by Vonna Harper
Yeah, fire! Raging at him. Clutching his body and shaking it, building strength onto strength so she shook every time he pummeled her. Her sounds kept changing until the whimpers died out. Feeding off her faint growls, he covered them with deeper, louder ones of his own.
“Do me! Goddamn you, Matt. Do me!”
He attacked repeatedly, rocking her body and his, his head whipping up and down like some puppet, his legs on fire, his buttocks clenched, and his fingers digging into her.
“Oh my God, yes!”
Her speaking? Maybe. Didn’t matter. Only the screaming need did.
A sound that spoke of civilization scraped at his nerves, only to fade. He closed his eyes, then opened them when he started to lose his balance. Urgency climbed through him, and he recognized the hard rushing sensation that came during those final seconds before he lost himself.
The torrent slammed against him, shaking him and forcing him to tighten his hold on her. Seeing nothing and everything, he howled. His body turned against itself and rocked him with its power. Then everything became good and hot and wet.
The force slowly released its hold on him. In the past, weakness had broken him down. This time, however, he remained strong. Even as his cock slowly shrank, he reveled in his power.
Reaching under her body, he closed two fingers around Cat’s clit. Shrieking, she climaxed.
Good. Remind her of how much he knew about her.
Of his power over her.
His cell phone was ringing; that’s where the thought of civilization had come from. As Cat’s pussy tightened repeatedly around his dying cock, he told himself to ignore the damnable sound. But only a handful of people knew this number. Most of them worked for him.
Stepping back from the still-climaxing Cat, he hauled up his clothes and jammed his hand into his pocket so he could retrieve the cell.
“What?” he snapped. Was that his voice?
“Matt? It’s—” Coughing cut off whatever the man—that was all he knew about the speaker—had been about to say. “It’s Beale.”
“Beale? This connection sucks.”
“That isn’t it. I’m on my”—a deep and far-from-steady breath—“way back to the ranch.”
Concerned the wolf pack might return to where they’d buried the calf’s carcass, Matt had assigned Beale to remain near the herd. “What’s going on?”
“Attack.”
“Damn. You mean the wolves went after another calf?”
“No. Me.”
Matt stared at Cat, who had gotten to her feet without him knowing when or how. Truth was, although she was part of his world, an important part of it, at the moment he barely recognized her. As for why her jeans roped her legs—
“What is it?” she asked.
“You’re serious?” he said into the phone. “The wolves attacked you?”
“Yeah. Matt, I’m sorry about leaving the cows but . . .”
Still staring at Cat, who looked as if she’d been struck by lightning, he told Beale he was heading for the ranch and would meet him there.
“What happened?” Cat glanced down at her naked body, then back up at him.
“Beale.” His head pulsed. “The wolves went after him.”
Following the dust trail created by Matt’s truck, Cat worked to keep pace as they bumped down the drive to his place. He’d barely responded when she insisted on coming along. Because she wasn’t sure when he’d be able or willing to take her back to her place, she’d taken her own vehicle. She’d called to let the teenagers know that she couldn’t work with them today after all and rescheduled. There’d been no time to clean up.
Gripping the wheel with both hands, she acknowledged the moisture drying between her legs. For the second time, she and Matt had had sex without protection.
Sex? No way could she slap that simple label onto what had taken place on her couch. Most of the time she’d been all for it. Hell, why wouldn’t she want to kick the kinky up another notch? But there’d been moments when she hadn’t been sure Matt was fully aware of what he was doing. When she hadn’t known him.
His growls were part of it, and those lengthy silences of his didn’t help, but mostly it was having to ask herself if he knew he cared about her. Right when he was positioning her over the couch arm, she’d questioned whether he’d known what he was doing.
The hot, heavy, and unnerving fuck had begun while he was showing her the wolf-print photos. True, something had felt a little off about him from the moment he’d shown up, but she’d chalked his mood up to concern for his herd’s safety—or something. Then the oversized prints had filled her monitor, and he’d said he hadn’t shown them to law enforcement. Instead of explaining why not, he’d became someone new. Sexual. Primitive.
As the ranch house came into view, she faced the question she’d put off the whole time she’d been driving here: Should she show him what she’d discovered on the cave walls?
If looking at a huge wolf print had turned him wild, what might ancient Paiute drawings do?
Beale’s horse was in the corral. Whatever had happened to the young ranch hand, he’d removed the saddle and bridle, but both lay on the ground inside the corral, something no responsible hand would do.
Matt was already out of his truck by the time she pulled alongside. Through the settling dust, she noted that he was looking at the discarded items while striding toward the house. Wondering if her presence meant anything to him, she hurried after him.
They found Beale in the bathroom. The lanky cowboy was sitting on the edge of the tub as if he was contemplating taking a bath, but his clothes—or rather what remained of them—were still on. His pants legs were ripped as were his shirtsleeves. All were blood-soaked.
Looking numb, Beale stared at them. “Where do you keep the first aid? I . . . don’t remember.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she soothed to counter Matt’s silence. “That’s what we’re here for, right, Matt?”
“Yeah.”
Concerned, she turned her attention from Beale to Matt, who stood looking down at his employee as if barely comprehending what he was seeing. He’s shocked, she told herself. Of course he is.
“Matt? Beale needs help.”
“What?” Matt shook his head as if trying to wake up. “Yeah, right.”
Leaving Matt to get bandages from the medicine cabinet, she knelt before the injured man and pulled off his boots. Although she did her best not to jar him, he winced. “Stand up,” she said. “The jeans have to go.”
She thought Beale might object to stripping in front of her. Instead, he took Matt’s offered hand and stood on unsteady legs. She looked up to see Matt staring down at her. Like Beale, he was all but expressionless. What the hell was going on?
With Matt helping to support Beale, she gently pulled off Beale’s jeans. Several deep puncture marks in his thighs leaked blood.
“Sit back down,” she encouraged. “If you can.”
Going by how Beale was acting, she believed his buttocks had been spared. Hopefully his boots had protected his ankles and feet. Taking the soapy washcloth Matt offered her, she began gently cleaning Beale’s leg wounds. Although the young man sucked in several ragged breaths, she hoped shock stood between him and feeling true pain. If that was the case, she intended to finish the initial cleaning up as soon as possible.
Matt had taken off Beale’s ruined shirt and was lightly scrubbing the long scratches on his arms.
“They didn’t bite your arms,” Matt said. “Just scratched them. I wonder why.”
“Matt, I won’t have to go to the emergency room, will I?”
Instead of pointing out that infection was a strong possibility and that Matt and she were just providing first aid, she gave thanks to the emergency medicine training she’d taken through the county’s search and rescue when she was getting her business going. She’d expected to maybe have to deal with broken bones and bruises, compliments of a client being bucked off, not this. Some of the punct
ures and scratches would need stitches, but Beale had survived, somehow.
Matt handed her a bottle of iodine, his gaze saying what she already knew. This was going to hurt Beale.
“Take your time,” Matt said to the nearly naked and shivering Beale. “I need to know everything that happened.”
As soon as Beale started his explanation, she guessed Matt was deliberately trying to distract his employee from the stinging antiseptic.
Between gasps, the young man painted a simple and chilling picture. He’d spent the night in his sleeping bag, something he’d done any number of times since coming to work here. Being the only person out in the middle of nowhere at night didn’t bother him. He liked studying the stars and trying to identify the various night sounds.
“The cows were acting strange. I figured it was because of the calf killing, but now I’m not so sure. Same with my horse. I hobbled him so he couldn’t run off. I know you don’t like—”
“It’s all right. So the livestock were restless?”
“Not that so much. More like nervous. Scared.” Beale lowered his head. “Got me a little riled myself listening to them.”
“I don’t blame you,” Cat said. She’d been blowing on the wounds as she applied the iodine, and this was the first she was able to talk. “I would have been uneasy myself. Okay, I would have been spooked.”
“The wolves attacked at night?” Matt asked. He sounded so matter-of-fact that she again studied him. There was a distant look about him, as if his thoughts were somewhere else. “It took you all this time to get back?”
“Not at night,” Beale all but mumbled. “I, ah . . . After a while, the wolves started howling. That kept me awake all night. That’s something I don’t understand. Why did they wait until daylight? Dark would have made it even easier.”
Beale’s tone had become uncertain as he explained the last. Guessing that shock was giving way to vivid memories, she took his hands and sat on the hard tub rim beside him. Feeling him tremble, she leaned against him, hoping that would help.
“You’re right,” Matt said as he placed gauze over the longest scratch. “Wolves tend to be nocturnal. How many were there?”
Looking at his hands linked with hers, Beale picked up the thread of his story. He’d eaten several granola bars for breakfast and was saddling his horse when he sensed something behind him. When he turned around, he saw four adult wolves.
“They were stalking me.” Beale started rocking. “That’s how it felt like anyway. Like they were daring me to try to get away.”
How terrifying that must have been. When the time was right, she’d encourage Beale to get professional counseling for help in dealing with the trauma. The thought that Matt had been acting like a wild animal himself while Beale was fighting for his life made her sick to her stomach.
Couldn’t be. Matt couldn’t have possibly sensed what was going on and fed off it.
Shaken, she forced herself to concentrate on what Beale was saying. The wolves had closed in on him as if they had all the time in the world to do what they intended to. His horse had risked broken legs trying to get away, but much as Beale wanted to unhobble him and set him free, he didn’t dare take his attention off the pack.
“Their eyes—I hope I never see anything like that again. All yellow and glowing. They hated me.”
“Hated?” Cat and Matt said at the same time.
Beale stared at his ruined jeans on the floor. “That’s what it felt like. Like they didn’t see me as meat so much as something they had it in for. I didn’t try to run. Maybe it would have made a difference if I had, but I was scared that would prompt them to attack.” He swallowed. “They did anyway.”
“Matt,” Cat said when she found her voice. “We need to call law enforcement.”
He grunted. “I did on the way here. I’m surprised they didn’t beat us.”
Relieved that had occurred to Matt when she’d been wondering if part of his mind had turned off, she took the gauze from Matt and, kneeling again, went back to tending to Beale’s wounds. Someday she wanted to have children. Right now she felt like Beale’s mother. She couldn’t make the bogeyman nightmare go away, but she was determined to comfort him to the best of her ability.
Beale was explaining that, although the wolves remained around after the attack, he’d managed to crawl over to his horse when the sound of approaching vehicles caught their collective attention.
Matt’s features tightened. “I’ll get them,” he muttered.
Watching Matt’s retreating back as he left, Cat again tried to make sense of the way he was acting. She couldn’t blame him for wishing none of this was happening—she certainly did—but was it that simple? Maybe, like her, he was trying to make sense of the wolves’ behavior. As Beale had explained, the pack hadn’t seemed to be interested in killing him, as one after the other bit his legs and clawed his upper body. It was more like they’d decided to play with him, had seen him as a hapless victim.
Or something else.
As Sheriff Wilton and a middle-aged man wearing a Fish and Wildlife uniform entered the bathroom later, she tucked the crazy thought into a corner of her mind. Still she couldn’t completely silence the possibility that the wolves had wanted to make an example of Beale. Not kill him because then he couldn’t tell anyone about what they’d done to him, about the hatred in their eyes.
Either having the others in the room helped remind Beale that he was indeed safe, or shock no longer gripped him as tightly as it had at first. Sensing tension ease out of him helped Cat relax a bit herself.
Once she and Matt had finished tending to Beale’s wounds, they all went into the living room. Fortunately, Beale didn’t appear concerned over his lack of clothing; the idea of him trying to pull jeans over his injuries made her wince. After sitting in the recliner and letting Matt put up the footrest, Beale told the newcomers what he’d already told her and Matt, adding details she wished she didn’t have to hear.
As he described how the wolves focused on one limb at a time while positioning themselves between him and his horse, she forced her attention off Beale and back onto Matt. His concern and consideration for his young employee was genuine. Listening to him reassure Beale that he’d done what he’d had to to protect his life when he left the cattle, she wondered if he’d learned his compassion from his parents—parents she knew nothing about.
Why not? She’d stripped off her clothes and spread her legs for this man. Didn’t his background mean anything to her?
Unable to admit that about herself, she reluctantly faced the other possibility. Matt had offered nothing about his family because he didn’t want her to know.
Fine. Blame him. Except that she’d been no more forthcoming.
Male voices swirled around her to remind her what today was about. Damn it, her relationship with Matt wasn’t what was important right now. No way would she let his supremely masculine body speak to hers.
As for the growing energy between her legs—forget it!
“No way,” Matt said forcefully, jarring her. “I don’t want armed men swarming over my land.”
“You can’t mean that,” Sheriff Wilton replied. “Look, Matt, I’m not a rancher, but I know how important livestock is to one. Your herd’s in danger. I’d think you’d want all the help you can get.”
“That’s what I have hands for. My land, my responsibility.”
“Sorry,” said the Fish and Wildlife man, who’d introduced himself as Chuck Ehlers. “Going by the size of your spread, I’d be surprised if you have more than three or four employees, right?”
“Four, counting Beale,” Matt admitted.
“Besides, it’s not that cut and dried,” Chuck continued.
“Word’s going to get out about what happened. As soon as it does, you’ll be inundated by hotheads waving their rifles around and after blood. You’ll have a hell of a time trying to get them to leave.”
Matt, who had briefly sat down but now stood near Beale, shook h
is head. “What are your plans?” He sounded trapped.
Chuck ran a long-fingered hand into his thick, graying hair. “I’m not sure yet. Nothing like this has ever happened. The government’s set up to reimburse ranchers for wolf-killed livestock—”
“If the rancher can prove his case,” Matt broke in. “There’s a lot of red tape involved.”
“I can’t argue that, but back to my comment. I have to confer with my supervisors before anything’s implemented.” Chuck turned his attention to the sheriff. “Sorry, Bob. I know you’re thinking this is your territory, but in this situation, the federal government trumps local law enforcement.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe to it, unfortunately.”
As Chuck spelled out the need to make sure his agency’s plans met with federal approval, Cat again let her attention drift. Beale had adamantly nixed having an ambulance dispatched for him. He’d drive himself, he said, only to have his employer disagree. Matt was willing to go along with Beale’s wish to stay out of an ambulance, which meant either he or one of his other hands would drive him into town. Because Matt’s tense gaze repeatedly went to the window as he spoke, she had no doubt that he longed to go to where the attack had taken place and assure himself of his herd’s safety. Equally important, he wanted to find the wolves. Don’t, please. If anything happened to you . . . We have things—resolutions—
“This jurisdictional discussion is all well and good,” she said to stop her thoughts. “But right now we have a man who needs to be seen by a doctor. Chuck, you’re heading back to town, aren’t you?”
Chuck shot her an irritated look. Obviously he didn’t take kindly to a civilian telling him what to do.
“You’ll take me?” Beale asked. “I don’t mean to complain, boss.” He looked at Matt. “But I’m hurting something fierce. If they’ll give me a shot or something . . .”
It took more discussion than she thought necessary, but in the end, Chuck agreed to drive Beale to town but only because he had to wait for several officials to return his calls. The sheriff’s mouth twitched a couple of times as he told Matt that he was counting on him to take him to where the attack occurred, now preferably. When Matt agreed, she sensed the two men respected each other.