Wolf Bite (3 page)

“You haven’t answered my question.” Silky threat twined through his dark demand.

No and she didn’t intend to give in on the issue. “I told you I’d share my ice cream, but I wasn’t willing to be interrogated. Since you want to keep pushing it, I’m not sharing my ice cream anymore.” Putting words to action, she settled deeper into the chair and cradled the container closer to her chest. Maybe if she ate it and kept ignoring him, he’d take the hint.

In all fairness, Mason had always been the kindest of the wolves she’d dealt with at home. The worst of the bullies left her alone after her stepfather got wind of their actions, though Mason had chased off a fair number himself. He’d also been unfailingly polite to her—too polite. Like she’d never been allowed to carry anything heavier than a can of soda and, once, out of curiosity, she’d asked him to hold her ice cream cone.

He’d held it obligingly while she took bites. Hell, he’d continued to hold the cone after her double-scoop began to melt all over his fingers. When she’d realized he wouldn’t discard her treat until she finished, she’d tried to reclaim the cone and apologize. Mason had only grinned and licked his fingers while she watched.

The teasing gesture had made her stomach do the strangest of flip flops, but the incident had also been the last time she’d pushed him and began to assert her own independence. If he thought her too weak to even care for herself, he’d never look at her the way she wanted him to. Not that her romantic aspirations had mattered.

A few weeks later, he’d left Willow Bend for good.

“Lexi, will you tell me, please, why you aren’t with the pack?” Though he didn’t add ‘where you’d be safe’ to the end of the question, she heard the admonishment all the same.

Considering the sudden impulse to tell him everything, she ate another bite of ice cream. Another problem with wolves—the really dominant ones made it such a pleasure to confess everything to them. The feeling that they cared was overwhelming. She’d learned how to sort the difference in the years since Mason left her…left the pack. A dominant’s need to protect and truly caring weren’t the same thing, no matter how compelling their body language and tone made it seem.

With reluctance, she lifted her gaze and met the searing demand in his dark eyes. He’d cut his hair, which seemed a ridiculous thing to notice. The last time she saw him, he’d been seventeen and beautifully handsome with hair falling to his shoulders. The rough cut added to the strength in his masculine features, from the hard set of his jaw to the cut of his cheekbones, and her palms itched to stroke the shorter strands. He always favored his mother, with her dark coloring. His skin had turned a deeper tan.

He must spend hours out in the sun.
Her chest ached with the urge to confess and tell him everything. She fought the need to give in and asked, “Does it really matter?” After all, she wasn’t a wolf and wasn’t bound to the same rules as the pack. Toman, their Alpha, demanded only her word that she would keep the pack’s secrets which she’d given willingly.

She would’ve promised anything to leave the cold, empty north.

One moment he sat on the edge of her coffee table and the next he nudged her knees apart, making a space for himself. He crowded her, leaving her no choice but to look at him. Her heart kicked at her ribs. This close, she couldn’t ignore the spicy scent of him—sunshine, sweat, and distinctly masculine.

“Tell me.” Two words. Two simple syllables yet they encompassed everything. She willed herself the strength to shut her eyes, and block out the sight of him. Unfortunately, she wanted to drink in his presence more than she wanted oxygen.

Her teenage crush wasn’t a boy anymore, but need pulsed through her veins. Desire chased the adrenaline from her mugging and the excitement of realizing her rescuer was the man she’d fancied herself in love with for years.
But that was my overactive imagination and hormones…
Though, if her rationalization were true, it didn’t explain her current response to him.

“I had to leave.” Relief accompanied her admission and she set the ice cream container on the table before her shaking hands dropped it. “I wanted a different life.” All truths. She’d wanted a life with him, but he’d left and no one would talk to her about why. Her stepfather would only say that Mason needed to go. A month after he’d disappeared, she’d tried to run away.

Ryan brought her home.

Three more times that first summer, she’d run. Once, she’d made it onto a bus headed to Chicago only to find Ryan waiting for her at the station. After that attempt, she’d had to deal with tagalong companions. Nyssa hadn’t minded, after all, they’d been best friends.

But Alexis had and she’d changed. “I didn’t belong there anymore.”

You don’t belong because you don’t want to be here.
She tried to close out the memory of Nyssa’s words, but she remembered her best friend’s accusations clearly. Her choice hurt had Nyssa—hurt Alexis’ mother and, though Ryan hadn’t said a word the day he’d driven her to the bus station, she suspected she’d hurt him, too.

Mason didn’t respond right away. Then he leaned into her, invading her space further, until the warmth of him was a burn against her skin. It didn’t matter that she wore a skirt, blouse and jacket. Or that he had on a t-shirt and jeans—God, the denim looked molded to his skin. She longed to stroke his biceps where the muscles bunched and his hands, so rough looking, as if from hard work.

What does he do for a living?
 

When he pressed his nose to the side of her throat, Alexis forgot how to breathe. One moment delirious to see him again, grateful for his aid. The next furious he’d stalked her home and reminded her of everything she’d lost. Now, with his breath warm on her skin, she couldn’t string together two coherent thoughts.

He lifted his head with inexorable slowness and it didn’t matter that she sat in a chair or that he knelt—he loomed over her. “You still smell like pack. Like Alexis. Like home.”

Swallowing jerkily, she forced herself to meet the dark storm in his gaze. “Well, I can’t help that, but I’m not there anymore. I’m here. I went to school, and now I have a job and I’m building a life. I even have a boyfriend.” Why the hell she felt the need to tack the last line on, she didn’t know.

Mason’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “I don’t smell him on you.”

“Maybe I took a shower afterward. I’m not a complete idiot. You don’t think I learned how to disguise my ‘smell’ after years spent not being able to hide anything from all of you?” Did he have any idea how embarrassing it was when a teacher offered romantic advice in high school after she’d caught Alexis staring after Mason? She’d always thought she hid her crush well, but hiding scent and nonverbal cues from wolves wasn’t possible.

Everyone knew.

Dammit, Mason must’ve known
. Galvanized by the thought, she put her ice cream aside, flattened her palms against his chest, and shoved. “Get off me, Mason. Who I see and what I do is none of your damn business.”

She’d have as much luck moving a mountain and he knew it, too. He frowned and eased back an inch. Only a scant space, which they both knew had been by his choice and nothing she accomplished.

“You’ve always had such a temper, Lexi.” His soft laugh and a hint of wistfulness made his verbal jab a compliment.

“Says the man with big teeth and claws who growls.” At least she’d earned her temperament and, though she didn’t have the luxury of an animal side to blame it on, she’d arrested her behavior and choices all the same. She knew better than to hold his gaze for longer than a few seconds. The more blatant her nonverbal challenge, the harder the wolves fought against their nature.

For the wolves, the silent exchange of communication came naturally. They knew whom to defer to and how. They understood pack politics and dominance games didn’t always end in bloodshed. Hell, she’d seen Mason put other wolves in their place by merely looking at them. Then again, he hadn’t looked at them the way he stared at her.

Chancing another glance at his eyes, she could practically feel the heat of him licking her all over. She curled her fingers and fisted the fabric of his shirt, belatedly remembering she’d touched him in the first place. Of course, he knew he had her attention. He reached up to run his fingers over her hair. “You straightened all the curls.”

“It’s easier to take care of.” She didn’t add that she’d flattened it a year after he’d left, when she finally accepted he wasn’t coming back and that her stepfather wouldn’t allow her to leave and follow him.

“It’s pretty.” He rubbed a strand between his thumb and forefinger.

“Thank you.”
What a lame thing to say.
She relaxed her fingers and released his shirt. One breath at a time, she brought her rebellious pulse under control. “Mason?”

“Hmm?” The weight of his regard struck her again and she sighed. Even annoyed with him and all his wolf habits, she relaxed. She’d missed him. Missed the way he used to smile. Missed the way he’d try to make her laugh. She’d even missed the way he’d feed her temper, determined to make her snarl. Not once had he ever made her feel like less because she wasn’t like him.

“Why are you here?” She swallowed around the lump in her throat because that wasn’t what she really wanted to know. “Why did you leave?”
Me. Why did you leave me?
She left the last word off.

“You know why,” he said with a sigh.

“No, actually, I don’t.” Since he hadn’t rejected her inquiry, she decided to press on and moistened her lips. “I know your parents died.” An unspeakable tragedy. Even she, the lowly human, couldn’t miss the palpable distress filling the air at the time. The adults spoke in hushed tones about it and always clammed up when she drew near. The students at school had been sad and holding together. They’d turned to each other—and she wanted to seek out Mason, but he’d simply been gone. “I know you left. No one said why, no announcement, nothing. I didn’t even know you’d gone from Willow Bend itself until I went by your house a dozen times then started asking. No one would answer me, either.”

It had been a source of deep frustration. Ryan finally found her sitting on the Clayborne porch, sat next to her and explained Mason had left Willow Bend.

That was it, nothing more. “When I asked him why, he just
shrugged
. He said it was what you needed to do. That I should leave it alone and let you be.”

Still stroking her hair, he let out another sigh and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters to me.” Risking his wrath, she closed her hand over his, stopping his petting motion. “If you want to keep talking to me, then you have to tell me the truth.”

His mouth compressed into a thin line. He was in her space again. “Truth for truth then. Do you have a
boy
friend?”

Not rising to the bait in the way he placed emphasis on the first part of the word, she conceded. “No.”

A smug grin lit up his face briefly and he said, “I went Lone Wolf. That meant I had to leave.”

What the hell did that mean? “You were seventeen. Your parents just
died
.” Her heart still ached for him. “I never got to tell you how sorry I was.”

Sadness dimmed his smile and he threaded their fingers together. One minute she sat in the chair, the next, he’d pulled her into his arms and switched so he sat in the chair with her his lap. “My father,” he said simply. “Challenged Toman. He lost. It broke my mother’s heart.”

She should object to the proprietary way he held her, but his simple, straightforward words housed so much agony. Wanting to hug him the way she’d longed to all those years ago, she gave into the urge and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Her husband died…”

“Her mate.” The emphasis Mason placed on the word demanded her attention. “Wolves mate for life and her mate died. Mother…Mother killed herself shortly thereafter. The others tried to stop her. I tried, but she did not want to live without him.” His arms flexed around her, but she didn’t complain.

“Mason, I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t—and I don’t—begrudge her choice. And you mustn’t begrudge me mine.” Something in the way he said the last had her looking up and meeting his gaze one more time. “I chose my path.”

She wouldn’t lie. “I don’t understand what you mean. Your parents died? And you left? They let you leave? Ryan would never let me leave. In fact, he argued with Toman when I made my request.” Everyone had. Her mother had been so upset and her younger brother…Kyle hadn’t understood at all. She could still feel his sweet little arms around her neck and hear the way he cried when she told him she was moving away. But at least she’d said goodbye. Kyle was a wolf, like his father…and like her mother. Shoving aside the memory, Alexis focused on the man holding her.

The man she thought she’d never see again. Closing her eyes, she rubbed her cheek to his and he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Ryan was protecting you. As he should.” The rumble in his chest added a low growl to the sentence. “As a Lone Wolf, I was free to leave Toman’s territory and I did not answer to the other pack elders or to any other pack, for that matter.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” She tried to sit up, but Mason firmed a hand on her hip to keep her in place. “You wolves are all about pack, about being together and helping each other. Why would they let you do leave?”

“Because he had no choice.” Steel laced his tone. “If I stayed, I would have challenged him. I would have killed Toman or died in the attempt.”

Utterly mystified, she stared at him. “Over pack politics?”

“He killed my father.”
Flat. Empty. Cool
. And his mother, after a fashion, though Mason didn’t say that.

“I don’t understand.” Another reason why it was better for her to be gone.

“You don’t have to.” Just like that, the darkness left his tone. His teeth grazed her jaw, a gentle, almost tender nip and he smiled. “Invite me to stay, Alexis.”

“What?”

He brushed a hand against her breast and her nipples stiffened immediately. Liquid heat poured through her and her stomach clenched. In seconds, she’d gone from trying to comfort him to full blown lust.