Wolf Song (Wolf Song Trilogy #1)(10)

But the idea Summer knew Magnum’s son well enough to “Drew” him, made him want to strangle somebody. Or bear his fangs and take a chunk from the new alpha’s hide.

Summer ignored his fight-or-fight adrenalin-testosterone dump and stood up, drawing beside him again, Band-Aid close. She took his hand and looped his arm around her, then did the same with the other. “I don’t know him,” she whispered, reading him correctly. Once again her sweet, soft voice soothed him like a hot oil massage. “I just heard he’s in charge.”

“Okay.” Brick nodded and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “As it should be.”

“You know he’s mated, right?”

“He was mated ten years ago. Didn’t stop him from leaving his mate and the rest of the pack in the clutches of Magnum and flitting off wherever the f*ck he went.” Great examples and role models, those Taos. First the heinous Magnum, then the fleeing son.

She rubbed her body against him and all thoughts of Magnum, Drew, the pack, and everything other than Summer vanished into nonexistence.

“Can we focus on us now?” Her voice soothing, like her touch, her song.

“There’s an ‘us’?” He stood still, turning into a block of uncarved wood, sure even the slightest touch would light him up, a match to kindling.

But she was having none of it. She pressed his hands to her ass. “Isn’t there? We know each other, don’t you think? Don’t you want there to be?”

Her lush lashes fell as she lowered her eyes, but not before he glimpsed the uncertain question there. As if she’d taken a great leap being so bold with him. As if she’d never done anything like that before. Never chanced anything in this particular sexual arena before.

“Dog brought me here today. He wanted to see you.”

“Not you?” Disappointment shaded her voice.

“I’m a lone wolf. I’m not good with…relationships.”

“I see.” She nibbled on her full lower lip and he thought he’d lose it. “Then let’s not go there….” The yet remained unspoken but he heard it in her sweet, soft voice. “But I’m a cat. I’m touchy-feely sometimes.”

“You’re—” He shook his head, having a hard time wrapping his brain around that one.

“I’m a skinwalker, born into Clan Goldspark, a cougar, like my mother was. The raven’s my preferred form. It was my father’s Spirit Guide.”

“There’s gonna be a war,” he muttered.

“Not between us.”

“Calhoun Seven—”

“Forget him. Please, Brick. Let’s just deal with this…” she gestured between them, “whatever it is. This…heat.”

He groaned. She swayed, as if the sound he’d made burned through her, setting her on fire. Sexy. So hot he had to look away from her again.

“Didn’t know you were here at first,” he growled. “But the shower in the cabin wasn’t on the agenda when I could splash around in the lake.”

“And now that you do know?”

Again with the groan. She tilted toward him.

“Like I said….” He hesitated, then went for it. “Perfect.”

She heaved a huge sigh, her relief obvious, and then blessed him with one of her radiant smiles. “You call him ‘Dog’?” An eyebrow lifted like a bird in flight.

Brick shrugged. “Seems appropriate. Don’t you have a name for yours?”

She shook her head. “No. She’s too much me. Too much ‘Summer.’ So…you still haven’t told me why ‘Annabel Lee.’”

“Oh.” His lips quirked and he guessed his expression looked more sheepish than lupine. “You know that Edgar Allan Poe poem, ‘The Raven’?”

“You’re kidding, right? ‘Quoth the raven, “Nevermore”’? But the raven was a demon and the woman in the poem was ‘the lost Lenore.’”

“Yeah, but you’re no demon. You saved my worthless life when I’d crashed to rock bottom. And you didn’t seem either lost or Lenorish to me. So I went with the only other Poe poem I knew: ‘Annabel Lee.’ ‘And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.’”

“You know that one ends badly, too.”

“But it begins well.”

She nodded. “I like the thought.” She grinned at him. “Don’t you know this one?” She began humming, then singing, her voice crystalline, flawless as a many-faceted, museum-caliber diamond. His entire body relaxed as the sweet, traditional lyrics of the old Civil War standard Aura Lee washed over him: “As the blackbird in the spring ’neath the willow tree sat and piped I heard him sing praising Aura Lee.”

“Oh, f*ck, yeah.” He swiped a hand across his mouth to apologize for the F-bomb. “Much better. ‘For to me sweet Aura Lee is sunshine to the heart.’ Damn straight. Works much better. Aura Lee it is. If you hadn’t awakened me and gotten me off that porch like a beam of sunshine ten years ago, hell knows what would have become of me.”

“I think you’d have done all right.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”