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“I don’t want to be your lab rat anymore!”
“Abe,” my mom warns.
“What is your solution, son?” My dad‘s tone is sharp. “You can’t function at school, but you don’t want to identify your triggers. How am I supposed to help you?”
“You’re supposed to lay off when I’m doing the best I can! I don’t need or want you to solve my problems for me. This is my life. Let me figure it out for myself!” I leave without being dismissed, stomping down the hall to my room.
After a grueling practice in which Coach Jamison makes me do push-ups in between every play as penance for missing yesterday, I shower and drive up to Moongaze Hill.
Lauren didn’t come to school today, but I’ve been texting with her, and she says she feels good and only stayed home because her dad was freaked out that she’d left the hospital without being discharged.
She said I could pick her up to go for a drive after practice.
I know it’s reckless. Being seen with her would completely fuck my reputation, but I can’t seem to help myself. I need her scent up in my nostrils. Crave touching her luscious body. I need to see with my two eyes that she’s really okay.
I park in front of her house and take the steps up to the door. Halfway there, I suddenly get nervous. I’ve lived in Wolf Ridge my whole life. My parents are pack royalty, my brother was class president and a football star, and I’m the team captain of Wolf Ridge High. There’s nowhere in this town I go where people don’t already know and respect me. But here I am knocking on the door of a human. I might have to look and sound respectable if I meet her dad.
As it turns out, it’s Lincoln who answers the door.
His eyes narrow as he surveys me, but he steps back from the door to let me in. I saw him at the hospital Monday night after my dad and I brought Lauren in, but other than me repeating my story about finding Lauren bitten on a trail, we didn’t have much to say to each other.
“Lauren!” he calls out, keeping a suspicious gaze on me.
“Hey,” I say.
“What exactly are you doing with my sister, Oakley?”
I shrug. Jeez. First my dad, now Lincoln. “Just hanging out.”
“Yeah? You’ve been a dick to her since school started, and suddenly, you want to hang out? I don’t get it.”
A sick feeling rolls through me. I didn’t think my assholery had bothered Lauren. She seemed completely impervious to it, but her twin bringing it up makes me fear I hurt her.
Lauren appears behind Lincoln. She’s hardly limping at all–just walking a little gingerly, and far from appearing sickly, her skin, her face, her countenance appear positively luminescent. “Eh, he’s still a dick, but I can handle him.” She sails right by her brother and me, somehow managing to strut out the door with a hurt ankle.
I can’t stop the slow grin from spreading across my face. “That she can,” I mutter, spinning my keys around my finger as I follow her out, my eyes trained on her juicy ass, which looks amazing in a pair of black shorts that mold to her curves.
I hear Lincoln make a disapproving sound as he shuts the door, but I don’t care. I’m back in the same airspace with Lauren–exactly where my wolf was dying to be.
I run to get to the passenger door first, opening it like a gentleman then picking her up by the waist to lift her in.
“Show off,” she says.
Fates she feels so receptive right now. There’s something different about her. If possible, she seems even hotter than before. Her tits swell beneath a tight crop top. Her shapely legs look more tan than before, and the flat plane of her belly looks entirely too kissable.
I shut the door and walk around to my side, climbing in. “How can I thrill you?“ I ask as I start the car.
Lauren’s laugh is throaty. Sexy as fuck. “What are my options?“
“Cliff diving? A roller coaster? Drag racing? No—scratch that—there’s no way I’m putting you in real danger again.”
Her smile is soft and inviting. Utterly intoxicating. “I was thinking something more along the lines of a cabin in the woods. Minus the rattlesnake I ran into on the way last time.”
The cabin. My wolf fist pumps the air. I was right about her energy being receptive. I don’t know what changed—whether it was my rescuing her when she was scared or proving I cared by hanging around the hospital afterward—but there’s an energy she’s sending me now that is undeniable.
My temples throb with a muscle spasm behind my eyes. I blink rapidly and hold my breath to keep from inhaling her scent until it passes.
“Cabin in the woods, it is.” I take off, driving the short distance to the road that leads out to the cabin.
