn’t
riled up. Anger made it easier.

I closed my eyes again and envisioned myself
slipping into another skin, a freer skin than my human form. Free
from human limitations and preconceptions. Free from conventions
and logic. Something shifted inside me. An uncurling and stretching
of some mental muscle. When I opened my eyes, it was like sliding
on a pair of specialized glasses. Everything was clearer, each
stick and blade of grass standing out in sharp relief. Like life in
higher definition.

I’d done it.

My impromptu happy dance was interrupted as
something crackled in the underbrush about thirty yards ahead.
Something big and dark was moving through the trees. I stilled,
tilting my head to listen, widening my nostrils. The thing was
cross-wind from me. It couldn’t smell me, and I couldn’t smell it.
What the hell was it? A bear? I didn’t think so. It didn’t sound
like a bear’s lumbering gait when it moved. I needed to get
closer.

If I could just be quiet . . .

I crept forward, testing each step before I
put my full weight on it. My progress was pain-stakingly slow and
my body hummed with impatience. One step. Another. Until I was
within ten yards of the creature. Something snapped to my right. I
cast out my senses and caught the scent just before he spoke into
my ear with a voice more breath than sound, “It’s an elk.”