Silence of the Wolf (14 page)

Snow covered the cabin, the wolf door buried. Not having any choice, Tom shifted in the icy snow, threw open the human door, and slammed it shut. He tugged on his clothes, jammed his feet into his boots, pulled on his parka, a ski hat, and gloves, then grabbed a wool blanket and ran back out into the snow.

He swore he'd never reach Elizabeth in time. Not as slow as his progress was while trying to run through the deep snow. No wonder she couldn't make any headway, being petite, barely dressed, and injured on top of that.

When he was close enough, he thought he saw her struggling to walk in his direction, but he couldn't believe his eyes. He expected her to be lying in the snow, half buried before he reached her. She hadn't given up. She'd actually made it several more feet. Good. He tried to move more quickly but couldn't. It just wasn't physically possible to travel any faster through the deep snowdrifts. Her eyes widened a little when she lifted her head from watching her footfalls, following his trail, to see him. He couldn't even smile. The situation was just too grave.

When injured victims saw help arrive and quit the struggle to survive, thinking they were now safe, they died. She needed the adrenaline rushing through her blood, keeping her alive. She needed to keep trying, as if he wasn't coming to her aid.

To his relief, she trudged forward, but then she fell.

He thought he heard a choked sob. The disquieting sound made him feel as though an ice shard had stabbed him through the heart.

“I'm coming,” he said. “Don't quit, Elizabeth!”

She struggled to get up, but she couldn't make it.

He was beside her before she could lift her head to try again. “Don't give up,” he growled at her, angry at the weather, at the plane, at her if she succumbed to the elements before he could get her to safety.

He dragged his coat around her, intending for her to wear it, and remembered too late about the handcuffs. He cursed and grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around her, then the coat, and zipped it, folding her into it like a protective cocoon. He pulled the hood over her head and tightened the drawstrings until the fake gray fur fit snuggly around her small face, nearly covering it.

She stared up at him with her blue-green eyes filled with tears and a look of gratitude. Her dry cracked lips parted, and he was certain she tried to say, “Thank you.”

“
Don't… give… up
,” he said urgently, harshly. He lifted her into his arms and made the long trek back to the cabin. Her body was ice cold, but the parka and blanket and his body heat would help to warm her.

Carrying her made the journey nearly impossible as he tried to make headway through the knee-deep powdery snow. He knew the direction to go, even though he couldn't see the cabin.

“What happened?” he asked, not wanting her to go to sleep and never wake. He needed her to talk to him. To get this close to the cabin and lose her now…
he
couldn't think of that.

“Plane crashed,” she murmured, her words slurred.

Not
good.
“Elizabeth, listen to me
. Stay… awake
. I'll have you to the cabin in just a few minutes. I'll have a warm fire blazing in the fireplace in no time. I'll get you some hot tea and chili—if you can manage.”

“You…” she said weakly, straining to look at him, to watch his expression.

“Yes?” he responded, encouraging her to speak, to stay awake until he could get her to the cabin and ensure she would be okay.

“…will… warm… me,” she said hesitantly, rasping out the words between clenched teeth, in pain, shivering.

“Yes, yes, I'll warm you.”

“You'll… be…”

He looked back down at her, his feet trudging through the deepening snow. He had to hear what she had to say, even if she didn't make any sense. He really didn't expect her to make any sense. Not as hypothermic as she had to be. But he was glad to hear her speak about anything.

“…naked,” she finally got out.

He raised both brows, unable to prevent the curve of his lips, the first time he'd managed to smile at her. “You… mean
us
?
Together? Naked?
” He suspected the warmth of the fire, hot tea sliding down her throat, and being bundled in blankets and anything else he could wrap her in would do the job, if he could just get her out of this blasted cold weather. Lying with her naked? Yeah, he'd damn well like that, but he didn't know how badly she might be injured.

She smiled. And that one little smile sent his heart skittering.

Elizabeth wanted so badly to sleep, but she knew she had to remain alert. The only thing that had made her stir a little from her grogginess was the thought that the big, sexy wolf would lie with her naked to warm her. After trying to keep some distance from him, she knew that was probably a bad idea in the long run.

Yet part of her hoped he'd say that was just what he intended to do. Because it was the only way she'd live. And maybe even take it further…

He'd seemed highly amused at her suggestion, and she was sure that if she hadn't lost so much blood and wasn't so chilled, her face would have been three shades redder. Her cheeks felt icy, so she hoped she hadn't blushed and given herself away.

He still smirked, the cad. She felt the difference in his footfalls, first through soft snow, then on hard wood, the porch to his cabin. She couldn't look that way, though, not with the hood of his coat blocking her view of nearly everything except his strong jawline. Dark stubble covered the rigid bone, making him look strong-featured and sexy and able to warm her up just fine. Like he'd done before when she wasn't nearly this cold.

She shook her head at herself. He had to be angry with her for leaving him. And she had to look terrible. She had a gash in her forehead, and the skin around it had probably turned an assortment of rainbow colors. The rest of her had to be ice white otherwise, except for the blood dried on it. As much as her skin burned, she had to have a lot of abrasions. She was a mess.

“Elizabeth,” Tom said, laying her on the floor as close to the hearth as he could safely get her. He was concerned when she closed her eyes. “Elizabeth!”

Her eyes fluttered open. He took a breath of relief. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

Another wave of relief washed over him. He'd had every intention of seeing her again—but not like this. He'd planned to locate the wolves stalking their livestock first, and then he was going to fly out to be with her in Canyon, Texas. To stay with her. To learn about her. To convince her to come home with him.

He wouldn't have let go of whatever had happened between them.

Before he unbundled her, he kindled a roaring fire in the hearth. Then he wondered what to do with her. Put her in a hot bath? Her head sported a gash and she had small cuts from the impact. Was she injured elsewhere?

As soon as he unzipped the coat and opened it and the blanket, he saw the damned handcuffs confining her wrists again. She was a prisoner. What was she involved in? Instantly, he'd thought the worst. This was why she hadn't wanted to keep in touch: she was involved in some kind of crime. Was that why she had plans to meet someone in Silver Town?

For business, she had said. Maybe that was why she wouldn't tell him what the business had to do with. Maybe that was why she had left so suddenly. Maybe she'd met whoever the man was at the airport and hadn't wanted Tom to learn of it. Then she'd been caught.

He frowned. The men in the plane crash had been the same wolves as at the tavern. What did that mean?

He covered her up again and stalked to the bedroom where he'd left his lockpicks, a typical
lupus
garou
tool of the trade, on the dresser. Grabbing the lockpicks, he returned to the living room where the fire did a good job of keeping the place warm. The bedroom was ice-cold. The bathroom would be, too.

Crouching beside her, he again moved the coat and blanket aside and began to unlock the manacles. After trying three different lockpicks and jiggling the last one, he succeeded: the lock clicked open. He tossed the handcuffs on the floor. He would have ripped through them with his wolf's canines, had
he
been trussed up.

Her wrists were red from the metal scraping at her skin. Her legs seemed fine, if her ability to trudge through the snow was any indication. “Are you hurting anywhere—ribs, any sprains?”

She shook her head.

“Good.” He pulled off her wet boots and socks and wrapped a blanket around her feet. Once covered in snow, her clothes now dripped water.

He quickly removed her shredded pants. Then he touched the remnants of her pink cashmere sweater, which was stained with blood.

He wished he could absorb her cuts and bruises and make her feel all better.

“I'll take this off. Let me know if anything hurts.”

He pulled the sweater over her head and tossed it aside, damned thankful she was okay.

“I'm fine, just… c-cold,” she said through shivers, her teeth chattering.

The fact she was so cold worried him the most. He covered her up as gently and quickly as he could. “I'll get some warm clothes to put on you and something to bandage these cuts.”

He grabbed some of his warm wool socks, a button-down shirt, and sweatpants out of a bureau drawer in the bedroom. Then he seized a first-aid kit from the bathroom and quickly returned to her side.

He slipped a double pair of the socks onto her ice-cold feet, then rewrapped the blanket around them. “I'll clean your cuts and then bandage them. They look pretty shallow, no debris, and should heal within a day or so.”

He gently wiped down her wounds and applied antibacterial ointment as she shut her eyes and sucked in her breath. Then he bandaged all of her scrapes.

“I'll take off your wet bra. If I can't get it off easily, I'll cut it off.”

“It's the only one I have with me,” she gritted out.

“I'll take care to remove it, but I do have your bra from before.” Tom still had the bra she'd worn the day she arrived in Silver Town.

“I'd meant to wear it the next day.”

He chuckled. “Sorry about that. It's home safe… waiting for you. You should have come for it.” He glanced up at her to see her response. She wore a smidgen of a smile.

He shook his head. “You wouldn't have gotten far. I would have made sure of it.” He would have found out just why she'd been upset and why she'd planned to run away. And he wouldn't have let her.

She might be cold, but the heat of the fire and the anxiety he felt from trying to take care of her and not hurt her further was making him burn up. He slipped off the bra and considered the thin material of the button-down shirt he'd taken out of his bureau.

“Cinderella,” she said.

“Hmm?” He pulled his own sweater off and then unbuttoned his flannel shirt.

Her eyes widened, but she didn't say anything.

“I'll help you to sit and dress you in my flannel shirt. It's warmer than the one I brought for you from the bedroom.”

She nodded.

“Cinderella?” he asked.

“Cinderella left her… glass slipper behind.”

“With the handsome prince. Only Cinderella is a beautiful shifter, and she left behind a sexy, lacy blue bra,” he said.

She smiled a little.

“And of course, she left behind the prince,” he said, arching a brow.

“A wolf.”

“A
prince
of a wolf,” he qualified.

He couldn't be more relieved to see her smiling up at him. Once he'd pulled the shirt on her and buttoned it, he said, “Okay, now the panties come off, and I'll put some sweats on you.”

She raised her brows. “Seems… we've been doing this a lot when we're together.”

“Yeah, and for all the wrong reasons.”

Her teeth chattered, but the shivers had lessened some and the color had returned to her pale lips. “Are you sure we shouldn't just strip down and lie together so I can warm you up?” He dropped her wet panties on the hearth, then pulled on the sweats.

“I bet you say that to all the girls… you rescue.”

He chuckled. “You think that's what we do on ski patrol?”

She smiled again.

“How are you really holding up?” He applied some ointment on the scraped skin around her wrists.

She sighed, the shivers lessening. “Better. Thank you.”

He wrapped the blanket around her. Then he zipped his coat up to her throat. “Good,” he said, but he didn't like how cold she still was.

He began to clean up the gash on her forehead using a damp cloth. “It isn't too bad. Head wounds bleed a lot, so they can look really awful.”

She grimaced as he wiped the blood away too close to the injury.

“Sorry.” He cleaned her blood-matted hair as much as he could, then bandaged the cut on her forehead. “Nothing needs stitches. Your toes look good. Color's coming back. The same with your fingers.”

She licked her lips. “Teeth,” she said wearily.

He didn't want to discover that she had any missing or broken teeth. “Open your mouth.”

She did, and he looked inside and smiled. “Great set of teeth. Nothing broken. Nothing missing.”

“Good,” she said. “Where are we?”

“My brothers and I own this cabin up in the mountains. I was up here tracking when the blizzard hit and I heard your plane crash. Do you… want to tell me about the handcuffs?”

Elizabeth stared at Tom for a minute, wondering why he would ask her about them. Then she realized he probably thought she was some kind of criminal.

Tom studied her, but she couldn't read his expression. He had the most beautiful brown eyes with amber flecks of light that sparkled from the flames flickering in the fireplace. He was a handsome devil of a wolf, his face a little flushed from the heat, his hair a little longish, and a couple of days' growth of beard making him look even more sexy. And she realized just how much she'd missed him.

A prince of wolves? He was that.

Her gaze trailed down his naked chest. She'd thought he was planning to strip and get naked with her until he put his warm shirt around her. It smelled so deliciously of him—the great outdoors, musky male, and wolf. She was glad he hadn't bothered to put on another shirt to hide his chest.

He gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Elizabeth.”

Her gaze shifted back to his. She'd forgotten the question.

“The handcuffs?” he asked gently.

Oh. “Prisoner,” she rasped out. As soon as his eyes widened fractionally, she realized her mistake. Annoyed with herself, she frowned and cleared her dry throat. “Hostage.”

His expression changed subtly, transforming from annoyed wariness to surprise.

“Hmm. We'll talk about this later. You need to get some hot drink and food down.”

He sounded as though he didn't believe her. She needed him to. As tired as she was, she didn't care even to give it a try right now. Later, there would be time enough.

“I'll get you some hot tea and some venison chili if that sounds good.” He still crouched beside her, not moving, until she nodded slightly. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, her voice just a whisper. She wanted to fall asleep, to make all the hurts go away, to wake up at home in her own bed—with Tom in it—and her steaks in the fridge waiting for her to make a meal of them.

He caressed her uninjured cheek with the tips of his fingers in such a sympathetic way that it touched her deeply.

“You'll be all right.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though he knew what he was talking about.

He rose, looked at her for a while longer, then turned and walked across the living-room floor and into the kitchen. She felt alone and needy in a way she'd never felt before. She wanted to be with him, to share the space with him, to feel his body heat close to hers.

Without the energy to get up and join Tom in the kitchen, she observed him instead—the way his muscles stretched in his back and arms as he pulled open cabinets and found a pan, then moved to the stove.

From the kitchen, he said, “Did you know I tried calling you?”

“Not at first.”

Holding the pan, he stopped and stared at her.

“I don't use my phone much. I had turned it off on the flight home and forgot to turn it back on,” she said with effort.

“So you didn't know that I'd called?” Tom asked, sounding doubtful and somewhat upset that he thought she had been avoiding him.

She looked away uncomfortably and instead took stock of what she could see from the floor of the living room—a large forest-green sectional couch blocked the view of the rest of the room. With all the pillows stacked on the velvety couch, it looked comfortable and inviting. Being as close to the fire as he could keep her so she could warm up more quickly was probably for the best. But that couch had its appeal.

The fireplace was made of red stone, the floor beneath her polished redwood, the ceiling crisscrossed by large timber beams. Photos of wildflower landscapes—probably Jake's—hung on all the walls, making the cabin look homey and well loved, an atmosphere she had missed almost as soon as she had left Silver Town.

She felt bad all over again that she had missed Tom's calls. She had thought he might have given up on her because of the way she left. Yet she still knew she had been justified. Things had just gotten too complicated. When she couldn't get hold of North, she could only think that her uncle was going to come after her again. She hadn't wanted the Silver pack to get involved in fighting her battles.

But if her uncle had anything to do with her abduction, then the Silver wolf pack was destined to get involved. Nothing that she could do about it now.

“I went to call my editor and realized the phone was off. I saw you had attempted to get hold of me. I tried to reach you then,” she said finally, having settled on just telling him the straight truth.

Tom watched her closely, judging her.

“You didn't answer,” she said.

He took in a breath. “I was probably in the woods. That's why I tried to get in touch with you before I left. Darien was out with the search parties, too, if you attempted to call him. Lelandi was busy with patients.”

“I only tried calling you.” She couldn't read his expression. Was he glad she had wanted to talk to him?