Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) (15 page)

“You’re kidding,” he said. Why would anyone want to purposefully go to Wolf Hole? Especially a black she-wolf who’d probably done a pretty good job avoiding virulent racism up to this point in her life? “You’re kidding, right?”

“Look at me, Grady. Look at me.” She pointed her first two fingers from his eyes to hers, like a sergeant addressing a new recruit. “I joke about a lot of things,
but not money
. Never money. I’m from one of the richest packs in the nation. We never, ever joke about money.”

“I don’t see how you going to Wolf Hole is going to make the state pack stop being broke. Plus, it’s dangerous—”

Tu held up a finger to stop him. “Really important question: what do you think I should wear to this town meeting? I don’t think jeans would be appropriate.”

“No, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying here, Tu. You’re not going to Wolf Hole. I not going to let you risk your—”

“Ooh, I know…” Tu raised up to her knees on the bed and pulled her new thermal shirt off, over her head. She then unhooked her bra at the back and let it slide down her arms. “A cowboy hat! We’ll buy one on the way down to Wolf Hole. And some wrap dresses.” She wiggled out of her jeans and panties, then threw them in a corner. Her heavy socks soon followed. “My Mama says there’s no problem on this earth the right wrap dress can’t solve.”

The sight of her completely bare shouldn’t have affected him like it did. He’d seen plenty of naked women before, and with the state of the internet these days, you didn’t have to look far to find a woman who looked like Tu. He knew because there had been a few cold winter nights when he’d found himself clicking through site after site for naked girls with natural hair and small athletic bodies. Girls who, if you squinted hard enough, would suffice for the fantasy inside of your head while you beat yourself off, thinking about a she-wolf you had no business dwelling on, much less fantasizing about.

But she wasn’t one of those internet girls. Or even a memory reconstruct he’d done up in his mind. No, this was Tu. Naked, her pussy exposed and pulsing out her arousal scent, even after what he’d done last night.

She still wanted him. Even though he was defective. Even though he still wasn’t wolf trained and might never be.

His dick punched out against his jeans, hard and stiff, and he had to forcibly push his beast down before it took over again.

“Tu, I know where you’re going with this, and it’s not going to work. I’m not taking you to Wolf Hole.”

She smiled at him and walked across the bed to him on her knees, her eyes hooded with desire.

“I’m not taking you,” he told her again.

She reached down, unzipped his pants, and his dick sprung out, swollen and rigid, already dripping with pre-cum.

“Hello, Wolf,” she said, her voice husky and knowing inside his head.

16

A
t 6:20 the next evening, Tu and Grady pulled into a small, dusty town that brought to mind a word he’d read often in books set in the wake of a future apocalyptic event: desolate. Wolf Hole had one road, pockmarked with potholes. Squat yellow brick houses sat on either side with overgrown yards. And at the end of the road, right before you got to the Ouachita Mountains, there were a bunch of trailers scattered about with no rhyme or reason, like they had rolled to a stop in this place to give up and die. Nothing in this area had been touched since the eighties, back before the meth boom, and the whole place reminded Grady of those “Life After People” shows he’d seen on cable. The ones that talked about how everything would break down, degrade, and go to shit if people weren’t around to do any upkeep.

Except there were people here, peeping out of their windows and, in a few cases, coming to stand out on their porches to stare hard at the truck driving slow as could be down their stretch of residential road. The residents weren’t much better than the town. They all looked like the road. Hard and torn up by their personal potholes. Even the kids. The entire place felt like a rash to Grady, their reluctant king, the kind of thing you covered up because you sure as hell didn’t want to look at it too long. You didn’t even want a doctor to see it. It was that embarrassing.

But Tu leaned out the passenger seat of his Silverado, waving like a princess on a parade float, while she shouted something at the rednecks staring at her on both sides of the road. When they got to the shanty trailer town at the end of the road, he turned the truck around and let her princess wave to the other side of the road. And soon the looks on the town folks’ faces went from scowling to confused.

Grady couldn’t blame them. He was confused, too. Had no idea how he’d let Tu sucker him into bringing her here. Actually, he did know how that had come to pass. Could still feel Tu’s mouth, warm and wet on his cock, her tongue swirling around its hood as she asked ever so nicely inside his head if he would do her the favor of escorting her to Wolf Hole.

At that moment it had seemed wrong to deny her anything she wanted, do anything that might bring her displeasure, especially considering how much pleasure she was bringing him. But now he was kicking himself as ten different kinds of fool. At best, this Wolf Hole situation was going to get awkward. At worst, it was going to get downright ugly. And then grisly if anyone threatened Tu and he couldn’t keep his beast down.

Having reached the other end of the residential patch, Tu sat back down in the passenger seat, taking off the red mittens she’d bought earlier in the trip because “waving looks better with red mittens—I don’t know why, it just does. It’s like a fact of life.” She put her hands against the grated vents on either side of the glove box.

“I’d forgotten how cold it gets waving at people from a moving vehicle. But hey, still better than Alaska.”

She was dressed in a bright green wrap dress with an electric blue leather jacket and cowboy boots. She’d gotten the whole ensemble at the place they’d stopped at to get her hat, which was electric blue, too, and Grady had to reluctantly admit it was a good look on her. Not like the designer mini-dresses she used to wear, but still better than all that grey and black crap.

Unlike him, Tu didn’t seem to be running several different doomsday scenarios in her head. Instead she appeared cheerful and refreshed—like visiting a hick town in the middle of nowhere made up of downtrodden factory workers and meth addicts had been on her bucket list.

“This place is so retro,” Tu enthused, looking around at the brick buildings that made up the small business district. They’d seen better days and were mostly either boarded up or on their way to falling apart, including the town hall which had a few bricks missing from its façade, like a toothless Okie. But you could still see some of Wolf Hole’s original, fully planned out, early eighties charm shining through.

Tu pointed to a two-story house with peeling paint that sat next door to the town hall building. It was the only two-story structure in the entire town.

“Bobby Joe Jr.’s house?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, but he didn’t look to see where she was pointing. No, he kept his eyes on all the townspeople already gathered outside the town hall. Gawking and openly pointing at Tu as they filed through its double doors, which had been propped open.

That was when Grady realized what Tu had been shouting as they drove up and down the residential road.

“You made sure to invite everybody just in case Bobby Joe hadn’t.”

“Yeah, of course,” Tu answered. “We’re here to talk about the town’s future. Why shouldn’t everybody get a say? That’s how we do it for the really big stuff in Alaska. Like when we’re trying to decide who really won that ear pull or which hunter gets to keep the moose head, when two of them shoot it down at the same time.”

She was teasing. At least he hoped she was teasing.

“Tu, Oklahoma pack towns… they’re not like Alaska. The pack leader’s God here in Wolf Hole. They don’t have cozy little chats about shit. What Bobby Joe says just goes.”

Tu tucked her mittens into her new jacket’s pockets. “Then we had better say the right thing.”

She put her hand on the door handle, but Grady said, “No, hold on. I’ll come around and let you out.”

She grinned at him when he got around to her side of the truck and yanked open the door.

“Wow, you’re all kinds of chivalrous. Who knew—”

He cut her off, snatching up her purse and quickly depositing a tranquilizer gun into its confines before she could protest.

“Anybody comes at you, I want you to use that. No talking. Just shoot, no hesitation.”

“I won’t be needing that. You don’t have to—”

Further proving just how not chivalrous he was feeling at the moment, he all but hauled her out of the passenger seat, grabbing her by both arms and pinning her with a more than irate look as he said, “This is stupid, Tu. One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen anybody do. And I’m stupid for going along with it.” He let go of her arms and pulled off his jacket, revealing the double chest holster with matching Smith and Wessons he was wearing underneath. “I said I would, so I’m going to take you in there to let you do this stupid ass thing. However, I’m looking for a reason, any reason to call this off. And you not doing exactly what I say while you’re carrying my cub around inside of you. That feels like a reason I could run with. So are you going to carry this tranq gun in your purse or can I call this stupid shit off now?”

“Fine.” Tu snatched her purse back and gave him a mocking bow complete with a swirl of her hand. “If it pleases the beta king, I’ll carry a tranq gun, even though I know what I’m doing and I totally won’t need it.”

She was right about not needing the tranq gun. It wasn’t nearly big enough to handle the job. The first thing out of Bobby Joe’s mouth when they entered the big meeting room was, “What the hell were you thinking mating this black bitch after what she done to your brother? And who the hell do you think you are bringing a goddamn nigger into my town?”

And it had it only gone downhill from there. Grady couldn’t hear any of it and there were too many people present to read anyone’s lips but Bobby Joe’s. However, seeing was enough. People came out of their seats, their faces turning red, they were shouting so hard. And Tu… she didn’t help. He tried to shove her behind him, but she kept breaking away, shouting words he couldn’t see at the crowd. Words that incited the pack leader.

“What did you say, girlie?” Bobby Joe asked, his hand going down to the revolver at his hip.

Grady didn’t give him a chance to use it. He dropped his jacket and pulled both his Smith and Wessons out of their holsters. He kept one pointed at Bobby Joe and one pointed at the rest of the town as he herded Tu out of there, pushing her with his elbow down the stage stairs and toward the door.

But did Tu reach for her tranq gun so she could help get them out of this mess? No, of course not. Instead she kept on shouting, to the point that a few of the angry townspeople looked to Bobby Joe with confused expressions, like “is she serious?”

Whatever she was saying, it was vexing the pack leader bad.

“Get her out of here!” he screamed at Grady. “Get her out of here right now or I ain’t going to be responsible for what I do next.”

That was the last thing he was able to lip read before finally getting Tu through the open door, where he re-holstered one of the guns and used his free hand to push Tu toward the car behind him. He was using his own body to shield her from the crowd, yet he could sense her still shouting more words at the angry mob who’d just chased them out of the town hall, some who now had their guns raised themselves, tentatively jiggling them in the air as if they were trying to figure out if they could shoot Tu without also hitting their king, which was an offense punishable by death outside of a challenge fight.

“Tu, shut up!” he pushed into her head. “Whatever you’re saying, stop. You’re getting them all riled up.”

Tu kept on shouting, like he hadn’t said anything at all. And she wouldn’t stop, not after he dumped her into the Silverado’s passenger seat, not even after he shut the door. Instead of putting on her seatbelt like a sane person, she rolled down the window and shouted more words out of it.

He gunned the engine and backed the truck up, before peeling out of town like a bat out of hell.

“Gotdammit, Tu!” he said, yanking her back down into the passenger seat. “Put on your seatbelt!”

“Oh, yeah. Totally forgot. Safety first,” she said, and out the side of his eye, he could see her pull the strip of canvas across her body, before suddenly slumping back into her seat.

He looked over at her. Was she hurt? Had someone shot her without his knowing? But no, there was a huge, goofy grin on her face. Like she’d just won the lottery.

“What the hell were you thinking back there?” he demanded. “And why are you smiling? That was a fucking disaster.”

Tu rolled her head over to face him. “Was it a disaster or a triumph?”

“It was a disaster, Tu. I couldn’t read their lips, but Bobby Joe nearly pulled a gun on you and I think the only reason some of the other townsfolk didn’t try to put some silver in you was because they were honestly trying to figure out if you were nuts.”

His assessment of the situation only made Tu smile bigger.

“Yeah, that’s going to make for a good story. A King Tikaani rule of business—give everyone you meet a story to tell when they talk about you in the future. I bet people are already on the phone with their relatives in other towns, telling them about meeting the new queen. Everybody’s going to be dying to meet me after that.”

And now it was Grady’s turn to wonder if she’d gone completely nuts.

“So that’s your idea of a great first impression?”

She folded her arms with delighted satisfaction. “Yep. That back there was better than anything that’s ever happened on
Rap Star Wives
. I mean they pulled
guns
! Who does that? Let me tell you, if this was a reality show, our ratings would be through the roof!”