Читать книгу: «Tamed By The She-Wolf»

Chapter 1

“Dayax!”

Having shifted into his wolf form under cover of night, Lincoln Adams eased farther into the dilapidated two-story building, shot-up and abandoned long before he and his team had arrived in Taifa, a war-torn village in southern Somalia and home to the Yeeyi pack.

Wahyas, an ancient species of wolf shifters who were caught in the middle of escalating human conflicts, faced a greater likelihood of unintentional exposure. To minimize the risk, the Woelfesenat, the secretive international wolf council, developed elite Special Forces teams called Dogmen. Their primary function: safeguarding Wahyas in harm’s way while aiding human allies in their worldwide peacekeeping endeavors.

Since their arrival in Taifa six months ago, Lincoln’s Dogman team had been providing support to UN forces defending the area against militant insurgents and administering humanitarian aid.

Dayax, an orphaned wolfling who’d made himself somewhat of a daily pest at their base of operation, had disappeared from his village during the guerillas’ morning raid.

Tonight, Lincoln’s mission, though not officially sanctioned, nonetheless fell within the scope of his sworn duties. Still, he’d chosen to conduct the search and rescue alone.

Sensing movement behind him, Lincoln spun around, baring his teeth, and issued a low, threatening growl. Five dark, stealthy figures covertly closed in on the building.

Damn ass-wipes.

Affection flooded his wolfan body while he watched his team, in their human forms, fall into position as they had done on countless missions. Handgun drawn, Lila Raycen quietly and quickly entered the building, snapped a quick look around and then gave a hand signal to her teammates. Her gaze sweeping the street, she whispered, “Sorry, Cap’n. All for one and all that jazz.”

Lincoln couldn’t speak the words floating through his mind. Wahyas could only telepathically communicate with other Wahyas if both were in their wolfan forms. Unless, of course, they were mated, which he and Lila were not. Nor would they ever be.

Although grateful at the show of Lila’s support, he growled to officially express displeasure at her disregard of his direct order for the team to remain on-base.

“You can thank me later—” she smirked “—with a fat, juicy steak.”

She had a long wait. On deployment, Dogmen’s diets consisted of water and rations—canned and freeze-dried. Lincoln couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a real meal. But once this assignment ended and they returned to HQ, his first home-cooked meal would be fried, shredded beef empanadas. His weren’t as good as the ones his mom made but she had the actual family recipe handed down from her bisabuela, while he had to make them from memory, since Dogmen weren’t allowed contact with family or friends while in the Program.

One more team member entered the building; the remaining three set up watch outside.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Damien Marquez asked. A member of Lincoln’s team for less than a year and a royal pain in the ass, but the fresh-faced Dogman made a damn good soldier.

Lincoln nodded. Dayax had lived in the abandoned building ever since his parents died. On his first patrol of the village, Lincoln had discovered the wolfling scavenging in the streets. And Lincoln had been feeding him ever since.

He’d also notified his superiors of Dayax’s plight, requesting an extraction and transport to a new pack. Their negative response didn’t stop him from keeping an eye on Dayax or from planning to take the boy with him once the deployment ended. Screw HQ.

“All right,” Lila said quietly. “Let’s find the wolfling and get the hell out of here.”

Using his snout, Lincoln motioned for Damien to stand watch at the entrance. Since he’d already searched the bottom floor, Lincoln signaled Lila to follow him upstairs. Remaining in his wolf form, he hoped the wolfling would either hear his telepathic calls or see his wolf and come out of hiding.

Lincoln bounded up the mostly intact stairwell. The bulletproof vest he wore, specially fitted for his wolf, chaffed despite a thick coat of fur.

Following close on his heels, Lila, his second-in-command, obeyed orders as well as she gave them. Except for tonight’s excursion, she’d never disobeyed a direct command. But he wouldn’t fault her for this one. Loyalty sometimes outweighed a crappy order.

Together for the last five years, he would miss her support and friendship when she got her own team. He knew she would because he had been the one to recommend her for promotion.

Lincoln continued reaching out telepathically to Dayax. Silence answered, time and time again.

The worry gnawing Lincoln’s gut spread into his chest. As they carefully cleared the second floor, the probability that the wolfling had been injured in the earlier firefight or had been taken by the rebels became a clear and present concern.

“Más rápido!” Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Damien waved for them to hurry. “There’s movement down the street and it isn’t the Red Cross handing out lollipops and blankets.”

Room by room they searched. The gnawing in Lincoln’s stomach would eat through his chest before long. After seeing the cruel and evil side of man and wolf for so long, Lincoln had nearly lost hope in everything. Then Dayax came along. With his inquisitive mind, generous smile and trusting eyes, despite all he’d suffered, Dayax had renewed Lincoln’s faith. If he lost the boy now, the last threads of his humanity would snap.

“Se acabó el tiempo!” Damien yelled.

“Almost done,” Lila replied.

Lincoln exited the last room to the left of the stairs and returned to the corridor, shaking his head. He gazed out the large window into the empty alley below.

“Dayax, wherever you are, I will find you!” He sent the question telepathically in English and Somali, hoping the wolfling would receive the message and understand that Lincoln would not give up on him.

“Last one, Linc. Then we gotta scram.” Lila stopped in front of the last door to the right of the stairs.

“All right, kid. Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said, turning the doorknob. “Hmm. Must be stuck.”

Lincoln’s stomach knotted and a horrible foreboding drove an icy knife into his gut. “Lila, wait!”

Unable to hear Lincoln’s telepathic warning in her human form, she shoved her shoulder against the door. It swung innocently open and she darted into the room.

The breath stalled in Lincoln’s chest continued on its path, though his heart still thundered.

“Vámonos!” Damien shouted, stomping up the stairs two at a time. “Vámonos!”

A flash of light accompanied a resounding boom. The percussive force slammed Lincoln against the window. Deafened from the explosion, he never heard the glass break. But the air swooshed around him and his stomach looped as he plunged downward.

He would be okay; his team would be okay. Dayax would be okay. The beautiful angel inside the thin silver case tucked in the pocket of his protective vest would make sure they were. She always did.

Nine weeks later

“I’m gonna wring his freaking neck!”

Angeline O’Brien glared at the man passed out on her brand-new leather couch, thrashing and yelling in his sleep.

She slammed the apartment door, envisioning her long fingers curling around Tristan Durrance’s throat for giving his subletter the wrong key.

Friends since they were tweens, neighbors for nearly all of their adult lives, and both relationshipphobes, Tristan and Angeline had traded apartment keys with the understanding that they would look out for each other. Angeline had expected the arrangement to continue into their elder years.

Unfortunately for her, last summer Tristan had accidentally claimed a mate and subsequently fallen in love, breaking up their platonic cohesiveness. Angeline didn’t begrudge Tristan’s happiness, but she had felt a little lonely since he’d moved out of his apartment.

But not lonely enough to play nice with a Dogman who had found his way into the wrong apartment. Everyone in the Walker’s Run pack had been anticipating the wolfan paramilitary man’s arrival for weeks. Everyone except Angeline.

Turbulent emotions rose inside her. When her first and only love, Tanner Phillips, had chosen life as a Dogman over a mateship with her, Angeline had never wanted to hear the word Dogman again. Neither did she ever want to come face-to-face with one.

So instead of welcoming this Dogman like a hero, she had a mind to toss his ass outside into the cold and slam the door in his face. Next to the two empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter, she dropped her purse and the carry-out bag from Taylor’s Roadhouse, her uncle’s restaurant where she worked part-time.

“Hey!” she snapped. After being on her feet all night, Angeline wanted a hot shower to wash away the food odors from her body and to relax in the utter quiet and comfort of her home. Alone. The sooner she got the Dogman into the right apartment, the better. “Wake up!”

Curled on his side, face pressed against the duffel bag he used as a pillow, the man gave no indication that he’d heard her. Every muscle in his body remained tightly coiled. A muscle spasmed along his clenched jaw and the deep furrows creased his brow.

Angeline’s irritation level dropped a few notches. “Are you all right?” She touched him. An unexpected electric current caused her fingers to tighten on his bare shoulder when she should’ve let go.

His large hand cuffed her wrist as he sat up. “Who are you?” he snarled. His glaring silvery-green gaze appeared to be clouded and unfocused.

“The person who owns the couch you’re sleeping on.” Angeline yanked her captive arm against his hold. Instead of freeing herself, she became more entangled with him as he rolled off the couch and stood, leaning heavily on her.

“Where’s my team?” A shag of black hair curtained his forehead, dark brows slashed angrily over his eyes and his naturally brown skin lightly glistened with sweat. “Where’s Dayax?”

“Wherever you think you are, you aren’t!” She grappled against his effort to restrain her. “This is my apartment, not Tristan’s, and I want you to leave.”

Angeline’s heart pounded with a healthy dose of adrenaline, but not outright fear. She’d had to contend with two older brothers growing up. Wrestling over one thing or another had been a daily sport and they hadn’t given her any slack just because of her gender.

She wiggled one arm free, sharpened her elbow and jammed it into his solar plexus. An audible gasp filled her ear. His hold loosened. Falling away, he snatched the tails of her sweater.

With a resounding oomph, he hit the carpeted floor, flat on his back with Angeline sprawling on top of him. Immediately, his meaty arms caged her, then rolling her beneath him, he pinned her with his weight.

“I can’t breathe!” At least not all that well.

Hands flat against his muscled chest, damp from sweat, Angeline shoved hard but nothing happened. Pushing over a concrete wall might’ve been easier than getting the wolfan male to budge.

“Who are you?” Though he allowed her some wiggle room, the timbre of his growl gave grave warning.

“The woman who will unman you if you don’t get the hell off me!” Angeline scraped her nails down his taut abdomen to the waistband of his boxers. Odd, considering wolfan males didn’t care to wear men’s underwear. But it was winter and she was grateful that his bare ass hadn’t christened her new couch.

The undergarment, however, didn’t prevent her from gripping his heavy sack in a manner any man would recognize as anything but playful.

A painful snarl parted his lips. Each time she squeezed, his lids shuttered and his gaze became more focused and alert. She knew the moment his brain recognized that he was crouched intimately above a female whose body was perfectly aligned with his.

“Think carefully about your next move, Dogman.”

“Oh, I’m not moving, Angel,” he said calmly. Clearly. Seductively. “Not until you let go of my balls.”

“Good,” she said, ignoring the flutter in her stomach that his deep, quiet Texas drawl had started to stir. “Now that you’re awake, do you know where you are?”

A whisper of a smile curved his mouth. “In heaven.” Eyes drifting closed, he lowered his face to hers and rubbed his check against her jaw, snuffling her hair. “God, you smell divine.”

Despite the awkward circumstance, Angeline didn’t sense any threat in his manner. The reverent way he breathed in her scent seemed almost like an act of worship.

His clean male musk invaded her senses, sparking a primal interest better left dormant.

“All right. The sniff feast is over.” She squeezed his sack.

Once she had his full attention again, Angeline let go.

He eased off her and she sat up, watching him hoist himself onto the couch. Only then did she realize that most of his left leg was missing. She also noticed the scattered scars on his arms and torso. Some new, others quite old.

Her heart pinched but she wouldn’t allow sympathy to fester. She had no business feeling anything for a Dogman.

Leaning down, he picked up the blanket that had slid to the floor during their struggle and folded it. “Apologies for the intrusion, Angel.”

“My name isn’t Angel. It’s Angeline.” She sank into the oversize chair. “That was some nightmare you were having when I came home. Have those often?”

“Every time I fall asleep.”

No wonder his eyes looked weary, and wary and sad.

“And why are you sleeping on my couch, Dogman?”

“I prefer Lincoln,” he said quietly. “Tristan left the wrong key beneath the doormat. When I called, he said you wouldn’t mind if I crashed here. Clearly, he made a mistake.” He removed a nude-colored stocking from the oversize duffel bag. Grimacing, he began stretching it over his naturally bronze stump.

Angeline folded her arms over her chest, hoping he didn’t notice her weakness, a traitorous heart that tweaked because of the traumatic loss he had suffered. “Tristan should’ve warned me.”

If he had, she might’ve refused.

Watching Lincoln pull the state-of-the-art prosthetic leg from his duffel, guilt stabbed at her conscience. He would only be in town a few weeks. She could grit her teeth and be neighborly for that long, couldn’t she?