Read Online Wolf's Vengeance (After the Crash) by Maddy Barone - Free Book Online Page B

I hold you, it might help.”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    It gave him a lot of satisfaction to have her welcome his arms around her. When she squirmed close, he could feel how chilled her skin was and how tiny tremors shuddered through her. He pulled her harder against him and arranged the blankets to give her the best coverage.
    “Don’t you have a blanket?” she asked. “Or is this one yours? Don’t you need it?”
    “No. I’m a wolf warrior. I don’t need it.”
    She struggled to unwind a blanket. “I’m not a blanket hog.”
    He stopped her with gentle hands. “I don’t need it. Here, feel me. See?”
    Her icy fingers clutched his bare shoulder. “You are warm, even though you’re practically naked!”
    He wasn’t glad she was cold. No, of course not, but he loved being able to hold her. Mel hadn’t rejected him outright, but she made it plain she didn’t want to share her body with him. Letting him hold her to give her his warmth was allowed, and he’d take what he could get. Gradually the tremors quieted, leaving her pressed against him, her body soft with relaxation.
    “Snake?” Her voice was a whisper in his ear, sending a shiver of barely controlled lust down his belly to his balls. “What’s it like to be a wolf?”
    He forced his teeth to unclench, willed his body to cool. “I’m not a wolf. I have a wolf,” he clarified.
    He was so attuned to her he felt her eyebrow twitch against him. “Okay, then when you’re a wolf…Or when the wolf is out, do you know what’s happening? Can you see? Or is it like you’re sleeping?”
    One of his braids was trapped beneath her arm. He gently pulled it free. “I don’t sleep. I can see what the wolf sees, and I can send him back whenever I want.” He faltered, remembering the first time he saw her in the hotel room in Ellsworth, when his wolf reacted so violently to the threat to his mate Snake lost control. Was she thinking about that too? He swallowed. His cousin Paint found a mate, but she utterly rejected him because he wasn’t human. “Why do you want to know?”
    “I’m curious. I’ve never known anyone like you. So you aren’t a wolf? When the wolf is out, that’s not you?”
    His mate wanted to know him. The knowledge made him smile in the dark. “No, he is a spirit who lives inside me until I let him out. When he’s out, I live inside him. He’s not me, and I’m not him. Lots of boys of the Clan are born with wolf spirits inside them, and when they are older, the wolf makes the change. It takes time for us to learn to control the wolf.”
    He remembered his first change. Terror of never being human again had gripped him. But his wolf wasn’t as strong or defiant as some. Neither of them were Alpha. He saw how his Alpha cousins had to fight to dominate their wolves. When both the wolf and the man demanded supremacy, it was a battle to determine which would be in control. No, his wolf was usually happy enough to retreat when Snake told him to. The only time he forced Snake into the subordinate position was when he saw his mate being abused. And really, Snake had been so furious at any woman being manhandled, much less the woman his wolf chose for him, he did nothing to keep the wolf back. His memory of it was murky, yet some things were vivid in his mind, and one of the things he remembered was the sour scent of his mate’s fear.
    “Mel, are you remembering the hotel room?”
    She lifted her head from his shoulder, eyes staring blindly in the dark in the general direction of his face. “Sometimes I think about it. But I’m not afraid of you or the wolf, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not really. He didn’t hurt me. He protected me.”
    His breath came out in a controlled sigh. “He’ll always protect you.”
    Her hand gave his forearm, resting lightly over her waist, a squeeze. “I’m glad.” She yawned hugely. “Sorry. I guess I’m wiped out.”
    “Sleep, Mel. I’ll stay with you until it’s time for my guard