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Shit.
Without looking at him, Chelsea lowered her head to the steering wheel and prayed for patience. Nothing, not a single goddamn thing, had gone her way from the moment she’d started this miserable search. Why? She was trying so hard to do what was right, damn it—trying to help her sister…to get her out of what could potentially be a dangerous situation, especially after the girl at the club had said that Perry wasn’t looking too good. So why this? Why was karma, fate or whatever the hell it was that controlled her destiny giving her a kick in the ass with every step she took?
It wasn’t like her to be whiney, but she’d lost her sense of optimism so long ago, Chelsea no longer even knew what it felt like. Now all she had was this grinding, sickening feeling in her gut, and a bad case of nerves. Not to mention the sudden addition of ill-founded lust for the gorgeous jerk trying to get rid of her.
Talk about crappy timing.
Forcing herself to lift her head, she gave the dark-haired stranger a closed, expressionless look. “I don’t suppose you could give me a jump start?”
He shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. “The problem isn’t your battery.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that clicking sound means it’s your starter.”
“Shit,” she said for the second time, only this time out loud.
He muttered something rough under his breath again, then jerked his chin toward his truck. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride down to Wesley.”
She wanted to say, “Are you crazy? What kind of idiot do you think I am, getting into a car with some guy I don’t even know?”
But the words stuck in her throat. Her options were more than a little limited here. The idea of staying in the woods had been scary enough when the opportunity for retreat had been available, but to be stuck out here in a broken-down car didn’t strike her as smart, even though she had a gun. Then again, neither did driving off with Mr. Tall, Dark and Deadly Gorgeous. But if he was going to hurt her, he could have already done it. Right? The other two men, who were still waiting over by his truck, clearly submitted to his authority, as if he were some kind of superior they deferred to. She had the feeling that if he’d attacked, they’d have done nothing to stop him.
Which meant…what? Was she actually trying to talk herself into taking him up on his offer? She didn’t have enough money for a motel room, but she’d figure something out. She always did, one way or another.
As if sensing her disquieting inner conflict, he wiped the scowl off his face and let go of her door, that warm, male scent pulsing off him the most interesting thing she’d ever smelled. “It’s okay,” he said in a low voice. “I won’t hurt you. Just a ride into town, to a motel, and then I’ll have your bus delivered to you in the morning.”
“How can I get it fixed if I leave it here?” Not that she had the money to get it fixed, but he didn’t need to know that. “Can’t we just tow it behind us?”
“I’m going to call some mechanics I know and have them work on it here,” he explained as if it was the simplest thing in the world to do. “They’ll have it in running order by morning.”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she asked, “Why would you do that?”
“Consider it a fair exchange for the fact that I’m kicking you out of here,” he offered with a strained smile. He clearly wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was, and yet, he seemed determined to help her.
She didn’t agree or disagree. She simply said, “It isn’t smart.”
A deep, almost silent rumble of laughter vibrated in his chest, and he arched one of those damn black brows again. “Neither was camping out in your car in the woods all alone.”
“But at least I had a good reason for that.”
He could have argued that she had a good reason for taking him up on his offer, as well. But he didn’t. He just stared at her, the silver metallic of his eyes mesmerizing, like the liquid swirl of mercury in a vial—making her feel as if he could see right past her sarcastic bravado, down to the real woman huddling inside her skin. The one who was scared and tired and pushed to the edge of her limits. His cool air of command made Chelsea want to slap him, just as badly as she wanted to press her lips against that hard, utterly masculine mouth and find out if he tasted even half as good as he looked and smelled.
Pulling her lower lip through her teeth, she finally said, “If I accept, it doesn’t mean that I owe you anything.”
Instead of agreeing, he simply gave her a charmingly crooked grin that made her body react with ridiculous ease. “My name is Eric, by the way. Eric Drake. And you would be…?”
“Chelsea Smart.”
He started to laugh under his breath, as if there was something funny about her name, but choked it off when he caught her glare.
“So, what’s it gonna be, Chelsea?” He stepped back from the bus, shoved his hands deep in his pockets again and lifted his shoulders. “Will you trust me?”
The question was offered casually, and yet, she had the strangest feeling that her answer was somehow important to him. Which was crazy, seeing as how she’d never been all that important to anyone before, much less to a gorgeous man who didn’t even know her.
What was it going to be?
She was acutely aware of each second passing slowly into the next…of each breath that expanded her lungs…each hard, powerful beat of her heart that shuddered through her body.
Then she did something that she never did, and opened her door, putting her trust in another person. And not just any person.
No, for the first time in what felt like forever, Chelsea put her trust in the hands of a man.
Chapter 3
By the time Eric pulled onto the gloomy, rain-sodden streets of downtown Wesley, he’d managed to learn a bit more about the human than just her name and the fact that she had a prickly attitude. She was twenty-six years old, had just bought her first condo and taught Women’s Studies at a private university in Smythe, Virginia. He’d also learned that she had spent the past few weeks searching for her younger sister, a nineteen-year-old named Perry, who also lived in Smythe…and whose party-girl lifestyle and recreational drug use had a habit of landing her in a variety of unsavory situations.
According to her roommates, Perry had suddenly disappeared a month ago, after hooking up with an amazingly hot guy at a weekend party. He’d fed her some bullshit story about how he really cared about her, but that his life was just too dangerous for a girl like her, and then skipped out. But Perry wasn’t willing to give him up. After asking around about him, she’d learned he was heading to another party in a neighboring county, and she’d set off after him, determined to track him down. Then she hadn’t come back.
When a few days had gone by and her roommates hadn’t heard from her, they got in touch with Chelsea, claiming they were worried about their impulsive, risk-taking friend. Chelsea had been worried, too, while waiting for word from her sister…or a sign that she was okay and on her way back home. When her phone messages on Perry’s cell went unanswered for over a week, Chelsea left Smythe and followed Perry’s sloppy trail from one college party or nightclub to another, until her search eventually led to a strip joint right there in Wesley called Heaven and Hell.
Unfortunately, by the time Chelsea had arrived, Perry’s short stint illegally serving cocktails in the club was already over. No one had been willing to talk to Chelsea or to give her any information, until she finally got lucky that afternoon and caught one of the girls, a hollow-eyed little slip of a thing named Maggie, on the way to her car in the parking lot. The girl had reluctantly divulged that a tired-looking Perry had hit the road after only a few nights at the club, when some guy she said she’d been looking for came in.
Apparently, the guy—a good-looking blond who Maggie had seen before, but whose name she didn’t know—freaked out when he saw Perry working in the club. A fight started between him and the bouncers when he demanded Perry leave with him, but then they eventually told him just to get her out of there. She’d run in the back to collect her things, giddy with excitement, and told Maggie that her boyfriend was taking her home with him, to a place somewhere up in the nearby mountains.
And that was how Chelsea Smart had ended up in Silvercrest pack territory. Chelsea had left Wesley not long after talking to Maggie, determined to search any towns she found up in the mountains until she finally located her sister. When Eric asked why she hadn’t bothered to go to the police, she told him she’d already tried that route, but there’d been nothing they could do to help. According to the officer she’d talked to back in Smythe, being stupid wasn’t a crime. Perry was a legal adult who was apparently acting of her own free will, and until they had reason to believe otherwise, there was nothing the cops could do.
Considering that the private road he’d found Chelsea on led to Shadow Peak, and Eric was positive Perry wasn’t in the mountaintop town, there were only a few other possibilities, and none of them were good for a human female on her own. Just as the road split off from the main highway, there was a turnoff to an old dirt path that wound its way over to the opposite side of the mountain, and into the territory owned by the Youngblood pack. Though the pack itself, a relatively small, peaceful group who kept to themselves, lived in a town that had been built on the western edge of their land, there was an even smaller settlement over the border in West Virginia where the Donovan family lived. Known for their corrupt business dealings, the Donovans had been asked to leave the Youngblood Lycan homestead in the late seventies—and yet, they hadn’t been banished, seeing as how their Midas touch generated handsome profits for the pack.
As far as Eric knew, the Donovans had never set up shop in Maryland, keeping their various ventures in West Virginian towns that were closer to their pack lands. But he’d recently heard a few of the Runners say that the Donovans had been sniffing around Wesley the past couple of months, and the prickling at the back of his neck told him the family might somehow be involved with that particular club.
If he was right, there was a good chance Heaven and Hell was being used as a front for something far more sinister than peddling flesh. Over the years, there’d been rumors that the Donovans were involved with drug trafficking, among other illegal activities. From the sound of things, the guy that Perry Smart had hooked up with was probably associated with the family in some way, or they never would have let him walk out of there with the girl in one piece. And if that was true, then the odds were high that he wasn’t a man at all, but a Lycan. One who, given the trail that Perry had followed, could very well be scouting out young women for the Donovan family to do God only knew what with.
All of which meant that Perry Smart had landed herself in some deep shit—and if Chelsea kept searching for her, she was going to end up in the same situation.
As he took the next right, she shifted in the passenger’s seat of his truck, drawing his gaze, and he damn near couldn’t take his eyes off her. The watery spill of light from the garish neon signs in that part of town played softly over her feminine profile and that long, wavy spill of hair. Though her attitude grated on his nerves, Eric had the strongest urge to fist his hands in that silken mass and draw her over to him. To press his lips against her pale, tender skin.
For some screwed-up, infuriating reason, it seemed that the more time he spent with her, the harder it was to keep his hands and his mouth to himself.
He grimaced at that unsavory realization, while adrenaline pumped through his system like a drug, making him restless, on edge—and yet, he didn’t push the speed, trying to drag it out, making his time with her last. He knew he needed to get the hell away from her as quickly as possible, but there was a part of him snarling at the fact that the drive had gone by far too fast. There had been too many heavy silences, too many failed attempts to learn more about her. She’d been willing to tell him about her sister, and yet, for the most part, had remained stubbornly closed-mouthed about herself.
Not that there was any point in seeking the answers to his unasked questions. The human was going to walk out of his life as easily as she’d entered it. And that was the way it should be.
Unfortunately, his wolf had other ideas. The damn animal had sex on its mind tonight, when Eric knew that was the last thing he needed to be thinking about.
Though the rain had stopped falling nearly a half hour ago, it still lingered on the asphalt, reflecting the harsh colors from the oversized neon signs, so that it looked as if they were driving through an acid trip. “Are you sure you want to stay in this part of town?” he asked, casting an uneasy glance over the seedy storefronts and dark alleyways that lined the street.
“Yeah, this is good. Heaven and Hell is only a few blocks from here. I was thinking I should probably drop by there again tomorrow, just to see if Perry has recently tried to contact anyone she met there. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even get a chance to talk to Maggie again.”
Eric cut her a dark look. “I thought you said the place was a hellhole?”
“I did. A hellhole that disgustingly exploits women as sexual objects for the gratification of men, to be exact. But I’m still going back, for the simple fact that this is my sister we’re talking about. Maggie might have remembered something more about the guy she saw Perry with.”
“If that was the case, couldn’t she just call you?”
She shook her head. “I suggested the same thing, but she wouldn’t take my number.”
Eric scowled, keeping his eyes on the road, wondering how he was going to talk some sense into her. He admired her commitment to helping her sister, knowing what it was like to want to protect your family. He felt the same way about Eli and Elise, his brother and sister. But the fool woman was going to end up getting herself killed.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth, ready to launch into a lecture on how she needed to get her ass out of town as soon as she could, when she pointed to a flickering sign on the side of the road that read Melvin’s Motel. “You can drop me off right over there. That motel will be great.”
Uh, yeah, sure it will. And the Bates Motel was just a cozy little getaway…
Thinking she must be out of her ever-loving mind, Eric pulled into the lot—not because he planned on leaving her there, but simply because he wanted to be able to focus on the argument they were about to have without the distraction of driving. He was just slowing down to pull into a parking space, when the sign for the building next door caught his eye. It was a women’s shelter, and he suddenly realized why Chelsea had chosen this particular establishment. She had no intention of getting a room at the creepy, sleep-with-a-knife-under-your-pillow motel, because she planned on staying at the shelter.
Like hell, he thought, knowing that too many things could go wrong with her half-baked plan. What if they didn’t have room for her, or turned her away? She’d be left in the middle of Wesley with no car, no money and no goddamn place to go.
“Screw this,” he muttered, gunning the gas. As he steered out of the parking lot and back onto the rain-slick road, she twisted in her seat, grabbing his forearm. It was the first time she’d touched his skin and his breath hissed through his teeth from the piercing jolt of awareness. It burst through him like a freaking detonation.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice sharp. “Turn around and take me back there!”
He worked his jaw, ready for the argument that had already arrived, and so desperate for a cigarette he could have begged for one. “Forget it, Chelsea. I’m not leaving you there.”
“You have to,” she snapped, her anger coming through loud and clear.
Slanting her a hard look, Eric shook his head. “Save your breath screaming about it, because it isn’t gonna happen. I’ll find a decent place and get you a room. It won’t be fancy in this part of town, but at least you won’t be sharing the bed with a family of roaches…or worse.”
“No way,” she breathed out, pulling away from him, until she was huddled back against the passenger-side door. He knew from her scent that she wasn’t afraid of him, but there was no doubt she was burning with bitter-edged fury. It pulsed from her small body in a hot, jagged wave. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’ll stay wherever the hell I please. And I can pay for my own damn room!”
“No, you can’t.” The words were graveled and thick, his jaw so tight he had to force the words out past his frustration. “I know what you were planning. You were going to stay at that shelter back there, and I’m not letting that happen.”
From the corner of his eye, Eric watched her send him a look that would have withered a lesser man. “It doesn’t matter what I was going to do, because it isn’t any of your business.”
“It is now,” he said with a harsh sigh, taking one hand from the wheel to rub at the knots of tension in the back of his neck, “whether you want it to be or not. So you can take the gun you stashed in your bag and hold it on me if you want to. Go ahead, if it’ll make you feel better. But I’m not going to back down about this.”
“You arrogant bastard,” she seethed in a choked voice, the angry, electric pulses of her rage slamming against him, filling the interior of the truck. It made her scent thicker…richer, till he was damn near ready to howl from this unusual craving he had for her. “Just who in the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the man who’s trying to keep your crazy little ass in one piece, no matter how determined you are to put it in danger.”
“That’s insane!” she burst out. “Are you out of your freaking mind?”
Was he? It certainly felt like it. This whole night felt like a certain kind of madness. If she’d been his destined life mate, then yeah, he could see getting this worked up over her. But she wasn’t. Hell, she wasn’t even a Lycan.
Instead, she was something soft and breakable, and Eric shuddered. He might be his father’s son, but he did not get off on hatred or pain. He wanted this woman badly. Wanted her under him, pinned, at his mercy. But once he got her there, hurting her wasn’t what would drive him. No, he wanted to smash through those damn prickly walls of hers and break her open. Wanted her sweating and clawing and screaming with pleasure, as animalistic in her passion as he—
“Seriously, Eric. Why are you doing this?” Her voice was tight, vibrating with tension as it cut into his thoughts. “It doesn’t make any sense. You don’t even know me.”
He wanted to argue, to tell her how wrong she was. They might be strangers, and she might not be one of those women who loved to gush about themselves, but he was learning more about her with each second that went by. More about himself, too.
But she was right about it not making any sense. Thankfully, a Travelodge sign appeared up on the left, and while it wasn’t the Ritz, at least Eric knew she’d be safe there.
The second he pulled into the crowded lot and parked the truck, she reached for the door, but he latched on to her arm, curling his fingers around the soft swell of her biceps. He was careful not to hurt her, but kept his grip tight enough that she couldn’t break away. Before she could lash out at him with that wicked tongue of hers, he said, “I’m getting you a room.”
She drew in a deep breath, as if searching for patience, and he tried like hell to ignore the way the sharp movement pressed her nipples against her shirt. Tried…but didn’t exactly succeed, since it was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“No, you’re not.” She glared at him as if he was something slimy that had crawled out of the drain. “You’re not getting me anything. Do you understand?”
“Damn it, Chelsea. This isn’t the time to be stubborn. Pride isn’t going to keep you safe. It’s going to get you hurt. I get that you hate to accept help from anyone, especially a man, but just let me get you a room and we’ll chalk it up to an even trade for the fact that I kicked you off the damn mountain in the first place.”
“We already did that with the ride to town. And the work being done on my bus.”
“And this is just another part of what I owe you. Not the other way around. I swear.”
She wasn’t buying it, but he could feel the starch go out of her as she leaned back against the seat. Her breath soughed softly past her lips, their smooth surface glossy and pink and undeniably tempting. There was a danger there, the same way you weren’t meant to stare too long at the sun. A beautiful view, but one you paid for with pain. Somehow, he managed to force himself to lift his gaze back to the dark, stormy blue of her eyes, and for a moment he wondered if she was actually going to say thank-you.
But, really, he should have known better.
“You know, Eric, it’s high-handed, arrogant jerks like you who give your sex a bad name.”
“Whatever. Just wait here,” he grated, choking back his own anger as he climbed out of the truck. Christ, she had to be the most mule-headed woman on the planet!
A chime dinged as Eric jerked open one of the double doors at the entrance to the hotel, and a young guy behind the registration desk looked up from the comic book he was reading. “What’s up?” he asked, staring at Eric from behind a pair of thick reading glasses.
“I need a room, just for tonight.”
The transaction took longer than he would have liked, considering the guy moved as slow as molasses. Eric signed for the room with an impatient scrawl and grabbed up the card key, heading back out to the truck as quickly as possible, his breath jerking from his lungs with a sharp burst of relief when he spotted her through the passenger-side window. He’d half expected her to make a run for it—and was thankful she wasn’t that impulsive. Or maybe she just wasn’t done chewing him out yet.
Opening her door, he offered his hand, which she refused, glaring at it like it was some kind of insult. Instead, she hopped down from the seat without his help, careful to keep her body from brushing against his, though they stood so close he could have easily leaned down and pressed his lips against the top of her head. When she’d first climbed out of her bus, he’d been surprised by how petite she was, his height making him feel like a damn giant beside her. And yet, she wasn’t scrawny. She was, in fact, deliciously proportioned, with a soft, curvaceous figure that made his mouth water, especially when it was so perfectly displayed by the hip-hugging jeans and that soft T-shirt. She kept tugging at its low neckline, as if wishing for more fabric to cover that delectable, shadowy view of her cleavage. Given her actions, Eric guessed she probably only wore the thing to sleep in, and hadn’t meant for anyone to see her in it.
And I was lying through my teeth about wanting to get rid of her.
Grabbing the oversized backpack she’d brought down with her, she hitched it onto her shoulder, then turned back toward him, grabbing the card key that he held out. He wondered if she had any idea how hard it was going to be for him to leave her, instead of following her into that hotel room, where he imagined a queen-size bed was waiting. He could see the possible scenario in his mind as clearly as if he were standing beside the bed, watching it happen. Watching his larger body, with its tensed muscles and sweat-slick skin, taking her to the flowered quilt. Spreading her beneath him. Pressing his lips to the smooth heat of her flesh. Taking the taste of her hot, slippery sex into his mouth, onto his tongue, where it could imprint upon his memory. Hearing her husky cries as she came from his touch. Sweet. Wild. Undone and unraveled and outrageously beautiful.