Wolfs choice, p.4
Wolf's Choice, page 4
“At least I’m not cold anymore,” I murmured.
The words steadied me enough to ignore my body’s overreaction, although the sensations lingered. Refocusing my attention, I slid my hand between the bed and Jack, my movements guided by touch alone now.
In the absence of sight, sensation expanded. I’d gone astray, I realized, when my fingers touched not a pocket interior but thick, soft fur that sent an electric jolt through me. And as if it possessed a life of its own, that fur also elicited a primal response from Jack.
His breathing hitched and a low hum of pleasure vibrated through the air. Through the air...and between my thighs. His heat and mine both notched up from simmer into inferno.
Then his arm swept upward, wrapping itself around my shoulders with a precision that suggested an instinctual knowledge of my presence. Despite his closed eyes and steady breathing, he had to be awake.
“Jack?”
No answer. But the warmth and weight of his arm dragged me more fully down on top of his broad chest. I was cupped by his heat, enormously aware of his hard muscles so close to my nakedness.
And for one long moment, I let myself revel in the safety and comfort that his touch provided. My sword, the handcuffs, the murder he thought I was responsible for—all of that faded. What remained was the tantalizing pressure of my body against his body, the heat that coursed through and between us, the rapid beating of my own heart.
I swallowed, tearing my focus away from our unexpected intimacy, then returned to my original purpose. My fingers didn’t want to leave the fur, but I forced them away from what I now realized was the space beneath Jack’s trousers. Forced them back to the quest for the key.
Beneath me, Jack grumbled softly. A vague complaint that subsided into silence.
In the end, I found the pocket, but it was empty. Of course it was empty.
And I realized that in my pursuit of the key, I’d intertwined one of my legs between Jack’s for leverage. He’d responded by angling his hips towards me, his body molding around mine in a way that made me feel both sheltered and exposed all at once.
“Absurd,” I murmured. “He trapped me.” My voice wavered as I attempted to regain control of my erratic heart rate. Outside the apartment, a door slammed shut and a car started up.
Inside, with Jack, a memory arose unbidden. Not a stolen memory but one of my own.
A prank I’d played on Tru when I’d considered her bond with Jack’s brother a danger to be counteracted. I’d left her handcuffed to the bed beside Drake even though I knew the presence of an alpha werewolf would terrify her when she woke up memoryless.
Had she felt this torn when she came back to herself, both fear and attraction spinning through her in equal measure? Torn between self-preservation and...something else?
The pang in my stomach wasn’t only hunger this time. And as if he’d felt my reaction, Jack’s broad palm began stroking circles into the small of my back. Lazy circles. Slow circles.
I fell asleep before he stopped.
“Rise and shine, beautiful.”
Husky words intruded on pleasant dreams of basking in what felt like a vat of pure energy. In the world behind my eyelids, a wolf curled up beside me, big and wild and protective. My fingers sank into his fur and I inhaled lemon sugar.
Here and now, warmth cupped my cheek. “We need to talk, Kami. About pesky little things like spirit possession and murder.” Fingers combed through the hairs at my temple, his gesture soft and caressing. “I want to hear your side of the story. Just tell me and I’ll listen. Judgment-free zone, I promise.”
The dream faded. Reality reasserted itself, not quite as warm as the dream had been.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. I was literally warm, both from the furnace of a body beside me and from the blanket Jack must have drawn up over both of us while I’d been sleeping. With my eyes closed, I could almost pretend I wasn’t naked and handcuffed to someone who thought I was a murderer.
Well, to be fair, I was a murderer. Just not a recent one.
Another pang rose in my belly, a pang that begged me to snuggle closer to Jack’s warmth and pretend my dreams were real. I wanted to bask in this feeling of safety that I’d never before experienced while in a human body. I wanted to forget my own past.
But the pang wouldn’t let up. The pang suggested that the real way to counteract my past wasn’t to forget what had happened but to act differently in the future. Here and now, I could blink my eyes open and tell the truth.
Reluctantly, I complied. “I’ve done very bad things, Jack,” I admitted, “but not this week. This week, I’ve been in Lexington dumpster diving for dinner and trying not to freeze my ass off.”
As I spoke, the softness that had formerly infused Jack’s perfectly sculpted face froze into rigidity. I expected him to disbelieve me, but I supposed his shifter nose meant any lies would have been evident.
Still, he requested specific confirmation, gray eyes boring into mine in a way that wiped away all the seductive dream remnants. “You didn’t kill Cedric?”
“I didn’t kill Cedric. Wouldn’t have known who he was if I hadn’t rooted through your brain yesterday.”
“You didn’t possess Erik? You aren’t following Tru around?”
I shook my head and Jack swore so hard I had to raise my voice to regain his attention while demanding, “What’s wrong?”
His gray eyes, when they finally met mine again, had turned fiery. “I left my brother’s mate unprotected because I thought you were what she needed protection from. But you’re not. Which means she’s in danger and I’m letting Drake down.”
Chapter 8
I knew from digging through Jack’s memories that Drake’s protectiveness when they were children had formed the bedrock of the twins’ relationship. Ever since, Jack had been willing to drop everything to come to his brother’s aid. No wonder he leapt out of bed now...or tried to.
But we were still handcuffed together and he hadn’t given me any warning. So I acted like an anchor to which he provided a counterweight. To cut a long, awkward story short, we ended up in a tangled-up heap on the floor.
A tangled-up heap, but a pleasant one. His hand cupped my head in what I suspected was instinctive protection to keep my skull from cracking itself open on nearby bedposts. My right nipple scraped against his shirt button in a luxurious friction that was even more intense than our pre-nap encounter had been. Then I gasped as an even more overwhelming sensation thrummed through me from head to toe.
Electric pleasure. Connectedness combined with heady awareness of our close proximity. Like what might have happened early this morning if Jack’s hand stroking circles onto my back had accelerated rather than decelerated as we were both consumed by slumber.
Only...this wasn’t coming from any part of my body I was familiar with. It seemed to be suffusing me from the inside out.
I barely managed to release a single word. “What...?”
“Apologies.” The sensation ceased as quickly as it had started. Then Jack was moving our cuffed-together hands behind me. “Pick this up. Keep it with you but keep it well hidden.”
Guided by his fingers, mine sank into deep, soft fur. Like what I’d found beneath Jack’s trousers but without the electricity that contact had provided.
Or, without the electricity when I touched it. I suspected the pleasure still reverberating through my body had been initiated by Jack’s contact with what, as I drew it into sight, turned out to be a large lupine pelt.
The furry skin was big enough so I could have wrapped it all the way around myself. If I had to guess, it might have been what I’d noticed slipping off my shoulders when Jack gifted me the second memory this morning and grounded me in the body I now possessed.
Was this pelt somehow related to the lupine body I’d inhabited earlier? But werewolves lost their fur entirely when becoming human. “Is this some sort of...?”
Jack sidestepped my question before I could finish it. “I don’t have time to explain.”
Thumbing back through relevant facts from Jack’s memories, nothing stuck out as pelt-related. But I hadn’t been looking for oddly soft and nerve-tingling wolf skins at the time.
I wanted answers. Still, it was hard to be annoyed when Jack unfolded himself upward and scooped me into his arms as if I weighed no more than a whisper.
His strength and warmth knocked curiosity aside as we crossed the room together. This was like my dream only better. This was…
Then he was setting me onto my feet, holding on long enough so I could find my balance even though his muscles were tense with the urge to protect Tru. Only then did he bend and root through his coat with quick efficiency, pulling out the handcuff key I’d sought hours before.
One click and I was free. I rubbed the red line around my wrist, knowing the smart move now would be to grab my sword and hoof it out of there. Jack was distracted by concern for Tru and his brother, fates that were none of my business.
My business was self-preservation. I tried to tell myself that over and over. The words didn’t quite ring true.
“Grab anything you need.” Jack waved a vague hand around the room, his attention already elsewhere. “There are some clothes that might fit you. Snacks. Money. You can stay here if you want to. I have to go...”
I’d met this man less than twenty-four hours earlier, but I somehow knew he wasn’t thinking straight. So I grabbed onto the empty handcuff that had recently held us together, one side of which was still attached to his wrist. And I demanded not the answers I wanted but the ones he needed to voice.
“If you think someone’s gone after your brother’s mate, you need a plan. What is it?”
“Call her. Call Drake. Call a cab.” As he spoke, he twisted the key a second time, unhooking the handcuff from his wrist so it now dangled from my fingers only. Unburdened, he patted at his pants pockets, rifled through his coat pockets, then growled soft and low like a wolf cornered and unwilling to back down.
“What?” I asked, knowing from personal experience how bodies could make reasoning impossible. How using someone else as a sounding board could help racing thoughts settle into a straight line.
Pale fingers streaked through dark hair, mussing it in a manner that was strangely adorable. “Drake has my phone and I left his with Tru. The store upstairs might have a burner...”
He was already striding toward the door, leaving me behind. I started to follow, then remembered the necessity of clothes when inhabiting a body in public. Wasting a moment digging through the satchel Jack had indicated, I found garments that looked nothing like what he currently wore.
Of course they were different. Jack was pretending to be his brother. What, I couldn’t help wondering, was he like when he was merely being Jack?
Tamping down that curiosity just like I’d done the other, I wrapped the pelt around my waist then yanked on the lone pair of pants that could be made to fit. A silky orange button-down would likely be a shirt on Jack, but I belted it into a tunic hanging halfway to my knees. Finally, grabbing my sword inside its poster tube and ignoring pebbles pinching my bare feet, I sprinted up the concrete steps outside in hopes Jack would still be in sight.
He was. One level up, he’d only just opened the door of the convenience store, his muscles so tense I could see them pushing against the inside of his skin.
And something prompted me to try to ease that tension. “Maybe don’t invest in a screen protector this time,” I teased as I caught up.
Jack glanced back over one shoulder, his lone dimple reasserting itself so briefly I almost thought I’d imagined it. “Because I have a bad track record keeping up with cell phones?”
“Exactly.” Then, when politeness seemed to be holding him in a conversation he couldn’t afford to waste time on, I added, “Go. Do your thing. I’ll be here.”
In less than a minute, Jack was wrestling a phone out of its packaging, tossing a credit card to the proprietor when she complained. Blowing out a frustrated breath as he worked through a series of setup screens, he still had the presence of mine to add: “Put what Kami wants on my tab too.”
What I wanted couldn’t be bought in a convenience store. I wanted a way to ease the tension out of Jack’s muscles. I wanted to fix whatever was going on with Tru so he wouldn’t have to.
I wanted to understand why what I wanted suddenly had very little to do with me.
But my stomach gurgled dire warnings of an incipient revolution and I knew I wouldn’t be able to help anybody if I toppled over from low blood sugar. So I swiped food off shelves, piling a mound of diverse items on the counter and accepting two overstuffed bags just as Jack finished messing with the phone.
At that point, he thanked the proprietor, pocketed his credit card, and led me back out onto the steps where we sank down side by side. “Tru isn’t answering her phone,” he told me, shaking his head to refuse the stick of beef jerky I held out to him. “Neither is Drake. But my ride will be here in five minutes. I’ll start where I left Tru and work out from there.”
His knee was jiggling as if sitting still for even five minutes was almost more than he could handle. So I didn’t stuff my mouth the way my body demanded. Instead, I used that mouth for speech.
“Tru’s pretty resilient. I threw a lot at her and she always landed on her feet. And your brother is one scary dude. They’ll be fine.”
Rather than answering, Jack reached into the closest bag and unwrapped an egg biscuit I’d snatched out from beneath a heat lamp. Folding the paper back fastidiously so it protected his fingers, he pressed the item into my hand then demanded, “Eat.”
Warmth spun through me, most of it originating not from the physical item but from the gesture Jack had taken the time for even while worried sick about Drake and Tru. And I got it finally, if belatedly. This was why I was putting Jack’s needs ahead of mine. Humans had a basic yearning for connection. Since Jack had taken care of me, I wanted to take care of him.
Despite understanding my body’s urges, I couldn’t seem to counteract them. So even though the softness of the biscuit indented beneath my fingers and saliva swamped my mouth, I swallowed down the liquid and focused on helping Jack stay on track instead. “Listen, based on what I saw in your head, I think the culprit might be Tru’s husband Ambrose. I went grave robbing a while back, planning to use his skull to solidify my body. Didn’t work, but my attempt might have somehow woken his spirit up.”
Gray eyes bored into mine with an intensity that made me shiver. “You still have the skull?”
I shook my head. “It shattered into a thousand pieces when the ritual finished. Still, we can...”
A car pulled up to the curb and Jack was on his feet and striding toward it. It hadn’t been five minutes, which was just as well given the energy vibrating beneath his skin. Energy that made him interrupt me even as he opened the car door. “We can’t do anything. I’m not taking you with me.”
Something sharp biting into the area beneath my breastbone made me gasp. I’d dealt with pain while in a body before, but it had never felt like this. Like someone had thrust a knife between my ribs and twisted even though there was very clearly no knife in play.
No, the culprit was human emotions, ones that made no rational sense. I was better off today than I had been yesterday. I had my sword again. There was enough food in my hands to keep me embodied for a good long while. And Jack was slipping a wad of bills into the closest grocery bag along with what appeared to be his apartment key.
He’ll be fine, I reminded myself. Jack had been fine before we met on that rooftop. He’d be fine after we parted today.
The memory of Ambrose’s cold cunning, however, chilled me even as Jack blew me off as politely as he could.
“Feel free to use my apartment. I’ll find you when things are settled.”
“No. I want to help.” I pushed myself into the space between his arm and the car, ignoring the fluttering in my belly as I made contact with Jack’s side in the process.
Whether because he felt that same awareness or for another reason, Jack paused and considered me rather than pushing past. Dropping his voice so the bored driver wouldn’t overhear him, he took the time to provide an answer, even if it wasn’t the one I’d hoped for.
“Fifteen minutes ago, you admitted you were a murderer,” he observed. “Which doesn’t change how I feel about you. But I can’t bring you around Drake’s friends if there’s a chance you’ll steal their memories or hurt them in any other manner.”
Again, the knife seemed to stab into my heart. Again, I ignored the pain and kept my words steady. “You want a promise. Collateral.”
He was shaking his head, but I understood quid pro quos and I had one possession valuable enough to act as surety. “Here.” I thrust the poster tube into his arms. “Is this collateral enough?”
Chapter 9
“Are we going?” the driver interrupted and Jack tossed a hundred dollar bill through the open door at him.
“Wait here. I’ll be two minutes.”
Then he was leading me back down the steps toward his apartment, that same quivering energy in his body that had been present ever since he’d learned his brother’s mate might be in danger. Poster tube under one arm, he held out a hand and demanded, “Key.”
It took far too long to root around in the grocery bag and find it. Time that tightened Jack’s face until it was impossible to imagine his dimple ever making a reappearance. Finally, though, I found the key and he unlocked the door, setting the poster tube inside then turning to face me.
“This is what you want? You’re certain?”
I was certain even if my reasoning had turned muddled in my head now. I was certain that my body required me to go with Jack, no matter the consequences. I was certain that being separated from my sword wasn’t an immediate problem as long as the weapon was kept safe. So I nodded even though something deep inside me cracked the moment Jack relocked the door and pocketed the apartment key.
