Force of the Dark Wolf (Force of Nature Series) (37 page)

“You, young lady
,
have been hanging out with my sister-in-law too much.
Just keep the snide comments to yourself and show me what I did wrong.”
He grinned at her before he kissed her forehead.
“There’s a good girl.
And if you finish this batch for me I’ll give you fifty bucks toward your car.”

Alexis simply rolled her eyes.
At the rate Darcy was going she’d have a better car than she did and for very little out of pocket cash on her end.
Gordon agreed to help in the barn three times a week
,
but mostly he hired one of the kids to do his part while he watched.
When Alexis was finished with her pouring she looked over at him and he winked.

“You do know you’ll never get the hang of this if you keep paying someone else to do it for you, right?”
She shook her head when he grinned bigger.
“I see.
So just how rich are you making my nieces and nephews with this ‘help’ you’re giving me?”

“You’ll never know.
They’ve been sworn to secrecy.” He moved toward her, slow and easy like the big wolf that he was.
“Darcy, will you watch things in her
e
for a few minutes? I want to talk to your aunt outside.”

“I can’t go outside with you until I get this batch finished. Then I have to go to the pack house and help with the decorations for CJ’s baby shower. She said I had to be there on time or she was going to hunt me down.”
Alexis had discovered that she and CJ had a great deal in common
,
but CJ was much scarier about things when they didn’t go as she’d planned.
“Then there is your mom.”

That stopped him in his tracks and had him frowning.
“What about my mom?
She’s not coming over
,
is she?
Please tell me that you didn’t tell on me again.”

Alexis started to laugh and tell him his mother knew everything
,
but she didn’t. She thought she’d keep that to herself.
She moved to get another batch off the stove when he rushed to take it from her.
He poured while she tamped things down.

They worked side by side for several minutes without speaking. They quickly poured the liquid soap
in
to the newly purchased molds and add
ed
the seal to the ones that had hardened enough that she could press it into. She had hoped that he didn’t notice the ones in the basket near the door when he came in
,
but it was too much to hope that the ex cop wouldn’t see them.

“The wolves, did you order those before or after the pack accepted you?”
She looked at him and quickly away.
“Alexis?”

“Before.
But I’d met you already.”
She picked up the next mold and put it onto the cooling rack with the others.
Darcy went out the door with a small wave.
“I thought I could convince your mother and sisters to buy more if I had them in stock.”

He nodded as he reached into the basket and pulled one out.
“They’re very beautiful.
And I’m sure that whoever carved them knew that you weren’t using them as simple nature art either.”

He handed her the bar and she looked at it.
When he took it back and showed her the small footprints in the soap that were human that the wolf left behind
,
she looked up at him startled.

“I didn’t see that.
I swear I didn’t order…do you know who did these for me?”
He nodded.
“Is it someone we know?”
Again
,
he nodded.

She tried to think who she had met that carved.
The soap molds that she bought were all one of a kind.
The person who did hers did custom work and when she’d placed her order for the wolves
,
he
’d
laughed and told her it would be his pleasure.
The molds had also been shipped several weeks earlier than she’d been told they would.
She looked down at the tiny signature that was in the lower left
hand corner.
CWF and the year was all it said.

“It’s Connor
,
isn’t it
?
”
S
he looked up at him as she asked
,
suddenly sure that was who it was.

“He wasn’t very graceful as a kid. He was forever tripping over his own feet and had a broken ankle at least twice a summer for a few years running.
Our dad showed him how to carve using a knife and a few simple tools.
Mom was terrified that he was going to cut his fingers off or slice open an artery and die before he could grow into his feet.
He got really good at it.”
He picked up the mold that she’d emptied that morning.
“He loved to carve in relief and made a pretty good name for himself by the time he was sixteen.
When he turned eighteen and needed money for school
,
he started carving enough and selling his stuff online.
By the time he was in his twenties
,
he was a millionaire.”

Alexis looked at the bar of soap in a whole new light.
Connor had seen them when he’d been in here last week.
“He never said anything.
He just sort of nodded in their general direction when I asked if he’d seen them and he said
,
‘yeah
,
’ like it was no big deal.”

“It’s not to him.
He doesn’t make them for a living. He simply likes doing it because it makes him happy.”
Gordon moved closer to her as she backed up.
“Where do you think you’re going
,
love?”

When he talked to her in that
“
I’m going to fuck you until you can’t walk again soon
”
voice
,
she felt herself respond.
She moved back more out of overwhelming need than anything else.
He moved with her and when she put her hand up to stop him
,
he took it to his mouth and kissed it softly.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me since I…since I killed Tom.”
The first night they’d been together
,
he’d simply held her. Then since, he’d not stayed at her house.
“I didn’t know what to think about everything.”

“The Council of Weres had to talk to me.
Well, me and Austin.
I told them that I didn’t want to leave and form my own pack just yet.
Austin had to let them know that he was all right with me staying on for a little while and letting me keep my pack.”

She knew that.
Nancy, Gordon’s mother
,
had told her that it was a big deal to have the council decide in your favor about things like this.
Wolves, especially alphas like Gordon and his brother
,
could easily come to want to kill each other over territorial rights.
Gordon had had to sign in blood, his own
,
that he had no desire to take his brother
’
s pack and didn’t want to do anything but serve and protect his brother’s claim.
That had taken just over two weeks.
Just after her own trial of sorts had ended.

“Are they still sticking to their decision that I killed that man in self defense?”
She shuddered when she thought of what she’d done.
“Are they going to change their mind and come after me?”

She’d been her bird when it started.
Terror gripped her when she saw the cane coming toward Gordon.
She didn’t know a lot about wolves
,
or vampires for that matter
,
but knew that silver was something that could and would kill them.
She’d seen that same knife when Tom had come to her sister’s house and knew that he would kill whoever it struck.
She also knew that he’d planned to kill Gordon and she refused to lose another person in her life.

“When I saw the knife coming toward me I thought
…
” She looked up at him
,
scare
d
of what he meant.
“You’d be alone and I’d never get to see you large with our babe.
Lots of other thoughts came to mind
,
but that one hurt me the most.”

“I couldn’t let him kill you.
He would have
,
you know.
And me shifting to the wolf was the only thing I could do. She wanted him dead and I let her go.”

The wolf, her wolf
,
had snarled at her when she’d landed at Gordon’s feet as a bird and not a wolf.
She’d tried to calm her, speak to her as if she was another be
ing
when she saw the cane change.
The wolf inside of her seemed to say, “mine
,
” and Alexis let her have it.
It wasn’t until her claw, the one that was suddenly at her wrist even as the feathers on her arms were still fading away, was at Tom’s neck that Alexis realized that the shift hadn’t hurt at all and neither did killing a man.

“You saved my life and th
ose
of the others around us.
Especially Rod and Hope Campbell and my brother.”
He moved closer and she backed up again, this time into the table behind her.
“Are you still concerned that they will sentence you?
They won’t.
Rod said that you were well within your rights as my mate to kill the man.”

She’d heard him say that too.
He’d been her biggest supporter even though she’d killed his child.
She shuddered again.

“I didn’t think I could do that, kill someone. Not even when he was there and Darcy was bleeding when my sister died.
But when he tried to take you from me I couldn’t see past him hurting you and me stopping him.”

“I’m glad you did.”
He moved within inches of her without touching. “Alexis, I want you.
Why don’t we go back to the house and you let me show you just how much?”

Looking around the barn she realized that everything there could wait.
And even if it didn’t, she simply didn’t care.
Nodding to him
,
he picked her up and
,
before she knew it
,
he was taking them both to the shoreline where the waterfall was.