Chapter 2
CADE
“Jessica?”
The beautiful naked shifter standing opposite me all smooth and lush and tempting was Jess MacLeish. The new chick in town whom I’d been picturing naked ever since I’d first laid eyes on her. And damn, she wasn’t disappointing on the naked front, now that I had the full monty view.
She was curvy and voluptuous, just the way I like ‘em. Fantastic breasts that I could hardly wait to stroke and squeeze. But given the way her green eyes were spitting fire, I didn’t think I’d be lashing those hard, pink nipples with my tongue quite as quickly as I’d hoped.
I should have picked up on who she was sooner. I’d caught her scent. But it was fainter than it ought to be—elusive. Mysterious. But sweet, oh so sweet.
I must have been more muddled by the near-miss than I’d realized. I’d barely avoided a collision that probably would have killed me.
She hadn’t stayed in her wolf form for long, but she’d had that sleek, golden-eyed appearance of a magnificent beast before her facial features settled back to human. I’d never seen her wolf before. Tom had told me she didn’t like to shift. Which was weird. Almost unheard of, in fact.
Tom.
“Fuck my life!” I whirled back to the injured man on the ground. This wasn’t some stranger; Tom was my neighbor and my friend.
“Dammit Tom, can you hear me?”
He stirred. His eyelids flickered. He was still out, but not deeply. His head and neck seemed unscathed, which was a good sign.
I sought his pulse again. Steady. Other internal injuries could probably be mended if we could get him quickly to a trauma center.
I wiped some of the dirt off his face as I turned him slightly. I didn’t think there was a spine injury, but I didn’t want to move him too much. Dammit. As if Tom didn’t already have enough issues with his health.
“Grandpa has been trying to convince me that you’d grown up and left your wild ways behind,” the naked girl said. Her tone was scathing. “Guess he was wrong. What were you doing? Joyriding?”
I couldn’t deny it. There’s always joy in riding for me. I’d been reveling in the night and the time alone and, yeah, the speed. I’d been reminiscing about a time when I’d had a lot fewer responsibilities and a lot more fun.
Still, this fuckup wasn’t my fault, and I wasn’t gonna let her put it on me. “Who was driving?” I barked at her. “You or Tom?”
“He was.”
I guess I’d already known that. Jess had emerged from the passenger side. She’d been thrown or something…hell, it had looked like she was flying. “How the fuck could you be stupid enough to let Tom drive? Don’t you know—” I stopped, cutting myself off as I realized what I’d been about to say: Don’t you know how sick he is?
Because she didn’t know. Stubborn old Tom had insisted on not telling his granddaughter that his cancer had spread. He hadn’t wanted to ruin her homecoming.
“He assured me he was capable of driving.” She sounded pissed. “He’s been driving me around since I was a little girl, and he knows these roads far better than I do. I’ve been living out of the country for years, as I’m sure you know, Mr. Derringer. You know everything, since you’re the pack alpha now.”
Yep, she was pissed. It was cute on her. I liked a spirited lover. And her lover I fully intended to be. Well, not her lover, exactly. I wasn’t interested in any kind of attachment. I just wanted to slide my dick into that prime mouth. That bound-to-be-juicy pussy.
She wasn’t making it easy, though, and this crack-up would probably complicate things. I flashed back to what she’d said when we’d been introduced a couple of weeks ago. She hadn’t been diplomatic, which had amused me at the time. She was sassy.
“Cade Derringer? You’re the alpha now? You?”
I’d heard that before. The surprise. The incredulity. No one had ever expected Bad Boy Cade Derringer to grow up to be pack alpha. There were moments when I doubted it myself.
“What about your older brother?” Jess had asked. “Shouldn’t Aaron be the alpha now that your father is gone?”
Well, that had been a knife in my heart. Most people weren’t so blunt about it. They had more respect than to compare me to my brother right to my face. “Aaron’s dead,” I’d told her. Saying it kicked me deep inside. Goddamn, I missed him so much.
“I’m so sorry.” She’d looked stricken, and she’d even put a soothing hand on my arm for a moment. It had been a kind gesture, but her touch had roared straight to my cock.
I’d known at that moment that I wanted her. Focusing on my lust helped distract me from thinking about the various other crap in my life, so I’d actually devoted quite a bit of time to planning my Jess MacLeish seduction strategy.
That was then. Now she looked as if she’d like to thrust a spear into me. This didn’t help my mood. What the fuck was her problem? I hadn’t been the one driving on the wrong side of the road.
On the other hand, it was possible that I’d been at least partially responsible for the damn accident.
Yeah, Tom might have been speeding, but I hadn’t exactly been driving slowly, either.
In fact, up until a few hundred yards before that curve, I’d been racing. Not a smart way to behave on a foggy night like this.
Couple miles back, two guys had come up on me and challenged me. I’d figured they were members of one of the two rival motorcycle gangs in the region, the Tigerbears or the Rockets. But they weren’t patched like those MC club dudes, and besides, they were shifters.
Their full helmets hid their identities. I didn’t know if they were total strangers or a couple of guys from my own pack.
I shouldn’t have raced. But knowing they might be members of my pack—the pack I’d led for less than two years—how could I refuse that challenge?
The two riders were good. They’d worked as a team, crowding me from either side. One had deliberately tried to wreck me on an earlier curve. I’d kept it together that time, but they’d pulled the same tactic again, nearly forcing me off the road, and sending my anger levels soaring.
While one came about two inches from skidding into me, the other pulled ahead and raised an arm in triumph. Won, yeah, but not exactly fair and square.
I might have laughed off the nasty tactics—I’d seen a lot worse—had the other dude not given me the finger as he rode off.
That was rude.
No alpha likes being dissed, and I’d been stewing about it when I’d rounded that curve and come upon Tom’s headlights. I was pretty sure that the SUV had already been out of control. The other two bikers might have had something to do with that.
“Did you see a couple other bikers on the road before you entered that curve?”
Jess frowned as if trying to recall the details of the accident. “Bikers? Yes. I thought it was a car, but the headlights were too widely separated. They startled me and must have spooked my grandfather.”
Bingo. Fuck those two assholes. Had they even realized they’d caused an accident? They hadn’t stopped.
I glanced up at the granddaughter. The naked granddaughter. The very fuckable naked granddaughter.
“You might want to put some clothes on. The ambulance guys will be here soon, and they’re ords.”
Ords. Ordinary humans. Not shifters.
“Not that I wouldn’t like to keep looking at you naked,” I couldn’t help adding. I threw in a smirk for good measure and loved it when she rolled her pretty green eyes at me.
“I’m not naked, I’m skyclad.”
I chortled at the euphemism.
“Please don't pretend my nudity shocks you.”
“Shocks me? Not likely. Affects me, though?” I dropped my hand to my groin in a gesture I ought to have been ashamed of, but wasn’t. This had turned into one helluva fuckup already. I doubted there was much I could do to make it worse. “Color me affected.”
The corners of her mouth turned down enough to tell me she thought me an ass. She had that right. I was supposed to have put the bad boy swagger shit behind me now that I was pack leader. I’d had to grow the fuck up.
And I had, too. Most of the time.
“God, you’re just as crude as you were as a teenager, aren’t you?”
“How the hell do you know what I was like as a teenager?”
“I spent a lot of my childhood here. You probably don’t remember. You were a lot older, and you never paid any attention to me.”
I tried the winning grin that always works with women. “Can't imagine why not, but I’d be glad to remedy that mistake.”
She snorted. “You were too busy playing rebel without a cause, roaring through town with your motorcycle club friends. You were always in trouble. If one of the Derringer brothers was gonna die young, I’d have expected…” her voice trailed off. “Um, never mind. Sorry.”
She’d been about to refer to Aaron again. My brother the golden boy, the prince, the heir. No one could forget Aaron, even though he’d been in his grave for years. I couldn’t forget him, either. If one of us had had to go, it should’ve been me, not him.
I pushed the negativity away. Screw that. It hadn't happened the way the pack had expected, and now they just had to deal with it.
Flashing red lights and sirens warned me that the ambulance was approaching. Jess started toward the wreck, but I grabbed her by the arm to stop her. “Wait.” I’d already taken off my jacket, so I unbuttoned my shirt and ripped it off. I had a T-shirt on underneath, so I was still covered, compared to her butt-naked self.
“Better not go poking around in the wreck. Might be twisted metal bits sticking up. Put this on instead.”
She took it and, as she did, she gave me an absentminded smile. She had a great smile. It had been one of the first things I’d noticed about her when Tom had introduced us. When Jessica smiled, she was fucking radiant.
“Thanks.” She pulled my ratty shirt on without making any comments about its dubious cleanliness. When she closed the front, it covered two absolutely perfect plump breasts and a kissable belly. I didn’t even dare contemplate her pert mound or her shapely legs. I wanted those legs wrapped around my waist while I slammed into her.
My shirt fell to her thighs. Good. I didn’t want the ambulance crew to look at her.
My cock throbbed as I realized I was saving that sight all for myself.