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

He let out a dry scoff and turned his head toward the side of the bed, likely to the clock on the nightstand.

Because he’s a responsible adult and has to go to work.

And she was a distraction.

The part of her that was more human than beast swam back up through the murk in her brain momentarily, but the wolf pushed her back again.

Let
me
,
the wolf said.
Get out of the way, or you’ll ruin this. We’ll lose our shot.

Petra didn’t know what shot the wolf was talking about. She didn’t know what she was doing at all, but the wolf had never steered her wrong. The wolf had kept her alive for all those years—she’d told her to run when Arnold had left, and that staying would have meant abuse or worse.

“Don’t you want to touch me, Viking?” Petra could hardly recognize the words, or the husky voice they’d been delivered through. She could, though, recognize the look of lust on Paul’s face and predict that, adult though he was, he could be convinced to ignore his responsibilities on occasion.

“The question isn’t whether or not I want to,” he said. “It’s
should
I?”

“I’m asking you to.”

“Why, Petra? If you’d had the chance yesterday, you would have mauled me.”

“Can’t a girl change her mind?” She slid her knee into the crease between his thigh and balls and wriggled it gently.

His Adam’s apple bobbed with his loud swallow, and his breathing sped. Not with fear—she knew the sound of fear—but of indecisiveness.

“You want me,” she said. “Why’s that so bad? You’re not going to break me.”

“I’m not worried about breaking you. If a tree and truck couldn’t do the job, I doubt I could. Besides, there are
rules
in civilized societies, Petra. I shouldn’t touch you.”

“I’m not civilized. I’m a werewolf.”

Careful,
the lady part of her warned the wolf.

That kind of talk was how her mother had run her father off. Her mother had been proud of what she was and hadn’t wanted to tamp down her fearsomeness for
anyone
, including the man she’d chosen to mate with.

“Take me or leave me,” she’d said.

He’d left.

Petra didn’t want Paul to leave. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to keep him.

“I want to make sure you’re thinking clearly,” Paul said. “That the medication isn’t making you loopy and that you’re thinking beyond instant gratification to consequences.”

“What could happen?”

“You tell me.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“You sure about that?”

Of course not.
She was lying through her teeth.

The lady part of Petra didn’t understand the wolf’s motives, but she was going along for the ride just the same.

She leaned up and skimmed her lips along the stubble on his jaw, breathing in his crisp, male scent. Breathing in his warmth, his
magic
that she didn’t understand. She wanted to know all about his magic—everything about him,
period
.

She’d never had a man to keep before, and figured she should know something about him.

“I’m a grown woman,” she said.

He glided tickling fingertips up her ribs and spanned his large hand beneath her breast. “I haven’t forgotten.”

He pressed down on her nipple with his thumb, and little jolts of electricity coursed through her battered body.

Whoa.

“You act like I can’t see you—like I could be so cold that I’d ignore what was right in front of me, but you’re impossible to ignore, Petra.”

“Act like I am, then. Don’t just tell me.
Show
me.”

She lay back again and pulled him down with her, pressing his face to his chest, insinuating her breast near his smart mouth.

“Do something besides talk, Doc.”

His scoff became a lick. Just a quick flick at first, but then he broadened his tongue and laved beneath the lower swell of her breast. Tickling and teasing. Then more pressure as he crested the top, pleasurable and tantalizing.

She felt as though he’d found the exact right button to push to send all her blood rushing from her head southward. It was hard and brown, and he was scoring it between his teeth, not once taking that daring gaze off her.

“
Fuck
.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands or her limbs, and the wolf wasn’t too sure, either.

In the wolf’s estimation, she’d done her part. She’d gotten the man on top of her and his mouth near her heart, and the rest was up to Petra.

But what’s the rest?

He moved his other hand gently up her other side and cupped that breast, too. He pushed them together and licked from one nipple to the other.

Her breath escaped as another surge of blood pounded between her legs and wetness pooled at the tops of her thighs.

Touch him, too
.

She didn’t know what to touch. Had no idea what a man found erogenous besides the obvious area, but she wasn’t about to go there. As randy as she was feeling, her body was broken in enough places that she didn’t think either of them would have a good time. But she could still touch.

Touch what you want.

She wanted to dig her fingers into something, so she pulled him down, crushed his mouth with hers, and stuffed her hands into the back of his scrub pants.

He let out a hiss, then a moan, and his tongue probed more deeply into her mouth and thick hardness pressed against her inner thigh.

Insert tab A into slot B
.

She changed her mind. She wanted that so badly. She’d only have to force those useless pants of his down a few inches, and he’d only have to nudge the crotch of her underwear aside. He could be inside her, and he’d be stuck with her because lady wolves had ways of claiming their men that the men knew nothing about.

But she felt like something was wrong—she’d skipped some step and couldn’t remember what it was.

What the fuck was it?

The wolf in her sighed. After all, Petra had lived in a pack for fourteen years before hitting the road with her brother. She knew how things were supposed to work. She’d heard the whispers, because nothing in a pack was ever really a secret.

There was supposed to be a bite. Her or him, she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t paid attention when she should have. To finish what they were doing—whatever they were doing—someone needed to be bitten.

Cover all the bases. Both.

She pulled away from his intoxicating lips and batted his hair out of her face. “Paul?”

“Changed your mind? Can’t say I didn’t expect you to.”

She rolled her eyes and scooted down beneath him a little—just enough to reach his shoulder. She bit down hard in the space between his shirt and his neck and growled at the metallic tang of blood flooding her tongue.

“What the fuck—”

She clasped her hand over his mouth and released her teeth from his flesh. “Bite me, too.”

“Why?” came his muffled voice behind her hand.

“You have to.”

“Give me a few more words than that. Last time I checked, we weren’t in a vampire novel.”

“You just have to, if you—” She closed her lips on the words, because she didn’t know.

Goddess, why?

Petra didn’t actually expect an answer, but she got one anyway. Abstract, but clear enough. Petra should have long known what to do, but she’d run from her pack.

“You have to bite me,” she said, “so no other wolf gets me.”

“I’m not a wolf, Petra.”

He was right, of course.

But does that matter?

She didn’t think her goddess would have answered if it did. Nothing made sense, but maybe things weren’t supposed to.

They’ll make sense later. Bite first. Knowledge later,
came the goddess’s whisper, and then she departed with a pulse and a flicker in Petra’s mind, leaving her confident, in spite of having no good reason to be. She’d have to trust for once.

“Paul, bite me if you want me. I don’t have answers for you yet. Just bite me.”

He hovered over her, unmoving and staring down.

“Do you want me?” She’d never had any desire whatsoever to ask that question before, but with Paul, she had to know.
Now, not later
.

“I hardly know you,” he said. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“I don’t have one anymore.
Please
. Bite me. I’ll tell you everything, I swear. But later. Just bite me now. You have to.”

“Why?”

He was being just like a doctor by asking
why
instead of doing what a patient demanded, but if she wanted to get her cure, she had to tell the truth, and the truth was clear then. All the pieces were starting to come together in her head.

“I—I don’t get anyone else,” she said. “I only get one chance at a fated mate, and I guess that’s what you are. If you want me, even a little, just bite me.
Please
.”

She was begging. She’d never begged a man for anything before. Her mother hadn’t even begged for her father to stay, but those pathetic words were coming out of Petra’s mouth, and she couldn’t take them back.

She barely had time to try, because the next thing she knew, he lowered his head and searing pain radiated from a point over her left breast as the warm trickle of blood seeped down her cleavage.

Petra lay frozen, wide-eyed and gaping at the ceiling.

Holy shit.
What now?

Her pussy’s answering thrum seemed to respond with a,
Guess what?

No…

Her body was tight as a drum, her sex throbbing, and tingles danced around the bite Paul licked.

She wanted to push his head downward and beg him to give her some relief, any way he could. Tongue, fingers, cock—
anything.

But she couldn’t move.

There was some…
conflict
in her brain. Biology warred with medicine. Her brain wanted her mate to take her. It needed him to finish. Her body, though, was losing the battle, whose opening volley had come with a swallowed pill and a half-gallon of water.

She could hardly keep her eyes open.

But she needed to fuck.

And she needed to shapeshift for the first time ever, but…

She had to sleep first.

Shit.

Paul had never had a woman fall asleep on him in such a spectacular way before. In one moment, Petra had been giving his cock the liveliest massage with her knee, and the next, she had him toppled off balance and beside her.

She cozied up next to him as if he were just a hot water bottle in hospital scrubs.

Completely. Utterly. Passed out.

He scoffed.

She made little snarling noises in her sleep and batted playfully at his chest.

He would have laughed if he hadn’t been so fucking angry with himself.

His restraint was better than that. He shouldn’t have touched her—his professional ethics should have precluded otherwise—but she’d begged. She’d seemed convinced that him touching her was necessary. She was trusting the wills of the Fates and so prettily following along with their whims.

And for a moment, he’d wanted to be swept up in that current, too. The thought of taking her home—nestling her into his routine and integrating her into Norseton—put a smile on his face.

He had so much he wanted to show her, the woman whose last name he didn’t know. He’d done what she’d asked and bit her, against his better judgment, because she’d been insistent.

And because he hadn’t wanted to deny her any reasonable thing.

He didn’t know if biting a woman was reasonable by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d wanted him to, and had seemed relieved when he’d done the deed. For whatever reason, he’d been relieved, too. He’d felt that “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…” kind of relief known only by people who’d done the right thing.

He’d done the right thing for her. He was her mate, even if she didn’t quite understand what she’d been doing. Afótama attachments were so much simpler. One look, and a man would know. He’d be
enthralled
.

As much as he was afraid to admit it, he was. There was no running from the connection, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put some air between the two of them. She still didn’t know what she was getting with him, and maybe he was a little afraid to let her see it.

He untwined her limbs from around his, carefully repositioning her arms and legs so as not to stir her from her healing sleep.

Her clothes were scatted across the floor. He folded them neatly onto the chair near the bedside and stood, watching her sleep for a moment.

So pretty. So
wild
, even in sleep. Her teeth gnashed and fingers curled into claw shapes as she chased the phantoms in her dreams.

Maybe he was one of them. Plenty of his conquests would have said that he deserved a good mauling, and possibly a personality transplant, too.

He pulled the covers up over her twitching body, and then left.

He needed to think and try to turn off that needy drive of his to touch her as if she were his. He’d just met her, and she knew almost nothing about him.

That might be for the best.

Several times in recent memory, Petra had been stirred from sleep with the profound urge to get up and piss, and needing to shapeshift was kind of like that. She felt like if she didn’t have release, she’d explode.

She took a moment to get her bearings—she was in bed, apparently, in the middle of the damn day—and scrambled to her feet.

“Arnold?” she called out while scratching at her prickling skin to take off her clothes, but she wasn’t wearing any except for panties, because she’d stripped.

For Paul.

And Paul wasn’t there.

She forced a growl through clenched teeth and made her way to the back door.

“Arnold?” she called out again, and then muttered, “Of course the jackass bounced. I guess going to work was more important than sticking around.”

Where the hell is Arnold?

Still scratching her skin, which had started to burn along with the muscles beneath, she wriggled out of her panties and put her shoulder to the back door.

Her body came apart as she toppled out onto the patio.

Bones cracked and reshaped as she fell, and she screamed in agony on the ground while her skin stretched and molded around her new form.

There was someone looking down at her with such concern.

Leticia.

She ran away, shouting, “Someone who can shift, come help Petra!”

Where the fuck is Arnold?

Petra forced her furry new body up onto all fours, only to crash under her newly-distributed weight.

Fuck him, too.

Leticia ran back with Esther, who was peeling off her clothes as she approached.

She shifted as she ran.

Lady one moment. Wolf the next.

Esther got Petra moving—to where, she didn’t know—but she kept her from thinking too much.

She couldn’t think when she was having to run so fast.

The exertion was a good thing. She couldn’t plan a Viking murder if a sadistic she-wolf was forcing her into a grueling marathon into the desert.

All she could do was try to keep up.

___

“Feeling better?” Esther asked, smiling.

Petra sat on the patio bench, wrapped in a large, soft blanket, and shivering as if it weren’t nearly ninety degrees outside.

“No,” Petra said sourly.

“Wanna tell us what happened?” Lisa had been waiting when Esther brought Petra back from their punishing run through the desert. Apparently, she’d gotten Petra moving quickly so the inner wolf didn’t have a chance to assert her dominance over her body. If the wolf was in control, Petra wouldn’t remember the run. Most werewolves weren’t completely integrated with their beasts until after their first shift, but Petra had always been in touch with her beast. Aberrant, but typical for her mother’s line. She
probably
wouldn’t have had a problem remembering. Arnold always remembered.

Petra shrugged and picked at the cuticle of her thumb. “I don’t know what to tell ya.”

“Obviously, someone bit you,” Lisa said. “We need to know if the bite was against your will. We need to know who did it.”

Petra waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, please. I told him to bite me.”

“Who? We don’t exactly have an excess of unattached wolves here.”

Petra cleared her throat and gladly accepted the bottle of water Esther pressed to her. Esther seemed no worse for the wear for the run, but she was a Eurasian wolf. She could shift whenever the hell she wanted to, and to no ill effect. She wasn’t driven by moon cycles like most of the ladies in the pack. Petra was the one who was off-schedule. She’d only shifted because she’d had that absconding bastard bite her, and she figured she’d be feeling the aches for days.

At least I don’t feel the bumps and bruises from the truck crash anymore, though.

The shifting had evidently fixed that.

Lisa gave her a nudge. “Who was it? We’ll keep your secret if you ask us to.”

“Not much of a secret. Wasn’t a wolf.”

“I don’t understand. Before you got here, you couldn’t shift, right?”

“That would be correct.”

“And the only way to make a lady wolf shift, except in certain very rare populations, is to have her mate bite her.”

“Uh-huh.” Petra cracked her knuckles.

“So, someone bit you,” Esther said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And that someone was
whom
?” Lisa prodded.

“Like I said, he wasn’t a wolf. My mate’s not a wolf. Three guesses who he is.” She turned to Lisa and batted her eyelashes coquettishly.

“What in the ever-loving hell—”

“Hey, I don’t understand what happened any more than you do.”

“I’ve never heard of someone who’s not a wolf being able to trigger a mate shift.”

Esther leaned forward to see Lisa around Petra’s body. “But there’s not like there are good records about this, right? For all we know, it happens all the time and people just don’t talk about it.”

“I don’t think so. Wolves tend to be secretive in general, but there would have been some whispers about such an odd thing happening.”

“Who are we talking about?” Esther asked. “Anyone I’ve met?”

“Maybe,” Lisa said. “Have you met Paul? He’s an E.R. doc in Norseton.”

“Talk about me like I’m not sitting here. I’ll be okay,” Petra muttered.

Lisa pinched her thigh. “You can interject any damn time you please. I’m just trying to get Esther up to speed.”

“Or rather,” Esther said, “we’re trying to determine if we need to bring my aunt into this conference.”

Petra put her head back and groaned. “Ugh. I feel like I’m being sent to the principal’s office. I sure did plenty of that at the rez school before me and Arnold left.”

Lisa put up a brow. “You lived on a reservation?”

Petra scoffed. “More like a reservation within a reservation, which was a very interesting arrangement, lemme tell ya. They couldn’t help but to know about us. Had to start marrying outside the wolf gene pool. You know how that goes.”

Lisa grunted and rubbed the top of her swollen belly. “I didn’t realize there were native wolf groups. I assumed you were like me and that your family picked up the wolf strain through integration. Both sides of my family got it from the Spaniards who colonized Mexico.”

“Oh, there are plenty of us. We’re probably just a little more secretive than the rest of you. Same rules apply, though. Same bullshit, no matter where you go.”

“Not here, though,” Esther said.

Petra shrugged. “That’s left to be determined.”

Lisa and Esther shared a look.

Petra didn’t bother calling them out on their conspiring. She wasn’t in the mood to argue. She wanted a steak and maybe half a pizza and an apple pie. And then a nap.

And
then
she wanted to go kick a disappearing Viking’s ass.

First things first, though.

There was one other disappearing man she needed to deal with.

She got to her feet and tightened the blanket “Have either of you seen my brother? I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

Both women shook their heads.

Lisa furrowed her brow. “Come to think of it, the last time I saw him was yesterday, too. After you woke up, I think.”

Petra pinched the bridge of her nose and shifted her weight. “Shit. I hope he didn’t get a vision and go off on a wild hair.”

“What do you mean by
vision
?” Esther asked.

“Psychic shit. Our mother used to have them, and our grandfather, too, but apparently that’s one curse I was able to dodge.”

“Do you have a phone number for your brother?”

“Yeah, but he’s not gonna answer, especially if he’s out stalking. Probably left his shit in a hole somewhere and went off on foot. Ugh, I’m going to kick his ass when I see him. Fuckin’ leaving me here like that. He’s never left me like that before.” She pulled open the back door of the house and went straight for the kitchen. Her stomach was going to gnaw itself if she didn’t get some sustenance.

The ladies followed her in and leaned against the kitchen island.

They watched her pour cereal into a bowl. Watched her eat it dry. Watched her dig into another serving.

“Lactose intolerant,” she muttered.

Lisa snorted. “You know, if Arnold left you here, there’s a good chance he was thinking you’d be safe with us.”

“Wasn’t his decision to make.”

“You could still leave. No one’s stopping you.”

Petra poised her spoon mid-dip over her cereal bowl and stared at the pile of oat O’s.

I could leave.

She could hike to the road and stick out her thumb for a ride. She and Arnold had done that plenty in ten years, but they’d always been together. The road wasn’t a safe place for a single woman—not even one who was a werewolf.

Also, surprisingly, the allure wasn’t there anymore. Now that she had her feet planted somewhere stable, she was hesitant to move them very far. Wolves needed homes, and the people in Norseton said she could stay there and make the life for herself her mother would have wanted.

But she wasn’t going to be able to avoid her mate. She needed to let him off the hook or get some closure, or the animal part of her would never be content.

If he doesn’t want me—fine.

She wasn’t going to beg him to stick around, just like her mother hadn’t with her father. He’d changed his mind about having a wolf for a wife. He’d left them to struggle on their own without so much as a penny for support. He hadn’t even shown up to fetch Petra and Arnold when their mother got sick and everyone knew she was going to die.

He hadn’t wanted anything more to do with wolves, and Petra sure as shit wasn’t going to force any man into an unwilling entanglement.

She’d gotten what she wanted. She was a full-fledged werewolf and could shapeshift with the rest of her pack.

I’m fucking awesome.

She put more cereal in her mouth and chewed so she didn’t have to think anymore. So she didn’t have to meet Lisa and Esther’s gazes and have them look at her like she was a liar.

They would have known.

Her mother may have been fine alone, but Petra wouldn’t be able to stay away from her mate, whether he wanted her or not. Her mother hadn’t had a bite, and certainly not one by a man who’d apparently been vetted by the wolf goddess.

I’m so fuckin’ screwed.