Sleeping With the Wolf (3 page)

“Peachy,” Carla snapped. Taye was bent over putting on his shoes, so he couldn’t see her face, but he heard her voice soften. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

Lisa’s pale hair rippled when she nodded. “Yeah. But Eddie says he doesn’t see much of Taye or his Pack. I’ll miss you.”

Carla’s eyes were gleaming. With tears? “I’ll miss you too.”

Yes, tears. But she was blinking hard, daring them to fall. Taye straightened and nodded once at Eddie Madison. “You have free passage if you want to bring your wife for a visit. Send a message ahead. I’ll clear it for you.”

Eddie smiled. Taye had never in his life been attracted to a man, but even he felt the sensual beauty of that smile. “Thanks. Lisa will like that. After the honeymoon we’ll take you up on that.”

Eddie’s mate flushed a delicate pink, and she smiled at her new husband’s mention of a honeymoon. His own mate jerked her chin up and glared at him. Taye hoped that wasn’t a bad sign for his own honeymoon. He had been looking forward to tonight for years. The sooner they got home, the sooner he could begin gentling his mate.

“We better get moving. We need to get home before dark. Eddie. Ma’am.” He nodded at the blonde politely. “Congratulations.”

Chapter Three

It had been warm inside the theater, but out here on the street with the sun going down and the wind cutting through her clothes, Carla shivered. It was the cold that made her shiver, not fear of the savage walking alongside her. Definitely. She paused to dig her jacket out of her overgrown handbag. Taye stopped immediately and looked at her with a small frown, and so did the other two, but with bigger frowns.

“I’m cold,” she said curtly, shrugging the jacket on. It was one of her favorites, short-waisted so it wouldn’t cover her rodeo belt buckle, made of supple suede dyed burgundy red with fringe dripping off the arms. It had matched her high-heeled pointy-toed cowboy boots, except the cowboy boots were now so scuffed and dirty that they looked piebald brown. Life in the public eye had taught both Lisa and her to carry necessities like basic toiletries, water and snacks, and a change of underwear in their purses, so they had all kinds of helpful essentials. Too bad she hadn’t packed a pair of walking shoes in her purse. “If you’re cold,” Taye suggested, holding out his arms.

He was wearing only a thin cotton shirt that looked like it was a size too small, so each muscle in his upper arms, chest, and belly was obvious. “No, thank you,” she snapped, starting forward again. But she peeked at him, looking at the blood staining his shirt on the right side of his chest and the dried blood on his forearm. “Aren’t you hur—

cold?”

“Nah,” he shrugged. His white, white teeth glowed briefly in the dimming light.

“Unless you’re offering to warm me up?”

Carla stared stonily straight ahead and marched on. The man behind them made a sound like a smothered laugh. Taye just shrugged and walked beside her, moving smoothly and easily in spite of his obvious injuries. Carla refused to feel sorry for him. If he was hurt it was his own fault. No one made him enter that stupid fight. Of course, if he hadn’t won it would have been somebody else. She could be going home with someone else. Maybe someone even worse.

For the first twenty minutes she strode sullenly along the broken pavement. The next quarter hour she focused on evil thoughts to help her hide her limp. But Taye, curse him, was too observant, and he picked her up like a baby, carrying her several strides before she demanded furiously to be put down.

“Your feet gotta be hurting you,” he returned casually. “I’ll carry you the last mile home.”

Carla drew in a breath to scream at him, but wrestled the urge down. She was not going to act like some too-stupid-to-live heroine in a cheap romance novel. She stuck her chin in the air and pretended to not notice him. It was hard, though, when he was so warm and smelled so good. How he could smell so good when he was sweaty and bloody she didn’t know, but he did. She breathed in his enticing scent for only a couple minutes before he stiffened and lowered her gently to the ground.

“Stay here,” he murmured.

“Wha—” she began.

Four men came out of nowhere, armed with clubs and something shiny—knives?—

and attacked Taye and his two friends. Carla stared in disbelief as a fifth man came from a different direction right at her. He said something to her. It sounded like something about helping her? But Carla concluded from the bulge in the front of his pants he was too excited about the prospect of helping her to be trusted. When he tried to take her arm she whipped the pointy toe of her cowboy boot into his groin with all the strength she could muster. He screamed like a woman and fell over, curling himself into a fetal position. Carla hopped back from him right into another man. She whirled, poising herself for another kick, but it was Taye, who was staring at the man writhing on the asphalt.

“Ouch,” he said, something between respect and glee threading his deep voice.

“Damn, Chief,” said one of his friends admiringly. “She’s gonna make one hell of a Lupa.”

Carla glared, trying to hide her fear and confusion. Taye was smiling at her, a wide grin of approval and appreciation. The man who had spoken was now looking around, back in guard mode. The second of Taye’s friends was nowhere to be seen, but a large gray dog was sniffing around the four men bleeding on the ground. Taye nodded to the dog and told it to keep its ears and nose open and give a warning if it found anything, as if it could understand everything he said; then he put his large callused hand over Carla’s wrist firmly.

“We have to hurry. Sorry ’bout your feet hurting, but I gotta keep myself ready to fight. I can’t carry you. We need to get you home before any other women stealers come after you. Ready? Run!”

It was the closest to a five-minute mile Carla had ever run, and if Taye hadn’t been towing her along by her wrist she would have fallen blocks behind the two men and the gray dog. Her once-fashionable boots were killing her. So were her calves, her ankles, and her thighs. It looked like Taye and his friends lived in a one-story motel surrounded by a high chain-link fence. She thought she recognized a tall sign, almost too faded to be readable, to be the logo for a popular chain motel. After they ran through the fence gate to a grassy area which must have been the parking lot once upon a time, Taye finally let her stop running, so she thought this must be home. She put her hands on her knees and leaned over to gasp air back into her lungs, and swore she would start to exercise more.

The tall chain-link fence that went around the property was patrolled by men who stared at her.

So this was home? A dumpy roach motel at the edge of a broken prairie town? At least Ray lived in a large Victorian mansion. Taye had left her side to talk quietly with some of the men. Carla counted four men strolling along the fence like sentries. Taye was smiling broadly at something one of them had said when he turned to look at her. His eyes were almost a physical weight as his smile turned somehow intimate. She admitted privately that he was handsome. Sometimes he looked like he was sixteen years old. His face sometimes seemed soft, almost boyish with full lips, but other times looked hard with a square jaw and high cheekbones and fierce dark eyes. His face might sometimes look boyish, but the broad, muscled chest and chiseled abs were completely grown up.

He saw her looking at him. In the dark he couldn’t have seen her appreciation for his physique, but she was careful to glance away as if bored.

He walked over to her and swept his arm around her waist, pulling her with him towards the motel. “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s get you inside so you can warm up and take off your boots.”

She let him pull her along. He smelled so good. Was he wearing some really subtle cologne? She bent her face a quarter inch towards his shoulder and sniffed discreetly.

Maybe it was just him.

Of course, he noticed. His mouth quirked in a half smile. “Like my scent?” he teased.

“
You
smell delicious, sweetheart. It’s the mating scent. Mates always smell alluring to each other.”

Carla gritted her teeth and ignored him, his sexy voice, and his yummy scent. They entered what had once been the motel lobby. She didn’t know how it had been decorated back in the first decade of the 21st century, but now it looked like an Old West-themed lounge. There were a bunch of wooden chairs draped with furs around square wood tables which held oil lamps and decks of cards, sawhorses with blankets draped over them, and a large stone fireplace. The floors were bare wood, but not rough wood like in the theater. It was smooth and had been coated with something to make it shiny. It actually looked pretty nice.

“I’ll give you a full tour later,” Taye said in her ear. “This is the rec room. The boys hang out here most of the time. That room over there on the left is the dining hall. And through here are the rooms we live in. Most of the men have a room to themselves. I have a set of rooms. They connect. So we’ll have a room for sleeping and a room for you to do your sewing or whatever you like in. It’ll be private, just for you.”

Carla hoped it had a bed or a couch for her to sleep on, because she wasn’t sleeping in his room.

“In back we have a stable and a garden,” he continued.

Carla stopped thinking about the sleeping arrangements. “You have horses? You ride?”

Taye shook his head. “Mostly pack horses, to carry trade goods. For traveling, we mostly run when we want to go somewhere. Our kin keep their horses there when they come to town to visit. You ride?”

“I grew up on a ranch,” Carla said. She patted her belt buckle. “I barrel raced all during high school and for a few years afterwards.”

Taye nodded dubiously. He wasn’t sure what the draw of racing a barrel would be, but his mate seemed pretty proud of it. “I’ll get you a horse.”

“I have a h…” Carla trailed off. Her horse was at her parents’ place, fifty years in the past. It hurt to think about it, so she didn’t. The hall he was leading her down was narrow and dim. She noticed the walls were bare. Any boring motel art had been removed along with the light fixtures. The doors still looked solid, with their brass numbers still attached.

Taye stopped in front room 121 and opened the door. “This is our room. I guess, uh, it’s pretty plain. But you can decorate some if you want.”

Actually, Carla admitted, it was nice. Homey. The bed was a double, the frame bolted to the floor just as it had been fifty years ago. It was covered by a patchwork quilt made of denim squares. Hopefully the mattress was not fifty years old. Not that it mattered since she wasn’t going to be sleeping on it. Curtains made of rough woven denim were pulled back so the setting sun could come in through the long windows. In one corner was a small round table with two straight-backed chairs. The polished wood floor was covered by two good-sized oval rag rugs, one beside the bed and the other in front of a sofa made from carved wood slats and cushions made of the same denim squares. The original dresser was against the wall, the mirror a little wavy.

Taye ushered her over to the couch and told her to sit, then closed the curtains and went around and lit a few lamps. Carla ignored his order to sit, dumped her purse on the floor by the couch and limped to the adjoining room. It was completely empty, not a stick of furniture in it. She went back to the couch. It was comfortable enough. She was so tired she would sleep fine right where she was. She noticed a tattered paperback book on the end table, its cover curled up and almost bleached of color. She tried to read the title, expecting a western or a thriller.
Love’s Last Passion
?
Love’s Lost Passion
? Good grief.

How had that survived the apocalypse? She remembered Taye mentioning something about reading romance novels.
So he could please her in bed?
Yikes!

“We’ll get you what you need for your private room.” Taye knelt before her and grabbed one of her boots. “Wiggle your foot, sweetheart. Let’s get these off.”

Carla straightened with a snap. “I can do it. You should clean up your cuts. You know, from the fight.”

“Don’t worry about them. They’re fine.”

Carla snatched her foot away from him. “I can do it! And there’s a lot of blood on your shirt. You should take care of that. It could get infected.”

Taye was shaking his head at her. “The Pack don’t get infections. But I’ll clean up if it will make you happy. Then I’ll go get us some food. Stay in here, okay? The boys are pretty curious about you. I don’t want you to run into any of them yet without me along.”

Alone in the room, Carla removed her jacket and took off her boots. She considered leaving the boots on since they were the only weapons she had, but she had seen Taye fight. She was pretty sure she was defenseless against him. Besides, her feet hurt bad. She held her feet up one at a time to the lamplight and saw oozing blisters. She should clean them. She wondered what the bathroom was like, and wandered over to the door she hadn’t gone through yet. The bathroom looked exactly like a bathroom from home, absolutely pristine, with a bucket full of water on the floor beside the tub. What she wouldn’t give for a hot bath. Or a flushing toilet. Or any running water. Hotel towels must be indestructible. Two hung over the rail above the toilet, a bit gray but clean. She dipped a corner of one in the bucket of water and used it to clean her feet as well as she could.

Taye returned in fifteen minutes. He was wearing only cut-off shorts and carried a tray. He set the tray down on the round table in the corner and turned to face her. She examined his chest only because she wanted to see how bad the cut was. Yep, that was the only reason. Of course, she had to admit it was a very nice chest. The man was buff.

But she couldn’t see any cut, at least not that would have bled so much. Maybe it had been someone else’s blood? The slice on the inside of his forearm was only a thin red line against his brown skin. She was sure he had been badly hurt. She had a blood smear on her shirt from when he had grabbed her and jumped over the edge of the balcony to the floor. How had he done that? He was strong, yes, but no one was that strong. She was so lost in thought that he was standing right in front of her before she saw him move.