When his eyes traveled downward, his brow furrowed. “There’s dirt all over your coat.”
She glanced down and fought the warmth rising in her face. “It’ll dry clean.” She slipped the coat off and hung it over the back of a maple dining chair.
His eyes widened a fraction. “You look very fancy for a trip to the store.”
She heard the skepticism, veiled though it was. “I always put on a dress to visit Mom on Sunday. I don’t bother changing for the errands and such that need doing afterward.”
“Let me take you to dinner.” He swept up to her and took her hands in his. She felt him toying with the ring. “I won’t bring up your answer or anything. I just want to be with you.”
She blinked. “I don’t know, David. I’m pretty wiped out.”
“Great. Dinner out will save you from having to cook.”
He pulled her forward, and she was in his arms before she could reply. “God, you smell incredible.” She froze as his hands slid along her back. He nuzzled her hair. “I confess what I really want to do is take you to bed. But I’ll settle for showing you off in a nice restaurant.”
“What?” She whipped her head up to look up at him. “That really isn’t like you.”
“I know. I should apologize, but I can’t. I guess almost losing you made me realize what my feelings really are.” He stroked back a lock of her hair. “I felt it in the car on the way back, and I knew. There was this protectiveness that came over me, but that wasn’t all.”
Although she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, she posed the question anyway. “What wasn’t all?”
“When I proposed to you, I told you that I was a practical man who didn’t believe in love. Now I know that was a lie. I must love you, Aimee. The feelings I’ve had over the past twenty-four hours has proven that to me.”
He took her face in his hands and bent close. This time, his lips didn’t merely attempt to introduce her to the concept of kissing him. He mashed his mouth against hers, moaning when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. “You feel so damn good,” he said, pulling her closer. His hands slid all along her back. “And you taste even better than when I kissed you by the falls.”
With the length of him molded against her, she could feel his erection pressing almost painfully against her pelvis. No doubt thanks to her recent “awakening,” she had to admit David’s attentions caused a twinge of desire. Panic quickly overrode the pleasant warmth spreading in her stomach, however, and she put her hands on his chest to push him back. “Stop. I think this is all moving forward just a little too fast, don’t you?”
His eyes were dark with desire, and she could see the ridge of his hard cock straining behind the fly of his pants. “I feel like I’ve wasted years denying what we have together. And I don’t want to lose one more minute.”
The almost fierce look in his eye shot up her pulse, but a knock on the door stopped her from having to reply. Why had her apartment become Grand Central Station all of a sudden? No one ever dropped by.
Not sure whether to be annoyed or grateful for the interruption, she pushed around David and went to the front door. There, her mouth fell agape.
“Kyle?” she said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
A serious expression was visible beneath the brim of Kyle’s hat, as was the bare hint of stubble along an unshaven jaw. He wore no coat, just a denim button-down shirt paired with blue jeans and the same snakeskin boots from before. No real hint of gold was evident in his gaze, though the absence of seeing the animal within made his hard stare no less unsettling. “I need to talk to you.”
“How did you find me?” She lowered her voice. “Is that something your kind can do?”
“I looked you up in the phone book. You’re the only Aimee Jo Stevens listed in Philips.”
“Oh.” She gripped the edge of the door. “Sorry, but now’s not entirely a great time.”
“Dillon’s gone missin’, Aimee. And I think you know that.”
Her eyes widened. “He what? No. I had no idea.” She whispered the rest. “I just saw him a few hours ago.”
Kyle stiffened. “Where?”
“The Wild West Bar.”
He pushed up the brim of his hat. “You went back up the mountain? Why?”
She pressed a finger to her lips. “Keep your voice down.”
He peered over her shoulder, trying to see inside her apartment. “Who’s in there with you? It is him? Dillon?” he called out.
Without awaiting an answer, Kyle pushed the door open and brushed her aside as though she wasn’t even there. Long strides took him into her living room, where he stopped abruptly. “David.”
The men faced each other alongside the back of her couch, and it struck her just how well-suited they were to her modern brown, yellow and green decor. She never had been the lace doily and ruffled pillows type, and the angular lines and minimalist impression of the room might just as easily have belonged to a cowboy or a businessman.
“You?” David said, setting his hands on his hips. “Aimee didn’t tell me she gave you her address.”
“She didn’t.” Kyle pulled off his Stetson and ran a hand through his blond hair that had been pressed flat by the band. “I looked her up because I thought my partner might be here.”
“Why would he be here?” David asked. “What’s this about, Aimee? I thought these were just some guys you ran across in the woods.”
“They are,” she said, still eying Kyle. “Were. I never met them before I got lost up there.”
“Yeah?” David’s dark eyes flashed. “Just what all went on up there that would make him come down here assuming the other man would be with you?”
“Nothing went on,” she shot back, tamping down the flash of guilt that accompanied the lie. “And as you can both clearly see, Dillon isn’t here.”
“It wasn’t exactly nothin’,” Kyle said, his eyes boring through her with a pale intensity that set off showers of sparks deep inside of her. He laid his hat on the back of her couch and turned to David. “She ain’t fated to be with you. I’m sorry to say it like that, but it’s hard, cold truth. Best you know it right now.”
“Kyle!” She stomped between him and David, whose face now wore a thinly restrained mask of rage. “Who I will or will not be with is not for you to decide. I barely even know you. Now you march into my house uninvited, making proclamations like a posturing alpha male.”
The grin he cracked crinkled up his scar and held about as much humor. “I am an alpha.”
David stepped forward until Aimee felt his body heat just behind her. “And I’m her fiancé.”
She whirled on him. “Will you stop saying that?” She twisted the ring on her finger until it slid off and held it up to him. “You can take this now if you can’t wait on an answer. Meanwhile, both of you can just back off.”
David glanced down at the diamond but made no move to take it. “We’ve known each other for four years. Yet a few minutes ago, when we were kissing,” he said, glancing up at the other man as he hissed out the word, “you told me you thought we were moving too fast. Now you’re already involved with a man you supposedly met today?” His eyes narrowed. “Or was it last night? Just how long did you spend with him?”
She stomped past him and slapped the ring on the round dining table with a loud clink. “I don’t see how any of that matters.”
He frowned. “Are you saying no to my proposal, then?”
Aimee averted her eyes from both men’s rabid stares and sighed. “No, I’m not.”
“So you’re saying yes.”
She shook her head. “I’m not saying anything yet.”
“Then your relationship with this Dillon guy does, in fact, matter.”
“Not just with him,” Kyle said, ignoring her rabid warning look. “With me, too.”
David recoiled as though he’d been slapped. “What the hell? You’ve been with both of these men?” His stare darkened. “So let me get this straight. While I was
busy searching the mountain in a panic while praying you weren’t dead, you were spreading your legs and letting two men stick their dicks inside you?”
Her lip curled as anger boiled inside her. “That is not what happened. I won’t have you stand here in my house shouting vulgar accusations. I’ll have you know that I am a virgin, not that it should be any of my boss’s business. I didn’t ask for you to propose, and I didn’t ask Kyle to come down here. I didn’t even tell him how to find me.” David’s expression wavered as she moved closer to him and raised her chin. “You need to leave now.” Kyle’s face lit with a self-satisfied expression until she fixed him with a hard stare. “Both of you.”
Silence fell while Aimee listened to the roar of blood rushing through her ears. David broke the stillness first by turning toward Kyle. “Fine. You just stay the hell away from her, cowboy, or you will be sorry.”
Kyle stepped right into the man’s face, and though David was a forehead taller, Kyle’s wild expression and scar gave him the more intimidating edge. “By all means, please make me do somethin’ I’ll be sorry for later.” His voice rumbled with a growl that wasn’t convincingly human.
“Stop acting like a couple of playground bullies,” Aimee spat. “Leave. And don’t you dare start up again in the parking lot.”
“What about the reason I came here in the first place?” Kyle asked.
“Right. You said you thought your partner might be here.” She folded her arms tight across the low-cut front of her dress, then thought better of it when both men’s eyes dropped to the cleavage her action had unwittingly pushed up. “‘Partner’ is an interesting choice of words, considering that last I heard, you were busy running off with your other friends.”
A flicker of guilt crossed his face. “That couldn’t be helped. And now he’s not where he outta be tonight.” He paused with a glance upward, as though he could see the high full moon rising through the pebbled texture of her ceiling. “I’m worried somethin’ might have happened.”
“Maybe he’s tired of being treated like an outcast lone wolf.” Her eyes shifted to David, who was staring at her with a curious scowl.
“Or he’s wanderin’ the mountain,” Kyle said. “Where hunters are waggin’ pistols at wild animals every which way.”
A pang of fear shot through her at the image, but she pressed her lips together tight. There was nothing she could say, let alone do, with David standing over her like a looming tower of testosterone.
“Pistols?” David said with a sarcastic air. “Hunters use shotguns. And there isn’t any hunting in Shay Falls.”
“Oh, yes there is,” Aimee said. “I saw a woman with a gun in her hand, chasing down the wolf that almost attacked me.”
“They issue hunting permits now to deal with the wolf issue?”
Her brows shot up. “What do you know about a wolf issue?”
He shrugged. “Everyone who hangs around Shay Falls enough knows there’s a higher wolf population than normal the past several years.”
“Huntin’s still not permitted legally,” Kyle said, turning to Aimee. “But property owners shoot wolves caught tryin’ to poach on their property. The huntress chases wolves from the wild pack we mentioned to you, though others occasionally get caught in the crossfire.”
They exchanged a weighted glance. The redhead was hunting Dillon’s old pack. Could werewolves even be killed with a bullet?
“And all cowboys chase are pretty skirts,” David said. “Too bad this one’s taken.”
She rolled her eyes. “This one has had enough male posturing today to last me a lifetime,” she fired back. “I won’t tell you two again to get out of here.”
The air thickened with awkward tension as David jerked on his jacket. Kyle snatched up his hat and used both hands to tug it onto his head. She followed the men to the door and watched them file out, David lingering behind.
Kyle’s boot steps clicked along the main walkway to the visitor parking area. Her eyes flicked to the full moon hanging low and bright in the sky, and she called out to him before she could stop herself. “Kyle?”
Both men turned, and somehow David’s expression managed to be more perilous. She paused at Kyle’s furtive glance, then said, “I hope you find him.”
He gave a curt nod.
“We will talk about this tomorrow,” David said, jabbing a finger her way. “You may not be ready to give me an answer, but I want it clear that the question will no longer be on the table if you see either of these hicks again.”
Her stomach knotted into a ball. “Is that a threat involving your proposal, or my job?”
His expression tightened. “Be fair, Aimee. Your job will never be in question for as long as you need it. But ask yourself just how much extra help I should be expected to continue if this is the way you choose to treat me.”
He spun on his heel and stalked off, all but pushing Kyle aside. Kyle stood there, wearing an expression that read more I told you so than she would have liked. She was already shutting the door when he, too, turned and disappeared into the moonlit night that somewhere held Dillon tight in a solitary, primal grip.
Chapter Six
Sleep would not come for Aimee that night, even though exhaustion from the weekend’s events seeped into her very marrow. Unrelenting rays of the full moon shone through her bedroom curtains, transforming their muted green color into a pale jade. She flipped over, turning away from the light, but still felt the moon’s energy on her back as keenly as though she were lying under the tanning rays of summer.
How did the cowboys experience the power of that moon? Did the odd vibration she felt tingle beneath their skin, stimulating the change? Did it burn inside of them like mystical fire? Had Kyle given into that power in order use his wolf senses to track down Dillon?
A stab of guilt accompanied the thought of Dillon, and an image of his maddeningly sexy smile and reach-into-her-soul eyes flashed in front of her. That seductive grin had been replaced by a look of hard finality when she’d rejected him in the bar parking lot. He said he wasn’t good enough for her, that he had nothing to offer but himself. Is that why he never returned to the cave? Had he not wanted to be someplace where she might find him again? With Aimee refusing him and Kyle forced to spend the bulk of his existence with another pack, maybe Dillon decided it wasn’t worth bothering to chain up his nature. Maybe he’d decided to embrace it again instead.
Her eyes found the bedside clock, which read almost 1:00 a.m. Aimee pushed herself upright and rubbed her bleary eyes while she slid out of bed, pushing into a pair of blue slippers on the way. The silken fabric of her sleep chemise brushed against her thighs while she wandered over to the window. She parted the curtains with her upper body and peered at the huge ball of glowing white moon that was framed perfectly in the sky. The moon held such beauty and brilliance, overwhelming the planet with its power. What other secrets did the moon hold in its grip?
Movement caught her eye near the ground. Her window looked out over the street, and standing on the far side was a sight that caught her breath.
“Dillon,” she whispered.
The wolf stood between a pair of compact bushes, watching her. Even in the dark and mostly hidden by the hedge, she could tell that it wasn’t Kyle’s pure-black wolf. There was something in that wild, pensive stare that told her otherwise. How had he found her? Surely even a clever wolf didn’t have the manual dexterity necessary to look her up in a phone book.
His majestic head turned this way and that, as if scanning the road for anyone who would be even more alarmed than Aimee at the appearance of a wolf in the small city. Then he started forward, moving with slow caution and his tongue hanging out. She froze, wondering what he expected from her. He had no control over his wolf nature under this moon, and she couldn’t converse with him like this. Nor did she have any intention of letting him inside her apartment, and not only because of the no pets rule. He might appear to be calm and resolute right now, but who knew how wild his natu
re might become?
The wolf paused, seeming to pick up on her hesitation. He sat down on his haunches right in the middle of the deserted street, curling his tail around him while he looked straight at her. She swallowed and gazed back, unsure what to do. Dillon raised his head, exposing the creamy fur along his throat, and let out a piercing howl that prickled the hair on Aimee’s bare arms.
“Like that will keep you low profile in the city,” she muttered under her breath, but the howl was forgotten moments later when she saw a startling sight.
A truck was coming.
“Dillon, look out!” Aimee called through the window, pointing.
His head turned slowly toward the oncoming vehicle, then back around to her again.
“Jesus, what is he doing?” Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her upper arms as he just sat there.
The truck bore down on him, but Dillon just sat there. She banged on the window and shouted to him. “Hurry up, Dillon. Move!”
A flash of motion followed as another furry canine body leapt out of nowhere and tackled Dillon. The push shoved Dillon out of the way in time to avoid the truck, but the same could not be said for his animal rescuer. The other wolf got clipped by the front fender just as the truck whizzed by. The driver kept right on going, either unaware or uncaring. The body hit the ground rolling as a black wolf, then stopped at the far curb as a naked blond man.
“Kyle!” Aimee shouted.
She was running out the front door even before she’d fully realized she’d turned away from the horrifying scene at the window. Her heart beat frantically while her slippers scuffed along the ground at a full run. Once she raced around to the front walk, she saw that Dillon had phased back and knelt over an unconscious Kyle, who was sprawled on his back in the gutter.
“Oh, my God,” she said when she saw the bloody scrapes all over his body. A cut over his eyebrow flowed more blood into his fine, blond hair.
Dillon’s head snapped up to her. “Let’s get him inside before anyone sees.”
“Shouldn’t he go to a hospital?”
Allister, J. Rose - Disowned Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 10