Seeking Pack Redemption by Eve Langlais Page B

they
still follow? Had Roderick’s pets caught them?
    As
twilight gave way to night, she trembled as she wondered how long they had
until the vampire himself found them.
    I don’t want to think about Roderick. Not when escape finally
seemed a possibility. She focused instead on the man carrying her. While he
didn’t inspire the same kind of tingle Darren and Trent had, she still felt
something, a little shock more along the lines of that she’d experienced with
David. It was totally weird. In the past, her boyfriends never gave her
electric shocks when they touched. Could the odd sensation have to do with
their wolf status? A weird kind of pheromone thing given how
attracted she found herself to the men despite their deadly situation? Heck,
even now, butt half frozen, the cut in her leg throbbing, tense, and stressed,
she couldn’t deny a certain spurt of heat at being held against his naked
chest. A heat that flared higher when she allowed herself to
think of Darren, or the very naked Trent.
    My trauma has made me into a nympho-slut. That or she found herself
so happy to have escaped that she welcomed any kind of interaction with another
person. Say what you would, talking was nice, but nothing compared to a hug or
the intimacy that came from touching almost skin-to-skin. It beat a “Get Well”
card any day. I wonder if there is a card
for, “Sorry you got kidnapped by your possessed boyfriend and given over to a
psycho vampire who wanted to use your unborn child as a soldier in his army.” Would
a card like that come with money in it or the number for the nearest insane
asylum?
    Except she wasn’t crazy. Vampires existed. Or at least one did. And
werewolves were all too real, and in some cases, chivalrous and good-looking.
    To her
surprise they made it downstream without mishap. After staggering out of the
chill water, Marc set her on her feet and she wobbled for a moment as her
frozen butt thawed and her cramped legs stretched.
    Darren,
still in wolf form, slogged from the water and shook, his soaking coat sending
droplets flying. She twisted her face and grimaced in his direction.
    “I could
have done without the wet-dog smell.”
    She could
have sworn his wolf smiled: the man certainly was when he changed shapes, his
smooth tanned flesh—so much of it, delineated with well-defined muscles—making
her avert her eyes but not before a flicker of heat warmed her belly.
    Totally insane.
    While Marc
scrounged, his arm up to the elbow in a hole at the bottom of a tree, Darren
approached her. He crowded her space as he caught her hands in his, warming
them with his simple touch.
    “How are
you holding up?” he asked.
    “I’m fine.
Shouldn’t you be more worried about your friends?”
    His lips quirked. “I think they’d be insulted if I wasted my time
worrying.”
    “You guys
are weird.”
    “A good
weird I hope?”
    “Maybe.”
The smile that curled her lips with her answer surprised her. How could having this conversation, in the middle of the woods, with a
naked stranger, make her happy? She didn’t know, but when he answered with a
wide grin of his own, her heart pattered faster. Mine. Where that possessive thought kept springing from, she didn’t
know, but it also didn’t frighten her like it should have. Not when it seemed
more and more right.
    “Aha. Are
you ready to smell like roadkill ?” Marc asked as he
held aloft a couple of bottles filled with cloudy fluids.
    He wasn’t
kidding about the smell. They spritzed her with the vile scent, then did themselves. She wondered if it worked by grossing
their pursuers out because the stench certainly made her want to run away from
herself.
    Before she
could protest, Darren swung her into his arms.
    “Not a
word,” he warned. “We need to move fast. And besides, I like holding you.” His
startling declaration stunned her. In silence, she clung to him as he ran,
wondering if he was perhaps sick. Who enjoyed carrying a pregnant woman in a
dirty gown