by J. L. Wilder
Slowly, as he laid there beside her, reason started to return. The motorcycles were too far away, and they were moving too quickly to be idling into a parking lot. They were probably on the highway, which ran parallel to the bank of motel rooms in which they were staying. He had heard highway traffic all night. But a bunch of motorcycles was a different sound.
He let go of Hazel, trusting her to stay quiet now that she knew it was important, and crept to the window. Carefully, he pushed aside the curtain and peered out.
Sure enough, a long stream of motorcycles was ripping past them on the highway, not even slowing down. He turned and beckoned to Hazel, and she quickly joined him at the window.
He pointed. “Is that them?”
“I don’t know...” She frowned. “It’s hard to see.”
“What do you think?”
She watched them go for a minute. “That one has a mark on the back of his jacket like my tattoo.”
He nodded. “One of the others had that too. So, there they go.”
“We tricked them?”
“It looks like it,” he said. “Now we can head back safely. We should get moving as quickly as possible, though.”
“We can’t leave now,” she pointed out. “They’re still out there. We have to let them get a few miles away before we make our move. Otherwise, they’ll hear your bike when it starts up.”
He nodded. “Okay. We’ll take a shower. Then we’ll go.”
She smiled, and Emmett led her to the bathroom and turned on the warm water. They were still naked from the night before, and they stepped right in, allowing the water to cascade down their bodies. It felt something like a celebration, Emmett thought. They’d been on the run for what felt like a very long time, and now, they had tangible proof that the Rangers had missed them. Now, he could take Hazel back to her family without having to worry about her safety.
On second thought, maybe it wasn’t much like a celebration at all. In just a few days, they would be out of each other’s lives forever.
What would happen if the Rangers came back one day? He didn’t like the Coywolves’ chances of protecting their only omega. That pack was too weak. They hadn’t even tried to get her back when she’d been kidnapped. They hadn’t had any kind of plan. If Emmett hadn’t come knocking on their door, he was prepared to believe they would have just abandoned her to her fate. What kind of alpha would do that? He had found it hard enough to leave his own packmates behind. But they were trained fighters, and none of them had been kidnapped. He had every reason to believe they were fine.
And Hazel’s safety was only half the issue. There was also the matter of how madly attracted to her he was. He could no longer deny that something unique was going on here. It had to be related to the fact that she was an omega. He felt pulled almost magnetically toward her. It had become impossible to resist.
Like now. He had positioned himself in the shower with her, their naked bodies soapy and wet, without even thinking about the impact that was going to have on him. Now, he pulled her toward him and began to massage her breasts, thumbs working in circles over her nipples, and she gasped and pressed her hips back into him.
Could she come this way? Just from being touched like this? He had never met a girl who could, but she was different. She was an omega. Her body was wired in a more sensual, sexual way.
He eased her forward so that the water would hit the front of her body, cupped her breasts, and lifted them up to the spray, still working his thumbs over her hardening nipples. She ground her ass back against him, moaning now, back arching to encourage him.
Emmett ached to give her more, to pull her back and bury himself within her. But he was too curious to see whether this would really work, and watching her squirm under his hands was one of the hottest things he had ever experienced in his life. Long after he had returned her to the Coywolves, he knew, he would be reliving this experience.
She shouted his name as she came, thrusting her hips back once more, and went momentarily limp in his arms. He propped her against the wall, waiting for her to recover, his hand now sliding down her body to take care of his own swollen cock. A moment later, he felt her fingers join his, exploring inexpertly but gaining confidence as she worked. They interlaced their fingers and Emmett thrust twice into their joined hands and found that he was coming as hard as he ever had in his life.
THEY GOT ON THE ROAD quickly after that, throwing on their clothes and Emmett jamming his few possessions into his bag. As they rode eastward, he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of the Savage Rangers, even though he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for or why. He knew they had come this way. Would it really help him to see the leavings of one of their campsites?
Yes, he thought. It would. Because if he could see how the Savage Rangers lived in the wild while they were on the road, he would know a lot about them. That would tell him how smart they were, and how capable. If they left messy campsites that were easy to spot behind, he would know that they were careless, and he could relax a little about protecting Hazel.
But he didn’t see any campsites. He didn’t see any torn clothing or any rocks stacked in such a way that would suggest they might have been fire pits. He didn’t see any bent trees that might have had tarps hung over them the previous night or piles of leaves that might have been mattresses. Maybe they were staying in motels, like us, he thought, and wished he could ask when they stopped for the night if the people at the motel had seen the Rangers. But he knew better. Asking questions would get them noticed. There was nothing remarkable about him or Hazel to an outsider, and they would slip below most people’s radars as long as they didn’t make themselves memorable. Asking questions would ruin that.
They made good progress, and at four in the morning, Emmett decided they could stop at an all-night diner for a meal. If he was honest with himself, he thought, he would have to admit that he was stopping to get more face time with Hazel. Feeling her body wrapped around his on the road was fine as far as it went, but he wanted to talk to her. He wanted to hear more about her life with the Coywolves, and her unique take on the world.
Damn it, he liked her.
It was bad enough that he was attracted to her. Bad enough that he’d had sex with another pack’s omega while on a job. But now, he’d actually developed feelings for her.
What a fucking mess this was turning out to be.
His own packmates, he knew, would bust his chops if they knew what was going on. Pax, in particular, would be angry. And Dart—Dart had wanted to keep Hazel with them from the beginning, and Emmett had told him no. It was a decision he stood by. He still felt that bringing an omega into the Hell’s Wolves would be completely destructive to the pack. But there was a deeper, more primal part of him—his wolf side, he thought—that wanted her with him.
For now, he would settle for sandwiches.
He watched in awe as Hazel ordered a massive roast beef on rye and set about devouring it. “You’re hungry,” he said.
“I was kidnapped, remember?”
“Okay, sure, but you look like Dart when he’s gotten a kill.”
She threw a French fry at him. “I don’t look like Dart!”
“Ravenous, I mean. You weren’t this hungry yesterday.”
“I was so hungry that I couldn’t sleep,” she reminded him. “I was so hungry that I got a motel receptionist to give me her snack. You haven’t forgotten that, have you? Because you completely blew up at me over it at the time.”
“I haven’t forgotten it,” he said. “I just get the feeling a couple of granola bars wouldn’t satisfy you anymore.”
“Yeah, could I get another one of these, do you think?” she asked.
“Seriously?” Emmett pushed his own half-finished turkey sandwich over to her. “You can eat mine. I’m not going to finish it.”
“You’re not?” She picked it up and took a bite. “Awesome. Thanks.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Am I not feeding you enough or so
mething?”
“I think it’s like with the bacon,” she said. “I don’t get to eat food like this that often. It’s really good. I’m trying to make the most of it before I go back home.”
He nodded. That made sense. He supposed if he was going back to that rich, snooty, no-bacon house in a couple of days, he would have been going to town on his sandwich right now too.
“Hey, Hazel,” he said. “You do want to go back there, right? I mean, you’re not going out of obligation or anything? This is what you want?”
She lowered her sandwich slowly.
“What’s my alternative?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just don’t like the idea of taking you back. It doesn’t feel right, somehow. And that’s never happened on a job before.”
“Why don’t you want to take me back?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You know they’re not bad people, right? They’re not going to do anything to me.”
“They’re going to mate you against your will.”
“It’s not really against my will,” she said. “They’re going to choose a mate for me. It’s tradition, that’s all.”
“But is it what you want?” he persisted. “If you could choose anything. If you didn’t have to worry about what anybody else wanted except yourself. Would you still choose this? Would you go back to your pack and mate with whoever Matthew decided to pair you up with and raise as many litters as they decided you should and spend the rest of your life in that house? Would that be your choice?”
She picked at her sandwich.
“It wouldn’t, would it?” he said.
“I wish you wouldn’t ask me these things,” she said, and when she looked up, he saw tears in her eyes. “Can’t you see that it doesn’t matter? That is my life, Emmett. That’s what has to happen. I have to go back. I have to play my part for my pack, just like you have to play your part for yours. We can’t just decide to leave. Could you leave your brothers?”
He didn’t answer. The truth was, that for her, he was beginning to think he could, and that was terrifying. It was too terrifying to speak it out loud.
Instead, he said, “I don’t want to give you to them.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t appreciate you.”
“You don’t know them, Emmett.”
“I know they weren’t looking for you,” he said. “I know that after you went missing, they just sat around feeling vaguely sad about it.”
“They hired you.”
“They hired me because I went to them and solicited work. They weren’t looking for help. Help literally walked up and knocked on their front door.”
That surprised her, he could see it on her face. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” he said. “And even then, they were reluctant. Your alpha accused me of being one of the Savage Rangers, of trying to trick him into paying for your return.”
She looked stunned.
“And all I can think now is, why would he care?” Emmett asked. “He clearly has the money to spend. Why would he care who he was giving it to if it meant getting you back?” He shook his head. “I don’t think they deserve you.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said quietly.
He heard—or thought he heard—the implied question in her voice, and his mouth was forming the answer before his mind had time to rationalize it. “You can stay with me.”
She stared at him.
Immediately, he could have kicked himself. How could he have said that? How could he have let that thought escape his lips? It was what he wanted, yes. He could no longer deny that. But it was against everything the Hell’s Wolves were about. As long as he’d been their alpha, he had made it clear to the others that settling down with women in any kind of permanent capacity was inappropriate and dangerous. They couldn’t bring women on the road with them. That could lead to pregnancy. And they definitely couldn’t have pregnant women and babies on the road.
Of course, this risk was dialed up to the next level when the woman in question was an omega, for God’s sake. He couldn’t keep her with him, as much as he wanted to. He knew that.
But neither could he turn her back over to the Coywolves. They would probably just let her get kidnapped again.
What choices did that leave him? What was he supposed to do?
He could leave his pack behind.
The idea sickened him. But wasn’t that what he was asking her to do? Maybe that was the only way they could be together. He could take her away from the Coywolves and away from the Hell’s Wolves and they could start a new pack together, just the two of them.
God. He must be delusional.
“I can’t really stay with you, can I?” she said quietly, and not with the tone of a question. She’d been following his every thought, he realized, and she’d landed in exactly the same place as he had. There was only one way they could make it work, and that way wasn’t practical at all.
“I guess not,” he said quietly.
“I have to go back to them,” she said. “It’s where I belong. And you have to go back to your pack. They need their alpha.”
“They do,” he admitted. He thought about Pax, his second-in-command, who would ascend if he left his pack. Pax was a good man and a good fighter, but he was rash and incautious, and Emmett knew he would lead them into trouble. Judah had a level head, but Judah took rank seriously and would never challenge his alpha, no matter what kind of danger the pack was in. Dart, impetuous and rebellious, might go so far as to go off on his own, but none of the others would follow him. And Xander was just young. Without a good leader to guide him, he would grow into something Emmett didn’t want him to become.
He picked up the receipt and went to the cash register to pay the tab, suddenly wanting very much to escape this conversation. Looking at Hazel was hard. He kept remembering what she looked like naked, what she had felt like in the shower this morning as she’d come apart in his arms. He couldn’t stop thinking about the scent and the taste of her. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever come in contact with. She hardly seemed real.
The hell with my pack. I should take her.
This was too dangerous. Thoughts like that were dangerous. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way. He had to take her back. Having her with him was making him forget about the things that were important. He was an alpha and his primary responsibility was the well-being of his pack. She was an omega. Her responsibility was to bear offspring for her pack.
It was bad enough that he’d slept with her. Bad enough that he’d outright told her he wanted to keep her with him. He was going to have to get himself under control, and quickly.
He paid the bill and led the way back out to the motorcycle, which was parked in the narrow strip of asphalt between the diner and the highway. He climbed back on and felt Hazel take her seat behind him. Riding tandem had become natural to both of them now. He was used to the feeling of her holding on, and her grip had become less fearful and more easy. He could picture going on long runs with his pack with Hazel sitting behind him, her hair blowing in the wind, her cheek pressed to his back.
He had to stop picturing that.
He engaged the bike’s engine and pulled slowly out of the parking lot and onto the highway. If they kept going as they were, they would reach the Coywolves’ house sometime tomorrow and Hazel would be out of his life.
Maybe, he thought, it would be best to take one more detour. Just to make sure they’d lost the Rangers. Maybe he should dip down south for a bit before taking her home.
That was probably for the best.
Chapter Eleven
HAZEL
Hazel couldn’t believe it. He would keep her. He had said he would.
And never mind the fact that he’d turned that right around and said that he couldn’t keep her. Never mind that she knew as well as he did that it was impractical and probably impossible. The point was that he’d wante
d to. Which meant he was feeling the same things she was feeling. It wasn’t just a crush. She wasn’t being silly and naive and girlish.
There was something real going on here.
But they had left the diner now, and they were heading back toward home. The idea of it made her feel like crying. When she’d been with the Savage Rangers, home had seemed like a utopia she might never get back. When she had first heard Emmett say he planned to take her there, it had seemed like a miracle. But now, it was the last place she wanted to go. Now, she almost thought that getting kidnapped had been worth it. It had given her access to, and knowledge of, a whole other way of life.
It had allowed her to meet Emmett.
How was she going to go back to the Coywolves and feign interest in the boys there? She had known all her potential mates for her entire life, and not one of them stirred in her the kind of feelings Emmett did. How would she look at whoever Matthew assigned to her without seeing all the ways in which he couldn’t measure up to Emmett? How would she be able to go to bed with someone who could never be his equal?
That doesn’t matter, she told herself sternly. You won’t be doing it for fun, the way you were with Emmett. You’ll be doing it to conceive. You’ll be doing your duty. That’s all it is. Do your duty to your pack.
But why? Why should her life be about duty and responsibility? Everyone had a role to play in the pack, it was true. but the rest of them got to enjoy their lives too. They were allowed to leave the house. They were allowed to choose their own mates, or choose not to mate at all if that was what they wanted. All her life, she had been told how privileged she was not to have to get a job, not to have to work hard. She had been told she would be provided for. And that had always been true. But now, it occurred to her that having the freedom to lie around all day wasn’t the same as having freedom. It couldn’t compare, really.
It wasn’t just Emmett she wanted—although she did want him, and desperately. But she also wanted to be free to choose Emmett. She wanted to choose her mate for herself, not to let Matthew choose for her.