“Forgive me, Lena,” he muttered to himself and then his lips were on mine. He wrapped his arms around me and it took me so much by surprise that I was limp for a split second before every pent-up feeling I had been harboring for this man exploded out of me. I jumped up and wrapped my legs around his waist as his hands came down from the small of my back and cupped my butt. He walked a few steps and then my back was up against the tree.
A moan ripped from my throat and into his mouth and he swallowed the sound. Our tongues sought each other, softly stroking at first and then searching for the other in a feverish heat. When he took my bottom lip into his mouth, my fingernails dug into his back with need.
I’d never been kissed like this.
Ever.
He didn’t kiss, he destroyed, my mouth, my heart, and he destroyed my soul.
I grabbed the back of his neck and pushed his mouth harder against mine as a growl ripped from his throat. Grinding my pelvis into his hips, I was completely intoxicated with him. His smell, his touch, his taste. It was everything.
Reaching down to grasp the hem of my shirt, I pulled my lips away from his and yanked it over my head, giving him a full view of my black lace push-up bra. His chest heaved with heavy breaths as he raked his gaze over my breasts and then he froze, his entire body stiffening. His face fell and he stepped backward, setting me onto the ground as he grabbed the sides of his jaw.
“Oh shit. That was a mistake,” he breathed, and I couldn’t help my reaction. Tears exploded from my eyes. I swallowed my sob and my heart twisted in so much pain that I gasped. Without knowing what else to do, I turned and ran into the woods, needing to get away from him.
“Averly!” he yelled, but didn’t run after me.
I was so mortified, so heartbroken, I didn’t care if I ran into a mountain lion and was eaten. I just wanted to get away from the horrified look on Brayden’s face of me in my bra. My feet pounded the ground as I stumbled through the bramble, my tears quickly drying and turning to anger.
How dare he kiss me like that and then reject me!
It was a slap in the face that I didn’t ask for and I’d never forget. Leah could have him; I didn’t want a man who would treat a woman like this. His precious Lena was gone and he needed to get over it. She hadn’t been back in forty years, and although it was likely that either Leah or I was her, neither of us remembered being intimate with him. He needed to pick one of us and stop playing with our hearts.
Myheart.
“Want some company?” Maddy’s voice scared me and I yelped.
I threw on my shirt, wiped my cheeks, and spun to face her. “Not really,” I deadpanned, still stewing in my anger.
She was panting. Brayden must have sent her after me because he was too much of a coward to come after me himself.
So now Brayden was alone in the house with Leah?Is he kissing her too?Maybe he’d just kissed me to see if I was Lena, and when he didn’t feel anything he’d thrown me away like trash. Now he was in there experimenting with Leah.
I hadn’t realized I was shifting until I was thrown forward and my back snapped in half.
“Good idea, let’s go for a run. You’ll feel better, and we can finally put to rest that I’m faster than you,” Maddy said cockily and pulled off her shirt.
“Are not!” I growled as the anger at Brayden fueled my shift and my clothes tore. Fur burst out on my skin and my bones snapped. The pain felt good and I welcomed it. It was a shadow compared to the pain currently burning through my heart.
By the time I was fully shifted, Maddy was only halfway. The itch to run was too great and the anger was still present, like a beating war drum. Brayden should never have kissed me like that. Not if he didn’t mean it. That was majorly messed up and I was—
Maddy took off like a rocket and I growled, charging after her.
Cheater.
My paws hit the cold, packed earth as I tore through the woods, hot on her tail. My emotions flashed from being mad at Brayden to being competitive over my race with Maddy. She was fast, dammit, faster than me.
As her wolf leapt over a fallen log, she landed and then tipped her head back and howled, running for the creek. My lips parted in a wolfish grin and then my own howl rose up to meet hers.
There was something indescribable about running through the forest in wolf form with one of your packmates. I could sense Maddy’s joy, but also her worry over me and her brother. The upcoming fight. All of it. Running like this made us closer than ever. It was a shared experience where for this split second in time Maddy and I felt like one. She was family.
We were having so much fun running that I didn’t smell the hunters until it was too late. The telltale smell of leather boots and gun oil hit my nostrils as the retort of a firearm ripped through the air. A slice of pain licked into my side and I was thrown to the ground. Maddy’s howl tore through the night and I tried to get up and run away but my back legs weren’t working. Looking back at my hindlegs, I whimpered when I saw the crimson blood and a bullet-sized hole in my lower abdomen.
Maddy took off into the woods and I didn’t blame her. The hunters were walking right for me, ready to finish me off, and if they saw her they would kill her too. They moved in the shadows, hunting rifles held aloft as they looked down at me panting and unable to move. My back legs were completely numb. I’d gone from running wild and free to paralyzed in a split second.
“Decent sized wolf,” one of them said. He wore a yellow hunting vest; night vision goggles were perched on his head.
“Yeah, will look good on my trophy wall.” His friend nodded and raised his gun to finish me off and Maddy screamed.
