Dark Wolf (Shadow Pack Book 1) (10 page)

Every candle in the bathroom was lit, imbuing the room with a sexual ambiance. He was relieved she hadn’t opened her eyes, as his mouth hung open slightly, and he was sure there was a dribble of sparkling drool on his chin. This woman was the fulfillment of his wildest dreams.

“David?”

“Umm. God, I apologize, Katie. I’ll come back.…” Speaking in a hoarse whisper, David was horrified with himself. He tried to turn his back to her, but no force on earth could have broken his stare, not even his own considerable willpower.

∙•∙

She gripped the sides of the tub. “David, don’t leave, please. We
do
need to talk and…well, could you go into the bedroom and wait?” After the events of the day, modesty should not have been an issue, but she felt terribly shy right at the moment. Besides, she was worried he might jump into the tub with her. There was only so much a horny girl could take, no matter how noble she was trying to be.

He nodded and carefully backed away, slowly clicking the door shut behind him. Katie rose from the tub to towel herself dry and wring out the long rope of her hair. She then dressed quickly in the T-shirt, thong, and jeans, trying not to wonder where his housekeeper had come up with a clean thong for her. She felt a bit safer in the clothing than she would have in the white spa-quality terrycloth robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. It had his family crest embroidered on the right breast. Elitist snob.

She ran a comb through her tangled wet mass of hair and then walked into the bedroom where David sat on the couch, feigning ease in front of the glowing fireplace, a leather-bound copy of Hemingway’s
Islands in the Stream
from the room’s stocked bookshelves on his lap. The soft sound of a string quartet flowed from hidden speakers, and a terrible twist in her stomach was like the starting gun of the upcoming seduction.

“Your home is—is beautiful.” Damn. Unfortunately, stuttering did not denote strength. Rather, she thought, it suggested that she wanted to crawl inside him and hide forever, safe.

“It’s been in my family for a while.” He spoke quietly, not meeting her eyes. “I just wanted to see if you were all right. I apologize for intruding.” There was no need to speak of the passion simmering between them, it was palpable…a presence in the air, electric and achingly hot.

“You know, you could have just hollered or banged on the door, you know…” Katie trailed off. Who was she kidding? They were drawn to each other like magnets. He probably could not have stopped himself from searching for her any more than she could have stopped herself from masturbating in the bathtub with his face in mind. No. She was not going to make excuses for him.

He continued to stare while he got to his feet, still silent in thought. Anger returned when she realized he was reading her face like the book in his lap. “Walking in on me while in the tub isn’t very polite. Were you raised in a barn?”

Thoughts rolled through her troubled mind.
He’s rich, looks like a dark Roman god, and reads books without pictures of scantily clad women perched on hot rods on the covers.
Why am I fighting this? Oh yes, he will die a terrible, painful death if he lays one paw, literally, on me.

David genuinely smiled at her for the first time that she could recall. As her knees melted from the glow of his 100-watt smile, his husky voice crawled into her head without permission and curled up in a corner to stay.
“I can’t seem to control myself around you at all. Although it was completely worth it to see you in the tub, I’m sorry I intruded. But after all, I
am
part animal.”
His deep voice resonated in her mind. There was a distinct growl to it, the humanity more fluid and mixing with the wolf. She shuddered as the growl worked its way down her nerves, setting sparks off in each one.

“Join the club. Look, I’m sorry about being in a snit all evening, but I’m used to taking care of myself. It’s more than unsettling when you and Uncle Frank take over and start barking orders at me. It is beyond me why you would think we would be safe staying here. The safest place for you is a thousand miles away from me, and the safest place for me seems to be the small hole that I dug for myself in Spain.” She curled up in the oversized chair beside the couch and started to run a comb through her hair as it dried to a gloss in the firelight. The sadness in her words was poignant. “I should have known better than to try to come back to the States and make a home for myself.”

He grimaced and cocked one eyebrow in her direction. “Did you have to use the word ‘barking’? I hate that word. I howl, thank you very much.
Dogs
bark. I’ll tell you the reasons I think we’re safe if you’ll tell me your ‘tale,’ as Frank puts it. He would not give up one nugget of information about you. First, he told me I had to ask you, then he ate everything that wasn’t nailed down in the kitchen, and finally he toddled off to the biggest bed in the house. Nan says that the china in the cabinets is shaking in time with his snores.”

David’s brilliant smile brought a warmth into Katie that made her feel at home for the first time in years. She allowed herself a moment to cling to that sensation, and then with a silent sigh, she pushed the emotion and the memory of his dark eyes into a closet in her mind to be taken out and savored later after she left her dark wolf safely behind. But after the events of the day, he deserved the truth before she left. She also wanted to take a few moments in his company for herself. It would be the only way she could stomach walking away.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she said with a wry grin. “Frank suddenly thinks we’re safe in this house, you bristle with weapons, and the way you carry yourself practically screams ‘special ops.’” In answer to his questioning look, she added, “My stepfather has a few guys like you in his employ, but I don’t think they have the morality gene you seem to be saddled with. I figured that out when they helped hold me prisoner for years at his house in Georgia.”

David held her in his gaze. “Unfortunately, the reason you’re safe here is because I seem to be as hunted as you are. This house is a fortress. The werewolves of the world have been under attack in the last few years—disappearances and bizarre murders that look like dissections have been rampant.”

A small alarm in the back of her subconscious began to ring, but she shushed it for a moment to answer him. “My family has always been isolated. My parents meant to take me back to our kin in Scotland for a visit, but we never made it. My mother and I were the last of our clan after my father’s death. After she married Ambrose, he cut us off completely, out of love, he used to say.” Her heart ached at the thought of her beautiful, broken mother. “My father was murdered, and Mother was terrified of every shadow for years, waiting for whoever murdered him to come after us. She met Ambrose and told him all of the secrets of our people before learning what a monster he really is. She married him hoping he would protect us from whatever it was she was afraid of.” Katie turned to look directly into his eyes. “I don’t know what kind of person you are. Should I be afraid of you?”

Her direct question seemed to have caught him completely by surprise.

Setting the book aside, he sat up straighter to face her, his arms on his knees and hands open in as innocuous a manner as he could manage. She hoped he realized he was facing a wolf who had been mercilessly hunted. He needed to earn her trust. Biology was not enough for her.

∙•∙

“I work for MI6 as a sort of freelancer. I retrieve things and people that have gone missing. They know about Weres. The British government has known about our people for centuries and has kept our secret. In return, we are recruited into the ‘Great Game’ on a voluntary and regular basis. The abilities of the Were people are very valuable in this kind of work.” He took in the shock on her face. The secrets of their people were forbidden to the human race, although there were ways around it, usually through marriage or involuntary discovery. “No one told them of us, Katie. They came to us.”

She suddenly looked angry. “Does
our
government know about us?”

“God, no. Can you imagine what the politicians here would do with that information? MI6 loans me out occasionally to your government, but they don’t go into detail about how I get things done so easily. As far as I know, there are only three people in MI6 that know the extent of what I am, and they will keep it secret because they are Weres as well.

“A few years ago someone began to hunt our people mercilessly, and I began to hunt them in return. I never thought my family would pay for my vigilance on the part of our people.” He hesitated as if he was about to pull a huge bandage off of something painful. “Whoever it was came to my family home in Scotland—whether searching for me or for something else, I don’t know. They killed my parents and tore our manor apart in their search. All they took was the records of our family history, which are written in code. My family owned most of Shadow Mountain here in the Carolinas for over a hundred years, and I came here to go to ground for a while, after the hunter became the hunted. I have dealt with several kidnapping attempts, but I don’t have any idea who’s trying to hijack me.

“MI6 is desperately looking for the killers, and here I sit, playing lord of the manor. I sneak out occasionally for a job, but I’m as much a fugitive as you are. As I said, this house and this mountain are a fortress. Your stepfather would need an army to get into this place. I’ve got the local police on the payroll as well. They’re on watch tonight, and they’ll escort us out of here tomorrow. The sheriff wasn’t too pleased about the chase through town earlier today or having to scrape up the guys in that Suburban that flew off the side of the mountain, but he’s a smart man and listened to reason. That is, he listened after I had some people in your CIA make some calls to him.” His eyes had started to wander around the room, no longer trying to look at her too closely.

∙•∙

“Escort us out of here? Where do ‘we’ think ‘we’ are going?” Katie asked irritably. She had escaped one controlling tyrant to find another. “As I’ve said, I did manage to survive a while before I met you, Mr. Finn. After just one day, I’m supposed to trust you with everything in my life and let you slay all of my dragons for me? I’ve waited a long time for Prince Charming to come for me. There’s no such person.”

David swore in exasperation, his eyes flashing in the firelight. “Look, you wouldn’t talk to me, and Frank would only say so much. We decided that it might be good for you to disappear for a few days with me so we can come up with a plan. Your stepfather is a dangerous man, and I feel it would be smart to examine him closer.”

Wait…
His parents were murdered, and someone’s looking for information? Shit.
She couldn’t ignore the ringing alarm in her head any longer.

“How did your parents die?” Katie realized this was an insensitive question, but they were in too deep. She had to know. It was very hard to kill a Were. Invulnerable to most diseases, their people could endure great trauma before succumbing to the specter of death. Unknown assailants had brutalized her father’s body in ways she didn’t want to think about. They were unknown assailants to everyone but her—a fact she had conveniently left out of the story she had related to her uncle. The last time she saw her Uncle Frank before Ambrose had taken over her life was at her father’s funeral, the big bear-man’s frustration with her mother’s dazed inaction and his rage palpable in the air.

One of the few methods used to kill a Were was by drowning, which was how her mother had been murdered, in the ocean surrounding their mansion home. Weres did not go softly into the night.

David’s voice was hollow when he finally answered. “My father had gone wolf to fight them. He was riddled with bullets. He was shot so many times that MI6 never figured out exactly how many times he had been hit. My mother…” He stopped, his hands balling up into brick-hard fists. “My mother had been literally torn to pieces. They dissected her like students cutting up a frog in biology class. She had organs missing.”

Despite her anger at him for the intrusion, Katie rose to move to the couch beside him so she could take his hands into hers. She froze at the description of what had happened to his mother and suddenly felt more sick than angry. Weres reproduced infrequently, but because of their extended life spans, the women could produce children long past the point a human woman could. Another connection blossomed in her mind. She fell back against the couch with a plop, her face frozen in horror. Was the mutilation of a were-woman an act of cruelty or an act of scientific curiosity? If a person had an abnormal fascination with reproducing Were offspring, Were reproductive organs would be unbearably interesting. In a flash, Katie realized the fault for every terrible act in David’s life could possibly be laid at her family’s door. First her father, for allowing Ambrose to discover what they truly were, and her mother, for telling Ambrose the history of their people.

It was Katie’s duty to set it right, according to the laws of her people.
Change the subject!
She looked down at her trembling fingers. She felt a tear slip down one cheek as she again took his hands in hers and gently massaged warmth into the clenched fists. Hiding behind her curtain of hair, she leaned into him and savored the feel of his body against hers for a moment.

David leaned Katie’s head back and examined the tear-streaked face, admiring the way the golden light of the flames made playful shadows run about the hollows of her slim neck. As if reading his mind, she stood and turned to face him. “David…” God in Heaven, the silky voice speaking his name nearly set him off like a geyser. Her hungry eyes fastened on his face. He felt as if he could devour her, taking her warmth and comfort into his soul.

David’s mind was raw from telling his story. There could be no more waiting. He rose and stepped so close there was not a hint of space between their faces. His chest was in contact with hers, the heavy weight of her breasts straining at the lightweight undershirt, pushing up against him, begging to be touched.