PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  Luke was silent. She could see no evidence of surprise or doubt on his face, even when his eyes searched beyond her to the forest. In fact—Joey shook her head mentally—she could almost swear that he was not surprised at all. That he had heard something he expected to hear.

  Amazed at her own surmise, Joey found herself voicing it before she could stop herself. "That wolf—you know that wolf, don't you?" She was rewarded by his sudden full attention, his eyes grew suddenly paler as the pupils contracted in shock. That question, at least, he had not expected, and Joey felt a sudden flare of smug satisfaction. "Does that wolf belong to you?"

  Her satisfaction and sense of having unbalanced him at last was short-lived. Suddenly he laughed—a deep chuckle that rocked Joey back in genuine astonishment. She had heard him make a similar sound before—brief, subdued, edged with cynicism—but this was a fullblown laugh. The laugh seemed as alien to him as this wilderness was to her. It briefly transformed his face from grim severity to something approaching warmth. And then it died almost as quickly as it had come, leaving Joey's ears ringing with it, and her heart pounding in confusion.

  He looked down at her again, some of the humor still lingering in his eyes. "No one ever 'owns' a wolf," he said softly. "But you might say that particular wolf and I are on very good terms."

  Joey took this in, with all its implications, while Luke's gaze slid back to the trees behind her. The last of the humor vanished. "I can see I'll have to do something about those men from town. They've come here once too often, and it's about time they learned to stay off private property." His eyes came to rest on her again with a significance she suspected she was missing.

  "I think they may have learned their lesson, thanks to your 'friend,' " Joey said. She could not quite control the shivering that had come over her in earnest, some of its was still the aftereffects of her ordeal, but the air was not getting warmer, and neither was she. Luke's formidable shadow cut off much of the fading sunlight, and she knew she had little time left to get back. The thought of making the long hike to town, with the possibility of running into those men again, was becoming less appealing by the moment.

  As if he had read her thoughts, Luke's gaze raked over her. She tried to stop her shivering but might as well have asked the wild geese to forgo their annual migration, she could see him take in her condition for the first time. She managed to draw some humor out of the fact that, like most men, he was so completely self-absorbed.

  But he reacted. His eyes narrowed again with an entirely different emotion "Perhaps. But I'll have to make certain of it in any case." She could feel him step forward even when she kept her gaze turned carefully away from his all-too-intrusive presence. "You've been out here too long," he muttered gruffly. "This is not the time of year to be sitting around in damp clothes."

  Joey almost laughed in disbelief. "You re telling me that?" She couldn't help herself, she drank him in again from head to toe, and this time, for the briefest moment, the faintest color rose in his tanned face. But it was nothing to the blush that followed in her own when she realized how thoroughly she had once again acknowledged his unclad state. And that awareness of him had never entirely left her, not since he had appeared like a primitive wilderness deity on the beach.

  She made haste to cover her discomfiture. "I would like very much to get back home and put on clean, completely dry clothes," she assured him in a deliberately emotionless voice. "But I have to admit that I'm wondering if those men might still be out there. If your wolf friend didn't chase them all the way back to town, of course."

  She kept her chin high to keep from drowning in chagrin at having to admit—to him—that she was afraid. That she didn't want to go back to town alone.

  It galled her incredibly to acknowledge such a weakness, to give him any power over her beyond what he already had.

  But he was staring beyond her again. His broad chest rose and fell with deep breaths that Joey might almost have called agitated, had his face not been so rigidly calm.

  "I should go after them," he muttered, more to himself than to her, "and make sure they're hiding in their little holes."

  With a deliberate effort he looked down at her, his expression softening in a way that made her bite her lip. "But not now. You can't stay out here." He put his hands on his hips and considered her. "And you can't go back to town. It's too far, and it's too late. And... " His gaze raked over her assessingly. "You look like a drowned wood rat."

  Joey's mouth fell open in outrage before she could stop it. A thousand cutting remarks flew to the up of her tongue and died there. She could beg him to take her back, of course, she could further put herself in his power and still have no way of securing his help. She could argue with him here, remind him he'd agreed to help her, and then try returning to town on her own in the dark. Or she could give up all hope of getting his cooperation and go home now, and forget all her hopes and plans.

  None of these options seemed the least bit appealing. So she held her tongue until he said what she'd expected him to say. "You'll have to come back with me. My cabin is some distance away, but it's a lot closer than town."

  Having come to this decision, it was clear to Joey he did not expect her to object. She bristled. She fumed. But she also realized that he made perfect sense, and his cabin had been her destination all along. That much hadn't changed. She still needed his help, and she still was bent on getting it, one way or another. That they weren't the circumstances she preferred had little to do with it.

  "All right," she admitted at last. "I guess I don't have much choice." She pursed her lips and met his eyes with deliberate coolness. She would stay in control. "I should thank you for helping me out. And for your 'friend's' help, too." She thought back to the wolf and the way it had stared at her the way Luke was now.

  "Later I'm going to ask you about that wolf." She made the statement a challenge, to let him know that she didn't give in easily—to anything. He might have her at a disadvantage, but she was still someone to be reckoned with.

  She half-expected him to offer his arm in support, but he kept his distance. In fact, he seemed finally aware that she wore clothing while he had none at all.

  "Wait here," he commanded, and before she could answer, he had bounded off into the trees.

  She caught a flash of tanned skin among the deep green of the wood and then no more, pulling on her jacket, she squinted the way he had gone. She grew rapidly irritated by his absence as the sun sank lower in the sky and the wind grew ever more penetrating. But then, all at once, he was back .He was still bare from the waist up, but snug jeans now covered everything below.

  With an uneasy start, Joey realized that the covering did not seem to make much difference. The awareness of him she had been fighting all along was not the least reduced by the addition of clothing. And he still showed not the slightest sign of being uncomfortable himself. Even his feet were bare on the damp gravel of the beach.

  Joey thought she would have liked to be very disgruntled if she had been less cold and tired, she would have liked the option of turning and leaving now, even if she hadn't planned on doing so. But she shrugged it off philosophically. She was a practical woman, a realist. She'd always been and always would be, and even Luke Gévaudan didn't have the power to change that.

  He started off, looking back at her inquiringly when she hesitated. With a last final glance around the place that had seemed so beautiful and peaceful, she zipped up her jacket and followed. She had a feeling it was going to be a long, uncomfortable walk. And the discomfort was not a matter of mere cold and weariness. She wished with quiet desperation that it were that simple.

  Luke was painfully, irrevocably aware of her. Every one of his senses had been alive to Joey from the instant he had seen her on the beach and through everything that had followed. The very best of his intentions were being defeated one by one

  Even as he heard her grimly struggling to keep up without revealing any hint of weakness, his own heart was pou
nding with the strain of being so near to her. She seemed to dominate sight and sound and sense of smell, so that he hardly knew where he put his feet or consciously remembered to take the right path. Somehow his feet found their own way without any help from his mind. What there was of his rational mind was fully fixed on her.

  Did she knew how she affected him? She must have seen at least some of it, though he had been careful not to let it show on his face, even when his body betrayed him. She had not shown any shock or horror at his nudity. For him it was nothing, for someone brought up as she had been, it surely must have been strange at the very least. But she had kept her composure—and made him lose his.

  A breath of her scent came to him teasingly as they walked. Her clothes had clung to her skin, the shirt had been pulled open during her struggle with the brutes from town, and he was well aware that she wore no additional protective layers underneath. The cold sculpted points where her breasts met fabric, what the jacket covered he had no trouble imagining.

  Pale, damp hair had been wrung out and twisted into her usual braid, and it was true that she had indeed looked rather like a drowned wood rat—but only because her peculiar vulnerability had forced him to find a defense of words. Even bedraggled and smudged with dirt, she was desirable. He had never expected her to look so lost, so in need of help. It had been easier to regard it all as an exercise when she had seemed so certain of her own invulnerability. Or when she was as determined to use him as he had been to seduce her.

  But now she was simply alone and, he knew, frightened, however well she attempted to conceal it from him. Once he would have been gratified by that familiar reaction. Now he cursed it for making things worse than they had been.

  Everything had changed with that kiss—that terrifying, exhilarating kiss so unlike any other he'd experienced. He'd followed his resolve not to go back into town, not to see her again, he hadn't counted on her coming after him.

  She half stumbled on a fallen log, and he reached out automatically to steady her. The contact brought both of them to a sudden, startled halt. He dropped his hand instantly. He had felt the heat of her skin through the sleeve of her jacket, she stared at him now with brown eyes wide. Whatever had happened before—she still felt it, too. He knew why she had come after him, but he also knew her motives were not as clear-cut as she wanted to believe.

  He wished he could have gained some satisfaction out of it.

  Though he told himself he was taking her back to his cabin for her own good, his motives were no clearer than hers. Never had he been forced to face this kind of confusion with any of the other women.

  They walked in silence. The shadows grew longer and the light receded under the canopy of trees as they passed in and out of the forest, skirting the lake along the deer track that the path from town had become. Occasionally he led her on a shortcut through unmarked land, he wondered if she had any conception of how few human feet had crossed there. Her face was set in stubborn determination, to prove, he thought, that she could keep up and didn't need him. That she wasn't afraid. She wrapped her arms about herself and refused his help, even when she might have used his steadying grip.

  He had been concentrating on ignoring her to the best of his ability, forgetting the feel of her supple body in his arms, the uninhibited passion of her kiss and what it had done to him. But when she lost her footing at the edge of a creek and he was there to catch her, he knew it wasn't going to work.

  She was too tired to fight him. Her body was limp in his arms for a long moment as her breath sobbed and her eyes screwed shut in unutterable weariness. He could feel it as if it were his own. The pale oval of her face was lovely even haggard with exhaustion, the lips parted with her breathing were just as enticing. The softness of her breasts lay against his arm while his own breath stirred her hair. When she opened her eyes at last, he was lost in them.

  Taking a deliberate hold on himself, he eased her to her feet. She leaned against him just long enough to make certain of his downfall and then pushed away. She did not meet his eyes again. But the damage had been done.

  He had determined to stay away from her, for his sake and for hers. She had, in a few short hours, managed to undo days of self-control. Nothing had changed, he could not forget what had sparked between them, or what he had realized about her. But she had come to him, and his struggle was over.

  He wanted her. He still wanted her more than he could remember ever wanting a woman, even in his time of strongest need. If she had been indifferent to him, perhaps he could have resisted—but he sensed her own desire, the desire she tried to hide even from herself. It no longer mattered that she wanted to use him for her own ends. She would give herself to him willingly, and he wanted what she had to give. So be it.

  They stopped within sight of the cabin, up the slope from the lake amid abundant forest. The last rays of the sun struck sparks from the lake and caught the cabin in a welcome glow. Joey stopped and leaned over, hands on knees, staring at it with an expression Luke knew to be relief. He wished that he could feel that same relief now that he'd reached his decision.

  But there was no comfort in it. He would ignore everything his senses, his mind, and his instinct told him so he could have her in his bed. So he could feel her body against his. Because he wanted her. And the consequences be damned.

  Even as his body stirred in anticipation, he wondered if both of them would survive those consequences.

  Joey didn't know what to expect as they walked into the cabin, from a distance it had seemed plain and practical, well-constructed of logs, small and unexceptional. As Luke held the door open for her, the first thing she noticed was the chill. She had expected a flood of comforting warmth after the cool of outside, but it was almost as cold within as without. She wrapped her arms tightly about herself and shivered.

  Luke shut the door behind them, led her through the entryway and vanished through another doorway, leaving Joey to examine her surroundings. As exhausted as she felt, she was not about to relax until she had a very good grasp of where she was—and what she was getting into.

  The room she stood in was probably the largest in the cabin, a central living area that seemed stark but somehow comfortable. Against one wall lay a fireplace, empty of wood or ashes. Lining the others were shelves alternating with impressive displays of antlers and pelts. A thick woven rug covered most of the wood-paneled floor, and there were a few pieces of furniture: a well-worn sofa, an elegantly carved rocking chair, a few small tables covered with various objects. At first glance it seemed very plain, but as her eyes traced around the room a second time, she began to absorb the details.

  Before she had progressed very far in her study, Luke reappeared, a thick blanket slung over his arm. He had put on a shirt much like those he always wore, a brown-and-green plaid, his feet were still bare, noiseless on the carpet.

  "Use this," he said, pushing the blanket unceremoniously into her arms. It was so heavy she almost dropped it. "I'll find some spare clothes for you." He hardly looked at her as he turned to go, his eyes focused inward and his posture reserved.

  Joey shook out the blanket and draped it around her shoulders "Do you always keep it so toasty warm in here?" she called after him. There was no reply. She tugged the thick wool closed so that it overlapped in generous folds and began a slow circuit of the room, trailing excess blanket behind like a tram.

  She had not known what to expect, and she found herself wondering again just how much—or how little—she truly knew of Luke Gévaudan. The cabin did not luxuriate in creature comforts, but there was a rich sensuality, a deep love of nature, in the few articles he had chosen to display. A roughly made, hand-painted table against the left wall exhibited a number of objects, chief among them several beautifully carved animals whittled from wood. There were two wolves, an adult and cub, each was so lifelike, even the fur had been rendered in finest detail. A moose stood off to the side, head raised under a rack of antlers that reminded Joey of the battle she and Luke
had witnessed. Half-afraid to touch them, Joey ran one tentative finger over the strong back of the moose. The feel of carved wood was delicious even to her weary senses.

  Beside the carvings was a collection of rocks of varied shapes and sizes and a small display case containing a multifaceted crystal. Joey gazed at it for a moment and moved on to one of the rows of shelves alongside the table. She had just begun to take in the sheer number of books they contained when Luke reappeared.

  "Clean clothes," he announced as she paused to face him. Once again his arms were filled with fabric—a plain flannel shirt, jeans, woolen socks. He frowned at her as if seeing her for the first time since their arrival, his eyes swept over her critically. "Put these on. They should fit."

  He paused again, and Joey wondered if he expected her to strip in front of him. She tightened her grip on the blanket. His gaze swept beyond her to the table with the carvings, dark brows drew together briefly. Then he looked back at her, offering the clothing with an impatient gesture. "Go ahead. I'm not going to bite you. Are you hungry?"

  The abrupt change in topic startled Joey as she took the folded clothing from Luke while trying to maintain a precarious hold on the blanket. She failed, and it slipped from her shoulders to he in a puddle about her feet. Luke crouched to pick it up, Joey found herself following his motion in blank fascination. Even now she was completely aware of the way he moved, the glitter of his strange eyes, even the corded strength of his bare feet.

  He rose and stood with the blanket for a long moment of awkward silence. They looked at each other, Joey felt her pulse rising and wondered if he could hear the pounding of her heart. But he turned at last to lay the blanket on the sofa. "Are you hungry?" he repeated over his shoulder. All his attention seemed focused now on some fascinating flaw in the weave of the blanket, he did not turn again to receive her reply.