The Witch, the Wolf and the Snowstorm: (Book 6, Grey Wolf Pack Romance Novellas) (6 page)

Don hovered around outside the Diner.  He should
leave, he should get out of there.  But... every time he tried to step away his wolf practically threw a fit.  He inhaled Kayleigh’s beautiful scent. 
Mmmm honeysuckle
.  His wolf immediately settled and practically started purring.
  He could find her anywhere just by that sublime smell.

Kayleigh
looked at him with wide doe like eyes.  She bit her lip.  She wanted to say something to him, she wanted to make sure she saw him again.  She feared that if she let him walk away he might not come back. 
The thought of never seeing him again seemed intolerable
.

Throwing caution to the wind she opened her mouth
and...  “Ahem.”  Melanie cleared her throat.

A guilty look stole over
Kayleigh’s face.  Don stared stonily at Melanie.

Melanie watched them both through narrowed eyes. 
Hmmmmm...

Don shrugged.  Saying a quick goodbye he began loping away with easy strides. 
Kayleigh watched him go with a heavy heart.

Without looking at Melanie
Kayleigh muttered about needing to get back to work, and like a rabbit she shot across the road to the library.

Melanie stared after her. 
Hmmmmm...

Chapter
Five

Kayleigh
brushed her hair irritably.  After lunch her day had been progressively lousy.

Terri had decided to take the afternoon off to spend it with Mal. 
Lucky girl
.  Which meant that Kayleigh was stuck working with Mrs Martin for the rest of the day.  Mrs Martin had been insufferable, trying to provoke her about Sharron being back in town.

Honestly
Kayleigh didn’t care about Sharron, but she did care about the older woman constantly talking and gossiping at her whilst she was trying to think about what was happening with Don. 
Or rather what was happening with her rapidly growing obsession with Don.

Eventually
Kayleigh had just spent the day stacking books, and when Mrs Martin came looking for her she hid in the cookery section. 
No one would think to look for Kayleigh there... at least not anyone who had ever tasted her food...  After trying to learn how to cook she’d unceremoniously given up, there were too many kitchen fires for her liking.

Her head told her she just had a silly crush over Don, her heart told her it was so much more.  And her sex... well that part of her anatomy was just going crazy right now.
  Maybe that was it, she was just horny.  It had been a couple of weeks now.

She should wait for Greg to get home and they could have sex. 
Hey presto problem solved! 
Sex with Greg was always nice, sometimes fantastic even, and a lot of the times she did orgasm. 
Just not always
. 
Not that it mattered
.  He wasn’t perfect but she loved him, and god knows she wasn’t perfect. 

The sex dreams she’d had about Don were mind-numbingly erotic, but they were just dreams.  They were just figments of her over active imagination.  For all she knew Don was terrible in bed... although she doubted that, the man was a freaking walking wet dream! 
Ugh, that was a bad turn of phrase.     

But the point was that
she was fantasising of being with a man based on briefly meeting him twice.  It was silly, it was nothing compared to the months she had been with Greg.  They were in love, they were getting married.

That was it!
 
These crazy dreams had started not long after the proposal.  She was having cold feet about the marriage so she started dreaming about another man. 
It really was that simple. 
For one thing this was the longest relationship she had ever had, and marriage was a life time commitment.  It had never really come up before but it seemed like she was a tad commitment phobic. 

It was so obvious she actually slapped herself round the head.
  What she needed to do now was buckle down and make her relationship work.  She should forget all her silly daydreams about Don, it’s not like he was interested in her anyway. 
Was he?  Nope, didn’t matter.

She reached for her cold cream but hesitated, hand in mid air.  Maybe she should forgo the cream for the night.
  She looked down at her oversize t-shirt.  Maybe she should put on something a little more... uncomfortable.

Searching through her wardrobe she found
a purple silky, strappy nightie. 
Greg had been pretty excited the last time she wore this... four months ago.

She stripped out of the t-shirt and slipped it on.  She rushed round the room tidying and lighting a few candles.  Greg was due home any minute. 
Kayleigh arranged herself on the bed in a seductive pose, ignoring the niggling misgivings she had.

This was definitely going to jumpstart their sex life
.

*

The front door thumped closed.

Kayleigh
snorted awake, blinking in confusion. 
What happened?
  She was sprawled out on the bed in her now rumpled silky nightie, the candles had burnt out and there seemed to be a sticky pool of drool under her face.

So much for her plans of seduction.
 
She heard Greg banging around and flinched at a loud crash, and breaking glass.  This was shortly followed by Greg making shushing sounds at whatever he had broken. 
Terrific, he was drunk
.

Judging by the sounds coming her way he wouldn’t even be able to find his way to her
sex!  Groaning she snapped off the bedside lamp.  She’d pretend to be asleep, again. 
She’d been doing that more often than not recently.

She heard him making his way to her clumsily knocking over everything in his path. 
He switched the bedroom light on.  She almost yelped as he threw himself on the bed.

She remained still as he
clambered over the bed so he was half lying over her.  “Kayleigh babe... you sleeping babe?”  He slurred in her ear, his breath tickling her.

“Babe come on, you awake?  You look really pretty...”  His clumsy hands roughly fondled her breasts whilst he continued to hiss the word ‘babe’ at her, his
rotten breath over her cheek.

He reached down and rubbed her thighs, worrying the hem of her nightshirt upwards until it had almost reached her
groin.

Kay
leigh held her breath.  For one horrifying moment she thought he was so drunk he was actually going to try and take her in her sleep. 
Definitely not okay!
  Thankfully he stopped and with an annoyed grunt he rolled off her.

Immediately he started snoring,
deafeningly so.  The bed frame virtually shook
.

Letting out a displeased huff she got up and began pulling his boots and clothes off.  She found a bucket and placed it next to his side of the bed, along with a glass of water and wash cloth. 
Experience taught her he would need those things.

Switching off the light she crawled into bed, snuggling under the covers.  As much as it pained her to admit she was kind of glad Greg was in no position to perform.
  While waiting for Greg she had become more and more agitated about being with him.  Her stomach had tightened and she been plagued cold sweats, her body seemed to be violently protesting to the thought of being touched by Greg. 
Or maybe she just had food poisoning...

But s
he must have fallen asleep waiting and then she enjoyed her lovely dream of her grey wolf before it melted into something much more steamy, where Don was a farm hand and she was the farmer’s daughter...

Although now that he was out for the count she was starting to feel a lot better. 
She was imagining herself ill.  It had to be about her fear of commitment didn’t it?

But then there was Don...

Her heart bloomed at the thought of him.  But it wasn’t like she was his true mate or anything, if she was Don would have said something by now. 
To say shifters got excited about meeting their true mates was an understatement
.  And by all accounts Don wasn’t the kind to settle down.  Anything she had with Don would be short term,
probably a one night deal
.

It surely wasn’t worth destroying
her relationship with Greg for was it?

She pulled the pillow over her head.
  Ugh, what she wouldn’t give for a vision to help her see the way forward.

*

Don watched as the light in Kayleigh’s apartment disappeared.

His beast growled furiously, pacing in his brain.  Over the past week he had felt himself
slowly losing control of his beast.  Now in such close proximity of the object of the beast’s affection the rift between them was only getting bigger.

In a moment of weakness he had followed her home from the library.  He had watched her every move, mesmerised by the sway of her generous hips
and the way she put a few dance flourishes in her walk as she listened to music through headphones.

He had stayed with her until she got home, ostensibly to make sure she got home okay.  But when she got there he found himself standing across the road watching her window.  He told himself to
leave dozens of times,
his legs just didn’t seem to want to co-operate
.

What was he doing?
  Stalking a woman he just met.  Mooning outside her window.  He was acting like a lovesick pup half his age. 
He should know better than this
.

Things had been quiet in her apartment,
until he turned up
.  A black hatchback had driven up at 12.15am, being driven by a petite redheaded woman.  She had pulled up at the side of the street, engine still running.  Greg said a few muffled words and then the redhead grabbed his jacket and dragged him over to her for a kiss. 
A long, deep kiss
.

Don had seen red.  He had wanted to storm over there and pull the cheating bastard out of the car,
through the windshield preferably
.  His fists ached to hit the little asshole.  How dare he hurt Kayleigh this way?  He had the perfect woman at home, what the hell was he doing running around in the dead of night with someone else? 
The man was insane
.

Don was gearing up to shift and pelt over there but... his wolf kept a tight hold of him.  The animal refused to shift.

Don was surprised at how calm the wolf was.  The beast didn’t even bat an eyelid, if anything Don could have sworn he was grinning. 
Like he’d just run across Little Red Riding Hood
.

Greg finally pulled himself away from the redhead and stumbled out of the car. 
The stale alcohol fumes wafted over to him.  Don almost gagged, he smelled like he’d took a bath in malt liquor. 
It was a miracle he was actually able to stand up
.

Well actually he barely was.  Don winced as the young man staggered into a fence,
knocked over three plant pots, trod on a cat and crashed into a garden gnome.  Don heard the young man apologising to the gnome before setting him straight.  Greg bid the gnome good night and continued on his way.  Alright so beating Greg up in this state wouldn’t have actually been that rewarding...
although it still would have been a little satisfying
.

He watched with loathing as Greg tripped his way up the stairs to the balcony and after a few failed attempts to unlock the door lurched his way through into the apartment.  Don silently jogged across the road, until he was directly under
Kayleigh’s bedroom.  He heard a few more crashes followed by Greg’s slurred shushes...  Don rolled his eyes when he realised Greg was telling the furniture to be quiet. 
Dumbass
.

The bedroom light flickered on and
Don pricked up his ears.  Greg murmured her name a few times and then... he fell asleep.  Inward sigh of relief, they weren’t having sex.  Not that he thought Greg was in any position to actually do anything... it was just nice to have that confirmed.  The thought of having to listen to the two of them... it was excruciating.

He heard
Kayleigh’s soft groans and then the light went out.  Minutes later he could hear her even breathing mingled with the asshole’s ear-splitting snoring.

He should go.  He should never have been there anyway.
 
Don made his way across the street and melted into the trees, quickly walking back to his home.

He felt a wave of smugness from his wolf.
  Don harrumphed as he realised why the beast was so cheerful all of a sudden.  In the space of fifteen minutes Kayleigh had gone from being with a doting fiancée to being with a cheating ratbag.  Which meant that Kayleigh may very well be available soon... after all Don’s main objection to her was that she was off-limits...

Don shook his head.  No, it still wasn’t that simple. 
He still had to stay away from her, he couldn’t offer her a long-term commitment.  She was still too young, he was still too old.  Not to mention Melinda...

Oh god Melinda!
  The woman he had sworn undying devotion to...  He hadn’t even thought about her for almost a week now.  Usually she was never far from his mind, but now it was like she was slipping away. 
All his thoughts, all his passions were consumed by Kayleigh
.  Melinda was a like a distant memory.

No, he wouldn’t allow that.  Melinda was his true mate. 
The woman born to be with him, born to love him. 
The woman made just for him
.  But he had lost her, and he was resolved to spend the rest of his life mourning her.

So why the hell can’t he stop thinking of
Kayleigh?