by Terry Spear
She knew that wasn’t so. She’d dated several Arctic wolves in Alaska, and she hadn’t felt that way about any of them. She believed the attraction was due to a combination of reasons. First, he was sexy as hell. Then, he’d gone after pet traffickers, risking his own life, and he’d offered himself as a hostage in the jewelry heist. He’d even rescued her pups. He was also good with animals. The first thing he did after they crashed was free Winston from the plane. Being an animal lover was a big plus in her book. Sure, the Arctic wolves she’d known cared about other wolves. Not all the men she’d known had loved other kinds of animals. Two of them didn’t like that she was fostering dogs. Some of her foster dogs didn’t like them either. She’d hoped they’d learn to like one another, but it didn’t happen.
The part about Gavin not liking flying… Well, she could understand his reasoning on that. Especially when she probably had a hand in his phobia. But she didn’t think he’d be happy when he found out the truth.
If she hadn’t been as comfortable in her fur coat as she was right now, she would have shifted and questioned Gavin about what he was really doing here. She was warm with him like this, the wind howling, the rain slowing to a constant patter, and rumbles of thunder still grumbling away. She cuddled against him further.
She slept for a time, then at some point, she felt his arm wrapped around her. She realized her wolf’s head was resting on Gavin’s naked, muscled chest, and he had shifted. He was under the blanket with her.
As much as Amelia knew she shouldn’t do this without knowing him better, and not while she still felt so at odds over the heist situation, she shifted too, snuggling her whole body against his. She’d never imagined she’d be doing this with a hot Arctic lupus garou who had been her passenger—when she had only meant to drop him off in the bay and then get on her way. Winston was curled up on the other side of Gavin now, his head on Gavin’s legs.
She groaned to herself, remembering she’d missed the deadline to drop the dog off at the shelter. She felt bad that he didn’t have a home to go to now. Brushing her arm against Gavin’s warm abs, she reached out and petted Winston on the head, loving the big pup. Sometimes, she had a hard time remembering he was just a young’un, as big as he was. She wished she had a big enough place. If she did, she’d keep Winston in a heartbeat.
Her thoughts shifted to the plane and seeing it flounder until it sank.
She couldn’t help thinking of her dad and how angry he would be about the plane. Well, alarmed about her first, of course. And her passengers. Then he’d be furious regarding the cause of the wreck. As much as she hated to have to go through that, she was glad her father hadn’t had to. She was glad she was the one here with Gavin instead of her dad. Was she nuts or what?
Gavin caressed her hair, and she sighed against his chest. She breathed in his spicy, male scent and that of the stormy rain. The sound of his heartbeat against her ear and of the rain falling all around them soothed her. She shouldn’t be feeling anything for this wolf. It could only hurt her if he learned the truth about her.
He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her forehead and kissed her. She knew she shouldn’t do this. Every human part of her brain shouted: don’t feed into this intimate moment. The wolfish side craved to make the connection. To see if they were meant to have something deeper.
Amelia wrestled with her feelings. Logically, after what they’d been through, she felt closer to him than to guys she’d only dated a couple of times. Going through a life-threatening crisis with a guy, and seeing how he handled it, showed a lot about character. Certainly more than if she were just eating in a restaurant and having a conversation with a date where each of them was careful to say the right things and act the right way to help decide if they were the right ones for each other.
Emotionally, she was torn. No way should she kiss him back. But she wanted to see if his kiss matched her expectations. Logically, it made sense—as far as her wolf half was concerned. As far as her human half was concerned, it made no sense when she considered what he would think if he learned the truth about her.
So why in the hell did she tilt her head up, wanting to kiss him back? Her wolf feelings were running amok.
He angled his head down, and she moved higher on his body to reach his mouth, rubbing her scent over him as if claiming him, melting against him. She pressed her lips against his hot mouth. That quickly escalated to them parting their lips and deepening the kiss. Their tongues stroked, and their bodies writhed against each other’s, her whole body craving more, her nether region already aching with need.
Winston suddenly moved his head off Gavin’s legs and resettled to sleep some more, which immediately brought Amelia to her senses.
Breathless, she pulled her mouth from Gavin’s and sank against his body again. “My God, Gavin… You are a…wolf.” He was; there was no denying that. For being a much more newly turned wolf, he surprised her. He had all the right wolf moves where she was concerned.
He chuckled and kissed her hair, his hands stroking down her back, his touch gentle but heating her up all over again. “So…are…you.”
She’d never felt like this with another wolf. As if she’d known him for much longer than she had. She wondered if this was like what had happened between her parents—two wolves meeting, sensing they were the ones for each other. She knew that in the wild, wolves didn’t take months to decide such a thing. That was why the shifters often mated as soon as they found a wolf who felt totally right to them. It wasn’t something they took lightly because wolves, shifters included, mated for life. Boy, would she be screwed if she told him of her connection to the dirty cop.
Winston whimpered in his sleep. Gavin reached down and petted his head. “It’s okay, boy. We’re here to protect you.”
“You’re good with Winston. Have you had a dog before?”
“We had German shepherds growing up. That was when I was a kid. They were like part of the pack. I learned a lot about canine behavior from them. It helped me when I became a part-time wolf. What about you? Have any dogs?”
“Yeah, Alaskan malamutes when we were growing up. We went sledding, took them snowshoeing with us, and ran with them as wolves sometimes.”
It was still raining and dark out, not time to get up. And then, enjoying the feel of his hard body beneath hers and the sexy smell of him, Amelia listened to his heartbeat drumming against her ear and the rain falling in a steady stream outside their protected alcove and fell back to sleep.
Although it rained off and on all night, the rock overhang and tarp protected them, and they stayed dry. Thunder boomed right overhead and everyone jumped a little bit, their sleep disturbed. Amelia swore she saw the shadow of a man silhouetted against the tarp, illuminated in a second flash of lightning. She barely breathed, watching, waiting, not about to wake Gavin when it was most likely nothing. Another flash of lightning lit the sky, and there was no shadow. It had to have been her imagination. She’d watched way too many scary thrillers.
Yet she couldn’t sleep. Trying not to disturb Gavin, she left the sleeping bag and shifted into her wolf, then went out into the storm, breathing in the smells. Luckily, scents lasted longer in cool, damp forested areas. In fact, scents needed moisture to survive, so rain wouldn’t destroy them. Wind and rain could disburse them. The wind was blowing, and she did smell the scent of a man and bears. Four wild black bears. A sow and her cubs?
Might be. The sleuth of bears could be unrelated males. Though bears didn’t live in family packs like wolves, sometimes males of varying ages would live in close proximity. Not hunt or live together, but they could be in the same area with the older males serving at the top of the hierarchy. She still suspected the group was a mother and cubs.
Amelia relieved herself in the woods, listening for any sign of the bears or a man. Had they been there earlier? She wasn’t certain. Cold and wet and concerned about the lightning all around
them, she had been too busy trying to get Winston into the alcove and set up their shelter, then sleep. She hadn’t been trying to catalog scents. Maybe Gavin had noticed.
She returned to the alcove, and standing just outside it, she shook off the excess raindrops collected on her outer fur before she stepped inside and shifted.
Gavin, the fierce-looking Arctic wolf, nearly ran into her, looking like he was ready to find and protect her. She hadn’t expected that. She licked his face in greeting and thanks and entered the alcove. He turned to watch while she shifted and climbed into the sleeping bag. “I smelled bears and a man out there. The scents could be from several days ago. I have no way of knowing,” she said.
He shifted and joined her. “I thought I heard a bear, which is why I left earlier.”
“Then that’s what I saw. A bear silhouetted against the tarp when lightning lit up the whole sky. She probably smelled the food you have.”
“She?”
“She or he was standing up. Since I smelled four bears, I was thinking the one was a sow and the other three might be her cubs.”
“Okay. We’ll have to safeguard our food when we get up in the morning. All we’d need is to have bears steal it.”
“They’d better not even think about messing with our food,” Amelia said, sounding all growly.
Gavin pulled her into his arms. “I’ll protect you, Winston, and the food.”
But she had every intention of making such a racket if the bears came back. They would need protection from her, not the other way around.
Chapter 5
A glimmer of light finally woke Amelia early the next morning, and she ran her hand over Gavin’s chest, loving that she’d had his warm body to sleep against but knowing she shouldn’t. “Are you awake?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He rubbed her arm with a light caress, then took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling. “It’s times like these I’m glad I’m a lupus garou. Especially when I was lucky enough to share my sleeping bag with you.” Then he frowned. “How old are you, really?”
She snorted. Of all the things to ask her! “You know a man is never supposed to ask a woman her age.” But she knew what he was getting at. She was a royal, her wolf lineage not diluted by a lot of strictly human genes for generations. When she turned twenty, she began aging one year for every five, so she wasn’t really old, like some who had aged even more slowly before the great Time Collapse, as wolves were now calling it. She didn’t have the life experiences of wolves who might be decades older in human years, having lived through all kinds of wars and technological changes in the time before the change. But they were much younger in every physical aspect.
“I’m twenty-eight based on a human’s actual life span, but because of the extended wolf genetics, I’m physically twenty-one. And you?” she said.
“I was twenty-five when I first met you in Alaska, then I was turned the next year. That means I’m twenty-six in wolf-aged years, thirty-two in real human years.”
“Okay, so we’re four years apart in human years, and—”
“A year apart in wolf years. What do you think about that?” Gavin twisted a curl of her hair between his fingers.
“I’m glad I’m not robbing the cradle. Are you glad you’re not hooking up with an ancient wolf?” Not that she was really “hooking up” with him.
He laughed. “It’s one of those things I forget about, usually because we aren’t around wolves that have lived for so many years. The ones we’ve met don’t talk about their historical pasts, but even if they did, it would sound like they were just talking about historical facts, not about their own pasts. I was just curious.”
“I don’t blame you. If you hadn’t told me you’d been turned a few years ago, I would have wondered the same thing about you. The historical past is still just the historical past to me.”
Winston lifted his head as if he thought maybe it was time to get up, but when he saw that Gavin and Amelia weren’t moving, he laid his head down and fell back to sleep.
“If it wasn’t still raining, I’d start a fire.” Gavin let out his breath. “I’ve been thinking about the situation with the plane. If it was sabotaged to the extent that the electrical system was shorted out and the emergency battery didn’t work, then the ELT was probably disabled. When will anyone miss you?”
“Not for another day, unless the weather continues to be bad. And then no one would miss me for a couple of days. We weren’t flying anywhere today because of the weather, which means I’d just chill out at home, catching up on the next show in my conspiracy theory series. If the weather continues to be bad tomorrow, the same thing. What about you?”
“No one will expect me back until I’m ready to return in about nine days or so. Unless I had some news to share.”
“Well, they’ll miss me before that. Maybe everyone will worry about us because the weather turned so…” She paused. “God, I hope my dad and brother are all right. What if someone actually did sabotage my dad’s plane, and the bastard did the same to all our planes? If not, I hope my brother and dad landed safely before the storm caused problems for them.”
Gavin ran his hand over her shoulder. “We need to get you out of here.”
“You’re staying?”
“Yeah.”
“I think we’re going to need a private investigator to look into this matter, by the way.” Every time she woke last night, she’d been thinking about it. It would take months for aviation accident investigators to sort this out. They needed results faster. “I didn’t thank you for everything you did. I don’t believe I would have gotten Winston out on my own or into the raft by myself. Certainly, I couldn’t have retrieved everything else out of the plane like you did. If we hadn’t had the raft, we probably wouldn’t have made it. You must have been half-frozen swimming in the water, as cold as it was with the wind chill and rain.”
“Shifting into the wolf for a while made all the difference.”
Amelia agreed. “Is work slow, and that’s why you’ve taken a vacation?” She figured it was time to learn the truth about why he was here.
“I’m…not on vacation. The truth is, I’m on a case.”
“What if the plane going down had something to do with what you’re investigating?” She’d been thinking it had something to do with her or her family’s company. But what if Gavin was investigating someone and that was the reason for the sabotage? They had to consider all plausible or even seemingly unlikely avenues.
Gavin raised his brows at her, appearing as though he didn’t think he could have had anything to do with the disaster. “Normally, I never discuss a case I’m on with anyone other than my partners. It’s a matter of ethics. We don’t share what we’re doing with anyone, or clients won’t feel their cases are being handled confidentially. Since we’re in a bit of a quandary over this situation with your plane, in the unlikely event my case has anything to do with what happened to it, if you can keep this a secret—”
“I can. What if it had everything to do with it? What exactly are you working on? It’s about the other party my brother and dad brought out here yesterday, isn’t it? The ones you were interested in, though you had said you were just concerned there’d be too many people around.” She climbed out of the sleeping bag and began pulling on the sweatpants.
Gavin was still lying in the sleeping bag, his arms behind his head, looking up at her as she yanked the sweatshirt over her head.
“Yeah, it’s about them. Or actually a man who’s with the group.”
“Man?” Amelia had immediately assumed it was about the woman he’d helped to arrest before. She sat on the edge of the sleeping bag and pulled on her socks. “Not Mindy Michaels?”
“Mindy Michaels? I told you I didn’t know she was out here.”
“Let me guess. The perp you’re after is cheating, or supposedly cheating, on his wife.
”
“That’s the gist of it. You didn’t hear it from me. It’s possible he isn’t. I just have to learn whether he is or isn’t.” Gavin climbed out of the sleeping bag and fished out a pair of fresh boxer briefs.
Amelia let out her breath. “Okay, so your case is kind of blown, isn’t it? You’re a whole day late in following them. You’ve lost your paddle, though if I can get picked up, you’re welcome to mine. I imagine you would need a camera to take pictures to have proof of his infidelity. Just your word wouldn’t be good enough.”
“I have a waterproof camera in a waterproof bag, so I’m good there.”
“You were going to surreptitiously take pictures of him?”
“I planned to keep my distance, stay out of sight, and learn what I could. And yes, take compromising pictures, if there are any. It’s amazing what people will do when they’re away from home and think a spouse can’t witness their transgressions.” Gavin pulled on a pair of socks, then a shirt and jeans, hiding his spectacular body.
“But it’s a company excursion, right? Wouldn’t it be difficult for him to be inconspicuous about seeing a woman in front of the others?”
“I would think so. Supposedly, the guy I’m placing under surveillance could be having an affair with one of the sales associates. Sounds to me like the perfect way to have an extramarital affair. If I weren’t a wolf, of course. Maybe he doesn’t feel any need to hide an affair in front of his coworkers. One of the executives is apparently openly having an affair with one of the sales associates, so maybe on these trips, the guy I plan to investigate can do the same. Maybe everyone already knows about the affair, so he does what he wants.”
“That could be. Which guy and which woman?”
Gavin shook his head. “I wasn’t supposed to say this much.”
She had to admire him for that. “Well, call me your PI assistant, then.”
He gave her a dark smile.
But she was serious. If someone had tampered with her dad’s plane and she’d wrecked it because of that, she had every right to help investigate why and who was involved. “When they were getting ready to leave, a man of about forty to forty-five seemed ultra-friendly with a young woman in her midtwenties, and he wasn’t her father. The dark-haired guy was Conrad Dylan, and she was a blond, Cheryl, not sure of her last name. A man named Theodore was joking with them. I didn’t catch his last name either. The woman who seemed to be giving all the orders was Lee Struthers, a blond of about thirty. My brother took them up.”