Dark Wolf Rising

She didn’t agree or disagree. She simply said, “It isn’t smart.”

A deep, almost silent rumble of laughter vibrated in his chest, and he arched one of those damn black brows again. “Neither was camping out in your car in the woods all alone.”

“But at least I had a good reason for that.”

He could have argued that she had a good reason for taking him up on his offer, as well. But he didn’t. He just stared at her, the silver metallic of his eyes mesmerizing, like the liquid swirl of mercury in a vial—making her feel as if he could see right past her sarcastic bravado, down to the real woman huddling inside her skin. The one who was scared and tired and pushed to the edge of her limits. His cool air of command made Chelsea want to slap him, just as badly as she wanted to press her lips against that hard, utterly masculine mouth and find out if he tasted even half as good as he looked and smelled.

Pulling her lower lip through her teeth, she finally said, “If I accept, it doesn’t mean that I owe you anything.”

Instead of agreeing, he simply gave her a charmingly crooked grin that made her body react with ridiculous ease. “My name is Eric, by the way. Eric Drake. And you would be…?”

“Chelsea Smart.”

He started to laugh under his breath, as if there was something funny about her name, but choked it off when he caught her glare.

“So, what’s it gonna be, Chelsea?” He stepped back from the bus, shoved his hands deep in his pockets again and lifted his shoulders. “Will you trust me?”

The question was offered casually, and yet, she had the strangest feeling that her answer was somehow important to him. Which was crazy, seeing as how she’d never been all that important to anyone before, much less to a gorgeous man who didn’t even know her.

What was it going to be?

She was acutely aware of each second passing slowly into the next…of each breath that expanded her lungs…each hard, powerful beat of her heart that shuddered through her body.

Then she did something that she never did, and opened her door, putting her trust in another person. And not just any person.

No, for the first time in what felt like forever, Chelsea put her trust in the hands of a man.

Chapter 3

By the time Eric pulled onto the gloomy, rain-sodden streets of downtown Wesley, he’d managed to learn a bit more about the human than just her name and the fact that she had a prickly attitude. She was twenty-six years old, had just bought her first condo and taught Women’s Studies at a private university in Smythe, Virginia. He’d also learned that she had spent the past few weeks searching for her younger sister, a nineteen-year-old named Perry, who also lived in Smythe…and whose party-girl lifestyle and recreational drug use had a habit of landing her in a variety of unsavory situations.

According to her roommates, Perry had suddenly disappeared a month ago, after hooking up with an amazingly hot guy at a weekend party. He’d fed her some bullshit story about how he really cared about her, but that his life was just too dangerous for a girl like her, and then skipped out. But Perry wasn’t willing to give him up. After asking around about him, she’d learned he was heading to another party in a neighboring county, and she’d set off after him, determined to track him down. Then she hadn’t come back.

When a few days had gone by and her roommates hadn’t heard from her, they got in touch with Chelsea, claiming they were worried about their impulsive, risk-taking friend. Chelsea had been worried, too, while waiting for word from her sister…or a sign that she was okay and on her way back home. When her phone messages on Perry’s cell went unanswered for over a week, Chelsea left Smythe and followed Perry’s sloppy trail from one college party or nightclub to another, until her search eventually led to a strip joint right there in Wesley called Heaven and Hell.

Unfortunately, by the time Chelsea had arrived, Perry’s short stint illegally serving cocktails in the club was already over. No one had been willing to talk to Chelsea or to give her any information, until she finally got lucky that afternoon and caught one of the girls, a hollow-eyed little slip of a thing named Maggie, on the way to her car in the parking lot. The girl had reluctantly divulged that a tired-looking Perry had hit the road after only a few nights at the club, when some guy she said she’d been looking for came in.

Apparently, the guy—a good-looking blond who Maggie had seen before, but whose name she didn’t know—freaked out when he saw Perry working in the club. A fight started between him and the bouncers when he demanded Perry leave with him, but then they eventually told him just to get her out of there. She’d run in the back to collect her things, giddy with excitement, and told Maggie that her boyfriend was taking her home with him, to a place somewhere up in the nearby mountains.

And that was how Chelsea Smart had ended up in Silvercrest pack territory. Chelsea had left Wesley not long after talking to Maggie, determined to search any towns she found up in the mountains until she finally located her sister. When Eric asked why she hadn’t bothered to go to the police, she told him she’d already tried that route, but there’d been nothing they could do to help. According to the officer she’d talked to back in Smythe, being stupid wasn’t a crime. Perry was a legal adult who was apparently acting of her own free will, and until they had reason to believe otherwise, there was nothing the cops could do.

Considering that the private road he’d found Chelsea on led to Shadow Peak, and Eric was positive Perry wasn’t in the mountaintop town, there were only a few other possibilities, and none of them were good for a human female on her own. Just as the road split off from the main highway, there was a turnoff to an old dirt path that wound its way over to the opposite side of the mountain, and into the territory owned by the Youngblood pack. Though the pack itself, a relatively small, peaceful group who kept to themselves, lived in a town that had been built on the western edge of their land, there was an even smaller settlement over the border in West Virginia where the Donovan family lived. Known for their corrupt business dealings, the Donovans had been asked to leave the Youngblood Lycan homestead in the late seventies—and yet, they hadn’t been banished, seeing as how their Midas touch generated handsome profits for the pack.

As far as Eric knew, the Donovans had never set up shop in Maryland, keeping their various ventures in West Virginian towns that were closer to their pack lands. But he’d recently heard a few of the Runners say that the Donovans had been sniffing around Wesley the past couple of months, and the prickling at the back of his neck told him the family might somehow be involved with that particular club.

If he was right, there was a good chance Heaven and Hell was being used as a front for something far more sinister than peddling flesh. Over the years, there’d been rumors that the Donovans were involved with drug trafficking, among other illegal activities. From the sound of things, the guy that Perry Smart had hooked up with was probably associated with the family in some way, or they never would have let him walk out of there with the girl in one piece. And if that was true, then the odds were high that he wasn’t a man at all, but a Lycan. One who, given the trail that Perry had followed, could very well be scouting out young women for the Donovan family to do God only knew what with.

All of which meant that Perry Smart had landed herself in some deep shit—and if Chelsea kept searching for her, she was going to end up in the same situation.

As he took the next right, she shifted in the passenger’s seat of his truck, drawing his gaze, and he damn near couldn’t take his eyes off her. The watery spill of light from the garish neon signs in that part of town played softly over her feminine profile and that long, wavy spill of hair. Though her attitude grated on his nerves, Eric had the strongest urge to fist his hands in that silken mass and draw her over to him. To press his lips against her pale, tender skin.

For some screwed-up, infuriating reason, it seemed that the more time he spent with her, the harder it was to keep his hands and his mouth to himself.

He grimaced at that unsavory realization, while adrenaline pumped through his system like a drug, making him restless, on edge—and yet, he didn’t push the speed, trying to drag it out, making his time with her last. He knew he needed to get the hell away from her as quickly as possible, but there was a part of him snarling at the fact that the drive had gone by far too fast. There had been too many heavy silences, too many failed attempts to learn more about her. She’d been willing to tell him about her sister, and yet, for the most part, had remained stubbornly closed-mouthed about herself.

Not that there was any point in seeking the answers to his unasked questions. The human was going to walk out of his life as easily as she’d entered it. And that was the way it should be.

Unfortunately, his wolf had other ideas. The damn animal had sex on its mind tonight, when Eric knew that was the last thing he needed to be thinking about.

Though the rain had stopped falling nearly a half hour ago, it still lingered on the asphalt, reflecting the harsh colors from the oversized neon signs, so that it looked as if they were driving through an acid trip. “Are you sure you want to stay in this part of town?” he asked, casting an uneasy glance over the seedy storefronts and dark alleyways that lined the street.

“Yeah, this is good. Heaven and Hell is only a few blocks from here. I was thinking I should probably drop by there again tomorrow, just to see if Perry has recently tried to contact anyone she met there. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even get a chance to talk to Maggie again.”

Eric cut her a dark look. “I thought you said the place was a hellhole?”

“I did. A hellhole that disgustingly exploits women as sexual objects for the gratification of men, to be exact. But I’m still going back, for the simple fact that this is my sister we’re talking about. Maggie might have remembered something more about the guy she saw Perry with.”

“If that was the case, couldn’t she just call you?”

She shook her head. “I suggested the same thing, but she wouldn’t take my number.”

Eric scowled, keeping his eyes on the road, wondering how he was going to talk some sense into her. He admired her commitment to helping her sister, knowing what it was like to want to protect your family. He felt the same way about Eli and Elise, his brother and sister. But the fool woman was going to end up getting herself killed.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth, ready to launch into a lecture on how she needed to get her ass out of town as soon as she could, when she pointed to a flickering sign on the side of the road that read Melvin’s Motel. “You can drop me off right over there. That motel will be great.”

Uh, yeah, sure it will. And the Bates Motel was just a cozy little getaway…

Thinking she must be out of her ever-loving mind, Eric pulled into the lot—not because he planned on leaving her there, but simply because he wanted to be able to focus on the argument they were about to have without the distraction of driving. He was just slowing down to pull into a parking space, when the sign for the building next door caught his eye. It was a women’s shelter, and he suddenly realized why Chelsea had chosen this particular establishment. She had no intention of getting a room at the creepy, sleep-with-a-knife-under-your-pillow motel, because she planned on staying at the shelter.

Like hell, he thought, knowing that too many things could go wrong with her half-baked plan. What if they didn’t have room for her, or turned her away? She’d be left in the middle of Wesley with no car, no money and no goddamn place to go.

“Screw this,” he muttered, gunning the gas. As he steered out of the parking lot and back onto the rain-slick road, she twisted in her seat, grabbing his forearm. It was the first time she’d touched his skin and his breath hissed through his teeth from the piercing jolt of awareness. It burst through him like a freaking detonation.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice sharp. “Turn around and take me back there!”

He worked his jaw, ready for the argument that had already arrived, and so desperate for a cigarette he could have begged for one. “Forget it, Chelsea. I’m not leaving you there.”

“You have to,” she snapped, her anger coming through loud and clear.

Slanting her a hard look, Eric shook his head. “Save your breath screaming about it, because it isn’t gonna happen. I’ll find a decent place and get you a room. It won’t be fancy in this part of town, but at least you won’t be sharing the bed with a family of roaches…or worse.”

“No way,” she breathed out, pulling away from him, until she was huddled back against the passenger-side door. He knew from her scent that she wasn’t afraid of him, but there was no doubt she was burning with bitter-edged fury. It pulsed from her small body in a hot, jagged wave. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’ll stay wherever the hell I please. And I can pay for my own damn room!”

“No, you can’t.” The words were graveled and thick, his jaw so tight he had to force the words out past his frustration. “I know what you were planning. You were going to stay at that shelter back there, and I’m not letting that happen.”

From the corner of his eye, Eric watched her send him a look that would have withered a lesser man. “It doesn’t matter what I was going to do, because it isn’t any of your business.”

“It is now,” he said with a harsh sigh, taking one hand from the wheel to rub at the knots of tension in the back of his neck, “whether you want it to be or not. So you can take the gun you stashed in your bag and hold it on me if you want to. Go ahead, if it’ll make you feel better. But I’m not going to back down about this.”