Kristal Hollis - Rescued By The Wolf

“I feel dizzy.” Grace squeezed her eyes shut.

“Maybe you should sit down.” He scooped her into his arms.

“Hey, no funny stuff,” she warned meekly. “These hands are lethal weapons.”

She wiggled her finely boned fingers with painted pink nails. She was so dainty and feminine, he couldn’t imagine her swatting a fly.

“I’m terrified,” he said mildly, although his heart raced like a hunted wolf whose only options were capture or escape. He carried her toward the disabled car. From what he could see, the front passenger side had suffered the brunt of the collision. He would know more once he got the car into his repair shop.

“You should be terrified. I was trained by the best.” Grace’s eyelids slowly shut.

“Who?” he asked, tucking her into the driver’s seat.

“My dad. He’s a former Navy Seal.”

“Appreciate the warning,” Rafe said to be polite. He wasn’t going to give in to his attraction to Grace, so there would be no need to meet Daddy.

She nodded, then clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Try not to move. Inhale slowly, deeply. Good, now exhale.”

He waited for her to complete a few deep breaths.

“I’m going to reach for your phone to call for help. No funny stuff, I promise.” Holding his breath so he wouldn’t indulge in her intriguing scent, he leaned over her to grab the phone from the jumbled contents of her purse on the passenger floorboard.

“What the hell is your passcode?” he asked, unable to access the keypad.

Grace scrunched her eyes and her lips stretched tight in a seal across her mouth. She clutched the hand in which he held the phone and the jolt he got from the innocent contact nearly knocked him on his ass. At least, it felt like it did. He glanced down to make sure his backside hadn’t actually kissed the ground.

After she keyed in the numbers 0-2-2-7, he jerked his hand from hers and backed away. “I need to find a spot with clear reception. Don’t fall asleep, got it?”

She didn’t respond.

“Grace?” He didn’t want to touch her.

Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. He definitely wanted to touch her again, to indulge in her softness, to see if her heat would take the chill off the soul-aching loneliness he endured.

“Grace,” he said sternly. “Answer me.”

With painstakingly slow movements, she gave him a thumbs-up.

“I’ll be quick. Don’t fall asleep.” He paced about fifty feet from the car until the phone registered a signal. His thumb hesitated above the touch screen before he placed the call.

“There’s a wreck on the old highway behind the McAllister homestead,” Rafe barked before Doc had a chance to utter a groggy, “Hello.”

“Are you all right, son?” Dr. Harold Habersham’s strained voice cut Rafe to the quick.

Since sobering up, Rafe tried hard not to cause his adoptive human father more grief.

Still, it lingered. Just below the surface. The old man loved his son too much for his own good.

“I’m fine.” Rafe frowned at the disabled car. “But I need the Co-op responders to pick up Grace Olsen. She’s got a knot on her head and dry heaves. Could be her nerves. She’s coherent and her pupils aren’t unequally dilated.”

“If you wanted to be a doctor, you should’ve gone to medical school.”

“I hate hospitals.” Hated the smell of antiseptics, sickness and death as a child. Hated the restraints, the needles, the beep of the machines that haunted his dreams long after he recovered from the shooting.

“Yeah, yeah.” The rustle of clothes muffled Doc’s voice. “I’ll put in the emergency call and be there in ten. Make sure Grace stays conscious.”

Keeping Grace awake would be easier said than done, considering Rafe would need to nudge her whenever she started dozing off. A nudge meant touching, and he definitely needed to keep touching to a minimum.

Palms tingling, Rafe sprinted to the car. “EMS is on the way.”

Grace’s eyes were closed and her head had lolled to the side. Rafe’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Grace!”

Her shoulders twitched and her eyelids popped opened. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Same here, sweetheart.

“I thought you fell asleep.” He thumbed her chin, tipping her face to see her eyes. Still clear and alert. Her blush-pink lips, full and luscious, dipped in a grimace.

“Nope, I was concentrating on not getting sick. The smell in here makes me want to—”

She gagged and Rafe didn’t think it was for mere effect.

“Makes me want to gag, too.” He lifted her from the car, carried her up the slight embankment and sat her against an old oak log. “What is that crap smeared in your car?”

“What’s left of a hot fudge sundae and French fries.”

Rafe’s stomach turned in a not-so-silent blech.

“Hey. It’s my favorite midnight snack.” She squinted up at him. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“I’ll pass.” Rafe was allergic to chocolate. Violently allergic. End-up-in-the-hospital allergic.

And Rafe was glad he was. It quelled his desire to kiss her. If she’d eaten one bite of the hot fudge, and his mouth and tongue touched hers, she wouldn’t be the only one headed to the emergency clinic.

“Can you move out of my line of vision?” She held her hand in front of her face. “Your family jewels are quite impressive, but I don’t want them dangling in my face. It’s distracting.”

A sharp, primal awareness pierced him. He glanced at his cock, going from semierect to fully erect in the span of a breath.

Damn.

He’d done fairly well at controlling his reaction until now.

Impressive and distracting. Her description made him proud and more than a little possessive.

He sat beside her, knee bent to cover his groin. “Better?”

Her pensive gaze dropped to his lap, then inched up his chest. “I would’ve preferred clothes.”

His clothes were miles away in his tow truck and he wouldn’t retrieve them if it meant leaving her out here alone.

After a few minutes of silence, Grace shivered. Against his better judgment, Rafe reached around her shoulders and drew her close.

“You’re nice and toasty,” she said, snuggling into his heat.

His body hummed from the contact and he realized he no longer wanted alcohol. What he craved was much more dangerous.

Chapter 3

What is that god-awful sound?

The incessant noise kept time with the pounding in Grace’s head.

She forced open her tired, scratchy eyes and sat up in the queen-size Murphy bed. The soft glow from the muted flat screen TV hanging on the left wall cast enough light that Grace didn’t feel entombed in a sarcophagus, but only barely.

Earlier, when she had woken up to use the bathroom and found the bedroom–living room area of Rafe’s micro-apartment consumed in utter blackness, a blood-curdling wail had exploded from her chest. Terror scaled her throat, tightening her windpipe around the scream until she ran out of air and could no longer breathe.

From out of the void Rafe had appeared, gathered her close and calmed her with his rock-solid presence. He probably thought a nightmare about the accident had incited her panic, when really she was simply afraid of the dark.

Being locked in a windowless basement for nearly a day when she was ten had instilled a debilitating fear of the dark and she was ashamed to have never outgrown it.

Beep...beep...beep...

The grating sound kicked up her headache several notches. Searching for the alarm clock, she glanced at the long wooden dresser centered beneath the TV. All that topped it were a video game console and one controller, the wires neatly wrapped around the middle. A cell phone, the TV remote, an orange prescription bottle and an empty water bottle were scattered across the coffee table.