Awakening: Montana Wolves, Book 2 (2 page)

Good sex, no messy strings that would interfere with his day to day life.

Then, Amber had walked in. She wasn’t really his type, but she’d been persistent. And that was good. He didn’t want to burn for her anyway. He figured he’d take her out, show her a good time and, if all went well, have mutually satisfying sex. With Ryan out and his libido at a critical point, he was going to bite the bullet and get it done come hell or high water.

Until Chandra had banged on his door.

And as she walked in front of him, hips swaying, the need that had been clawing at him for the past few months once again narrowed to a pinprick of pulsing energy with a clear target.

Chandra.

When Chandra awoke, her eyes were scratchy, and she was feeling out of sorts. As she rolled onto her back and stretched, thoughts of Jax and the night before rushed in.

It hadn’t exactly gone well.

Even now she found herself blinking back tears, calling herself all kinds of a fool for thinking that something had shifted between them when she was holding him. He had been quick to remind her she was a great friend, a buddy. That was all. She’d better get used to the fact that there were going to be women for him. If not Amber, then someone else.

There was nothing wrong with that. He wasn’t a eunuch, for crying out loud. He had the right to a private life, and the right to move on. She knew from her own experience how hard it was to be without a partner, especially for a were. Her old pack had slim pickings in the worthy males department, and she’d gone it solo for a very long time. It was an unnatural state for their kind, and loneliness took its toll. As long as Ryan wasn’t home, she should have no beef with Jax trying to feel a little less lonely. He’d suffered enough already. 

She’d realized that last night, and right when he’d been about to go back into his room, she’d bit the bullet and had choked out an apology. He turned to meet her gaze, warm chocolate eyes burning into hers. Then he’d leaned in close, his breath tickling her mouth. Her stomach had done a flip, but at the last moment he veered and kissed her cheek lightly before pulling back a scant inch and whispering, “See you in the morning.”

With that, he opened the door and walked into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

She yanked the sheet over her head and groaned.

What the hell was that about? Just when she thought she’d had him figured. She was used to his teasing, but this had been different. He had looked…intense. She shivered as she recalled his hot gaze. A gaze that had haunted her all night, joining forces with her jealous thoughts to slowly drive her insane.

What was he doing? Was Amber still there?

From 4:00 a.m. until the last time she had looked at the clock at 5:47, she had laid perfectly still, ears straining to hear his door opening and Amber on her way out. The sound never came. She’d been hoping that after their heart-to-heart Jax might send the little tart packing. Furious with herself for even caring what—or who—he did, she tried to focus on something else.

She thought back to the first time she had noticed him,
really
noticed him. It had been a brisk night in October of previous year. She and her pack, the wolves of Big Sky Canyon, had come to Pray for a meeting with all the area wolves. After a rift had driven a wedge between their two packs, Chandra, never one to follow along blindly, had chosen stay with the wolf pack of Pray.

She closed her eyes as she recalled how hard it had been to leave. Following their alpha’s misguided example, her pack had been doing things that had not sat right with her for a long time. Hunting humans, encroaching on farmlands that resulted in the killing of timber wolves in the area. The Big Sky clan was getting more and more bloodthirsty and less and less careful.

When her alpha had voted to murder a woman in cold blood, it had been the catalyst she needed to break away from them. Her former pack mates had been forbidden from contacting her since she left, and she missed some of them, but worse was the tension that night had created between the area packs. Alliances were made, gauntlets thrown…there was a storm brewing and, in spite of a quiet winter, it was only a matter of time before things imploded in the were community in a big, bloody way.

And still? She was happier than she’d ever been. She felt at home with her new pack in a way that she never had with the old. And, even in the short time they had been together, the friendships she’d made with all her new pack mates, especially Amalie—the very woman her former pack had voted to kill--Maggie, and Billy, had progressed to the point that they felt like family. Not to mention that her relationship with their alpha, Liam, was one of mutual respect and harmony. He was strong but approachable, firm but fair. Everything one could want in a leader.

Then there was Jax.

She thought again about that fateful night, when everything had changed for her. She’d walked into the beautiful great room of the Pray house with her pack, tuning out the low buzz of conversation around her as she scanned the room. She stopped as her gaze was drawn to a man she didn’t recognize. That had seemed strange because, despite being in different packs, everybody knew everybody to one degree or another. He looked haunted, his dark eyes staring into hers but not really seeing her.

Then she knew: Jax. Before Sara had died, his power had been almost palpable. She had seen them all together two summers before at a gathering by the lake. They were a beautiful family. Sara had been blessed with a cascade of corn silk hair and eyes the color of pansies in the spring time. Her temperament was as sweet as her face, and Chandra had looked on as they played by the water with Ryan. She remembered thinking how lucky they were and made a secret promise to herself she would not settle for less than that when she finally chose a mate and had a family of her own.

Less than a year later, Sara was dead. Shot to death by a man who some of the area werewolves claimed was just a regular Montana hunter who had gotten lucky. Chandra doubted that. It took a little more than luck to kill a full-grown werewolf. And a game hunter would’ve assumed that a single, well-placed bullet would have killed a regular wolf Sara’s size. Maybe two. By the time the pack reached her, she’d been shot eighteen times. To Chandra’s mind, the only reason he would have kept reloading and shooting, ruining the prized, lily-white pelt in the process was if he knew one bullet wasn’t going to cut it.

No, Chandra, along with most of the wolves of Pray, felt like this man knew what he was doing. That he had somehow figured out, or at least had a hunch, that Sara was a werewolf.

While this terrible, life-changing tragedy played out, Jax had been out of town. He had known instantly due to his bond with his mate that she was no longer alive and had rushed back. Ryan had been there with Sara and, at his mother’s desperate urgings, had managed to get away when the shooting began. But in the end, Jax’s wife was dead, and she still hadn’t been avenged.

“I failed my mate,”
he’d said to Chandra earlier.

She shook her head briskly to ward off the ghosts of the past, focusing once again on the present.

And
presently,
Jax was probably still tangled beneath the sheets with that woman.

Chandra swung her legs over the side of the bed and hoisted her still weary body up. She brushed her teeth and took a few angry swipes at her hair with a comb before pulling it into a loose knot on top of her head. Maybe a run would clear her head. She quickly changed into workout gear and headed for the stairs, but a woman’s tinny voice sounded from behind her, assaulting her eardrums and stalling her in her tracks.

“Hey, there, Red, whatcha doing?”

Chandra sucked in a breath and bit her lip hard. She so didn’t need this shit right now.

“Hello there,” she said, pasting on a smile on before turning to face a disheveled Amber. “Aren’t you looking lovely this morning?” She attempted to cut their interaction short by turning back toward the stairs.

“Thanks.” Amber didn’t cooperate and stepped back into view. “Jax just buzzed my cab through the gates so I’m heading out.” She slid her arms into the coat that she’d been holding and hoisted her purse back onto her shoulder. “He was exhausted so he went back to bed.”

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Nice place you have here,” she drawled, glancing around at the art decorating the hallway walls with an appreciative nod. “Kinda weird all of you living together though. I mean, the house is big enough and all, and I know Jax said the bunch of you are partners and run the business out of the house and whatnot, but still…kinda weird having seven roommates, isn’t it?” Amber’s gaze stayed on Chandra’s face longer than was comfortable.

Spidey senses tingling, she manufactured a laugh and replied, “Yeah, more than a little weird. But our boss, Liam, is what you might call eccentric. He feels like the partners that play together will stay together. And—” she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, glancing around as if to make sure no one was listening “—he’s a slave driver to boot. He loves to call meetings on a Saturday afternoon or some nonsense just to make sure we’re all eating, sleeping and breathing real estate, you know?”

A horn blared, and Chandra said a little prayer of thanks to the cab company for their impeccable timing.

“Well, it was nice talking to you.” With that and a breezy wave, she turned on the balls of her feet and jogged lightly down the stairs, replaying their conversation over in her head. She hoped she’d added enough detail to make their odd living arrangement plausible, but not too much that it had sounded forced. Amber didn’t exactly seem like the brightest star in the sky, but she might be ambitious and that could be just as dangerous.

Once Chandra was alone in the kitchen, she made for the window and watched Amber get into the taxi with a sigh of relief.

This was why they didn’t bring humans home to play with.

It wasn’t expressly forbidden, but it was definitely discouraged. Her pack did business with humans every day, and many of them had human friends or acquaintances. But they didn’t let them get too close, or they invariably started asking tough questions like Amber had done.

If he had no plans to hook up with her again, and everyone was asleep anyway, maybe he hadn’t seen the harm in bringing her over. They all knew better than to change indoors. Wolves were insanely destructive and they all liked a nice house, so it wasn’t like she would’ve seen anything she shouldn’t have.

Still, since she’d been with this pack, she couldn’t recall a single time any of them had brought a human home. Billy kept a room in town where he entertained lady friends, and if Maggie had a boyfriend, Chandra sure didn’t know about it. The rest of the pack followed suit, spending most of their time with one another or the other area wolves.

She might not have a right to be jealous, but Jax was Liam’s second, and his right hand in all things. He was also the brains behind their business ventures. The others looked up to him and respected him. He needed to lead by example, and, as his friend, it was up to her to remind him of that.

She went to the cabinet and took out her favorite mug, one that Jax had given her for Christmas. It had a picture of Little Red Riding Hood on it and read
Anyone who confuses a wolf with their grandmother DESERVES to get eaten
.

She filled it with the steaming coffee from the pot on the counter and sniffed appreciatively before taking a deep swallow. It scalded her tongue, which healed almost instantly, but it was worth it as she felt the glorious jolt of caffeine skim through her veins, clearing out the cobwebs in her brain. She drained her cup and refilled before heading back up the stairs to take the proverbial bull by the horns.

She knocked lightly on Jax’s door but didn’t wait for a response to let herself in. The room was dark, all the shades drawn tight, and she could just make out the shape of him in his bed.

“Go away,” he grumbled, covering his head beneath a pillow. “Wait!” He stirred again and poked his head out. “Do I smell coffee?”

Chandra sighed and brought her cup over, setting it into his outstretched hand. She sat down on the foot of the bed as he struggled into a half-seated position and began to drink her coffee.

“Headache?” she asked dryly.

“Nah, not too bad. Strong constitution, you know. What time is it?”

“About nine o’clock.”

He smothered a yawn. “Tired, though. Long night, I hardly slept.”

Chandra resisted the urge to jab him in the solar plexus and tried not to imagine he and Amber rolling around on the bed together. She reached out and touched a half-melted candle on the dresser with her forefinger before picking up a book of matches and reading the words emblazoned on it. “What’s The Naughty Kitty?”

“The name of the club where Amber dances.”

Dances.

He clearly wasn’t talking the Viennese waltz, and she bit back a growl.

“Whatever.” She dropped the matchbook and stood, determined to say her piece in spite of the ache just being in the room was causing her. “It’s really none of my concern what time you and your friend finally went to sleep last night. I’m here to talk to you and I want to get it out of the way so I can go for a run. First thing, you really shouldn’t be bringing women to the house.” She held up a hand as he opened his mouth to speak. “I know your personal life is none of my business, but she was asking me a lot of questions this morning.”

Plus, I’m crazy about you, and seeing you with someone else breaks my heart.

Jesus, she had to get those feelings on lock. Sure, he was sexy. And gorgeous. And smart. And, aside from his recent, late night jaunts, he was a great dad as well as a good person. But she couldn’t allow herself to be in love with him. That would be nuts, to hand her heart over to someone who was still in love with someone else, whether that someone else was still of this world or not. It was an exercise in futility and a recipe for pain.

So why did she suddenly have the urge to be a masochist?