Primal Heat(Wild Lake Wolves Book 3)(13)

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.