Unstoppable Force (Force of Nature Series) (12 page)

Chapter 10

Lou waited in the kitchen for someone to
show up. The sun was just cresting the windows when Nancy came into the
kitchen. She didn’t say anything, but handed her a large tin and a glass. When
she sat down with her at the table, she had poured them both a glass of tea and
handed her a plate of cookies from the tin.

“When Connor was small he used to raid
this can to see what he could get out of it before his brothers did. He was
partial to the oatmeal ones more than anything. You like chocolate chip? Have
one.”

Lou took the plate offered and set it
down. She still couldn’t eat much of the sweet stuff, but she did break off a
small piece and nibbled on it. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Nancy nodded as she ate another cookie.

“It’s about Connor.”

“I would think you’d know by now that he
isn’t going to let you go. If you are here to have me talk him out of that
notion then I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you.”

Lou shook her head.

“Then what can I help you with, dear?”

“This man that’s coming. Why?”

Nancy cocked her head.

“Why do they all assume that they need
to help me? I can just go to him and no one will get hurt. Because you know as
well as I do that someone, if not a lot of people, will get hurt when he shows
up.”

“More than likely. But we will protect
you.” Nancy got up and opened the refrigerator. “My own mate died some time
ago. He was a good man. Not the great men his sons have turned out to be, but
he was a good man. Here, put the bacon in the pan for me. I’ll get it baked
while we talk.”

Lou took the ten pounds of bacon from
the older woman and began laying it in neat rows on the sheet. She wondered
aloud if she was to use it all and Nancy smiled at her and nodded. That was a
lot of food.

“Connor gets hurt too.” She hadn’t meant
to say it that way, but it was out before she could stop it. Nancy paused, but
didn’t stop measuring flour. “I don’t know how or when, but he does.”

“And you don’t? Am I to presume that
you’ve seen this in your dreams?”

Lou nodded.

“And when you have these dreams, do they
always come true?”

“Most of the time. I can’t really alter
them, but sometimes they change.” She thought about the man from the school who
she’d seen hurt her all those years ago. “If I can alter things, events, by
telling someone, then things change. I don’t know enough about how he gets hurt
to do that.”

“Is he dead? In your dreams, is he
dead?”

Lou didn’t know and told her so.

“Then there is a chance. Have you told
Connor what you saw?”

“No. I wasn’t sure how to. He wouldn’t…”
She laid the last slice of bacon on the fifth baking sheet before she could
continue with her tale. “I don’t think he’d do anything different if he thought
it would make me any less safe.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He is in love with
you.”

Lou looked up at Nancy, panicky.

“You know that as well as I do. He’s not
told you, has he?”

“No. Why would he love me? I mean,
mating is one thing and I can see that it has worked out for your other sons
and daughter, but love me? I don’t think you have it right.” A part of Lou was
happy, but more of her was terrified. “There are things he doesn’t know about
me.”

“I would imagine that there are things
about him you don’t know either. And that’s fine. You have a lifetime to figure
those out.” Nancy handed her a large bowl and several dozen eggs. “Wolves mate
for life. Did you know that?”

She had. She’d read a great many books
in her life and wolves were always something that fascinated her. She told
Nancy what she knew about wolves as a whole. Nancy listened, but only shook her
head after she was finished.

“Yes, that’s the wild wolf. Werewolves,
what we are, can resemble those wolves, but we’re much larger and have a better
sense of self being. What I mean is we keep a lot of our human traits with us
when we shift.” The kitchen was taking on the smells and scent of a restaurant
that Lou had stolen into when she’d been nearly starved. “We’re logical as well
and can speak to each other. Austin can talk to all the wolves as a whole or
one when it is necessary. CJ as well. She is their female alpha to Austin.”

“I thought they were called bitches. Alpha
bitch.”

Nancy laughed and Lou flushed. She heard
someone clear their throat and turned to look at the woman in question. She had
a child on her hip and one walking with her.

“I won’t be called bitch so they call me
alpha person. I can be one, I just don’t want to be called one. Good morning,
Lou. Welcome to our pack.”

Lou put her hand over the small scar on
her throat. It burned a little now and then and she flushed when she thought of
what they’d been doing when he’d put it there.

He’d joined her last night and she
couldn’t seem to get enough of touching him. He laid back and let her touch
him, strip him down until he was naked. She’d sat on the side of the bed and
looked at him, really looked at him. He was beautiful…

“You can do whatever you want to me, but
know this, I will return the favor.”

She looked at his face and could see he
was serious. She nodded and looked at him again.

“Touch me, Lou. Touch me wherever you
want. I’m yours.”

She started with his fingers. They were
long and tapered. There were scars along the tips and inside of his palms. He
told her that he worked with metals at times and sometimes he was a little
impatient with what he was doing.

His arms were furred in the same dark
fur he was when she’d seen him as a wolf. When she ran her fingers up to his
shoulder, she could feel his wolf just below the surface. She wanted to see
him.

“Not yet. When you're finished with me,
I’ll shift for you, but right now I want you to touch me.” He shifted his body
on the bed and took her hand to his mouth. “Continue and I’ll tell you a
story.”

Her fingers danced along his chest and
over his hard nipples as he began to speak. She was only half listening to him,
but when he said her name she looked up at him. She tried to remember what he’d
been saying.

“I was telling you about the first time
I saw you. Pay attention.” He smiled. “You were naked for me then too. Your
breasts are what brought me to you in the first place. The moon had just appeared
from beneath the clouds when I saw them. Bright white in the night light, you
were leaning against the tree as if you were an offering for me.”

“I was out of my mind in pain.” She
touched his abs and watched as they moved under her fingers. “I saw them, the
others. Their eyes were bright like the stars in the sky. Why didn’t you kill
me?”

“Because I could already smell what you
were to me. I could no more have killed you than myself. Why did you want me
to?”

She shrugged and he said her name. “I
was hurting and tired. I’d been hunted for so long that I…it seemed the best
route to go. I’d been thinking about it for some time. I just wanted to go away
forever.”

“I hope you still don’t feel that way. That
you have no more places to go, but with me. I want you in my life forever, Lou,
and I do mean forever.” She touched his hip bone and watched his cock move. Her
mouth watered for a taste of him.

“Can I take you into my mouth?” His low
growl made her feel things she’d never felt before. Leaning down, she licked
along the thick vein that ran the length of him.

“Lou, baby, that’s it.” She wanted to
take more of him into her. Fitting her mouth over the bulbous head, she suckled
on him. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and held her there as he pumped none
too gently into her mouth…

Lou flushed when she realized that
someone was speaking to her. She glanced over at CJ when she laughed. The woman
was smiling at her as if she knew just what she was thinking.

“I know that look. I get it now and
again when I think of Austin. The Force men are something else, aren’t they?” The
door opened from the outside before Lou could answer and a woman with a bunch
of kids tumbled in. She smiled at them all before she told the kids to go to
the play room.

“We’ve not meet. My name is Alexis Force.
I’m mated to Gordon. And Stacy is on her way over too. We’ll make a morning of
it.”

Lou looked longingly at the door and
wondered if she could make it.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. We’ll only
hunt you down and bring you back.”

“I don’t like people.” Lou turned her
head away. “I don’t do well with crowds. They make me…you all make me nervous.”
She looked at the door again.

A little girl came into the kitchen with
her thumb in her mouth and stared up at her. Lou didn’t know what to do and looked
to the woman she’d come in with. When the little girl took her hand, Lou
stopped breathing.

“You’re innocent.” The little girl
nodded and moved them both to the chair where Lou fell into it. “You’re
so…trusting, aren’t you?”

The thumb popped out and the girl
smiled. “My name is Sis. My real name is Abigail, but they call me Sis. Are you
going to marry my uncle Connor like my aunt married Gordon?”

Lou nodded. She’d never had a great deal
to do with children and the ones that she had had been mean and cruel to her. This
child wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before. She started to touch her
hair, golden and curly, when she suddenly stopped and looked at Alexis. The
woman nodded her permission.

The child had seen so much. And been
through more. Before she could say anything, the child put her hand over Lou’s
and held her there. When she snuggled up to her and laid her head over her
heart, Lou could feel the tears threaten.

“The children at the home had been told
never to speak to me. My mother had told them that I was there to steal their
souls and to kill them in their sleep.” The little girl in her arms looked up
at her. “I wouldn’t have done that to anyone.”

“You won’t either. There are monsters in
my room sometimes, but Gordon scares them away for me. He’s a big wolf and they
don’t like wolves.”

Lou nodded at Sis.

“Sometimes, when I get really scared, my
sister Darcy comes to sleep with me. She has a new boyfriend now.”

The incorrigibleness in her eyes
sparkled. And Lou would bet any amount of money, had she any to bet with, that
this kid wasn’t as innocent as she wanted the adults to believe she was. When
the other child, a little boy, came into the room, he looked at his sister
before coming over and sitting on her lap as well.

“I’m Tim. Who are you?”

Lou looked at Alexis again and knew
there wasn’t going to be any help from her. She was laughing too hard. “I’m
Lou. And Tim, I didn’t invite you to sit on my lap. What gives you that right?”
She didn’t mean to sound so hard, but they made her nervous.

He just grinned up at her. “You like us
here. I can feel it.” He adjusted himself more on her lap. “You could help us
out by moving on the chair better. That way we won’t fall off.”

Lou was sitting back before she realized
it. The kid had cheek, she’d give him that. Before she could comment on his
manipulating her she could feel Connor coming in the room. Her breath caught
when he stepped in the kitchen.

He seemed to have eyes only for her and
when he cupped the back of her head and brought his mouth to hers she forgot
about everyone else in the room but him. It wasn’t until the kids on her lap
began to struggle that she remembered them.

“You’re squashing us, Uncle Connor. Sheesh,
are you going to be kissing her all the time like Gordon does Alexis?” Tim made
a gagging noise and got off her lap. “Girls are just yucky. And why anyone
would want to go around kissing them is beyond me.” He glared at her before he
took Sis’s hand and headed out of the room. Lou laughed as he was explaining to
his sister how this place was getting to be as gross as their house with all
the touching and stuff. Lou looked up at Connor when he sat down at the large
table.

Breakfast was finished up before the
last of the Force men came into the room. It looked as if Austin and the other
man, Gordon, had been up for some time and that Dallas was getting things
organized for a command center, as he’d called it. As they dug into the
enormous amount of food, they began telling each other what they’d found out. Nancy
set a plate of toast and jellies in front of her and smiled. Connor handed her
a small part of his eggs and some of his bacon as he continued speaking.

“The perimeter is as secure as we can
get it. I’ve asked for help from the neighboring packs, to help us by letting
us know if someone comes poking around their area. Also, the extra cameras we
had installed are all up and working.” Austin reached for another rasher of
bacon as he spoke. “There are a great many more pack around too, so I’d like to
see if you’d take Lou here around and show her where she can go.”