Scout: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 7) (11 page)

No words. No psychic whispers bombarding her, but she had to say something. She wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise.

“Took you so long.”

He draped his arm over her hip and tucked his chin atop her head. “I’m back now.”

“You would tell me if you weren’t going to come back, wouldn’t you?”

No answer.

She didn’t want to poke or nudge him, but she had to know. Something felt off about them, and she was too ignorant to even begin to know where to start troubleshooting. She didn’t even know who she could ask about what was supposed to happen next.

“Paul?”

He pulled in some air, and his arm tightened around her. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

She was going to anyway. He could tell her to be still, and she’d do her best for him, but being told not to worry?

She didn’t think he had the right kind of magic to make that possible.

With each little movement Paul made to try to separate his body from Petra’s, leaving became somewhat harder.

Her clock read six. He needed to be up and at home showering for work, but she was so warm, and she felt so nice. She was a perfectly organic mood regulator. The longer he touched her, the mellower he felt. She was like some decadent cream being soothed over burned flesh. She seemed to make everything feel better—seemed to make his grasp on the Afótama web a little stronger.

That wasn’t unusual for his kind. Generally, when people in the clan became intimately close with others, their psychic networks merged. But, Petra wasn’t from the clan. She was a werewolf with no psychic abilities at all, beyond with him. She shouldn’t have affected his magic at all, but he was her mate, and she was his match, and the mingling of their gifts was unavoidable.

He didn’t know what that meant. Doctors didn’t generally like not knowing things, so he needed to get up and ask someone. He needed to clear his head before they got any further entangled. Already, he was certain he’d never be able to deny her anything, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hurt each other. He couldn’t bear to hurt her. She’d already endured too much.

“Petra.” He gave her bottom a little pinch, and she swatted him in her sleep.

He sighed into her hair and gave her ass another grope. “Come on. I’ve gotta get up and go to work and as it is, your alpha’s gonna be pissed that I didn’t follow up with him last night.”

“If he thought something was wrong,” she said sleepily, “he would have barged in. Right?”

She slung a leg over his thigh and wriggled closer to him, insinuating her warm sex against his crotch.

“Petra…”

“
Mmm
, why not?”

He could think of a lot of reasons to keep his cock to himself. The risk of pregnancy was one, and given her questionable medical status, if they didn’t have protection, they needed to abstain. Another was that if they went
there
, she would never be able to completely extricate herself from him.

He had ex-girlfriends from the time he’d been living away from a Norseton who still called him out of the blue and said things like, “I have no idea why I was thinking about you. I hate you, but I had to call anyway.” He’d left his psychic thumbprint on them, and he’d always niggle at their consciousnesses, even if them being together wasn’t meant to be.

But he
was
meant to be with Petra, however that didn’t make him any less wary of what might happen.

She was so worried he’d give up on her and abandon her for being a wolf. He was afraid he’d become too dependent on her—as his kind tended to do with their partners—that
she’d
be the one who ran. He’d be stuck.
Gutted
. Pining after a woman who didn’t want him anymore, and he’d never be able to move on. The people of the Afótama only got one chance at a fated match. There were no replacements. No do-overs.

She was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he hadn’t been ready for, and she needed to get ready for him, too.

“Paul,” Petra crooned against his chest. “Why not?”

Her lips were soft as silk—tantalizing and punishing at the same time.

His cock had gone from soft to iron-hard in about thirty seconds. Spearing her between her legs would be so easy—just a grab of her thigh to make some room and a tilt of his hips to get sheathed inside her.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Why
not
?” she repeated.

“Listen.” He kissed the top of her head and gently peeled her away from his body.

Just that quickly, he felt the chill of isolation race through him as if she were a mile away, and not just being held above him at arm’s length.

Afótama bullshit
.

“As much as I’d like to lie in bed with you all day, I’ve got to go to work.”

“Can’t you take the day off?”

“That’s not easy to do with a staff as small as ours. The only person who could feasibly fill in for me is Chris, and he’s working nights right now. He can’t do back-to-back shifts like that.”

“What time do you get off?”

He laid her gently beside him and then sat up. He hated leaving her, but he didn’t see where he had a choice. She may not have thought she needed space from him, but she’d appreciate having it later.

He hoped.

“I get off at around six, assuming there isn’t a six-car pileup on Main Street that sends twenty people to the emergency room.”

“That’s a long time from now.”

“Yeah. Things’ll get better at the hospital in the next couple of years. We’re in recovery mode right now. A few doctors all decided to retire at the same time, and we have to be very careful how we recruit replacements.”

“No more young Afótama doctors out in the wild finishing their residencies or whatever right now, huh?”

“Nah.” He kissed her forehead and eased off the bed before he could convince himself that he didn’t
really
need to go to work, and that probably no one would need an emergency medicine doctor that day. “Far as I know, there’s one out there who just started first year medical studies. She still has
plenty
of chances to pick another field. Not holding my breath.”

“Can’t you recruit from other groups?”

He put on his glasses to find his socks, and regretted it. Leaving her for the day would have been easier if she’d been blurry. She was wild and stunning, and she was
his
.

Gods
.

“We have a lady at the executive mansion—Lora—who’s looking into finding us a designated recruiter,” he said. “She used to do a little bit of recruitment work, but since Queen Tess came back, she’s been too swamped to start any new projects.”

“Maybe I should go help her. I’ve got skills.”

“Oh?” He glanced over his shoulder to look at Petra. He bet that in time, he wouldn’t need to see her face to know which expression she was wearing. He’d be able to make a good guess just based on what her psychic energy was putting off.

Her wicked smile was probably meant to emphasize the fact that she probably
could
root out candidates for whatever job openings happened to be sitting on Lora’s desk, but that wasn’t how he immediately read it. His Viking brain immediately motored to that jealous curiosity about who his partner had honed her
skills
with.

Probably assholes who don’t deserve to keep breathing.

He ground his teeth and pulled on his boxer shorts.

She’s poking at me.

He hoped he’d get better at discerning that in time, too. Already, she knew exactly which buttons of his to press.

“Get close enough to Lora, and you’ll get trapped in her gravitational pull for sure. She’ll find some work for you to do,” he said. “I suggest you check in with Adam first, though.”

“So he can make sure I’m alive?”

“That, and other things.” Paul found his shirt and pulled it on quickly, as well as his shoes.

He was a pretty enduring long-distance runner. Sprinting back into town through the desert rather than via the paved path could possibly prevent his mother from finding out about her only son doing the walk of shame at six in the morning.

“You’ll call me when you get off?” Petra asked. “Or—actually, I don’t have your number, so—” She clucked her tongue and wriggled her eyebrows playfully at him.

He couldn’t help but to laugh.

Gods, we’re a fucking mess. Not even the slightest bit normal.

“You don’t need my number,” he said. “I’ll find you.”

“Or more likely, I’ll find you. Not like it’d be hard.”

“Why not?” he asked with one hand already on the doorknob.

“’Cause you’re my mate, I guess. I don’t know. You’re easy to find. I’m not sure if that’s normal for wolves, though.”

He suspected it wasn’t. Sounded like Afótama shit to him. Chris could find his wife without even trying, and so could his neighbor Will with his girlfriend.

He gave Petra a wave and let himself out without another word.

He didn’t imagine he’d be much different. He’d be able to find Petra no matter where she was.

Even if she left.

___

Petra had barely gotten herself showered, dressed, and out onto her doormat before Adam swooped in from out of nowhere and slung an arm over her shoulder.

She yipped and clutched her chest. “Make some noise, dude. I’ve got brain issues. Not nice to sneak up.”

“Come on, lady,” he said with a laugh. “Your ears are better than that, aren’t they?”

“I guess I was thinking too loud to hear you.” She swallowed hard and shoved her new house keys into her pocket.

Being singled out by an alpha was rarely a good thing in her experience, and from what she was gathering, she was in a pack full of them.

“Just checking in. Haven’t heard from Paul this morning. I was gonna send my wife over to see how you were, but then you came out. Where ya heading?”

“Um. Into Norseton, I guess. Wanted to talk to a lady named Lora. I mean—” She cringed. “If that’s okay. Paul said she was always looking for people. You didn’t have something else you wanted me to do, did you? Because if—”

“Hey,” he interjected. “It’s all right. No skin off my teeth whether you find a gig through me or if you let Lora place you somewhere. Either way, your pay would probably be coming from the same source.”

“Oh.”

“Am I to assume you’re medically cleared to work?” He started her toward the path.

“Uh—I dunno about medical clearance. I’m not sure what’s going on with that.”

“Paul didn’t say anything specific?”

Petra scoffed. “Said I might not be able to drive again. And that I needed further testing.”

“Well, maybe that won’t matter too much. Won’t hurt to see what Lora has to say.”

“Cool. So, were you heading into town, too?”

“Yep. Guard duty.”

“I see. Have you, possibly, seen my brother in the past couple of days? Could he be sleeping somewhere else? He’s never disappeared before without telling me where he was going.”

“But he
has
disappeared before?”

Petra shrugged. “He gets visions sometimes and goes to investigate them, but he always tells me he’s doing that. I tried calling him, but he’s not answering his phone.”

“Visions?”

Petra’s step faltered, but Adam held her up and got her back on balance. Just that quickly, she’d forgotten that saying too much to an alpha could be the cause of her and Arnold’s very next pack dismissal. Adam was so laidback and friendly that she kept forgetting how dangerous he actually could be.

She swallowed hard and got moving again, hoping the motion would distract him away from the conversational direction. “Nothing serious. Doesn’t even happen all that often. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“I wasn’t worried.” He stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and kept up with her manic pace easily with his much-longer legs. The man had to be nearly sixty given his son’s thirty-plus years, but he sure as hell didn’t look his age. Other than the bit of gray shot through his hair and the occasional deepening of the creases on his face when he grinned or squinted, he looked like could have passed for forty-something.

Wolves always did age well, though.

“He’s not dangerous,” she said.

“I never said he was. I was just curious. Wondering how well he has the ability under control. Most of the wolves we take in here don’t really start to come into their power until they push themselves past their comfort zones. That’s easier to do when you trust the folks around you. You don’t have to be ashamed if you don’t get things right when you first try. No one’s gonna tease you for it.”

She furrowed her brow.

He snorted. “I lied. Colt would, but don’t take anything he says personally. He teases everyone.”

“Everyone here has some sort of weird ability?” Petra didn’t risk looking at him. She kept her gaze forward and her feet slapping the trail toward town, figuring if she were casual and seemed aloof about the magic crap, he wouldn’t push her too much about Arnold…or herself.

Adam grunted. “Varying degrees of weirdness, I guess. You’ve already sampled a bit of the Modesto sisters’ weirdness. That’s a family trait of theirs. Their mother and grandmother have it, too. I guess they evolved the ability to keep the men in the pack from going berserk.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Nah. Why would it? Everyone here knows they have the ability, in different ways, and we all call on them to use that magic from time to time. Can’t sleep? Call a Modesto. Afraid you’re gonna fail your next firearm qualification test? Call a Modesto. Boyfriend got you angry enough to spit?”

“Call a Modesto,” she finished for him in a whisper.

“That’s right.” He gave her shoulder a playful cuff and chuckled. “You wouldn’t happen to need a Modesto for anything right about now, would you?”

Yes.
“I don’t know,” she lied. She was feeling unusually unsettled—incomplete, somehow—and she suspected Paul had something to do with that. “I might need one whenever Arnold shows back up and I’ll want to kick his ass for going off like that, though.”

Adam let out a full belly laugh, the likes of which she’d never heard from a wolf of his stature. Every alpha she’d every encountered had always taken himself so seriously.

Maybe he doesn’t feel like he has to. Norseton is a weird, weird place.

“Nah,” he said. “The girls would probably tell you he’d deserve the ass-kicking. Anything else?”

Petra raked her gaze over the back of the executive mansion looming in the near distance and wondered if potential new hires should go around to the front or use the back door.

Probably the front.

She took the leftward fork in the path at the juncture.

“No,” she said to her alpha. “Nothing else.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Does he know something I don’t?
She smiled at him and shrugged. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

He stopped there on the path and gave her a wave.

She stopped, too.

“Well. You know where to find me if you change your mind and wanna talk.”

She couldn’t trust him. Not yet.