Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1)

Karly’s Wolf

Penny Alley

Karly’s Wolf

by

Penny Alley

A Red Hot Romance Erotic Novel

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2013 © by Penny Alley

This book may not be reproduced, in whole

or part, by mimeograph or any other means,

without permission of the author.

[email protected]

This book is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to actual persons,

places, and events are purely coincidental.

Edited by:

Rose Lipscomb

Cover design by:

Sarah-Jane Lehoux

Also by Penny Alley:

Demon Seduction

Golden Song

Incubus Moon

Coming Soon!

Gabe’s Bride

PROLOGUE

Digging her keys from her jeans pocket, Karly shoved through the screen door hard enough to send it crashing back against the house. Her hastily-packed suitcase banged against her leg as she jogged down the steps and ran for her car.
Run, Run, RUN!
—it was the only thought in her head as she fumbled the keys into the lock. She looked back over her shoulder, already hearing Dan’s heavy work boots pounding down the carpeted second-floor stairs in aggressive pursuit. Just as she yanked the car door open, he burst from the house after her.

“Get your ass back here!” His face was livid. His fists were tightly clenched. “Karly!” He leapt off the porch after her. “I’m not through with you!”

Yeah well, she was through with him. She was through with black eyes and cover-up that didn’t cover enough, leaving people to stare at the marks his fits of temper often left behind. She was through alternating between being a punching bag and a doormat. She was just plain through.

Flinging her suitcase onto the passenger seat, Karly jumped behind the wheel, yanking her feet in and quickly slamming the door seconds before he hit the side of her car. She slapped the locks down just as he grabbed the handle and the whole car shook as he punched, kicked and shoved in frustration. He slammed his fist into the window, but the glass withstood the blow far better than his knuckles did. Twirling, a burly ballerina of pain in his policeman’s uniform, Dan hugged his hand to his chest and spat curses into the lawn between his feet.

Shaking so badly that she almost dropped her keys, Karly started the car and his attention locked on her again.

“Where do you think you’re going? Karly!” When the engine revved, Dan darted behind the car. He slammed both hands flat against the trunk, his dark eyes wild and promising more than just a black eye if she didn’t start “paying attention.” Love, honor and obey; that’s what she’d promised and Dan, as he was fond of saying, refused to accept anything less.

So, you’d better start paying attention, little girl…
She shuddered, her hands gripping white-knuckled at the wheel.

“Don’t,” Dan warned, soft and low, his gaze locked with hers in the rearview mirror. Icy fingers prickled up her spine. He was always at his most dangerous when his voice went soft and low. “Don’t do anything stupid, baby. I’ll make you regret it, I swear to God.”

That was the wrong thing for him to say.

Half-scared and half-angry, Karly shoved the gears into reverse and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. He dove out of the way just in time. Otherwise, she’d have run him over and she wasn’t at all sure if she’d feel bad about it afterward or not. As it was, she left twin streaks of black rubber lining the length of the driveway and then she was gone, peeling off down the quiet residential street without any regard for speed. Her only thought was to get away. Run. Escape. She had been planning it for months.

She gripped and re-gripped the steering wheel, checking the rearview just as Dan’s bright red pickup barreled out of the garage in furious pursuit.

He was never going to let her go. Karly burst into tears. She didn’t know she was going to until it just happened. She also stomped the gas pedal again, speeding straight through the stop sign on the corner. She was gasping, trying to pull herself back under control and praying none of Dan’s cop buddies would be stationed at the well-known speed trap opposite the liquor store.

One was.

The black and white started to pull out behind her. She saw the minute flash of his lights and heard the brief blip of a siren’s wail before the unknown policeman spotted Dan’s truck. Both lights and sirens shut off. Small town cops stuck together, offering more blame than protection to the battered wife of one of their own.

She had to get out of Redemption. If she could make it to the highway, then she might have a chance. The state patrol was headquartered just two miles down the road. State cops were still cops, still part of that same “stick together no matter what” fraternity, but they were also less likely to overlook black eyes on hysterical wives. Sometimes, they even asked questions.

Karly kept going, driving as fast as her little Honda could, knuckling away the tears that kept leaking out and wincing each time she touched her right eye. It was swelling, red and getting redder by the second. She could already see spots of darkness growing up under the puffy skin, but at least she could still see out of it well enough to keep tabs on Dan in the rearview.

He was keeping pace with her, but not doing anything aggressive. She could see him behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette and muttering. Probably cussing her, or reassuring himself of all the things he was going to do once he got her home again—

His hand on the back of her neck…his belt whipping down again and again until she was screaming apologies into the bedspread…

She gripped the steering wheel, her palms starting to sweat. Well, his gas gauge was broken and she knew something he didn’t. Two nights back, just like clockwork, Dan had filled his gas tank, but in the wee small hours this morning while he had slept, Karly had siphoned out as much as she could, putting ten gallons in her car and another five in the two storage cans in her trunk. If he wasn’t driving on fumes just yet, he would be soon enough. All she had to do was watch, wait, and keep on driving.

Run, run, run!

She was past city hall, past the Wal-Mart at the last stop light and almost to the highway before Dan’s truck gave its first sputtering hint of impending failure. It jerked, rapidly reducing in speed, and by the time he got it pulled over onto the gravel roadside, she could see him beating on the steering wheel with both fists.

“Who’s paying attention now?” Karly said bitterly, and barely slowed at all as she took the on-ramp out of town. Once Redemption was out of sight, she let her speed drop back to something approaching normal. After that, she was safe, she knew. She didn’t have to keep checking the rearview mirror. She didn’t have to keep looking over her shoulder.

Some habits, however, are really hard to break.

CHAPTER ONE

Hollow Hills was an old copper-mining town with a population sign that boasted 397 people. It sat in a geographical pocket, surrounded by mountains and national forests and flanked by Wallow Creek, which was in actuality more of a lake than a creek. But it was quiet and remote, with a thriving tourist trade during hunting and fishing seasons. It was also located two states away, and Dan would never think to look for her here. She could have blinked and driven right through town without even realizing it.

There was no light and no stop signs, just a handful of old Wild-West-style buildings situated right off a winding two-lane highway. The general grocery store, gas station, feed store (which doubled as a post office) and breakfast diner (which closed every afternoon at two and never opened at all on Sundays) sat on the left-hand side of the road. The local station house for Fish and Game sat back off the highway on the right behind a thin curtain of trees, making it difficult to notice. And that was it, the sum total of consumer life in Hollow Hills. When Karly first called to inquire about a tiny cabin advertised for rent, Margo Hemington had told her most everybody who lived here had done so for generations, refusing to leave even after the copper mines shut down.

“If you want to get away, you can’t get much farther than Hollow Hills,” Margo had proudly stated. “City folk don’t usually stick around beyond what it takes them to fish or hunt. Cabin’s got no phones. No internet or TV, and cellphones can get a bit sketchy on whether they’ll work or not. It’s got electric though. I put that in a couple years back. Even has proper plumbing. No outhouse.”

“Sounds perfect,” Karly had said. “If I pay six months in advance, will you keep the utilities in your name?”

The pause that had followed had only lasted half a heartbeat.

“I can do that,” Margo finally said, and the deal had been struck.

As soon as Karly pulled into town, she called Margo to arrange a meeting at Emmett’s Hay and Feed to exchange money for the keys and directions to the cabin. While she waited, Karly opened her suitcase and dug out the small coffee can where she’d hidden every cent she could pilfer out of her paychecks and the weekly allotment Dan had allowed for groceries. All of that amounted to little more than four hundred dollars. The rest—thirty-six thousand and change—had come from her mother just days before she’d died.

“I buried it under the front porch steps,” Ezie Barker had rasped from her hospital bed. “Go and dig it up. Then you take it, baby girl, and you run.”

No mention of that money made it into the reading of Ezie’s will, which was just as well. Karly had been her mother’s only child and sole heir, but everything that had been left to her, Dan had taken.

Counting out six months’ worth of utilities and rent, Karly slipped the wad, plus a little extra, in her pocket. Hiding the can in the bottom of her suitcase again, she went into the general store. She bought a few cleaning supplies, a toothbrush (because in her haste to get out, she’d forgotten hers) and something quick and easy to fix for dinner: a small package of ground beef and generic-brand hamburger helper. By the time she emerged from the store, the shadows cast by the surrounding evergreens were long, the sun was going down, and an old woman dressed in worn jeans and a flannel shirt was waiting for her on the feed store steps.

Stashing her supplies in the car, Karly made her way across the parking lot. “Ms. Hemington?”

“Margo,” the old woman replied, gruff and business-like. She stood up, brushing the dust off the seat of her jeans and stuck out her work-rough hand. She looked at Karly and then pointedly at Karly’s black eye. Though she’d tried to smooth her too-long bangs down far enough to hide that side of her face, the bruise extended too far down her cheek. There was no pretending it didn’t exist. “Well,” she said. “You’re well shut of him, aren’t you?”

The only thing worse than the bruise was the humiliation of someone else knowing exactly how she’d gotten it. Karly’s knee-jerk instinct was to deny she’d been hit. A good fall, feigned clumsiness, it was so much easier to admit to, except that Karly never got the chance. Already the old woman was pulling out a set of keys and written directions, pressing both into Karly’s hands as she said, “Go straight on out of town and take Old Bueller Road. It ain’t marked, but it’s your first unpaved on the right. Follow that on about four miles and past the dogwoods. McQueens live out there now, but don’t you worry none. They aren’t as like to shoot you for a stranger if you’ve got the keys. If they do go for their guns, you just tell their ma I sent you and she’ll whoop that mangy lot straight!”

“O-okay.” Karly stared at the directions and then at Margo. “Thanks.”

The old woman patted her hand. “You’re in a good place, girl. Around here, we know the good ones from the bad. Anyone coming to Hollow Hills looking for trouble will be lucky if trouble doesn’t find them first! Go on. You’ve daylight enough to find the place if you hurry.”

The paper of directions crinkled between Karly’s hands as she looked at them and then back at Margo. The old woman couldn’t possibly understand, but she hadn’t just given Karly keys to some remote old cabin, she’d given her keys to a brand new start in life.

“Thank you,” she tried to say again, but had to stop, afraid she might start crying. She didn’t want to cry in front of Margo. That was the only thing more humiliating than being caught wearing fresh bruises.

“Go on,” Margo said, waving her off with both hands. “Daylight’s burning.”

Karly returned to her car and lay her new house keys on the passenger seat. As she drove away, Margo offered a farewell wave and called, “Drive safe and mind the animals!”

Karly drove slowly, holding the directions against the steering wheel so she could keep a close eye on them. She found Old Bueller Road easily enough, but when she turned onto it, she found herself driving into the setting sun. Lush evergreens and sprawling oaks shielded her from the worst of the glare, but that blanket of road dust on her windshield turned every flash of sunlight she drove through into a blinding sheen of yellow and white. She held up a blocking hand, but still could barely see the road ahead.

Gravel, kicked up by the tires, peppered the underside of her car. She bounced from rut to runnel and over exposed tree roots, one of which was so large it scraped her oil-pan. Four miles became closer to five, and the ‘dogwoods’ were in actuality a weathered sign that read, ‘Dog Woods’. It also had more bullet holes in it than letters and she began to get nervous, worrying at the edges of her paper as she strained to see through the blinding light and thickly-wooded overgrowth for signs of the McQueens.

Hers was an overactive imagination determined to conjure up deadly, dangerous hillbillies, hell-bent on protecting hidden moonshine stills or, worse, marijuana farms. She saw dozens of broken cars—rusted out vehicle shells that the forest and blackberry brambles struggled to hide, and by the time she glimpsed two narrow brown shacks, peeking back at her out from behind the cover of shadow and trees, Karly had truly spooked herself. A distant figure on the farthest porch stood up. Figuring her day had been rough enough without the added strain of being shot at, Karly sped up. She kept one eye on the half-hidden shacks and moved past them as quickly as possible, taking the sharp corner ahead much faster than she should have.

Sunlight pierced straight into her eyes and she threw up her hand again, striving to block the worst of it and barely spotting something dark directly in front of her just before it dashed to get out of the way. She stomped the brakes with both feet. Her car spun, fishtailing wildly and spraying dirt and rocks back into the trees. And still she felt that dreadful
whump
as whatever it was bounced off her front bumper and crashed into overgrown brush that lined the road.

“Oh my God.” Kylie sat frozen behind the wheel, her heart pounding and her mouth agape, terrified that she’d just hit a man. “Oh my God!” Throwing the car into park, she fumbled to get the door open and her seatbelt off. She stumbled out of the car, finding no sign of whatever she’d hit in the bushes at first, but then she checked the bumper. Blood, that was the first thing she saw. Blood and a bushy tuft of long dark hair.

One hand clapped over her mouth and the other clutching her suddenly queasy stomach, Karly turned to stare into the shadowed bushes. At first hasty glance, she saw no hint that anything had recently disturbed this stretch of road. It wasn’t until she crept closer and really looked that she saw broken twigs here, and crushed grass there, and then…something dark, lying in the blackest part of the shadows, silent and unmoving.

Creeping closer, Karly bent to peer into the brush. It took her eyes a moment to recognize the thing lying there as a dog. A really big dog—like a Husky, maybe. She didn’t know much about dogs, but she’d seen those in a movie before, only this one was black all over, with thicker fur and sharper features. The horror that gripped her gut barely eased. Mind the animals, Margo had said, and here she’d gone and killed someone’s dog.

Karly inched closer still, squatting down a little in an attempt to get a better look. No, not killed. It was still breathing.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she whispered as she reached into the prickly bushes and touched its soft, dark flank. The fur felt wet and her fingers came away sticky with blood. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry!”

A broken whine was the only response. Wobbly and dazed, the dog raised its head. It tried to rise, but couldn’t and flopped back down to lie there instead.

Was it the McQueens’ dog? Karly stood up, stabbing her fingers through her long blonde hair as she stared back down the road toward the rundown shacks. Was she brave enough to walk back there and tell the gun-toting hillbillies that Margo had expressly warned her about, that she’d just hit their family pet? Her heart thumped twice, almost stopping in her chest.

No. No, she definitely was not.

She looked at the dog, then at her car, and then back down the winding dirt road and quickly made up her mind. Digging her coat out of the trunk, she cleared as much room as she could on her backseat.

“It’s okay,” she soothed as she crawled into the bushes with the injured dog. She wrapped her coat around him. “Please, please don’t bite me.”

It made her nervous, getting her face this close to a wounded animal, but dazed as he was, the dog only turned his head to look at her. He nosed at her cheek, but didn’t growl and made absolutely no aggressive motions. Not even when she wrapped her arms under and around him and tried to lift.

He was bigger than he looked and heavy—she grunted—much heavier than she would have thought. In the end, after several heaving attempts that failed to budge the unsteady animal and afraid she might hurt him more if she continued trying, she spread her coat out on the ground and gently rolled him onto it. Gripping her coat sleeves, she dragged him back out of the vegetation onto the road.

Rocky as the ground was, it couldn’t have been comfortable for him. Grunting and straining with every tentative pull, Karly had only just drawn abreast of the rear passenger door when the dog seemed to gather wits enough to try standing again. She stopped pulling, for fear she’d accidentally sweep his unsteady feet out from under him.

“Easy, puppy,” she soothed, offering support until he locked his legs, gaining some stability. He was still weaving though, still dazed. “It’s okay, baby. Easy. Easy.” She reached past him to open the back. “Okay, up. Get inside.”

Head hanging low, he stared into the backseat, but made no move to comply. Gradually, Karly let go of him and sat back on her heels, watching without breathing, halfway hoping he might simply shake off his wounded lethargy and lope off into the woods without any further interference from her.

It was an incredibly selfish moment for her, and one that she was heartily ashamed of as the seconds bled out into minutes and it became painfully obvious that the poor dog was anything but fine. He wobbled, he swayed. He took a single, faltering step, his front legs completely out of sync with the back and, in the end, Karly went back to her original plan.

“It’s okay,” she soothed as she wrapped her arms around his thick chest. One paw at a time, one step at a time, she muscled the heavy canine into the back of her car. She all but lifted his hind legs up onto the seat when he seemed incapable. Massive, furry and bloody, he lay where she left him, overflowing her rear seat and whining softly when she tried to tuck his rear limbs in out of the way of the door.

“It’s okay,” Karly said stupidly one last time. Her hand trembled, but she gave his massive head an impromptu pat in the hopes there would be no hard feelings when this was all over.

As she withdrew, he lifted his nose to lick the back of her retreating hand. His tail thumped twice, a halfhearted wag that dropped it back off the seat. She carefully brushed it up to lie over his rear legs and softly closed the car door. Then she stood there, staring in at the dog, who stared fixedly back at her with lupine yellow eyes.

Now what?

Bending, she picked her coat up off the ground and looked at the blood smears. She turned in a full circle, looking up and down both ends of the gravel road. Should she go back to town? Surely there had to be a vet…somewhere. If not in Hollow Hills, then maybe the next town over, wherever that was. And what about the cabin? The sun was going down, and it was getting very dark, very fast. If she lost what little daylight she had left, how would she ever find her way to the cabin?