Play of Passion

CHAPTER 12

He grinned, his wolf delighted with her. “His head.” When Indigo touched her nose to his, he dared raise one of his hands and play with strands of her hair, her ponytail having tumbled over her shoulder. “I might have hinted that he was turning old and gray. Oh, and maybe losing his hair anyway.”

Indigo’s body shook. “You know newly mated men are touchy about things like that.” But her hand clenched on his T-shirt before she fell away and onto her back beside him, the sound of her laughter husky and open. “God, I wish I’d seen his face.”

Andrew wanted nothing more than to raise himself on his elbow, reach down and stroke his hand over Indigo’s face. He’d hold her with his fingers on her jaw as he took her smiling lips with his own, indulging once more in the taste he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind since the night of the storm.

His body tensed, blood pumping hot and hard. Gritting his teeth, he bent one leg to hide the blunt evidence of his reaction, even as he said, “I couldn’t believe he fell for it.” His brother was in the prime of his life, one of the most powerful wolves in the pack. And he was assuredly in no danger of losing his hair.

“He’s not going to think completely straight for a while,” Indigo said, “but the mating dance is the worst part. Men go a little nuts during that time. I remember when Elias met Yuki. He turned into his evil twin, snarling at anyone who so much as looked her way.”

Andrew couldn’t imagine even-tempered Elias snarling at anyone. But as he himself knew, it was hard to be rational when your whole being was focused on a woman to the extent that the need to touch her skin, to draw the scent of her deep into your lungs, became a fever in your blood. “I think the natives are getting restless.”

“Yeah, I hear them.” Sitting up, she slapped him lightly on the chest. “I’ll go help them clean up, pack up the leftovers for later.”

“I’ll take care of things here.” Rising, he watched her walk away, a tall, strong woman with contentment humming through her stubborn bones—because he’d apologized, because she thought he’d turned the clock back to the way things had always been.

His hand fisted again, but not in anger. In determination.

They made camp late that afternoon. Since the weather was holding and the night sky promised to be beautiful beyond compare, Andrew suggested they lay their sleeping bags out on the ground. “It’s not damp anymore,” he said to Indigo, having tested the earth. “Doesn’t look like it’ll rain any tonight, either. And this area’s only logged the odd snowfall the past few weeks, so we should be good on that score.”

Indigo rolled her eyes. “You’ve clearly never been a teenage girl.”

“Huh?” He looked out at the kids, who’d collapsed against trees or on the earth. “They’re all good kids. And they’re changelings.” No matter what their place in the hierarchy, all wolves could survive in the forest with no amenities whatsoever.

Shaking her head, Indigo said, “I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to the man who knows everyone and has probably had dinner with more people in the pack than me, Hawke, and Riley combined.”

“Don’t rub it in.” He scowled at the teasing—though his wolf was spinning around in untrammeled joy that she was playing with him. “So?”

“Haven’t you noticed the glances passing between male and female?” She raised an eyebrow, nudging his attention toward a certain pairing. “Sure, it’s no big deal to be naked when you shift—but we’re human, too. No teenage girl is comfortable with her body. Especially with a boy she’s interested in looking on.”

Andrew rubbed his jaw, aware he’d missed the signals passing between the kids because he’d been so focused on Indigo. “Huh. Cute.”

“It might be. But there’ll be no monkey business on my watch.”

He grinned at her stern expression. “I bet you were confident about your body when you were a teen.”

“You’d lose that bet.” Snorting, she cupped her hands around her mouth. “Come on, boys and girls, get the tents up! Then we’ll play a game.”

“What’s the prize?” was the cheeky response from Harley, who at sixteen was still fluctuating so wildly in his control—and resulting dominance—that no one knew where to put him in the hierarchy. Hawke was hoping that two days of concentrated time with the pack’s dominants would decide the matter one way or another.

Indigo grinned. “An extra marshmallow in your hot chocolate—if you’re lucky. Now snap to it.”

Grumbling at her “slave driving,” they began to put up their tents in pairs, as they would all be sharing. Indigo had worried about that with Drew, but now that they were back to normal, they’d do the same. It made her wolf happy. Like most SnowDancers, it preferred sleeping with Pack to a lonely bed. It was only the human half that chose privacy. But tonight with Drew, both sides would be satisfied.

Drew was already bending down to pull out the tent from where it was attached to the bottom of his pack. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered, continuing their earlier conversation. “What did you have to worry about as a teenager?”

“Oh, please.” She helped him spread the groundsheet on a level section of earth facing the other tents and hunted out the high-strength pegs as he unfolded the whisper-thin fabric of the tent itself. “I grew to my full height at fourteen.” Five feet ten in her bare feet, Indigo loved her height. Now.

“But,” she continued as they pegged down the edges, “I didn’t have any curves. None. All I had were clown feet I kept tripping over, and a body that was all right angles. I felt like a giant in the land of little people. A flat-chested giant with elbows of doom.”

Chuckling, Drew fed through one of the flexible struts that snapped the tent upright without the need for a central support pole. “I was short at fourteen. Really short.”

Indigo thought back, tried to remember. But she’d been eighteen, and fourteen-year-old boys hadn’t merited much attention. “That must’ve been tough.”

“You have no idea.” He watched as she fed through the second, cross-supporting strut. “Riley was already all manly, and I couldn’t even see over the tops of my shoes.” A mournful expression.

Laughing, she finished her task and opened the flaps so he could throw their packs inside. “Ah, well, we both grew into our bodies.”

“In my case, I grew out of it,” Drew corrected. “Shot up like a pine tree the summer between my fourteenth and fifteenth year. Unfortunately, I continued to lack any manliness whatsoever.”

Reaching out, Indigo squeezed his upper arm, the skin of her fingertips a little rough from all the work she did combat training their young dominants. “Well, you bloomed nicely.”

It took every ounce of control Andrew had to keep his tone light when all he wanted to do was to strip himself naked and have her stroke those capable hands over every straining inch of his body. Thank God his T-shirt covered the hard ridge of his cock as he took a seat beside her, his arms braced loosely on raised knees. “Thanks,” he said when she looked to him for a response. “That’s what Meadow Sanderson said when she divested me of my virginity.”

“Meadow . . . hmm I don’t remember her.”

“Human,” he said, recalling the lushly sensual girl who’d tied him up in knots over the course of a long, hazy summer. “She dumped me for the quarterback after she’d played my body like a banjo. So sad.”

“I bet.”

“I’m serious. I was heartbroken.”

“For how long?”

“A whole week.” An eternity in the life of a teenage boy. “Then I realized other girls had noticed my new manliness, too, and the rest, as they say, is history.” Adoring girls had never been hard for him. He liked the way they smelled, the way their bodies curved, the way they laughed. But that blissful year, for the first time in his life, those girls had adored him back. “What about you?”

“I was the hunter, not the hunted,” she said with a slow smile of remembrance. “I finally grew some breasts in my second-to-last year of high school—and decided I’d waited long enough, thank you very much.”

He could see her in his mind—a tall, lusciously curved girl who’d made his head spin. It had been a general admiration at that stage—he’d thought she was hot, no doubt about it, but he’d been more focused on getting girls his own age to pay attention to him. “Who was the lucky guy?” Jealousy dug sharp little claws into his gut, but he shut that door tight almost before it opened.

Changelings were sensual creatures—touch was the cornerstone of how they related to each other. He would have never wished for Indigo to have spent her adult life without intimacy; it would’ve hurt her on the deepest level. But that was then. If she went to bed with another man now . . .

Andrew’s wolf saw red.

“An Ecuadoran exchange student named Dominic.” Indigo’s voice cut through the haze, pulling him back into the present. “Dark, handsome, and with that accent—and the boy did know what he was doing.” A laugh . . . but that husky tone was just a fraction “off.” “Though I remember him scrambling backward when my claws sliced out.”

Attuned to every tiny aspect of her, he paid close attention. “Was he human, too?”

“Changeling, and dominant, but I don’t think he’d ever been with a female who was as dominant.” A pause. “I don’t think the experience made him want to repeat it.”

“Stupid boy,” Andrew said, too angry to be anything but blunt. “I hope you found someone with more balls for your next time.”

Indigo’s laugh was startled. “So to speak.” Tension leaching from her expression, she nudged him with her shoulder. “Time for you to do your thing, hotshot. Make the tracks hard, but not impossible. It’s all about building up their confidence.”

“Yes ma’am.” Getting up, he pulled off his sweatshirt and tee at the same time, throwing them inside the tent.

“Hey,” Indigo said, looking up with a scowl, “I got the feeling you wanted to help the boys with their romantic interests.”

Andrew followed her gaze . . . to see several pairs of female eyes on him. Teenage female eyes. “Shit.” Ducking inside the tent, he finished stripping and shifted, hoping like hell his wolf would listen to reason when it came to the woman who put her hand on his ruff and whispered in his ear as soon as he stepped outside.

“No tricks.”

Quivering inside with the urge to tumble her to the earth until she shifted, until she laughed and gave chase, he closed his teeth around her free hand. A gentle bite. “Okay,” she said with a smile that almost shattered the wolf’s control, “no tricks they can’t handle. Go.”

Drew’s fur slid out from under Indigo’s palm, the muscled weight of him fluid as he disappeared into the forest. She watched for him, but he was gone, a whisper in the early evening shadows. Turning back around to face her charges, she curled her fingers into her palm, disturbingly aware of how he’d felt, the heat and wild beauty of him.

“Simple rules,” she told the teenagers once they’d shifted. “First one to find Drew wins. You can work in pairs, or you can go solo, but you have to decide now.” She gave them a couple of minutes to make up their minds before continuing. “No booby traps, no blood. This is about tracking.” Glancing around to make sure they all understood, she raised her arm, then dropped it in a sharp downward strike. “Go!”

As they shot out from around her like streaks of lightning, she followed on human feet. She could easily see—and scent—where Drew had gone, but the kids were moving slower, having seldom had the chance to work with someone of his skill. It made Indigo wonder if she could track him if he didn’t want to be tracked.

Her wolf didn’t like that thought—she was used to being able to run down anyone she chose except Hawke. Their alpha was all kinds of cunning when he didn’t want to be found, but Drew was their tracker, born with an almost preternatural ability to zero in on rogue wolves. Lines marred her forehead as a new thought intruded. Was it possible Drew could locate Hawke even when their alpha preferred to be lost?

Catching a whiff of iron in the air, she changed direction to make sure no one had been injured. She found Silvia—a sharp branch had whipped across her muzzle. The girl was gone before Indigo could tell her that the damage was superficial. Indigo’s wolf approved.

Burying the branch to ensure it wouldn’t inadvertently lead the others this way, she carried on keeping watch over the hunters. True dark was hovering on the horizon when she heard a victorious howl on the cool evening wind.

Brace.

Nothing like wanting to impress a girl—in this case, Silvia—to nudge a male wolf into gear. Lifting her head, she joined in as the others in the group began to howl in response to Brace’s triumph. The sound was . . . It touched the soul, the music haunting, starkly pure and yet so very earthy.

Home. Pack. Family.

Aware that Drew would herd everyone to camp, she lowered her head on the fading echo of the last note and jogged back herself—to find that Silvia had beaten her there. The girl’s bruise looked worse in human form, but the maternal female wasn’t worried. “I found something,” she said with an almost puppyish eagerness. “Look.” A round metal ball lay in the palm of her hand. It was rusted, and had clearly come off the worse against rocks, but was recognizable as a man-made object.

Indigo frowned. “Where did you find this?” SnowDancer was very strict about garbage. Nothing, but nothing, was allowed to pollute their lands.

Silvia described a location about a five-minute run east from where Indigo had last seen her. “It was stuck between two rocks on the edge of the stream. I think it must’ve been washed down.”

That was Indigo’s thought, too, and, given the network of tributaries that ran down through the mountains, it meant there was no way to trace the object’s origin. “I don’t think even Brenna will be able to figure out what this was meant to be.” Because while she could see the remnants of a few wires inside, the metal orb was mostly hollow.

Silvia’s face fell. Reaching out, Indigo squeezed the girl’s rounded shoulder. “But you did good bringing it to me. Even if it is simply trash, we need to track down the guilty party and tell them to keep their junk off our land.”

The others began to trickle in then, and she turned to put the sphere in the tent. Drew nudged his way inside while she was still packing it away. Shifting in a shower of sparks, he tugged at the clasps of his pack. “I’m going to go take a dip in the stream.”

Indigo realized she was staring at the muscled slope of his back, her fingers uncurling as if in readiness to stroke. “Sure.” Coloring at her own rudeness, she backed out of the tent. Thank God Drew had been too intent on pulling out a change of clothes to notice.