Gwen screamed as the weapon was torn from her hands and tossed aside. The front door was kicked in behind her, bouncing off the wall. She didn’t know where to look. There was a stranger behind her and another one in front of her.
She lunged for the kitchen counter and the knife block. She needed something to defend herself with. Anything. One of them swore and leapt toward her. Large fingers tightened around hers, the pressure making it impossible for her to draw the large butcher knife from the block.
“Relax, chère. Shhh.” His breath was hot on her neck and his hand practically swallowed hers whole.
She started to shake. Would they hurt her? Rape her? She couldn’t think about the possibilities. She had to fight back. Her muscles, immobilized by fright only seconds before, came back under her control. She threw her head back hard and fast and connected with his face.
Her captor howled in pain, sending an icy-cold shiver racing down her spine. It sounded too much like the dogs she’d heard earlier.
Massive arms wrapped around her torso and pulled her away from her only source of weapons. “Dieu. There was no need for you to do that, chère.”
She still couldn’t see the man holding her but the one in front of her was hard to miss. He was huge, probably around six-four, his brown shaggy hair hanging around his massive shoulders. His golden-brown eyes stared at her and his full lips were drawn into a thin line of displeasure.
Shit. She was in deep trouble. She recognized him from the picture she’d seen only moments before. Her only option was to try to brazen her way out of this situation.
She cocked her eyebrow at him and inclined her head. “You’re either Louis or Jacque LaForge. I’m not sure which.” She had a brief moment of pleasure when she noted the surprise in his eyes. Then they went flat, and the expression in them scared her spitless.
Chapter Two
Jacque LaForge stared at the tempting female his brother currently held subdued in his arms. Louis’s nose had taken quite a hit, but thankfully it didn’t look broken. Not that it mattered. They were both quick healers and the bleeding had already stopped.
When he’d heard the shotgun blast, his only thought had been of reaching his brother. Damn Hector Canton and his big mouth. They’d stopped him long enough to give him his one and only warning and hopefully put enough fear in him to keep his mouth shut. Then they’d headed to the woman’s home to find out how much she knew.
Hector was obsessed with werewolves and had made quite a bit of trouble for them. But their cousin, Armand, was already doing damage control. The man was a computer whiz, able to hack any system. A doctor’s file here and there questioning the man’s sanity, a few bogus reports filed with police and Hector would be in for a stay in a psychiatric hospital if he didn’t leave them alone. This was his only warning, and Armand had punctuated it with a more physical threat. If Hector didn’t cease and desist, they’d bury him. Literally. There was nowhere he could hide where they couldn’t find him.
Jacque didn’t want to hurt Hector, who was harmless enough in his own way, but no way would he allow anyone to threaten his family’s safety. He’d kill him if he had to and wouldn’t lose a moment of sleep over it. By the time they’d finished questioning Hector, he’d spilled every detail he knew about Gwendolyn, which wasn’t much. Just where she lived and the fact that she was single.
The name was old-fashioned and didn’t quite suit her at all. She wasn’t really a Gwen either. The name conjured a picture of a cool business executive. The woman in front of him was much more interesting.
She was wearing faded jeans that were slightly frayed at the ends and knees and a plain blue long-sleeved shirt. Nothing fancy, but she wore it well. While the cotton shirt was molded to a pair of first-class breasts, the tight denim showcased a pair of long, shapely legs and a mouth-watering ass that he was more than tempted to take a bite out of. Her blonde hair was cut short but layered, giving her a tousled, just-got-out-of-bed look.
His cock responded on cue. He certainly wouldn’t mind getting Gwen into bed and knew his brother would be thinking the exact same thing. He frowned as Louis sniffed her hair and rubbed his nose over her neck.
Jacque growled low in his throat and Louis glared at him but stopped sniffing Gwen. Jacque was thankful, because his own control was tenuous at the moment. Usually he had perfect command of his body and hormones, but the moon was nearly full and there was a sexy female right in front of him. All his senses were on high alert.
But she was obviously not feeling the same way. Right now she was spitting mad and scared. The stench of her fear burned his nostrils. He didn’t like it. He wanted to smell her sweet arousal, not fear.
“I’m Jacque LaForge. My brother, Louis, is holding you.”
“Please to meet you.” Louis rocked her slightly from side-to-side, a sort of full-body handshake.
Jacque wanted to smack his brother up the back of his head. Instead, he focused on Gwen, wanting to calm her immediate fears. “We mean you no harm.”
“Could have fooled me.” Her head jerked toward her front door.
“You’ll have to forgive me, chère. I heard the shotgun go off and got worried about my little brother.” Louis snorted but thankfully kept his mouth shut. Jacque knew how much he hated being referred to in that manner. The bastard should be thankful Jacque hadn’t called him a young pup after the way Gwen had caught him off-guard and smashed his nose.
“You’ll have to forgive me for this as well.” He walked to her kitchen phone and yanked out the cord, snapping off the plastic end. Her purse was sitting on the end of the counter and he reached for it.
“Hey, don’t touch that.” Jacque ignored her protests and dug through the bag. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he turned to her and frowned. “Where’s your cell phone?”
“Don’t have one,” she lied.
He frowned and looked around the room, his gaze falling on her coat. She swore as he strode to it and rummaged through the pockets until he found her phone. He dropped it to the floor and ground it beneath the heel of his boot.
“Louis is going to let you go now.” Jacque inclined his head toward his brother as he walked back toward them. “We just want to talk. If you run, we’ll catch you, so don’t even try it.”
Louis slowly released her and stepped back to give her some breathing room. They both tensed, waiting for her to bolt.
“If you’re trying to put me at ease, you’re not succeeding.”
Her acerbic tone almost made him smile. There was something about Gwen that called to Jacque. He sniffed and caught a whiff of her perfume, not a synthetic kind, but the natural one that was unique to her. With her fear fading slightly, he was more able to smell her. He inhaled deeply, wanting to take her into his lungs so he’d always recognize her particular scent.
The combination of salty skin, lavender soap and laundry detergent filled his nostrils and seeped into every cell in his body. Beneath it all was the sweet scent of woman, of Gwendolyn Jones.
Jacque stiffened and every molecule in his body surged to high alert. His senses flared and he sniffed again. His wolf howled inside him, dominant and purpose driven. His fangs dropped and his jaw elongated. The urge to bite her was overwhelming. His cock lengthened as the mating heat kicked in, overriding almost all other senses and thoughts. Gwen’s sweet scent twined around his body, filling him, driving him to the very brink of sanity.
This couldn’t be happening. Not here. Not now.
How in the hell had he found his mate in the middle of this fucked-up situation?
Gwen screamed when his face began to contort and change, but he barely heard her. His total focus was on his brother. Louis sniffed her again. As Jacque watched, his brother’s fangs dropped, his eyes began to glow and he growled.
Louis looked at him and Jacque could see the same disbelief mirrored in his brother’s eyes.
Fuck, they were in big trouble. While any virile male werewolf would be sexually drawn to an att
ractive woman, it was extremely rare for two wolves to have the potential to mate with the same woman. It did happen every now and again, and almost always to brothers. Their only choices were for one of them to kill the other or for one of them to step aside. And since he wasn’t about to kill his brother any more than his brother would kill him, there was really only one solution.
Because as much as he loved his brother, he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by. Gwen was a priceless gift, one he’d never expected to receive. He’d just have to make both of them understand that she belonged with him.
Gwen shook her head, denying what was right in front of her. Her high-pitched scream was cut off when Louis wrapped his arms around her middle again and squeezed the air from her lungs. She was sweating, her cotton shirt clinging to her torso. Her heart was racing like a runaway freight train and she felt slightly lightheaded. This couldn’t be happening. Jacque LaForge was not morphing into some kind of wolf-human hybrid in front of her very eyes. It was impossible.
Yet her eyes told a different story. His jaw contorted and lengthened and a set of very large, sharp fangs dropped down from his gums. She had to be hallucinating. “How did you drug me?” She had to keep talking even though the world around her was shifting and changing in a way she didn’t understand.
“We didn’t.” The voice behind her was little more than a growl. She tilted her head back and was shocked anew when she got a good look at the creature holding her. Crap, he looked just like his brother, doing the fang thing. This was like something out of one of the stories she’d written. Only her work was total nonfiction, drawn from the minds of folks who pushed over the line of reality and into fantasy.
Maybe she’d written one story too many and had finally succumbed to madness.
This was so not happening. Not when things in her life were finally falling into place. Not when she finally had time to work on her dream project—a novel. She wasn’t having it.
Gwen drew back her foot and kicked Louis in the kneecap with her heel. She wished she were wearing more substantial footwear, heavy-soled boots instead of sneakers. That would do a lot more damage. The action did surprise him enough that he let her go. Or maybe he let go because she’d stopped screaming. Either way, she didn’t care as long as she was free.
She backed away from both men and put her shoulders against the wall so neither of them could sneak up on her. While both men continued to stare at her, their faces contorted again, this time going back to normal. She blinked, not trusting anything she saw with her own two eyes. How could she? Werewolves didn’t exist. Not in reality. There had to be some trick to what they were doing.
Her legs shook but she stiffened her knees. She could not show weakness. That was the first rule of facing down any wild animal. And werewolves definitely fell into that category. Come to think of it, so did men.
Across the room on her desk, her computer hummed along, and it was only then she remembered what was on the screen. She glanced over at it, a reflex action she tried to stop, but it was too late. Both men were aware of the flicker of her eyes and they looked in the direction of her desk.
“Sonofabitch.” Jacque strode toward her laptop and stared down at the screen. He quickly closed the picture and flicked through the other files that were on the flash drive.
Gwen cursed herself for not thinking to close the damn computer and hide the files before leaving her desk. Her only excuse was fear, which in her mind was a pretty damn good one.
Jacque turned to her, his dark eyes practically glowing, which was impossible. This seemed to be the night for that. “What else did he give you?”
Gwen swallowed past the giant lump in her throat. Would the police eventually find her cold, dead body lying on the cabin floor? They’d probably write it off to a break-in gone wrong. These things happened. Then they’d file her case in some metal cabinet in a basement somewhere and forget she’d ever lived.
There was no one to remember her. To say she and her parents weren’t close was an understatement. She wasn’t even quite sure where either of them were and didn’t care enough to find out. She had no siblings, no family she was close to. Her legacy was her work and she’d barely even begun to write her book yet. This wasn’t fair.
“What else?”
A shiver skated down her spine as he all but whispered the words. Jacque LaForge speaking softly with that deadly look in his eyes was a hell of a lot more scary than any other guy would be yelling and threatening her.
“Nothing.” She was proud of the fact she’d managed to speak even one word. He growled and she sidled along the wall, trying to get farther away from him.
“Don’t be afraid, chère.” Louis stepped into her path, stopping her from moving past him.
Gwen almost snorted at him. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one being threatened by two gigantic men, or werewolves or whatever the hell they were.
She took a really good look at them, studying them intently. On the off chance she survived this encounter, she wanted to have a good description to give the police. Jacque was well over six feet tall. Both men were. She estimated around six-three or six-four. They both had incredibly wide shoulders and huge biceps. In spite of the cool weather outside, they were both wearing black T-shirts and no jackets.
Jacque’s shaggy brown hair fell around his shoulders, while Louis’s hair was cropped short. They both had brown eyes—Louis’s eyes were dark and Jacque’s were golden—and they gave her the shivers with their intensity. Jacque’s lips were slightly thinner than his brother’s, while Louis’s nose wasn’t quite as prominent, even though it was slightly swollen from the whack she’d given it with the back of her head. They certainly looked like brothers.
They were hot. No other way to put it. If she weren’t scared to death, she’d probably be attracted to both of them. Any red-blooded woman would be. The jeans they wore clung to thick thighs and firm butts and at any other time she might have admired the bulges in the front of their pants.
She shook her head. Okay, the fear was obviously making her loopy. What did it matter that the LaForge brothers were gorgeous in a dark and deadly way? They were going to kill her. They had to. She’d seen their faces, knew who they were, knew too much about them.
All the blood drained from her face. Oh God, they were going to kill her.
Reality sank in and she began to shake. Not with fear, but with anger. She wasn’t done living yet. She had so much she wanted to do. She hadn’t asked for this. Damn Hector Canton and damn Jacque and Louis LaForge.
Jacque unplugged her laptop and set it aside before he began riffling through her desk.
“Stop that. There is nothing else.” The order was automatic, but she swallowed the rest of her demands when he glared at her with those scary golden-brown eyes. She was quiet for about thirty seconds. “That’s my stuff. Stop it.” He was pawing through the drawer with the notes for her book.
He shot her another deadly glare and continued to search. Obviously, he didn’t believe her, which proved he wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t believe her either. She had Hector’s phone number and some observations in a little notebook in her purse.
Louis walked over to the desk and began to help his brother rummage through the piles of files and notes she had stacked on her desk. Gwen couldn’t believe her luck. In their search for evidence about their existence, they’d forgotten about her. They probably thought she was too scared to try to run. She inched slowly toward the open front door, desperately trying not to make a sound.
She barely dared to breathe. Freedom was only feet away. If she could get outside, she could run and hide in the woods and maybe make her way to town. No, she didn’t have to run and hide. Her car keys were still in the front pocket of her jeans.
She licked her dry lips, keeping one eye on the door and the other on the men in the corner of her dining room. This could work. Had she locked the driver’s door when she’d arrived home? She couldn’t remember, but she didn’t
think so. She’d been so scared all she’d wanted to do was get inside.
That could work to her advantage. With all the other doors locked, if she made it inside her car she should be safe. This had to work.
She was almost to the door when Jacque’s head came up and started to turn in her direction. Gwen reacted immediately and flung herself through the front door. Her feet flew down the three steps and she raced to her car. Her fingers scrambled for the door handle, grasped its cool metal and popped it open. She threw herself into the front seat, slammed the door shut and hit the lock.
Her fingers were shaking as she dug out the keys and jammed them into the ignition. It took her two tries before they finally slid home.
Something heavy hit the car. Gwen cried out and her gaze flew to the front windshield. Jacque was perched in front of her like some giant hood ornament. He was crouched low with one hand resting on the hood. “Unlock the door, Gwen.”
Like that was going to happen. She turned the key and the engine sprang to life. Louis stood beside the car, shaking his head at her. She prayed they didn’t have any guns, although they could easily use her shotgun against her.
Gwen slammed the vehicle into reverse and hit the gas. Louis managed to jump out of the way before she ran him over. She flew backward down the narrow driveway with Jacque riding on the hood. She turned the wheel hard to the left and he flew off, landing with a heavy thud on the ground.
She almost stopped to see if he was hurt then reminded herself that he and his brother were going to kill her. What did it matter if he was hurt? Still, she was glad when she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him climb to his feet.
“Stop being stupid.” She pressed down on the gas and headed toward town. If she could get to the sheriff’s office she’d be okay. Those guys had guns—lots of them—and they knew how to use them.
She’d only gone a few yards when something heavy hit the roof of the car with a thump. The metal buckled slightly and Gwen yelped, ducking low in her seat. She jerked the steering wheel and the car skidded to one side and then the other. She prayed she didn’t have a wreck. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.
Wolf at the Door: Salvation Pack, Book 1 Page 2