Mate Bond

He wanted to kiss her right now. More than kiss her—he wanted to lean her back on the hood of the car and take her mouth, tasting her strength. He wanted this woman with his entire body, and with every thought he had, every day.

“All right,” Kenzie said, still angry. “But if you break your leg again, don’t come crying to me.”

“I never cry.”

Kenzie shrugged, but her body was stiff. “I know. You’re the big, bad alpha. You just bitch and moan until we want to gag you.”

Bowman let the fantasy of Kenzie tying him down and working a gag between his lips flit through his mind. Then he shoved it aside. He’d never get this problem solved if he didn’t calm down.

Without another word, Bowman slid off his leather jacket and laid it on the hood of Gil’s car. He didn’t bother to find a place to hide or ask Gil to turn his back; he simply started shedding clothes.

Kenzie caught the shirt and T-shirt he threw off, making sure they got folded up all nice. She was like that, going domestic in the most incongruous places and making snide remarks about the messiness of males.

She also looked her fill as Bowman toed off his boots and slid out of his jeans and underwear, the cold air biting his ass. It was getting colder by the minute, but Kenzie’s gaze dropping to his cock made his body roasting hot.

Gil was pretending to fix something on his flashlight, not looking at the stark-naked male next to him. Kenzie, on the other hand, didn’t have a problem watching, a satisfied gleam in her eyes.

But enough. Time to finish this.

Bowman shifted as quickly as he could to wolf and dropped to all fours. The world took on the curves he saw in wolf form—at the same time, outlines were sharp, colors muted. His sense of smell nearly overwhelmed him, especially with leftover monster stink, and his pricked ears heard plenty in the darkness.

Kenzie’s scent came to him even over the stronger smell, pure female goodness. Gil Ramirez contained the too-salty scent of human, overlaid with a subtler scent Bowman couldn’t place.

Hmm. He didn’t have time at the moment to find out what was up with that, but he realized that Gil was more than he seemed.

Scents of the night—air, cold, coming snow, small sleeping animals—were hideously tainted by whatever had been in that truck. Bowman’s nose wrinkled, and he couldn’t stop his growl.

“I know.” Kenzie’s voice, though she spoke softly, was loud to his sensitive ears. “It’s awful.”

Everything inside Bowman didn’t want to approach the truck, but he knew he had to hunt this threat. Noiselessly, he padded toward the eighteen-wheeler, leaving the light and Kenzie behind.

The truck waited, inert, its polished black glinting where Gil’s flashlight brushed it. The truck was an inanimate object, Bowman knew, but it seemed to crouch in the shadows as though lying in wait.

Bowman heard Kenzie coming behind him, ignoring Gil’s admonition to be careful. Kenzie knew what she was doing. He padded into the arena, pausing at the edge to listen, sniff, assess.

No one was in or around the truck. His nose told him that. Whoever the human driver or drivers had been, they were long gone. The beast wasn’t in it either. So why was Bowman so reluctant to go any closer?

He shut off every human thought running through his head and let himself be guided by instinct alone. That didn’t work well, though, because every instinct of his wolf told him to leave that truck the hell alone. Take Kenzie, take Ryan, leave the area, and hole up in a wild place with them, and to hell with the human world.

The weight of his Collar around his neck stopped him. There were no wild spaces for them anymore. They had to try to make it in captivity, to build strength until the time was right for them to be free again. That was the whole point of agreeing to move to Shiftertowns.

The Collar, however, sparked once as Bowman forced his wolf feet forward. It sensed his rising need to fight.

The truck loomed. Bowman made himself sniff its perimeter, but that told him nothing new.

He sat down, waiting for the other two, and looked up at Kenzie when she stopped beside him, her hip pressing his flank. The intimacy and peace of simply touching her flowed into him, quieting the sparks in his Collar, the jangle of his nerves. She stroked the top of Bowman’s head, giving him a nod of understanding.

When they’d first become mated, Bowman had told Kenzie never to pet him when he was in wolf form. He wasn’t a frigging dog.

So Kenzie, of course, made sure to pet his head at least once every time he went wolf. She did it again now, smoothing between his ears, scratching behind them. He’d never, ever tell her how much he liked that.

“We need to open it up,” Kenzie said to Gil.

She stroked Bowman’s head one more time before she joined Gil, who had thoughtfully brought along a large set of bolt cutters.

Gil, who had the advantage of a weaker sense of smell, went right up to the truck. Bowman knew he could smell just fine, though, because he said, “Sheew,” as he broke open the door.

The stench that wafted out made all three of them back up rapidly. The monster wasn’t inside, but there was no doubt it had been confined in the truck for some time. It had done what all animals do, judging from the wetness on the floor—repeatedly.

“Wait,” Kenzie said. She put her hand on Gil’s arm, a familiar gesture that any other time might have made Bowman slam Gil into the nearest wall. “Flash the light in the corner again.”

Gil, happy to oblige, did. “Is that blood?”