"I didn't see any batteries. Did you guys see any batteries?"
Danika stared at him in dismay, wondering if he knew vibrators used ‘c’ batteries. Her face began to heat up before he even gave her a knowing look. “Oh damn! I forgot the flashlight batteries!"
His lips twitched faintly. He flicked a glance around the tiny cabin that she was sure took in every detail.
Not
that it was any of his damned business, she thought with rising indignation! “I think I forgot the salt, too,” she added, inspired.
"Nope! You got the salt,” Jared informed her from the kitchenette.
She glared at him. “Oh, well, good. The flashlight would've been more helpful, though, if the lights should go out."
"They go out very often?"
She sent Xavier an irritated look. “Actually, they haven't ... yet. But I thought it best to be prepared ... just in case, and, of course, I go out at night a lot ... because of my work."
Jared grinned at her. “Sex therapist for wolves, right?"
He was so not funny! She blushed again. She could feel her face heating. They were going to think she was trying to communicate via morse code! He chuckled at the look on her face, throwing up a hand as if to ward off a blow. “Alright. Don't be pissed. I was just joking."
"Too late,” she said irritably.
The sound of motorcycle engines announced the imminent arrival of the rest of the gang, effectively distracting everyone. Balin nodded at the other two and they headed toward her door. Jared paused beside her on his way out. “Hey, sorry about the bad joke."
She found it hard to resist his apology although she would've far rather nursed her resentment in his case. The man was just too damned handsome for any woman's good. She shook her head. “It's alright. It's just ... hard to be taken seriously, but I feel like my work is important."
Balin stopped outside her door and studied her for a long moment. “We've got booze and music if you're interested in a little company. There doesn't seem to be much here to entertain if you're not in to fishing."
Danika actually regretted having to turn him down, even though she knew his suggestion was a very bad idea. She smiled but shook her head. “I'll probably be up most of the night watching for my wolf."
His face hardened abruptly. “Your wolf?"
She shrugged. “I'll be surprised if he comes back, to be honest, but he's been around the cabin several times since I arrived. I've tried to tag him, twice, but he always manages to ditch the locator."
He nodded, thoughtfully, but his frown was an indication his thoughts weren't good ones. “Do you have a gun?"
Danika gaped at him. “I've got a tranq gun."
His lips thinned. “I meant one that fires bullets,” he said dryly.
Danika found her own temper rising. “I try to observe and learn what I can about the animals. I don't try to kill them."
"You
observe
wild animals, Dani—and that means they're dangerous. At any given moment you could find yourself the hunted instead of the hunter,” he growled. “If a wolf has been hanging around your cabin, chances are he isn't looking to play."
She stared after him as he stalked back across the narrow yard that separated their cabins and finally went inside when she discovered that the other gang members were watching her watch Balin.
The sense of restlessness Danika felt after Balin had left was something new. Trying to work it off, she went to sort the supplies she'd bought. Jared and Xavier had put up most of it—what would actually fit in the cabinets provided for groceries and the small under counter refrigerator. She found places to stow the rest, reflecting that going shopping when her mind was somewhere else was as bad as trying to be practical about grocery shopping when one was hungry. She'd bought way more ‘comfort’ food than she should've.
She was still restless when she'd finished and discovered she hadn't been able to nurse her irritation with Balin or Jared very well either. She was more accustomed to people not understanding, not approving, or just dismissing her work as a ‘hobby’ than she was the opposite. It would've been a pleasant surprise if they hadn't had attitude about it. The fact that they did was just a minor annoyance given how much flack she'd taken over the years.
She'd been trying to log notes for her field report since she'd arrived, but she'd had so little success so far that she quickly realized there wasn't much point in staring at the damned notes. She couldn't think of anything to add. Settling with the stacks of articles she'd collected from other researchers, she began trying to read through them again in search of suggestions, but her mind kept wandering.
Finally, she put them down and simply sat staring out the window.
She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she knew what the restlessness was all about. There were five drop dead gorgeous men next door, built like athletes, and her hormones were pinging around in her brain and turning it to mush. Reason might keep her ass planted firmly in her own cabin, but it wasn't going to make any of the yearning building inside of her go away.
Worse, the drugs circulating her system were eroding reason. At the rate it was going, she was going to have herself convinced that it was actually a good idea to fraternize with the guys next door before long. Hopefully, they'd be long gone before she lost her grip on sanity, but she wouldn't place any bets on it.
The entire time she'd been trying to focus on her work arguments had been darting back and forth through her mind in a heated debate between hormones and sanity.
Granted, they didn't look like the ‘boy next door’ type with their motorcycles, leather jackets and pants, tribal tattoos and pierced body parts, she told herself, but they'd acted so neighborly in helping her with her groceries! And it wasn't as if she wasn't a rebel in her own way.
She
didn't have a regular job, or dress like the average person either.
She
wore her hair unfashionably long—mostly because she rarely thought about such things and didn't have the time or inclination to make regular trips to the hair salon—and what difference did it make anyway? She spent more of her time tramping about the woods somewhere than anything else.
Just because they didn't look like they had jobs, of any kind, didn't mean they didn't. Or that they made their living selling drugs or by some other equally illegal means. They could be on vacation. Or maybe they worked in construction and were between jobs? Or on their way to one?
They were certainly built like men who did physical labor for a living.
Anyway, they were young.
Men didn't age like women, the skunks! They could be older than they looked. They didn't act like kids—except for the motorcycles, but that still didn't mean anything when she'd seen motorcycle gang members with gray hair and beards.
She was still certain they
were
young, too young to have any real interest in a woman her age. They were probably just amusing themselves with the ‘science geek', older woman, pathetic plain Jane desperate for a man's attention. They probably thought it was hilarious the way she reacted to their flirting—catatonia accompanied by neon flashing blushes and squirming discomfort.
Irritated with herself, she moved away from the window when it began to grow dark, set her alarm, and resolutely lay down to take a nap so that she'd be more alert for her nocturnal wanderings. If the wolf didn't show up at the cabin again tonight, she decided, she'd go down to the area she'd found just off one of the paths that indicated the wolf pack regularly passed that way. Even if she didn't manage to tag one, she might be able to get a head count and that would be
some
progress.
She surprised herself by actually dozing off, but it wasn't the alarm that woke her. It was vibrations traveling through the bed and through her. She lay still for a few minutes after she'd surfaced toward consciousness, trying to figure out what the noise was that was annoying her and where it might be coming from.
Suddenly recalling Balin had invited her over for drinks and music, the vibrations finally connected in her sluggish brain and she pushed herself upright. Slowly, anger began to pound through her, matching the beat vibrating through everything around her. Rolling from the bed, she stumbled around the darkened cabin and finally found the door and flung it open. Stomping angrily from her cabin to the one next door, she began pounding on the door with her fist.
She'd just raised her hand to pound on the door a second time, a little louder, when the panel was abruptly snatched open. Con stood framed in the opening, his expression still, unreadable, though the same couldn't be said for his eyes. They skimmed a leisurely path down her length and finally traced a return path. His pale blue orbs had darkened considerably when he met her gaze again, gleaming now with something that wasn't amusement, although his finely etched lips had quirked upward at one corner. “Decided to join us?” he drawled, bracing one forearm on the door jam and leaning toward her, forcing her to tip her head back to meet his gaze.
Still slightly disoriented by her rude awakening and not terribly clear headed from her anger either, Danika was nonetheless brought abruptly to a keen sense of her condition by the hunger in Con's eyes.
She wasn't wearing anything but a hip length t-shirt and her panties!
Her anger dissipated like mist in sunshine. “No...."
She didn't get any further. Releasing his grip on the door knob, Con slipped an arm around her waist, dragging her up against him. ‘No’ had barely left her lips when they were captured beneath his in ruthless possession. His lips were warm, hard, eager. He plunged his tongue inside her mouth. The faint taste of hard liquor teased her taste buds as his tongue glided over hers, setting off warning bells in her head that swiftly faded into silence in the wake of the heat that rose to his command. She sucked in a sharp breath of surprise, dragging with it his heated exhalation and a wild, intoxicating scent she knew instinctively was his alone. A wave of dizziness washed over her as if she'd drank the liquor instead of merely sampling it from his mouth.
Dimly aware of the need to stop him before he could take it any further, she lifted her hands to his shoulders, gripping them, pushing at him weakly.
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Chapter Three
He was either completely unaware of Danika's feeble attempt to dislodge him or he chose to ignore it. He speared the fingers of his free hand into the hair at the back of her head, holding her when she tried to retreat from the dizzying sensations pelting her. Sucking at her lips momentarily, he repositioned his mouth more firmly over hers and thrust his tongue more deeply into the moist cavern of her mouth, boldly exploring every inch of it.
She managed a sound, but even she wasn't certain if it was of distress or encouragement, if she was distressed because of what he was doing, or because of the way it made her feel.
Her back bumped against the door frame or the wall. She had no idea and no time to assimilate the fact that he'd pinned her or how he'd maneuvered her there. Prying her fingers from his shoulders, he manacled her wrists with his big hands and pinned them to the wall on either side of her. His groin made almost painful contact with her belly as he curled his hips, the thick, engorged shaft of his cock sending quakes along the channel of her sex. The feel of his hard body and the evidence of his arousal in conjunction with the heat his mouth and tongue generated made slippery moisture collect in her nether regions.