Embracing the Wolf

Anthony knelt down in front of me, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. His eyes searched mine for a few moments before they fell to my lips. His tongue came out and licked a path along his bottom lip. That stupid warmth tightened in my stomach, and I mentally kicked it away. It meant nothing.

“Kiss me,” Anthony said. “Your words are just words. They lack conviction, but a kiss … you cannot fake what it will say.”

My eyes landed on his full lips and then to his green eyes. If a kiss would give him the proof he needed, wouldn’t it be worth it to never hear about this again? He could leave knowing that I was right and that there was nothing between the two of us, but most importantly, that I loved his brother.

“Fine.” As I said it, every muscle in my body tightened. If my wolf disagreed with me, she didn’t make it known. In fact, a spectral sense of anticipation filled me. I knew it was her emotions bleeding into mine, and that surprised me.

Anthony’s large hand cupped the side of my face. He spread his fingers, his pinky caressing my bottom lip. Slowly, he leaned toward me and stopped just in front of my mouth.

“Once the truth is out,” he breathed against my lips, “there’s no hiding from it.”

“Agreed,” I breathed, knowing he was about to be disappointed.

At the first contact of his lips on mine, my eyelids slipped closed. He moved his mouth against mine, soft and deliberate. When he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, I stifled a moan. I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing I was enjoying any part of this. I kept my mouth hard, allowing him to kiss me without kissing him back. A low growl vibrated in his throat and ignited something inside of me. Wrapping an arm around my waist, he tugged me hard against his chest. His mouth worked fervently against my own, urging me to join. I stood my ground, not giving into the kiss and praying it would be over soon.

Anthony broke away from my mouth, but held me tightly against his body. His eyes burned like coals, glowing against the darkness surrounding us.

“I will kiss every single inch of you until you give into me, Anna. If you want to prove me wrong, you have to kiss me back.”

He brought his mouth back to mine and picked up where he left off, slanting his lips over mine. That tingling warmth in my stomach ignited like gasoline on a fire. I gave in, moving my lips against his. When his tongue slipped between my lips, my body melted against his. He sucked, licked, and kissed me like I was water, and he was dehydrated. I was so dizzy from the kiss that I couldn’t think straight. My wolf surfaced and became ravenous for more of him. I needed to feel his flesh on mine, to be closer.

Someone cleared their throat and in turn, my head. Anthony broke away from my mouth, his eyes starving for me. I was embarrassed to think my own reflected the hunger in his. A slow smile creased his mouth, and I could almost hear his voice whisper, I told you so, inside my head. Tears blurred my vision at the revelation. I knew without a doubt that I loved Adam, so why did kissing his brother affect me as much as it had? I should have been unaffected, repulsed, right?

“I wondered if something was going on with you two,” a female said behind Anthony. He stood up and cleared my line of sight. Chelsea stood just ten feet away, her arm bent up and holding a crossbow. My mouth automatically fell into an O, shocked to my core.

“Chelsea?”

She shrugged. “Surprised?”

“You? But … why?”

She took a couple steps toward, me and Anthony stepped in front of me. “Uh huh, Romeo,” she said, holding out the crossbow toward him. “Back up or end up with a silver arrow through the chest.”

Anthony stepped to the side, his eyes flicking to mine. I still had my arms wound around the tree, and I hoped Chelsea didn’t notice that I wasn’t shackled and start firing that crossbow. She moved closer, keeping a safe distance from Anthony.

“Did you ever stop to think that I had a life before becoming a werewolf?” she asked.

Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. I was an only child, and both of my parents were dead. When I was bitten and transformed into a wolf, I wasn’t leaving anything behind by coming up here and living with my new pack. In that moment, I felt like a horrible person. Chelsea had been moody since the change, and I brushed it off thinking she just needed to get used to it. Was I really so wrapped up in my own stuff that I didn’t see her pain?

“I thought not,” Chelsea snorted. “Well, I did. I had a boyfriend, and we had been talking about getting married before this happened.” She held out her hands to signal herself. “We’re not permitted to be with humans. Not that Joel would want me now any way.” Her eyes burned with her hurt and anger, singeing me from the inside out. “And it’s all your fault.”

“Actually,” it’s all his fault.” I nodded toward Anthony.

Chelsea swung her arm around and pointed the crossbow at him. His hands shot up in surrender. “Way to throw me under the bus, Anna.” He shot me a displeased look, and I shrugged. So maybe I was still angry about the kiss and my reaction to it. Looking at Chelsea, he said, “Anna is right in that she didn’t have anything to do with it. She was just as much of a victim as you were.”

Okay, so now my tactic to get the focus on Anthony made me feel like shit. Why couldn’t he be the asshole we all knew him to be? It would be a lot less confusing. “But,” he continued, “kidnapping you was all Eve’s doing.”

So instead of throwing me under the bus, he was throwing his dead girlfriend out there. I guess he was still the asshole. Not that he wasn’t right, but was it really all Eve?

“She had a vendetta against Anna and knew she could trick her if she had you. Anna would never let harm come to an innocent.”

“But she did!” Chelsea snarled. “I was innocent, didn’t know a fucking thing about your world until my chance meeting with Anna. Talk about bad luck.”

I had run into Chelsea at Wal-Mart while Wade and Adam were trying to get me used to being around humans. It just so happened that Chelsea was working there at the time. When I ran into her, Eve and her goons had been following me and kidnapped Chelsea knowing that I would fall into their trap to try and save her. So, in a way, it was kind of my fault. Just being associated with me had targeted Chelsea. Since I didn’t have family to hold as captive, Eve used the next best thing.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “Really, I am, but it could have been worse.”

“How?” Chelsea asked. “I turn into a fucking animal every full moon and had to break Joel’s heart. He thinks I fell out of love with him.”

“It happens,” Anthony muttered, his eyes on me.

Ignoring him, I said, “You could have died from the infection of the bite. Yes, you were unlucky by being targeted by Eve, but you were lucky that the magic in the wolf saliva chose you to become one of us. Most people do not make it through the transition.”

“You wanna know what really sent me over the edge?” Chelsea asked, kneeling down so that we were eye level. She couldn’t hold my gaze, but she tried. At my shrug, she continued. “That,” she nodded toward my chest. I looked down and found my engagement ring hanging from my necklace. “I lost everything, and now I have to live through you getting it.” Her eyes flitted over to Anthony. “Then again, how long could it possibly last when you’re cheating on Adam with his brother? Trouble in paradise already?”

“I … didn’t cheat on him … not really,” I stuttered, but that’s exactly what it felt like. I had kissed a man while engaged to another. “It was just a test.”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care,” Chelsea said, standing. She pointed the crossbow at me. “Looks like I’ll be doing Adam a favor by ridding him of a cheating fiancé.”

“Chelsea, listen,” I said, pretending to still be bounded by the shackles. I twisted my body so that I could see her better. “I know you’re angry about what happened, but it does get better, and I know it’ll take some time to get over Joel, but what about Wade?”

Her face scrunched in confusion. “Wade? What about him?”

Now it was my turn to be confused. “He likes you … a lot. Hasn’t he told you?” I was grasping at straws, but I needed an opening, one where that damned crossbow wasn’t aimed right at my face.

Her eyes volleyed between Anthony and me. “I’m not like you, Anna. I actually loved Joel. We had been together for four years. I planned to spend the rest of my life with him. I can’t just turn that off and hop into bed with another man.”

I should have been angry that she just called me a slut, but I was more ashamed of myself. I wanted to tell her that I did love Adam, but then how could I kiss his brother and enjoy it? I thought about Adam finding out and the anger his face would hold, how he would look at me differently, and I crumbled inside.

“You’re right,” I told her. “I’m a bad person, but then so are you for orchestrating this entire thing. You hired vampires to kill me. Isn’t that worse than kissing another man?” I let my words sink in and watched her eyes brighten with fury. “By the way, how the hell did you have the money to pay them? By the sounds of it, it was a big paycheck.”

She smiled. “That’s the beauty of my plan. While cleaning Adam’s house for our arriving guest, I came across his safe, and his key was just sitting in his desk, tempting me. It was his money that would have paid for your death. Priceless, right?”

“And the vampires?” I asked. “How did you contact them? I’ve never even met one until they showed up here.”

She smiled as she thought about her plan, impressed with herself. “Wade took me to that seedy little brothel, Wild Things, in town and I met the most interesting people. It’s amazing what people will tell you when they’re drunk off their asses.”

“Well,” I said. “It looks like you thought of everything.”