Wolf Tracks (9 page)

Step one. Get abducted by a virtual stranger? Check.

Two. Completely forget all rules of safety and have sex with said kidnapper? Check.

Three. Have the guy she was developing suspiciously strong feelings for turn into a wild animal in front of her then suggest they were meant to be together for the rest of their lives? Once you put a check in that box, what the hell were you supposed to do for a follow-up performance?

But it was true. She’d seen him change—it was a reality she had to face, no matter how much her mind rebelled at the thought. Shrieking or wailing wouldn’t move this situation forward.

Logic was always the best thing to fall back on. Logic, and an oversized baseball bat.

TJ rocked on his feet, his hands twisting together until he deliberately shoved them into his pockets. “You don’t want me to get us back to Haines?”

She shook her head. “If we go back now that doesn’t answer any more of my questions, does it? I suspect once we reach civilization we’re going to have a few other issues to deal with.”

TJ’s cringe said it all. Yup—that hierarchy he’d mentioned in passing—she bet he was up the creek without a paddle in their books right now. His big brother was in charge? Thinking back to the way the whole group had worked her at the wedding ceremony, she suspected there were a few well-greased wheels in play. Who knew what weird rules TJ had broken? Someone was undoubtedly on the lookout for them even now.

But this was
her
life and she would be the one to make the decisions. Not some well-meaning older brother, or even Maggie, although Pam suspected her BFF could answer a few questions.

In spite of the adrenaline rush that had spiked through her for most of the evening and night, or maybe because of it, an enormous yawn overtook her.

TJ spoke quietly. “Let’s call it a night and tomorrow I’ll do my best to show you…well, I’ll show you how this works. But anytime you have questions, you ask. I promise I won’t keep anything from you.”

“Holding your tongue doesn’t seem to be the issue, TJ.”

“Sorry, very true.”

Pam covered her mouth as another yawn hit her. Bed. It was past two and definitely time for some sleep. She turned and paced into the bedroom. The chill in the air encouraged her to dive under the quilt. She pounded the pillows a few times trying to settle in comfortably when she realized she was alone. She sat up to see TJ staring at her from where he still stood in the living room.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“You want me to sleep with you?” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Okay. I mean, I want to join you, but…”

He walked forward slowly, dropping into a crouch beside the bed. His long fingers carefully stroked back a strand of hair from her forehead and his touch sent a shiver through her.

“Pam. You want me to prove we’re mates, then here’s the first demonstration. I think getting into bed with you right now would be a mistake. You’re still in shock and while there’s this incredible physical pull between us because we are mates, if anything happens sexually you’re going to regret it.

“Still, I can feel how much you need to be comforted right now, and so here’s the best I can do.”

He kissed her forehead tenderly then walked to the opposite side of the bed. He turned his back and stripped off his shirt, tossing it on a nearby chair. The pale light from the dying fire leaked in through the open doorway, brushing delicate highlights along the solid ridges of his body. Pam sucked for air. He was simply gorgeous. The way he moved made her hot and bothered, even when he wasn’t turning sexual attention on her.

There was a huge grin on his face as he pivoted and sank to his knees. “The way you’re looking at me is giving me a thrill. I’ll shift back when you need me in the morning.”

Though she watched as carefully as possible, she couldn’t figure out how he did it. One minute he was a human, stooping low to the ground, the next a beautiful wolf leapt onto the bed beside her. He batted her with his head, blowing warm air from his nostrils as he nuzzled her neck.

Something simply amazing—followed by something normal. It was so TJ. “Goof.”

He licked her cheek from jawbone to temple, a long slow drag that made her giggle. As one they settled, her arms wrapped around him, her fingers tangled in his fur to hold him close.

A tight ball of fear she’d been denying slipped out from inside her belly and unraveled.

How had he known? She’d needed to take charge and make this work. And yeah, she had the major hots for him. But this? She stroked his fur and he let loose a rumble, soft and low, in his throat. He radiated calmness, cautiously rolling to avoid bumping her too hard.

Closing her eyes, she was surrounded by a strong sensation of peace. His rhythmic heartbeat felt perfect under her hands as she fell asleep stroking him.

TJ was still in wolf form when they woke, and his enthusiastic good-morning kisses made her laugh until her stomach hurt. Her heart ached a little since that’s how Damon used to greet her—with a wet tongue-lashing that had her scrambling for cover as he chased her around the tangled bed sheets.

Damn it, her new boyfriend reminded her of her dog. This couldn’t be good.

She pushed him back enough she could sit up. He rested his chin on her thigh, big beautiful eyes staring up unblinking. She’d slept like a rock, his warm furry body pressed against her side, comforting and reassuring.

“Good morning, TJ.”

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes sparkling at her. One ear wiggled and she swore he sighed with contentment. Damn, he was cute. “Dibs on the shower, then you can tell me what you’ve got planned for today.”

TJ jumped off the bed and headed out the open door, leaving her alone in the room. She stripped off her sleep shirt and grabbed her things.

Mates. Werewolves. The calm, contented feeling she’d woken to dissipated a little. How come she hadn’t screamed and run away after waking up with a wolf in her bed?

Because it felt right?

The shower wasn’t hot enough to wash away the rest of her unease, no matter how long she stayed in. Still, she’d offered TJ time to prove his point. Not that she had much choice about getting out of the wilderness without his help. When her fingers and toes grew wrinkled, she abandoned the water to face what the day would hold.

She rubbed a towel over her hair as she joined him at the kitchen table.

The toasted bagels were only slightly burnt. A fully human TJ poured her a cup of coffee and passed her the sugar container, his damp hair sticking up in spikes.

“Where did you shower?”

He pointed out the window. “In the lake.”

Pam shivered. “You’re kidding. The water is freezing.”

“It’s too cold for me in my human form, but my wolf doesn’t mind a bit.”

She took a long pull at her coffee, letting the heat of it wash over her. It may be a handy solution—having two forms like that—but she was grateful it had been him in the lake and not her.

He handed her a note pad. “We’ve all got in the habit of carrying paper around for those times we need to talk with Robyn and our sign language isn’t adequate. While you were showering, I jotted down a few notes to distract me.”

“Distract you?”

His gaze rolled down one side of her and up the other, and suddenly the room grew a whole lot warmer. “You were naked in the shower. Imagining you in there…”

Their eyes met and Pam swallowed around the bit of bagel stuck in her throat. Oh lordy, what had she gotten herself into? She stared at him, the dark pools of his eyes enticing her to dive in.

He nudged the notepad and broke the connection. “As per orders, I’ve got adventure activities planned for each day, but I’ve added to them. This list is the things that are normal for wolf mates to experience around each other. I thought we could work our way through some of them—sort of see how things go, and still get in the activities you signed up for originally.”

He leaned forward and took her hand, his expression shifting from flirtatious to contrite. “I want to say one more time I’m really sorry I didn’t ask you straight out if you wanted to get involved with me. I should have done things differently.”

Wow. An unasked-for apology from a guy? Pam sat for a minute not sure what to say. “Okay.”

She glanced at the paper. He’d drawn five circles on the page, overlapping them in the middle like a malformed daisy. Paired words filled each circle.

Mental link

Chemical attraction

Physical connection

Emotional attachment

Complementary interests

Pam hesitated. He was taking this damn seriously. “Chemical attraction? Isn’t that the same thing as physical connection?”

TJ shook his head. “Not at all. One leads to the other, but I can assure you they are very different.” He brushed the back of his knuckles against her cheek before tucking her hair behind her ear. “This one might be hard to prove—heck they’re all going to be tough, but this one might be the most wolfish. I’m guessing a bit, since I only know what I’ve been told about wolves’ experiences. You being human…” He shrugged.

“So you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to prove?”

His eyes flashed. “Oh, I know exactly what I’m going to prove. That you and I belong together, without any doubt whatsoever.”

Pam pushed back her chair slightly, feeling caged by his intensity. She grabbed the notepad and held it between them, dragging air into her lungs to try and calm the blood racing through her.

“Okay, chemical. In short that means? What?”

TJ took a slow, deep inhalation and moaned. “I am never going to be able to do that without getting hard. Okay—what it means is you smell right. I’m not talking about your perfume or your soap, but you.” He closed his eyes and gripped the table tightly. “Just the smell of you makes me go weak-kneed. It makes me want to pick you up, carry you to bed and make love to you for hours.”

Pam shivered, erotic images flashing in her mind.

He opened his eyes. “But it also makes me want to sit beside you for hours and listen to you tell me about your favourite food, and your day at work, and stories about when you were growing up.”

Her stomach clenched before she deliberately relaxed it. No way he wanted to hear that kind of crap.

“So it’s different from seeing someone at a bar or a dance club and getting turned on? Or for that matter, watching Gerard Butler in a movie and feeling the dire need to jump him?”

He rolled his eyes. “What is it with you chicks and that guy? No, not quite the same thing. More like—what would you do if you met him in person?”

She laughed. “Probably freeze.”

“Right, and when we met, you wanted to…?”

She thought back to before the wedding. To the almost overwhelming desire to get to know him more intimately. “So we like how each other smells. I don’t know if that’s enough to prove anything to me.”

TJ sat back and sipped his juice. “As long as you agree there is something—magnetic—between us.”

She nodded slowly. That much she would confess to. It would also explain why no matter what insane thing he did, she responded the wrong way.

TJ tugged the notepad from her fingers. “Eat, the day is wasting. That’s not the item on our agenda for today anyway.”

Pam blinked in surprise. “It’s not?”

“Nope.” He topped up her coffee and raised his mug in a toast. “To working our way through the mate list.”

Hide and go seek. She was playing hide and go seek in the Yukon bush with a werewolf. Pam tucked her legs a little closer to her body and made sure nothing was sticking out.

They’d spent the morning hiking to an abandoned miner’s cabin and poking around for artifacts. After lunch he’d casually proposed this game, and now she sat in the branches of a tree, her body pressed against the trunk. TJ walked straight toward her like she’d left a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow. He grinned at her and held out a hand.

“You need to work harder at this or I’m going to think you’re not trying.”

“You’re cheating. You’ve got lupine senses, don’t you, even in your human form?” There had to be a reason he’d found her so quickly. The last
five
times she’d hidden.

TJ shook his head. “Well, I can smell you, but I can also feel where you are. It’s like I told you, there’s a mental link between us, and I’m following that.” She pushed off the branch and he caught her, her body settling against his, warm and comfortable as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Fine. You can find me in a snowstorm. That’s a cool trick.”

“Hey, don’t think this is a one-way street. I think you’ll be able to do it as well.”

He placed her on the grassy area outside the cabin yet refused to let her out of his arms.

“You planning on proving the physical connection right now?”

He flashed a grin. “No, but you wait. When we get kinky in bed, I’ll know what you want. How hard, how fast.” One hand skimmed her shoulder and down her spine, coming to rest on the small of her back. Intimate. The airy touch of his caress sent a tingling sensation racing up her body and her nipples tightened involuntarily. TJ spoke, his voice deep and husky. “Of course that means I can totally tease you.”

Oh my God, do it now.
The need to offer herself up on a silver platter was instinctive, and somewhat frightening. Time to retreat. She pressed her hands to his chest to separate them enough she could think. “Two-way street, bud? Be careful there, I might have to write you out a ticket.”

He cupped her chin with his free hand. His grasp firmed until she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Don’t. Don’t hide behind jokes right now.”

Pam closed her eyes and waited. His warm breath caressed her cheek as he brought their bodies back in contact.

“You look beautiful in the sunlight.”

She opened her eyes just as he brushed his lips against hers. His dark lashes fluttered against her skin. She stroked her tongue into his mouth, no longer fighting the delightful sensations that streaked through her body.

They stood there, kissing slowly, hands gently exploring each other’s bodies—Pam lost all track of time and slipped into a dreamy place where there were no issues hanging over her head. No need to discover if fairytales really could come true.