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He was almost a decade older than me when we met. I remember it like it was yesterday, how he came walking out the automatic doors of the grocery store with a couple bags of ice in his hands. I had been heading in at the same time. We almost ran into each other. I’d stumbled back. He grabbed me and stopped me from falling dropping the ice in the process.
Oh god, his hand on my shoulder, that possessive heaviness.
Right from the get-go, I was lost.
He never did get to wherever he was going with that ice. It was all melted by the time he sent me on his way with the promise that we would see each other again. We did see each other again, time after time after time. I couldn’t stay away.
My Wolf. I thought he was mine, would be mine forever. He wasn’t as huge as some of the others, but he was still plenty muscular. He was tall, sleek, lean in a dangerous, sharp sort of way. His face was hungry and intense. He had short, thick black hair that I loved burying my fingers in, and the most piercing set of blue eyes a man ever possessed.
Thinking about how those eyes of his devoured me with the same greed that his mouth did, my stomach pulses with heat. My pussy clenches. I press my hand over my face and pinch the bridge of my nose. A motorcycle growls past the cemetery while I stand there and try to get ahold of myself.
My father is the reason I strayed from home. Wolf is the reason I left for good. What I thought was for good.
I fell for him so fast. I thought he’d fallen for me, too. Given what ended up happening, I’d been wrong about that part. As fast as I fell for him, the relationship fell apart even faster after just a handful of delicious, intense months.
Gravel crunches from nearby. I realize there’s someone else in the cemetery, on the walking path.
Keep going. Leave me alone.
The sharp scrape of stone against concrete changes, becomes softer. Whoever it is, they’ve left the path and stepped onto the grass. They aren’t going to pass me. They’re coming my way, moving up behind me at an angle where I can’t see them coming.
But I can feel them.
They stop right behind me, a huge, yet silent presence that breaks the wind like a solid wall.
I turn.
But I already know before I do. I know because that motorcycle growl from before stopped dead instead of tapering off. The rider killed the engine, stopped, instead of going by. But I also know because my body senses him, reacts to him even after all this time. My skin tingles all over, hairs prickling and standing upright across every inch of me. Blood flushes up under my skin, my face heating up, other parts of me doing the same.
“You,” I whisper.
“Me,” Wolf says, and flashes that fierce grin.
Chapter 3
Wolf
Icouldn’t sleep last night, and not just because it’s weird to be in the silence, in the dark, in my new house. I’ve gotten used to the white noise of prison. Voices. Doors clanging. Other men snoring, pacing, pissing and shitting mere feet from me. It got to where I almost didn’t hear it anymore, except now I actually miss it.
That’s not the real reason I spent the whole night looking at the ceiling.
It was knowing Julia’s here. She left town shortly before I was carted off to prison. Knowing that she’s so near, that we’re back in the same town as if nothing had ever gone wrong, it haunts me.
“Why are you telling me this?” I had demanded of Steel while pacing the front yard, feeling all this pent-up need to move.
“Because you’d find out eventually and then wonder why I didn’t tell you.” He had shrugged at me. “Lose-lose scenario.”
As soon as it was light out, I’d grabbed a bite of breakfast from the kitchen Leah stocked for me, then went out to give my bike a proper look before riding off. Wearing my leathers, feeling the wind on my face while the world whipped past…
I’d kept busy for a time, exploring the areas I used to know, greeting the brothers I passed by. Because I was moving around so much, it was only a matter of time before I wound up passing this cemetery. I didn’t know that I would see a small, lonely figure standing out amidst the graves.
I spent a lot of time last night wondering what I would do if, when, I saw her.
I’ve got my answer.
Like a heat-seeking missile, I’d gone straight to her. There was no resisting the urge because it wasn’t just an urge, it was a desperate, all-consuming need. Like the need to breathe, to blink, un-fucking-deniable.
She heard me coming. Felt me coming? She turned.
