Page 13 of In the Mouth of the Wolf (Of Wolves and Kings #1)

13

MARLOWE

I woke up in a room I didn’t recognize, in clothes that weren’t mine, next to a man who wasn’t my fiancé.

Camden stirred with me, stretching and yawning by my side. “Mornin’, baby. Do you need me to get Archer?”

“Wha…?” I was flooded with fragmented memories of the past few days. Flashes of me out of my mind with horniness, begging for cock. I cringed from embarrassment but also fear – had any of these men actually fucked me?

I remembered Archer had taken the edge off with a sex toy, but I didn’t think anyone had actually touched me, aside from cuddling. Mike and I had had some wild, weekend-long sex marathons before, and I had usually felt quite sore afterwards.

Aside from dirty and hungry, I seemed to be fine down there.

But whatever had happened wasn’t okay, and I certainly wouldn’t have been fine if Mike had done that to another woman, I knew that.

“Oh god…” I whimpered, covering my face with my hands. “What have I done?”

Camden sat up, his eyes sad and filled with concern. “Hey, hey, Marlowe, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. We tried to tell you about the heat…”

“Heat?” I yelled, scrambling away from him. “You guys must have drugged me. What happened – that’s not natural!”

I stumbled out of the bed, my legs weak, and rushed out the door and down a hall. I came into a large living room and open kitchen in an A-frame building. A winter wonderland outside tall windows took my breath away, and I saw Archer and Elias sitting on a plush couch working on laptops, while a third man I didn’t know watched TV.

They all stood as they realized it was me, and Archer cleared his throat cautiously. “Marlowe, how are you feeling?”

My heart raced, and I wrapped my arms around my chest. I wore a large t-shirt bearing the logo for Wolfcrest Construction and nothing else. Several days’ worth of sweat covered my skin, my hair was disgustingly greasy, and my mouth was dry.

“How long?” I asked quietly.

Elias took a tentative step forward, while the third man rubbed the back of his neck.

“How. Long?” I asked again, punctuating each word.

“About four and a half days,” Archer responded. “It’s Wednesday morning.”

A shuddering breath slammed through me and my knees buckled. Elias caught me before I could fall, but I screamed and pushed him away, backing up into the wall. I slid down it until I landed on the floor

“What the hell did you guys do to me? Heats aren’t real. You must have slipped something into my drink!”

Camden came up to my side, sitting down next to me. “You really think there’s a drug that can do all that? Think about it, babe.”

Since when was he some voice of reason?

I sniffed, then closed my eyes and went through the date-rape drugs I’d studied. As far as I knew, none of them really made someone that deliriously horny.

Maybe they’d given me MDMA? But that only lasted a few hours, and the few times I’d tried it, it had mostly just made me touchy-feely.

Besides, if a drug that turned people into wanton messes for half a week straight existed, I definitely would have heard about it through my job at a woman’s advocacy nonprofit.

The man I didn’t know sighed and walked into the kitchen. “I’m making breakfast. Who wants some?”

My stomach rumbled like I hadn’t eaten in days. If what I had pieced together from my flashes of memory were correct, then that was likely the case.

He grinned, pointing a spatula at me. “Pancakes?”

I nodded slightly, and he slapped a dish towel over his shoulder as he grabbed a bowl and whisk, turning on a Bluetooth speaker.

Smooth reggae beats filled the room and Camden stood up, offering me his hands. “Here, let me show you where the bathroom is. I bet you wanna take a shower, right?”

My bottom lip trembled and I nodded again, letting him help me. I left Archer and Elias in the living room and followed Camden down the wood-paneled hall. “This is my cabin,” he explained. “The pack and I come up here every once in a while to drink, let off some steam, and be idiots.”

How idiotic? Like kidnap-a-drugged-woman-and-rape-her idiotic?

I wanted to be furious, but once the initial fear, anger, and confusion over my situation faded, my gut began to whisper to me that these guys hadn’t tried to take advantage of me in my frenzied state. Not one memory of someone’s cock inside me, or a hand on my breasts, or a mouth on my skin. The vibrator, yes, but I also remembered begging to be fucked, and Archer cooly and calmly asking for my consent each time to help me get off with a toy instead.

I attempted to calm down, taking note of the pictures of the four of them over the years that hung on the walls. “How did you meet?” I asked.

Camden opened a closet and took out a towel, handing it to me with a proud smile on his face. “We played football together in high school.”

I hugged the towel to my chest and stopped at a photo of the four of them in their uniforms, looking like they probably won a four-way tie for prom king. Meanwhile, when I was in high school, I’d been busy doing stuff like organizing a school walk-out over dress code policies that discriminated against female students.

“Elias was the quarterback, Nolan and I were linebackers, and Archer was a wide receiver.”

I raised my eyebrow. “You say that like it means something.”

He pursed his lips in mock anger and messed up my hair even further than it already was. “Yeah, yeah, insert joke here about peaking in high school, whatever. I bet you were valedictorian or something really nerdy.”

I pushed the bridge of pretend glasses up my nose. “Um, actually, I was the salutatorian…”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Of course. You got salutatorian written all over you.”

I laughed. A real, genuine laugh. I didn’t know why I wasn’t feeling more traumatized. And why I found it so easy to joke around with Camden.

Or why I still found him so sexy.

For now, at least, I could trust them. I had to trust them, if I was ever going to make it back to civilization.

“Oh crap,” I realized. “I haven’t talked to Mike in days. He’s gotta be out of his mind. Do you have cell service up here?”

A low growl reverberated out of his chest, but he shook it out. “No, but I have Wi-Fi. I think your phone’s dead, but I’m sure one of the pack will let you use their computers if you want to email him. Now that your heat is over, we’re going to head to my place in Maiingan Hollow so you can figure out your next move. Whether that’s heading straight back to San Fran, or working with Elias and me to figure out what to do about your dad’s half of the company, or whatever.”

“Okay, first of all…” I held up one finger. “… don’t call it San Fran, and two…” I held up another. “… I thought you didn’t want to share the company with a, what did you call me, ‘beta female?’”

He grabbed my fingers and sighed. “Look, I may have overreacted a touch when I found out your dad’s half was going to his daughter who I’d never met and assumed didn’t know jack shit about construction, rather than to me, like he’d hinted at over the years.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, my fingers still in his hand. “My dad promised you the whole company?”

“Argh,” he grunted, rubbing his head in frustration. “More or less. I knew he had kids, but he never talked about you, and he treated me like his son most of the time. Especially after my old man died. It’s complicated.”

Complicated indeed. Had my dad been super old school and “manly,” wanting someone like Camden as a son versus Ezra or an omega daughter?

But Ezra had been super masculine and would have easily been friends with this group. He had played a ton of sports in high school and had been bigger than all these guys. Besides, my dad had left when we were four, before he could have even known what Ezra and I were like.

And then why would he have ultimately given me, his daughter, his half of the company anyway?

None of this was making sense.

I looked back at the photo of the four boys, now men, now an “alpha pack,” and asked quietly. “So do you still want it?”

He took a step closer, his jaw set tight as his eyes inspected every inch of my face. “If not having it means you’ll be in my life, I’d much rather you keep it. Even if I’m just CC-ing you on emails you’ll never reply to, even if you’re just Zooming into board meetings once or twice a year, it’s worth it.”

My heart raced, and he leaned down, nestling his nose in the crook of my neck as he inhaled deeply.

“Why?” I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper. “You barely even know me.”

His finger lightly ran down my arm, and I bit back a gasp, squeezing the towel tighter.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that answer yet. Not until you can accept what you are.”

He pulled back and our eyes locked, his baby blues slowly losing the battle to his dilating pupils. His gaze fell towards my lips, and my lashes fluttered as his face grew closer.

“Cam!” a voice barked from the kitchen. “Let her take a shower, for Moon’s sake.”

He exhaled deeply, giving me a quick kiss on my forehead. “Use whatever you want in there, babe.”

Then he slapped me on the ass and walked back towards the living room.

Dammit, that was close. Too close. And with Camden, of all people. If it had been a drug or a weird hormone imbalance from the birth control pills that had caused my four-day horny black-out, there were likely still traces lingering in my system and I would need to be careful.

I stepped under the rainfall showerhead and smiled when I noticed the brand-new pink bottles of floral shampoo and conditioner.

After thoroughly cleansing my hair and skin, I stepped out and wrapped the towel around my body, realizing I had no idea where my stuff was. When I opened the bathroom door, I found someone had left my suitcase in the hall for me while I’d been showering. I dug out some sweatpants and my favorite Stanford sweatshirt, and then padded barefoot into the kitchen.

The smell of bacon and butter drew me in, and Elias, Archer, and Camden were all sitting at the table, happily scarfing everything down.

“There’s a chair over here for you,” said the man I didn’t know. He carried over the frying pan, adding more pancakes to the stack on the central platter. “I’m Nolan, by the way. Nolan Wilk. We uh, didn’t get a chance to talk much, but I came here just a little after you all arrived.”

Like the others he was tall, at least three or four inches over six feet. His dark brown hair was cut stylishly, with bangs falling adorably into his equally dark brown eyes. I admired the way his large, muscular frame moved around the kitchen with grace and ease. He leaned closer as he added some strips of bacon to my plate, and his scent of bourbon and vanilla triggered a memory of him cuddled up next to me, purring while he ran his fingers through my hair and told me how he wanted to take care of me.

My stomach was a jumble of knots, and I mumbled my thank you as I shoved a bite of pancake into my mouth.

Camden laughed. “That’s four for four!”

Elias elbowed him in the chest, and I looked up from my plate. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” everyone but Camden said in unison.

I swallowed my food. “I really hate being left in the dark, and I also hate jokes being made at my expense. Just say it.”

Archer shot Camden a dirty look and then turned his attention towards me. “We’re not making fun of you. Camden is referring to your arousal from scenting Nolan. He means you’re attracted to all of us.”

And just like that, whatever moment I’d had with Camden was ruined. I put my fork down and dabbed my mouth with my napkin. “Archer, can I use your computer? I need to email my fiancé.”