CHAPTER TWELVE
Poppy had just showered off all the chlorine and pulled on a pair of leggings, a t-shirt and a pair of flats when she caught the sound of Stetson’s voice, loud and angry, coming from down the hall. Her heart hammered in her chest for a moment and she found herself wondering what he was yelling at. Well, there was only one way to know for sure…
She slipped from Bronte’s bedroom and wandered down the hall, careful to tiptoe in case he caught her snooping outside of his study room. When she reached the door, she could just see through where he had left it open a crack. He was pacing up and down.
“It’s not like that,” Stetson said loudly into the phone he had pressed against his ear. “I am not falling for her.”
Poppy found herself holding her breath. He couldn’t have been talking about her, could he? She waited to hear more before jumping to any conclusions.
“I feel nothing for her.”
Those words caused Poppy’s heart to ache. She was growing more and more suspicious that he was talking about her. She remembered what they had done in the pool not an hour ago and she felt like she had been stabbed in the chest. She could barely breathe.
“She is nothing but a client.”
Those were the words that confirmed it for her. He had been talking about her and his words caused her to gasp loudly in shock.
It was then that he whipped around, and she realized that he had heard her exclamation. Their eyes met for a moment and she saw shock in his gaze.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, couldn’t bear to be taken in by the shock in his gaze. That look might intimate that he was sorry for what he had said. Instead, she turned around and began to run down the hallway. Her legs would not seem to carry her fast enough as she rushed down the stairs, two at a time. She needed to get out of there, she needed to be away from him, away from this house. Her heart hammered in her chest as she ran, and she felt sick to her stomach, though she did not stop.
She ran and ran and ran, leaving the house and racing down the driveway towards the huge wrought iron gates. She had no idea whether she could escape them, but she had to try. She needed to be away from there. She couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere near Stetson ever again. Not after what he had said about her. The words rung in her ears buzzing like bees around her brain.
When she reached the gates, she was shocked to see them begin to open up in front of her. For a moment, she thought that Stetson might have opened them up from the house but when she turned to glance back at the building, she saw that he was giving chase. His huge form was lumbering towards her.
She needed to get out of there quickly. She turned again and continued her run through the gates and began to make her way down the country lane beyond. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps and her chest began to ache with the effort of it, but still she continued. That was, until she felt something suddenly wrap around her. Confusion hit her for a moment as she looked down at the arms that pinned her own to her sides. At first, when she saw them, she thought they were Stetson’s and for a moment she felt the familiar heat she felt whenever he was near. Then she saw the thick black tattoo that snaked its way up the left arm and her heart burst with fear.
“Get off me!” she screamed as the danger registered inside her. “Stetson!”
Though she was angry with him for what he’d said, she found herself calling for him. She screamed for him at the top of her lungs.
In that moment, she realized that she wasn’t just falling for Stetson. She had already fallen for him and she had fallen for him hard. Fear gripped her even more as she imagined never seeing him again.
She fought with all her might against the man those thick arms wrapped tightly around her, crushing her to within an inch of her life. She could barely breathe, and she knew that if she didn’t get away from his iron grip soon, she would surely pass out or worse.
“Stetson!” The scream was quieter this time as she choked on her almost empty lungs.
***
Stetson cursed himself for having set the sensors of the gates to allow people to exit. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. If nobody unwanted could get in, then why not let anyone leave whenever they wanted to. Now, it seemed like the stupidest idea he’d ever thought of as he watched Poppy run right out of the gates, away from him. For a moment, he skidded to a halt. Damn, that woman was faster than he’d expected. He was always underestimating her. He wished that he could shift and chase her down, but he knew that she wouldn’t just be pissed off with him then. She would be absolutely terrified and then he would have no chance of explaining himself.
How could he explain to a woman he barely knew that he had simply been telling his brother what he had to in order to stop himself from looking weak? How could he explain to her that he really did care for her and that, for him, that was the largest weakness he could ever have? How could he explain to her that he was a dangerous liability, not only to himself but also to her?
Right now, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The second he heard Poppy scream, he set off again, running faster than ever.
“Poppy!” he yelled back, even though he knew that with her weak human hearing, the odds of her actually hearing him were almost zero.
“Stetson!” When he heard her yell again, there was utter terror in her voice. It pushed him on faster than he’d ever run in his human form.
All too late, he reached the corner of the lane where Poppy was being attacked. The man stood at what must have been a foot taller than her with his thick arms wrapped tightly around her. The scene caused Stetson’s stomach to lurch as he began to race towards them. His heart hammered in his chest like it never had before. He realized that, for the first time, he was actually fearful of losing someone that he cared about who wasn’t one of his brothers.
“Get off me!” Poppy screeched as the man began to drag her in the opposite direction. He glanced over his shoulder and Stetson’s eyes connected with his. There was no fear in his eyes but, in that moment, Stetson decided by the end of the day, he would see more than fear in those brown depths.
Suddenly, Stetson felt something heavy come down on the back of his head. Pain lanced down his spine and stars sprung up in his eyes as he came down onto his knees like a ton of bricks. The second hit came just as his forehead hit the floor and everything went black.
The next thing he knew, he was on his side in the dusty back of a vehicle. When he glanced around him, he could only ascertain that he was in the back of a truck. When he tried to breathe in, a gasp of air dust floated up into his nostrils. His chest and arms ached as he realized that his arms were bound behind his back.
Damn it, he snapped at himself. Since when do I let humans get the jump on me?
It was the small voice in the back of his head that gave him the answer. Since you allowed yourself to fall for one of them.
“What are you doing?” Poppy’s shrill voice hit his ears through the open doors of the back of the truck. “What are you doing? Get off me!”
The sound of scuffling was all Stetson needed to hear to know that somebody was manhandling her. That set his blood boiling. He barely managed to contain himself as he wriggled his way around so that he could look out of the back of the van.
Two men were carrying Poppy like a sack of potatoes, one at her feet and the other with his arms wrapped under hers while her hands were tied in front of her. To her credit, she did not allow herself to be held easily. For a little woman, she certainly wriggled and jerked enough to make their footing uneven.
“Stop your wriggling!” the man at her arms yelled. Then the two of them threw her down into a pile of hay across the barn. “You’ll get what’s coming to you if you don’t shut your yapper!”
Nobody threatens Poppy, Stetson heard himself growling before he’d even realized that he’d opened his mouth.
“Get the big guy out of the van,” the first man demanded of the other with a stab of his thumb in Stetson’s direction.
You really don’t want to do that, Stetson thought to himself as he imagined being able to rip them both in two for even touching Poppy like they had.
“Leave him alone!” Poppy shouted shrilly as the second man began to stride towards the vehicle. Stetson was instantly warmed by her words. Her concern for him made his heart swell.
Don’t let her distract you, he told himself, all too aware of the kind of things that could go terribly wrong if he allowed himself to get distracted in such a situation.
Closing his eyes, he decided to bide his time. There was little he could do in the small confined space he found himself in, especially with his arms handcuffed behind his back. He made himself a dead weight as the man slipped his arms under his armpits and began to drag him from the truck bed. All too ungracefully, the man dropped him onto the floor and Stetson let out a loud growl. “Watch what the fuck you are doing!”
“Looks like sleeping beauty is awake,” the first man laughed as he crouched down beside Poppy and grabbed hold of her chin. “Is this your girl, sleeping beauty?”
Stetson kept his mouth shut and simply glared at the man as he shoved himself up into a sitting position. The man stared back at him with a smirk on his face. “I would answer me if I was you,” he snarled as he reached into his pocket and pulled out something that glinted in the sunlight that beamed in through a crack in the rotten barn doors. “Unless you’d like me to have a little fun with her. Would you like that, sleeping beauty?”
That was when Stetson realized what the man had in his hand. He brought the blade up towards Poppy’s cheek and pressed the very tip against her soft flesh. Stetson barely managed to stop himself from baring his teeth at the man. His wolf form was writhing inside just waiting to get free and tear the guy’s head off.
“I really wouldn’t do that if I was you,” the other guy joked. “This guy looks angry.”
Neither of them sounded scared. Stetson knew they should be. He had seen the aftermath of what his wolf form could do. The only thing that was stopping from him shifting was the fact that Poppy was sitting right there between them. He had no idea whether he would be able to control his wolf form enough not to hurt her in the process and the last thing he wanted was for her to see his true form.
“If you don’t move away from her, I will tear you both limb from limb,” Stetson promised coolly.
“Is that a promise or a threat, my friend, because I would be most intrigued to see how you could do that with your arms tied behind your back.” The first man with a bald head laughed as he dug the blade a little into Poppy’s cheek and a thin line of blood began to streak down her face. She flinched away but he grabbed her by the back of the head.
“I am warning you,” Stetson snarled.
“Stetson, please, they are going to hurt me.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Stetson told her softly. “Nobody is going to be hurting you today.”
The two men began to laugh, and Stetson knew that there was going to be no way around it. He could tell from the way that they laughed, that they were not new to the kind of games they were playing. These men were used to scaring people, used to hurting people. Stetson had seen all too many of them in his time. His face had been the last thing they had ever seen, and it would be the last thing these two guys saw too.
“Poppy, sweetheart, I want you to do something for me,” Stetson told her, and he turned his gaze to her. He allowed his gaze to connect with hers and waited for her to nod before he went on. “I want you to close your eyes for me, ok?”
“Close my eyes? I am not going to close my eyes! I want to get out of here!” She looked as though she was about to burst into a fit of tears. Stetson wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew that he could not do that until he had dispatched the assholes who’d scared her in the first place.
“Do you trust me?” Stetson asked her, continuing to look at her dead in the eye. Please, baby. Trust me.
“Well, isn’t this touching?” the second guy laughed. Still, Stetson kept his eyes on her, willing her silently to answer him. He needed her answer before he did what he was about to do. Something he hadn’t wanted her to see, ever.
“Poppy, do you trust me?” he asked a little louder and she nodded. “Close your eyes then.”
The second she closed her eyes, Stetson began to change. He allowed his limbs to grow and his body to twist until it was completely unrecognizable to the two men crouched on either side of Poppy. Their eyes grew wide with fear as he threw himself at them.
***
Poppy could not control herself to keep her eyes closed. The gasps of shock that came from the men on either side of her were enough to make her eyes flutter open. The sight that caught her eye was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was Stetson, but it wasn’t Stetson. His body had grown larger and thick with hair and it was changing still. Before her eyes, Stetson changed from the handsome man she’d been in bed with to the magnificent gray wolf she had seen only once before and had never thought to see again.
Utter amazement overwhelmed her as she her mouth gaped open. Instinct caused her to roll out of the way as the wolf came flying towards them. She began to crawl on her hands and knees, shuffling wherever she could to escape whatever the hell was going on behind her. One blood curdling cry hit her ears and she glanced over her shoulders to see the bloodied body of one of the men broken and battered. His lifeless eyes stared coldly back at her and she began to scream.
When the wolf flew at the second man, it was only seconds before he landed on top of him. The creature mewled for a second and Poppy saw blood spray his gray fur. In an instant, he lunged at the man’s throat and tore it right out of his neck. Bile rose in the back of Poppy’s throat and she barely managed to hold on to the contents of her stomach. Oh God.
It wasn’t until the wolf turned its attention on her that she really began to know what true fear was. For a moment, she thought it was going to lunge at her as it had the two men. Its eyes blazed with fury and its lips pulled back in a snarl that was dripping blood. Then its face softened, and it let out a saddened whine.
The gray creature limped towards her and she remembered something she’d once heard about not moving too fast in front of a wild animal. She found she was unable to take her eyes off it as it sauntered towards her and dropped down into a crouch. Her heart thundered heavily in her chest and she struggled with the urge to get up and run as the animal leaned forward and placed its muzzle against her cheek. He rubbed gently against her cheek before she felt the wet tongue stroke over the wound that the man’s knife had caused.
In an instant, with such an affectionate gesture, Poppy felt all her fear melt away. When the wolf pulled back to look at her, she saw that, though the body was different, the eyes were still the same eyes as those she had looked into when she had made love with Stetson. This wolf was Stetson and he was just as beautiful in wolf form as he was in his human form.
Poppy couldn’t believe her eyes as again the creature began to change and shift. Within moments, Stetson was crouched before her, his head bowed and his body completely devoid of clothing. A thorn stabbed her heart as she saw the large gash that ran down his right shoulder. “Stetson, you are injured!” she gasped, and she reached forward with her bound hands to touch his arm.
Stetson’s head lifted, and he looked at her with shock in his eyes. He searched her face as though he was looking for something before he asked in disbelief, “You aren’t scared of me?”
***
“You just saved my life,” Poppy shrugged, her small shoulders lifting. “How could I be scared of you?”
Stetson could not control himself then. He reached forward and pulled her into his arms.
“Stetson!” she gasped. For a second, he thought he had frightened her until she quickly added, “Your arm! You are injured!”
She pulled quickly away from him to look at his arm and Stetson looked down to see the gash that was spread across his bulging bicep.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Stetson assured her. With that, he reached forward to untie her wrists. He paused halfway through and looked at her. “If I undo these, you aren’t going to go running for the hills and tell everyone my secret, are you?”
“And if I tell you that I will?” she asked but there was something in the spark that flashed through her eyes that told Stetson there was no way she would do something like that.
“I’m sorry but I can’t release you until you promise me.” He bit the inside of his lip, warring with all the emotions that bubbled up inside him. He had never been so fearful of something in his life, never felt as much fear as when he thought that he and his brothers were in danger of having their secret learned by the entire human race.
“I promise, you have nothing to fear from me,” Poppy assured him, and his fears only eased off a little. He would never truly believe that he was safe, not while he had the secret wolf hiding within him.
Stetson still didn’t make a move to untie the rest of her binds and so Poppy reached up to press her hand to his cheek. “What have I got to do to prove it to you?” she asked.
Stetson didn’t have a clue what she could do to prove it to him, though he knew she had come close when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. The heat that overwhelmed him was like nothing he’d ever felt before and he found himself leaning in to her.
A moment later, he found himself laying on top of her, their bodies writhing in the pile of hay. A growl erupted from his throat and he felt Poppy shiver beneath him.
“Are you alright?” he asked as he pulled away slightly. He was scared that he might have hurt her. He wasn’t sure he was back in control of himself.
“I always wondered why you growled like that,” she giggled up at him. “I guess now I know why.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“I would be lying if I said that it didn’t, but I guess I will have to get used to it if I am going to see where this is going to go between us,” she smiled warmly. Stetson felt his heart melt as he realized what she was saying.
“Are you saying you aren’t going to run away and change your name, hair and everything else to get away from me?” The thought stung. He remembered one such woman who had done just that before she had tried to give him and his brothers up. He knew that was why he was always so wary of women, though he would never admit it to himself.
“For the first time in my life, I do not feel the need to run away from a man,” Poppy told him and then she pulled him back down to her. There was something in her voice that told him she had never said truer words and his heart swelled at the thought of the meaning behind them.
He gripped hold of her wrists and told her gently against her lips, “Grit your teeth. This might hurt a little.”
Then, he tugged hard and sharp and the handcuffs that were holding her wrists snapped apart. They jangled around her wrists and she gasped as she looked down at the broken metal.
“Oh my god!” she gaped. “I knew you were strong, but I didn’t realize you were that strong.”
“You just saw me turn into a wolf and it’s my strength that amazes you,” Stetson laughed. He stroked a strand of hair away from her face. “You are an intriguing woman, Poppy Wade.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been with a wolf man before,” Poppy giggled and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I think I might enjoy this.”
“I know you will if last night and this morning is anything to go by,” Stetson reminded her.
“I want to feel that again,” she whispered to him. When she breathed out a sigh, he felt himself quiver in her arms. “Stetson, I want you inside me again. I want to thank you for saving my life.”
“I don’t need you to thank me,” Stetson assured her. “But whatever the lady wants, the lady gets.”
Stetson reached down and gripped hold of her leggings. Pulling them from her legs, he growled deep in his throat at the sight of her long, smooth legs and the soft flesh between them. That’s how he took her, there in the hay, like he had never taken her before. He thrust inside her like the wild animal that he was, and they writhed and grunted and moaned as their bodies melted together.
“I love you, Poppy,” Stetson gasped the words that he never believed he would ever hear himself say again and his heart began to swell further as he heard her reply.
“I love you too, Stetson.”
Their energies connected then, and Stetson truly felt whole for the first time in his life as he felt all his fears melt away. A new light began to shine at the end of the tunnel that he never believed he would see, no matter how many times his brothers told him it would happen. He had to believe them now.
THE END