Читать книгу Awakened By The Wolf - Kristal Hollis - Страница 7

Chapter 1

Naked and wet, Brice Walker crouched on the back porch of his grandmother’s log cabin. The splintered grooves of the weathered boards bit sharply into his sore hands and feet, intensifying the throb in his right leg.

He focused his better-than-human night vision and tuned his ears to any movement along the forest’s dark tree line. Every muscle clenched in fight-or-flight readiness, though he was too tired for either. The three-day trek in wolf form and subsequent swim up the Chatuge River had overstretched his endurance.

If things were different, he would’ve driven from Atlanta to his grandmother’s home. His present situation being what it was, he no longer enjoyed that freedom.

He’d fucked up. Colossally.

One careless mistake and he’d lost his family, his friends, his home.

Regret flared inside him like a backdraft. He tried to swallow the burning ache, but its fiery fingers fastened around his throat and squeezed until his mouth prickled from the embers.

His banishment was well deserved and if he got caught slinking into the territory, the sentinels would waste no time hauling his bare ass in front of the Alpha.

All things considered, Brice would’ve preferred catching rabies to facing his father. Distance didn’t always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it fostered bitterness.

A faint August breeze stroked his skin like a lover grown cold and distant. Out of habit, he sniffed the night air. The familiar scents of pine and honeysuckle eluded him. Once his nose had been his pride. Now he depended on his eyes, ears and gut instinct to compensate for his lost sense of smell.

The evening symphony of crickets calling their mates salted the wound of his loss. Scent triggered a Wahya’s mating urge. Despite the heightened acuity of his other senses, only his nose could lead him to his true mate.

With a heavy humph, he shook. The water droplets that had pebbled on his heated body thwacked against the deck. A silver-coated house key fastened around his biceps with corded silver—the only substance that wouldn’t disintegrate during a shift—slapped against his arm. Each time it struck, electric shocks pinched his skin.

He untied the key and rubbed it between his fingers to dispel the residual shift energy, wondering if he wasn’t about to make the second biggest mistake of his life.

When his uncle, Adam Foster, had whisked Brice to Atlanta after his first epic fail, he didn’t have time to say goodbye to his beloved grandmother. Of course, he hadn’t known that his uncle’s offer of respite disguised a permanent relocation.

Brice unlocked the back door. His heart paused at the click. For the past five years, the Walker’s Run pack had considered him wolfan non grata.

Trusting that Margaret Walker wouldn’t disown her only surviving grandson, Brice clamped down on his nerves and limped into the kitchen. The dim light above the stove softly illuminated the pie on the counter.

First his heart swelled. During his college days, Granny always had a fresh-baked pie for him on his weekend visits.

Next Brice’s gut clenched, his stomach bellowed and his mouth watered, putting him in serious danger of drooling. Despite the ample game he’d encountered on his journey, he hadn’t eaten in days. The thought of killing again triggered nauseating sweats—if he was lucky. God-awful flashbacks if he wasn’t.

Silently he snagged a small saucer from the cabinet, a spoon from the drawer, a knife from the wood block. Then he cut a large wedge out of the pie. The first bite of sweet-tart deliciousness slid down his throat, slow and easy.

Mmm, cherry! His entire body sighed.

One piece wasn’t enough. He had to have two. A chug of milk washed down the third. Abandoning all etiquette, he scarfed down the rest and licked the pie pan clean. At long last, a warm, cozy satisfaction ebbed from his belly.

God, it’s good to be home.

The snazzy penthouse apartment above his uncle’s law offices served as a place to eat and sleep. Brice felt no more connection to the space than he would a hotel room. His heart and soul resided here, in this simple cabin. Always would.

He hobbled through the dark house. Each right step shot pain through his calf.

“Granny?” He rapped a soft knock against the bedroom door. A few seconds later, Brice slipped into her unlit room.

Nothing seemed amiss or out of place, so he assumed she’d spent the night with his parents. She often stayed in the family’s private quarters adjacent to the Walker’s Run Resort whenever they hosted a social event. Granny never missed a good party.

Vacillating between disappointment and relief, he wanted his grandmother’s welcoming embrace and assurance that all would be well between them again, but he was too weary to face the alternative. He headed down the narrow hallway to his old room, each gimping footstep heavier than the last. At the door, his senses tingled even before he set eyes on the small lump in his bed.

The mixed feelings Brice had about his homecoming knotted into concern. Granny knew wolfan law forbade adult males and females of blood relation to share bedding, so why had she fallen asleep in his room?

“Granny?” He eased onto the edge of the mattress and touched her leg.

An unfamiliar feminine gasp prickled the skin along his spine.

“Who the hell are you?” Brice didn’t mean to sound so rough and angry, but pain and exhaustion made him edgy and terse.

“Stay away from me!” The woman kicked out of bed and grappled with the bedside lamp.

“Fuck!” The sudden brightness stung like a fistful of sand slung in his face. Shielding his light-sensitive eyes behind his arm, Brice tuned into his other senses. The air thickened. He could almost taste the sharp tang of her fear. Her breaths came hard and fast.

“Get out before I call the cops,” she demanded.

“With what? Telepathy?” To his knowledge, Granny had one telephone. A landline in the kitchen.

“I have a cell phone.” The uncertainty in the woman’s voice said she didn’t.

“Nice try.” Swiping his eyes, Brice sensed a change in the air pressure, heard a hitch in her breathing. His instinct warned that she had inched to her right.

“I don’t need my eyes to track you.” He pointed to where he knew she stood.

The woman stopped moving and quite possibly stopped breathing. Nothing but howling silence filled the space between them. Any second she would hit the floor in a dead faint. Brice forced his eyes to open.

Not that he had any doubts, but the fragile-looking young woman pressed against the wall was definitely not his grandmother. Wild spirals of red hair gave her a sexy bed-head look regardless of the cornered animal glint in her cinnamon eyes.

She wore an old Maico High baseball jersey. Wait. That was his old baseball jersey.

His bed, his clothes. What else had she claimed that belonged to him?

And why?

She was human and likely unaware of the implications of marking a male Wahya’s belongings with her scent.

As if he could smell her anyway.

Still, that this small slip of a woman had claimed his discarded clothes and his abandoned bed sparked a possessive thump in his chest. His gaze prowled the small swell of her breasts and the narrow curve of her hips cloaked beneath his shirt.

She sported the longest legs he’d ever seen on someone so petite. Soft, toned legs that inspired steamy visions of them tangled around his hips as he moved inside her until she shattered in ecstasy, breaking him with her.

The full moon had passed, so his attraction was real. Not something prompted by primitive hormones riddling him to fuck the nearest willing female.

That this one didn’t look so willing was like an ice dump on his stiffening cock.

“You need to leave.” A pink flush rose from her slender throat to color her face. She anchored her arms over her chest, her fingers tightening around her flesh in a vise grip that would leave marks on her porcelain skin if she didn’t relax.

“What I need is a good night’s sleep.” Brice watched her cute little toes curl in the shag of the small white rug in front of his dresser.

The rug was definitely not his. Neither were the feminine touches on the dresser.

A tightness squeezed Brice’s chest. His grandmother had been forced to take in a boarder because he wasn’t around to help out.

“Are you drunk?” Condescension hardened the woman’s delicate features.

“No. Why?” He flexed his foot. The pain stabbing his leg would scale his entire body if he didn’t lie down soon.

“Because you’re in the wrong cabin and you’re naked.” Her voice thinned on the last word.

“You’re only half-right. I am naked.” Although nudity was second nature to Wahyas, Brice pulled the rumpled bed covers over his lap. The tattered comforter’s hideous color scheme caused an unpleasant twitch to crinkle his nose.

Whack!

“What the hell was that for?” He rubbed the sore spot where the can of hair mousse smacked his head. “I covered up.”

“This is a private residence. The resort’s rentals are down the road.” Her voice sounded tight and her words were clipped. “Now, get out, frat boy.”

Boy? She thinks I’m a boy?

“Wait—” He barely had time to block the candle she lobbed at his face. “Hey! Take it easy, lady.”

She stood battle-ready, shoulders squared, feet spread apart, a hardcover book gripped in each hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m Brice Walker, for chrissakes!”

Okay, maybe his tone was a little too patronizing, but he didn’t deserve the wallop to the chest from the book she flung at him like a ninja star.

“Freaking perv, get out.” The woman wasn’t simply frightened. She was downright mad.

“I’m not—” he dodged the second book “—a pervert.”

Projectiles of various sizes targeted him with the precision of heat-seeking missiles. Who knew a woman’s hair and beauty products did double duty as a weapons arsenal?

He slid to the floor, using the bed as a shield. “I can explain.”

“Not interested.”

A wolf doll dressed in a tiny Maico High jersey bounced on the floor next to him. Either the woman had been an athlete in school or she had dated one. Since she looked too small and fragile to have played sports, Brice assumed the latter.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he grumbled, holding the stuffed animal to his nose. After a few futile sniffs, he tossed the toy aside and peeked over the mattress.

Her impromptu armament depleted, the woman’s gaze ricocheted around the room. “Just leave and I’ll forget you were here.”

Guilt plagued Brice’s conscience. He knew from experience how helpless she felt being trapped. Tomorrow, after he and Granny talked, Brice would issue the frightened woman profuse apologies for what he was about to do.

In the territory without permission, sleep-deprived and beyond exhaustion, he couldn’t risk anyone else discovering his presence. Tying her to the bed so he could get some sleep seemed like his best option.

An unexpected thrill electrified his body, temporarily numbing Brice’s pain. Another time, another place, he would have had an entirely different motivation for tying her up. He almost smiled.

“Easy, sweetheart.” He stood, hands lifted in mock surrender.

“I am not your sweetheart.”

For some illogical reason, Brice felt the distinct need to disagree. However, the critical way she assessed him down to his bare toes made him think that she found him lacking.

Or not.

Before he could cover himself again, she jerked the ugly comforter off the bed and stashed it behind her.

“Like what you see?” He straightened to his full six-foot-four height.

“Hardly.” She swept a mass of curls from her heart-shaped face. “What I’d like to see is your ass walking out the front door.”

“Not going to happen.” Brice smirked. He liked that the woman had spunk in spades. “Look, darlin’. All I want is a good night’s sleep. Preferably with you next to me, all sweet and cuddly.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen, either.” She stuffed her small feet into a pair of worn sneakers. Her gaze teetered between him and the bedroom door.

His predatory senses sparked. “I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”

“It’s a good thing you aren’t me.” Her chin tilted and one eyebrow arched as if upping his challenge. She snatched the lamp from the nightstand and yanked the plug from the outlet.

If the little spitfire thought dousing the light gave her the advantage, she was oh-so-wrong. In milliseconds, Brice’s eyes adapted to the darkness.

The lamp shattered near his unprotected feet. Shards of glass skittered across the wood floor. She dashed past him and he couldn’t intercept. Not without slicing his soles.

Damn.

The woman was smart. Cunning. Fast.

And the chase was on.