But of course, it wasn’t that simple.
Feeling Maria rub her damp cheek against his chest, he pulled his attention back to the present, running his hand over and along her back until she quieted down. “Kieran’s an idiot,” he murmured, continuing to pet her with the undemanding caresses of a packmate. “When you grow up a little more and become the woman you’re going to be, he’s going to kick himself. And you can rub his face in it.”
Maria gave him a shaky smile, dark eyes near black even to his night vision. “You know how to stroke a woman’s ego.”
Using his thumbs, he wiped away the remnants of her tears. “It’s easy with someone like you.” Too bad he was stuck on a woman who might just drive them both to insanity with her refusal to even admit the possibility that there might be something between them.
Indigo found herself
alone half an hour after Drew left with Maria clinging to him like kudzu. No guesses as to what the two of them were doing, though thankfully, they’d gone far enough out of range that she couldn’t hear or scent their bodies. As for Hawke, he’d noticed that four of the juveniles weren’t as exhausted as their peers and had rounded them up for an exploration of the night-swathed forest.
The eight Hawke had left behind were all lost in deep sleep, their faces—no matter the form they’d chosen—content. Only Indigo remained awake by the fire, her spine stiff, her wolf snarling inside her mind as she stared at the spot where Drew had disappeared into the dark, his arm curled around Maria’s shapely form.
Her eyes shifted without conscious control, until she saw everything with the wolf’s piercing night vision. Furious with her lack of control, she went to the tent—to be confronted by Drew’s sleeping bag. He wasn’t likely to come back here, and even if he did, she sure as hell did not intend to sleep next to a male who stank of another woman. Decision made, she rolled up his bag and put both it and his pack in a neat pile against a tree a small distance away, where he couldn’t miss it.
Just being a good packmate, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that an odd kind of anger was boiling through her system. She didn’t want to sleep with Drew. Okay, yes, she did, but she wasn’t going to do it, so she had no reason to be so savagely angry that he’d gone off with another female. There was nothing worse than a woman who played dog in the manger—it would be the worst kind of hypocrisy on her part.
Her mind snapshotted to an image of Drew’s naked body as he dropped the towel the night of the storm, his muscled flesh inviting touch. Maria was probably in raptures—
Enough
.
Stripping off her clothes, she pulled on a large tee over her panties and slipped in between the unzipped halves of her sleeping bag. She’d ended up kicking off the top half last night, not needing it given the blazing heat of Drew’s body. His heartbeat had been a slow, steady rhythm behind her, his breath warm against her temple. Sometime in the night, he’d spread his hand out over her abdomen and intertwined his legs with her own, the hairs on his thighs rubbing rough and sensuous against her skin. It hadn’t only been comforting to sleep like two tangled pups, it had been … more.
Gritting her teeth against the heavy impression of memory, she closed her eyes. Sleep continued to evade her like the most frustrating prey … and she was wide awake when she scented two familiar forms coming back to camp. Her hand fisted and she set her jaw, determined
not
to take a deeper breath, to peel apart the scents in a search for the musky taste of sex.
“Looks like everyone’s asleep.” A feminine whisper.
A pause and though Indigo knew it was impossible, she could’ve sworn Drew’s eyes were drilling into her skull. “You better get some rest, too.”
Sounds, skin meeting. A kiss? “Good night, Drew. That was really nice … thank you.”
Nice?
Not exactly a ringing endorsement. She hoped that burned Drew’s ego.
The next sounds were of Maria moving about, heading to her tent. Drew’s heavier tread didn’t follow. Instead, Indigo felt him go to his pack … and then more quiet, determined sounds—fabric being unrolled, boots being unlaced and dropped to the ground.
Unable to resist, she opened her eyes and twisted toward where she’d left his gear—to find him stripping off his T-shirt and throwing it on his pack in a way that shouted temper. His sleeping bag lay open beside him. She should’ve closed her eyes and gone back to sleep, but her wolf’s edgy temper prodded her to get up and confront him. “What are you doing?” she asked in an almost subvocal tone, not wanting Maria to hear. The kids were too tired to wake.
Cool blue eyes met hers. “Going to sleep.”
The cutting bite of his response took her aback for a second—she’d never really seen Drew angry before. “I thought you’d be sharing with Maria.”
“Is that what you think of me?” he asked with a frost in his tone that made her want to wrap her arms around herself. “That I’d take advantage of a girl who’s just had her heart broken?”
“I—what?” She was a good lieutenant, but she hadn’t seen anything in Maria’s behavior to betray that kind of hurt. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter. She’ll be fine.” His hands went to the top button of his jeans and he flicked it open. “Might as well shift,” he muttered, not undoing the zipper. “Since it smells like rain, I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight if I stay in human form.”
The way he said that, the way he looked at her, rubbed her temper raw. “Fine, I misread the situation.” She folded her arms, curving her hands into fists. “You’re welcome to—”
“No, thanks.” He put his own hands on his hips, his chest a muscled plane only inches from her. “I think I prefer a little rain to being frozen out by Lieutenant Indigo Riviere for daring to ask her to step outside of her safe little worldview.”
She saw red. “What’s that supposed to mean?” It was sheer breath-stealing fury that kept her tone low.
“How about I ask a question instead?” Closing the distance between them until they stood toe to toe, the heat of his body a silent challenge, he said, “Why are you out here, sniping at me?”
“I do not ‘snipe.’” Her wolf growled.
“Yeah, sure sounds like you’re being snippy to me.” And then the damn male did that thing he did—he kissed her. As if he had every right to just take her mouth with the wild heat of his, to cup the back of her head, to bite down on her lower lip and suck her upper one into his mouth.
Her toes curled, the rage in her bloodstream translating into pure wild heat as the touch-hungry wolf took control. She hadn’t even realized she’d unfolded her arms until her palms met the hard wall of his chest. Hot. Strong. Beautiful. Overwhelmed by the sudden blaze of the sexual inferno, Indigo wanted to push him to the ground, claim every solid male inch with her mouth, her hands, and finally, her sex. The hunger was a fever inside, a spiking, thudding pulse.
“Damn.” Drew lifted his head, his chest heaving. “I can scent Hawke and the others.”
The words poured cold water on the flames of passion. She realized she still had her hands on his body, the fingers of one curved slightly into his flesh, as if she wanted to prick at him with her claws—as if she was in heat. Shoving away, she stumbled a little. “You lied,” she said, taking out her own stunned confusion on him. “All that bullshit about everything being back to normal.”
“So did you.” His eyes gleamed, hard and bright. “You want me, and if you’d stop fucking lying to yourself for one second, you’d realize we could have something good.”
Her wolf, no longer caught in the sexual inferno, snarled at the challenge, at the arrogance of this male who thought he could bring her to heel. “Don’t kid yourself. Yeah, you can kiss—but I need a little more in my man.” Harsh, angry words, torn from the part of her that hated how he’d made her feel earlier when he’d gone off with Maria—so vulnerable, so weak. She was never weak. She refused to allow it. “I might play with boys, but I don’t keep them.”
Drew flinched, and she knew she’d drawn blood. Somehow, it didn’t feel as good as it should have. But she couldn’t bring herself to take it back, too proud, too confused, too fucking scared of what Drew was asking from her. She knew how it would end. She’d
seen
how it would end. The hurt, the pain, the constant effort to make herself
less
so that he would feel better as a man.
It wasn’t worth it. Not even if it hurt like a bitch to walk away.
CHAPTER 17
Henry looked at
his man. “It can be done?”
“Yes.” An unequivocal answer. “However, we’ll have to be quick to get the rest of the operation in place now that they’ve detected us.”
“I assume you have that under way.” Henry had chosen this man because of his intelligence and dedication to Silence—and, unlike Shoshanna, he wasn’t about to squander that resource by killing him simply because he happened to be strong enough to be a threat.
A nod. “Even if they somehow discover the first element, the second should give us what we need.”
And the war to uphold Silence, Henry thought, would claim another victim.
CHAPTER 18
Andrew dumped his
pack in his room and began to tug off his clothes for the shower. The hike down from the campsite had been undemanding in spite of the rain that had fallen overnight, and, for the juveniles, fun. Most had abandoned their packs for later retrieval halfway down and shifted, gamboling in the pools of water like four-year-olds, their howls of pleasure singing to his soul.
But no matter his wolf’s joy at being with his pack, the trip down had cut at him, made him bleed—because in spite of everything he’d told himself about charm, about courtship, he’d lost his temper the night before and it was still simmering. He’d been in no mood to play—and neither had Indigo.
They’d spoken to each other only when necessary and kept their distance the rest of the time. For Andrew, it had been partly self-preservation and partly because he didn’t trust himself around her. The hunger to touch, to caress, to possess, was a constant craving in his gut by now. He was fully capable of going after her with the intent to claim rights he didn’t have, rights she refused to give him, notwithstanding the addictive musk of her own desire.
Throwing the last of his clothing on the floor, he walked into the shower cubicle and tried to rub away the need, the fury that had him losing his mind. Of course it didn’t disappear, but the time he spent under the deliberately cool spray did calm him down a fraction. He’d made a mistake in challenging Indigo that way—but he wasn’t sorry. Because when it came down to it, he was a dominant same as her. He wasn’t going to lie to her about that. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t also going to use his other skills to burn through the ice of her temper.
I might play with boys, but I don’t keep them
.
He clenched his jaw at the memory of her razor-sharp words, refusing to let them push him away. That was what she wanted—it would be the easy way out. And no matter how mad he was at her for what she’d said, he wasn’t going to give her that out. No fucking way.
Switching off the shower, he got dressed, then scrawled something on a small piece of paper that he slipped under Indigo’s door on his way down to the garage. He wasn’t exactly fit company right now. Better he redirect his anger into something useful, like fixing one of the malfunctioning vehicles. Fact was, he was good with cars, but no expert—which meant he’d have to concentrate.
However, he’d barely reached the underground area that was home to all their vehicles when someone pulled him aside and whispered that he’d been hearing rumors to do with “purity.” Freezing, Drew asked for further details, but the mechanic shrugged. “I think it’s something nasty, but no one’s sure quite what.”
His anger tempered by the need to protect the pack, Andrew began to do what he did best—talk to people. Over the next few hours, he moved from group to group, eating lunch with the soldiers, playing chess with a few of the elders, hanging out in the infirmary and in the training rooms.
His gut was a knot at the start. The last traitor within the pack had almost killed SnowDancer, stabbing a knife straight into its heart. He wasn’t sure they could bear it a second time. The pack was too tight a unit, their loyalty to each other the bedrock on which they built their worlds. But what he found was something else, something unexpected.
“An e-mail,” he said to Hawke later that day, after managing to get his hands on a copy at last. “Sent from an anonymous account but, from the content, it’s connected to Pure Psy, that group all about maintaining Silence. No one knows where it originated—and a few of the people who received it had enough skill to attempt a backtrace. Nada.”
Hawke held his hand out for the e-mail. Andrew passed it across, having already memorized the poison.
We invite our brothers and sisters in SnowDancer to help us achieve our aim of a world of absolute Purity. Surely you do not want your blood polluted with those of the other races—surely you do not want your pack weakened by humans.
Hawke threw down the piece of paper, his jaw a brutal line. “Do we have a problem?”
“No,” Andrew was happy to say, his wolf’s relief a powerful beat against his skin. “Everyone I ran into who’d had contact with the thing found it ugly and malicious and deleted it immediately. I got this copy from someone’s recycle bin.”
Hawke rubbed at his forehead. “Why the fuck didn’t they e-mail it to me? I need to know about shit like this.” When Andrew said nothing, his alpha sat back in his chair. “Yeah, yeah, that’s why I have you.”
Andrew gave him a wry smile. “Most people just didn’t think it was that important—figured it was a nasty e-mail campaign by some crackpot group but nothing more.” Relaxed now, but with a different tension thrumming in his blood, he nodded at the e-mail. “That was a miscalculation on the part of Pure Psy. Almost everyone in the pack has someone human in their family, and they’ve come to see the Lauren children as pups to protect.” And wolves, changeling or feral, would give their lives to protect the young. “But I don’t like the fact the sender seems to have targeted people lower down in the hierarchy.”