Chapter 3
JESS
“Sorry, ma’am, but unless you’re hurt, there’s no room for you in the ambulance.”
“I’m his granddaughter. Make room.”
“She was in the crash,” Cade said. “You guys haven’t even examined her.”
“I’m not hurt,” I said when one of them turned to me, mumbling an apology.
“Sorry, I thought you were with him,” he said, gesturing to Cade.
“She is with me. Now. You guys go; take care of Tom. I’ll bring the girl on my bike.”
I was about to protest, but I realized from the urgency of the two EMTs that they needed to devote their full attention to keeping my grandfather stable.
“Yes, go. Please take good care of him, okay?”
“We will, ma’am. And the officers will be right along. If you’re unhurt, it’s best to wait for them and not leave the scene of the accident until they take your statement.”
Indeed, I could hear more sirens approaching. Cade nodded. “I’ll bring you right along after him. Everything’ll be okay. Here,” he said, walking toward the wreck, “Let’s find your things.”
Some kind of adrenaline ebb must be hitting, because I felt trembly and exhausted. As the police car drew up and the ambulance pulled away, I was glad he was there, asshat though he was. He climbed over the twisted metal of the SUV and found my clothing. He even retrieved my backpack with my phone and my sketchpad.
I dressed behind a couple of trees while he spoke to the police. He clearly knew the officers, and he must have explained what had caused the accident because when I went over to where they were examining the wreck and taking pictures, they nodded to me and asked after my health.
“They’ll ask us their routine questions tomorrow,” Cade informed me, slinging one arm around my shoulders and pulling me close to his side. I was glad of that, too, because the wind had picked up and I felt chilly. He was big and tough and warm.
Alpha wolves were a pain in the ass in all sorts of ways, but they were leaders and protectors, and he seemed to have that role down solidly enough.
“C’mon. I’ll take you to the hospital.”
I went with him. I probably could have gotten a ride with the cops, but that would delay things since one of them was walking around the SUV and photographing it, and the other was making some kind of measurements on the road.
As Cade and I climbed the gentle hill to the pavement where he’d left his motorcycle, I studied him. He was tall, with broad shoulders and long, muscular arms and legs. His clothes consisted of a T-shirt and jeans, the lower ends pulled down over a pair of riding boots. His hair was dark brown, thick, and shaggy.
There was something appealing about his scent, too. It was hot, spicy and delicious. But that perception came from the part of me that I didn’t want to acknowledge. The animal part. The beast within.
He was staring at me, so I returned the scrutiny. Regular features, clean lines and angles. Good eyes—large, expressive and blue-blue-blue. A strong blade of a nose over a generous, mobile mouth. A slight cleft in the chin. His cheeks were scruffy with dark whiskers, but it wasn't clear whether he was growing a beard or if he just hadn't bothered to shave today.
He gave a lazy smile, and I noticed his mouth again—full-lipped and sensuous. He was hot-damn sexy.
When he’d straightened up the motorcycle, he mounted and patted the leather seat behind him. Something about the way his hand caressed that leather sent sparks through me. I imagined his fingers on my breast. Between my thighs.
Damn. That was all I needed now—an attack of the lusties. No way in hell.
He had the kind of smokin’ vibe that drew me against my will. Why did males like him always push my buttons? It was a flaw I hadn’t been able to stamp out.
“At your service, ma'am," he drawled, smiling. He offered me his hand. “Climb on.”
Such bullshit. This guy wasn’t at anybody’s service. He was the local alpha. He didn’t serve. He commanded.
He was a cocky bastard, too. Oh, he knew how to be smooth. I had already seen that he was quick with a laugh or a grin, but he was also full of himself. He had that arrogant way of walking and talking that told me he knew he was valued, admired and even feared by the members of his wolf pack. And by most of the clueless human inhabitants of Whittier, too.
I took the hand he offered me, but I was quick to extricate my fingers from his too-firm grasp as soon as I was seated. I felt a bit unsteady after the crash, so the idea of nestling up to someone strong and capable didn’t offend me.
Pressed against him, I could feel that Derringer was tough, hard and as ripped as a wrestler. Since he’d removed two layers of clothing, I’d seen some scars, probably from fights he’d been in, and tattoos that made him look like the leader of a biker gang. He’d walked around the wreck with the loose-hipped swagger of a cowboy. His steely blue eyes had glowed with the lingering wildness of his youth. I could sense his wolf lurking just beneath the façade of aw shucks Western courtesy.
I supposed you didn’t get to be the alpha of a wolf pack without having a deep inbred ferocity. How had he snagged the job? Grandpa had told me something about it, but I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention at the time.
“I guess I should have mentioned,” Cade said, “if you’d prefer to shift and run, you’re welcome to do so. But shifting back in town is forbidden, unless you’re in a private dwelling, unobserved by humans. Plus,” he added with a smirk at my now-covered body, “You’re kinda new here, so I doubt you know where the clothing stashes are kept.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to shift. In my current stressed-out state of mind, I wouldn’t even consider it. If I couldn’t control my shift…god, I didn’t even want to think about that. I’d already gone through one spontaneous transformation tonight; I shuddered at the idea of falling into another.
“I’m not part of your pack.” Nor likely to be. “But thanks for the ride. If you’ll just drop me off outside the hospital, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll come in with you. I want to talk to a friend of mine who’s on the staff there. He’s one of us and he’s familiar with your granddad’s case. I don’t want Tom to get stuck with some ord doc who doesn’t know how to treat our race.”
I’d always been healthy, so I’d never given much thought to what happened when a shifter was treated in an ordinary human hospital. Humans didn’t know shifters existed, although there were plenty of legends, not to mention the occasional sighting. “There are shifter doctors?”
“Sure. You oughta know that. We’re everywhere.”
“I guess I do know that. I just…how do you know which doctors are familiar with my grandfather’s case?”
He seemed to shut down when I asked that question. “I’m alpha leader. It’s my job to know stuff about the members of the pack. You ready? Let’s go.”
When he kicked the engine, the bike jolted as if it were alive. "Have you done much riding?" Derringer yelled over the roar.
"Hardly any."
“Easy as pie. Just press yourself against me and hold on tight.”
He gripped my wrists and pulled my arms around his waist. In some weird way, he felt familiar to me. No accounting for that. There was something surreal about this—the dark, the unplanned shift that had saved me from injury, the crash, Grandpa silent and hurt, this man I hardly knew whose body felt so right.
Frightened though I was for Grandpa, I couldn’t deny how exciting it felt to be seated astride Mr. Sex Personified’s motorcycle, my thighs locked around his and my belly hard against his back.
"Hang on tight. I wouldn't want you to fall off.”
"I'm not worried about falling off. I'm worried about my grandfather. Can't we go any faster?"
He hit the gas and we sped up, the trees melting into a blur.
CADE
I was nothing more than a vehicle to her. But as soon as I'd touched her, I knew I was going to fuck her. Whatever it took to get her down on her back beneath me—or, even better, on her knees—I intended to do.
I considered everything I knew about her. We’d only met twice since she’d arrived, and not for more than a few minutes on either occasion, but Tom had talked about her enough. In fact, she’d been just about all he’d talked about, once she’d told him she was moving back to Whittier.
She was some kind of artist. Painter or graphic designer or something. She’d been born here in Montana, but she’d moved away after her father’s death. At some point, she’d left the country for Scotland, where her mother’s family resided.
I remembered something else: "She's wary around males,” Tom had said. “Especially shifter males.”
“What’s she got against shifters? She’s a shifter herself.”
“Plus she’s got this silly prejudice against hunting. I told Jess she was gonna have a rough time here in Montana, finding herself a man who doesn't hunt, but the girl's real stubborn.”
“What the hell? She’s a wolf. Show me a wolf who doesn't hunt.”
“She doesn’t shift much.”
I’d wondered why not, but Tom declined to elaborate.
“She’s independent,” he’d claimed. “Probably thinks she doesn't need a man."
"What about a mate?” Most shifter females found a mate sooner or later; many sooner.
“You lookin’ for your mate, Cade?”
“Me? Hell no. I don’t believe in that crap, and besides, I got my pick.”
Which was true. Jess was in my territory now and she was hardly likely to turn me down should my choice fall upon her.
Feeling her hanging onto me was intoxicating. Superhot. Her pelvis against my ass was delicious torture. Her hair, whipping forward over my shoulders, smelled fresh and clean and exotic. I’d fucking love to bury my face in that hair and wind its strands around my fingers, my limbs, my cock. Better still, I’d love to bury my face in her pussy.
I would, too. Soon enough.
Shame arrowed through me. Here I was, fixating on this woman, reveling in the lust and desire she’d aroused in me at the same time that Tom MacLeish, her grandfather and my friend, was fighting for his life in the ambulance.
What a horny bastard I am.