Kitabı oku: «Rescued By The Wolf»
She’s not afraid to run with his wolf.
When a poacher killed his mate, Rafe Wyatt lost his future. While the Wahyas of Walker’s Run have been pulling him back from the brink, he’s certain he won’t have another chance at love. That is, until Grace comes to town.
Grace Olsen is a woman without roots. That’s exactly how she likes it, until a sojourn in a small, close-knit Appalachian community gives her a new vision of what home could be—and so does Rafe. He was supposed to be nothing more than a casual lover, just as wary of commitment as she is. When their raw attraction becomes something deeper, more complex, they could be looking at a new future together. But someone close to them both would rather see Grace dead than let her be with the man—and the wolf—she’s grown to love.
Testosterone and a slew of wolfan hormones stormed Rafe’s veins.
Burning up all his restraint, Rafe stood perfectly still as Grace moved lithely out of the room with her hips sashaying in an erotic sway that beckoned both the man and the wolf.
God, she was pretty. Long, shiny hair the color of corn silk. Bright green eyes that put polished emeralds to shame. Soft golden skin and an athletic body with just the right amount of curves. None of which he should’ve noticed. And yet he had, and more.
She had a ready smile, a kind heart toward people and animals. He liked her spunk more than he should.
And she smelled really good, too.
Another time, another place. Another life. She could’ve been the one.
Southern born and bred, KRISTAL HOLLIS holds a psychology degree and has spent her adulthood helping people and animals. When a family medical situation resulted in a work sabbatical, she began penning deliciously dark paranormal romances as an escape from the real-life drama. But when the crisis passed, her passion for writing love stories continued. A 2015 Golden Heart® Award finalist, Kristal lives with her husband and two rescued dogs at the edge of the enchanted forest that inspires her stories.
Rescued by the Wolf
Kristal Hollis
To all who have loved and lost, and dared to love again.
Although the act of writing may be a solitary endeavor, inspiration is often found far and wide.
To Cam and Scott at New Tokyo Auto Repair, thanks for keeping the Blue Bandit running smoothly so I can attend all those writerly meetings and retreats. A heartfelt thanks to my friend and colleague, John Custis, for sharing your knowledge of baseball. Ann Leslie Tuttle and Kayla King, oh how I appreciate your wisdom and guidance in helping me to shape this story. And, as always, much love, hugs and kisses to Keith—the hero of my heart, thank you for never doubting.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Extract
Copyright
Chapter 1
Boom!
The shotgun blast decimated the midnight calm of the Walker’s Run wolf sanctuary. Rafe Wyatt’s sure-footed paws faltered. Heart frozen midpound, he dove to the ground, nose filling with the earthy scents of damp dirt and decayed leaves.
A flash-flood of dread and fear rolled tremors through his wolfan body but he didn’t feel any pain from penetrating shrapnel.
Then again, three years ago he hadn’t felt the bullet that had ripped through him and killed his pregnant mate trotting beside him, either.
Goddamn poacher.
If Rafe had been in his human form, he would’ve spit on the ground and stomped his foot in it as if it were the dead man’s grave.
The hunter hadn’t lived long enough to collect his trophy. Rafe, still in his wolf form, had torn him to shreds. A justified killing under wolfan law.
He’d suffered no recriminations from the Woelfesenat, the governing wolf council. Any penance was his own.
Avenging Lexi’s death had brought him no peace. His only solace from the loss and longing had come from a bottle of bourbon.
How many times had he drunk himself into oblivion, only to find the sharp talons of reality waiting to shred his heart and soul again the moment he awoke, cold, naked, and alone?
Too many to count.
And it had damn near killed him when he’d blacked out behind the wheel and missed the curve at Wiggins’s Pass. Drove right off the mountain. The guardrail, a thick canopy of trees below, and rescue workers had kept his Jeep from plunging to the bottom.
Still, the accident wasn’t what convinced him to stop drinking. It had been waking up in the hospital and seeing his father’s drawn, pale face, the frenzied panic in his eyes, his ghostly-white lips and the salt-and-pepper hair that suddenly had twice as much salt as pepper. Rafe never wanted to make his father look like that again.
Now, instead of drinking when unbearable loneliness ate him alive, Rafe ran the pack’s protected expanse of woods. Only, wolfans didn’t use guns to safeguard their territory and the boom ricocheting through the trees was definitely from a shotgun, which meant poachers.
A chill frosted his skin. Senses heightening, he focused his acute hearing to pinpoint the direction of the gun discharge. From the echo, the shooter was northwest of him, in the vicinity of Mary-Jane McAllister’s farm at the edge the sanctuary.
The wolflings!
Releasing Mary-Jane’s potbellied pig, Cybil, and herding her back into her pen without using their human forms had become an unofficial wolfling rite of passage ever since Rafe and his best friend, Brice Walker, had successfully wrangled the ornery sow as teenagers. Their victory had resulted in cracked ribs and massive bruises, but the adventure had been one of the best of their lives.
Rafe suppressed a snarl at the arrogance of youth. Once he’d been cocky and proud. In a time when it felt good to be alive and unstoppable in the face of a nova-bright future and carefree oblivion.
At fourteen, Rafe had believed he was invincible. At twenty-eight, the reality of how wrong he’d been lived coiled inside him like a copperhead, its fangs embedded deep in his conscience, spewing venom into his soul.
The cries of frightened wolflings penetrated his mind. Rafe leaped to his feet in an all-or-nothing run. The nearest sentinels would converge to investigate. Some in wolf form, others in human form dressed as Walker’s Run Cooperative security guards. But none were as fast as Rafe.
Paws thundering against the damp and familiar ground, he zigzagged through a dark maze of tall pines. The crisp, cool spring air ruffled his fur as he ran. He covered the four-mile distance in just under two minutes.
Three frightened wolflings darted haphazardly across the farmyard in a confused search for the right direction to run.
“Go on, you damn wolf pups. Get!” Stomping on her front porch, Mary-Jane McAllister—a sturdy woman dressed in a flowered housecoat and tattered slippers with curlers in her gray-streaked hair, waved a shotgun in the air without making any action to fire it again. Although her tongue had delivered a fair share of sharp lashings, she’d never harmed a wolfan and Rafe didn’t think she intended to do so now.
“Cybil!” Mary-Jane hollered at the huge pig plowing into the woods. “Be back by morning. I got no time to look for you. I’m plantin’ beans tomorrow.”
Rafe doubted the pig would return any time soon. Once roused out of her pen, Cybil didn’t willingly go back in until good and ready.
She would be safe in the wolf sanctuary. None of the Walker’s Run Wahyas would harm one short, coarse hair on her body. The pack considered the big sow family. Besides, Cooter, the pack’s lead sentinel, was sweet on Mary-Jane. If anything happened to that pig, paying the devil his due would be pennies compared to what Cooter would extract.
Mary-Jane trudged inside the house, the screen door slamming behind her. The panicked wolflings fled into the woods. Rafe loped after them to steer them to safety.
Two adult wolves appeared ahead and the wolflings separated.
Rafe nodded to the sentinels, then bolted after the tawny wolfling who’d veered left.
“Alex, stop!” he called telepathically, adding a note of annoyance to his thoughts. Chasing his cousin’s delinquent son through the forest wasn’t how Rafe wanted to spend the rest of the night.
He’d grown up believing he was the last of his parents’ bloodlines. The recent discovery of a maternal relative and her son in need of sponsorship gave him another chance at family.
Not that Doc, his adoptive human father, wasn’t family. He was, absolutely and resoundingly.
But Rafe longed for more. The loss of his birth parents and entire birth pack had created a soul-aching need to rebuild his family line.
His dream had ended with a single shot from a rifle. After losing Lexi, Rafe had no desire to claim another mate. Since wolfan males could only father children with a female they’d claimed, he would likely never have a family of his own.
Then Ronni and her son Alex, distant cousins through his mother’s bloodline, had come along. Looking after them was a far stretch from being a mate and father, but as their only male blood-kin he was responsible for their welfare.
“Alex, I said stop!”
“Rafe?” Even as Alex’s startled voice sliced through Rafe’s mind, the wolfling disappeared over the ridge.
Damn.
Rafe cut sharply through the budding brush, hoping to catch the wolfling before he reached the old two-lane road.
The soft hum of a motor vibrated through the thinning trees.
Rafe crested the rise and his chest tightened, restricting his airflow like the choke valve on an old carburetor. “Alex, get out of the road. Now!”
Paralyzed inside a glaring beam of light, the wolfling didn’t budge.
Rafe darted down the embankment, leaped over the roadside ditch, and slammed into Alex. The adolescent wolfan tumbled clear of the oncoming car and darted into the woods.
Dazed and sprawled on the pavement, Rafe stared into the headlights of imminent doom.
He’d spent more than two years drunk and wishing for death. Nine months, three weeks, and five days ago, he’d gotten his life back on track, sort of.
When he quit drinking and resolved to put the past behind him, people said things would get easier with time.
They lied.
Nothing was any easier. At least life hadn’t gotten any worse—until now.
The blare of a horn shattered the zombie-like shroud fogging his brain. Pure Wahyan instinct took control. The sudden surge of adrenaline caused a loss of coordination in Rafe’s limbs. His legs skewed in different directions, his paws scrambled for steady footing.
Tires screeched from a hard brake, slinging the car into a slippery slide across the asphalt.
“Alex!” Rafe’s mind screamed at the wolfling barking frantically from the edge of the woods. Time slowed to a centipede’s crawl. “Look away!”
A wave of heat from the car’s engine rolled over Rafe’s fur. His nostrils stung from the acrid smell of burning brake lines.
His heart pounded furiously, the beat stabbing his chest in a desperate plea for him to get up and run, only his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Rafe curled into a ball, every muscle clenched for impact.
This was it. Really it. There’d be no coming back this time. He’d already survived two near-death experiences. He wouldn’t survive a third.
At the last possible moment, the car veered sharply to the right and careened into the embankment. The crunch of metal competed with the jackhammering pound of his heart.
“Rafe!” Alex’s hysterical cries penetrated Rafe’s mind.
The wolfling’s cold nose nudged Rafe’s side. As if a reset button had been pressed, a current zipped through Rafe’s body and pumped a steady stream of relief through his veins.
His stomach lurched to untangle the knots that had formed.
“I’m fine, Alex.” Rafe unfurled his legs and stood, a little wobbly until his nerves settled.
“I thought you were a goner.” Alex tucked his head beneath Rafe’s chin and rubbed his muzzle against Rafe’s neck, warming Rafe’s fur with his frantic pants.
A deluge of affection greatly increased the probability of what would have been an uncharacteristic hug, if Rafe had been in his human form. “Stop slobbering on me. I said, I’m fine.” Or he would be once his heart stopped beating against his skull and dropped into his chest where it belonged.
“What do we do now?” Wide-eyed, Alex stared at the wrecked car.
“You go home.” Rafe nipped Alex’s ear.
“But—”
“Go.” Rafe pointed his nose in the general direction of Alex’s house.
“Aw, man,” Alex grumbled. Head and tail hanging low, he trudged into the woods. At the ridge, he looked over his shoulder. His eyebrows lifted in a hopeful expression.
Rafe barked a warning. Alex’s nose wrinkled, pulling his upper lip over his canines. He slowly padded between the trees and disappeared from sight.
Rafe waited a few seconds and called out, “Alex, go home.”
A disgruntled growl rumbled through the forest, followed by a rustle of leaves, then silence.
Rafe turned toward the pale green Volkswagen Beetle, the right front side pinned against the opposite embankment. His own low, frustrated growl lodged in his throat. Of all the people in the Walker’s Run territory, the one woman he’d gone out of his way to avoid would have to be the one who almost killed him.
He should follow his orders to Alex and go home. The accident didn’t appear to be serious enough to have injured the driver. He could howl a signal to the sentinels. They’d take care of her.
His gut pinched and something deep in his chest tugged him to move forward. Toward the disabled car. To the woman behind the wheel.
The farther he padded forward, the more intense the feeling grew. He sat on his haunches. A soft burst of electricity pulsed through his nervous system. Ignoring the ticklish current, he stood as a man. “God, I need a drink.”
Chapter 2
Rafe stalked toward the disabled car. His heart beat a weird tattoo of excitement and doom. The wolf in him couldn’t wait to see the human female. The man would rather be fed to a starving, angry bear.
Rafe had been sober for only twelve days when he’d met Grace Olsen at Brice’s thirtieth birthday party. Encountering her once was enough to deter all future interactions. Her tantalizing scent had captivated him from across the room. So much so that he’d had a hell of a time focusing on anything but getting close to her and marking her with his scent—something he could not, or rather would not, do.
At the time, he wanted to stay focused on remaining sober and putting the pieces of his life back together. Grace presented a complication he wasn’t equipped to handle and he’d gone to great lengths to avoid.
Rafe snatched open the car door. A myriad of scents—greasy fried potatoes, vanilla and sweet cream, and sickly sweet chocolate assaulted his nose.
Uck! He hated chocolate.
Snorting to clear his nose, he honed in on the more delicate musk of the woman slumped over the partially deflated air bag.
His breath knotted in the back of his throat.
“Grace?” The soft rise and fall of her shoulders were a comfort beneath his palm.
Leaning over her to shut off the engine, he breathed a deep lungful of her heady essence. A frisson that had nothing to do with the residual shift energy coursed through his body.
She squinted and a whispery moan escaped her clenched mouth.
“Grace, can you hear me?” Squatting beside her, he tucked a few wisps of blond hair behind her ear. A trickle of blood seeped from the half-dollar-sized knot forming along the hairline above her temple. “You’ve been in an accident.”
Her eyelids opened on a sigh and the clearest, darkest green eyes he’d ever seen peered at him.
Every cell in his body froze. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. Damn near couldn’t think. Nine months hadn’t been long enough to weaken the pull he felt toward her, but he was in a better place to resist it.
“Rafe? Rafe Wyatt?”
He nodded. She recognized him and remembered his name. That shouldn’t make him feel good, but it did.
“Oh, no! The wolf!” Her panicked gaze darted past him. “Did I hit him?”
Either the knock on the head had really messed her up, or she didn’t know the truth about the wolves in Walker’s Run.
He guessed the latter. If the pack’s Alphena-in-waiting, Cassie Walker, had not confided in her best friend, then Rafe wouldn’t be the one to let the wolf out of the bag.
“He’s fine, Grace. I checked him before I came to you.”
“What a relief.” The strain on her face eased and she finally seemed to see all of him. “For Pete’s sake. Why are you naked?”
He stared at the open moon roof above Grace’s head, willing his body, his mind, and his wolf to behave.
“Haven’t you heard the stories?” He put an edge in his voice, despite the smile scratching at the corners of his mouth as Grace covered her eyes like the see-no-evil monkey. “I run naked through the woods and howl at the full moon.”
“The moon isn’t full.”
Rafe was thankful it wasn’t. His attraction toward her was real, dangerous, and something he wanted to avoid like the mange. A full moon would only heighten his awareness of her and weaken his resistance.
He lowered his eyes to her pink tank top and pink bottoms covered with tiny cat faces.
She liked cats and the color of bubble gum. Two strikes. One more and maybe he could get her out of his head for good. “Why are you driving around in your pajamas?”
“No one was supposed to see me.” She peeked through her fingers. “Hey! Don’t stare.” She slapped her arms over her chest, then quickly uncrossed them to grab her head. “Oh, no! I’m going to be sick.”
Covering her mouth, she bumped past him. He followed her to the spot beside the road where she’d dropped to her knees. Her stomach heaved, but expelled nothing. The muscles in her back rippled beneath his touch. “Relax. Everything will be all right.” He slowly stroked along her spine. As his hand warmed from the friction, something ebbed into his being. Something soft and feminine. Something that intrigued man and wolf. Something that would upend his life and he’d suffered enough upheaval. He couldn’t endure any more.
Grace swayed as she stood.
“I got you.” He pulled her against him. Her soft curves flush against his hard planes opened up a deep-seated yearning he needed to keep buried. But damn, it had been so long since he’d held a woman, and since he’d almost died tonight, what harm could come from a little hug?
The lightness of her feminine scent filtered through him. His ears tuned to the quiet, rapid breaths she swallowed. Her cantering heartbeat, softly thumping against his chest, slowed until the pace matched his. The synchronicity sparked an excitement that skipped along his nerves, soothing as much as it ignited him.
“I feel dizzy.” Grace squeezed her eyes shut.
“Maybe you should sit down.” He scooped her into his arms.
“Hey, no funny stuff,” she warned meekly. “These hands are lethal weapons.”
She wiggled her finely boned fingers with painted pink nails. She was so dainty and feminine, he couldn’t imagine her swatting a fly.
“I’m terrified,” he said mildly, although his heart raced like a hunted wolf whose only options were capture or escape. He carried her toward the disabled car. From what he could see, the front passenger side had suffered the brunt of the collision. He would know more once he got the car into his repair shop.
“You should be terrified. I was trained by the best.” Grace’s eyelids slowly shut.
“Who?” he asked, tucking her into the driver’s seat.
“My dad. He’s a former Navy Seal.”
“Appreciate the warning,” Rafe said to be polite. He wasn’t going to give in to his attraction to Grace, so there would be no need to meet Daddy.
She nodded, then clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Try not to move. Inhale slowly, deeply. Good, now exhale.”
He waited for her to complete a few deep breaths.
“I’m going to reach for your phone to call for help. No funny stuff, I promise.” Holding his breath so he wouldn’t indulge in her intriguing scent, he leaned over her to grab the phone from the jumbled contents of her purse on the passenger floorboard.
“What the hell is your passcode?” he asked, unable to access the keypad.
Grace scrunched her eyes and her lips stretched tight in a seal across her mouth. She clutched the hand in which he held the phone and the jolt he got from the innocent contact nearly knocked him on his ass. At least, it felt like it did. He glanced down to make sure his backside hadn’t actually kissed the ground.
After she keyed in the numbers 0-2-2-7, he jerked his hand from hers and backed away. “I need to find a spot with clear reception. Don’t fall asleep, got it?”
She didn’t respond.
“Grace?” He didn’t want to touch her.
Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. He definitely wanted to touch her again, to indulge in her softness, to see if her heat would take the chill off the soul-aching loneliness he endured.
“Grace,” he said sternly. “Answer me.”
With painstakingly slow movements, she gave him a thumbs-up.
“I’ll be quick. Don’t fall asleep.” He paced about fifty feet from the car until the phone registered a signal. His thumb hesitated above the touch screen before he placed the call.
“There’s a wreck on the old highway behind the McAllister homestead,” Rafe barked before Doc had a chance to utter a groggy, “Hello.”
“Are you all right, son?” Dr. Harold Habersham’s strained voice cut Rafe to the quick.
Since sobering up, Rafe tried hard not to cause his adoptive human father more grief.
Still, it lingered. Just below the surface. The old man loved his son too much for his own good.
“I’m fine.” Rafe frowned at the disabled car. “But I need the Co-op responders to pick up Grace Olsen. She’s got a knot on her head and dry heaves. Could be her nerves. She’s coherent and her pupils aren’t unequally dilated.”
“If you wanted to be a doctor, you should’ve gone to medical school.”
“I hate hospitals.” Hated the smell of antiseptics, sickness and death as a child. Hated the restraints, the needles, the beep of the machines that haunted his dreams long after he recovered from the shooting.
“Yeah, yeah.” The rustle of clothes muffled Doc’s voice. “I’ll put in the emergency call and be there in ten. Make sure Grace stays conscious.”
Keeping Grace awake would be easier said than done, considering Rafe would need to nudge her whenever she started dozing off. A nudge meant touching, and he definitely needed to keep touching to a minimum.
Palms tingling, Rafe sprinted to the car. “EMS is on the way.”
Grace’s eyes were closed and her head had lolled to the side. Rafe’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Grace!”
Her shoulders twitched and her eyelids popped opened. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Same here, sweetheart.
“I thought you fell asleep.” He thumbed her chin, tipping her face to see her eyes. Still clear and alert. Her blush-pink lips, full and luscious, dipped in a grimace.
“Nope, I was concentrating on not getting sick. The smell in here makes me want to—”
She gagged and Rafe didn’t think it was for mere effect.
“Makes me want to gag, too.” He lifted her from the car, carried her up the slight embankment and sat her against an old oak log. “What is that crap smeared in your car?”
“What’s left of a hot fudge sundae and French fries.”
Rafe’s stomach turned in a not-so-silent blech.
“Hey. It’s my favorite midnight snack.” She squinted up at him. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“I’ll pass.” Rafe was allergic to chocolate. Violently allergic. End-up-in-the-hospital allergic.
And Rafe was glad he was. It quelled his desire to kiss her. If she’d eaten one bite of the hot fudge, and his mouth and tongue touched hers, she wouldn’t be the only one headed to the emergency clinic.
“Can you move out of my line of vision?” She held her hand in front of her face. “Your family jewels are quite impressive, but I don’t want them dangling in my face. It’s distracting.”
A sharp, primal awareness pierced him. He glanced at his cock, going from semierect to fully erect in the span of a breath.
Damn.
He’d done fairly well at controlling his reaction until now.
Impressive and distracting. Her description made him proud and more than a little possessive.
He sat beside her, knee bent to cover his groin. “Better?”
Her pensive gaze dropped to his lap, then inched up his chest. “I would’ve preferred clothes.”
His clothes were miles away in his tow truck and he wouldn’t retrieve them if it meant leaving her out here alone.
After a few minutes of silence, Grace shivered. Against his better judgment, Rafe reached around her shoulders and drew her close.
“You’re nice and toasty,” she said, snuggling into his heat.
His body hummed from the contact and he realized he no longer wanted alcohol. What he craved was much more dangerous.
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