Wolfen (8 page)

 
"Good riddance!” she muttered. “Bossy bastards!"

 
Getting to her feet, she stalked inside and gathered what she thought she might need then headed out of the cabin again, taking the trail she'd discovered a few days earlier. She found herself listening intently for the sound of motorcycles as she strode purposefully along the trail but after a while she managed to dismiss it.

 
It was an uncomfortably warm day and the bag she was carrying seemed to weigh twice as much as usual. Stopping after a time, she checked her pedometer to see how far she'd come and dragged her bottle of water out to take a few sips.

 
She'd been studiously avoiding thoughts about the night before, but there was little of interest around her to keep her mind occupied and she found the thoughts creeping in despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. She wasn't certain how she felt about the confrontation beyond being annoyed. She realized she hadn't actually been afraid of them, though, and that surprised her until it occurred to her that they hadn't made her feel threatened. If they had, she would've had enough sense to be scared, especially after the fight she'd witnessed between Con and Balin.

 
She hadn't wanted to think about that at all but the moment she did, she remembered Con's kiss—vividly. She felt the effects again, too—hot, jittery, breathless.

 
He could kiss. She had to give him that. She'd never been more thoroughly aroused so quickly in her life. Whether he could use that python he had pressed against her worth a damn might be another matter all together, but he could damned sure kiss.

 
He probably couldn't, she told herself. Granted, her own experiences were fairly limited. She didn't have the time or patience for relationships and her work made it nearly impossible for one anyway. She had participated in some extracurricular activities from time to time, though, and the only guy she'd been with that was hung like that had had this moronic attitude that his cock was so wonderful nothing else was needed. She was supposed to
look
at it and come.

 
Of course, he couldn't kiss worth a shit so Con already had one up on the guy anyway.

 
Or maybe it wasn't that Con was so good at it so much as it was that she was just plain horny?

 
She hadn't thought she had a problem until she'd run into the biker quints from hell. Obviously, she'd been wrong, though. Not that they weren't five of the hottest males she'd ever laid eyes on, and she was only human, and she could only withstand just so much testosterone—especially when came so beautifully wrapped. She supposed if she hadn't been needy before she'd had more than enough provocation to feel that way now.

 
Especially after that kiss.

 
Firmly, she put it from her mind. The guy couldn't be much more than twenty five years old, for gods sake! “Get a grip, Danika!” she muttered under her breath. She was ... old enough to know better, not too old to be tempted, but too damned old to fall for a pretty face.

 
A fabulous bod.

 
Dreamy kisses.

 
And a champion cock.

 
Oh the temptation to go for a wild fling!

 
She gave herself a mental smack. “Knock it off, Danika! You're not seriously considering having sex with a biker!"

 
She was.

 
Any of the five. All of them.

 
Because she couldn't even decide which one appealed to her the most.

 
Because she was an idiot.

 
She hoped when she made it back to her cabin it was to discover the bikers had taken off. They were screwing with her head and they were going to seriously screw up her job if they kept interfering every time she needed to go out to check on the pack she'd been sent to study.

 
What she really needed to do was wrap everything up as quickly as she could and remove herself from temptation, not wait for them to remove themselves from her temptation.

 
Con had sucked out every ounce of willpower she possessed with that one kiss. If any of the others were half as good, she was dead meat ... putty in their hands.

 
Oh god! She would
love
to be putty in their hands!

 
[Back to Table of Contents]

 
Chapter Four

Con didn't know if he was more pissed off with Balin or himself. He shouldn't have kissed Danika, not in front of the others, because whatever it was about her that drove him up the wall, he'd already seen he wasn't alone. They wanted her, too, even Balin, regardless of how hard he was struggling against that attraction. And he could see he was.

 
Let him, he thought irritably. If he was so stuck on his lineage he couldn't consider ‘tainting’ his offspring with human blood, so much the better. He'd keep his hands off of Danika and he wouldn't have to kill the bastard.

 
He was pretty particular himself, even though he couldn't claim the royal blood of Balin Chevalier.

 
He just didn't see why that precluded a wild romp with a human female.

 
He hadn't before. It had never particularly bothered him that council law frowned upon it, even if it was nothing more than an interlude, but that was because he hadn't met Danika before. Danika, for whatever reason, did things to him like no one else. It wasn't as if he'd never met a woman he'd been instantly attracted to. He had—quite a few actually. It was the
degree
that the made the difference.

 
Of all the women he'd met before that he had felt an instant desire for, none of them had made him feel like he'd just hit a brick wall, purely knocking the wind out of him. None of them had addled his wits and loosened his tongue, made him feel like a stupid kid that didn't know which end was up—made him do really stupid things just by looking at him.

 
Like dragging her into his arms and kissing her until she went all weak and soft and hot.

 
He should've resisted the urge to kiss her, he thought irritably, mostly because now he was having a lot more trouble getting his mind off of doing a lot more, which meant risking the mission and he damned well knew it. He didn't need that prick, Balin, to tell him that this was a dangerous situation that required cool heads and absolute focus.

 
It didn't escape him that giving in might also be the last straw for the others. Right now, between Balin, the council, and their own good sense, they were trying to keep their distance, keep cool heads, and keep focused on what they'd come to do. One hint that he'd taken a dip in that sweet little honey pot and the others were going to be all over her.

 
It wasn't that he minded a fight. He hadn't gotten where he was by accepting second place, but he hadn't been up against a pack of alphas before and he didn't like idea of losing, not when it meant one of the others might walk off with Danika.

 
It would be better all the way around to keep his distance and wait. When the mission was finished, they'd split and go back to their packs.

 
Maybe he'd split, too, but not before he'd thoroughly explored everything Danika had to offer and gotten her out of his system.

 
* * * *

Balin flicked an annoyed glance at Con and felt his anger deepen at the glazed, faraway look that came into his eyes whenever he was still for more than five minutes.

 
Danika was a distraction that was going to get them killed, he thought grimly.

 
It almost seemed as if it would be better if they went ahead and did what was on everyone's mind and got it out of their system.

 
There were a few problems with that, though, he thought wryly.

 
First and foremost, he knew damned well that it wasn't, couldn't be, that simple. If it had been, he might've suggested it himself—would have. The problem was that he was disinclined to share, and he was fairly certain none of the others were keen on that idea either. At this point Con was the only one overtly willing to challenge him for Danika, but he thought, if it came down to it, Jared and Dakota wouldn't be far behind him. Xavier, he wasn't certain about, but Jared and Dakota were bound to be a problem and he wasn't betting Xavier would stay clear of the battle either.

 
They couldn't afford to take the chance that territorialism wouldn't kick in the moment any one of them decided enjoying a little fuck wasn't going to create problems, because if it did they'd be too busy fighting each other to take care of the business they'd been sent for.

 
He thought it more likely it would result in battle than not, not necessarily because they wouldn't be able to resist having a little more once they'd taken the plunge, but he had to admit it could be a possibility given the fact that they'd all instantly formed an unhealthy interest in her. Even if that wasn't the case, though, it was an inescapable fact that they were all alphas—pack leaders accustomed to having things their own way. Whether any of them wanted to pursue her after having satisfied immediate needs or not, it was highly likely the fact that they'd staked their claim at all was going to result in a pissing contest to see, as Danika had put it, which of them was top dog.

 
He understood the logistics of the council's decision in sending the five of them instead of appointing a single alpha to bring his lieutenants. The reports had been sketchy. No one had a clear idea of what the situation was beyond ‘very bad'. Taking one pack leader and his pack from their territory for an indeterminate amount of time would leave a hole that was bound to create more problems. Beyond that, he had to suppose they expected to need the muscle and collective strategy of alphas to solve a problem they'd never encountered before.

 
Apparently they hadn't considered that alphas weren't used to taking orders and that that in itself might create problems. Or maybe they'd thought they could overcome their natural instincts for the greater good?

 
So far, he thought they'd done tolerably well, but he wasn't convinced they were going to manage to make it all the way through without fighting among themselves in an instinctual need to establish a clear leader. He thought that might have been the case anyway. Throwing Danika into the equation had practically insured it.

 
But then again, no one had anticipated the discovery that Dr. Dan Whitney was actually Danika Whitney and he was pretty sure, even if they'd suspected it, they still wouldn't have anticipated a problem. She was human and ordinarily that was enough to preclude any real interest in wolfen males.

 
He was a little baffled about it himself. She was pretty but, looking at her objectively, which was damned hard, she was a good distance from breathtakingly beautiful. She had a hot body—nice tits, nice ass—which brought her a bit closer to exceptional, actually a lot closer, he admitted wryly.

 
She was smart, but none of them were particularly interested in her brains and although he had a personal preference for intelligent women he hadn't had a fucking clue whether she was or not when he'd felt the first impact of attraction.

 
He had the uncomfortable suspicion that he wasn't going to find a lot of flaws in Danika, much at all
not
to like, which only made the problem worse. As physically attracted to her as he was, if she'd had an annoying voice, or laugh, been inclined toward whining demands, had been empty headed and prone to rattle her tongue so that he couldn't ignore it, or had a nasty temper, any or all of those less than desirable traits would've tipped the scales of attraction and eliminated the problem—for him anyway. He didn't know any of the others well enough to know their personal tastes in women. Maybe once their dicks got hard they became blind and deaf to anything else, but he'd discovered he didn't have the patience to deal with a woman that annoyed him outside the bedroom.