by Penny Alley
As if she didn’t already know how isolated and alone she was. She stared at the dash panel, hating how right he was. On all fronts but one.
“There was never anyone I could call.” There was that bitterness again. Neoma locked her lips, determined not to let it out.
Gabe’s hand dropped from the steering wheel to his knee and the old leather of his seat creaked when he shifted to look at her. “Everyone has somebody. What about your parents?”
Funny, how fast that strange heaviness could crawl its way back into the car with them.
“My mother died. Five years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said diplomatically. “What about your father?”
Her hands were clutched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles hurt. She didn’t mean to, but the look she shot him was almost angry. “He’s the one who killed her.” She withstood Gabe’s stunned stare for as long as she could, biting her lip until it throbbed. Eventually, his silence became so unbearable, she couldn’t help but bare that secret shame. “She was having an affair with my husband. He killed them both.”
The old leather of his seat creaked when Gabe turned to face her as far as the confines of the steering wheel would allow. He waited, challenging her to continue until she just couldn’t bear the weight of it.
“Don’t pretend to know me because you saw a few scars.” The tension between them stretched taut, becoming knots in her stomach that twisted and untwisted until she felt sick from it. “You don’t know anything about me.”
His frown deepened. “Then tell me what I don’t know. Is Deacon Scotty’s father?”
Neoma recoiled, her throat so tight that her answer came out hoarse and choked. “God, no!”
A tic of muscle leapt along Gabe’s handsome jaw. “Did he want to be?”
The knots spasmed, locking in tight as fists. Rabid trembling shot the length of her, settling in her knees and her hands. And her lips. She bit down, forcing the bottom one to be still. She didn’t realize she’d punctured it with her teeth until she tasted blood. Hot. Metallic. Her stomach rolled.
Afraid she might be sick, she grabbed the door handle and threw herself out of the car. Bad enough that she’d burned up his clutch without the added sin of vomiting on the floor mat of his prized possession.
“I’m sorry,” she said, accidentally slamming the door harder than needed. She had to get out of here. She had to do something.
She had to run.
Gabe only watched her when she backed away from the car, but when she turned around, she heard his door open. At once, she spun, her hands up as if to ward off a blow despite all the distance between them, the distance that was always between them.
“I’m fine!” she said, too strained and too shrill to be honest. “I’m not a child! You don’t have to…have to follow me everywhere I go! You don’t have to chase me!” Emotions churned in her stomach, burned in her throat, and came out in a high, cracked cry: “You didn’t want to catch me in the first place! Just leave me alone!”
The wind blew between them, cold.
Gabe closed his car door. He watched her leave, not calling after her, not unbuckling his seatbelt or rolling down his window. He stayed in that parking space, one hand gripping the top of the steering wheel, his eyes switching mirrors to keep her locked in his sights. She could feel his eyes burning at her from as near as the gas station pumps and as far as the grocery store. She broke into a run, crossing the road and leaping from pavement to hard-packed earth as she passed the Fish and Game office.
The Alpha Lauren and his second lieutenant, Marcus, were sharing a bench by the front door, enjoying the sunshine and eating their lunches. Both paused mid-bite as she ran by. Dark as the Alpha Lauren’s stare was, it didn’t evoke half the fight-or-flight panic that Gabe’s did. Nor did it invite the same prickling trepidation to dance up and down her spine, or make her already quivering stomach tighten, her heart skip, or her chest ache. It didn’t make her do anything except quicken her step so she could get home faster.
Neither man acknowledged her any more than she did them. By the time she reached the small cul-de-sac at the end of the dirty road, her legs barely held her. Each step felt watery and weak, yet she leapt the stairs in a single running step. She hit the door with both hands, fumbled with the key until she got it unlocked, then flung herself inside and slammed it shut behind her.
Pressed full against it, she tried to catch her breath. She tried to tell herself it was the uphill exercise that made her heart pound and the rest of her shake, but if this was what it was going to be like when they were nice to one another, then Neoma prayed he came home angry again. That she could handle a whole lot easier than she could this…this…smothering weight pressing down on her chest and fluttering panic of a heart that kept pounding as if it were trying to break right out through her ribs.
Oh, who was she kidding? The smell of leather car seats, engine oil and Gabe were still in her nose. She could still hear his soothing murmur, that gentle “You’re doing fine,” and when she closed her eyes, instead of the car or the drive-in, the image that resurfaced over and over again was of the leaf-littered earth, shadowy blackberries and brush, and Gabe’s massive paws planted in the pine needles to either side of her, shifting back into hands while the heat of his naked body burned into all the parts of her that all the parts of him couldn’t help but touch.
Neoma pressed both hands to her hot face. She was a horrible mother. She should be thinking of Scotty right now, not fighting against all this fiery need fanning out from her core. The nape of her neck tingled, aching to feel the points of his teeth nipping across her skin. Dominating her the way strong males were supposed to dominate their Brides. The Brides they wanted. Not the ones they had to put up with.
She bent, bowing until she was almost double and the ethereal tickles on her skin became joined by the very real sensation of liquid arousal spilling down onto her thighs, soaking into her panties and the crotch of her jeans. Filling the air and tainting her breaths with the unmistakable scent of her wanton confusion. She covered her belly with both hands, pushing hard, and when that failed to stop it, she gripped lower still and pushed there too. The battery of her own pulse consumed her, deafening her to every other sense. At least, until the creak of leather pricked her ear and a familiar scent tickled her nose.
Neoma jerked her head up, then spun from her awkward crouch to flatten herself against the door as she saw the shadowed figure of a man leaning on the far wall.
“Hi,” Wayman said, and even raised his hand to wave, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to find him standing there.
Her hand clenched reflexively, then flew away from the crotch of her jeans to clutch at her throat.
“Yeah.” He flashed his crooked grin. “I was going to say something, but then, you know…I didn’t.”
“What…? What…?” Her heart still pounded, hard and panicked, though not for the same reason as before. “What are you doing here?” She tried, but she couldn’t find the steel to keep the tremble out of her voice.
Glancing around the living room, Wayman shrugged. “When you live in the Scruff, learning how to pick a lock can often make the difference between a full or an empty belly, or sleeping under a roof rather than on the ground in the rain.”
“You broke in?” There was nothing else he could have meant, no other reason for the unlocked door she had just come spilling through, but still the disbelief shook out of her. “You broke in…to this house?”
Another shrug. “I won’t be here long enough to raise anyone’s hackles. I just wanted to talk to you. Waited on the porch for a while, but it smells like rain and I’ve been rained on enough.” He hooked his thumbs through his belt, keeping his head down and making sure his movements were slow and obvious as he walked toward her. When she skittered back and grabbed at the door knob, he stopped and his smile took on an element of exasperation. “I promise, I don’t want anything but to talk.”
“A
bout what?” she asked and immediately corrected herself as she shied back even further. “We have nothing to talk about!”
“Then it won’t take long, will it?” He took another step. When she grabbed at the door knob again, his careful, crooked smile turned at once into a thin, hard line. “I’m Scruff-born, so I’m going to hurt you, is that it? Huh? Isn’t it funny how unfair it is that everyone in this high-nosed pack hates you and your boy for being Scullamy, but then you look at me and I’m Scruff, so of course I’m going to hurt you.”
A tickle of shame scuttled in around her unease. Neoma twisted the door knob, nervously looking anywhere but at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” She knew she ought to tell him to go. More than anything, she did not want Gabe to come home and find Wayman here. But in the end, she stopped herself and sighed. “What do you want to talk about?”
He stared, the angry wolf light in his eyes gradually dimming and the stiff set of his shoulders loosening until, with a blink, he was only looking at her again. When he moved next, it was to gesture back at the couch—at the pillow and blanket that made it Gabe’s bed. “Let’s talk about that, for a start.”
Dull heat rose to burn in Neoma’s cheeks. She lifted her chin. “What about it?”
Wayman grunted, then growled, then raked a hand through his long hair as he thought. “Look,” he said at last. “There may be a classy way to say this, but I’m not a classy guy, so here it comes. His scent’s gone cold in the back bedroom, where you and your boy bed down. Your scent’s cold on that couch. There isn’t a whiff of sex anywhere in this whole cabin—not in the bedroom, not in the shower, not in the kitchen sink.” His head cocked, his expression shifting between amusement and rough amazement. “He fucked you at all?”
Neoma’s stomach knotted again, but even she couldn’t sort out her feelings. Gabe was there, man and wolf, smile and snarl, a terrible twisting of then and now with herself bound between. He was the resentful stare and slamming door, the patient instruction and gentle word. The hand that had lobbed rocks at her on the day of the Hunt was also the hand that had rested on her knee when she’d sent her son alone into a strange school. He was already not the man she thought she was mated to, but she would never be the Bride he wanted. She would always be just the one he had.
“We’re getting to know each other,” she admitted, and hoped it was true.
“Yeah? You’re going about it in a funny way. I got to know you three times already and I only had the one night.”
“Why are you here?” Neoma demanded, throwing the words at him like a weapon and pretending not to hear the shake in her voice. “What do you want with me?”
Wayman did not immediately answer. His eyes shifted left to right as if reading the script for this scene on the door at her back. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Hell, I got plenty of time for that, don’t I? It’s not like I have a job taking up my time. Or a Bride.”
Refusing to let her blush deepen, she waited for him to get to the point.
“Things can’t be any easier for you here than they are for me,” he said. “When I woke up this morning, I found myself thinking, I’m just Scruff. You’re just Scullamy. And here we both are, all alone in a town full of hypocrites.”
Neoma’s eyes and heart both fell, both burned. “It’ll get better.”
“Oh yeah? Well, my mistake. You must be settling in just fine, then.” Wayman huffed out a singularly bitter laugh and jabbed his thumbs back through his belt loops. “Found a job right away, did you? No one was hiring when I went around, although there were plenty of signs up in all the windows. You making friends? Because I’ve got to go fifteen miles to buy a fucking burger I’m sure no one’s spit in. The only smile I caught in all the time I’ve been here came from that chevolak the Alpha Claimed, and how’s that rubbing on you, by the way?” His laugh grew harsher. “Chevolak at the gas station, chevolak at the deli, chevolak at the grocery store. What is the goddamned point of joining a pack if you still can’t throw a stick without hitting a fucking chevolak? They even got them at the school!”
Prickling dread washed in waves across her skin. “Scotty’s safe.”
Wayman visibly checked himself, frowning as he said, “I’m sure he is. The Alpha would never let a pup get hurt in his pack. The boy’s fine.”
“And Gabe would never hurt me.”
“Ah, but that’s a different story, isn’t it? A pup’s a pup, but you? You’re the enemy. So stop acting like you don’t know that makes a difference.”
“Gabe—”
Wayman interrupted with a snort. “We didn’t do a lot of talking the night we shared, Neoma, but you didn’t strike me as stupid. He thinks about you the way he thinks about me, as something his Alpha ordered him to tolerate until he has a reason not to.”
“That’s not true.”
“I see him, too,” said Wayman, no longer smiling. “I see him just as much as you do, maybe even more. I hear the way he talks about you, always asking questions. He’s his Alpha’s first lieutenant and when his Alpha told him to take his Bride home, he did it, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? His Alpha had to tell him to take his Bride before he would. And not a day’s gone by since that I haven’t heard him bark and whine about it.”
She wished it was harder for her to believe that.
“He’s waiting for you to make a mistake,” Wayman continued. “Waiting for you to be just Scullamy enough so no one will blame him when he puts you out. I’m not going to stand here and say he’s an asshole—he is, but I’m not going to say it—I’m just saying he doesn’t want you.” Wayman moved another step closer and this time, Neoma did not back away. When he took her arm, she didn’t try to pull free. “But I still do,” he said, trying without success to catch her gaze.
He inched a little closer, but the door at her back prevented her retreat, giving Neoma no place to go except sideways into the corner. It was a feeble escape, as useless as the rest of her.
“Don’t,” she quavered, hating herself for shaking, hating herself even more for simply standing there.
“Don’t what?” he countered, soft and cajoling. “Why are you shaking? When did I ever hurt you? Not that first night, right? And it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I don’t usually like my bitches quiet…though you did get pretty loud there at the end.”
She flinched at the sound of his self-satisfied laughter and it cut itself off short.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “That was supposed to be sexy. I suck at this romantic crap, so I’m going to get to the point.”
“Please,” she begged. “Please and then go. Just go.”
“I will. Believe me, I am gone the minute I walk out this door. I was promised a pack, Neoma,” he said, frustration creeping back into his eyes. “Not a cell in the basement of some moldy old building, next to fucking…Krampus! Whatever. I was promised a pack, is my point, somewhere I belonged. My home. My place. My pack. I’ve been trying, but I’ll never have it here. I’ll always be Scruff to these people, and you’ll always be Scullamy,” he said again, trailing a rough finger across her cheek to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m leaving this shit-hole. Come with me.”
The offer was so outrageous that at first, she couldn’t even laugh. When she finally managed, it came out as more of an incredulous cough.
He understood it anyway and shrugged, annoyed. “I’m not that bad.”
“You want me to believe the one night I had to spend with you was so amazing, you can’t live without me?”
Now it was his turn to cough laughter. “I see you suck at this romantic crap, too,” he informed her. “Grow up. I’m Scruff. Scruff males are thick as fleas out there and about as welcome in any pack, but I show up with a Bride? I’ll have my own pack in two shakes of a bitch’s tail. We could band us together a couple good soldiers. I’ve been up and down these roads enough to know there’s places, whole towns, chevolak just up and abandoned that we could move into. You’re young, pretty. You
got those big don’t-kick-me eyes.” He shrugged again, looking her worn edges over and smiling. “And maybe even my pup growing in your belly, who knows? I could do worse.”
She flinched again.
“That’s starting to get a little insulting,” he remarked.
“If you wanted me, you had your chance to contest the Claim.”
“What does wanting you got to do with anything? Does he want you?” Wayman challenged, pointing back at the couch as if Gabe were sitting there, watching all this unfold. “Do you want him? The Hunt’s not about wanting, it’s about taking and starting over. And you were given to me. Sure, okay, one night, but you were given to me and that makes you mine!”
The hot mess of emotions that had been churning in Neoma’s heart all this time now knotted tight and turned cold. She stared at him, hardening with it. “I won’t let you take us back.” Her words carried both a whine and a growl. “I don’t care what he gave you or what he promised, you won’t take us back. Not to him!”
Wayman blinked, then scowled. “Lady, I may not be a prince, but I’m not a complete fucking asshole either! You forget, I was there at the bus when Deacon tried to take your pup! Did you somehow not see me there? Did you somehow not hear me when I told everyone it was a valid Claim?”
Neoma dropped her eyes again.
“Oh, for… Look. Just look at me.”
Pinching her chin between his fingertips, he applied ever-increasing pressure until her will to resist ebbed away and she allowed her face to be tipped up to his. She didn’t want to look, but she wasn’t strong enough not to. Especially not when he leaned into her, caressing down the slope of her neck and the curve of her shoulder. He breathed her scent in, slow and deep, then sighed it out again.
“I have been alone goddamn near all my life,” he said, staring boldly into her eyes. “And it fucking sucks moose balls. I been rained on. I been snowed on. I’ve eaten roadkill and rats and fucking Taco Bell. I slept on beaches and in ditches and in shit-houses by the side of the road because it was only place for miles with a roof on. I’m tired of it. I want out. I want you to get me out. Come with me, Neoma. I can’t be as bad as that nutless shitstain who ran you down. Little rough around the corners, maybe, but last I knew, you liked it just a little rough. We’ll get out of this town, out of this whole political toilet. Ride down south, yeah? If you don’t want the headache of starting up a pack from scratch, I hear there’s packs down in Arizona who’ll let a Scruffer prove his way. I personally fucking hate the desert, but I’ll get used to it. And you’ll get used to me. No one in Arizona will know you. For sure, no one will care if you’re Scullamy. They probably won’t even have heard of Scullamy. So come with me.”