Wolf Among Sheep: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Roadside Angels Motorcycle Club Book 1) (5 page)

“I heard Ginny telling you why,” he replied. “But as you seem to be in the mood to hear things twice, he was ill and I volunteered to help. Toby likes to work the ranch with his grandfather, so it was natural for him to be with me. Besides, then I can teach him to drive as well.”

“He’s only eleven years old!” she exclaimed. “Why is he driving? And do you teach him to drive with this thing?” She was scandalized.

Lex laughed. “Ms. Gibbs, it is clear that you know nothing about life on a farm,” he teased, not answering her questions.

“Please call me Tammie,” she offered, feeling awkward about not having invited him to do so before.

“Does everyone call you Tammie?” he asked, turning to pin her with his gaze.

“Except for my grandparents, yes,” she answered, flustered by the light that seemed to be shining out at her from his summer-sky eyes.

“Then, I’d like to call you Tamara—if that’s all right with you,” he said and then waited for her answer.

“Whatever is comfortable for you,” she answered, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.

“Come on,” he invited her. “Let me show you what we were doing.”

He helped her out of the truck, walked her over to the fence, and proceeded to explain the process of fence repair. She paid scant attention—because he was so close she could see the flecks of gold in the center of his eyes, and she could smell his cologne and his scent. She was so turned on, she could barely hear what he was saying. She had no idea why her mind was befuddled and her body on fire, but she knew she needed to relieve them somehow. Stepping away from him seemed the smart move to make, so she wandered away and hoped he wouldn’t follow.

He didn’t. She breathed a silent sigh of relief and watched him lean his hip against the fence post. Even when he was doing nothing, he made her crazy.

“There aren’t a lot of trees out here, so where would a wolf hide? Where did it come from?” She thought it best to get back to work. This was not, after all, a social occasion.

“I don’t know where it came from. My back was to Toby.”

“So how did you know he was in trouble?”

“How do you think?”

He was laughing at her again, and her temper flared. It was bad enough that he was having an unusual effect on her libido—but to be the center of his amused attention was unbearable.

“Where was Toby when it happened? Where were you?”

“We were about ten feet or so apart.”

Not a helpful answer.
She was trying to form a picture in her mind, and he was being deliberately obtuse. She was having a much harder time holding on to her temper now, and she decided she had best call a halt to the outing.

“Since you’re not going to help me, I’d like to go back now, please.” She turned away angrily and flounced off to the truck where she opened the door and hauled herself up into the cab, slamming it as hard as she could. She knew she was being childish, and throwing a temper tantrum was not a good idea, but she couldn’t hold in the angry frustration that had been building for the last twenty-four hours any longer. She was on overload emotionally, something that had never happened to her before, not even when she had her falling out with Garth.

She watched Lex walk around and get into the driver’s seat. He closed his door quietly, as if to emphasize how childish she had been to slam hers, which only pissed her off more.

“Why did you bring me out here?” she demanded in a hard voice. “You haven’t told me anything useful!”

Lex turned to look at her, his face serious. “I never said I was going to tell you anything. I just asked you if you wanted to see where it happened. Didn’t I just do that?”

She hated his reasonable tone. Somehow, it felt like he was talking down to her. Plus, her proximity to him in the confines of the truck was starting to spark a kind of energy inside her that she didn’t know how to dissipate. She grabbed the door handle, intent on leaving the truck, when his voice stopped her. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, clearly amused. “You wouldn’t get far.”

Refusing to face him, she spat out over her shoulder, “And why might that be?”

He laughed, and Tammie’s anger grew. “You don’t know where you are.”

She turned then, spearing him with a fulminating glare. “You asshole! Was that your plan all along? To bring me out into the middle of nowhere so you could make a fool of me? What? Your ego can’t handle a little attitude from a woman with a brain?”

If looks could kill, Lex would be plastered all over the window of his truck. Instead, he kept looking at her, watching her clench and unclench her fists, as though he knew she was struggling not to slap his face. He reached for her as though he couldn’t help himself. She looked up at him questioningly, and then, at the look in his eyes, her own sparked with fear and anticipation. By the time his lips touched hers, they were both breathing hard.

Lex took his time, quieting her first by suckling each lip in turn, swiping his tongue over them, and planting butterfly kisses on them and at the corners of her mouth. When she relaxed under his hands, he licked the seam of her lips. She thought she understood his sign language because she gasped and opened for him, letting him in to explore the warm treasure trove within. He licked her and then suckled, softly at first, and then, when she moaned, he sucked harder, cupping her face in his hands.  

“You taste so good,” he whispered before he kissed her again, this time invading her mouth as if to get the full flavor of her. She moaned, and he groaned in response, his tongue tangling hungrily with hers. He seemed to like how she answered his need, how she took him in and suckled him in her turn, as though she were starving and only he had the needed milk of her sustenance. He kissed her deeper, harder, and she wished he could take her and mark her as his. The thought floored her because she didn’t understand where the desire came from or how to control it.

Their kisses grew ever more heated, and he pulled her over till she was straddling his lap. He pressed himself into her body, and she gloried in the feel of her soft swells against his hardness. Some small part of her was horrified at the liberties she was allowing him to take with her after only two days’ acquaintance, but she smothered her disquiet and reveled in the electric currents that zapped her nervous system into live wires everywhere he touched her. Somehow, she knew he was barely holding on to his control, and it thrilled her to know he was as affected by her as she was by him.

“Perhaps we need to call a truce, Tamara,” he rasped, after dragging his mouth from hers. He smoothed a finger over her lips as he spoke, his eyes on hers. “I prefer kissing you to fighting with you.” His voice was a sexy murmur, and Tammie felt completely lost in it. “Agreed?”

She didn’t know whether she was agreeing that they needed to call a truce, or that she preferred kissing him to fighting with him, but she nodded, because she couldn’t speak. He dropped a quick, light kiss on her lips and inhaled deeply before saying, “Right then. Stay in the truck. I’m just going to check on the repairs in this section, and then I’ll do one other section before I take you back to town.”

Tammie watched him get out of the truck and walk along the fence line, inspecting it as he went. When he got back, he drove further along the way, got out, and repeated the procedure. He had donned heavy work gloves, and she watched him test the barbed wire and the posts, his tall body hunched over. Sometimes he seemed to be inspecting the ground around the posts, and then he crouched and she had a better view of his broad back and shoulders. He was so much more man than she had ever known. Plus, he was certainly the first man ever to have kissed her till her panties were wet.

She wondered what he would think if he knew she was completely inexperienced in matters of sex, despite her tough girl image. The thought made her cringe, and she wished she hadn’t let him get so close. Because now that she had, he would probably expect more, and she was very worried she couldn’t refuse him.

When he got back into the truck, his cell phone rang, and he took the call after a murmured apology. Tammie gathered her wits and tried to listen in on his end, but his answers were monosyllabic, which was frustrating and completely unhelpful. Sighing, she leaned her head against the seat and waited for him to take her back to the hotel.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he started up the truck. “Let’s get you back, shall we?”

He smiled at her briefly and then switched on the radio, tuned it to a country station, and drove quietly along. Neither spoke, content to think their own thoughts. Tammie’s thoughts were all about the man sitting next to her so quietly in what she had discovered was a Dodge Ram 2500. The truck was huge, but it fit him perfectly, with his long, broad frame and thick muscles. She even thought fancifully that the truck looked muscular, like him. It made her chuckle, and when he turned his head to ask what was so funny, she realized she had made the sound out loud.

“I was just thinking how much like you your truck looks,” she admitted after a small hesitation. She was relieved when he laughed, as well.

They lapsed back into a comfortable silence, the electricity of their earlier kiss having finally dissipated. By the time they got back to her hotel, Tammie was thinking optimistically again, hoping she could find a way to get something out of Lex. There had to be a way. He couldn’t possibly expect her to believe everything was fine when he was being so secretive. So, when he asked her out to dinner “as a peace offering,” she eagerly accepted. She refused to concede, even to herself, that it had less to do with her job and more to do with her personal interest in him.

“Just one thing,” she added, as he turned away. She watched him turn back cautiously and armed herself for another refusal.

“What?” he asked.

“I want you to answer some questions and help me write a newsworthy article. Please!”

She sounded like she was begging, and maybe she was, but she had nothing left in her arsenal, and she knew instinctively that threats like the one she had thrown out carelessly earlier at Bob Rose would not go over any better with Lex.

“Before you refuse again, please understand that this is important to me—aside from the fact that it’s my paycheck. I understand that some of the townspeople aren’t too happy about the motorcycle gang in their town, and that even though your group doesn’t do anything illegal, you’ve all been tarred with the same brush by the townies who dislike you. What if I were able to help get some of that heat off your guys? I could, if I wrote what I know already about the gang that seems to be a kingpin in drug and human trafficking round these parts. Based on the little I’ve managed to dig up about them, they’re also into dog fighting. What if they’re using wolves, not dogs? And what if the wolves got loose? Exposing them will show the people here who they really have to fear, no?”

She knew she had got his full attention by the time she got to the dog fighting, and she waited to hear what he would say.

“Where’d you get all this?” he asked, his voice neutral.

She didn’t know what he was thinking, and she strove to keep her own voice even. “I was talking to William, the clerk downstairs, and he said there were rumors about dog fights being run outside of town by motorcycle gangs. I did a little searching on Google…” she watched his brows shoot up in shock and smiled. “You’d be surprised what you can ferret out on Google if you know how to search. Anyway, though nothing was said directly, there’s enough to make it look like there’s truth to the rumor. It wouldn’t be too hard to make the folks here begin to look twice at them. I just have to word it right, without making any outright accusations.”

“That could be very dangerous, Tamara,” he said, his voice low.

“I laugh in the face of danger! Hahaha!” she said flippantly, quoting Nala in
The Lion King
. When he didn’t laugh with her, she sobered quickly and said, “Come on Lex. I’ll be very careful. And if you’re helping me, how much trouble can I get into, huh? One look at you and people back off!”

She still wanted him to smile, to lighten the mood, and this time he relented, one side of his mouth looping upward in a half smile.