Awakened by the Wolf (4 page)

Chapter 4

B
rice slumped, his mouth fell open and he appeared to have stopped breathing. He was a tall, tall man, and from the way he swayed, he looked ready to topple.

“I'm too late?” His words were barely audible in the silent woods.

“No.” Afraid he would drop from shock, Cassie stood on her toes and tapped his face. “She isn't dead. Okay?”

Though he stared at her through large, unblinking eyes, his trembling hand found hers. He held her palm to his cheek, pressed his nose against her wrist and inhaled shallow breaths until his composure returned.

She ignored the ridiculous notion that he drew comfort from her touch. Maybe the cherry-scented body wash she used smelled like his girlfriend's fragrance. Although Cassie imagined the women Brice dated would be able to afford a more luxurious and expensive brand than the dollar store variety she used.

“How is she?” Brice's jagged voice squeezed her heart. His distress over his grandmother's health sounded as genuine as Cassie's concern.

A kind, decent woman, Margaret Walker had hired Cassie to clean her house before Cassie was old enough to apply for a real job. And when family services threatened to put her in foster care after Imogene got sick, Margaret helped Cassie file emancipated minor papers. She'd also encouraged Cassie not to give up on her education no matter how bad things got—and for a while, things got pretty darn bad.

“She's in serious condition, as far as I know. The nurses wouldn't tell me anything else or let me visit her.” Cassie swallowed the residual sting of being turned away because she wasn't family.

“I need to see her. Now.” Brice squatted at Cassie's feet and went wolf.

The transformation took less than a second, which didn't give Cassie enough time not to look. Her brain did a mental loop-the-loop. “Don't do that in front of me.” She held her head to stop the spinning. “It's freaky.”

The wolf's ears flattened. Although Brice's au naturel appearance unnerved her, Cassie preferred his nudity to this scowling, four-footed fur ball.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” She pointed up the road. “Go.”

Crinkling his nose, the wolf pulled his thin lips back in a peevish snort.

“Good boy?” She thumped his head. “Don't roll your eyes at me. How am I supposed to know what you want? I've never owned a dog. Hey, stop that!” She swatted his cold nose away from the back of her knee.

His yips grew impatient. After a few nudges and some wolf drool from Brice tugging on the hem of her nightshirt, Cassie understood he wouldn't run ahead and leave her behind.

She jogged toward the cabin. Brice loped beside her without touching his right hind leg to the ground.

Surreal didn't begin to describe the situation. Of all the things she might have expected of Margaret Walker's grandson, being a wolfman wasn't one of them.

A very sexy wolfman, sans the wolfy part.

A girlish giddiness bubbled through her body and caused complete loss of coordination in her limbs. She tripped on the porch steps.

Brice, the man, curled strong fingers around her arm.

“I can manage.” Cassie shook him off and scurried into the cabin to turn on the lights.

“Fine.” Brice shaded his eyes behind his hand. “I need a shower.” He brushed past her.

“Fine.” Cassie locked the door, then spun around and knocked full frontal into him. After the way he'd cast her aside in the woods, she should have been disgusted by the contact. Instead, her nerve endings jumped with excitement, and her body begged and screamed to cozy into him.

Ignoring her sensible brain's command to move away, Cassie steadfastly stared straight into his eyes. From across the bedroom, Brice's irises had appeared almost teal. Had she been close enough to realize that his left eye was a vivid shade of dark blue and his right one was a bright green, she would've recognized him by his reputation of mismatched eyes.

And missed all that delicious touching and tackling and more touching.

She couldn't wait to do it again.

“Stop!” Oops, she hadn't meant to say that aloud.

“I can't show up at the hospital naked.” He dipped his stern face within inches of hers. His mismatched gaze bore into her as if willing Cassie to say something, but her mind filled with two thoughts: how striking his eyes were and how much she wanted to rub her body against him like a frisky cat.

Being a wolf, he probably didn't like cats. Except maybe to eat them.

Cassie's sex clenched and her thoughts ran amok with visions of his soft whiskers against her inner thighs and the pressure of his masculine lips against her folds, sliding his moist, firm tongue along her slit, sucking her nub and thrusting into her wet heat until she came undone.

Just because she didn't have actual sexual experience with a man didn't mean she hadn't fantasized, and she'd have been a liar to say she didn't want fantasy to turn into reality. Right here, right now.

He wanted it, too, if the mammoth size of his erection heating her stomach was any indication.

He doesn't want you, specifically. Like all men, he just wants sex. Doesn't matter with whom.

“Clothes,” Brice growled.

“I, um.” The swirls of hairs on his chest teased the palm Cassie pressed against his torso. Her hand itched to stroke every inch of his body, and she wondered if his penis would feel as velvety as it looked.

Focus!

“Your grandmother never wanted to throw out your stuff. Everything is where you left it.” Cassie tugged down the dirty hem of the baseball shirt. “Mostly.”

“Grab me a pair of jeans and a shirt.” Brice left her standing, breathless and out of sorts, in the middle of the foyer.

Cassie resisted a retort about not being his maid. By the time she thought of it, the shower was running. Barging into the bathroom to make the grand announcement was probably a bad idea.

She headed into the kitchen for a broom. A bloodied nose and bruised balls were bad enough. She didn't want Brice to cut his feet on broken glass.

She flipped on the kitchen light and stared, slack-jawed.

Oh, no.

“He didn't.”

Oh, yeah. He did.

The fog numbing her senses evaporated. In its place came the startling reality that although Brice Walker was a wolfman, he was also a pig.

Cassie no longer felt sorry about the pain she'd inflicted. If he'd been standing in the kitchen at that moment, she would've beat him with the broomstick. He could've eaten anything else in the whole darn kitchen, but no. He had to eat her pie.

The freshly baked, made-from-scratch cherry pie promised to Rafe Wyatt in lieu of a cash payment for her clunker's scheduled oil change. Now she'd have to cancel the car service. Again!

She glared at the white dribbles of milk and red splatters of pie filling on the counter. In the sink sat a dirty plate. A sticky spoon. A suspiciously spotless pie pan.

Gross!

Brice had licked it clean. Cassie knew he had. Probably drank straight from the milk carton, too.

“Men!” It seemed some male traits were shared between species.

Grumbling, she grabbed a cloth and scrubbed the dishes and countertop clean before hurrying to the bedroom with a death grip on the broom. By the time she dumped the last of the broken glass into the trash, her irritation had mellowed. To be fair, Brice hadn't known she bartered pies for services when he ate it.

Cassie tossed her dirty nightshirt into the laundry basket. She had found the worn baseball jersey on the closet floor when she moved in and couldn't resist wearing it to bed. She should've known borrowing something without permission would bring bad luck.

She knelt beside her battered suitcases and sorted through her clothes until she found a comfortable pair of shorts and a thin, long-sleeved T-shirt. The shower shut off, so she dressed quickly and straightened the bed. By the time she'd finished, Brice had yet to emerge from the bathroom. Suspicion made her glare down the hallway.

Brice had commandeered her new razor to shave that scruff from his face. The certainty of it threatened to rekindle her temper. Good sense snuffed it out. No matter the history between her and Margaret, Cassie was the hired help. She shouldn't make too many waves.

Massaging the muscles in her neck, she dutifully pulled his clothes from the closet and laid them on the bed. She'd play butler to a grown wolfman if it meant she would continue to have a place to live.

After rummaging through the dresser drawers, she called out, “I can't find your underwear.”

“I don't own any,” he answered from the hall.

A zip of excitement swirled in her lower belly. She slammed the drawer shut. “I didn't need to know that.”

Clean-shaven, with his damp hair slicked back but for one rebellious wave, so black it almost looked blue, tumbling over his formidable brow, Brice leaned against the door frame, naked. Of course.

She tried not to look at his penis, but there it was again. A massive rod of rigid flesh, jutting proudly from a nest of dark hair. Human or not, Brice Walker was definitely all male.

An arid wind whipped through her being. On its wings rode the devil himself. With a stern mental shove, she shooed him away.

Circumstances being what they were, Cassie couldn't afford to give in to temptations that she had no experience managing. She'd focused on work and school. Allowed no time for boys, or men. No distractions, no detours. Nothing could get in the way of finishing her business degree—her golden ticket to a better future.

“Didn't I tell you to cover that thing?” Proud that her voice didn't squeak, she tossed him the jeans and shirt.

Humor crinkled his eyes, and seemed to simmer with a mischievous desire she would do well not to encourage. “Most women can't wait to get me out of my clothes.”

Cassie understood why.

Made for the cover of
GQ
, his face had the most perfectly balanced features she'd ever seen on a man. Slightly swollen from her ramming palm maneuver, his straight nose rested between sharp chiseled cheeks arrowed toward his generous, masculine mouth, the corners turned up in taunting tease.

“I'm not most women,” she said, watching him dress.

The dark hairs that dusted his limbs and swathed the broad expanse of his chest did little to disguise the angry, dark slashes running up his sinewy arms and across his strapping shoulders. More streaks scored his left hip bone down to his knee. He favored the right leg, which bore deep, saw-toothed indentions around his entire calf.

Her gaze lifted to the jagged, purplish-red half-moon marks on his neck. Proof something had tried to rip out his throat. She touched hers in sympathy.

When Cassie had stumbled upon Brice's room during one of her mother's multitude of hospitalizations, he'd lain still as death, covered in layers of bandages. On a ventilator, he opened his eyes for a few mere seconds and locked onto her heart.

The front page of the
Maico Monitor
had heralded Walker Boys Mauled by Feral Boar.

“You weren't attacked by wild hogs, were you?” Cassie's throat burned at the savagery he'd endured.

Brice zipped his jeans and slid his arms into his shirtsleeves. His long, nimble fingers fastened the small, flat buttons with a fluid grace. “No,” he answered, his voice a soft caress.

Chill bumps puckered on her skin, though Cassie was far from cold. She rubbed them off. “Was it another Wahima?”

“Wa-hi-ya.”
Exasperation lit his eyes, though none was reflected in his tone. “Four
Wahyas
attacked while my brother and I were hunting.”

“Is that how you became one of them?” Cassie sat on the bed and tucked her hands beneath her thighs to resist the urge to offer physical comfort. She needed to keep a tight rein on the feelings Brice awakened. Nothing good would come from setting them loose.

Brice's sigh sounded weary, or maybe frustrated, considering his mouth's downward turn. “Wahyas are born, not made.”

“Wait. You were born that way?”

Brice's shoulders bowed like a cobra ready to strike. “Stop looking at me like I'm some sort of freak.”

Touchy. Touchy.

“Sorry.” Cassie hugged her knees to her chest. “I'm trying to understand.”

Brice's nostrils flared, sucking in a long, deep breath that expanded his chest. He appeared to be counting again. She could almost hear the numbers tick one by one until he reached thirty.

“It's probable humans and Wahyas share a common ancestor. Somewhere along the evolutionary trail, our DNA metamorphosed, and we developed the ability to shape-shift into wolves. We aren't mutants, we aren't diseased and we aren't monsters.” His emphasis reeked of sarcasm. “We're civilized.”

“Then why were you attacked?”

“They were rogues.” Brice sat next to her. Not so close they touched. Not so far as to leave a space.

Cassie's body hummed from the energy passing between them. The tiny vibrations sharpened her awareness of her own femininity in stark contrast with Brice's overwhelming masculinity.

“Rogues?” She coughed to disguise the breathiness in her voice. Seriously, she needed to figure out how to moderate her body's responses to him. Quickly. Before she became the rabbit trapped in a foxhole alongside the big bad wolf.

“Rogues are Wahyas who have no loyalty to a pack,” Brice said. “Most are curs who prey on the weak.”

“You don't strike me as weak.” Defying the scars and pronounced limp, Brice projected a will of steel and the muscle to enforce it. Someone would have to be insane to believe him weak.

“I stepped in a steel trap.” Brice lifted his right leg, though his jeans hid the old injury. “The rouges saw an opportunity and took it. Mason died protecting me.”