White Wolf 2: The Call of a Soul (2 page)

“I’ll call a cab.” She made to move around him, and he caught her hand and drew close.

Too close.

He smelled like paradise. Like a warm sea so blue and clear and sparkling it hurt to breathe and see when you stared at the glinting waters. Like equatorial sun baking her skin and raising a hot sweat. Like a tropical breeze whipping exotic aphrodisiacs every which way and creaming her sex.

“Little idiot. I bet you intend to walk the fifteen miles. You always did act as if I stunk up your air.”

Had the floor turned liquid? No, her knees had. She grabbed the counter and tried to shake off the thick fingers circling her wrist in a steely but somehow gentle grip. “Stunk up
my
air?”

“Half-breed not good enough for a full-blooded
Cwaatchii?
For the daughter of a
Ska Awhi?
For the granddaughter of
Ixota Migziwa
?” His nose was so close she had to blink to get his features in focus.

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She licked her suddenly dry lips.

“That’s it.” He picked her up and jammed her against the wall. Her face was level with his. Then he kissed her, and the world turned upside down and inside out. He tasted of all her pumpkin-coach dreams, of all her tortured teenaged visions of knights, rescue, and happy every after, of every single, furtive pleasuring of herself with his image in her head. Smoky, citrusy, and stomach-clenching delicious.

His hold on her firmed. His arm went around her waist, and when he nudged her legs apart, she surrendered. Worked her fingers into the silk of his hair and kissed him back, touching her tongue to his.

“Melanie? Mike?

“Melanie?

“Mike?”

The raised voice boomeranged around her brain insistently.

A door banged.

The loud crack pierced her carnal haze.

Doc G.? Oh no.

She tore away from Mike. “Put me down.”

When he didn’t react, she shoved at him and hissed. “Now.”

The minute her feet touched the ground, she took off, doing a frantic roadrunner imitation down the hallway, and rasped out words as they formed in her head. “Coming, Doc G. Mike said Jim’s Whisper might drop her foal tonight. You promised I’d get to assist you. I’m holding you to that.”

She screeched to a halt seconds before bumping into the vet, her sneakers making that blackboard-chalk sound that grated already raw nerves to shreds. Praying the burn in her cheeks didn’t mean she wore a fierce blush, Melanie gave Doc G. the pleading look he never could resist. “You did promise, Doc G., and more than once.”

“Young lady, you have a day job.” Doc G. wagged a finger at her. “What time’s your shift tomorrow?”

No way was she going to be stuck in a car with Mike for fifteen agonizing miles. Not after she’d thrown herself at him. Melanie bared her teeth in what she hoped passed for a smile and lied like a shaggy rug. “I’m on the evening shift tomorrow. Don’t start till four. What do you need me to get ready?”

Doc G. spun around, and Melanie followed in his wake, their footsteps echoing on the tiled floor. He halted in the middle of the waiting room. His tall, solid form dwarfed the five single chairs tucked around the far corner. Melanie folded her arms and waited.

“Everything’s in the pickup. Whisper’s been looking like she’s about to drop for the last few days, and I stocked up midweek.” Doc G. winked at her. “How can any man say no to such a pretty little thing, huh, Mike?”

She hadn’t even realized Mike had followed them back to the reception area.

“Beyond me.” Mike had a deep, scratchy voice that did strange things to her insides. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lean one shoulder on the door frame. The man epitomized the phrase
wicked sexy
with those silver eyes, ridged cheekbones, and the inky curls that brushed wide shoulders. “The last thing I’d ever do is say no to Melanie.”

“Is that right?” Doc’s hazel gaze fixed on Mel and then focused above her head on Mike. “You two’d make great babies.”

Suck me to the earth’s molten core and cinder me to a crisp.

The phone jangled like a rescue instrument made in bell-ringing paradise. Melanie lunged for it. “Glancing Animal Clinic. How can I help you?”

If she hadn’t had the acute hearing of a maggishahwi, Melanie wouldn’t have caught Mike’s whispered, “Saved by the bell. This time.”

A shiver did a snake creep up her spine, and her ears burned.

This time? What the heck did he mean, this time?
Hen’s feathers. Mike Dorland had kissed
her
, pudgy, mousy Melanie White. Why?

All at once, a chill chased the fuzzy hairs at the nape of her neck. How did Mike know about her being a full-blooded Cwaatchii? That her father’d once been a Ska Awhi or that her grandfather had the gift of Ixota Migziwa? The language wasn’t spoken by any but the white wolves, the words handed down verbally from one generation to another.

He’d understood what he’d said, that she knew instinctively. Mike knew her father had once been one of the revered elders, that he once had a seat in the circle. And that her grandfather had the vision of foresight and was the man all called He Who Sees With Eagle Eyes? How?

Melanie shook her head and held the phone at arms’ length as the person on the other end bellowed something her ears refused to translate. She squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt at reining in her galloping fear.

Breathe. In. Out.

“How long you back in town for, Mike?” Doc G.’s half-hooded eyes had a glint too familiar to half the town’s population. The middle-aged bachelor figured himself a matchmaker of sorts and had embarrassed Melanie to no end before she’d stood firm a few months back.

“For chrissake. Answer me.” The outraged roar demanded her attention.

She returned the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry. There’s a ton of background noise. I didn’t catch what you said.”

Melanie scowled at Doc G., who grinned like a beaver, showing the perfect smile that dazzled all the over-forty females in Mackinac County, even the happily married ones.

“I said I need Doc G. right away.” Sheriff Pincer had the voice of a radio announcer—smooth, silky, and creepy-crawly. To Melanie, anyway. “Jump to it, girl. This is an emergency.”

Melanie choked back the need to shove the word
girl
down Pincer’s throat and handed the phone to Doc G. “Pincer.”

Glad for any excuse to get out of Mike’s presence, she hurried to the examination room. Stooping, she took a deep breath, then opened the cabinet in front of her and removed a lab coat and a box of gloves. She smelled him the minute he entered the room, and choked back a groan. Why had he followed her?

Trying to ignore the tantalizing scent of Mike’s I’m-fantastic-in-bed-and-will-give-you-screaming-multiple-orgasms aftershave, she stood, reached for the duffel bag on the counter, and placed the supplies inside. He crowded her, so big, and so, so—so much man, damn it.

Lean and rangy and made of whipcord, irresistible testosterone, that was Mike Dorland. To
all
women. She tiptoed to get a couple extra bottles of alcohol. Not that they needed them—Doc G.’s truck was more than amply supplied—but to give her nervous fingers something to do and to keep her brain from fast-forwarding into full-fledged panic.

“I’ll get that.”

Mike’s breath, warm and feathery, sailed across her exposed nape. Oh hell, he was right behind her. The urge to relax into his chest, to arch her neck, and invite a bite—a
claiming
bite—had her seeing stars. Melanie dug both elbows into his belly and winced when she encountered steel instead of mere flesh. Those ridges had to form a six-pack, maybe even an eight. Her mouth watered, and she went so wet down there that her cheeks ignited in embarrassment. Thank the Lord Mike Dorland didn’t have X-ray vision or a wolf’s heightened sense of smell. “I…don’t…need…
your
…help.”

“Oh yeah you do. You just don’t know it yet.” His low rumble had a fudge-velvet edge. Her favorite fantasy—him painting her body with smooth, warm chocolate and then licking her clean—had her nipples on fire. “You’re creaming for me.”

A bucket of frigid water couldn’t have pulled her back from the brink better. How could he have known?

She peeked at Doc G. talking on the reception desk phone, and had to lock her knees so as not to crumple. The vet hadn’t even glanced in their direction. Though the rooms were separate, with the door open, sound carried. But Doc G. wore a frown, and he had his gaze fixed on the desk.

Why was Mike Dorland trying to flirt with her? After putting a ring on another woman’s finger? The news of his engagement had been a Mack Truck hit.

Her birthday resolution—five months earlier—had been to get on with her life. Forget dreams of a future with Mike. Forget the stupid notion that he was the only man she’d ever love. Forget the past and live in the present. She’d made a ritual out of it—gone to the cabin that the Dorlands owned, sat in the middle of the fairy-tale gazebo overlooking the lake, and sobbed her heart out.

Well, heck, he
was
engaged, and she was
so
going to get over him.

Melanie pivoted, crossed her arms, and met his stare, refusing to be intimidated by the fact that if he leaned a mere inch closer, his rib cage would brush her saluting-at-attention nipples. “How’s Valérie? Heard she’s sporting a rock the size of Fiesta Square.”

He rolled a shoulder and set his hands on the counter, caging her in. “Not interested. It’s not my ring she’s wearing.”

Melanie glanced down and studied the floor tiles, noting a brown stain that hadn’t been there before.

How could that be?

Valérie had flaunted the ring not three nights ago when she’d been dilly-dallying over a slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee at the Caboose. Not once in the eight years she’d worked at the diner had Melanie ever waited on Valérie, no matter what section she sat in. The other waitresses had protected Melanie in some sort of unspoken diner-women bond. So she hadn’t seen the ring up close, but it would’ve been hard not to notice the diamond glinting under the Caboose’s track lights.

Mike and Valérie had been prom king and queen, had been hot and heavy in high school, and every time he came back to Chabegawn, photos of the couple had been splashed across the front page of the
Spectator
—the county’s newspaper. Melanie had read the caption under each and every picture, and she could probably regurgitate them verbatim by now. Heck, she’d read every single article published about Mike Dorland since the day he and his brother picked up and left town all those years ago. Spent hours at the library using the computers to track him. Felt inordinate pride the day he’d won his first poker tournament and the media dubbed him “Mike the Machine.”

“Why are you flirting with me?” she blurted.

“Ask me why I’ve come back to Chabegawn, Melanie Frances White.”

Lordy, that boyish grin made her mind go blank and fried her vocal cords. Not for nothing could she break away from his hot stare, those amazing silver-rimmed eyes. Blood crashed like storm waves in her ears, and she couldn’t formulate a single thought.

“Well that’s that.” Doc G.’s booming bass reverberated across the room.

Mike held her gaze for a second and then whispered, “We’ll finish this later.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Problem, Season?”

“Looks like we’ll all be missing Whisper’s foal.” Doc G. set the phone back on its base. “There’s been a murder out near the reservation. Sheriff Pincer wants me to take a look at the body. The coroner’s on the other side of the county. Mel, call Jim and tell him he’ll need to get young Fitzwilliam to come out for Whisper. I won’t need to be at the crime site for long, so I’ll drop you home afterward and then I’ll head up to Jim’s.”

A kind, merciful Lord did exist.

Melanie repressed a long sigh, ducked around Mike, and near ran to the reception desk. “Do you want me to call Dr. Fitzwilliam as well?”

“Good idea. Call him first; then call Jim.” Doc G. did that man-back-slap-brotherhood thing. “How long you been back, Mike?”

If Mike felt the impact, he didn’t show it. His stare never strayed from her.

The cotton neck of the uniform rasped her skin, and only by grabbing the phone did she refrain from tugging at the fabric. Trying not to be too obvious about eavesdropping, she punched out Dr. Fitzwilliam’s number, got voice mail, and left a message.

Mike had got into town the day before. Why was he here now? He and his brother had rarely come back to Chabegawn after his father’s death and his mother’s commitment to a mental institution. She could count on one hand the number of times they’d visited since their abrupt departure in 1994. Eight years ago. But then again, his mother had returned to town recently and even bought a house in the country club development on the east side.

Even more important—why did he want her to ask him why he’d come back?

Don’t go there
. She punched in the Baldens’ number. That phone also went straight to a recording, so she left another message. Doc G. and Mike were deep in a murmured conversation Melanie couldn’t decipher, and she had a few moments to study him unobserved.

If anything, he had grown more handsome over the years. The grooved lines around his eyes gave him a brooding air, his full lips, once always curved in a ready smile, had taken on a grim cant, and he wore not an ounce of spare flesh. The bulging muscles of his biceps challenged the sleeves of the black T-shirt clinging to his powerful arms. He was her every fantasy, her only fantasy, and had been from the get-go.

A burst of anger tore through her.

Every time Mike came to town, the mere knowledge she could bump into him rattled her composure. The Melanie who reputedly possessed nerves of steel, the one everyone counted on to be calm in a panic. The practical Melanie who never lost track of reality, never daydreamed, never protested, but knuckled under and did what had to be done. The agreeable, always smiling Melanie Frances White who had a hard time saying no to anyone.

That Melanie warped into a frazzled idiot who snuck about trying to catch glimpses of her Prince Charming. And then relived every stolen moment long into the wee hours of the morning. That Melanie was never going to resurface. No siree.