Wolf trap, p.18
Wolf Trap, page 18
“Better than stickiness all over my kitchen,” Rosa observed. She must have enjoyed the first round of pancakes because a syrup-smeared plate rested in her lap while a half-full glass of orange juice graced the kitchen stool that had been converted into a side table.
She looked ten years younger than she had yesterday, so it was no surprise that she started to work her way to her feet, gaze intent on sticky kitten tracks. Drake, however, didn’t accept the unsurprising. He huffed out something halfway between a growl and a human admonition then grabbed a damp dishrag to wipe up the mess. “Not your problem.”
“Wolves.” Still, she settled back into the softness, looked at me, and beckoned with one crooked finger.
Okay, I’ll admit it—I’d been hovering all this time three stairs down from the bottom, the hole in my gut growing deeper the more I watched. The scene in front of me was too perfect to splinter with the conversation Drake and I needed to finish. Because, yes, he’d let me off the hook yesterday, but there was a certain amount of placating any over-protective alpha was bound to engage in to get those he considered weaker out of an enemy’s lair.
Yesterday, we’d settled nothing. I could tell that by the way he carefully didn’t look at me. The way he kept his back turned in case I wanted to rush out the door and leave him behind again.
Lynette had been stuffing her face with syrupy goodness, but now she addressed the room as a whole. “I’m not going off to feed the kitten this time so you can talk without me.”
“Good,” I answered, planting my feet so they wouldn’t get any bright ideas about sidestepping the issue. “I want you to hear this. Drake, could you turn off the stove and look at me?”
He obeyed me even though alpha werewolves obey no one. He didn’t assert his dominance by taking the time to flip the pancakes over, even though they appeared ready to flip. Just slid the skillets off the burners and leaned against the stove as if he needed its support to stay upright. “Shoot,” he rasped, piercing gray eyes flicking to me once before dropping down to focus on the floor.
Lack of eye contact made it easier to talk, but his evasion also made my stomach drop further. “A few memories are coming back,” I admitted, ignoring my sudden queasiness, “but not many. I know Kami is still out there, needing to be dealt with. And I’m pretty sure that means my past isn’t entirely in the past. I don’t know who I am, and until I figure that out I can’t complicate matters by entangling myself in a romantic relationship. I…I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that again.”
Last night’s dream, however, fought against fear from the previous evening’s revelation. I wasn’t ready for further kisses now, but I would be. Sometime. With the man wearing an apron that demanded I kiss the cook.
No wonder Drake flared his nostrils, scenting the same bitter mistruth I scented. No wonder his gaze left the floor to consider me more fully for the first time this morning.
He didn’t, however, call out my lie.
“So you’re leaving.” Lynette stabbed a piece of pancake as if it was a rat caught in the grain bin.
“No.” I waited until she looked at me also before continuing. “You, Lynette, are not complicated. If you want me in your life, then I’m here. I very much appreciate being considered part of your family.”
She didn’t shower me with profuse acceptance. She was, after all, a teenager. But her cheeks turned pink and she muttered “Sounds good” down at her pancakes.
And Drake’s lips quirked up the tiniest bit. The gray of his eyes softened from granite to ash. “How many?” he rasped.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Pancakes,” Rosa explained. “He wants to know how many pancakes you can handle.”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Let’s start with two and go from there.”
I hope you enjoyed Wolf Trap! If so, you won't want to miss Wolf's Curse, full of a desecrated grave, a murderous spirit, and Lynette taking over Tru's clothing choices. Turn the page for a sneak peek.
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Wolf's Curse Excerpt
There’s nothing quite like grave robbing to ruin a first date. Not that Drake and I were on a formal date. And not that I intended to dig around in my husband’s grave when we set off up the hill.
The landscape, however, was ominous from the start. Above us, the branches of winter-bare trees curled like a giant’s fingers. And our choice not to bring flashlights was cast into doubt by the new moon’s complete absence, not even a sliver brightening the sky.
No wonder my foot caught on a root. But before I could do more than tilt off balance, Drake’s hand caught my elbow, stabilizing my balance while provoking a different sort of upheaval beneath my skin.
“You’re cold,” he rasped, misreading the cause of my shivers.
I shook my head then layered words atop the gesture since it was too dark for even shifter eyes to read body language. “No. Just concerned about Lynette.”
And that was true, if not the entire truth. Despite being the one who had browbeat me into setting up this outing, our sixteen-year-old ward had decided it would take way too much effort to climb up to the graveyard where Ambrose had been buried. Instead, she’d invited herself into a game of tag being played by four young werewolves down where we’d parked our cars.
Which, in a way, was good. Lynette needed friends. She deserved a normal childhood to counteract the magical hands that tended to scorch those she touched if she wasn’t careful.
Still, I couldn’t help voicing my worries now. “She wasn’t wearing gloves and it looked like she was going to win. If she burns somebody, they’ll bite back.”
Drake’s growl promised immediate, bloody retribution. “They wouldn’t dare. Plus,” he continued, his rasp warming, “Lynette’s control is improving. You’re a good influence.”
The final words, aimed in my direction, felt like a caress. Despite his job, despite his voice, Drake was a protector of those he cared about. Lynette, the Strays…
…Me.
The question was, could I allow myself to be included in that list when my previous leap into a romantic relationship had proven so disastrous? When I now had a teenager depending on me to protect and guide her out of an equally traumatic past?
I shivered for a reason other than Drake’s delicious proximity, then I returned to the conversational point before my companion could remark upon my bodily reaction. “The influence between me and Lynette flows primarily in the other direction. Did she tell you we went clothes shopping last week while you were in Montana?”
Despite my best intentions, I found myself picking at the sliver of bared skin where my sweater V’ed down in a very unladylike manner. The choice of wardrobe had been Lynette’s, and I’d accepted her fashion advice because doing so made her smile. Plus, as I’d reminded myself half a dozen times since then, what would have been a societal faux pas in the time I hailed from was now considered not risqué in the least.
Still, I found myself hoisting the neck of the sweater upward, which had the unfortunate side effect of producing a cold breeze down my back. And this time, Drake didn’t even bother asking if I was cold. Wool swirled around my shoulders, bringing with it his signature lemon-meringue-pie aroma plus a hug-like warmth. Clever fingers buttoned the pea coat beneath my chin to hold it in place, cloak-like. He didn’t fumble once despite the pitch black.
“I’ll speak to Lynette about being pushy,” he murmured into my ear, and I shivered even though I was now toasty warm inside his overcoat.
With an effort, I leaned my body in the direction it didn’t want to lean—away from the tantalizing werewolf. Drake had left the relationship ball in my court and I wasn’t quite ready to pick it up again.
So I stuck to words rather than embracing the physical attraction spinning between us. “You don’t like the clothes?”
“Your clothes are your business. Not hers. Not mine.” A pause, then a purr replaced Drake’s usual rasp. “But, yes, I like what you’re wearing very much. My coat. What’s under my coat.”
I could almost taste the words he hadn’t added. What’s under the sweater and skirt beneath my coat…
Now it wasn’t just the extra garment raising my core temperature and I could no longer talk myself into holding the relationship line I’d drawn in the sand. Yes, for Lynette’s sake we needed to make sure the volcano I could feel building between us didn’t erupt in ways that would fling burning relationship lava onto our ward. Yes, it would be so easy to lose myself in the eruption before I’d really found myself.
Still, despite the darkness, my right hand had no problem finding his left hand. Skin grazed skin then I let my fingers slide between his fingers as if they were coming home to rest.
Perhaps I was ready to bounce that relationship ball just a little bit off the ground after all.
“Okay?” Drake asked, even though I was the one who’d reached out and touched him. Even though the intimacy level of our contact was moderate enough that grade schoolers wouldn’t have blushed.
“I want this,” I admitted, resisting the impulse to do more than interweave our fingers, “but I still wake up in cold sweats, afraid I’ll bind myself to an alpha werewolf and harm not only myself but also Lynette and Neko.”
Neko was the kitten Drake and I also shared unofficial custody of, the uninspired name (cat in Japanese) making me feel grounded to my forgotten past every time I spoke it. The cat in question was currently napping in the pocket of the coat Drake had lent me, and I let my unoccupied hand slide between layers of fabric to cup his furry warmth. In response, Neko stretched a silky back against my palm, the contact soothing away some but not all of the tremors memories aroused inside me.
Drake was the one who soothed away the others as he had before and likely would again. “I don’t want anything you aren’t ready for.”
“You’re content with this?” I raised up our hands, palms pressed close together.
“More than content,” he rasped. “Thank you for inviting me along tonight.”
The truth was, Lynette had stolen my phone and hit the send button before I could talk myself out of deleting the message requesting Drake join us here. The laughter Lynette and I had shared as I threatened to ground her for life colored my subsequent words now. “Very romantic, taking you to visit my husband’s grave.”
“First.”
“First?”
“First husband.”
First husband and first alpha werewolf who’d expressed a romantic interest in me. Ambrose Reed had lured me halfway around the world as a picture bride, had intended to kill me, and had instead stuck me in suspended animation for over a century.
That suspended animation—helped along by the spirit of my sword parasol—had wiped out most of my memory. So I didn’t actually know many of the facts involved in Ambrose’s awfulness. Couldn’t dig up any recollection of how Drake and I had met, although he’d filled in those blanks verbally. Didn’t know my real name or much of my past.
Which was part of why I was here. I hoped visiting Ambrose’s grave might revive some sliver of knowledge about my history. Well, I’d come for that, plus the childish intention of stomping on the earth Ambrose had been planted beneath while celebrating his belated demise.
To that end, my footsteps quickened as we stepped out of the trees and into a clearing on the hilltop. Out from under the bare-branched canopy, I could see just a little better, enough to make out headstones dotting grass that someone likely hiked up to mow once or twice a season. In the near darkness, it was hard to tell where the newest grave might lie.
“This way.” Drake, as usual, was prepared. He turned us south, his hand guiding me as if my arm was a boat’s rudder. The gesture should have been awkward but it wasn’t. Instead, I imagined we were dancing. An old-style gavotte perhaps, the sort that ended with a kiss.
My cheeks burned by the time Drake’s free arm lashed out in front of me. Fox reflexes kept me from losing my balance and fox-assisted eyes let me see, one moment later, what my escort was reacting to.
The ground in front of us wasn’t grassy lawn like what covered up other grave sites. Instead, a hole deep enough so I couldn’t make out the bottom and long enough to lie down in yawned before us.
Someone had dug up my husband’s grave.
Keep reading in Wolf's Curse!
Aimee Easterling, Wolf Trap
