Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I looked left and right. “Roy,” I chided, a smile tugging the corners of my lips.
“No one’s around to hear the little sounds you make when I kiss you. I wouldn’t let them. I don’t share.”
“I thought you needed to run.”
“I do. Yeah, I’d better run first, or else I might mar–I might be too rough.” He stroked the backs of his knuckles across my cheek like I was precious to him.
My pussy clenched at the thought of him getting rough with me. What would it be like to have my giant mountain man totally unleashed?
I wanted to find out.
“Let’s get going, then,” I murmured, smiling up at him.
He gave me another kiss and helped me into the van. Thirty-five minutes later, we were in the pine trees, heading down a dirt road that dead-ended in front of a little cabin. I had navigated while Roy drove, but he had been twitchy the whole drive, occasionally starting to breathe hard again or succumbing to full-body shudders. Each time it happened, I would reach for his leg or hand and talk to him, and it seemed to calm him down.
“We’re here. Now you can take that run,” I said when he parked because he seemed to be in another episode.
He threw the door open and tumbled out. “Yeah. Good.” He yanked open the snaps on his flannel shirt.
Weird. I guess he liked to run bare chested?
“Don’t look, okay, baby?” he said. Was he taking off his boots?
“What?”
He wasn’t making any sense. There was a wild look to him. Not frantic, but…enervated. Electrified.
“You have the key code to the cabin door.” His eyes glowed bright green in the darkness. “Go inside. I’ll come back soon. Just, uh–I gotta go.” He took off at a sprint in his bare feet, his shirt on the ground.
I stared after him as he rounded the corner of the cabin, and then I saw something–
Weird.
Wait–what?
I dashed after him, but when I rounded the corner, all I saw was his jeans and boxers, like he’d melted into the earth. No, they were ripped. Like he’d burst out of them.
The sound of a wolf’s howl split the night, and I shrieked, my gaze jerking forty yards up the mountain to the most enormous wolf I’d ever seen. Bigger than a lion. Black fur shining under the light of the full moon.
At my shriek, the howl broke off, and the wolf looked right at me with glowing green eyes.
I gasped, gooseflesh rising on my arms. The wolf wheeled around and took off running into the woods as I stood there in shock.
Oh. My. God.
Roy was a wolf.
22
ROY
* * *
My wolf was out of his mind–confused as fuck about what he needed or wanted. The moment I shifted, he tore up the mountain, earth and pine needles scrabbling under my paws. The need to run was too extreme to ignore. The open space, fresh air… the fucking call of the wild. Because I was wild right now.
As I covered more and more ground, all I kept seeing was the bars in the Denver jail and the military prison’s cinderblock walls closing in on me, suffocating me, trapping me… The nights on that cot in the tiny room as I attempted to contain my wolf had been the hardest of my life. It broke me. The insanity had crept in from trying. I hadn’t cared that I’d been discharged from the military, that my career was over.
I’d needed to be home in the wilds in Montana to heal, which I’d done somewhat. I knew my limitations and being in a city jail was definitely one of them. The fact that I’d been arrested specifically to protect my mate was what kept me sane-ish. Much longer, and I would’ve gone feral, for sure.
But I was free now. It was over. I was out on the mountain breathing the fresh air. I could run to my heart’s desire.
It felt so good to be free. I could run for days and not stop. Run until my paws bled. Run all the way home to Montana, only stopping to hunt and eat.
I covered a mile in a precious few minutes. Then another. And another.
It was only the vague notion that I’d left something behind, that something was wrong or missing, that finally slowed me down.
I checked my speed, climbing up to the top of a boulder where I lifted my snout to the moon and howled. The wind fluffed my fur, cooling the feverish heat that had been boiling me ever since they put me in cuffs earlier.
My breath quieted. The air stilled. My mind started to clear. I had left something behind.
Mate, I remembered.
Brooke is at the cabin.
Relief poured through me, followed by elation.
She was safe. I’d protected her. My wolf chest swelled with pride. My beautiful accountant. She’d shown up at the police station, and through my haze of panic and anxiety, I remembered she’d looked worried. For me. She hadn’t needed to come, but she had. That must mean she cared.