Chase Me (18 page)

Museums. Theatre tickets. Restaurants. Culture. He could wear his work clothes again, feel summer-weight wool draped against his skin instead of rough cotton. See for himself how Glynna was doing instead of relying on her assurances by phone that things were going well. No steel-toed boots, no pterodactyl-sized mosquitoes, no lingering scent of bug dope permeating his pillowcase no matter how hard he scrubbed in the sauna.

He’d be able to sleep in his own bed, a king-sized pillow-top he bought right after he and Kayla had broken up.

Yeah, he’d finally get test results from his retinologist too, but all things considered, he should be dancing a jig right here on the trail. So why wasn’t he happier about the prospect? Because his chances of convincing Lorin to share the bed with him once they got home were lower than the odds of him discovering a new element on the periodic table.

Lorin wasn’t his girlfriend, not by a long shot, and he couldn’t let himself forget that he only shared her laughably small bed through proximity and sheer dumb luck. No way would she want to continue their arrangement once they got home. She’d be back in Rafe Sebastiani’s bed again by tomorrow night.

The thought was a pickax to the gut.

He jammed his hands in the pockets of his shorts, crunching fallen pinecones under his boots as he approached the clearing where Lorin and the crew worked. Yes, the timing of this trip back home was excellent on many fronts. He needed to take a giant step back, because he was enjoying this—enjoying her—far too much. The WerePack Alpha’s opinions about bonding outside of the pack were clear—ignorant, but clear.

The Valkyrie Princess wasn’t his to keep.

Damn it, she’d told him right up front that their relationship was physical, and thinking with his dick, he’d mindlessly agreed with her. It wasn’t her fault his feelings were—

His traitorous hearing picked out Lorin’s low, throaty laugh over the pop and hiss of someone opening an aluminum can and the familiar rasp of soil being sifted through a screen. When he stepped into the clearing, he saw her immediately, wearing the black tank top, camo-patterned cargo shorts, snowy white crew socks, and leather boots he’d watched her put on that morning. Her gloved hands rested lightly on the handles of a wheelbarrow Nathan filled with dirt he excavated from the pit. As he watched, she snorted and doubled over laughing.

Nathan told some of the filthiest jokes Gabe had ever heard.

Dragging his eyes from Lorin, he assessed the crew’s progress. What a difference a couple of weeks made. The mud had dried, and the edges of the pit were noticeably vertical again, shored up with upright two-by-fours. Wooden yardsticks were in place. With the colorful gazebos erected, tarps stretched tautly over the active work areas, and brightly colored coolers and five-gallon beverage jugs resting in the shade, the site looked like a tailgate party—until you noticed the shovels, tools, and the line of laptops sitting at the worktable.

Gabe swiped his forearm against his sweaty forehead. Spring had not only sprung but had gleefully trampolined into summer. The pink calamine lotion Lorin had dabbed onto his mosquito bites that morning was already melting down his legs.

“Hey, Gabe,” Paige called, lifting a can of Mountain Dew to her lips. Her tank top and khaki shorts exposed her neck, delicate collarbones, and thin legs. With her pouf of pale hair pulled into a ponytail perched at the top of her head, she reminded him of a baby bird. Her light-sensitive eyes were protected by a pair of tiny, Lennonesque sunglasses with dark lenses, so he couldn’t use her eyes to assess her mood. Her vamp bite was completely healed, but she’d positioned her chair so her back was to Mike, who was screening dirt in the gazebo with Ellenore.

“Hi there,” he said, approaching his little fly in the ointment. “Why is Lorin pushing the wheelbarrow? I thought that was Mike’s job.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Mike forgot to put on his VampScreen this morning. Now he’s paying the stupid tax.”

Through the gazebo’s flexible door, Gabe watched the younger man grumpily scrape a length of two-by-four across a wood-framed screen, the extrusion underneath looking like soft spaghetti noodles, the signature of clay-heavy dirt. Every inch of Mike’s exposed skin was slathered in nearly opaque white cream.

He sighed. Could they really leave responsibility for the dig in the hands of a vamp who forgot to apply his sunscreen, and the tween-sized faerie holding a Jolly Green Giant-sized grudge against him? Damn it, how could he and Lorin leave the dig if their two most experienced crewmembers weren’t even talking to each other?

Lorin approached, still giggling at Nathan’s joke, pushing the wheelbarrow filled with damp soil. Her shoulders, arms, and wrists flexed in the hot, ruthless sun. Though she used sunscreen religiously—he’d slathered it on her body himself that morning—Lorin spent so much time outside that she couldn’t help but pick up some color. Freckles speckled her shoulders and upper chest, diving into her cleavage.

Last night, he’d played Connect-the-Dots between them with his tongue.

“Hey.”

Her scent swirled into his nostrils. Sidling back from her a few crucial inches, he cleared his throat, mentally adding Coppertone to the growing list of everyday things that had somehow become aphrodisiacs. “Hi,” he said. Her smile lit her face like sunrise. He desperately wanted to kiss the tip of her adorable, slightly reddened nose, but… Gabe steeled himself for what he had to do. “Have a minute?”

Her eyes flicked over his body. “What do you have in mind? And it had better take more than a minute.”

His body hardened in a rush, urgent and primal. A red film floated over his spotty field of vision, and his mouth and lips suddenly tingled, like fire ants had taken up residence under his skin. His teeth pulsed and stung.

Ah, damn. He hadn’t shifted in years, and his body chose
this
specific moment to pulse to life? A low growl rumbled in his chest. His muscles banded too tightly around his lungs.

It felt… wonderful.

Shove
it
back. Shove it down.

Lorin stepped in front of him with her body, resting her hand on the small of his back. Waiting, guarding. Of course she knew he was vulnerable. She’d probably had countless werewolf lovers who couldn’t control themselves around her.

Her touch comforted him. Maddened him. Made him want to howl in recognition. In rage.

She wasn’t his mate to claim.

“Gabe. Dude,” Nathan called from the pit. “You gotta get a room for that shit, man. Hit the woods, drag Lorin off, go running or something.”

Trust the other werewolf on the crew, one who shifted as frequently and carelessly as he changed his underwear, to know exactly what was happening to him—and to draw everyone’s attention to the situation.

Paige hurled her half-full can of Mountain Dew at Nathan, splashing neon green liquid on his cheek, neck, and T-shirt. “You need a couth implant.”

As Nathan pulled wet, clinging cotton away from his chest, Mike left the protection of the gazebo to stand at Paige’s side.

“Keep out of this,” Paige snapped, elbowing him aside so she could better see Nathan. “When will you grow up?”

Nathan eyed the thrown can lying on its side in the dirt. “You’re a fine one to talk about maturity, there, Booster Seat.”

Paige glared at him. “If I didn’t like these shoes so much, I’d plant my foot up your ass.”

“You should really get some professional help for that anal fixation, Paige.”

Paige lunged at him, but Mike slung an arm around her waist, stopping her. “Damn it, let me go!”

“Enough!” Lorin’s raised voice got everyone’s attention. “Paige, calm down. Nathan, shut up. Everyone, just shut up.” There was a pause in the mayhem. “Start breaking down for the day. Now.”

Shoving Mike’s arm away from her waist, Paige stalked toward the now-empty water coolers, grabbed two of them, and disappeared down the trail leading back to camp without a backwards glance.

Mike rubbed at the rib Paige had tagged with her bony elbow. “What the hell…?”

“Shark Week,” Nathan responded knowingly. “She’s on the rag.”

Lorin wheeled toward him. “Shut. Up.”

Nathan ducked, disappearing into the pit.

“Damn wolfy nose,” she muttered.

Gabe had a damn wolfy nose of his own, and the scent of Lorin’s sun-baked body was cratering into his head for the long haul. He cleared the gravel from his throat, hoping he could speak with something other than a rumble. His wolf was finally receding. “Lorin, I need a minute.”

Her gaze cruised over his face. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but there was no suggestive comeback this time. “Sure. Are you okay?” She pulled off her leather gloves and tucked them in her back pocket.

No.
He missed her already. “Yeah. Sorry about…” He made a vague hand gesture toward his own body. “The place is crawling with hormones.”
Yeah, nothing personal, Lorin.
He put some space between them and tried to get his mind on business. “I have an update from Elliott.”

He and Lorin walked to the picnic table and sat down on the same bench. Remnants of the crew’s lunch—clear glass salt and pepper shakers and plastic squeeze bottles of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise in red, yellow, and white—still sat on the table. Paper napkins fluttered under a fist-sized piece of ore. Without thinking, Gabe reached into the pocket of his shorts, extracted his lip balm, and passed it to Lorin, like he had so many times over the last couple of weeks.

She popped off the cap, slicked it across her lips, rubbed them together, and handed the black tube back to him. “Thanks.”

Gabe dragged his eyes away from her moist lips—the lips that, just last night, had mapped his body with an explorer’s gusto. “I just got off the phone with Elliott and Julianna.” He quickly ran down the high points of the meeting he’d just held. “The lower level lab is ready for us,” he concluded. “It’s ours for the foreseeable future.”

Lorin’s brows rose halfway to her hairline. “You booted Krispin Woolf’s team out of the basement lab?”

“Elliott did the dirty work on this one.” Though Krispin Woolf didn’t work at Sebastiani Labs, or for Elliott Sebastiani in any capacity, Elliott let the WerePack Alpha use his facilities as a Council member courtesy. Elliott hadn’t disclosed why Krispin Woolf, who didn’t have a single scientific bone in his body, might need scientific research facilities in the first place, and Gabe hadn’t asked. “We’re scheduled to start work the day after tomorrow.”

“So, you’ll finally get your hands on Pritchard’s command box.”

He nodded, not bothering to call her attention to the assumption inherent in her statement. Pritchard’s box, Lorin’s box… statements of origin or ownership wouldn’t impact his assessment of its physical makeup. And she was right; he was anxious to examine the box, which Wyland had placed in the mysterious archives for safekeeping. Gabe envisioned the box glowing serenely, napping in a crate, stored in a facility that looked a lot like the one at the end of
Raiders
of
the
Lost
Ark
.

“I want to compare the box’s composition to the flecks of metal we found at the grove.” Not looking at her, he buried her in status, data, minutiae, and the details of the tests he was going to perform, because if he didn’t keep talking, his thoughts would clatter back to everything else they’d done in that grove—things that would never be repeated. “Wyland will deliver the box to the lab early Wednesday morning. I’ll take exterior measurements and perform some initial tests before handing it over to you,” he said. “After you document and catalogue its contents, I’ll take it back and perform a more detailed analysis.”

They sat quietly for a moment, listening to the sounds of the crew cleaning up their workstations. Nathan kicked the pop can Paige had hurled at him toward the recycling station between his feet, soccer-style. Mike stuffed Paige’s forgotten supplies into her pink and black tote bag, slung it over his shoulder, and picked up a cooler. He placed both items in the bed of Lorin’s truck for the short trip back to the campsite.

“So, we’re leaving, going south tomorrow,” Lorin finally said. “Just when the weather’s getting nice.”

Gabe nearly snorted in disbelief. She thought this lung-clogging heat and humidity was “nice weather”? Jesus, he preferred the frost, and that was saying something. “I’ll appreciate a break from the mosquitoes.”

Lorin glanced at the pink calamine lotion dotting his calves and ventured a smile. “It would help if you remembered to zip your tent.”

Blood rushed to his cheeks, and body parts south, as he recalled how he’d acquired most of the bug bites in the first place. Yesterday, he’d been in such a rush to get Lorin flat on her back on his blow-up mattress that he’d forgotten to zip the tent door behind them, proximity of the crew be damned. He cleared his throat and shoved the memory aside. “We should be gone five days, maybe six. What do you suggest we do about supervision of the dig while we’re gone?”

“Hmm?”

“Mike’s head isn’t fully in the game, and Paige’s behavior is erratic, to say the least. Throwing that can at Nathan?” He shook his head. “Completely unacceptable.”