Hunting Wolf: Black Mesa Wolves #3 (12 page)

Another burst of laughter snorted out of Lily. “That's definitely my sibling you're talking about. Could he take any wolf in the world during a cage-fighting death match? Sure. But being graceful and suave around a girl he actually likes? Not so much. I can see that going south fast.” Despite the censorious words, Lily's voice held enormous affection. Rielle immediately understood Lily probably took her big sister role as seriously as Caleb took his Guardian role.

“Rielle.” Lily's tone became solemn. “Look. He'd kill me for talking to you about this, but I think you're pretty cool.” Lily smiled at Rielle, who tentatively smiled back. “So you deserve to hear this. Caleb really likes you. He just doesn't know how to treat women the way they should be treated. He's such a guy's guy, and you're pretty feminine. I think he's half afraid of breaking you.”

“He almost has, a few times.”

They both laughed.

Lily went on, “Now, I don't know exactly what's going on between you two, and I don't really want details.” She wrinkled her nose. “He's still my brother. But anyone with half an eye could tell there's tension between you both lately. I'm guessing something went kinda wrong. Which I'm sure was his fault,” she added in a very dry tone.

“Um,” Rielle ventured, somewhat nonplussed.

Lily waved a hand at her in a “please don't say anything more” gesture. She went on, “I will let you in on a little secret, though.”

Rielle raised her eyebrows and leaned very slightly toward the other wolf, who leaned right back.

Keeping her voice low as she glanced quickly toward the customers admiring a new shipment of gauzy, colorful scarves, Lily said, “Like any guy, he's a total chicken about admitting his real feelings. I can tell just by the way he's been acting that he likes you more than he knows what to do with. Unless I push him to actually talk to you, he'll probably just hunt Luke down and beat him to death instead. That would be way easier than admitting he has some feelings for you,” she ended, face crinkled into a frown. “Caleb knows how to fight, and he searches it out every chance he gets.”

Rielle pictured Caleb punching Luke as he roared with furious glee, blood spraying from the other wolf's face. To her surprise, the image didn't horrify her as much as it once might have. Even so, it didn't mean she remotely wanted him to defy direct orders and take out his anger on the former rogue. Violence wasn't the answer. Deep down, her wolf made a simple, shrugging observation:
Predator. As am I.
Rielle put that interesting thought away for the moment. She could only concentrate on one thing at a time.

“What he doesn't know, however, is how to to talk. How to communicate with anything besides his fists. But you can make him talk.” Lily's voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

“How?” Rielle whispered back, intrigued despite her nagging feeling she should still make Caleb wait and wonder if he'd blown every chance he'd ever had with her. Since, after all, he practically had. Although she still wasn't sure exactly how the chance had been offered in the first place. In fact, her mind was still in a whirling loop of delight, fear, and excitement that he'd kissed her at all.

In the week—okay, eight days and fourteen hours, to be exact—that had passed, she'd had a chance to examine more closely what had happened that day in the woods. Caleb had kissed her. She'd kissed him back. It was amazing. Mind-blowing. Exciting beyond anything she'd ever imagined possible, and her imagination was pretty detailed. She'd allowed her usual fantasies of the perfect wedding, of the perfect guy, to overwhelm her just as Caleb's kiss had. She'd been imagining suave, sophisticated moves from him. Then he'd gone and made that dumb, hurtful comment, not to mention somehow smacking her in the head, and it brought reality crashing back down on her. He wasn't a sophisticated, suave gentleman. He was Caleb Bardou, a rough and tumble guy who might be good-looking—okay, who might be the most outrageously male, gorgeous guy she'd ever seen, even if she hadn't seriously noticed it until recently—but had a significant foot-in-mouth disease.

When she'd taken even more time to think about it, which happened almost every night as she tossed and turned in her bed in a room at the den, very aware that Caleb slept in his small house nearby on the property, she had to admit that was Caleb. And even if it was nowhere near gentlemanly, it was part of him. What Lily was telling her right now made sense. He'd been covering up his own nervousness. Because apparently he liked her, too.

The thought made her tingle and flush again. A whole lot.

“Go on, then.” Lily said.

Rielle blinked at her.

Patiently, Lily said, “Go over to the coffeehouse, sit down next to him, and tell him he's taking you out again. As a do-over.” With a satisfied smile, Lily leaned back again.

Rielle blinked. “That's it?”

Lily laughed and shook her head. “Trust me. All we females have to do is show up. After that, men usually putty in our hands no matter what.”

Rielle knew the sudden softness and glow on Lily's face had everything to do with her mate, Kieran. She sighed. One day, she would love to have that sort of glow herself.

Was that even possible with a huge, toe-smashing, foot-in-mouth, barbarian wolf who could kiss her into a state of pure mindless longing?

Yes.
Her wolf's voice echoed through every cell as she projected an image of the kiss that had about knocked Rielle to her knees. A shiver launched its way down her spine and up again, leaving pleasant little tingles in its wake.

Somewhat bolstered by her wolf's confidence, she straightened up and took a deep breath. “Okay. You win. I'm going over there. But if he laughs at me, he may have to call you for backup when I take a swipe at him.”

Lily's answering chuckle followed her out the door.

~

Caleb drummed his fingers on his leg for about the twenty-seventh time in the last hour. It took three times as much caffeine to jack up a wolf as a human. Since he was on his fifth cup of black coffee laced with a triple shot of espresso, he was about ready to jump over the moon.

“Refill?”

The barista popped up at his elbow, the one who kept coming to his table with her offer despite the fact customers were supposed to go up to the counter and pay for refills. Caleb somehow managed to keep his voice short of barking when he said, “No, thanks. I think I'm set for about a week now.”

“You sure can put it away!” she chirped, giving him an inviting smile again.

His wolf yawned.

“Yeah,” he said. Pointedly, he turned back to the screen of his tablet.

“Okay, I'll check on you again in a while!”

She bounced off. He hmphed under his breath, wondering what the heck she didn't get about his refusal of more damn coffee. Were women always this dense?

His wolf sent an image of Rielle in wolf form, padding toward him with determination in her gaze. Okay, so, no. Rielle was anything but dense. She might be one of the smartest wolves he knew. In fact, he'd been thinking about asking her for a bit of help on this stupid report he had to rewrite—again—because it was about to kill him from some serious boredom. Of course, she seemed to be not quite talking to him at the moment. Well, she was polite to him, because that's who she was. But man, had he screwed up the other day. She hadn't seemed to have forgiven that just yet. Which was his fault. As usual.

Maybe asking her for help on this report would break the ice between them a little. He wrote reports all the time of course, like every Guardian. But apparently his latest was “too intense in its negative descriptions of the rogue wolves and does not accurately reflect what the Black Mesa Pack wants to leave in the historic record.”

So he'd called some child-killing rogue bastards just that—child-killing rogue bastards. In fact, the words stared up at him from the screen right now. Kind of taunting, actually, like they were daring him to tone them down to something Alpha would find acceptable.

“You wrote
that
in a report?”

Rielle's musical voice coming over his shoulder made him lurch in surprise, knocking a pen off the table and cascading a coffee-splotched drift of white napkins down as well.

“Sorry!”

He turned around with the intention of glaring at her. But she was standing there in that form-hugging silky white top, the one that outlined her breasts so perfectly, and that dark pink little skirt that kind of swirled around her thighs like it was dancing. Instead, all he really wanted to do was stroke her. Everywhere. When he'd first met her in the morning to escort her to her job, it had taken just about all his strength to not grab her and kiss her till they were both gasping for air. Because, yeah. She looked so gorgeous in that top and skirt he could pretty much eat her up.

Irritated at himself for not being focused enough to have scented her approach, he reined himself in. She was still mad at him, anyway. Not to mention she was the reason he was stuck in town. Guarding her while she worked at that store of hers she loved so much.

“Did you just walk across the street by yourself?”

Rielle slid into the chair across from him. Her intoxicating sweet smell came over the table to him, and he inhaled it with every sense he had. His wolf rumbled with great approval.

“Lily was watching me from the store. You know, she might actually make a pretty good sales associate.” Rielle smiled and let her fingers stray to the small turquoise stone in the silver necklace she wore. Caleb's eyes followed the movement and caught on the beat of her pulse in her throat. He swallowed and forced himself to look at her eyes again. “I actually left her in charge for a minute. She's helping customers try on clothes right now.”

Caleb tried to picture his butt-kicking Guardian sister plucking frilly blouses or something equally girly from the racks and holding them up against herself to demonstrate how wonderful they would look on a customer very willing to be parted from all her money. “Right.”

“They didn't kill a child, you know.” Her voice became low and very serious, and she gave him a stern look. “He was quite young, but that's an inaccurate description.”

“Ree. He wasn't a Guardian, or even in training to be one,” he said, also keeping his voice down. He knew she could hear the frustration in it, though. “He was still in his teens.”

Rielle reached out a light pink fingernail to tap the screen. “History is about accuracy. I'm not surprised Alpha is having you rewrite your report.”

He let his dander get up—whatever that meant, anyway—and decided to spar back with her. He liked how feisty she got when she talked about history. Actually, he liked that she was talking to him at all, given the tension between them ever since he'd botched a perfectly good kiss. Okay, a kiss he remembered to its every last detail, especially the fact it had made him forget everything. Including, unfortunately, his manners at the time.

He sighed. Then, nonchalantly, he said, “Maybe with your help, oh Pack Historian, I could pretend I know how to write a decent sentence and make this report sound better.”

He expected that annoyed look on her face and a snarky answer, which he seemed to bring out of her. To his surprise, she said instead, “Maybe. In return for something.”

“What sort of something would that be?” he asked, slightly suspicious but intrigued. Very intrigued. His wolf pushed toward the surface, very aware of the sweet little dark wolf who'd been snubbing him for the past several days.

She took a deep breath. Those soft brown eyes stayed serious, with a touch of uncertainty framing her expression. When she spoke, her words were so quiet they were almost lost in the bustling background sounds of the coffeeshop.

“Another date. With me. So we can, um, start over.”

Caleb sat up straight. Oh, yeah. Things just got really interesting.

Color flooded Rielle's cheeks but she boldly continued. “I think we've really gotten off on the wrong foot with each other. And Caleb....”

He thought he might pass out from holding his breath waiting for her answer.

“I haven't been very honest with myself. Clearly, I like you.” Pink covered her cheeks, and he knew she was remembering their kiss. Her soft cocoa-colored eyes searched his. “And I've been a little rude with you. Okay, I've been very rude.” Her rueful smile showed how sorry she was about that, which instantly made him want to apologize for being a rude jerk himself. “So, I want to start over. If you want to, that is,” she finished on a suddenly hesitant note.

A smile he couldn't control turned him into a grinning idiot. Wow. So he hadn't totally blown it with the one girl whose kiss he honestly couldn't get out of his mind. “That would be cool,” he said. She looked relieved. “I thought you were pretty pissed at me the other day. I didn't think I had another chance.”

“You almost didn't,” she said, although a smile played around the edges of her lips. “But...” She sent a nervous glance to the tabletop, then looked back up at him with that shy yet intrigued expression that made his body want to do all sorts of totally wild things with her. “I really liked that kiss.”

He held her gaze, letting the heat of it rise between them both. “So did I,” he said. He let his words hang there for a beat, enjoying the play of color across her face. She didn't drop her eyes again, though, which made his wolf rumble with approval and anticipation. “But a date right now might be a little awkward.”

Her brow furrowed, which was a trait that was beginning to actually grow on him.

He shuffled his feet under the table. “We'll need a chaperone.”

Face wrinkling, Rielle started to open her mouth, but he quickly went on. “Rule of three right now. So it will be me, you, and someone else from the Pack.”

“Oh. Right.”

She looked so deflated he scrambled his brain trying to think of a way out of it.
Think!
He commanded himself. His wolf whined, as blank as he was.

“That's okay,” she said. She let her fingers nervously crush a napkin. “Maybe after everything is—solved.”

There was a short silence, during which Caleb pictured finding the rogues and killing them not only for being rogues, but because now they were ruining his chances of ever showing Rielle he could be an actual gentleman for one evening. Or at least not quite as much of a clueless guy for once.