Silence of the Wolf (11 page)

***

Elizabeth knew she was nuts to encourage this. The last man she'd trusted with her heart had stomped all over it and left her, so she hadn't felt this way toward anyone since. She knew Tom lusted after her because she was someone new and different, and this wasn't for the long term. Which suited her perfectly.

She thought she could do this—a bit of sexual release and then go about her business, return home, do her job.

She wanted this intimacy between wolves and her coyote half. Wanted to feel loved, if only for a fleeting moment. Wanted to savor the way his pheromones kicked up as he kissed her, touched her, lusted for her, making her own respond in kind. A wolf who would want a woman for a lifetime. Not a human who could ditch her for someone else at the drop of a hat. Not that any of this meant it was for a lifetime.

She kissed him back on the mouth, her hands curling in his hair as he molded a hand to her breast. She realized he observed her, studying her expression, analyzing it, wondering what was going on in her brain. She didn't want to consider it any further and pulled him down for another kiss.

His hand tightened on her breast as he moved his leg in between hers. He had removed all his clothes, even his boxers, and that had worried her a little. She hoped he didn't think she wanted a mating.

Still, she had left her panties on, which was a signal she didn't want to take this all the way. At least in
her
mind.

When he moved his leg in between hers, prying her open, she felt the exhilaration of sexual tension but also a little apprehension.

Caught up in the heat of passion, she rubbed her leg wickedly on top of his, his mouth not so gentle on hers now. She loved the roughness alternating with tenderness.

His hands moved between holding her face while caressing her cheekbones and sliding down her shoulders and arms in a way that said he loved touching her. Likewise, she felt her way up his toned muscles and enjoyed how they moved beneath her fingertips.

Then he kissed her again. Her mouth, the corners of it, her chin, her throat. Her willingness showed her acceptance of his touch. A wolf would never expose his or her throat to another without completely trusting that individual.

He slid his large hand down her belly. The tips of his fingers paused at the waistband of her bikini panties. She was already wet with need. He could smell her, just as she could smell how aroused he was. His stiff erection brushed her naked belly as they moved against each other, stirring up their hormones, pushing to go further.

She wanted so to slide his hand beneath her panties, to push his fingers deep inside her to make her come, as hot and needy as she was.

He waited a heartbeat. She didn't stop him. Didn't place her hand on his and move it out of bounds. She barely breathed, her hands stilled on his arms, his gaze locked onto hers. As if he'd come to a decision, right or wrong, he slipped his fingers beneath her panties. He began to kiss her mouth, licking it, gently nipping her lower lip but not stealing her attention from the way his fingers moved to intercept the knotted bud waiting for his touch.

***

If Elizabeth wanted to live dangerously, Tom was all for it. He had no intention of mating with her, but he wanted to prove to her just how hot she made him. Especially since she was still wearing panties. Not that that would prevent him from giving her pleasure.

She seemed so needy. He slipped his hand beneath her panties, didn't sense she wanted him to stop, and plowed right ahead—finding the tantalizing bud that made her arch and moan and whimper as he stroked her. He'd never been with any woman who responded so easily to his touch, wanting more, letting him know just how good he was making her feel.

She raised her leg higher on his, spreading herself more for his easy access, and he wanted to yank off her scrap of silk panties and bare her to him. If he was mating with her, he would. He did consider removing her panties anyway, just to show her that he wouldn't take advantage of her even with them off, as much as he wanted to bury himself in her.

He was a little afraid he might do just that, with both of them losing their heads in the heat of the moment.

Instead, he stroked her, nuzzling her face affectionately at the same time and enjoying the aroused feminine scent of her mixed with his own musky scent, the heat of their bodies making him even hotter. He rubbed his penis against her soft belly and began kissing her again, so aroused that he wanted to end this now inside her, filling her, taking her.

His thumb stroked her bud, and he felt her come, the tiny ripples of orgasm, the soft mewl of pleasure escaping her lips. He loved bringing her pleasure.

He withdrew his hand from her panties and kissed her again, softly on the mouth this time, a farewell parting for the night. He wanted to go. He wanted to stay. If she wished him to remain here for the night, he couldn't. Not without craving more.

“I'll see you in the morning,” he said, stroking her hair.

She looked down at his chest, and he lifted her chin to see tears in her eyes.

“Elizabeth?” he said, his voice low, concerned, shocked.

She gave him a smile, faked to reassure him. “I'll… see you in the morning.”

“What's wrong?”

She just shook her head. “Nothing.”

He knew something had upset her, but when it came to figuring out women, more often than not, he and his brothers didn't have a clue. “Are you hurting?”

She shook her head.

He thought she might be and didn't want to admit it. That she didn't want him to believe he was at fault.

He left the bed and threw on his boxers, then went into the bathroom to get her a glass of water.

He gave her the water and waited until she took a sip and seemed to feel a little better. “See you in the morning.” He didn't think he could go to sleep again, as worried as he was about Elizabeth and the men and why she seemed upset.

The front door slammed shut. “Sounds like Darien.” Tom had planned to grab his clothes and retire to bed, but he dressed instead. “Sleep, Elizabeth. We'll talk in the morning.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

He smiled, but the smile she returned wasn't genuine, and her eyes swam with tears. Not knowing what else to say if she wouldn't help him out, he said, “See you in the morning.”

He left and closed the door, wanting to kick himself for taking things too far with her. He hurried downstairs and met Darien in the living room. He had brought in Elizabeth's bags and raised a brow at his younger brother in question.

“She's gone to bed. I'll take her bags up to her. They've been dusted, right?” Tom asked him.

“Yeah. I can't figure it out. Why steal her stuff and then leave it there?”

“Maybe they weren't trying to get away with her stuff. Maybe they hoped that by bringing her stuff to the abandoned hotel, they could lure her there.”

“And then what?” Darien asked. “It certainly wasn't just to talk. Breaking the window was an act of violence against Elizabeth. They could have jimmied the window open or attempted to pick the lock on the front door. They smashed her window as if they were angry.”

“Because she took pictures of them?” Tom rubbed his whiskery chin. “They stole everything she had to learn who she was, but they don't want anyone to learn who
they
are. Her ID and airline tickets were inside the case of her laptop, so without having time to search through her stuff at the B and B, they just took everything. Why else would they need to ID her if she isn't some sort of mark?”

“Makes sense. But why leave her stuff and run when she showed up?” Darien asked. “Maybe they believed she'd come alone. That no one from our pack would watch over her. They probably didn't want to get in a fight and just had to cut and run.”

“That's what I figure. I'll take her suitcases up to her and then go to bed,” Tom said.

“I'm calling it a night, too. Again.”

When Tom reached the guest room, he saw the light still on underneath the door. He rapped on it. “Elizabeth, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You can come in.”

He opened the door and walked inside, setting her bags on the floor. “Remember that Darien wants you to check them over tomorrow to see if anything is missing. Are you really all right?”

“Yeah, I'm okay. Have a good night's sleep.”

He paused, feeling she wasn't sincere. He figured he could learn more about whatever was bothering her tomorrow when they were both well rested.

At least, that's what he planned.

Later that night, Elizabeth woke feeling much more herself physically, but emotionally she felt bad. She hadn't realized how quickly she had become attached to Tom, and now she had to leave.

Despite the late hour, she called North to arrange another meeting, hoping he'd answer the phone. She had to get this resolved, get the evidence against her uncle, turn it over to Hrothgar, and return home soon.

Someone picked up, but when he didn't say hello or anything, she thought North might be half-asleep. She said, “North?”

No response, just someone's breathing. Her heart pounded, and she quickly hung up. Had someone learned North planned to meet with her to expose her uncle's secrets? Someone who didn't want those secrets revealed?

She paced across the guest bedroom's carpeted floor. She had to leave. She couldn't get Darien and Lelandi's pack involved in this. All she wanted to do was resolve this on her own. This was not the Silver pack's trouble. They already had enough problems with the other wolf strangers prowling around farms in the area.

She dialed another number. “I need the first flight out to Amarillo in the morning.”

***

The next morning, Darien greeted Elizabeth bright and early, but he knew something was amiss. He'd finished feeding the triplets, and a nanny watched them in the den while Lelandi ate eggs and toast before her first client session. She usually had one before this, but the woman had canceled because of the weather. Lelandi might be eating, but Darien knew she was trying to figure out what was wrong with Elizabeth, just as much as he was.

Being an alpha, Elizabeth told him how things would be right away. “I'm so sorry, but I need to leave. Could anyone drive me to the airport, or could I get a cab out here?”

She had three more days to be here, Darien remembered. Something was compelling her to leave this soon.

“Peter can take you. He's on his way here now anyway.” Darien wasn't about to wake Tom and ask him. He suspected something was wrong between the two of them or Elizabeth would have asked Tom herself. “How are you feeling?”

“Great. All better. Thanks.”

That was the way she'd spoken since she joined them. Brief. To the point. She wasn't sharing how she was feeling. The fact she was downstairs so early after having been up half the night made Darien believe she was desperate to leave before Tom woke. He wondered if she'd slept at all.

“You're not afraid the men will come after you, are you?”

“No,” she said so emphatically that he wasn't sure he believed her.

Lelandi was so good at psychoanalyzing patients and pack members, including himself and his brothers, that Darien wished she would speak up and get to the bottom of the trouble. She wouldn't. She just poured herself another cup of coffee while Elizabeth downed a glass of orange juice in a hurry, even though Peter was still on his way to the house.

“You spoke to Jake this morning.”

“Yes.” She looked out the window.

“He was pleased you did an interview of him,” Darien said, trying to draw her out.

“Yeah.”

“Did he manage to fix your camera?”

She shook her head.

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.”

He glanced at Lelandi. She raised her brows at him as if to say that the situation was in his court.

When Peter pulled into the driveway, Elizabeth hopped up from her chair—another indication she was physically fine—and hurried to slip into her parka. “Thanks for everything. You've all been… wonderful.”

Darien heard the hitch in her voice and saw the way she turned away and wouldn't look at them.

She grabbed her suitcase handles and laptop, then hurried for the door, but Darien quickly snatched the bags from her hands and hauled them for her.

“I left a note for Tom on his computer,” she said, trying to sound businesslike and not entirely succeeding.

Tom would be upset that she had left without saying good-bye face-to-face or allowing him to take her to the airport. Unless they had fought. But what he had smelled on his brother last night wasn't anger or upset. Worry and sex. That's what he had smelled.

“You always have a home here with us anytime you want to return,” Darien said.

She offered him a faint smile. “Thanks.”

When she looked away, he got the feeling she wasn't planning to return. He was disappointed, because he knew how much Tom liked her, and he'd seen the way she'd reacted to his brother in a positive, caring way. For that matter, everyone who had chanced to meet her had liked her. That video capturing Tom and Elizabeth kissing on the slope had totally surprised both Lelandi and him, and he knew more was going on between the two of them than they admitted.

He'd wanted to call Carol and ask if her talk with Elizabeth had revealed anything of her past, but Lelandi said what the two women discussed had been private. If Elizabeth wanted to share, it was her business to do so. It didn't matter that Darien had mentioned that this
could
have an impact on the pack. Lelandi had only shaken her head—an emphatic, nonverbal “No, butt out.” He loved his mate, but sometimes, like now, she totally exasperated him.

He opened the door to find Peter standing on the porch, ready to knock. He smiled brightly at Elizabeth.

She hurried past him and headed for his vehicle.

“She's in a hurry to get to the airport,” Darien said in explanation. “Could you take her?”

“Oh, sure.” Peter took her bags, hurried out to the truck, and stuck them in the backseat of the cab. “See you in a little while.”

Her eyes shiny with tears, Elizabeth waved at Darien and Lelandi. Then Peter got into the driver's seat, and they were off.

Darien knew that no matter what had happened between Elizabeth and Tom, this was not a good way to say—or not say—good-bye. Darien, for one, didn't want the job of having to deal with the mood he knew Tom would be in when he woke.

***

That morning, Tom felt something wasn't right as soon as he got up. The sun was too high in the sky. He never slept this late, and he wondered why no one had bothered to wake him. He hurried to dress, then headed for Elizabeth's room. Her door was shut. He knocked. No answer. He opened the door a crack.

She was gone. The bed stripped. Her suitcases nowhere in sight.

With a sickening knot in his stomach, he ran down the stairs, expecting to see her eating breakfast with Darien.

The toddlers played in the den, squealing in delight, then arguing—the way he and his brothers had done when they were that age—while a couple of wolf nannies watched over them. He thought Lelandi would be plying her psychology on a human client in the office they had built next to the house. The home was off in the woods, but this was the only way she wanted to work when the babies were still little. Bonding and pack dynamics were all too important, from the youngest
lupus
garou
to the oldest.

To his surprise, Lelandi was sipping coffee with Darien. Jake and his mate were there, too, which was odder still. They normally ate breakfast at their own home.

Elizabeth wasn't there. Everyone looked at him as though they didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to act.

“Where is she?” he asked, sounding much more growly than he intended.

“Peter took her to the airport,” Darien said.

Tom turned and began to stalk out of the dining room.

“Tom!” Darien called out. “She's gone. She left two hours ago.”

Tom scowled at Darien. “Why didn't anyone wake me? Tell me she was leaving?”

Why
didn't she tell him herself?

“She didn't want it that way,” Darien said.

Tom was the most even-tempered of his brothers, but right now he was so angry that he could have put his fist through the wall.

“What happened between the two of you?” Darien asked in a voice that was meant to calm him, but Tom didn't want his brothers' or their mates' sympathy
or
interference.

“Nothing,” Tom said.

“Was she scared of the men? Afraid to stay?”

“Hell, no. She would have gone into the hotel after them if I hadn't stopped her.”

Darien took Lelandi's hand in his. “Anything else that you can think of that happened, Tom? She asked if someone could take her to the airport, then had a glass of orange juice but no real breakfast. She was in a rush to leave. She barely said a word or two to us in response to anything I asked.”

“She was supposed to be here three more days.”

“You said yourself she had a job to do,” Darien reminded him.

Lelandi said, “She was running away from something. She might not be afraid of the men, but maybe something else is going on that we don't know about.”

Tom ran his hands through his hair. “I don't know about that, but… I asked her to join our pack. She didn't act interested in the idea.”

Everyone stared at him as if he'd suddenly grown vampire fangs.

He folded his arms across his chest. “She's a damn good tracker. We could use someone with her expertise in the pack. And we don't have a newspaper. Maybe she could have started one.”

“Is
that
what you told her?” Lelandi asked, her voice a little edgy.

“Not about the paper.” Then Tom frowned at Lelandi. “Are you implying that if I had told her
I
wanted her to stay, she would have done so?” Lelandi's raised eyebrows indicated she thought just that. Before she could respond, Tom shook his head. “She was completely against the idea. She's not a loner, but she's afraid of belonging to a pack for some reason.”

“Or making a commitment to a wolf possibly,” Lelandi said.

Tom didn't want to mention he'd gotten a little frisky with her last night, and that that had brought tears to her eyes. “Was she okay this morning? Hurting still?”

“She was fine,” Darien said. “She moved fast and started hauling her bags out of here when she saw Peter arrive, so she couldn't have been feeling any pain.”

Not
physically.
Then it dawned on Tom. She'd been emotionally upset—hurting.
Shit.

Irritated with himself, Tom said to Darien, “Unless you have something else for me to do, I'm tracking those rogue wolves today.”

No one said a word. Tom stalked out of the dining room, grabbed his parka and other cold-weather gear from the coat closet, then left the house.

Before he reached the garage, Jake joined him outside. “She left you something. She'd taken a picture of you helping an injured little girl on the slope, and she used it as your desktop picture. She also left you a note.”

“Why the hell didn't Darien say so?” Tom strode back to the house. “Did you read what she said?”

“No. Not that I didn't want to, mind you, and it killed me not to. If it helps tell us why she rushed out of here, we'd all like to know,” Jake said. “Lelandi said that the picture she left on your desktop has significance. Of all the photos she took, and she took lots, she put up that particular one. Lelandi believes your helping the little girl really touched Elizabeth. If you want to see more of her, you might have to take the initiative to make it happen.”

“I already plan to,” Tom said. He was so irritated at his brother for thinking he needed to suggest such a thing that he couldn't help snapping at Jake.

Jake smiled. “That's what we all wanted to hear. Darien got all her information—her cell number and home address—before he turned over her bags. Look, Darien and I have both been in the same position as you. We're with you all the way, however you want to deal with this. I'll see you later.”

The little red wolf-coyote thought nobody cared anything about her when a whole gray wolf pack was ready to take her in.

Jake didn't join Tom in the den, giving him some privacy, for which he was grateful. Tom opened his laptop and turned it on. The monitor showed the picture of him crouching before the crying girl who had wrenched her knee on the slopes.

Looking at it now, it made him sick to think Elizabeth had taken a Norman Rockwell-type picture of him and the little girl, and then some bastard had shoved Elizabeth down the slope right afterward.

On the desktop, she had created a folder of the pictures she had taken of her visit here, as if it were a gift to him. Which frustrated him even more. She couldn't come into his life like this and pop right out again without him having any say in it.

He opened the folder. A separate file was labeled “Elizabeth's Note to Tom.” With apprehension, he paused, then clicked on the file and opened it.

Dear Tom,

You are the nicest man I've ever met, for a wolf. You should meet a nice she-wolf and settle down. I think you'd make a great mate and father.

I'm sorry for not saying good-bye properly. I just thought it would be easier this way.

You said I wasn't a loner, and you're right. I love what you and your family have. But it's just not for me. It never has been.

Thank everyone for me, will you? I won't be back, but I just wanted you to know how much I appreciated your kindness.

Elizabeth

Lelandi's words came crashing back to Tom: She's running away from something.

His thoughts in turmoil, he closed the letter. He wouldn't let her run away.

He stared at the scene she'd captured of him on the slopes. The central figures in the picture were Kemp, the little girl, and him. Off to the side, the distraught mother had her hand over her mouth. The father and son had still been on the slopes. A couple of skiers watched the scene—spectators interested in who had gotten hurt. One man, a few feet away, wore a black ski bib, hat, and balaclava, and a blue-gray parka and reflective sunglasses—but he wasn't observing the scene with the little girl. Instead, he stared straight at the camera operator—
Elizabeth.