Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (28 page)

She couldn’t concentrate on it. Her
ears felt as if they’d elongated with the intensity of their focus
on the men. She heard the heavy tread of booted feet as they
sauntered unhurriedly through the diner.

“
Mind if we join
you?”

Danika looked up
automatically at the deep masculine voice. Startled when she
discovered the man—the entire pack of men—was standing right in
front of her booth and worse, the man was talking
to
her, Danika felt her
eyes widen. Her thoughts went chaotic in a frantic attempt to find
some reasonable excuse for why she minded that wouldn’t arouse
their antagonism. “Well … uh ….”

The man who’d spoken to her slid into
the seat. Frozen in place, she felt her eyes grow wider and wider
the closer he came. Brought abruptly to the belated instinct to
flee by the man’s proximity, Danika slid away from him, only to
discover that three of the others had slid into the seat from the
opposite side, pinning her in.

Wide eyed with panic, she stared at
first one face and then another until she’d catalogued a mental
photograph of each. It didn’t help that her imagination instantly
kicked in and supplied her with a kaleidoscope of horrific images
that all featured her as a victim and the pack as violent
offenders.

“
The name’s
Balin.”

The voice was the deep rumble of a
high testosterone male and it sent a wave of prickling sensation
through Danika that she dimly recognized as a purely feminine
reaction to an attractive male. She blinked for the first time in
several minutes, realizing only then that she’d been staring slack
jawed at the man who’d slid in beside her. Sucking in her first
breath in as many minutes, which made it obvious by the dryness of
her mouth that she’d been staring at him with her mouth open, she
licked her dry lips and brought them together abruptly. Her eyes
slid away as she pasted a nervous smile on her lips. “Danika,” she
said weakly.

Where was a cop when she needed
one?

“
Con.”

Dankia stared at the huge paw the
blond man had extended across the table toward her, wondering if he
was admitting to being a con man.

“
Connor,” he amended as if
he’d read her mind, “but everyone calls me Con.”

Or maybe it was just the blank look on
her face?

Like a sleep walker, she extended her
own hand, watching as it disappeared in the man’s clasp.

“
Dakota.”

Still with the feeling that she was in
the grips of a dream, or maybe a nightmare, Danika removed her hand
from the man’s grasp and watched it disappear as the second
enveloped it in a firm shake.

“
Xavier.”

“
Jared,” said the last of
the five, who’d settled on the other side of Balin.

Marginally relieved when
the five men grabbed menus and turned their attention to studying
them instead of her, Danika tried to shift unobtrusively to put a
little distance between herself and the men crowding her. She
discovered it was useless. For all that they seemed more rangy than
big, they
were
big men and the booth wasn’t nearly as big as it had seemed
before they’d descended on her. There wasn’t much more than a
couple of inches between her and the men now firmly entrenched on
either side of her, Balin and Dakota.

Surprise flickered through her that
she actually remembered the names. Ordinarily, she was very bad
with names and it wasn’t as if she’d actually had her wits about
her when they were making the introductions. For one, they were
unnerving just by virtue of being a biker gang. She’d never been
this close to the criminal element of society and she was sure she
was petrified with terror, although she was in a state of shock
that, fortunately, made it impossible for her to either faint or
scream, and she sure as hell couldn’t run.

Secondly, although she was well aware
that it was psychotic even to have such thoughts, despite their
rough appearance and the fact that all of them were sporting at
least a day’s growth of beard, Xavier was the closest to ‘just
average’ of the bunch and he wasn’t actually average but several
cuts above the best looking man she’d ever actually seen in person.
They were all handsome enough any one of them could have made it as
a model, or actor, despite the intimidating multitude of tattoos
and piercings she could see at a glance that unnerved her more than
she would’ve thought possible. Along with the unfashionably long
hair they all had, though, the tattoos and piercings seemed to add
to the wild, untamed air of the bunch.

The last time she could recall being
this unnerved was when she’d looked up from taking notes in her
wildlife studies and discovered one of her ‘subjects’ had noticed
her and wandered close enough to study her.

Balin had a tiny ring at the outer
corner of one eye brow she saw when she glanced at him again and
her imagination took flight as to where else he might be
pierced—his nipples, certainly. She couldn’t resist flicking a
glance at the t-shirt molded to his rippling physique and the
nipple rings brought her focus instantly to his hard
pecs.

“
What’s good?”

Her gaze jerked upward from his nipple
rings to Balin’s face. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement
in his hazel gaze. “What?” she asked blankly, her mind going wild
at the question.

“
On the menu.”

She felt her face heat. Trying to
pretend she hadn’t been staring at his body, Danika frowned at the
menu. “Uh … actually, I’m not from around here. I don’t really
know.”

He dropped an arm along the back of
the booth behind her, shifting to face her. “No?”

His hard thigh brushed hers when he
shifted. Between the burning heat of that touch and her acute
awareness of the arm behind her shoulders, Danika had to struggle
to gather her wits.

“
Maybe you’d know of a
good place to stay around here, then? Or are you just passing
through?”

She wanted to tell him she was just
passing through in the worst kind of way, but his interest in a
place to stay probably meant he was looking for a room for the
night. If she lied and he found out, would he be pissed
off?

She didn’t want to piss him
off.

“
I … uh ….”

“
What will you folks be
having?”

Relieved by the interruption of the
waitress, Danika’s gaze snapped from Balin to the waitress standing
over the table with a pad in her hands. “What’s tonight’s
special?”

“
Meatloaf.”

Gag! “I’ll take the baked chicken
dinner, then.”

The men all ordered beef—thick steaks
and all the trimmings—minus the ‘rabbit food’ they didn’t seem to
approve of. They didn’t look like they had anywhere to put that
much food, but then again, they were all painfully young and very
muscular. They probably burnt up a couple of thousand calories just
breathing.

Ordinarily, Danika didn’t pay much
attention to her appearance or the passing years, but their youth
made it impossible not to compare her age to theirs, and their
beauty … well, she’d never felt quite as plain or unappealing, like
a little brown duck that had found itself swimming in the midst of
a flock of beautiful swans.

It didn’t occur to her until the
waitress left that the woman hadn’t asked about dividing up the
tickets. “Wait! Put mine on a separate ticket!”

The woman turned around to glare at
her in irritation.

Balin waved her off. “Just leave it
together. I’ll pay for hers.”

Struggling with indignation when the
woman left without waiting to see if she was agreeable to that
solution, Danika bent a tight smile on Balin. “I’ll just give you
my share, then,” she said firmly.

He lifted the black, beringed brow.
“Consider it payment for sharing the booth.”

Danika kept her smile with
an effort. She didn’t want to argue with the man, not when he
personified dangerous, but she wasn’t about to be obligated to a
total stranger,
especially
a dangerous one. “That’s … sweet, but completely
unnecessary.”

The comment provoked chuckles from the
other men and she looked around at them in surprise. Con’s blue
eyes were dancing with merriment as he divided a glance between her
and Balin. “Sweet? Balin? Honey, you don’t have a clue.”

Honey? She might’ve taken exception to
that, too, except some of her shock was beginning to wear off and,
as it did, she was more and more uncomfortably aware that she
wasn’t in the middle of a pack of swans.

They reminded her a lot more of a pack
of … wolves, she decided, though she wasn’t certain why unless it
had just popped into her mind because she’d been called in to study
a wolf pack.

There was more to it than that, she
decided. Balin was a bit more ‘solid’ looking than the others, not
exactly stocky, but definitely more heavily muscled than the
others. The rest of the gang, though, had the kind of builds that
reminded her of wolves in the wild, muscular, but lean. Con was the
only one of the bunch that was actually fair, though his complexion
wasn’t. Every inch of skin exposed was tanned to a golden
brown—which probably meant he spent a lot of time on that bike of
his. Balin was almost his exact opposite. His hair was black enough
it seemed obvious that his sharp features were the result of a lot
of Native American blood or maybe Hispanic, although he looked more
Native American and his name didn’t seem to be Spanish. Of the
other three—Jared and Dakota were closest in coloring to Balin and
Xavier, whose hair was a lot like hers, neither blond nor brown,
but in between, was closest in coloring to Con.

They weren’t related that she could
tell but then again not all siblings looked like peas from the same
pod. She looked nothing like either her brother or her sister,
fortunately for them, and unfortunately for her since she was the
family ugly duckling.

More to occupy herself than for any
other reason, Danika looked around for her bag and discovered
Xavier had dropped it on the floor by her feet when he’d slid in
beside her. Dragging it out from under the table, she dug around
for a piece of paper and a pen while the men scanned the restaurant
with keen interest.

Despite her optimism, she couldn’t
think of anything to put on the list of things she
needed.

“
Taking notes?”

Startled at the low, husky voice near
her ear when she was struggling to concentrate on recalling her
list, Danika’s head whirled automatically in that direction and she
found herself almost nose to nose with Balin. He stared back at her
with patent interest.

Her instincts seriously impaired, her
head finally recoiled on her neck and she leaned back to put a more
comfortable distance between them. “Notes?” she repeated
blankly.

He studied her a long moment and then
flicked a glance at the envelope she’d pulled out of her
bag.

“
Oh. I was just trying to
remember what I’d come to town to get. I forgot my
list.”

A slow grin curled his lips. “You’re
staying around here, then?”

Danika blinked at him, mentally
kicking herself.

“
Yes,” she mumbled,
returning her attention to her project and staring at the paper
hard to will her brain to function on a level above ‘female in
heat’. The thought had no sooner flickered through her mind than
she realized a good part of her jitters was exactly
that.

It stood to reason, she excused
herself. They were a damned good looking bunch and they practically
wreaked of testosterone. She was a woman, after all, even though
that wasn’t something she remembered very often.

“
Is there a particular
reason you don’t want to tell us where you’re staying?”

Danika felt her face heat again. She
cleared her throat, searching for something to say that wouldn’t
offend.

“
We don’t bite … hard,”
Con said with a husky chuckle.

“
Just a little gnawing
here and there,” Jared agreed with a wolfish grin.

“
You’re scaring her,”
Balin said coldly when she sent the two men a wide eyed
look.

They were
all
scaring the shit out
of her!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t fear that
coiled in her lower belly, generating heat.

The men tensed at Balin’s
rebuke—
all
of
them. Danika flicked uneasy glances from one to another and finally
looked at Balin, who seemed to be the focus of their brooding
gazes. He’d tensed, as well, but she didn’t think she would’ve
noticed if not for the fact that he was touching her. He looked
singularly unimpressed by the fact that the other four men radiated
hostility and aggression.

That thought sent a wave of cold
through her.

Alphas, she realized, stunned. That
was why she felt so uneasy. It wasn’t just the testosterone level
at the table. It was the fact that she’d instinctively registered
that all five men were alphas.