Page 14 of Tracking Wolfe

“Open the door, asshole!” I called again. The side of my fist was hot from banging it over and over.

When he finally opened the door, Trace was shirtless and bleary-eyed. Soft flannel pajama bottoms hung dangerously low on his hips, revealing acres of skin and muscle. Chest hair and dark hair below his navel. A thin, silvery scar on his flank. A hint of sharp bone at his hips and the soft curve of his ass just behind it.

Fuck me.

He steeled his expression into one of polite indifference threaded with familial, paternal concern. “Wolfe? Why are you banging on my door? Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not fucking okay.”

His skin prickled in the cold, hardening his nipples and making his stomach muscles bunch. “Why are you here?”

I pressed my fingers into the center of his chest to push him back so we could both go inside, into the warmth of his cabin, where he wouldn’t freeze to death. I didn’t dare let my entire hand touch him for fear of what it would unleash inside of me.

Trace’s eyes widened at the touch, but he let me push him back. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll get cold.”

“You shouldn’t be here. You should go.”

I continued to push him gently until he was backed against the console table in his small entryway. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

His eyes dropped to my lips, sending a flash of heat shooting into my groin. I wasn’t stupid, and this wasn’t the first time I’d caught him looking at me with desire. If I’d truly thought my attraction to him was one-sided, I wouldn’t have been nearly as angry about his supposed indifference.

Trace’s shoulders slumped. “Wolfe. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to call you a goddamned liar,” I hissed, surprising him. If there was one thing Wolfe Marian wasn’t, it was confrontational. But this particular confrontation had been a long time in the making. “You stood there on your fucking porch kissing a… a child after telling me you’d never consider dating someone seventeen years younger than you.”

I stood close enough to feel his chest brushing my own through my shirt. Somehow, I’d left the house without my parka and hadn’t felt a single thing. But here? Now? Now, I was feeling everything. Every short inhale of his breath. Every warm exhale tinged slightly with the scent of alcohol. The inevitability of this moment but also the ugliness of it.

His hand came up to hold me back, his entire palm landing in the center of my chest, warm and strong. Gentle. There was no pressure on it. No actual push to keep me away.

I instinctively brought my own hand up to cover it and hold it there. A touch I’d never been able to steal before now.

It was precious and so incredibly perfect.

“I thought maybe,” he said, hesitantly. “I thought maybe you meant… me when you asked back then.”

“I did!” I cried. “Of course I did. And we both knew it. And you fucking ran away. You fucking left me and started your big, exciting dream life. While I…” My voice broke, and for some reason, reality came crashing down. “While I was stuck in mine.”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Trace’s fault. How could it be? He wasn’t required to love me. To want me. To be with me like that.

He wasn’t—couldn’t be—the reason I was adrift in this purgatory space between my foundation job and the dream job I could never claim in the light without ruining what made it a dream.

Reality began to crowd in. Even if he were attracted to me, even if he’d looked at me some kind of way once or twice, he had the right to reject those feelings. To not act on them.

I couldn’t force him to want me the way I wanted him.

“Never mind,” I said, pulling on my fake smile and self-deprecating shrug like an old coat.

Reassurance that everything was fine. I was fine. And so very sorry for disrupting.

“Wolfe,” Trace said carefully. “Hold on. Wait.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, patting my pants pockets and recognizing the shape of the key fob in one and my phone in the other. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Wolfe.” This time, it dropped lower—slower, steadier. A commanding note struck clean and sure, like a bass line coming in after too much treble. The kind of voice I sometimes imagined in my dirtiest fantasies. I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply, letting it resonate through my chest, through bone and breath.

I didn’t want to disrupt the melody mid-measure, so I let it play out.