Red Snow Bride (Wolf Brides Book 2) (17 page)

“Idiots,” Kristina grumbled.

“Ready,” Daisy said with a delicate white handkerchief clutched in the air. “Steady. Go!”

We plucked furiously, and by the time we were using our knives against our thumbs to remove any stragglers, we were neck and neck. I won, but only because when Daisy checked for leftover feathers, Kristina’s chicken had a few she’d missed while mine was smooth.

“Victory!” I whooped.

“Rematch,” Kristina declared.

As I squatted nearest the fire to toss breaded chicken over the hot oil sizzling away in the iron pot, a strong hand ran the length of my back and Jeremiah kissed me lightly on the cheek. Grease popped onto the skin of my forearm again and I yanked it back as the burning subsided.

“You want me to do this?” he asked, trailing kisses down my neck.

“Do you know how?”

Amusement hummed in his voice. “Who do you think gave Kristina this recipe?”

“Trudy.”

“Not on this one.” He pulled me back with a gentle hand. “This one’s all mine, passed down from Da to me and my brothers.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. Never in my life had I seen a man who held any interest in cooking. He set the chicken in the pan and pulled back before the oil hit him. He was so fast it was like watching a snake strike. I sat back into the chair against the wall beside him and ran my fingertips lightly over his knee. Luke and Sheriff Hawkins spoke easily from the front porch while Daisy and Kristina fussed happily over a finished pan of warm yeast rolls across the room.

“Is there nothing you can’t do?” I asked.

His face was serious in the flickering light of the fire and he slid those burning, coffee colored eyes to me. “I can’t lose you.”

I pulled my legs up under me and touched the side of his face. “You won’t.” The smoothness of his jaw was too irresistible not to caress. The angles of his face were sharp and hard like the crags of a mountain and his eyes slanted ever so slightly, which made them look as much animal as man. His dark eyebrows made the perfect ceiling for such consuming windows into his secret self.

“You’re so damned beautiful, woman,” he said low.

Had he been reading my mind while I sat there trapped in his gaze? I closed my eyes against the loss when he released me. I’d have stayed happily there for the rest of my days, lost in the reflected flames of his eyes. He forked the chicken from the skillet and onto a cloth covered plate to soak up the excess grease.

“Dinner’s on,” he called out.

He hadn’t had an extra moment to make a table or chairs yet, so dinner was served buffet style, then consumed in companionable silence as we dangled our legs from the porch. I leaned against Jeremiah contentedly and when he was finished eating, he draped his arm over my shoulders with a sigh. “We need to talk to you ladies about somethin’.”

Why did those words make me go cold inside? My flare of earlier worry came back with a vengeance.

It was Sheriff Hawkins who spoke up. “Deputy McDowell is dead. Dirty Bill’s gang of men shot him through, as you likely know, and I aim to go after the sons of bitches who done him like that. McDowell was young and green but his heart was in the right place when he brought that outlaw into the jailhouse. His death can’t be for nothing.” His stormy eyes were serious over his thick mustache.

“Eugene!” Daisy cried. “They’ll kill you if you try to bring him in.”

“Stop,” he said with a warning look. “You knew I was a lawman the day you married me. This is part of the job. I can’t just pick and choose who to enforce justice on, Daisy.”

Her lip trembled and she looked away with a pained expression, but held her tongue.

Luke hung his hat on his knee and looked at Kristina. “I’m going with him.”

“What? But why? You ain’t no lawman, Luke, and this ain’t your fight.”

“It is,” he argued. “In exchange for the sheriff’s help when those Hell Hunters came to hang and burn us, I promised him a favor. I swore I’d help him someday when he needed someone with my talents, and that day has come.”

Kristina’s eyes rimmed with moisture. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“So you could worry yourself to death every time the sheriff walked our way?”

“I’d be right to worry, now wouldn’t I?” She was nearly yelling and he jerked his head like it hurt him. “You didn’t see those monsters riding through town, tippin’ their hats at the ladies they passed before they put bullets into the deputy and half the damned town to boot!” She jabbed a finger at the sheriff. “You are one man,” she jabbed a finger at Luke, “and you are one man. They have at least four of them left, if not more, and at the head of that lot of murderers and rapists is Dirty Bill himself. He’s probably killed more people than the entire population of Colorado Springs. He’s a professional at pain, Luke, and you’re riding off to track that rattlesnake down.” She wiped her eyes with the backs of furiously shaking hands. “You’ll go anyway. It doesn’t matter what I say. Honor above everything, right? Even above me? Jeremiah, go with him.”

My heart was already breaking for Kristina and now it crumbled. There was nothing worse than what was being asked of them.

“You two are stronger together,” she beseeched my husband. “I know he’ll come back if you’re there. I saw you in the woods the day I was tortured at the hands of those vile men Evelynn French sent after me. You stood in the shadows, holding the horses, but don’t pretend you didn’t keep him sane and able to track me. Don’t pretend you didn’t help every step of the way for a woman you hardly knew. You did it for
him
. You risked your life for
him
.” She turned a bright-eyed gaze to Luke. “Avenge the deputy, keep your promise to the sheriff, keep your honor, but Jeremiah goes with you.”

The silence in the clearing was heavy, like some weighted stone upon my chest.

“She’s right,” Jeremiah said softly.

“No,” I breathed. I bit my trembling lip and lowered my tear-filled eyes.

“He’s my brother,” he said. “And we both owe the sheriff a debt. If he wasn’t there that night, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.” He stroked my downturned cheek. “I wouldn’t have met you.”

I understood and that was the worst part. A desperate anger churned at him for leaving, for the situation, for that damned Dirty Bill Burton, for the risk he and his gang posed to the one thing on earth I couldn’t live without. Daisy sniffled quietly in the corner and her crying made it harder to control the tremor in my voice, so I nodded my understanding instead.

“Where are they?” Jeremiah asked.

“An informant told me they’re hiding out up in the mountains not too far from here. Got witnesses saying they’ve seen them all along the trail they would’ve taken.”

Luke’s voice sounded odd and distant. “One week. We can’t leave Kristina and Lorelei unprotected for more than a week.”

“That should be enough time,” Hawkins said. “Kristina, I watched you shoot Luke’s hanging rope with your Derringer. Can you shoot a pistol as well?”

She nodded miserably and her voice cracked like she hadn’t used it in a long time. “Almost as well.”

“Good. Daisy I want you staying here until we get back. Everyone knows where we live and if something goes south, that’s the first place they’ll go. Don’t go back to town. Don’t let anyone know where you are and if anyone visits here, don’t tell anyone what we’re doing.”

Daisy refused to look at him but nodded.

“All three of you need to be staying together,” Luke said. “In the big house or the barn, either one, but stay together.”

Jeremiah stood. “The faster we go, the faster we can get back here.”

“Wait.” I shielded my eyes from the bright sunlight to better see his face. “You don’t mean to go now, do you?”

Sheriff stood and dusted off his pants. “We need to go now before they move again.”

Kristina stormed from the porch, followed by Luke, and Sheriff Hawkins pulled Daisy into his arms and whispered into her ear. I left them to their tender goodbye and escaped into the house.

The flames in the hearth licked at the stones. Red, yellow, blue—their roiling colors matched what was happening in my heart. Jeremiah would leave and it wouldn’t end well. Everything in my gut told me so.

His hands were feather soft against the tops of my shoulders and he leaned into my back. “I’m sorry, Lorelei. It just don’t feel right letting him go alone.”

I spun and threw my arms around his neck. “I know. I
know
you have to go. I’m just so scared for what’s going to happen out there.”

I closed my eyes against the pain of the coming separation as he kissed me with the violence of a tornado. I gasped as his teeth grazed my neck and with barely any effort, he carried me into the back room and slammed the door with his boot.

He set me down on a crude chest of drawers.

“Lorelei,” he growled against the paper thin skin of my throat. “I’ll come back to you. I swear it.”

I groaned at the sensation of his mouth against my neck and he pulled my hair until it stretched farther for him. Pain and pleasure collided as he slid my skirts to my hips and gripped onto my thighs with rough hands. His warmth disappeared as he dropped to his knees and pushed my skirts up farther.

“What are you doing?” I asked, panic flaring in my chest.

“I’m not leaving without knowing how you taste.”

I opened my mouth to protest whatever he had in mind that would bring his face so close to my tender bits, but he yanked my knees forward, spread them wide, and then kissed my sex.

I’d never been a part of something so scandalous in all my life, but oh! His tongue dipped inside of me and my legs went soft as dough. About three strokes in, and I didn’t care how wanton this made me. I liked this. I needed this. The oncoming separation had me scared and desperate for a connection, and apparently Jeremiah felt the same. And he was so, so good at this. He circled the sensitive spot he was always careful to pay attention to with his tongue, and I groaned and arched back.

I shouldn’t like this, but I did. And Kristina had been telling me to own my body more and be proud of the physical relationship I’d been growing with Jeremiah, so hang it all. I ran my hands through his hair and a vibrating growl rumbled against the wetness between my legs. His strokes became faster, and Jeremiah’s hands disappeared from my legs. The jangling sound of his holster being removed filled the room. The first waves of my release crashed through me and I cried out as my toes curled. He sucked on my sensitive nub one more time, bowing me forward, then stood and slid his cock into me in one fluid motion.

He wasn’t reserved or tender, but I didn’t want him to be. He didn’t ask permission or take his time. He took me like he owned the deed to my soul. My second round of pleasure became a consuming wave that lapped at the shores of the deepest pieces of me. When his seed spilled into me in hot, throbbing streams, he closed his eyes tightly and rested his forehead against mine.

“One week,” he whispered.

And then there was nothing left but the creaking leather of his holster in his hand and his fading boot steps across the home he’d built for us.

I slid to the floor as if I were boneless, then curled up like a child and wept.

For one week, I would cease to exist.

Jeremiah

Easily, that had been the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, next to burying Anna. Nothing in me wanted to leave Lorelei. It was our moving day into the big house, a day we’d been looking forward to for the better part of a week. And instead of helping her set up, I was off on some suicide mission.

There was no point in giving Luke hell about it. He’d been stuck between a rock and a hard place and if it were me, I’d have done the same thing. His shoulders drooped on the back of his mount and he’d pulled the brim of his hat low over his shadowed eyes. If utter misery had a smell, Luke would’ve been bathed in it.

“Kristina rough you up pretty good?” I asked with sympathy.

“She’s pissed.”

“No, she’s scared. Same way we felt when we heard those gunshots in town and couldn’t get to the girls soon enough. She doesn’t have any control over your fate now. She won’t be there with her little pea shooter to help you this time. It doesn’t matter that you are werewolf and plenty capable. She just wants to make sure you’re safe.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt. “What about Lorelei. Was she mad?”

I thought about her hands in my hair as I tasted her and all the needy noises she’d made for me. Through a private grin, I said, “Not after I got done with her.”

My brother leveled me with a green-eyed glare. “You know, you used to be all mannerly and boring. What happened to the Jeremiah who wouldn’t rub shit like that in my face?”

I shrugged. “Lost him I guess. Cheer up, Luke. We’re going hunting.”

“We ain’t huntin’ for bunnies, Jeremiah. This prey has weapons and logic and itchy trigger fingers.”

“And we have the element of surprise. They aren’t expecting anyone comin’ after ’em this quick, and they sure as hell aren’t expecting wolves.”

“We aren’t bulletproof. We can still die, remember?”

I whistled. “Being married has made you soft! What happened to the Luke who was always itching for a saloon fight? You ain’t exactly a novice at gun fights, little brother. Get your head in the right place or you
will
be going home in a casket.” I kicked my horse into a slow gallop. “Let’s get this done with so we can get back to ’em.”

We stopped in Colorado Springs to chat up Elias on the way out about what was happening. Other than that, we steered clear of the small towns and homesteads on the way into the mountains for fear they’d send a rider out to warn Dirty Bill we were coming for him. Instead, we rode through the brush when we could and avoided contact with people as much as we were able. By the second day, we were low on smoked deer meat and the canteens needed a refill. We’d be on them tomorrow if they hadn’t fled the area already, and a good night’s sleep wouldn’t hurt before going into what promised to be a dangerous situation.

Luke had stalked off into the wilderness and come back with a fat spring pig that had escaped someone’s farm along the way. While it roasted on a spit over the fire, I packed everyone’s sloshing canteens back into their horses’ saddle bags. Sheriff Hawkins sat with his elbow propped on his knee staring off into the fire like it held the answers to the world’s secrets, and Luke squatted near the flames with his hands against the warmth of them. He flipped the collar of his duster up to shield his ears from the cold. The higher we went up into the mountains, the more snow and bitterly cold wind we met.

“When do you plan on telling your wife what you are?” he asked as I walked by.

Hawkins looked up from the fire briefly but he already knew the big secret. He wouldn’t have recruited our special talents if we didn’t have any.

“When the time is right.”

Luke poked at the fire with a long stick. “You know there isn’t a right time to tell her something like that. It’s best if you do it quick.”

I snorted. “Like you did?”

“Yeah, well you could stand to learn from my mistakes.”

I sat beside him with a sigh of resignation. I really tried my best not to think about telling her, so talking about it in detail sounded about as much fun as the roasting pig was having at the moment. “I have to make sure she won’t run away first. I can’t lose her.”

“She ain’t running, Jeremiah,” he said quietly. “Any man with eyes can see she loves you somethin’ fierce. You’re stalling is all.”

The stick between my fingers bent and made a popping sound as I broke it in half. He was right. The time had been ideal for a while now but I’d chickened out time and time again. Every time I’d opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t human, this whining voice, like the buzz of a mosquito said,
you’ll lose her if she finds out what a monster you are
. Even if the risk was small, it was still a risk.

“My wolf lets me in now,” I admitted quietly. “He ain’t so crazy anymore. I forgot what it feels like to hunt as an animal. To enjoy the woods like only an animal can, where my oversensitive hearing and smell make sense. It’s a scary thing to feel like someday soon I could be whole again, and that could be taken away before it happens.”

Luke inhaled and nodded slowly. “I’d probably be stallin’ too if I had that much to lose.”

****

Lorelei

Things were downright gloomy around the big house. We’d unanimously decided to live in there until our men came home because it was farther from the entrance to the property and we could each have our own rooms. And it didn’t smell like horse poop, as Daisy pointed out.

Three sets of waiting eyes never strayed far from the road, and even though we knew it would be five days yet until they were due home, we continued to hope just the same. An apparent guilt consumed Kristina by the second day.

“I should’ve sent him off with a good memory of me. I should’ve been understanding and given him a proper goodbye.” It was no secret she agonized over their parting moments together.

She milked the cow while Daisy sewed away at a hole in the hem of her dress with a needle and thread she’d borrowed, and I hauled feed to the horse’s stalls.

I dropped the bucket and wiped moisture from my forehead with the back of my hand. “Look at us, wallowing here like they’ve died,” I said. “They aren’t dead. They are out for some noble cause to rid the world of evil and we’ve already given up on them. They survived a hanging and a hail of bullets. They survived a train robbery and killed every last outlaw that boarded us, basically with their bare hands. And then they survived a night in the woods with a pack of wild wolves running around trying to eat people. And lord knows what the sheriff has survived.” I arched my eyebrows at Daisy.

“An awful lot,” she admitted.

“These aren’t normal men we’ve sent out there. Five more days until they come back. Until then, let’s keep busy and enjoy each other’s company.”

“Hello,” a man’s voice hailed.

“Aaaaack!” I screeched.

Trudy’s husband stuck his head in the barn door. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. You ladies decent?”

It was so much easier when Jeremiah and Luke were around to hear every little leaf fall from the trees.

“Yes, yes, come on in,” Daisy waved him over.

“I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced,” he said as he held out his hand. “Elias Jones.”

“Lorelei Dawson,” I said, shaking it gently.

He took off his hat and fidgeted.

“Take a seat,” Kristina said between pats into the milk pail. “We were just trying to motivate ourselves to be more optimistic about our gallant husbands and their chivalrous missions.”

“Ah, I see. Well, those husbands are the reason I’m here. They stopped in town on their way into the mountains and asked me to check on you every few days. You ladies need anything?”

“Have there been any telegrams for any of us at the post office?” Daisy asked hopefully.

“No ma’am, not unless one’s come in from this morning until now. I checked on it earlier, but nothing.”

“Who else knows we’re out here alone?” I asked.

“Just me and Trudy. Trudy wanted to come today but her ankles are all swollen and tender and I told her she needs to take it easy today. She sent me along with dinner though. It’s in the back of the buggy.

The boys hadn’t had a chance to hunt before they left and the chicken coop was getting low. The prospect of a dinner we didn’t have to cook and of Trudy’s caliber of expertise was enough to make my stomach think it was completely hollow. I felt better already. “Have you eaten, Mr. Jones?”

“Please, call me Elias.”

Kristina chirped up with a scrunched face. “Seriously do. Mr. Jones sounds mighty strange.”

He had a kind smile and laughing eyes and it was easy to see why Trudy had fallen for him. “I have not. I was hoping you’d ask me to stay for a visit.”

“Let us finish up in here and then we’ll head to the house,” I said with a kind smile. Bless that man and his golden heart for checking on us. The least we could do was offer him the warmth of the fire before he had to make that long trip back into town.

With the animals taken care of and the barn locked up for the night, we unloaded bound cloth sacks full of panned food and walked back to the house together. Dinner took time to reheat over the fire, so I gave Elias the tour of the house. It still smelled like newness and sawdust and was mostly bare of furniture, but the walls kept the wind at bay and the fire warmed the living area in no time.

Elias gulped his last bite of seasoned ham and said, “Trudy told me to tell y’all to put the leftovers in a sack and tie them up in a tree to keep them safe from bears. She packed enough for a couple of meals and its cold enough outside that it’ll keep. I can do that before I leave if you want.”

Kristina clapped him on the back. “Much obliged, Elias.”

He stood and stretched. “I’d better get on the road. I want to get back to Trudy before nightfall. Before I leave, Lorelei, can I talk to you in private?”

I frowned and set my fork down. “Of course.” I shut the front door gently behind me and waited patiently for Elias to track down whatever it was he was looking for.

From the pocket of his vest he pulled a folded piece of paper. “Jeremiah said to give this to you.”

I unfolded the letter carefully.

I love you. Always will.

- Jeremiah

The letter shook in my hands and I fought the stinging tears that threatened to spill over. “What is this?” I asked through clenched teeth. “He’s never told me he loves me, so why would he give it to me in a letter unless this was his way of saying goodbye? Is he giving me closure in case something happens to him? Elias, is this his goodbye?”

His fair eyebrows lifted and he looked nothing short of frightened. “No, ma’am. I think he was just thinking of you and didn’t want to leave without telling you how he felt.”

Sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and tried to smile. My heart hurt that I was reading these words and not hearing them from his lips. “Thank you for bringing me this and for checking in on us today. It was mighty kind of you to think of us.” My voice was thick with emotion but it couldn’t be helped.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’m fine. I’m so sorry. It’s just hard not knowing what is going on out there.”

His smile was small and understanding. “My wife would be worrying just the same as you are. They’re strong and able though, Mrs. Dawson. They’ll be fine.”

Everything in me hoped he was right.