Chapter Nine
Bas didn't speak as he tore away from the curb outside the Stacks. His nostrils flared as his breath came hard. I resisted the urge to reach across the cab and touch a hand to the side of his face. I wanted to. I couldn't explain it, but in that moment, I wanted to feel his skin against mine. Turmoil raged within him. If I couldn't see it in the flash of his eyes or the tension in his jaw, I felt it racing through me somehow too. Maybe I saw the pulsing of an artery in his neck. But, I don't think so. This was something else. It was as if his heart pounded inside of me.
I put my hands in my lap and focused on the lines of his face in profile. His blade-straight nose. Those full, bee-stung lips that had kissed me so thoroughly the other day. I wanted to reach up and smooth the crease in his ruddy brow and make him turn toward me. He gripped the steering wheel, his chest heaving in and out. I should have asked him if he was okay to drive. I may still have been a little buzzed, but Bas was Driving While Wolfish. I wondered which posed a bigger road hazard.
Though he was all controlled fury, Bas maneuvered the truck with racecar driver precision. He hugged the curves and kept his eyes straight ahead as he made the final turn into Oakwood. My heart sank when he did it. I didn't want to be here. Didn't want my reality right now. I wanted something else. I wanted the earth beneath me, wet from the rain. A canopy of trees above my head. Again, I wondered if what I felt was more of an echo of Bas's emotions. Though I'd never seen it yet, I felt the wolf between us, struggling to get out.
Bas's tires crunched over the gravel of my mother's driveway. The lights were on inside, and ringing laughter wafted out of the open windows. My mother was home and she wasn't alone.
The headlights flooded the trailer, and the voices went silent. We waited a beat and the screen door opened. My mother stepped out. She held a beer bottle in one hand and her high-heeled peep-toe pumps in the other. The red ones with the ankle straps. Date night. She turned toward the open door and held up a finger to whoever belonged to the shadow just inside. Chad, probably. But he had friends with him.
My mother shielded her eyes against the glare of Bas's headlights as she took a few halting steps toward the passenger side window where I sat. I rolled the window down.
She was beautiful, my mother. The headlights made her skin shine almost translucent. Her platinum blonde hair, identical to my own, piled high on her head except where curling tendrils broke loose to frame her face. She had Brigitte Bardot looks right down to her lush eyelashes everyone thought were false. Her wide blue eyes crinkled as she smiled, flashing a row of perfectly straight, white teeth. Not a trace of the nicotine they should have shown.
"Baby, you're early!" she sang in her Texas twang. She wasn't born here. My father, my real father, had been in the army when he married her, stationed near Huston. He whisked her away and ended up in Wild Lake the year before I was born. It didn't work out and he went to his next duty station without us before I was old enough to remember him. He died on some dusty battlefield in Afghanistan a dozen years ago. She kept a framed flag in a back closet.
She leaned into the window frame, her eyes raking over Bas and brightening even more. He dipped his chin toward her politely, but he still wasn't in a talking mood.
"Well, hello, handsome! You're sure a finer sight than those lawyer wannabe eggheads I usually see with my Abigail."
"This is Bas," I said. "He's just . . . bringing me home."
My mother's face fell for a fraction of a second before she plastered her smile back in place. "Well, that's just the thing, babe. I tried to call you. I thought you were going to be out with your friends tonight. Didn't you tell me that?"
I knew where this was going. The same place it had gone a thousand times. She'd send me to the neighbors. I'd crash with a friend. And I had forgotten. I meant to spend the night at Kendra's. But, Mom was far from done partying. A sick pit formed in my stomach as Chad appeared in the doorframe. Wasted. Leering. His temper about to flare. He had a group of friends over; it was my mother's job to wait on him hand and foot. And she'd do it. She'd try to keep him happy, but in a few weeks or months, Chad would tire of her. Or she'd finally see that all his big plans were nothing but talk. If she was lucky he wouldn't clean her out before he left. I'd hidden most of what she had of value: her engagement ring, her father's gold pocket watch, a few of my baby pictures, in a safety deposit box years ago. I never kept cash in the house.
Panic raced through me. Shit. Bas was on edge already. If Chad came out here and manhandled my mother or did any of his usual dipshittery, he might trigger Bas again.
"We were just leaving," I said. "I wanted to swing by and pick up a few things."
My mother slapped the side of the car, her lilting laughter raising the hair on my arms. "Well, I'm glad you did. Why don't you and Bas come on in and have a drink or two? Do you play Euchre, Bas?"
God. I dug my nails into my palms to hold back the hysterical laughter bubbling at the thought of Bas playing cards at my mother's kitchen table.
"Lori! Who are you talking to?" I recognized the edge in Chad's voice. So did Mom. She winced.
"Hang on, baby, it's just Abby." She turned back to me, never letting the smile drop. "Honey, you better take off. I'm sorry."
"Right. I'll see you in the morning."
Bas put the car in reverse and managed a smile toward my mother. Chad was yelling something else from the doorway.
"Is she . . . okay here with him?" Bas's eyes flicked from me to my mother's and back again.
My mother threw her head back and laughed. "Aren't you just sexy as sin? Sugar, don't worry about me. Chad's all bark and no bite. You, though. Hmm." My mother made a growling noise and waved as she turned and sashayed back toward Chad in the doorway.
"She should be fine."
Bas pursed his lips together then twisted at the waist to check behind us as he pulled out. He was stoic and silent as he left the park and hit the highway. Warmth flooded through me at the nearness of him. I didn't ask where we were going. I knew I should have. I should have asked him to take me to Kendra's after all. But, something happened in the air between us. Chad or no Chad, I could have stepped out of the car in the driveway. Except I didn't. Not because I had nowhere else to go. Not because I felt some obligation to Bas for helping me with Cal or anything else. It was just some strengthening thread between us that grew the moment I first laid eyes on him.
Dangerous. Impossible. Foolish, maybe. But, as Bas drove further away from the trailer park and deeper into the woods of Wild Lake, I knew I belonged here, with him.
He made a turn up a winding road past the Wild Lake Outfitters store. My heart thundered inside of me as giant pines rose all around us. Just a few miles from the highway, and it felt like I'd passed through to another world. Something dark and wild. Lush and green. The pavement gave way to gravel, then to dirt. Bas kept driving. We reached the top of a steep hill; the highway and the store were far below us in the valley. Then, the trees broke and in the clearing sat a cabin unlike any I'd ever seen.
It was huge. Like the Wild Lake store, it was made of rustic beams of wood. High glass walls and wooden decking all around, overlooking the forest beyond it. A log cabin, mansion style. Bas parked the truck next to one of the tallest pines and cut the engine.
The air hung thick between us for a moment. I held my breath, afraid my stuttering heart might betray me. I was here. Alone. With Bas.
"Let's get you inside," he said, clearing his throat. He moved swift and smooth. Before I could even blink, he was at my side opening the car door. I took his hand, and that electric fire sparked between us when his skin touched mine. He held my hand in his, both gentle and strong as he led me up the stone steps to the main house.
Movement caught my eye in the tree line. I startled as two pairs of glowing yellow orbs hovered in the darkness. Air went out of my lungs as those eyes bobbed, the trees rustled, and two huge gray wolves stepped out of the clearing heading straight for us.
Bas turned and put up a hand. The wolves froze and immediately sat. Gooseflesh rippled across my flesh as I recognized the gesture. Their Alpha had just given them a stand down order and they had instantly complied. I couldn't help staring slack-jawed at the magnificent creatures. Each one perfectly formed with domed heads and ears held high at attention. Their muscles rippled as they sat back on powerful haunches, ready to leap and strike at their master's command. I'd seen wolves before, but none like these. For one thing, they were huge, at least half a foot taller at the shoulder than those I'd seen at the zoo when I was little. And they looked at me with questioning, keen intelligence.