Page 9 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

“Eleven,” I say, deadpan, handing him the coffee I poured for myself because he’ll take it anyway. “All by myself with my teeth.”

He takes the lid, drinks, winces at the heat, drinks again. “Yeah, I heard that’s your thing now.”

“Fuck you.” But I’m grinning when I say it, and he claps a hand on my shoulder hard enough to stagger a smaller man. That’s been us since a concrete yard three years back, when some fool decided the quiet Brazilian was easy meat and Grayson waded in, swinging, before he’d ever heard my name. Wolf ended it from thirty feet away without saying a word. My pack. I’d go back inside for these two men, and I don’t say that lightly about anyone else aside from my mom and sister.

“You’re welcome, as I finished the work around here. Now say something useful.”

He grunts a laugh. “Your truck’s back at the cabin.” He hands the lid back half empty. “Plugged the tire. Nail through the shoulder of the tread, probably off the lodge road. You owe me a beer.”

“That fucking tire.” I say it slowly. “I blame it for the whole shit show yesterday. I’m on the shoulder with a jack in the mud, and the entire time, Eve’s granddaughter was probably standing in Rusty’s Wolf Tavern waiting for me to walk her through the woods because I didn’t turn up.” I roll the lid between my palms. “I missed her by about twenty minutes, and she was gone when I arrived.”

“Mm.” He leans a hip against the stump. “You sure it’s the tire, though? Not that you got one look at her and realized she’s sexy as fuck in real life, and now you’re grieving the first impression you never got to make?”

“Fuck. That didn’t even cross my mind.” I’m grinning again, which does nothing for my case.

“Right.” He scratches his jaw. “So that wasn’t you last night, rolling in at midnight covered in trail dust and another man’s blood, and the first thing out of your mouth being ‘I think I might be in love. Lucy’s my future wife, and she’s so damn beautiful.’ ” He holds up a finger. “ ‘Not to mention she’s got a great rack.’ ”

“Yeah, well. You had to be there.” I finish the coffee, and the heat of it does zilch for me. That’s the problem—nothing’s touched the wire humming under my skin since yesterday. “Besides, do you remember what else I said to you last night?”

The smirk comes down off his face by half, and he nods. “That during your fight, you bit her.”

“It was a damn accident because everything happened in the same second. The strange guy with her had swung at me, she fell into me, my mouth was open in a snarl, and then my teeth went into her hand. Broke skin, and she bled, and I got some of her blood in my mouth.”

His eyebrows rise. “Was it a bite bite?” he asks. “Or a marking bite?”

“Honest answer, I don’t know.” The lid’s going cold in my hand, and I set it down on the stump. “But the second my teeth were in her, I felt a current go through me down to my fucking balls. Like grabbing a fence you didn’t realize was electric. And it hasn’t stopped. All night there’s been this hum under my skin, and my heart keeps kicking like something’s coming up the trail. That worries me, man. A bite shouldn’t do that with a stranger, or with anyone.”

He watches me for a long moment. “Except with your scent match.”

The laugh that comes out of me is rough. “Yeah, right. What are the odds of that, tripping over your scent match on a forest trail? That’s fairy-tale shit. Men like us are the part of the story that mothers point at when they tell their kids to stay on the path.”

Twigs snap to the north, and both of us turn toward the figure coming down from the sloppy, thick parts of the woods.

Wolf, felling axe over one shoulder, wedge bag in the other fist. His gaze sweeps the clearing once—the bucked timber, the painted line, the two of us standing around a stump. He’s been walking the marked line since dawn, checking my paint against the lean of each trunk, because Wolf checks everything.

“Lots of talking,” he says flatly, “for two men on the clock.”

“Break,” Grayson answers, spreading his arms. “Even convicts get ten minutes, buddy.”

Wolf doesn’t respond to that. He shifts the wedge bag, pulls his dented steel cup out of his jacket, and tosses it underhand across the clearing at me. I catch it against my chest, then fill it up with coffee, the same cup that came out of Stone Creek Penitentiary with him that he’s never let go.

He takes the drink and sips it, staring at me over the rim with those flat gray eyes. “So, you’re talking about how you bit Lucy yesterday instead of helping her to the lodge?” he asks.

“I’ve been telling myself it was nothing, seeing as it was just an accident.” There’s no point in trying anything else on Wolf. “But it’s not nothing.”

He drinks again, taking his time. “Doesn’t matter that it was an accident. There’s no such thing as a harmless marking bite on an Omega, Roman. If you broke skin, it counts, and her body already knows it. By the look of how flushed you are and the fact that you’re bouncing on your toes talking about her, yours does too.” His gaze glides over me once. “How bad is it?”

“I can’t get her scent out of my nose, man.” The words come out low and scraped, half a growl. “Apples and honey, and I’m so fucking savage for more.”

Wolf bursts out laughing. “Well. Now I’m curious.” He tilts his head at me. “It’s not every day a man bites a woman the first time he meets her. So what’s the plan when she gets to the lodge? Because she’s coming here. You going to shake her hand and say, ‘Welcome home. I do the logging, sometimes I work the grounds and the firewood, and also, that’s my mouth on your hand’?”

“I’ll figure it out before she gets there,” I say, and it sounds weak even to me.

“Figure faster.” One corner of his mouth lifts.

Grayson’s already at his truck, arm through the open window, and he comes out with an energy drink. He cracks it and points the can at me. “You realize Eve is going to lose her shit. She finds out you put a mark on her granddaughter, forget the parole board. She’ll drive you back to prison herself and help them process you.”

The growl comes up out of my chest, rolling.