by Selena Scott
The wolf hadn’t moved from his place in the middle of the room, but he sure wasn’t taking his eyes off of her either. He watched as she gently stoked the fire, threw another log on, and then left the end of the poker in the flame, just in case she had to kick some wolf ass.
This might end up being a long night, so Kaya leaned her back against the brick pillar that lined the fireplace and let herself just sort of slide on down until her butt hit the floor.
All that tiredness she could have done with upstairs was suddenly swamping her. She wanted to erect a magical wall between her and the wolf and then she wanted to go the heck to sleep. She wanted to sleep for a year. And when she woke up she wanted to have forgotten all about Jackson Durant.
The wolf took a few steps toward her and Kaya jerked.
“NO! Nonono, you can just stay right over there. Yup. On the other side of the room.”
The wolf, however, did not listen to her. He padded over and she soon realized why. The freaking fire that she’d just stoked up. Like every red-blooded mammal on this planet, he was just trying to stay warm in the middle of a blizzard. She couldn’t fault him for that.
She could, however, not be so close to a gigantic wolf. So, her eyes on the wolf, Kaya scooted herself backwards a bit more, putting the poker between her and the wolf, just in case she needed it.
The wolf, however, seemed just as interested in the fire as he was in her. Keeping a good bit of distance away from her, he laid himself down, his head still up and alert, and watched the flames.
She wondered if Jackson had ever seen fire in his wolf form before.
The wolf inched forward, putting his nose awfully near the flame.
“Don’t do that,” Kaya admonished him lightly. “You’ll burn yourself, silly.”
Great. Now the wolf’s eyes were trained on her again. Just what she didn’t want. “You know, if you were a human man right now, I’d tell you to put your eyes back in your head.”
The wolf cocked his head to one side again, as if he were trying to listen, trying to make sense of the gibberish she was speaking.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “It’s not like these are national secrets I’m telling you over here. I’m just trying to explain what it’s like to be a woman these days. Men watch you wherever you go. A man bought me seventy-five cents’ worth of peanut butter crackers this morning and then expected that to be enough to also purchase my contact information. Can you believe that?” She looked at him, searching the white wolf for any resemblance of the man he was on the inside. “But not you. You rescue me from a blizzard and then expect nothing from me. In your eyes, the best payment from me would be my eternal distance, right? All you want is to never see me again?”
The wolf took that moment to let out a long whine that startled Kaya.
“Hold on, you can’t understand me, right? Jackson?” The wolf continued to look at her, giving no indication either way whether he could understand her words. “If you can tell what I’m saying, blink your eyes.”
Nothing.
“Wag your tail.”
Nothing.
“Do the Cupid Shuffle. Howl the thong song.”
Still, of course, nothing. Except for the fact that Kaya was starting to relax just a little bit. He seemed to be enjoying the heat from the fire and she knew that Jackson had eaten a large meal before he went downstairs, so he probably wasn’t hungry. She just wished that he wasn’t staring at her so much. He watched every single movement she made with a feral intensity that both chilled and exhilarated her.
“You’re not gonna hurt me, are you, Jackson?”
He tilted his head to one side and a long silence overtook them. Finally, the wolf turned his eyes to the flames and the two of them watched the fire for a long time. That fatigue was creeping up on Kaya again and she took a pillow from the couch that she slid halfway down onto. This movement led to the wolf watching her again for a long time, but when she didn’t move much anymore, he laid his head back on his paws and watched the fire again.
When he seemed fully settled, Kaya figured that it might be time to sneak back upstairs. He didn’t seem like he was going to chase her. Slowly, she made her way to her feet and inched along the wall again. The wolf immediately raised his head to watch her and then, when it became clear that she was moving away from him, he jolted to his feet.
Kaya jolted too, trying to hold still and not spook him further. But, as if he could sense her ultimate direction, the wolf, still dragging the chain, padded over to the bottom of the attic stairs and sat there, as if he were challenging Kaya to try to get through him.
“All right. I guess I’ll be staying down here, then.” She inched back to her pillow by the fire and stoked it up on her way. She really was starting to get tired. As much as she didn’t want to fall asleep with a wolf in the same room, she might not have a choice. Her eyes on the wolf, she pulled the afghan off the couch and laid her head on the floor pillow.
They went back to watching the flames together. She guessed it was midnight. Which meant about five hours until he was going to shift back. There was absolutely no way that she was going to make it. No way at all.
Her eyes got heavier and heavier and a little while later, she jolted awake. The fire was still going and the wolf lifted his head when she moved. He was still lying exactly where he’d been when she’d fallen asleep. She couldn’t fight the fatigue and her eyes went closed again. This time she really swam deeply into sleep.
Part of her, just a small part, felt strangely protected by the wolf at her side. She felt a danger from him, of course—she wasn’t a fool. But in terms of danger from the rest of the world? Kaya felt utterly and completely protected.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kaya awoke an untold number of hours later. At first she thought that it was the dim light in the sky outside the windows that had woken her where she lay in front of the fire, but it soon became clear that it was actually the wolf writhing in pain next to her that had done the waking.
“Oh,” she whispered, a hand over her mouth as she watched the pure white wolf claw at the ground, his eyes wide and pained. He looked as if he were dying. “Oh, God.”
She sat up and the afghan fell away from her. He was shifting back, she knew, but this was truly terrible to watch. It looked like extreme pain and there was nothing at all she could do to soothe him.
“Jackson,” she whispered. “Oh, Jackson.”
A swell of sympathy rose up within her. Sure, he was a jackass, but could she really blame him when this was the kind of torture he’d had to endure for so much of his life? Perhaps he was entitled to be a little dick-ish and standoffish.
She watched in horrified fascination as the wolf writhed on the ground, his transformation taking place. His fur receded, his bones cracked into different shapes, his whines turned into very mannish grunts of pain. And then, there was Jackson, stretched on his stomach on the floor of the cabin, breathing like he’d just run a 100-yard dash, naked as the day he was born. His cheek was to the floor, facing away from her, and Kaya couldn’t help but let her eyes sweep down his long, lean body. She’d always thought of him as lanky, but that man had shoulders. And calves. And an ass.
“Holy cow,” she muttered, momentarily forgetting that he could now understand English again.
He whipped his head around so that his other cheek pressed into the floor and his dark eyes were on her. She was instantly reminded of the wolf, with the way he’d watched her unyieldingly, as if he were devouring her with his eyes.
What should she say? She should definitely say something, but what could she possibly say? What was there to say to your naked sort-of friend who’d been a wolf, like, eight seconds ago? She couldn’t think of a damn thing.
But apparently Jackson didn’t need her to say anything because he pushed up onto his hands, his eyes still alarmingly wild.
“Kaya,” he growled. And then, suddenly, he was demolishing the space between them.
She was froz
en, her eyes flashing from his face to his nakedness as he was suddenly right next to her, crawling over top of her, in fact. She fell backward onto the pillow that she’d just slept the night on and he followed her down.
Holy cow was right. She’d gone from being dead asleep next to a wolf to having Jackson Durant butt-ass naked and wrapped around her like a vine.
He buried his face into her neck. He whispered something into the soft skin of her throat and she could have sworn it was, “I’m so sorry, baby.” But there was no way that was right. She was hearing things. He could barely stand to be around her. He certainly wasn’t coming up with endearments for her.
Those long arms of his were digging underneath her, wrapping around her body and pinning her against him. He gave her some of his weight, but tipped most of it to the side. His face, rough with stubble, scraped against her neck. Unthinkingly, Kaya’s legs parted and his thigh was between hers all of a sudden. The afghan pulled tight, trapping her down. She realized she was tugging against it with her body, as if she were trying to fight free of it, as if she wanted the freedom to hug him back.
So, that’s just what she did. Her legs were mostly pinned down, but her arms went around his back, her palms landing flat against him, holding him just as he was holding her. He was gripping her so intensely, breathing so hard, his heart beating so wildly that part of her wondered if he was stuck in some sort of half-place between man and wolf. He’d gotten his body back but his mind was just as wild as it had been in his wolf form.
“I’m so, so sorry.” That time she heard it clearly. At least she knew he was human enough to speak English.
“That was so freaking scary, Jackson,” she told him honestly, last night’s fear hitching her breath and making her voice catch.
He held her even tighter, his hip digging into her soft midsection and his face scratching her neck. “I know. I know. It must have been terrible for you.”
“Well… not terrible, just unexpected. What happened exactly?”
He squeezed her tightly, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go and his words were spoken directly into her collarbone. “I brought a blanket downstairs to keep me warm but it ended up being your gigantic scarf.”
He presented that information as if it were going to answer her question. Of course, it left her with way more questions than answers.
The strangeness of the situation threatened to overwhelm her. Jackson Durant was hugging her. While on top of her. Naked. He was holding her like she was the most important thing in the world to him.
Ohhhhhh. This was a dream! That was the only explanation. She was certain that in a few minutes she’d wake up upstairs in the attic and none of this would be real. Maybe she’d even wake up in her studio apartment and truly none of it would have been real. Her car would be parked in her marked spot, safe as could be.
She lifted a hand to pinch herself. But on the way up, she grazed the short hairs on Jackson’s head where the back of his neck met his skull. His hair was soft and bristly there and got longer and curlier on the top of his head. She hadn’t meant to feel it. But once she did, she found that her hand, almost of its own accord, took a second pass, feeling his slippery, soft hair again.
The corresponding grumble he made in his chest was so low that she felt it rather than heard it.
Oh God! She was kind of petting him and he was naked and lying on top of her and grumbling and pressing his face into the crook of her neck and suddenly, Kaya was almost positive that what she’d thought was his hipbone pressing into her soft stomach was actually a bone of a very different variety.
Even though she hadn’t had sex per se, that didn’t mean she was completely naive. In fact, Kaya was pretty certain that over the years she’d become the world’s foremost expert on fabric-covered boners. Because those were the only kind of boners she’d ever encountered and frankly, it seemed they were kind of drawn to her.
This, however, was a naked boner. Attached to a naked Jackson Durant whom Kaya was currently petting.
What the frick was going on here?!
Jackson seemed to ask himself the same question at the same moment, because suddenly, he stiffened and pulled up off of her. He took the afghan with him and wrapped it around his waist.
Kaya shivered and curled in on herself, suddenly chilly without her blanket and without his heat and weight. The fire had gone out during the night.
Jackson knelt next to her, naked from the waist up and breathing hard. His eyes were even darker than usual and he looked almost… betrayed. By her? By himself? She couldn’t tell.
“Is everything all right?” she asked gently, pulling herself up to a sitting position.
“Don’t ask me that,” he responded sharply.
And great. They were back to him being an asshole again. Kaya frowned. “I think that’s a reasonable question to ask right now. Considering what happened last night, and considering the fact that you look like you’re on the verge of a complete panic attack.”
“I mean that I should be asking you that, not the other way around.”
“Fine, then ask me.”
He stared at her. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I think so. It’s all a lot to process, but nothing bad happened last night, okay? I fell asleep next to an animal who seemed to wish me no harm. The end.”
“Right.” His eyes finally dropped and he dug his knuckles into his brow. “Right.”
“I’m gonna make breakfast.” She pushed to her feet and then was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was seeing her pajamas. They were the classic flannel kind. The kind that dads wore on the night before Christmas. Add in the two pairs of bunchy wool socks she wore and she wasn’t sure this situation could get more embarrassing.
He didn’t respond but when she looked back, he’d disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Kaya brushed her teeth and changed into some leggings and a warm wool dress she’d brought. When she stepped out into the main room, he was wearing jeans and a flannel, building a fire in the hearth.
They had just-add-water waffle/pancake mix and she decided that was probably the best they could expect to do for breakfast.
She was deeply relieved that the sun had fully risen and in true Colorado style, the snow was already melting away in great dripping rivers. She bet that all four feet of it would be gone by lunchtime. Which meant that—
“You won’t have to be stranded here with me much longer,” Jackson said, peering out the front window as if he’d just read her thoughts.
She frowned as she flipped pancakes. What a negative way of putting that. “You won’t have to be stranded with me much longer either,” she replied.
He turned back to her, his eyes sad, his mouth pulled down, but he didn’t say anything. They ate breakfast quietly, avoiding one another’s eyes. Kaya supposed that her mind should be spinning, but instead, it seemed to just be rotating around one fixed point. The feel of Jackson against her this morning. The intensity of his face against her. She’d barely ever touched him before this. She thought and thought about it, unable to move on.
When their meals were finished, Jackson rose, clearing their plates. “We should be able to get out of here after lunch.” He faced the sink, his hands braced and his head bowed. “Kaya, I’m not sure how I can ever adequately apologize.”
“Oh, save it, Jackson.”
He stiffened but didn’t turn around.
She rose up and finished what she had to say. “There’s only one condition under which I’ll accept this apology. If and only if it’s an actual apology and not a way for you to punish yourself even further. I don’t want your ‘I’m sorry’ if what you actually mean is ‘I hate myself’. Because I can feel you hating yourself over there and I’m so sick of it. You are so freaking suspended from reality! Will you please, for the love of God, save us all some heartache and join us here on earth? You know, the place where nobody thinks you’re the worst? You’re the only one who thinks that, Jackson. The only one. So, no. I don’t acc
ept your bullshit apology. Not when accepting it means cosigning whatever fucked up thing you obviously believe about yourself.”
She didn’t wait for him to speak or turn. She simply marched over to the bookshelf, grabbed a book at random, and strode up the attic stairs. She stayed there for the rest of the morning. She cleared up her things in the attic and made the bed again. A few hours later, she was sitting on the floor next to the small fire she’d made when Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I dug the Jeep out. I think we’re good to go.”
And that was it. That was all he said.
Kaya wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from him, but it probably should have been that. He wasn’t exactly a stellar emoter.
She sighed and grabbed her bag, heading down the stairs. She slipped into her coat and hat and stopped still when she saw how carefully he’d folded her scarf, leaving it on the kitchen table. She immediately shook out the folds, twisting it around her neck. She felt as if it was some sort of secret language. That him folding it up so neatly had been a message he was trying to send her. Well, screw that. She didn’t want a secret message. She wanted clear words. But she knew Jackson at least well enough to know that that was most likely not going to happen.
She waited in the warming-up Jeep while he shut down the cabin, tucking it in until the Durant brothers needed it again next month.
He slammed into the Jeep and they made their way back down the mountain. It was slow going but just as Kaya had predicted, most of the snow was washing away in great icy rivers.
“Do you want to stop by and check on your car?” They were the first words that he’d spoken to her since he’d gotten in the car. How underwhelming.
“No. I got a text from my auto mechanic saying that AAA already dropped it off.”
“So,” he cleared his throat. “I’m just taking you to your apartment, then?”
“I guess.”
Natalie and Raph wouldn’t be back from the resort until tomorrow. Which meant that the rest of this day and all the way until tomorrow evening stretched out before her in a long, lonely wave. And now she couldn’t even look forward to Christmas Eve with the Durants because things with Jackson were so weird right now.