Page 71 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

CLAY

The groaning creak of old springs sounded behind me and I stilled, my hands still deep in the engine of the bike. The sound came again, this time followed by the crinkle of cheap tarp.

Teeth clenched, I whirled, pulling my hands from the bike’s innards and lurching to my feet.

Allie wasn’t at the counter anymore, but the area still smelled faintly of the Fast Orange she used to clean the engine grease from her hands. She knelt on the sofa now, her slender fingers peeling back the hanging tarp to reveal what I had concealed beneath.

“Allie, what are you—”

But she’d already jerked the makeshift curtain back. The torque wrench I’d been holding clattered to the ground, the shrill sound of metal ringing against the pavement pushed me forward.

Allie remained speechless and immobile as I stalked toward her, my gaze fixed on the map she was now studying. A series of silver pins and the lines of black string fastened between them covered the map. In the upper right portion was a photo.

A picture taken by the private investigator I hired over a week ago to follow Allie’s ex-boyfriend, Devin Wright.

My throat tightened as her panic rushed to fill the room—the emotion raw and restricting. I breathed through my nostrils to quell the roiling in my stomach.

She shouldn’t ever have to feel like that. Not ever again.

He was gone, and I was going to make damn sure he stayed that way. It was the best I could do if she wasn’t going to let me deal with the son of a bitch.

She peeked up at the only other pin jutting out of the map—this one, unlike the others, was red and stuck in a spot near Fairbanks, Alaska. I swallowed hard, the familiar ache in my chest returning at the red reminder.

“You’re tracking him,” Allie said in a breathy whisper, her body rigid.

Steeling myself, I knelt beside her, tugging the tarp from her fingers to draw it back closed. She didn’t try to fight me, just dropped her hand and her head, her brows drawn.

Silently, she slid from the couch and onto unsteady legs, her arms crossing over her chest, fingers brushing her shoulders as if the room had suddenly chilled.

I stood too, feeling awkward as fuck and wishing I had the right words to say to smooth it all away. Jared would have known what to say. He always knew the right words.

I couldn’t imagine what she must have been thinking and I fucking prayed she would just let it be, but then she tilted her head to study me from the corner of her eye and I knew she wasn’t going to forget what she saw.

Her gaze, calculated and curious at first, softened, and something in me strained—like an old wooden board about to snap under my weight. Like a storm cloud, black and heavy with rain—the atmosphere thick with the threat of it hanging overhead.

She needed to know, I realized, the nagging ache behind my ribcage spreading.

She deserves to know.

“I may have told Jared I would step back,” I told her, fighting the urge to close the short distance between us. Her lily of the valley scent was driving me insane, and somehow the way it combined with the musky smell of engine grease in my shop made it even more brutally intoxicating.

“And I have,” I continued, drawing my hands into fists. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you. I’ll never allow anyone to hurt you again. Never.”

Her bottom lip trembled, and I had to look away.

It didn’t dull the crashing waves of her emotions as they tumbled to my shores through the tether of the mate bond. But it helped not to have to look into her light grey eyes.

“Clay—”

She shifted and I backed away as she advanced, her hands outstretched. My name on her lips was a plea I couldn’t answer.

“Don’t,” I bit out, unable to keep the word from coming out in a sharp bark. “I can’t.”

She didn’t understand.

She didn’t know what she was doing. What it would mean. I couldn’t have her.

And she shouldn’t want me.

“You shouldn’t—” I started, but stopped, trying and failing to explain in a way that she would understand. “I’m not—I’m not good for you, Allie.”

A rough sound escaped her lips. Something halfway between a laugh and a choke.

Her eyes were hard and shining with something I couldn’t name when I looked up, bellied by the taut silence between us.

“No,” she said firmly, the waver in her voice from a few moments before evaporated. “You’re wrong.”

My first instinct was to shout. To yell at her and tell her she was crazy if she thought I was anything less than what people thought of me. Hot-headed. An asshole. A murderer. I was all of those things and more. I’d earned my reputation.

A man like me had no business with someone like her.

None.

And yet, the bond had fused us together like some twisted, gnarled thing. Half beauty and half beast. There was no undoing it.

Did it even matter what I thought? That she deserved someone better? The mate bond took our choice away when it stole a piece of my soul and gave it to her.

…and I was getting tired of pretending it didn’t exist.

When Allie closed the space between us the second time, I stilled, forcing myself not to back away again. Not to run.

Her warm palm brushed against the stubble on my cheek, her fingers coaxing me to look at her. I bristled as the connection of flesh on flesh sent a shiver of throbbing pain and ecstasy through me.

This girl was going to be the end of me.

Her lips parted and I couldn’t take it for another second. I shook with the effort of keeping myself contained. I wanted to taste those lips. Wanted it more than anything else.

Fuck.

Her eyes flicked to my mouth and it was the only invitation I needed. If she wanted me to kiss her, then I was going to give my girl what she wanted.

Just this once. Just for a second.

I pulled her to me. Shock registered in her eyes for a split second before I found her lips.

Our breaths mingled as I kissed her hungrily, greedily, wanting more and less and nothing at all. Just this.

Allie moaned against my lips and I almost growled as my wolf burst free from its cage in my chest, reaching across the bridge of our connected bodies, finding its counterpart within her.

She kissed me back.

For half a second, I worried I’d over-stepped. Gone too far. That I read the signals wrong and she didn’t want this. Didn’t want me after all.

But she kissed me back. Her hands squeezed my shoulders, fisted in my shirt, pulling, grasping, begging.

She moaned again and I tipped her head up, gripping the back of her neck to fasten us together. Felt her erratic pulse thud against the pad of my thumb.

Allie felt lighter than air as I lifted her from the ground, wrapping her legs around me as I pressed her into the wall, keeping her elevated so she wouldn’t have to crane her neck so much to reach me.

And there, with my body pressing hers into the rough pressboard, I thought selfishly, savagely, that I wanted her. Right here. Right now.

And then forever.

There would never be a feeling to rival this one. A man could spend his whole life looking and never find it. Hell, most wolves did. But I fucking had it. Right here at my fingertips.

I’d been a damned fool to think I could let it slip through—that it would fade away.

It wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

And I didn’t want it to anymore.

She let me slide in, her lips parting to allow me entry and I swept in cruelly, stealing all the breath from her lungs. My body was on fire with need as she pressed herself tightly against me and I could feel her warmth on the growing length of my cock.

My fingers dug into her hips, needing something solid to hold onto, to keep my sanity before what little I had left was gone. She moved her hips against me and I shuddered, my body going stiff as a muffled groan passed between us.

I realized what was happening—what was going to happen—with a start and jerked myself away enough to get myself under control. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t how it should be. Not hard and fast against an auto shop wall. Christ, what if she was still a virgin?

I couldn’t…

The shock in Allie’s eyes cut through me like the sharp edge of a steel blade.

No, not just shock…horror.

All the heat from three seconds before was gone, the moment shattered. In its place was a dark, burning sort of cold that stole my breath.

I released her and she fell back against the wall, her chest heaving with labored pants.

With a face twisted in pain, she met my gaze. “We shouldn’t have—” she choked out.

I felt her emotions as clearly as if they were my own. Guilt. She was sick with it. My face flushed and I ground my teeth.

Damn.

Jared.

A sob broke free of Allie’s chest and I winced, turning back to her just in time to see the first tear fall before she shouldered past me, tripping in her haste to get out of the shop.

To get away from me.

I awoke gasping, my stomach turning and chest heavy with a phantom weight. I hissed a string of curses, rolling my aching body from the worn sofa. The springs creaked below me in protest, bringing the dream back into startling clarity in my mind.

Elbows on knees, I rubbed my chapped palms over my face, trying to rid myself of the memory of what happened right here in the shop barely a week ago.

Had it really only been a week? It felt like an age had passed between then and now. Allie barely spoke for the first couple of days after what happened at the Four Corners. Hell, she barely fucking spoke now, either, but at least she responded when spoken to. At least she was eating again.

It was a start.

I couldn’t imagine how much worse things would have been if the boy had died. Charity was able to get Quinn to an Alchemist in time to save his life. But there was nothing that could be done for her two best friends.

They were alive and their injuries would heal. It was a small consolation given the fact that by the end of the week their lives could change forever.

The full moon would decide which of them it wanted to claim—for their sakes I hoped it claimed neither.

But for Allie, it was a double-edged knife.