by Maddy Barone
He paused in turning to the barn. “Not superstition. It’s a Lakota thing.”
First Mike, now Snake. Mel followed him to the fire ring just inside the barn where Stone was unpacking the supper. She smothered a chuckle. Her fierce werewolf husband, who had no trouble tearing rapists apart, was afraid of ghosts.
* * * *
Snake stood at the half open barn door, listening to the rain lash the earth. After Mel put away the remains of supper, she went out to attend to what she called girl business. The barn was big enough for her to do her business in a corner, but he supposed she was worried about modesty. The horses, bunched in the front corner of the barn, would have been a perfectly good privacy screen. Stone stood beside him, staring out at the silvery curtains coming down, the scent of his melancholy a light tinge in the cooling air.
“What has your tail in a knot?” Snake asked.
Stone shrugged. “Just missing my mate,” he said in a voice so low even Snake’s wolf hearing almost didn’t catch it.
Mike hunched over the fire ring near the door. “I’ll take the first watch,” he offered.
Snake nodded. “I’ll cover second watch. Stone, you have third.”
“I better get some sleep now, then.”
As Stone slipped off to the near corner of the barn, Mike put on his slicker. “I better find my sister. It takes women a god-awful amount of time to pee, and she’s gonna drown if she doesn’t get back here soon.”
Snake made a bed for Mel and himself near the rusted monster in the far corner of the barn. It was some sort of farm machinery from the Times Before, but Snake had no idea how it was used and didn’t care. What he cared about was the extra shadow it cast, where Mel would be hidden from the sight of any strangers who stumbled upon them. He wasn’t expecting any strangers in this place, but only a fool didn’t take every precaution when it came to his mate’s safety. He wasn’t a fool.
His eyes had no trouble seeing clearly in the dark, but Mel walked cautiously on her way to the corner, hands reaching in front of her. “Snake?” she said in quiet inquiry.
“Here.” Snake sprang up from the blanket he was smoothing to take her arms and guide her to their bed. Her flesh was chilled. Her shirt was soaked through, the tip of her braid below her hat was dripping. “Right over here. You’re cold! We have to get your wet clothes off you.”
“Yeah, I can’t get warm. The fire is covered, and we’re out of dry wood anyway,” she said through chattering teeth.
He silently rejoiced when he found no resistance in her to his hands. She stood on one foot and reached to pull off a boot. When he brushed her hands aside to do it for her, she used one hand to balance against him and let him tug her boots off. Just doing little things like this for her was a victory for him. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons on her shirt. After a few agonizing moments, the sodden cotton dropped to the floor. Followed by the long strip of cloth she used to bind her breasts.
“Damn it,” Mel grunted. She bent down to find it, showing Snake the long line of her bare spine.
Heat that had nothing to do with the coals of the distant fire ignited in him. Her throat and arms were brown from the sun, but her back was pale. When she straightened, he saw her breasts and belly were pale too, except for the crinkled tips of her breasts, which were pink. Beautifully pink. He was grateful to the darkness for hiding his hardening cock. He doubted Mel would appreciate his body’s reaction to her, and now was not the right time for their wedding night.
“You’re looking at me!” she accused.
“Uh-huh,” he admitted. “Give me your shirt.” He took it and draped it over the machine to dry. “Okay, here’s a blanket for you to wrap up in. Can you take off your jeans?”
“Of course I can take off my jeans. I’ve been doing it since I was three.” The haughtiness in her voice was spoiled by convulsive shivers.
“Well, hurry up. I want to get you heated up.” He winced as soon as he said it, hearing the unintended innuendo too late. She must have missed it though. “You and me both.”
She handed him her gun belt first and then her jeans. Finally, he wrapped her completely in the blankets from both their bedrolls. Even through the thick blanket he could see her nipples like round pebbles pressing against the wool. He had to set his back teeth tightly together to control his urge to run his fingers over those peaks. He wanted to feel the weight of her breast in his palm, to taste those nipples.
He swallowed hard and took her braid in his fist to squeeze water out. When she was as dry as he could make her, he put his hand on her arm to guide her down onto the saddle blankets he had spread for a mattress. “Lie down,” he urged. “It smells of horse, but it’s softer than the floor.”
She lay on her side, knees pulled up to her chest. “I don’t care what it smells like. This is so stupid! I can’t get warm. There isn’t another blanket, is there?”
The almost inaudible chattering of her teeth agitated his wolf. “No,” he said regretfully. He lay down beside her and curled his body around her. “If I hold you, it might help.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
It gave him a lot of satisfaction to have her welcome his arms around her. When she squirmed close, he could feel how chilled her skin was and how tiny tremors shuddered through her. He pulled her harder against him and arranged the blankets to give her the best coverage.
“Don’t you have a blanket?” she asked. “Or is this one yours? Don’t you need it?”
“No. I’m a wolf warrior. I don’t need it.”
She struggled to unwind a blanket. “I’m not a blanket hog.”
He stopped her with gentle hands. “I don’t need it. Here, feel me. See?”
Her icy fingers clutched his bare shoulder. “You are warm, even though you’re practically naked!”
He wasn’t glad she was cold. No, of course not, but he loved being able to hold her. Mel hadn’t rejected him outright, but she made it plain she didn’t want to share her body with him. Letting him hold her to give her his warmth was allowed, and he’d take what he could get. Gradually the tremors quieted, leaving her pressed against him, her body soft with relaxation.
“Snake?” Her voice was a whisper in his ear, sending a shiver of barely controlled lust down his belly to his balls. “What’s it like to be a wolf?”
He forced his teeth to unclench, willed his body to cool. “I’m not a wolf. I have a wolf,” he clarified.
He was so attuned to her he felt her eyebrow twitch against him. “Okay, then when you’re a wolf…Or when the wolf is out, do you know what’s happening? Can you see? Or is it like you’re sleeping?”
One of his braids was trapped beneath her arm. He gently pulled it free. “I don’t sleep. I can see what the wolf sees, and I can send him back whenever I want.” He faltered, remembering the first time he saw her in the hotel room in Ellsworth, when his wolf reacted so violently to the threat to his mate Snake lost control. Was she thinking about that too? He swallowed. His cousin Paint found a mate, but she utterly rejected him because he wasn’t human. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m curious. I’ve never known anyone like you. So you aren’t a wolf? When the wolf is out, that’s not you?”
His mate wanted to know him. The knowledge made him smile in the dark. “No, he is a spirit who lives inside me until I let him out. When he’s out, I live inside him. He’s not me, and I’m not him. Lots of boys of the Clan are born with wolf spirits inside them, and when they are older, the wolf makes the change. It takes time for us to learn to control the wolf.”
He remembered his first change. Terror of never being human again had gripped him. But his wolf wasn’t as strong or defiant as some. Neither of them were Alpha. He saw how his Alpha cousins had to fight to dominate their wolves. When both the wolf and the man demanded supremacy, it was a battle to determine which would be in control. No, his wolf was usually happy enough to retreat when Snake told him to. The only time he forced Snake into the subordinate position was
when he saw his mate being abused. And really, Snake had been so furious at any woman being manhandled, much less the woman his wolf chose for him, he did nothing to keep the wolf back. His memory of it was murky, yet some things were vivid in his mind, and one of the things he remembered was the sour scent of his mate’s fear.
“Mel, are you remembering the hotel room?”
She lifted her head from his shoulder, eyes staring blindly in the dark in the general direction of his face. “Sometimes I think about it. But I’m not afraid of you or the wolf, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not really. He didn’t hurt me. He protected me.”
His breath came out in a controlled sigh. “He’ll always protect you.”
Her hand gave his forearm, resting lightly over her waist, a squeeze. “I’m glad.” She yawned hugely. “Sorry. I guess I’m wiped out.”
“Sleep, Mel. I’ll stay with you until it’s time for my guard shift, and then I’ll come back.”
“Good night,” she murmured, sleep already slurring her voice, and dropped off with her head on his shoulder, his arms holding her securely.
* * * *
Mel woke hours later from a sound sleep to find a warm furry body pinning her under the blanket. Her heart leaped into her throat and pounded there for a minute before she realized it must be Snake. She lifted a bleary head to try to see him better. It was too dark to see anything but the unearthly shimmer of wolf eyes, but she knew it was Snake.
“Oh, Snake, you scared me for a minute.”
The wolf swiped a wet warm tongue over her cheek.
“Eeww,” she groaned, wiping the slobber away. But she laid her head down and went back to sleep, leaning into the comfortable warm bulk of a wolf.
She woke next when dawn was only a promise in the east, barely seen through the open barn door. Her mouth opened in a wide yawn as she pressed closer to the wolf’s warmth. The feel of smooth warm skin instead of rough fur against her cheek shot her eyes wide open.
“Snake?”
“Mmm,” he hummed, burrowing his nose into her throat.
She wrestled a hand from under the blanket to touch his hair. His braids were thicker and longer than her stubby one. She ran her hand down the length of his braid until her fingers smoothed over his bare spine. “Are you wearing clothes?” she demanded with a gulp.
“Nuh-uh,” he murmured. “Just made the change a couple of minutes ago. Haven’t had time to dress yet.” His mouth touched her throat, glided up to the corner of her jaw, over her cheek to her lips, where he teased her with small, light kisses.
Mel froze, breath trapped in her throat for a long icy moment before she realized how nice it felt. His weight felt good too when he moved his body over hers. But she was horribly aware she was naked under the blankets except for her panties, and she could feel his erection pressing against the top of her thigh. “We’re in the open,” she protested in a whisper. “People can see us.”
“Nobody can see us. Mike’s snoring by the barn door and Stone is running a perimeter patrol. It’s just us, Mel.”
“I don’t want to have sex here,” she hissed.
“We won’t.”
“But, you’re…I mean, you…” She trailed off, angry at herself for being so prudish. “You’re hard,” she finished.
“Yeah. Just ignore that. It happens when I’m this close to you, but we don’t have to do anything about it.”
They didn’t? “Won’t that hurt you?”
She felt his shrug. “I’ll survive. This isn’t the right time or place. We’re in the open, remember?”
“Right.” She suppressed a shudder of remembered horror. “I don’t ever want an audience.”
At that he lifted his head. In the dark she couldn’t see him clearly, but she sensed him staring down at her.
“Me, neither.”
Relief flowed like warm honey to her belly. She wrapped her hands around his braids and tugged him down to her mouth. “Kiss me, Snake.”
His lips were amazingly soft for a moment and then hard and demanding on hers. They kissed for what seemed like an hour before Snake buried his face against her neck.
“Oh,” he groaned. “I’ve wanted to do that forever.”
“We haven’t known each other that long.”
“I wanted to do that before I ever saw you. And since I’ve met you, I’ve wanted to do it twice as much.”
His chin had no stubble. She brushed exploring fingers over it. “Then keep doing it.”
He went back to giving her long, hot kisses that made her breath wobble. His tongue glided over hers with such greedy demand she felt deliciously overwhelmed. No, not overwhelmed. Challenged. She kissed him back with just as much heated enthusiasm. His shoulders were broad and heavy with muscle. She learned each plane and curve of his back with desperate hands. She loved the feel of him, all of him, from his hot tongue dancing with hers, to his strong arms crushing her against him, to the lithe muscles that played in his back under her hands. His weight pressed against her front, sending desire to pool like warmed syrup between her legs. She struggled with the blanket to open her thighs so she could feel his weight press where she most wanted it.
“Oh, Snake,” she breathed. “Oh, God, you feel good.”
“This is paradise,” he said against her throat. He settled into the cradle of her parted thighs. “Complete paradise.”
She couldn’t keep back a thin whimper, or keep from lifting her hips to press against him. Only the blanket and her panties separated them, and right now they were too much.
“Let me see your breasts,” he begged.
There was a faint glow of light at the barn door, but it didn’t reach this corner. “It’s too dark.”
He tugged gently at the edge of the blanket over her chest. “Let me see.”
Morning air kissed her breasts before his hands covered them, petting and lightly squeezing.
“You’re so beautiful, Mel.” Snake’s voice sounded awed. “Do you like this?”
He sucked the tip of one breast into his mouth while his hand played with the other. Mel couldn’t remember ever feeling quite like this. At first, Danny’s lovemaking was hesitant, almost uncertain, and even experience didn’t changed that. Had he not been so badly injured only weeks after their wedding, he might have become a confident lover. Rob was the opposite, too demanding to even consider her feelings. Snake was confident, but considerate too.
“I love that,” she moaned. “I really, really love that.”
“Then, you’ll like this too,” he began to say, his lips against her nipple, but he jerked his head up. “Mike’s coming.”
“Damn!” She jerked the blanket back over her chest. “Where are my clothes?”
He handed them to her. In the dark she fumbled to get dressed under the blankets. Her boots were still clammy from the rain last night. “Are you dressed?” she hissed at Snake.
“Yep, but the breechcloth doesn’t sit quite right.”
His tone was either mournful or rueful, or maybe a mix of them, and it jerked a smothered giggle from Mel. “Oh, dear.”
“Here,” he said. “Take Alfie.”
“What? Who?”
“Alfie. Your pistol.”
“Oh.” She felt new heat rise to join the flush of passion in her cheeks, and her fingers twitched in discomfort. “Ah, Snake, you know, um, I don’t really call my gun Alfie. I just made that up.”
He clicked his tongue. “Lying to your devoted and loving husband? You shameless girl.”
That pulled another surprised chortle out of her.
“Here,” he said again. “Take Alfie. From now on, he is Alfie. I would help you buckle him on, but I’m still having a little trouble with the fit of my breechcloth, and I don’t want to poke you.”
“Good lord!” Mel choked trying to keep her laugh back. Then, to tease him, she lowered her voice to a sultry whisper. “Maybe I’m looking forward to you poking me.”
His swallow was audible. “You’re killing m
e, Mel. I’m going to have to let the wolf out to keep from embarrassing myself.”
The barn door was shoved wide with a metallic squeal and light extended to their corner of the barn. She sent a quick glance down his body and saw the outline of a large erection in his breechcloth. Oh, boy. He dipped his head for a brief, and disappointingly chaste, kiss.
“Tell Mike to head out right away. I’ll run ahead of you until I have things under control. Will you put my clothes in your saddlebag?”
She nodded mutely, not giving in to modesty but watching him with forced casualness when he pulled moccasins and breechcloth off. The sight of his erection, thick and dark, flooded her with renewed lust. She let out a long breath when the air around him shimmered with heat, and the outline of a man melted into a wolf. The wolf whined at her before turning and trotting across the barn and out the door.
“Oh, boy, Mel,” she muttered to herself, and began collecting the blankets to pack up for the day’s ride.
Mike stood by the door, mouth wide in a yawn, his hair standing up on one side, just like it had when they were kids. The idiot had gone to bed with his hair wet, and it had dried like that. A thought struck her, and she lifted her hand to her own hair, feeling the matted mess with dismay. Mike noticed and smirked at her.
“Comb your hair,” he said. “You look like your head’s been pecked to death by rabid chickens.”
“You look like you spent all night ironing your hair so it would stand straight up,” she retorted.
They grinned at each other with high good humor. Today they would leave the money, get Mama’s note, and begin the process of rescuing her.
Chapter 5
“That’s a gas station?” Mel asked, disappointed. “I thought it would have been bigger.”
She was between Mike and Snake, all of them lying on their bellies on a low rise above a small decrepit building. It sat over a mile away at the intersection of two ancient roads, near a third road Snake called an interstate. There had once been a bridge on the interstate that allowed travelers to ride over one of the other roads, but now it was only a ragged gap. Mel couldn’t imagine so much traffic that a bridge would have been required.