CHAPTER TWO

 

Blue Creek had barely changed since he’d left. The taxi ride from the airport, going through the outskirts and into town, had been confronting enough. The few happy memories were strangled by all the others: the teasing, the spitting, the abandonment. That had always been the way with the wolves in his clan. It was the law of nature to sort the wheat from the chaff.

He couldn’t really knock the system, though. They’d treated him as weak. There was no doubt it was that, more than anything else, which had made him so strong.

Almost every street held a bad memory. And the less said about the woods around the town, the better. Childhood trauma he could handle. But with Jennifer, and all that happened…

Adam shook the memory from its perch and came back into the present. He looked around the town green at the gathered crowd. He knew a lot of them were family, though most of them were distant. And that was exactly how he felt. Distant.

There was a reason he’d stayed away, turned his back on these people. After all, a lot of them had turned from him first. In the end, though, it had been his choice to leave, and to let this place fade. He’d turned Blue Creek into nothing more than a stranger’s home movie.

When he first left he’d thought of his journey as a simple regathering; a way to focus his energies on his career. But time and habit had numbed him to his heritage, to the point he’d let his city life become his only life.

After Jennifer there’d been nothing imaginable to keep him in the place. Not Leigh, not his uncle and aunt, and most especially not his damn parents, who were noticeably—and thankfully—absent from the gathered faces.

Just the thought of them had him reaching for a double scotch from a passing waiter’s tray.

“Hi there, tall, dark stranger.”

Adam turned to find his cousin Leigh smirking up at him. He was surprised to feel himself smiling back. Pleasantries over the phone were one thing, but now, face-to-face, Adam knew it would take his strongest effort not to turn away. To head back to the city, to the new life he’d created.

But it was Leigh. Like the town, she’d barely changed since he last saw her, and a tsunami of memories washed through him. Wrestling matches in childhood, where she would always manage to pin him—right up until puberty switched the power balance, and gave them a whole mess of reasons to feel uncomfortable about wrestling. But the bond was still there, and it was like the bond between twins.

“Hello, Leigh.”

“That’s it? That’s all you got for me after four years? Did your big-city surgeon buddies neuter you or something?”

Adam held her gaze for a moment before a small bubble of laughter erupted from his mouth. “Well, now I feel at home.” He stepped forward and swept his arms around his much shorter cousin, lifting her in a hug that would rival a bear shifter’s. “It’s wonderful to see you, Lofty.”

“That’s more like it. Now if you could just let me breathe again, that’d be super-great.”

Adam gave her one more squeeze. She was wolf. She could take it. When he placed her back on the ground she gave him a light punch on the shoulder.

“But you’re still not forgiven, you big lump. What, did the city lose power or something? All the phone lines were down? Someone broke the interwebs?”

“Yep, that’s right. The city elders drafted a plan to get the Pony Express started up again. It probably would have worked, but I ate all the ponies.” He took a healthy slug of his unhealthy drink.

“Ugh. Ponies. They taste okay, but they leave me a little hoarse.”

Adam’s expensive mouthful came straight out into the air, propelled by the laugh he couldn’t suppress. “Dammit, Lofty. How will I get through this if you won’t let me swallow?”

“As the actress said to the shifter.”

“Do you have to use that word?”

“What word? Actress? Said? The?”

Adam simply stared into her eyes.

Leigh stared straight back “You know that steely look doesn’t actually work on me, right?”

“I know it never did. I thought perhaps my years of sharpening it might have made a difference.”

Leigh hooked her arm through his. “Cuz, it really is nice to have you back here. And whether you acknowledge your…s-word status or not, well that’s your choice. But hell, it was nice just to hear you joke about your wolf. Makes me think one day you might even embrace him again.”

When she looked up at him with such hope in her eyes, he thought about lying to her. In the end, though it would hurt her, he had to tell her the truth.

“I said it back then, and nothing can change my mind, Lofty. I am no wolf. Not anymore.”

Leigh rested her head on his upper arm and sighed. “All right then, mister serious. Be like that. But it just so happens I brought you a present.”

“Me? But it’s your mom and dad’s special day.”

“Well, you know me. I’m a giver.”

“If memory serves, that so-called giving was restricted to purple nurples and wedgies, right up until I outgrew your ass.”

“If you can’t back it up with video evidence, then I’m afraid it never happened. And don’t get off the point.”

Adam bopped her forehead with the heel of his hand. “You actually have a point somewhere in all this?”

“Be nice or I’ll take my present home with me.”

He sighed and took another swig from his drink, making sure to swallow it quickly. “All right then. What could you possibly bring me that I don’t already have?”

“Wait here and I’ll show you.”

“You know I have extremely particular tastes, don’t you? In all things.”

“Uh-huh. And I know exactly what they are.” She shot him a tiny wink. “In all things.”

Leigh walked off across the clearing, heading straight over to where the Wolfe clan stood in a small group. He spotted Barbara immediately, and then realized the tuxedo forest around her was comprised of her mate Tristan and her sons Aric and Nathan. No doubt her other children were scattered around somewhere as well. He’d never been particularly close to the Wolfes, though they’d come to his defense a few times when he was young.

Before passing the group by, Leigh touched Barbara on the shoulder, leaning over to whisper something so low that even straining his hardest, Adam couldn’t quite hear it. Just a few words: Fun. Tease. Adam. Even without context he could pretty much work it out.

Barbara glanced across the short distance at him, her clear blue eyes glinting with more than a hint of her legendary mischief. For want of anything better to do, Adam raised his glass and his eyebrows in unison.

Leigh glanced back over at him with that elfin grin that meant she was at her conniving best. In this case, he knew she was drawing out the moment as much as she could, trying to test his patience.

“Test away, Lofty,” he murmured to himself. “I can stand in one place for ten hours with someone’s life in my hands.”

He scanned around the gathered clan in a show of nonchalance. There were few other people he’d even consider acknowledging. And only three people he was certain he’d never met.

As if reading his mind, Leigh stopped right behind one of those strangers, catching Adam’s eye and nodding.

He glanced at his cousin, who flashed her eyes wide at him and nodded again at the woman she stood behind. Leigh had clearly decided to play match-maker again. He raised the glass to his mouth to prevent himself scoffing at her.

The moment he shifted his gaze across, though, he froze in place. This was not just some random woman. This was a goddess who’d absolutely been designed with the express purpose of tempting Adam back to the dark side. The side where ridiculous emotional and physical needs ruled. Where libidinous desires stole away a man’s ability to think.

The high neckline on her dress had been a good choice. After all, a human surrounded by wolves needed some kind of protection from lustful leers. Of course, the bare shoulders and the sexy little collar attachment at the top undid the mock chaste effect.

As he scanned her, he felt his throat constrict. Everything about the woman was luscious. The way the thick, glossy waves of her burnt umber hair spilled over the velvet caramel of her bare shoulders. The way her thick waist flared out into her even thicker hips. And the kohl of her eyes…dark enough they could match even his soul.

It took only a fraction of a second for waves of want to course through his chest. Even worse, the lust in his belly howled for the succor he’d denied it these past four years.

The hunger of his wolf.