Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) (27 page)

Rachelwolf knew better than to trot through the middle of town. It was the Hunter’s Moon and she had a right to run, but she also knew some men didn’t like it. She didn’t understand when Rachel tried to explain.

“They don’t want us to be free.”

“
Stupid men. Wolvers born free
.”

“Not all,” she sighed.

“
All.
” Silly woman. This was free.

Rachelwolf began to run
to demonstrate the freedom she enjoyed, but another scent, the scent of man/wolver, also ran on the wind and when it reached her nose, she curled her lip in distaste. It was dark, dark. Too dark for men. She decided to investigate. If they were hunting Challenger/mate, he needed to know.

The dog whined and tried to turn her away
, but the she-wolf was having none of that. She was not foolish. Instinct had taught her how to hunt.

She tested the wind and kept it to her face as she followed the scents,
Arthur at her side. She stayed in the shadows as she crept passed behind the jail and paused for a moment to inhale the cleaner, fresher scent of her mate. His wolf had claimed her and marked her as his and she tossed her head and almost snorted with pride; almost, because she remembered her mission. She continued to creep behind the buildings.

Barnabas Holt and the moneyman,
Arnold Slocum were talking behind the big brick building. The she-wolf had no understanding of money. Metal and paper were not prey, were not good to eat. Wolves took what they needed and only cached kill to be eaten later. Rachel explained that among men, money was power. The she-wolf laughed at that. Teeth and jaws were power. Muscle was power. Cunning was power.

Slocum, who
se scent reminded Rachelwolf of a dead thing, talked. “You might try courting her, Holt, instead of strong-arming her father. She’d be more likely to cooperate.”

Rachelwolf knew about courting; eye-to-eye, head-to-tail, sniff, sniff
, enticing male; grin and bow, smile and play, raise your tail and trot away. The big male did not court. He took and he’d tried to take from her. Besides, he smelled bad, not like dead things, but…”

“
Evil,” said the human voice inside her.

“I don’t have
to court her. She’ll do it or her father will go the way of the others. Then she’ll have to mate me. She’ll have no choice. That hotel is her life. The bitch will do what she has to do to keep it.”

Rachel was so revolted by this, her stomach churned. The she-wolf hacked, gagging on the human revulsion. The two men stopped at the sound. Holt stepped toward her hiding place.
She almost yelped, herself, when the dog kicked over a bucket and, yelping in feigned fear, ran from the shadows with his tail between his legs. He ran directly toward the two men and then veered out into the street.

“Damned dog.
He should keep it on a leash.”

“Then we’d have to call it Sterling,”
Slocum wheezed his version of a laugh.

Holt didn’t laugh.
“Just do your job. Stall those bastards, because if this falls through, you’re going down first.”

“Me? You were the one who started this hunt.
”

“
I didn’t start it, but I’m running it now and if you want to share in it with me, you’ll do your job.”

“I can’t do my job without money.”

“Which is exactly why I have to mate the fucking bitch,” Holt snarled.

Rachel
wolf understood ‘fucking bitch’ and she didn’t like it. The she-wolf turned her back on the smelly males and backed into the shadows, taking her original, circuitous route home. Arthur was waiting patiently at the back door. She made the shift that took her home to human in record time, burst through the door and ran to her room. She was shaking and angry and ashamed; ashamed because until a few weeks ago, Holt would have been right. She would have done anything to keep the hotel.

Now it meant nothing at all
and yet, if Holt’s comment about her father hinted at what she feared, it could mean everything.

Chapter 26

Sitting at the table, w
atching the clock hands move, minute by minute, Rachel envied her wolf. Long time, short time; prey, not prey; good food, good hunt, good mate, or bad. There was no in between and the she-wolf was always so sure of the direction she should take. For a human, it wasn’t always so simple.

Should she
leave Gold Gulch or should she stay? Would her father be safe if she left? Would they even let her leave? She knew what McCall had planned for the pack, but could she wait until that happened and would it be in time? How much should she tell McCall? If she told him, would he feel the need to change his plans and in doing so, lose his Challenge?

She
was worried for him, frightened for her father, and terrified by the prospect of mating Barnabas Holt. But mostly, she was angry; angry with herself for closing her eyes and failing to see what was happening around her; infuriated with her father and the others for allowing it to happen all in the name of maintaining some mythical, ideal society. Ideal for whom?

She’d barely thought
these things before Lenora was there in her mind. Unlike the past, she didn’t enfold Rachel in peace and contentment. Instead, the Mate filled her with a sense of admiration and pride. Admiration? There was nothing admirable about wearing blinders for fifteen years. Pride? She promised to mate one man, fell in love with one she could never have and, as abhorrent as it might be, was now considering the possibility of mating yet another. What was there to admire? Where was her pride?

Rachel felt the hackles of her wolf rise. It pawed and scraped at her inside
s, snarling with its own anger and need to be heard.

Another feeling replaced the void created by her refusal to accept what the Mate offered and this one
suited her perfectly. It molded her spirit the way her corset molded her body. Determination.

Arthur sensed the change in her and whined.

Rachel pushed back her chair and, with hands on hips, stood and looked down at the dog. “Arthur, you bear the name of a king. You are more than a mixed breed cur. Don’t act like such a baby. We all have our roles to play.”

“
Caution. Cunning. Action. Pack
.”

Rachel knew her wolf meant it as a warning, but she chose to see it as instructions.

“Exactly.”

Head wrapped in a towel, body covered decently with a dressing gown, Rachel knelt beside the claw-foot tub, wiping away the last of the grime. Scrubbing until her skin was pink and shining, shampooing her hair twice to remove the filth she’d accumulated at the mine, Rachel felt as if she washed the skin of the old Rachel away and been reborn.

Her wolf felt it, too.
The animal wiggled and squirmed with delight during her ablutions, feeling they were together at last. It was still the Hunter’s Moon and the she-wolf was close to the surface, eager and waiting for Challenger McCall.

Rachel was waiting for him, too
, but for a different reason. There were things he needed to know, things he needed to hear. She was leaving Gold Gulch and the hotel, but not before Challenger McCall succeeded in his bid for Alpha. She knew he trusted her because he’d showed her the goal, but he’d never discussed his actual plan. Whether that was because he wanted to protect her, or because she was a female, she wasn’t sure, but whatever his reasoning, it had to be changed.

Arthur’s head lifted and his tail began to wag, beating the floor of the bathroom like a drum. Rachel turned the taps on and ran to the door, just as Challenger tried it and found it locked.

She turned the key and threw the bolt. Challenger McCall stood there dirty, ragged, and grinning. “I thought you might have changed your mind.”

“No, I...” Rachel started to tell him about Holt, but stopped when she saw he was alone. She stood on her toes and looked behind him. “Where’s John?”

“I left him behind. Were you expecting him?” he asked, still grinning as he stepped inside and placed the canvas bag he carried next to the wall, “Because honey, I’m not into that kind of thing. He may be a friend, but what’s mine is mine and I don’t share.”

“What
kind of thing? What do you mean you don’t share?” The look on his face told her she’d be sorry she asked. “And what’s in the bag?” she queried, hoping to divert him.

“Threesome
kind of things. Just what I said, and guns to store under your bed.”

It took her a moment to understand that he’d answered all three questions
largely because he took her in his arms and kissed her.

Her resolve to be strong and forthright melted away.
She ought to be ashamed to be sidetracked so easily, but his mouth was so warm and inviting, she decided all but one of her questions could wait.

“Threesomes?” she asked when the
y broke for air. She understood his other two answers.

“Yeah, threesome
s. You know, two guys and a girl, two girls and a guy,” he whispered, their noses touching.

She still didn’t understand.

“In bed. Together,” he added when her bafflement remained.

Rachel let that sink in and then her eyes widened in shock.
She pulled away. “Oh my heavens! Do people really do that? Where would they put all the parts?”

She had to slap her hand over his mouth, his laugh was so loud.

“Shhh, you’ll wake the house.” She pulled her hand away when his tongue tickled her palm.

He kissed her
again, a quick peck on the lips. “There are several places to put the parts. Take me to bed and I’ll show you,” he whispered in playful obedience.

“You’re not climbing between my clean sheets looking like that.” She brushed a splotch of transferred dirt from her dressing gown’s bodice.

“Don’t like dirty old men, huh?”

“I like them fine, but not in my bed.”
She couldn’t understand why he was still laughing. “You’re not old, and now stop your nonsense and tell me what you’ve done with John.”

McCall rolled his eyes. “I threw him down a well. He was slowing me down. What was I supposed to do with him?”

Rachel pursed her lips in impatience which earned her another quick kiss.

“Every time you do that prim pucker thing with your mouth, it makes me want to kiss you
,” he laughed. “John is sleeping peacefully in my bed over at the jail and yes, Miss Worrywort, I cleaned the wound and stitched it. The ankle is taped and should be right as rain in a few days.”

“Are you sure?”

That earned her another eye roll. “I’m well equipped to take care of wounds.” He cocked his head. “Is that water running?”

“Heavens!” she cried as she remembered she’d turned on the tap. She flew to the bathroom, calling over her shoulder. “I was drawing a bath for John.”
She looked up at him standing in the doorway, frowning.

“
John is perfectly capable of drawing his own bath. He got cut. Boo-hoo.”

The way he said it made her smile. “Jealous?”

“Yes. You discuss things with him,” he said as if that was a crime. “You drink whiskey with him. You feed him.”

Rachel went to him and started unbuttoning his shirt. “But he doesn’t feed me,” she said, “nor will any man.”

“Not even me?”

“You can’t,” she said, though how she wished he could.
Maybe Holt would rethink his plan if he knew she had a strong male behind her.

For a wolver male to feed a female, preferably from his own plate, was more than a friendl
y or even romantic gesture. It was a symbol of serious courtship. Done publicly, it announced to the world the two were a couple, a polite way to tell other unattached males to do their sniffing around somewhere else.

McCall wasn’t finished with his complaint. “You worry about his little boo-boos. If he was here, you’d probably want to kiss it to make it better.”

“It was not a little boo-boo and I’m not in the habit of kissing open wounds. Take off your boots.”

McCall used the toe of one boot to pry off the heel of the other. When both were off, he placed them neatly together under the sink. As soon as he was upright, Rachel began unbuckling his belt.

“You never kiss my boo-boos,” he went on.

“You don’t have any,” she laughed and then sobered as her hands ran over several nasty looking scars
. “But I would have. Where did they come from?”

McCall shrugged.
“Here and there. The one you’ve got your finger on came from a bullet I picked up in Tennessee. It was a through and through...” He drew her hand around to his back where another scar, larger and more ragged, lay directly behind the round one in front. “Hurt like a sonofabitch, but didn’t do much damage.”

Rachel begged to differ, but didn’t do it aloud. Instead, she fingered another.

“Knife. New Mexico. Biker, not wolver.”

And another.

“Wolver. Maine. Bastard ripped a chunk out of me.”

“You’ve travelled a lot, Mr. McCall.”

“It was part of my job, Miss Kincaid,” he said and she could hear the smile in his voice at her use of the name.

She also heard the soft hiss when she lowered the zipper of his jeans and tugged them over his hips. She went to her knees to strip the jeans from his legs along with a pair of wet and smelly socks from his feet. She looked up, ready to make a comment about them when she was confronted by a very healthy looking erection poking from the slot in his boxers, this pair of navy blue cotton.
It wasn’t as if she’d never seen or felt it, but the other night was such a heady mix of excitement and sensation in her own body, she really hadn’t paid much attention to his.

She touched it, curiously, and jumped when it jumped, and McCall laughed.

“It’s not funny,” she snapped.

“No, but you are. It’s not like you’ve never seen one before.”

Rachel continued to stare and touch. “Well, only briefly, last night, and you turned the light out as I recall.” She didn’t recall when, only that it went out. “I’ve seen babies, of course, and horses. Baby parts are very tiny and horses, well...”

“So you’re saying I’m not hung like a horse?”

“Good heavens, no. I should think that would hurt,” she said absentmindedly. Her mention of parts made her think of his and what other places those parts might fit. She licked her lips.

McCall’s laugh turned into a groan and she blinked. Embarrassed, she rose to her feet.

“You smell like a dog,” she said primly. Arthur, hearing his other name, thumped his tail. “That wasn’t a compliment,” she told him and he laid his head back down on his paws.

“First you cast aspersions on my manhood and now you say I stink.
” McCall kissed her again. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want me, Miss Kincaid.”

“Then you would be mistaken, Mr. McCall. I want you very much, but not smelling like a dog or ‘hung like a horse’.
Take your bath before the water goes cold, while I go dry my hair before it becomes a mass of snarls.”

“She’s way too practical,” Rachel heard him tell the dog as she left the room, “Bossy, too.”

Arthur gave him a happy “Arf!” in reply.

“I know,” McCall agreed. “I think she’s cute, too. She makes me laugh.”

Rachel was sitting
on the low bench in front of the dressing table that had once been her mother’s, when McCall entered the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his slim waist. She watched him bend and slide the heavy canvas bag beneath the bed, admiring the way his muscles moved beneath the taut skin. She continued her brushing, not because she needed to, but because it gave her an opportunity to observe him in her mirror.

The scars she had touched were only a few of the ones that marked his body. Some were large with wicked looking shapes and distortion of flesh; some were merely lines of slightly raised skin.
To her mind, they did nothing to detract from the masculine beauty of his form.

S
he wanted to hear about them, one by one, but not in a litany of the places they occurred or what implement made them. She wanted the stories of how and why they came about. They were a part of his history and she wanted to store that away in her heart, too.

He’d told her he travelled a great deal with his job, but he’d never said exactly what that job was. Regardless of whether he told her or not, she was glad it was over.
If he was successful in his Challenge, and both he and John Washington believed he would be, Challenger McCall could live out his days in the safety of Gold Gulch.

“Take it off.”
He caught her eyes in the mirror.

“What?” She’d been so involved in her
thoughts, she hadn’t realized he was watching her, too.

“Your robe, take it off. I want to see you brush your hair like that without the robe.” He settled back against the headboard.

She set the brush down and unbuttoned the gown. Slipping her arms from the sleeves, she let it pool about her hips on the bench. Picking up the brush, she began to slowly pass it through her hair. She tilted her head and ran it from the crown of her head, following its path with her other hand, down over her shoulders to the ends of the hair that covered her breast.