by Amanda LeMay
All in the first hour of the morning, I’d fed chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigs, and shoveled out a few stalls. The garden Maygan considered small was about an acre in size. Not that there was much to harvest in the dead of winter, but we pulled the few weeds that had sprouted between the rows, picked what we needed, and hauled our bounty into the house to wash and trim and pack away.
After lunch, Dad took me on a tour of the sprawling house and if I hadn’t been with him, I was sure I would’ve gotten lost. The house itself sat overlooking acres and acres of beautiful golden brown land dotted here and there with small, graceful hills. Petite evergreen trees sat nestled in patches and he explained there was a self-feeding pond somewhere off to the north, which seemed miles away. Tall, thick pine trees, whose lowest branches were above the first floor and didn’t block the view, shaded the house from the afternoon sun.
The two-story house glowed like a warm beacon at night, with a long bank of windows allowing a fantastic view running the length of the porch, a living room larger than any apartment I had ever lived in, a dining room, and kitchen. Six bedrooms were situated at the back of the house, along with an office for Dad, a room filled with Maygan’s many, many projects, and a large den with a wall-sized movie screen. The second story of the house consisted of the master bedroom and bath, with a morning room off to one side and nothing else.
I’d showered before supper and if the crackling fire hadn’t called to me on the way back to my room, I would have run a nice, hot tub and soaked for half the night. I had no idea living in the city would take such a drastic toll on my body. Wolves were not meant to live that way. Not meant to force themselves to be docile and live by human standards when all of our instincts screamed for the wild. No wonder it had scared the crap out of me to realize I might become like so many of the wolves in the San Francisco pack, seeking pain as an alternative release.
Just this once. Please. You’ll totally freaking get off on it. Don’t you trust me?
I rubbed at my wrists where the handcuffs had cut through my skin and made me bleed as I screamed the so-called “safe” word over and over while chained like a dog.
Don’t go there.
I slammed the memory away.
I was never going back there. Nothing good would ever come from trying to pick apart what had happened and what I could have done to get out of it once it started.
I gazed out of the windows into the cool darkness. With a southeastern view, there was nothing but stars on the indigo horizon. Not even the faint glow of city lights, as if this house were an island, safe in a sea of black earth and darkest blue sky.
The physical exhaustion from good hard work felt so fantastic, giving in to a nap in front of the fire would be the ultimate reward. Just as I settled in, two points of light glowed in the distance, traveling along the driveway toward the house.
Who would come all the way out to the house after dark? My nerves prickled as I sat up and stared out the window. Dad and Maygan would never have gone on a run if they thought a human might catch sight of them.
The faint sound of Dain’s quiet footfalls moved from his bedroom and through the hall before his clean scent replaced the slight smell of wood fire smoke. I couldn’t help but gaze at him standing there in the middle of the living room, dressed in a tight white T-shirt that hugged his broad chest and muscular biceps, tucked into perfectly fitting jeans that fit snugly along his solid thighs. He stared out across the ranch at the lone vehicle traveling closer and closer.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
With his hands on his hips, his dark eyes never left the approaching lights. And then I heard it—a truck, but I didn’t recognize the engine noise as one of the few trucks that had already come and gone during the day.
“Who is it?”
“Bobby Sanders.” Dain growled as he turned his head, his eyes fixed on mine. “Using DJ’s colt as an excuse to get a look at you.” He stood looking down at the carpet, running his hands roughly through his hair. “Would you stay in the house if I asked you to? Would you do that for me, Jessy?”
“Yes, if that’s what you want.”
Anything. I’ll do anything you want.
My skin tingled and the flush on my face had nothing to do with the flames flickering in the fireplace.
Still, the second this Bobby Sanders got back on the road, I wanted an answer as to why it was so important I stay away from some human.
“Dain, I’ll stay inside, but if you think I can’t protect myself, you’re wrong.”
He wanted to say something, but hesitated and shook his head. “I know you can, but the last thing I’d ever want to do is put you in a situation where you’d feel the need to protect yourself.”
He turned and walked back toward his room. I watched the twin headlights travel closer. After a moment, Dain returned, boots on, carrying a heavy leather jacket and my black flats.
He handed me the shoes. “Might as well get this over with.” Apparently, he’d changed his mind about my staying in the house. He held the jacket open. “Put this on too.”
“I’m fine. I’m not cold.” Then it hit me why—he wanted his scent on me to warn off a potential rival. “Wait. Is this guy a wolf?”
“No, not in the same sense we are.”
He slipped the jacket over my arms. My shoulders sagged from the weight of it.
“Well, if he’s human, your jacket isn’t gonna matter much, then.”
He grabbed my shoulders, spun me around and shook me. “It matters to me.”
His deep, possessive growl and extremely overprotective reaction took me by surprise.
I laid my hands on his forearms, his muscles tight and hard beneath my fingers. “Dain, you’re kinda scaring me, here.”
Not in a bad way, though. His rough handling made my heart beat faster, quickened my breath, and made a shiver that had nothing to do with fear run down my spine.
“Jess...” He closed his eyes, released his hold on me, and put a step between us.
Though I didn’t want to, I let my hands fall away from him.
“I’m sorry, Jessy. If it were up to me, that asshole wouldn’t get within a thousand miles of you.”
He rubbed his forehead, then threaded his fingers through his long hair and pulled it back from his face. His upper lip curled back. Long, thick canines had emerged from his gums. Evidently, he saw Bobby Sanders not as a rival, but as a serious threat. Any male could deal with a rival, but what had Dain’s hackles up seemed to set him on edge.
“Dain, I’ll stay in the house. I’ll lock myself in the bathroom, if that’s what you want.”
In an effort to reassure him, soothe him, I stepped closer, smoothed my hands over his bare forearms. The simple act of my fingers gliding up and down his skin made my breath hitch and the need to have his hands touch me back made my body ache with awareness.
“Jess.” His clean scent intensified, filling the room. He grabbed my wrists, held me still as he breathed in deeply. His eyes blazed as torn emotions played out on his face. “No, come with me.” His dark eyebrows bunched up as he shook his head. “Whatever happens, don’t let that filthy animal touch you.”
Why? What was so bad about this Bobby Sanders that Dain couldn’t come out and tell me?
He took my hands, his thumbs caressed my fingers.
“Because...” He paused, his eyes bored into mine as if he were hoping I could read his mind. No matter how much I wanted to know what was going on in that beautiful head of his, reading his mind wasn’t going to happen. The best I could do was guess.
“It’s okay. I get it.” I smiled. “Protect the pack, right?”
Instead of agreeing with me, he said nothing—only shook his head from side to side as if to say no.
“Dain?”
He turned, pulled me along with him, and I walked out the front door into the oncoming headlights, following Dain like a shadow.
BOBBY SANDERS WAS
DEFINITELY rival material. No doubt about that. He knew it, too. While DJ was all business with his new little colt, GW stood like a stone sentinel in the center of the open barn door. Bobby Sanders swaggered right up the middle, took off his hat, and ran his free hand straight back through his shaggy sun-bleached blond hair, fluffing it into a glorious mess that fell back across his forehead, barely covering his pale blue eyes. A set of perfect white teeth packed his movie-star smile and highlighted his sharp-angled, square jaw. Without his boots, he probably topped out at about six-one. His wide shoulders were pretty dang impressive. Still, even though he did nothing but smile, there was something menacing about him. It was easy to see that hard-edged, swoon-worthy face of his turning in a split second if someone didn’t do exactly as he wanted.
“Well, sugar, you must be Jessy.”
I fully expected little stars to twinkle in his eyes when he spoke with that full-on Texas accent, but instead, there was something dark and dangerous, and not in a good way.
And “sugar”? Seriously?
“Yes.” I nodded.
He came a few steps closer and held his hand out. My first reaction was to be friendly, take his hand and give it a quick neighborly shake. Then Dain’s request rang loud in my head.
“Don’t let that filthy animal touch you.”
So instead, I kept my hands jammed deep in the pockets of Dain’s sweet-smelling leather jacket. Really, after getting a look at this guy, my wolf senses already told me he was trouble.
“And your name is?”
“Well, sweet thing,” It came out more like thang. “I’m Bobby, Bobby Sanders.”
“Bobby Sanders...football player? Homecoming king?” Because that’s exactly what he looked like—the personification of a high school heartbreaker. Not to mention the testosterone-filled arousal he put off. The guy was one horny bastard.
His smile didn’t falter one bit, but his eyes did. A spark of electricity flashed at me for a second.
“Both,” he admitted proudly.
He glanced over at Dain, who stood a few steps to the side of me. The darkness was there again as Bobby’s pale blue eyes roamed over Dain, apparently sizing up his competition, which, Dain being a wolf and Bobby a human, there was really no comparison. I stepped back to within a few inches of Dain and watched as the two of them stared at each other from across the barn. Bobby would never win. No human ever won a stare-down with a wolf. The longer Bobby held Dain’s glare, the more dangerous Dain would become.
Suddenly, Bobby’s face softened with a smile, conceding his loss this round. He shoved his hat back on his head, his gaze flicking back to me.
“Nice to meet ya, Jessy. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you ‘round.” He smiled again and nodded. “DJ, saddle up.” He turned and strolled out of the barn, glancing back over his shoulder once to see if I was watching him, which I was, but not for any reason he might imagine.
GW, who had been standing still and silent throughout the entire pissing contest, nodded and disappeared into the darkness. DJ scrambled out of the stall and closed the gate behind him.
“Lucky looks great. I’ll be back to check on him in the morning.” DJ’s gaze darted over to me before he lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Dain...” His voice was tight, his eyebrows bunched up, as though he wanted to say something. The sound of a truck horn blared outside the barn and DJ practically jumped out of his skin. “Never mind.” He headed for the barn door as the second blare of the horn went off. “’Night, y’all,” he called back as he ran to the idling truck. Doors slammed and dirt flew up against the wooden sides of the barn as the truck pulled away.
I sucked in a breath, relieving the tightness in my chest. “Sugar? Really? What a dickhead.”
Dain stood in the middle of the barn, hands braced on his hips and eyes closed, but still, a slight smile on his face.
Two large wolves made a silent appearance at the other end of the barn: my dad, golden brown with matching eyes and Maygan, black with a white muzzle and belly, and dark brown eyes. Dain glanced at them as they came up beside him.
“You heard?”
Both wolves nodded.
A strange sort of sadness filled Dain’s eyes when he looked at me. Did he think that some nice-looking human male could ever hold my attention?
“What’s going on? Is there something you should tell me about this guy?”
“Probably nothing you haven’t already sensed yourself.”
Okay, thanks for the vote of confidence.
“I mean, besides the fact that the guy’s a horny bastard and there’s something not right with him.”
Dain chuckled under his breath. “Yeah.” He breathed in deep, then exhaled. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He turned and disappeared out the other end of the barn.
I called out after him. “Dain!”
My dad nudged my hip with his shoulder and stood in front of me with a look I understood well—let him go. And I did.
CHAPTER SIX
“YOUR DAD AND I ARE heading into town this morning. Would you like to ride along?”
I was so wrapped up in watching Dain’s lips move and catching the little glimpses of his soft, pink tongue that, even though my ears heard the words, my brain had sort of shut down.
“Jessy?”
I blinked and looked up to catch his eyes staring into mine.
“Yes?” It came out like a sigh.
“So, that’s a yes, you want to ride into town?”
“Oh! Yeah. Yeah, yeah...yeah.” I stumbled around, searching for two matching shoes. How Dain had found a matching pair so quickly the night before was a miracle. “Sure. I’d love a tour of Comfort.”
I flung a handful of blouses to the side and found one of my sneakers. Then one of my red flats.
“So, you have a new job waiting for you, huh?” Dain mumbled as he watched me from the bedroom door.
“Yes, at the Downs.” I found one black flat from last night, but where I’d kicked off the other one, I didn’t remember. “It’s the big racetrack there.”
“You’re kinda tall to be a jockey.”
“Haha. Funny.” I flipped over a pair of pants and found my matching sneaker. “Aha!” I slipped them on my bare feet. “I’m their new event coordinator, the person who makes the arrangements for the conventions and parties and such. I guess I contacted them at the most opportune time, since the last lady they had was completely disorganized and screwed up quite a few important events.”
Dain looked around, his eyebrows raised in question. His dimples appeared with his smile as he leaned over and picked up a bra that wasn’t much more than pink lace in a frame of underwire. I snatched it off his finger and tossed it in the closest empty drawer.
Sweet heavens, his finger just touched something that has been on my breasts!
Heat flushed my cheeks. I turned to hide the blush lighting up my face and, damn, my room was a mass of clutter and confusion: clothes everywhere, shoes all over, the bed exactly the way I’d left it when I’d climbed out of it in the morning. A pile of books left on the floor where I’d dropped them. My Kindle and phone all left to charge on the little nightstand next to the bed.
“I’m so not like this at my job.” Embarrassed as hell, and feeling a little guilty since I had promised to unplug, but reading and listening to music were not the same thing as scanning social networking sites and checking my email or voice messages. I hadn’t dragged out my iPad, and had only plugged in my phone to make sure it was charged for—well, just in case.
I waved my hand around the disaster area. “I’m really not such a slob. I’m pretty much an organizing freak, to the point where I drive my co-workers nuts. It’s a great job.” I laughed. “My work is my life.”
The smile fell from his face. “Oh.” His gaze roamed around the room again, but this time I had the sense he wasn’t seeing the mess or anything in particular—more, he didn’t want to look at me.
“I mean, it’s just...” I stammered as
I tried to explain, “my job was all I had in San Francisco. It was my life.”
“Did you ask her?” Maygan stepped up behind Dain.
“Yeah.” Dain turned to leave. “She’s coming along with us.”
He left my room and headed down the hall before Maygan had a chance to reply.
“Great.” Maygan held a piece of paper out. “If you don’t mind, here’s a list of things we’ll need for Christmas dinner. The market is right next to the feed lot. They’ll have everything. If they’re out of something, it’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”
“Sure, no problem.” I grabbed the paper and ran toward the front door as I heard Dad’s old truck start up and rumble to life.
“SO, ARE YOU EVER GONNA trade this old Chevy in and buy one of those new and improved trucks like Dain’s?”
“A Ford?” he scoffed. “Never.” Dad slapped a hard hand on the cracked dashboard of his beat-up old truck. “This old man likes his old Chevy.”
He shoved in the clutch and shifted gears. Luckily for me, the gearshift was on the steering column and not between my legs, where it might normally be in another model truck. I was squished on the bench seat with my dad on my left and Dain’s wonderfully warm body on my right. In order to keep from getting elbowed in the boob whenever Dad shifted gears, I had to lean in to Dain’s broad chest.
Yeah, like I was going to complain about that.
“‘Old’ being the key word here, Dad.”
Dain chuckled next to me, his warm eyes shining, quietly sharing my joke. My dad had always been a Chevy man. Never owned a car, truck, whatever, under any other brand. Why? I didn’t have a clue. Just plain stubbornness, probably.
“This baby has never failed me. Built like a tank. It can run circles around Dain’s fancy hunk of aluminum, fiberglass, and plastic. Can do every damn thing his lightweight piece of junk can.”
“Except play music.” I nodded at the original radio that hadn’t worked since before I was born.