Disobedient Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (8 page)

Caleb pressed his advantage until he had Stephen cornered against the wall, and Rose realized she’d been edging her way along the opposite wall until she found herself by the kitchen. From there, it was a fast shot around the corner to the front door. Stephen yelped in pain when Caleb buried his teeth in the wolf’s neck, and while they were distracted, Rose made her move.

She slipped out the door and began a hasty jog away from the apartment complex. Where she was going, she didn’t know or care. She just felt driven to outrun her insanity. Maybe some fresh air would help banish her delusions that the two men she seemed desperately attracted to weren’t even human.

Werewolves. She’d hit her head harder than she’d thought.

Rose struck out along the highway, headed in the opposite direction from the hospital so that she was traveling gently downhill. Perhaps leaving the battle zone had been a smart move, but going out into the mountain air with damp hair and a light sweater wasn’t. Nervous jitters quickly morphed into violent shivers from the sharp bite in the air. Her breath came in short, erratic puffs in front of her face as she quickened her steps to try and warm up.

The mountain road had no street lighting save for the moon overhead, and the farther she jogged from the complex, the darker and less friendly the surroundings became. The woods loomed tall and close, hugging the road just a few feet from the dirt shoulder flanking the two-lane highway. As soon as she left the pavement for the safer option of the soft dirt, she stepped onto a small, round stone that dug painfully into the arch of her foot.

“Ouch!” she cried as she pressed on. She’d forgotten she only had on her slipper socks, which were now getting wet and dirty from the damp earth, leaves, and pine needles that were being ground into the soles with each pounding footstep.

She folded her arms tight across herself to fend off the cold, wishing her pace would hurry and heat up rapidly stiffening muscles. A rustling sound from the nearby woods startled her, however, and she stopped for a moment, breathing hard as her eyes fought to adjust enough to the low light to see into the woods.

What the hell was she doing out here? It was freezing cold, and it was nighttime in an unfamiliar stretch of woods where things lurked in the dark. And she’d just discovered what sort of “things” existed in this crazy town. Now that she’d stopped, her head was starting to spin again too, making everything seem that much more foreign and disorienting.

The darkness threatened to close in over her as she stood there, her teeth chattering while she tried to force some plausible reasoning back into her thoughts. Which choice was safer—running around in the great unknown, or returning to the hallucination of a pair of rabid werewolves tearing up the place?

She frowned. Wait. None of that was real, was it? She was just confused. The men were fighting over her, maybe. But not as animals.

She headed out again, away from her confusing life. Maybe she should call the police and ask them to check and see whether two werewolves had taken over her apartment. Right.

Rose grimaced as her feet hit more stones. “Damn.”

She blinked away the whirling in her head and jogged faster, almost stumbling over a pinecone. Maybe she could contact animal control instead. Tell them to bring the
silver
lassos.

That made her giggle.

“Maybe you should just turn around, fool,” she muttered.

Deep down, she didn’t truly believe Stephen or Caleb would harm her. They’d saved her, hadn’t they? Stephen had sworn an oath to heal people. Caleb had carried her on foot all the way to the hospital. He could easily have taken advantage while she’d been passed out at the side of the road. Maybe the men really wanted exactly what they said—to work out the male pecking order before pursuing a sexual relationship with her.

That thought spurred her feet on even faster.

Light-headedness threatened to pick her skull right up off her shoulders and float it away, so when she spotted a large rock nearby, she jogged over to it and sat down heavily. She rubbed her numb hands together and sniffed back the runny nose cold air had spawned. Then she held her head in her hands while she tried to make the funny spinning stop.

“You can’t keep running,” she told herself through jagged, panting breaths. Even an accomplished jogger had to stop sometime. This wasn’t a pleasure jog, in any case. She was running away from her own life.

Her first option was to stay where she was until the wolves had gone. Option two was to turn her ass around and face the consequences of having invited two men into her home—and one into her pants. Both ideas sounded potentially disastrous.

The fact that a third option might crop up didn’t occur to her until she heard the scrabbling sounds scraping along the pavement well up the road. The source of the noise was out of sight but approaching fast. Something was running her direction.

She stared up the road, narrowing her eyes to focus through the night air and her own haze. Glowing eyes bobbed through the dark, emerging from the dim mist that was gathering on the mountain.

Her reaction was born out of sheer panic. She hopped off the rock and ran full speed away from the frightening sight. She took to the road, rather than risking a sprint over uneven, rocky dirt. Though she was a dedicated jogger, her woozy head, stocking feet, and cold-chilled muscles refused to cooperate as she would have liked. Her movements felt sluggish and uncoordinated, like the dream she sometimes had where she was trying to escape danger while her body moved in slow motion. Maybe that dream had just come to life. Maybe it had been a warning.

She dug in and pushed her burning thighs harder, faster, refusing to give in to the urge to look over her shoulder at what she already knew was happening. Even without checking, she could hear that the footsteps behind her were gaining.

Three sharp barks echoed out along the road, along with the knowledge of who—what—was chasing her. Still, she ran, even when the footsteps came right up on her heels.

A flash of faint brown sped right on past her, and then whirled around to stop several feet ahead. She let out a yell and brought herself to a jerking halt, though her body wobbled precariously when the sudden cessation of movement threw her already-spinning head out of balance.

The wolf stood in front of her with its feet planted wide apart, its sides heaving and eerie gold eyes lit up like flashlights in the dark. An image emerged of the last time this wolf ran in front of her, just a few miles up the road.

She bent over to lean heavily on shaky thighs while her chest burned from exertion. The footsteps bringing up the rear stopped, and she didn’t bother turning to look at the man she could feel close behind her.

“Rose?” came Stephen’s voice behind her. “You shouldn’t be out on this road alone at night. Especially not running down the middle of it. One accident is enough.”

She watched the wolf in front of her begin to shudder hard. At first, she thought he was shivering from cold, like she was. Instead, his fur began bristling as though it were alive or blown by a wind no one else could feel. The animal’s limbs stretched and popped into odd formations, and the hair on its body disappeared. Caleb was left behind, naked and kneeling on all fours.

He stood and came toward her, wearing an expression of tight concern. His earlier erection, she couldn’t help but notice, had disappeared, and his cock bobbed idly between his powerful thighs.

“What are you doin’ out here, darlin’?”

He stopped his advance when she took a step backward, though the press of Stephen’s warm, hard body against her spine stopped her retreat.

“Why did you run?” Stephen asked, gripping her shoulders and steering them both off to the side of the road.

The men stood close around her, and they waited in silence for her explanation. She waited, too, in hopes of finding one. Stephen and Caleb’s eyes still held shades of their animals, and Rose realized they must be much better able to see in the dark. They belonged out there. She didn’t.

Ragged breaths punctuated the sounds of night owls and crickets and rustling things that slipped among the tall pine trees. Now she felt safe, regardless of what frightening things loomed in those woods. She had two frightening things protecting her.

“Why did you come out here alone?” Stephen asked again.

“I’m not sure.” The words came out choppy from her chattering teeth. “I just panicked and ran.”

Stephen ran his hands over her arms and shot her a disapproving scowl. “Damn it, you’re frozen solid. Come on. Let’s get you home.”

When he reached for her hand, however, she pulled back.

“You don’t trust us,” Caleb said, and there was a flicker of hurt in the tone.

She stuck her fists under her armpits in a feeble attempt to warm them. “Should I?”

“Let your heart answer that question,” he said. “Not your head.”

Her stomach gave a drunken sort of flip, and she let out a slow, lazy laugh. “My head is out to lunch at the moment. Call back later.”

Her eyes swept over his body. While she stood there shaking violently, he didn’t so much as have a single goose bump on him—and she made sure to check every inch.

“Aren’t you even the slightest bit cold standing out here?” she asked, annoyed at the thought for some reason.

“I’m more worried about you at the moment. Let us help you home, Rose.”

Blood had crusted and dried on Caleb’s hip and shoulder, and she frowned. He’d been hurt again, probably during the fight he’d just been part of.

“Why is it that every time I see you naked, you’re on this road and covered in blood?”

“She ain’t stayin’ with our train of thought,” Caleb said to Stephen.

“It’s the concussion talking. She’s wandering.”

“No, I’m not. I’m standing right here.”

She tried to take a step forward, but the dizziness hit hard and pitched her forward into Stephen’s arms.

Caleb swore. “Let’s take her out of here before she catches pneumonia.”

Stephen grunted. “Or someone drives by and wonders why the hell a confused woman is being carried off by two naked men.”

“I’m not confused anymore,” she said sleepily. “Everything’s perfectly clear to me now.” And it was. She’d lost her mind and dreamed up two gorgeous hallucinations.

Stephen lifted her as easily as he would a child and cradled her head against his chest. She tried to drum up a reasonable protest for being held against his powerful body, but nothing came aside from the waves of safe, unbelievably warm comfort that swept over her. His scent stirred a very real and heavily layered longing inside her. She was right where she belonged.

His heat and presence filled her up, cocooning her in the certain knowledge that this was right, it was hers, and it was forever. Why had she tried to escape this?

Because you promised yourself you’d never be like your mother
, she heard a distant whisper say. The whisper tried to warn her of other things, but the fuzz in her head drowned it out.

“You might want to close your eyes,” Stephen was telling her. “The pace we travel can be a little disorienting.”

She was going to explain that closing her eyes made the dizziness worse, but when the men bolted, the surge of speed and blur of passing scenery changed her mind. Closing her eyes proved to be the better bet as she threw her arms around Stephen’s neck and held on. Even without being able to see, she could tell from the crunching sounds of their feet and suddenly sharpened scent of pine and wet leaves that they had ducked into the woods, likely to avoid being seen by anyone out on the highway.

With her head pressed to his chest, she could hear Stephen’s sharp breaths tinged with brief, faint growls. Earlier, the animal sounds the men made as they faced off had frightened her. Now, the rhythmic rumbling soothed her until she became a pliable lump in his arms.

At their impressive speed, they made it back in no time. Rose opened her eyes when they paused just inside the tree line, sniffing the air and discussing how best to be sure her neighbors weren’t about to get an eyeful of naked man flesh. Not that Rose was complaining about that any. Waves of giddy well-being infused every cell in her body. Let them stay naked full time for all she cared.

Once inside, she wriggled around in expectation that Stephen would put her on her feet. Instead, he marched her straight into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed.

“Help me,” he said, and Caleb leaned over her to tug on her sweater.

She lay there helpless, watching the room swim around her dizzy head while they undressed her. Stephen peeled off the soaked, dirty socks, which was a relief. Her jogging pants were next, and having a man pull those off should have alarmed her. The spinning room and dreamy feeling that her body was floating off the mattress, however, made it difficult to do anything other than ride the wave. Two super-sexy, naked males were stripping off her clothes in her bedroom. What wasn’t to like about that?

“Why, Stephen,” she said when he lifted her up enough to pull the bedcovers out from beneath her. “This is all so sudden.”

She yawned in the middle of a giggle, producing an odd, distorted laugh that sounded like it came from someone else.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let her out of the hospital so soon,” Caleb said as the men slid under the covers on either side of her.