Past My Defenses (Taming the Pack series) (Entangled Ignite) (3 page)

“Maybe I’ll keep her anyway.” The idea shouldn’t have any appeal to him, but it did.

Lucifer stared at him as if conveying disbelief.

“You’re right, taming either the wolf or the woman seems unlikely.”

He was talking to a cat again.

Rolling his eyes, Dane left the room and went upstairs.

He grabbed his phone and called, asking to be patched through to Travis. Even if he wasn’t up for a search-and-rescue and he didn’t feel comfortable leaving Vanessa alone, he said he’d check in.

“Any news?” Dane asked.

“Nah, but no signs of foul play anywhere in the area. We’re hoping she got picked up by a motorist, and we’re contacting next of kin and so on.”

“What’s her name?” He tipped backward and looked down the hall toward his bedroom.

“Cheri Britton? You know her?”

“Don’t think so. Blonde? Brunette?”

“Brunette with shoulder-length hair. Brown eyes. Five foot eight. One hundred thirty pounds.”

So, not his naked werewolf guest. “No. Don’t know her.”

“We did a pretty good search, but we might want to pull in some of park service if she hasn’t turned up and a missing persons report is filed. You want in on that?”

“Yeah. Not now though, right?”

Travis laughed. “And here I thought I’d have to chase you off this morning.”

There was a lot he could say. He had a guest. He hadn’t slept because of said guest. He’d seen said guest naked and also covered in fur at one point. Dane said nothing.

Finally, Travis said, “Nah, I think we’re good.”

“Good. That’s good.” It was hard to act normal after a brush with a fictional creature. “So, you mentioned wolves last night.”

“Yup,” Travis said slowly.

“Like…normal wolves?”

“Are there any other kind?”

“I don’t know.” Well, yes…but he’d sound like a crazy person if he volunteered what he now knew.

“What about wolves?”

Several moments of silence passed as Dane tried to manufacture some question that sounded reasonable.

“Have you seen a wolf?” Travis finally asked.

“Yes.”

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

“What color?”

He looked down the hallway again. This was insane. This was getting further into a conversation about werewolves than he wanted to go. “You know what? Never mind. It was dark. Maybe it wasn’t even a wolf.” It definitely wasn’t a wolf some of the time anyway.

“Dark or light-colored?” Travis asked.

“Light.”

“Oh, well, okay.”

There was another lull in the conversation. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“You said you weren’t sure if it was a wolf. There are plenty of light-colored dogs in the area that you might mistake for a wolf.” Another long round of silence. “Well, okay then, as I said, I’ll keep you in the loop if we need you.”

“Okay.”

“Get a hold of me if you come across any other wolves…or dogs that look like wolves…or shadows that look like dogs that look like wolves.”

“Shut up.”

Travis hung up laughing.

Pocketing his phone, he stretched his neck as he yawned. Exhaustion was hitting him like a wall.

A good host would check on a guest, and she’d been in bad shape all night. It wasn’t just the magnetic pull of her warranting this check. He’d never seen anyone
that
allergic to anything.

He stopped at the doorframe to his room and peered in. He’d assumed her cheeks were round and her lips extra plump, but the allergy medicine had started working and her cheeks had thinned out. Her lips still looked more generous than most women’s, but she’d looked like a collagen injection gone wrong at first.

And he’d still been attracted to her.

He needed a girlfriend. It’d been far too long between dates. He blamed this small town in the shadow of Glacier Peak. Only idiots lived this close to a volcano—and he’d joined them. There weren’t enough single females in small towns, not enough that he came into regular contact with, and now that he had—apparently some of them came with furry baggage he really ought to steer clear of. He ought to.

Her snoring sounded like a buzz saw had gotten loose, and she flipped in the bed so all he could see was the mop of blond curls on top of her head.

He absently rubbed his chest where a heavy weight had settled. Either he was having a heart attack or he felt something for this strange little interloper. He stepped forward quietly for a closer look. He probably didn’t need to keep quiet; the odds were next to nil that she could hear him above the racket of her breathing. Vanessa was waking the dead in the nearest cemetery with the decibels of her snoring.

Rolling over again, she snarled at the blankets wrapping around her. She tugged at the flannel sheets in her sleep with an angry growl that reminded him of Lucifer. Then, her thin pixie face smoothed, her mouth dropped open, and the loud snoring resumed. She looked better than she had a half an hour ago. Her face was small and pointed with high, pronounced cheekbones. He could almost see the wolf behind the woman in her long, thin nose. Then there were those brown eyes that had blinked and squinted at him while they’d talked—the color definitely matched the watery, allergy-blurred ones of the wolf.

She
was
the wolf.

She’d
been
a wolf. She might be trying to convince him his eyes were playing tricks, but he knew what he’d seen. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew what he’d seen. She looked warm in his bed and like she belonged.

A huge yawn made Dane’s jaw pop. It’d been a long night, and she wasn’t going to wake anytime soon. If he were a decent guy, he’d go sleep on that back-wrecking couch—especially since he’d probably need earplugs to sleep within a mile of Vanessa. Then again, she looked awfully warm and comfortable, and he was a decent enough guy to sleep on the other side of the bed. He yanked his T-shirt off, wadded it up, and tossed it in the direction of his hamper. It dropped several feet shy. Yep, he definitely needed sleep if his finely honed hamper-tossing skills were falling off like this.

His hand went to his jeans and then he stopped. Sleeping in jeans would be uncomfortable, but he didn’t want her getting the wrong idea even if it sounded like the right idea right this moment.

His marriage proposal and subsequent rejection by Kaylee a year ago made him either ready for a rebound or ready to settle down. Kaylee had said she wasn’t the staying kind. If a normal human woman didn’t work out, sleeping with a werewolf didn’t bode well for a stable relationship.

What was he doing? Trying to build something with a woman he’d known a half an hour? Well, technically, he’d known her longer, but she’d been a wolf. A silver she-wolf.

Dane dropped onto the bed. His houseguest let out a snore that might have rattled the windows. He pushed off the mattress and went to his sock drawer where he kept earplugs for when he had to use a chainsaw—the snores were on the same decibel level.

Amazing. He could hear her snoring with the earplugs in. Still, it was better.

Back in bed, he tugged a small portion of the covers from her. She bared her teeth in what looked like a snarl and then relaxed. Maybe it was only the lack of sleep making him feel this attraction to her. Maybe fully rested, he’d send her on her way after making sure she was up-to-date on her rabies shots.

Her snores stopped suddenly, and it stopped his heart. She was okay, right? He’d do mouth-to-mouth with no complaints, but if she wasn’t okay, did she need a vet or a doctor? Her nose wrinkled and she wriggled across the bed toward him. He was about to pull out his earplugs and explain—who the hell knows what—when she settled beside him.

Her nose pressed against his shoulder. He pulled one earplug out and tipped to face her. A roar of possessiveness took him by surprise. How she could look so fragile and fierce at the same time was a mystery. Reaching out, he ran a hand through her platinum-blond curls. The wolf’s fur had been more gray than blond, and nowhere near as soft.

Her face screwed up in an expression he couldn’t read, then she whimpered and moved closer. Her body was warm on its own, her flesh radiating heat, but when she draped a naked leg across him, he felt branded. They wouldn’t need any blankets if she kept this up.

This was stupid.

He wasn’t a stupid man.

Only a stupid man would get involved in whatever weird mythical crap was going on here with her.

Her mouth dropped open, her lips brushing his skin as they did, and then, the snoring resumed.

He shoved the earplug back in and lay down. Maybe he was a stupid man because he didn’t get up and leave. In fact, he turned toward her and hugged her nearer—snoring and all.

Chapter Two

Sweet heaven on earth. The scent filled her, energizing her. It ran through her veins, through her heart, and up to her head. She needed. This new scent was a drug, an opiate. She’d trade anything, do anything, give anything to wrap herself in it. It was the smell of pine trees, the musk of a wild thing caged, and something sweet and tasty. The wolf in her howled. This was it. She had to have this—

Wait…

She was pressed against warm flesh. Her hand rested on the side of a muscled abdomen. The hard pillow beneath her head was a bicep. And her nose was touching the smooth skin of a man’s pecs. His other arm was across her, his hand on her thigh—her naked thigh—though it was just below whatever she was tangled in. Her clothing wasn’t the only thing all tangled up. She had her leg between his.

He was in jeans. No shirt, but jeans. Yeah. Oh very much yeah. Hell to the yeah. This was clearly a fantasy image burned into her psyche by far too many jeans ads most likely, but she embraced it. A guy in only jeans made her heart pound and her wolf howl—or whimper.

She wanted. She craved. She needed. She’d have him if she didn’t back away—fast. A Lycan in heat could only stand so much, and this was stretching the limits of…

She inhaled again. Her brain memorized the scent, it sank deep, and her heart whispered,
Mine.

It had never been like this. Never. Not when she’d been in heat. Not when she’d been with someone. This felt like something she couldn’t run away from…which stilled her and sent a spike of cold through her heated, needy thoughts. But maybe she wouldn’t want to run away.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Mmm, he was intoxicating. The Alpha had been after her to commit to a mate a few months back—he’d suggested several Lycans. They were a dying breed—literally, and poachers hunting them to extinction weren’t helping that.

In a few packs, only the alpha couple bred, but even they were giving up on the old ways in light of their dwindling numbers. The Glacier pack was encouraged to pair off and breed like rabbits—no, like wolves.

She pressed her face closer. Whoever this was—and admittedly, the details were a bit sketchy—he was her mate, now and forever. She’d heard it would be like this. You’d catch their scent when the time was right, and you had to have them. You were ruined for everyone else. Everyone else was chopped liver—only not chopped liver because most wolves liked chopped liver. Oh, wow, this incredible scent was rattling her ability to think clearly.

Mine
.

Yeah, she got that.
Thanks, primal instinct. Can we figure out how to handle this?
How did one tell their mate, “You’re actually mine. Hopefully you feel the same way because I don’t really have a choice here”? She should probably start by opening her eyes and seeing which member of the pack she’d dragged to bed. He was less hairy than most she’d seen. Eventually, you saw most of the pack in the flesh, and something about him…

She should really open her eyes.

This was momentous.

She’d found her mate.

Open your eyes, Vanessa.

She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, and the memory of the cat and the cage and the man—sweet heaven on two legs—all rushed back in in an awful, grim reel of a “he’s a human” horror flick. Dane. The guy she’d been planning to convince that he was crazy today. The guy with
that
cat.

“Oh, hell no.”

He jerked, his arms tightening around her, and then one hand reached up as he grimaced and pulled something red and squishy from his ear—an earplug. “Do you always wake that way?”

Both the wolf inside and the woman housing it moved fast with panic—even if the wolf wanted to stay. She scrambled out of the bed before he’d even opened his eyes.

Run.

But…mine.

But run.

“No…no…no…not this.” She gestured at him. This was a damn ugly mess—that’s what this was. Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe she was dead.

Mine.

Run.

Both of you, shut up!

Frowning, this…this…this human said, “Look, whatever you think happened, didn’t happen. I needed sleep, and you were sleeping off that dose of allergy pills. I was here on this side, and you moved over to squish against me in your sleep.”

He
was
hugging the edge of the giant bed opposite where she’d started.

“So,
nothing
happened.”

Oh, it had happened. She was fighting every cell of her body that wanted back in that bed next to Dane…a human. Only a very small, rational portion of her was making sense and screaming, “Run like hell! Run like you’ve never run before!”

He was a damn human. Lycans didn’t fall for humans. Well, not many. Okay, it happened, but it wasn’t something to be proud of. And it certainly wasn’t happening with her. It was too complicated. Also, he was the park ranger—one of the last people who should know their secret. Then there were the poachers—the very reason they were a dying breed. If anyone mentioned the presence of Lycans in this area, the poachers would come, and they’d be as good as dead. There might be full-scale slaughter of Lycans in the Glacier pack if this human blabbed about their existence. The pack might have to move on because of her. At the very least, she should move…but even the thought of moving away from her…human made her stomach cramp and nausea rise in her throat.

This ruined everything.

And yet…

She inhaled. Mmm. He smelled like a feast to a starving person. He smelled like her first time for everything. It pulled on her—willed her to go back to him.

Stay.

His.

“It must be the hormones. It’s just being in heat.”

Dane squinted and asked, “What?” pulling out the other earplug. Then, he stretched his jaw and rubbed his ear.

Okay, that was weird. “Why do you sleep with earplugs in?”

He tossed them on the small table beside the bed. “I don’t normally. You snore like you’re trying to swallow sandpaper.”

Her mouth dropped open. Oh, no, he didn’t just say that. “I do not!”

Leaning back, he grabbed his phone off the same table and punched it on. “You do. It was so earsplitting, I recorded it because I’ve never heard anything like it.”

The horrible guttural noise made her hands jump to her own ears. The allergy pills had done the job and now her better-than-average hearing was assaulted, offended, and even stung from that…that…that horror. It was like a tree falling—a tree felled by Satan. That sound was evil. In some way, it was evil.

Dane grinned as he stopped it.

Pointing at his phone, she couldn’t believe she had to say it, but… “That was
not
me.”

He laughed.

He. Laughed.

She was so out of here. She spun away and bolted. It was an unfair advantage for a Lycan to be on school track teams, but she’d ignored that and taken Oregon by storm ten years ago. She hadn’t lost a second on her four-and-a-half-minute mile. And she’d only perfected running away from what life threw at her since then.

Run.

Now.

Yes. Hell yes.

Finally, her inner wolf was siding with her. Even a wolf wouldn’t stay in the room with someone claiming they snored loud enough to cause sterility. Bastard.

“Vanessa!” he yelled after her.

She made it to the trees at the edge of his property, fifty feet from the house, dressed in only a flannel shirt, which was going to hit the ground as soon as she was out of sight and could push the change.

“Vanessa!” he called from the front door.

Nothing he said would make her turn back. She was going to scrub his scent from her skin, from her nose, even if she had to use bleach. There was nothing…

“I know what you are!”

She stopped. Except that. Damn him and that infernal ace up his sleeve. Turning back, she yelled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dane, but you are a rat bastard.”

He grinned at that and shook his head. “And you are beautiful when you’re pissed.” He took a few lazy steps forward and leaned against the beams of his front porch. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt. If he had, she’d already be home. The noon sun filtered through the branches and brushed his skin with even more gold. He wasn’t half bad himself—and curse her frantic hormones for noticing that when she was so furious with him.

A breeze brought his scent to her. She closed her eyes and inhaled. There was no way. She might last a week if she was lucky, but then she’d find herself back here—maybe even against her will. She’d crawl across his body, memorizing every inch of his flesh.

Mmm.

Mine.

Her body and brain were both saying they’d cut off a leg rather than go without him.

He’d just told her that she snored so loud he’d worn earplugs.

Well, she had allergies.

She did
not
snore that loud. He’d turned it up or recorded something else. She could not be that loud.

And even if she was and did snore, what kind of jerk recorded it?

She inhaled again and whimpered. He wasn’t kidding. He did find her attractive when she was in a rage—she could practically taste the scent of arousal.

He’d recorded her snoring! Who did that?

His scent was in the wind and all over her. They’d slept in the same bed. He was imprinted on her soul and her body. The only part of her not aching to go back there was her stubborn streak, and lucky for her, it was a mile wide—which was the distance she was about to put between her and this fool. In four and a half minutes. Or faster if she could manage it.

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

Pulling the flannel shirt off her, she crushed it between her hands and threw it on the ground and turned and walked into the woods. Buck naked. If she had to chain herself to the bed, that’d be the last thing he’d see of her—her ass as she walked away—and he’d know what he’d missed out on because it was fabulous.

Behind her, she heard his deep, rich, heavenly laughter and that tugged on her too. She felt leashed to that irritating, stupid man—like he could yank on her chain and get her back there in an instant.

Oh, hell no.

Yeah, she didn’t believe it either.

…

Dane sat on the top step of his porch, shaking his head. He’d pay money for a show like that again. For a blonde, she had the temper of a redhead—and the body of a goddess. And he didn’t think for a second he’d seen the last of either of them. And he’d like to see a whole lot more of the latter.

How could she not know she snored to wake the dead? Unless she’d slept every night alone, someone should have told her. Actually, the idea of her always sleeping alone sounded really good. Well, not anymore—he didn’t want her sleeping alone ever again, even if he spent the rest of his life wearing earplugs at night.

It was unreal that he felt this strongly so soon. Even with all the insanity that she’d bring with her, he wanted her—like
really
wanted her.

When she’d taken off, he’d practically pulled muscles trying to chase her. He was sure he’d really screwed up—and, okay, he had, but then she’d turned at the edge of the landscaped portion of the cabin’s yard, and the alarm in him settled. The rush of adrenaline had turned to arousal. His brain filled with what seemed like an arrogant and outrageous certainty: she was his.

She’s mine.

He’d never been more certain of anything. She was in a blind panic, but it was inevitable. It was like spring following winter. She was his spring.

It was crazy as hell, and he almost wanted to discount it because
this
wasn’t him. He wasn’t like this. He had every reason to think that he’d never understand women. Kaylee had screwed with his brain. Hadn’t he been certain then?

Actually, no…not at all. Crap, he’d asked her to marry him in private and without a big production because it’d always been fifty-fifty in his mind, and maybe that was why he shouldn’t have asked her—even if they
had
been together for years. There were a few times in your life when you should
know
.

He was certain now. Vanessa was his, and she was staying his. If she didn’t come back on her own…well, he’d find her and convince her. She was his.

It was nuts.

He didn’t trust it. Not entirely. It was fast, and it was crazy, and…werewolves. Maybe she was appealing to his primitive side, and he’d get over this, but he’d ride this white-hot lust in the meantime.

Hell, he was hot for a woman who was part wolf.

This might even be a fetish.

Great.

Still, she was his.

From inside the house, through the open door, he could hear Lucifer start to yowl incessantly.

Time to let him out to prowl and then call his sister and have Christa collect her cat. Soon. Because damn if he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his day off vacuuming, sweeping, and scrubbing every inch of his house for when Vanessa came back.

…

She slipped through the small break between boards into her cellar. Her own musk was strong enough to keep anything smaller than a bear from approaching what equated to a wolf den. Here she’d leave the wolf and put on the trappings of a human. Along with her own scent in the den was the familiar odor of the Alpha. Well, that sucked. Someone was making a house call.

She shifted back to her skin with a long stretch and stood. Being a wolf took a lot more effort during the day and was more foolhardy. The night was their domain. Most Lycans were killed during the daylight hours—and if you were killed in wolf form, you stayed in that form, your cells frozen in that state. The only ones who’d recognize that something other than a natural wolf had been slaughtered were other Lycans.

Miles of woods separated her from Dane’s cabin, though, and she wasn’t streaking that distance in daylight. Not to mention that she’d wanted to put as much as distance as fast as she could from
that
mistake. And all because she’d gotten way off track last night. This was what came of going out with a full-blown allergy attack. You went out a pathetic excuse for a predator and came back good and shot down.